Short articles on Communications identities, VoIP peering and FMC

I write a monthly column for Internet Telephony Magazine where my articles appear, on paper, under the banner Next Wave Redux, about a month after I write them.  Recently TMCnet, the owners of Internet Telephony Magazine, started featuring some of my columns of the past year of so on their website.  Here are the first three, from September, November and August of 2007 respectively, which showed up on TMCnet in the past week.

Remarkably, they are not that dated and I am not too embarrassed to link to them.  :)

Phone Numbers and Our Evolving Communications Identity
TMCnet - USA
By Brough Turner 

ENUM and P2P VoIP are focus topics for this month’s issue, but while they both pertain to Internet Telephony, it’s also true that apples and hamburgers are both food. The conjunction does prompt one to reflect on how telecom identities are evolving and where it will lead....
 

VoIP Peering — Not Such a Big Deal
TMCnet - USA
By Brough Turner

VoIP peering — there’s a lot of talk, but relatively little action. That’s probably okay, as VoIP peering is a telephony concept.  In the world of Internet applications, we care about things like communities, endpoints and mashups. But to understand the real issues, we first need to resolve some confusing terminology and discuss some economics. ...
 

Fixed-Mobile Convergence, User-Need Divergence
TMCnet - USA
By Brough Turner

Fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) is a much-bandied term, but it’sa vendor or operator solution in search of a user problem. It’s all about technology, not users. Operators are building or planning converged core networks, based on IP, which can handle the needs of both fixed and mobile subsidiaries. But this is to save costs and simplify operations. Some operators are launching “FMC services,” but these focus on converging technologies, not on converging user functions or benefits.

Users are interested in converged address books and converged voicemail, many are mixing their business and private lives, but none seek to converge their channels of communications.

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