Editor's Welcome
Hello and welcome to FierceTelecom, your daily update on the news, trends, and technologies driving Telcos and other public network service providers forward.
You may be wondering why we're launching a publication covering the historically wireline side of the telecom industry. Isn't wireline a bit passe? Backwards not forward? Not at all. To say so is to forget what convergence is all about. It's an evolution, not a completely different ballgame.
Many traditional aspects of the telecom industry are fading: time division multiplexing; circuit switching; copper; big, old phones tethered to clunky handsets only a grandmother could love. But many telecom companies--ILECs, CLECs, independent telcos, cable TV firms, Carrier Ethernet providers and others--now operate and will continue to operate services over physical core networks that are wireline in nature while changing almost everything else about how their networks switch and carry call sessions, the protocols they use, the applications they offer, and especially how their services are delivered to consumer and business customers.
In a converging industry, it's the wireline telecom network operators and service providers that have both the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge. It's their market to own, and every technology innovation has the potential to strengthen their competitive edge. That's why we're focused on what's next for telcos and other historically wireline entities. The future of telecom begins here. -Dan