Breaking the silence of 40 long days today, a silence protesting the ugly 8 long years of telcom recession. That is one reason. The other reason is that I have been working on some custom research projects while you guys were watching the markets throw those familiar tantrums. Anyway, the blogging will be light for the next few months, but we will have a full-time blogger for you sometime in December. I have not recruited for over a year now. In India, that means attenuation to the tune of 50%. Almost an organized attrition. And that is a killer especially if you have to do the baby sitting while they stay!!!

Some comments on the major developments over the past month or so:

US elections: Easier to say things when you are out of power. The moment you assume it, you get a microscopic view of things you were previously seeing with your naked eye. Anyway, as long as the US produces innovation, there should not be a major problem. In the context of communications industry, the problem is to monetize that innovation. In ICT, some new and equally competitive pockets of innovation are opening up - areas like Eastern Europe and Ireland. I would probe the BRIC countries next.

The financial crisis: not quite Correction 2.0. However, I wish the VC model would implement some longer term correction. There is at times excessive optimism among the young entrepreneurs about their business plans (in the ICT industry). The VC model of nineties has also cultivated the culture of ‘let us work ridiculously hard for 18 months and then market ourselves as an acquisition target’. That sort of culture just defeats sustainable entrepreneurship. I wish that could go away. Other than that I think the financial crisis of Oct 08 could precipitate something that has been cooking over the last few years. A couple of telecom giants will fall. Their places will be taken by Huawei and ZTE. Open Source could gain importance in communications. I wish the landline could make some sort of a comeback with the fiber deployments. I can’t stand Internet over wireless, especially time sensitive apps. The crisis has also been conveniently used by some companies to do layoffs.

All the VoIP and IM apps developed for social networks have been freebies so far. I think Nimbuzz is the first one that will be making money out of such an arrangement. The mobile VoIP startup had teamed with StudiVZ, Germany’s largest social network with over 12 million members. StudiVZ will exclusively market Nimbuzz. Not just that. Nimbuzz is the first and the only third party application that StudiVZ has integrated.

Nimbuzz should be able to drive increased user interaction and activity on the StudiVZ site thus driving more advertising revenues. Those revenues will not be shared with Nimbuzz just yet and the sharing arrangement applies from 2009 onwards when Nimbuzz stands to get 50% of the advertising revenues resulting from the usage of its application.

I would have expected Amino to be more interested in the VoIP products of Tilgin rather than the IP STB. It makes sense for Amino to diversify into VoIP in the residential gateway kind of sense. Tilgin's STB has a higher cost base and comes at a much higher price than what some of the Chinese vendors are able to make possible. It was obvioulsy a matter of time only. Tilgin's main IPTV customer was Belgacom who decided to switch over to Motorola's STB product instead.

Motorola leads the IP STB market worldwide with others now coming in as distant second. When Belgacom switched over to Motorola, Tilgin's sales dropped almost 90%. But, anyway I think Amino should have snapped the VoIP side of Tilgin's business as well.

Amino itself will find it tough to compete in a market that is expected to be dominated by the Chinese vendors who will push volume and sub $50 IP STBs within a year or so.

Enterprise FMC vendor, Agito, has hired Amit Chawla as new CEO. Amit was previously with Veraz. I am not sure if he co-founded ipVerse, one of the original constituent elements in Veraz, but he was certainly the person that orchestrated much of the transition from ipVerse to Nexverse to Veraz. When Veraz was formed, the other constituent element came over from ECI.

ECI contributed the media gateway part of the business (and the DCME stuff too). A lot of those arrangements were made by Amit. Anyway, unless Agito has hired Amit to engineer a favourable exit, the selection raises a couple of questions about Agito strategy. Amit comes from a carrier background and Agito sells to enterprises (sometimes through OEM partnerships with the likes of Avaya). Maybe Agito is looking to sell to carriers after all. FMC vendors have had a tough time deciding who to sell to. Do they sell direct to enterprises (DiVitas) or sell via PBX partners (Firsthand/Counterpath) to enterprises, or sell via carriers to enterprises (OnRelay), or try to sell to both enterprises and carriers (Tango Networks).

Of course there are some more combinations possible there. Having said that, I believe in FMC somewhat. Perhaps we are in the early stages of the FMC and something more simpler and robust needs to evolve to bridge the future fiber and 4g networks seamlessly.