ITExpo Regulatory 2.0: Shoot All the Lawyers

There was one part of ITExpo I was able to attend remotely.

The Regulatory 2.0 sub-conference at ITExpo is an under-appreciated gathering of lawyers, FCC observers, engineers, and legally-savvy telecom entrepreneurs, who all had definite viewpoints on net neutrality and other regulatory matters.

Thank you Rich Tehrani and TMC (the organizers of ITExpo) for live-streaming the panel discussions of this “co-located” event to the millions of policy wonks who care about section 706 authority. 😉

Not knowing what to expect, I tuned into the “If Engineers Wrote the Rules” chat. It was less than an hour, but I thought someone on this panel would suggest how the telecom rules should be organized in a more logical, Spock-like way.

Other than wanting to remove lawyers with great prejudice from the FCC, the only policy recommendation offered was less rules.

While I didn’t agree with many statements coming from the panel, which included Richard Shockey, co-author of the SIP RFC and now board chairman of the SIP Fourm, it was a stimulating discussion and I learned a few things.Continue reading

ITExpo Stream of Consciousness

Axel Rouvin/Wikipedia

Fax over IP …  Aculab cloud … AT&T mobile hotpot …  Kevin Martin recalls threat to change FCC vote …  Sprint’s WiMAX …  Startup Camp this evening … the end of POTS in 10 years … open source UC with Asterix and Elastix … Allworx gigabit Ethernet phone …  SIP trunking …  hosted PBX … cloud-based media processing …

That’s as much as I’ve picked up reading tweets, watching  short videos, and dipping into a few blog posts. I’ve not been to a telecom-focused trade show event recently. So it’s reassuring and a sign of industry health (except for, er, fax over IP) that many of the same players, products, and big themes that ruled a few years ago still are making waves at ITExpo 2011.

What’s really new is the rise of powerful data centers —the cloud—and the virtualization technology that makes it all possible.

I was therefore most intrigued by the buzz around the keynote speech on cloud-based VoIP delivered by Aculab’s Alan Pound.

Continue reading

ITExpo East 2011

Babak Gholizadeh/Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

No, I’m not attending.

But I am soaking up this VoIP trade show’s ambiance remotely by dipping into tweets, blog posts, and video snippets.

At past VoIP conferences—it’s frankly been a few years since I walked those aisles—there was a divide between vendors selling their enterprises wares and service providers with their service offerings.

ITExpo is instead a mashup of companies from both sides of the wire.

Of course, the cloud has much to do with this blurring of the lines. Continue reading