I have been following this thread on Yahoo Message Boards today. A few lines about what this could mean for Sonus ...

So … Sonus has for a long time bet on hosted VoBB i.e. its vision of Class 5 VoIP has been that of an over-the-top voice over a converged broadband pipe. That was until the BT deal came along. BT vision says broadband and narrowband voice will co-exist for a long time. In terms of architecture that translates into a bridging technology, the one that bridges narrowband and broadband. As such you will find the Access Gateway + DSLAM kind of technology deployed in BT exchanges. If the customer is an over the top VoBB user, the voice hits the DSLAM direct. If the user is a narrowband customer, the voice is packetized by the Access Gateway in the same box before it moves over to DSLAM for IP dumping. The combined Access Gateway + DSLAM box technology is what they call MSAN.

So why am I pretending to be technical? Just to tell you that Sonus now has the hots for these MSAN type deployments. BT might not be alone in implementing this architecture. I think even France Telecom - that has over one-third of its landline users now subscribing to over-the-top VoIP - has realized that not all its customers will move away from POTS. And the regulation will never allow FT to ignore those that keep using POTS. Conclusion: use the BT model.

And therefore ….. what good is Sycamore as a merging partner for Sonus? Well, Sonus has the Access Gateway product and the Access Server. Sycamore brings in the access equipment for data. That means Sonus gets to keep all the money for the access POP that handles both data and voice access. Going forward, this access POP might be the only POP a telco deploys as Class 4 and Class 5 functions get integrated into a single server. So the merger makes sense. Besides, Sonus has been too conservative in terms of acquisitions. It needs to diversify in order to move ahead.