Facing the future

Delivering the opening keynote address at last month's NetWorld+Interop conference in Atlanta, Sprint President and COO Ronald LeMay deftly proclaimed, "Confusion, it seems, prevails everywhere today."

LeMay's remarks described the current tumultuous state of the telecommunications industry; he noted "that a lack of a clear vision and too many questions about who knew what and when has fueled pessimism, if not downright despair, in the telecom industry."

He's right. The telecom industry remains in a serious morass.

But carriers are showing signs of life, fueled by a number of technologies that are making it possible for them to offer new services in a cost-effective manner. As always, a string of acronyms -- SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), Wi-Fi, and of course IP -- are being bandied about as the keys that will help carriers generate new revenue while reducing operational expenses. Use of these technologies and others are inspiring options such as self-service provisioning portals, better wireless access and services for enterprises and consumers, and hosted IP Centrex, a set of hosted call control services.

Many users though are still a bit reticent to turn over internally run systems to the telecoms, content to hold a wait-and-see stance. "We're fairly traditional with our telecom requirements," says John Hayes, vice president of IT at E.piphany in San Mateo, Calif. "I'd like to see the carriers have the ability to get true quality of service before anything else."

"Sure, managed services are profitable and the way to go, but it is difficult to do," says Courtney Munroe, vice president of telecom and IP services at IDC in Framingham, Mass. "I believe that as companies get more complex, they will want to outsource more, but [telecoms] need to demonstrate ROI."

According to Brian Boyland, lead architect at Paris-based Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Group's telecom, media, and network practice, "Large enterprises don't want to manage bandwidth. Companies also don't want to manage stuff outside of their core competency."

Instead, explains Boyland, enterprises want to outsource some of these services, and telecom carriers are hearing the same message. WorldCom and Sprint have been complementing voice services offered over their traditional TDM (Time Division Multiplexing)-based networks with new services that take advantage of their large datacentric IP infrastructures. For example, as part of its Connection service, a collection of converged voice and data services offered over its IP network, WorldCom has been offering a managed VOIP (voice over IP) service.

"[The service] lets customers focus on business, and they don't need to be trained to manage equipment at their own premise," says Jim DeMerlis, vice president of product management at WorldCom in Clinton, Miss.

SIP -- a signaling protocol that initiates real-time communications on the Internet, including VOIP calling, instant messaging, video conferencing, multimedia conferencing, and chat sessions -- is also being deployed as part of the Connection services.