It’s War. Google vs. The Telcos

Yesterday at Google I/O a lot of new devices and concepts came forward from Google and GigaOm carried it blow by blow. In thinking overnight about what Google is doing, it became obvious to me that unlike Microsoft and Apple, they're no friend to the cable guys, the hardware manufacturers or the telcos/mobile operators.  Why? It's … Read more

Meet the Ultimate Travel Issue Mediator

Recently I took a flight on US Air that was supposed to have Wi-Fi. It didn’t. For me, and my team member who also was on the same flight, that meant a cross country trip during the day, a short connection, and very little time to get things done before an early dinner with a … Read more

Eight Morning Thoughts About Less VoIP Brands, More Services, Etc.

Over the next few years I think we'll begin to see the following: 1. Brand erosion in VoIP-Less brands selling to business, consumers 2. Greater consolidation-It's already started with Smoothstone and M5 getting purchased 3. More services from bigger suppliers-Companies like SalesForce, CA, SAP, Oracle will begin pushing out more services that support VoIP providers, … Read more

Skype Microscoped In the NY Times

In a story clearly orchestrated by Microsoft and Skype PR,  and what has really is the first deep dive look at Skype by a major publication since their offical takeover last October by Microsoft, the New York Times' Nick Wingfield examines what's up with the market leading online real-time communications service. Wingfield did a very good job, … Read more

My 2012 Rose Day

Every year I invite a bunch of friends over for a start of summer BBQ. Rose wines are the flavor of the day and yesterday we went through a range of the pink juice ranging from both the 2011 and 2010 vintages withh wines from Spain, the USA and France.  Off the cuff, the 2011's … Read more

Are Changes Coming At Polycom?

Today the very influential conferencing industry analyst report, Electronic Telespan which is written and edited by Elliot Gold lobbed a bomb and a hand grenade in the direction of Polycom in the subsription only newsletter. First off Elliot who uses the numbers to guide his business analysis points out the problems at Polycom-basically saying the … Read more

Cable Operators Implement WiFi Roaming

Wi-Fi Signal logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Image via CrunchBase Today, many of the USA's cable operators are already passing settlement free phone traffic between one another. Now they are going to become a wireless operator without spectrum costs as the leading MSOs (Cox, Cablevision, Comcast, etc) announced a WiFi roaming offer that's designed to keep … Read more