Telecom or all

VoIP announcements from all of the major carriers have galvanized major Network Equipment Platform (NEPS) vendors, most recently Lucent, to meet rising demand. Bot hosted speech and VoIP involve migration from legacy hardware into a virtualized cloud, full of apps and service. Packaged app providers should see a major opportunity here.

The UK is the latest of three top European markets to open up its DA market, and the first targeted by INFONXX. One year after INFO's market entry, it's safe to call its 118 118 retail play, The Number, a resounding success. With 45-50% share of what is still a 200+ million pounds market, INFONXX has become the largest non-telco DA provider in the world.

After an ambitious run at the US DA market, Telcordia spin-out Telelogue has been acquired for its intellectual property assets, as well as a differentiated secondary market suite of hosting and turnkey offers for smaller telcos. Job #1 is porting it from Nuance to ScanSoft engines, while Job #2 may be getting legal papers served on infringers.