Four events, four points to think about

Last week was hectic, made all the more crazy by three major events -- CTIA, The Cable Show, VoiceCon - happening in parallel.  When the smoke clears, one piece from each show sticks inside of my head, as does the potential of MetaSwitch Form this week.

At CTIA, Skype for iPhone made its debut, followed by regulatory fireworks across two continents. I can't help but wonder if Skype expected to get the reaction it did from Deutsche Telekom in Europe. Be interesting to see what the EU does. In the U.S., the focus on broadband builds and just getting a new FCC Chairman seated is likely to prevent swift action on Free Press's petition for the agency to review the AT&T implementation of Skype for iPhone.

Over at The Cable Show, Sprint rolled out enhanced VoIP services that are likely to put the squeeze further on legacy landline offerings. The announcement also highlights the key relationship(s) Sprint has with the cable companies, one that a lot of people have ignored. Sprint needs the cable companies and vice versa when it comes to cellular networks.

Microsoft's appearance at VoiceCon puzzled me. VP Gurdeep Pall gives a good keynote speech, but why did the company pull its booth on the exhibit floor? Maybe the company wasn't ready to give good answers at this time on implementing E911 and survivability when a business ditches its legacy PBX and goes with an all-OCS 2007 solution. If the mid-2010 release of OCS "Wave 16" to provide those answers is delayed a la Vista, well, that could cause some issues, no? 

This week promises some interesting news from the MetaSwitch Forum in Las Vegas. I'll be tweeting from the user group event starting on Tuesday around 11:30 a.m. EST or so and providing updates as I talk with MetaSwitch executives and the company's partners. In a world of "Be Big, Be Bought, or Be Dead," MetaSwitch is going for the first option and it is going to be interesting to see how it continues to grow.

- Doug