2009 Year in review: Runners up

Although I think we picked a solid list for our 2009 year in review series, there are a few others I felt I could not overlook in the process:

France Telecom's suicides: While it may seem like a morbid topic to include in any top five list, it's hard not to notice how low employee morale at the formerly state-run France Telecom drove 25 employees to take their lives over the past year.

AT&T and the wireline unions: Interestingly, the battle between AT&T's management and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) continued to be a popular story line at FierceTelecom. AT&T currently has made progress in garnering contracts with unions in most of their regions with the exception of the Northeast region, where workers are still working under an existing contract.

Cable steps up DOCSIS 3.0: Throughout 2009, all of the major U.S. (Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable) and U.K. (Virgin) cable MSOs continued to make progress with their rollouts to counter telco fiber-based broadband initiatives.

Carrier Ethernet External Network to Network Interconnection: Ethernet continues to be a hot commodity service, but the reality is that no one carrier can reach every location yet their customers demand it. This disparity has driven service providers to develop pre-standard Carrier Ethernet External Network to Network Interconnection and access arrangements with other carriers to expand their Ethernet footprint where they may not have network facilities.    

Telcos, cable target healthcare: One vertical market segment that continued to garner a good deal of attention for service providers throughout 2009 was healthcare. Whether it was smaller competitive providers (Optimum Lightpath), cable (Cox Business) or the three large incumbents (AT&T, Verizon and Qwest), service providers continued to win large network contracts with health care entities, but also launched a series of products targeted specifically at this vertical.