SP-4 - Service Provider Round Table Double Session State of the

IndustryFrank Estes

festes@transnexus.com

1.540.220.0309

State of the Industry1. Telecom Zombies

2. Softswitches?

3. Hey what about retail?

4. I didn’t make it in Telecom, I am going to try and hype wireless!

5. Routing for dummies

6. Will the real SIP stand up!

7. Kiss

State of the Industry (cont)

Telecom Zombies, the living dead, A new phrase coined by the“Washington Post.” Filed Chapter 11 after the bubble, former executives beinginvestigated, same old business model with the latest gadgets, no creativity, no margins, and waiting to die again.

Softswitches, PSTN switches are aging and the big 5 (Nortel, Ericsson, Alcatel,Lucent, Cisco) are promoting the softswitch as a replacement. Ideal for RBOC’sLEC’s and major IXC’s. Beware feature sets in development and what really is a softswitch. For IP carriers, a step backwards. The latest line I have heard, “we are a softswitch with a session border control built in,” Or, “eventually, our

(insertname) softswitch will do that”

State of the Industry (cont)Hey, What about retail?, the IXC’s and LEC’s have finally realized the game isto move high margin retail traffic into their low cost environments. The bigcarriers want to replicate “Vonage” and bring any and all retail traffic into theirlow cost networks.

I didn’t make it in Telecom, I am going to try and hype wireless!, many of the hot IP vendors with SIP proxies, border controllers, mega switches were notsuccessful in generating revenue, but really good promote HYPE! Their

strategiesare retooled and seeking to create buzz in the wireless market.

State of the Industry (cont)Routing for dummies, Multiple systems, protocols, route plans, and scale limitations have made routing important in today’s telecom environment. What is good inside the domain will not work outside the domain. Simple, easy to useRouting engines that can work with multiple protocols, destinations and deviceswill become the popular new feature in late 2004.

Will the real SIP stand up!, SIP has been touted as the protocol of the future, yet, it is moving slowly. SIP vendors are building applications for conferencing, voice, video and other neat and cool features. However, these applications arenot interoperable, billing has not been resolved, and a simple, usable SIP proxy is non-existent (Would you like UDP or TCP/IP?). Microsoft has its own

strategy,the carriers want to reach out to the SIP consumer, and new SIP ITSP’s are forming minor islands of users. Sounds like H323 all over again.

State of the Industry (cont)

Kiss, Keep it simple!