Ciena a favorite optical vendor: Service providers have spoken and their optical vendor of choice is Ciena (Nasdaq: CIEN), according to Infonetics' "Optical Equipment Features and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey." Ciena led the list of vendors service providers named as leading providers of 40G and 100G optical technology, packet optical transport systems (P-OTS) and optical transmission and switching. In addition to Ciena is Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Huawei, Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN), and Nokia Siemens Networks were cited for their work in the areas of optical transmission and switching, 40G/100G, and next gen P-OTS. Out of this group, Infinera and Nokia Siemens Networks are the only vendors that are being evaluated for future optical purchases by a larger number of customers that have not deployed their equipment in their respective networks yet. Andrew Schmitt, directing analyst for optical at Infonetics Research, said that "One of the surprising results of this survey is that control plane features are a critical area of differentiation, named by more service providers than cost as one of the three most important features that sets vendors apart from others when evaluating an optical supplier." Release
VoLTE and VAS show promise: Despite a 10 percent annual drop in overall carrier IP telephony infrastructure market revenues, Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE) and business-focused Voice Application Server (VAS) services made some gains in Q3 2011. "Based on recent interviews with vendors and service providers, we found that 3Q11 was the first quarter of significant revenue recognition for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) equipment for LTE voice services," said Chris DePuy, an analyst at Dell'Oro Group. "It is exciting to see early signs that VoLTE infrastructure spending is underway. While the services will initially focus on voice, we expect service providers to offer new messaging and entertainment offerings to customers that will compete with over the top services such as Skype." Of course, the true market test for VoLTE will depend on the availability of handsets. The research firm found that GENBAND maintained its revenue share lead in the wireline voice core market, while Ericsson remained number one in wireless voice core. Release
Rapid ROI makes SIP trunking attractive: Research and Markets says in its new report, "SIP Trunking: Next Generation Call Processing Drives Lower Cost Communications" that the potential for rapid ROI is a major driver of SIP trunking deployments for businesses. What makes SIP trunking compelling from a cost standpoint is that businesses can eliminate the need to purchase BRIs, PRIs or PSTN gateways. Initially seen as a way to more effectively carry multiple voice sessions, SIP trunking has utility to provide a number of other services to a business, including instant messaging, presence, white boarding and application sharing. Release
MNCs prefer on-net VPN: While service providers have made significant progress in expanding their global off-net presence through necessary partnerships and network-to-network interfaces (NNI) agreements with other carriers, the reality is most large businesses want on-net connections. Service providers surveyed by TeleGeography's Global Enterprise Networks research group said that they offer on-net IP/VPN service 50 percent of the time in U.S. and Canadian cities, and 44 percent in European cities. However, the outlook is different in emerging markets such as Africa and Latin America, where they will serve customers through a local carrier partnership or an NNI. In Latin America, service providers offer on-net VPN access 28 percent of the time and only 19 percent of the time in Africa. Greg Bryan, TeleGeography analyst, said that while it is necessary for service providers to leverage partnerships and NNIs with other carriers, these methods aren't without their issues. "Although carriers may be able to use NNIs to offer seamless service in many locations, delivering service off-net can affect service level agreements (SLAs), responses to outages, and mean time to repair." Article
