NGN deployment at telcos (specifically VoIP) has seen many diversions over the last five years. To me the first diversion was Voice-over-Broadband (VoBB). Majority of the industry players had placed bets on switch replacement rather than the hosted offering such as VoBB. So that was diversion number 1. Diversion number 2 has been IP TV deployments. Diversion number 3 would be the disappointment or the lack of excitement around IMS. These diversions have basically knocked out many talented equipment makers.
Web 2.0 (or Voice 2.0 thing within the overall Web 2.0 genre) is understandably and potentially a much bigger diversion than the above three. Two things need to happen for Web 2.0 to assert. Hosted applications model will require acceptance, and the extent of the IP cloud or the reach of public and private IP backbones needs to reach a critical size. The bigger the size of that IP cloud, the larger the volume of communication sessions that stays within IP cloud e.g. calls do not touch PSTN so much.
In both these scenarios, the VoIP hardware that does the conversions between IP and PSTN world (media gateway) and the call agents (softswitches) that most of the time control that conversion, will not be required as most sessions will be IP-to-IP.
In that scenario the only stuff we need in terms of NGN equipment is a bunch of application servers sitting pretty in the IP core. And that is about it (maybe some IP-IP transcoding stuff as well but that will be minute). So telcos delaying NGN deployment – on account of the Web 2.0 diversion - may not after all need NGN equipment anyway because most of these NGN pieces in form of softswitches and media gateways will not be required. The Web 2.0 diversion might end up being a permanent diversion, therefore.