IP Telephony Critical for 30% of SMBs; 50% of Medium-Sized Companies

More than 30 percent of small businesses (one to 99 employees) and 50 percent of medium businesses (100 to 999 employees) say that VoIP will become critical to their business operations in 2011, according to AMI-Partners.

The only aspect of those findings is that the percentages are not higher, though the reason is somewhat understandable. In a business setting, the switch from legacy telephony to IP telephony often costs money in the near term, rather than representing an immediate savings. Though recurring costs nearly always are lower, some amount of capital investment often is required, either to fix and upgrade a local area network or buy new software and hardware.

“The last several years of recession caused many SMBs to put new technology purchases on hold,” according to Karen Nielsen, Senior Consultant with AMI. “Moving into 2011, cost savings, as well as the advanced features available with IP, will impel more and more SMBs to IP architecture implementation."

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More Packet Backhaul in Europe

According to Heavy Reading research, eight percent of all cell sites in Europe will have packet backhaul in live service at the end of this year, which is up from less than two percent at the end of 2008.

Heavy Reading forecasts that by the end of next year, 17 percent of all European cell sites will have packet backhaul in live service.

In Europe, most of the packet backhaul deployments to date have been fiber-based, according to Donegan. But 2011 is expected to be a big year for packet microwave, and it will be deployed in substantial volume in "live commercial service," says Donegan.

Light Reading Europe - Ethernet - Packet Backhaul Busts the 'Pain Barrier' - Telecom News Analysis

Telecom NZ CEO: Industry Outlook Bearish

Telecom Corp. of New Zealand Chief Executive Paul Reynolds remains bearish about the short-term outlook for the communications industry, in New Zealand and most of the developed world as well, but as you would expect, says his firm, and others, are prepared for what they must do.

However, the telecommunications industry faces tough times and profound challenges in New Zealand and all around the world, he said.

"Revenue growth has stopped for telcos in mature economies," he notes. "There's no growth in Australia, Europe or the U.S., and none in New Zealand."

In New Zealand, total revenues are predicted to decline slightly over the next three years, Reynolds says.

Competition in traditional voice and data services were causing revenues to decline quickly, while growth areas like mobile, information technology and broadband were struggling to fill the gap, he says.

It is obviously not the concern of any end user that Telecom and other firms have to manage for a no-growth environment. But it has to be a concern for policymakers, capital markets and industry executives that this is the case.

To the extent that there is no possibility of providing new services, better services and lower prices without a return to growth, it arguably doesn't make sense to put barriers in the path to transforming the business. It sometimes makes sense to put new regulations and place new obligations on businesses with a strong public service character and robust earnings.

It arguably does not make sense to saddle declining businesses with additional burdens at a time when they simply cannot bear them. Otherwise one simply hastens the speed of the decline.

Telecom NZ CEO: Industry Outlook Bearish But Telecom Prepared - WSJ.com (subscription required)

U.S. Companies to Increase Hiring in 2011

Companies in the United States are poised to increase payrolls next year as revenue picks up, a sign the labor market is improving, an annual survey of chief financial officers showed today.

The share of executives who said they plan to hire new workers in 2011 rose to 47 percent, compared with 28 percent who forecast they would add jobs this year, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey released today. Sixty-four percent said they expect revenue growth, up from 61 percent in last year’s survey.

Businesses in the U.S. need to add more jobs to bring down an unemployment rate that rose to 9.8 percent in November, the highest since April, and alleviate concerns among Federal Reserve policy makers that growth in the world’s largest economy will remain sluggish.

U.S. Companies to Increase Hiring in 2011, Survey of CFOs Shows - Bloomberg

Mobile Story for 2011: Mobile Local Advertising, Android and Social Media

Android, social and local could make for “massive growth” in mobile advertising in 2011, some believe.

New Google Chrome OS

Sprint Network Modernization Means More Freedom

Sprint's new $5 billion network modernization program, which will allow it to consolidate its multiple radio networks into a single fabric, might save the company a huge amount of money: possibly $10 billion to $11 billion over seven years. That would be reason enough to pursue the upgrade.

More important are the potential strategic options, such as allowing Sprint the ability to deploy its own Long Term Evolution network, on its own facilities and using its owned spectrum, instead of relying on Clearwire facilities, even though Sprint owns 54 percent of Clearwire.

Sprint does not have management control over Clearwire and tensions between Sprint and Clearwire have grown over the last year. Sprint will have the ability to create a new LTE network on its own once it decommissions the iDEN network, and might have other options should Clearwire proceed with a planned spectrum auction, and should Sprint emerge as the winner of that spectrum.

At this point, Sprint might prefer to be the master of its own LTE and 4G destiny, rather than the depending on Clearwire’s WiMAX rollout.

Datamonitor | Media Center | Sprint takes control of 4G destiny, expert comment