Vendors lag in TM Forum issues like SDPs

The TM Forum (TMF) meeting in Nice this year seemed to show that the body is becoming more relevant to key issues like service delivery platforms (SDPs), content, and even advertising, but that the vendors involved in the process are lagging in their productization of these advances. The product...
Verizon backs LiMo

Verizon’s backing of LiMo is being perceived increasingly as a shot across Google’s bow, and also something that may be linked with an operator shift toward FMC and a more software-driven mobile strategy that moves away from IMS. The latter issue is, we believe, an important one for the...
Juniper announces IPsphere implementation

Juniper Networks and Net One Systems have announced the CONTENTsphere Field Trial Cookbook, a collaboration between the two companies to generate an implementation of IPsphere's content distribution field trial, authorized by the body in the plenary meeting last September. A contribution on the...
Alca-Lu ponders how to recover its position

Alcatel-Lucent is asking shareholders to amend the rules for dismissing the CEO or chairman, which would make it easier for the company to shed current CEO Pat Russo. Russo’s position has been deteriorating with the company’s stock price and financial performance, and many inside ALU and...
Comcast to buy Plaxo

Comcast is buying social network and photo site Plaxo, and plans to integrate it into Comcast’s offerings, perhaps even creating a set-top box that could be used to “tune” to Plaxo sites and view pictures. The move is one of several recent steps taken by content and network firms to gain...
HP nears EDS acquisition deal

HP is nearing an agreement to acquire EDS, which would make it the second-largest integrator in the world after IBM and a truly formidable challenger to IBM for perhaps the first time. The deal comes as the role of IT is shifting in the market in general, due to the emergence of the SOA-driven IT...
Common P2P architecture could threaten IMS

A number of developments, especially a rumored suggestion of cooperation among 15 common carriers to produce a P2P-model IMS-competing, voice-over-IP architecture that would be open to developers, suggest that the telco space is shifting its view of the future to accommodate the death of voice as a...
Sprint/ClearWire WiMAX move to shake industry

ClearWire and Sprint have finally married, apparently, brokered by Comcast, Google and Intel. The move is said to be preparing to shake up wireless carriers, but the most significant impact will be to expand the notion of a hot spot into something with metro or even national scope. As we have said...
Carrier Ethernet work continues for inter-provider connections

Vendors and the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) are working to correct an Ethernet omission that may or may not have much relevance to customer interest or service success—the inter-provider NNI. Ethernet standards have not addressed this issue fully because there has been relatively little interest...
ExperiaSphere adds cloud computing project

We have added a cloud computing project dimension to ExperiaSphere, a CIMI Corporation open source software activity in the service logic and service management logic area. The enhancement will permit ExperiaSphere to be used to link to cloud computing applications, to support the development of...