As it turns out, in February of 2013 (just last year) Infonetics stated:

“Analysts predict that seats for hosted VoIP will double between 2012 and 2016. The Infonetics Research study gave way to other attention grabbing predictions. By 2015, the VoIP services market will peak at around 74.5 billion dollars.
With that increase on the rise, managed PBX VoIP service will double by 2016.

In a twitter exchange with Infonetics analyst Diane Myer, I failed to realize that the study was a year old. But in a year, they gave up on that prediction.

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2014 North America Business VoIP Service Scorecard:

“The top hosted VoIP providers in North America are 8×8, West IP, Comcast, and Verizon.”
West provides a Cisco-based solution. “AT&T and Verizon both offer Microsoft Lync, Cisco HCS, and other hosted options.”
“The competitive landscape for hosted VoIP services continues to be impacted by the traditional UC vendors, leading to fragmentation.”
“Verizon, XO, AT&T, and Windstream are the leading IP connectivity providers in North America (SIP Trunking)”
“The IP connectivity market is driven by SIP trunking and led by a handful of strong providers followed by a large number of companies competing in a market where differentiation is difficult.”

I wonder about these research projects. I know they are pay to play but what about the other SIP Providers: Intelepeer, Broadvox, AireSpring? How is Thinking Phones a Magic Quadrant winner but not on this list? Yet made a list that Diane Myer presented at Metaswitch Forum?

In other research studies, “New fourth-quarter data from Synergy Research Group show that the UCaaS business suite now accounts for 8 percent of all managed and hosted business voice subscribers thanks to an annual growth rate of almost 30 percent.” [Source: CP]

“In the fourth quarter, UCaaS business market leaders by revenue were 8×8, ShoreTel and RingCentral, who combined to take 36 percent of the market. By subscribers, Fonality, Vocalocity and Mitel join the market leaders. In the hosted business VoIP and managed on-premise IP PBX segments, there is no one clear market leader, with NTT, AT&T, Verizon, BT and Orange all having similar scale operations; following them are a long list of other traditional telcos.” [source=CP]

More on this UCaaS study here.

In still another research study, “Revenue in the unified-communications-as-a-service market (UCaaS) is expected to nearly double in just five years. That comes from MarketsandMarkets, which in a new report says UCaaS revenue will rise from $13.1 billion in 2014 to more than $23.3 billion by 2019. That’s a compound annual growth rate of 12.2 percent.” [source: CP]

The InfoWeek UC survey is out and the summary is available here. The highlights are: 6 UC Trends to watch [infographic] from an InfoWeek/XO survey of 488 business. Among those deploying UC, 40% are keeping it on-premise with the IT team. 4 key points: Security, Mobility, UX (user experience) and collaboration. [The abstract is here.]

As many smart folks were telling me, it is Microsoft versus Cisco. Avaya is losing ground.

For me, a big take-away is that premise based is a mindset that is NOT going away. And recognize that buyers and users have used UC components – Skype, Google, Office365-Lync, 8×8, RC, Webex, GoToMeeting, Join.me – and that these apps are being used as reference points when comparing UC platforms. Only about half the respondents want a single vendor solution; the other half want best-of-breed with inter-op. (These are the dreamers!)

What is UCaaS? See the infographic answer.

ShoreTel’s 3Q2014 numbers show HPBX up 24%

From Infonetics Research: By 2015, the VoIP services market will peak at around 74.5 billion dollars.

So if VoIP market peaks next year, you have about 15 months to get your sales machine in gear and take market share.

“The Federal Communication Commission voted Thursday morning to move forward with proposed rules for net neutrality that may affect the concept of an open internet as it exists today,” writes RT. It was a 3-2 vote again, which means no consensus at the commission either. The public is furious. But Comcast and VZ are pretty happy; their lobby power will now kick in full steam ahead.

I wrote briefly about this issue before the vote. Go back as far as Powell as FCC Chair to see that the consumer and the independent company had no voice at the FCC. None. It’s all about politics, big campaign donations and that is it.

Amidst the whole Net Neutrality debate is a very simple thought: our economy is tied to the Internet. Period.

If you mess with an open Internet, our economy will shrink. Google, Amazon, Netflix — all started as Internet start-ups in a garage. All the new jobs in America come from small business. That’s right. Despite what the politicians would have you believe, all job growth comes from small business. (Think about the layoffs, down-sizing, synergies that large corporations do – before or after mergers. That isn’t job growth.)

The taxes that pay for all government programs come from SMB. Verizon hasn’t paid taxes in years. Yet VZ gets hundreds of millions in subsidy dollars and federal contracts. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? The tax dollars are spent on lobbying and campaign donations instead. This system is screwed up.

Once Comcast was able to charge Netflix for the access, the game was over. (Think about Cogent – cut out of the picture.)

There is going to be a 4 month comment period about what an Open Internet means. I know what it means to me: it means one Internet pipe as originally designed for ARPANET.

The Venture Capital (VC) community is worried [StopTheSlowLane], because now there will be more hurdles for the next billion dollar payoff. But think about that in smaller terms: now any small business will have to pay for better packet delivery as it gets bigger. As ISP’s that may sound nice, but the downside is that consumers will only be able to effectively use a few websites. (Consumers won’t wait more than 8 seconds for a webpage to load.) How will non-priority traffic work for sites running SSL or anything with a time-out?

What if Vonage and RingCentral pay for priority access? The other 998 VoIP providers sound like crap. Who wins?

Amazon pays for access, then Walmart, but Best Buy doesn’t have the cash, so its online efforts suffer. Bang!

“Companies such as Netflix, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have all come out against the creation of fast lanes. Under a fast-lane system, companies would pay Internet service providers to accelerate the delivery of their content to users. On the other hand, the content of those who can’t pay the fee would reach users slower.” [DW]

Etsy doesn’t buy priority access, so its marketplace of indie artists and craftmen are unable to sell goods. That is a lot of people. Etsy and eBay allow many thousands of people to make a living.

USA Today has a simplistic view of the 2 sides: regulate the Net or not. Recode has a nice Q&A about Net Neutrality. Recode even explains Title II — one of the FCC options is to reclassify Internet as a Title II service , which would require Internet packets to be treated like voice packets – uninterrupted (except by the NSA) and equally.

Peering has worked since the dawn of the Internet. Just 2 greedy assholes have tried to disrupt it – Verizon and Comcast. And Comcast is a late comer to the ISP game. I agree with some analysts that maybe if you don’t peer properly you should be kicked out of the peering points – all of them!

It’s important to note that none of this concerns wireless (cellular) networks, despite the Open provision in the 700 MHz auction.

“To be very direct, the proposal would establish that behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet will not be permitted,” he wrote on his official FCC blog last month.” [RT] Let’s not forget that Wheeler was with both NCTA and CTIA before the FCC. You can’t expect much with that background. It was like Obama saying that the trade organizations can now run the FCC, much like the head of the FDA is the former legal counsel at Monsanto. I can’t even get mad. I expect that DC will screw the voter in favor of Big Corp because it is in their best interests.

The LA Times has an op-ed piece calling the opposition nuts. It’s not a bad read that the big guys already have an advantage over any start-up due to networks that FB, AMZ, GOOG have built for themselves. Also, CDNs help them to get priority access too. [I think they are wrong about that assessment of CDNs.]

Read the ruling yourself here. Read the NPRM here. Thanks for reading.

Email your thoughts about what an open Internet means to the @FCC at openinternet@fcc.gov FCC 14-61 Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet = GN Docket No. 14-28

Last month I presented sales training on Hosted PBX and on Fat Pipe (10MB and more). The Hosted PBX was recorded as an mp3, but also as a webcast playback. The Fat Pipe session is only available in mp3.

Want some sales training tips for selling metro ethernet and other dedicated transport or transit? Just $10!

Want to watch the webcast of the webinar? Just $10!

Or just buy the book on Amazon.

Good, quick read on politics, net neutrality, closing the FCC and how broadband is tied to job creation on my TMC blog.

The NYT is reporting that one of the Dem FCC commissioners is asking for a delay on FCC CHair Wheeler’s new Net Neutrality Rules. That likely means no consensus. That’s great .

Congress punted on net neutrality, and FCC’s O’Rielly missed it.

A solution to the Peering Problem by Betanews – kick them out if they won’t play ball! Regulating Peering would be a cluster; but Peering is one of the founding principles of the Internet.

Level3 has 51 peers that connect it to 43,000 networks. Of those 51, only 6 are congested. This blog from L3 is a good read about inter-connection today.

BTW, the tech giants have written to the FCC about Net Neutrality. “Net neutrality has been called “the free speech issue of our time” due to its importance to keep a steady balance between control and freedom. ” It isn’t just about freedom; it is about the economy, jobs and Innovation.

One more update: 50 VC’s (venture capitalists) wrote an open letter to the FCC about Net Neutrality and keeping the Internet open.

A video explaining the current Net Neutrality situation.