Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

Democrats, Republicans, Communists and Libertarians alike. 

Let’s all join forces and welcome President McCain or rather if you believe the polls, President Obama, and even more important, the new BlackBerry Bold. 

Even though I am personally an iPhone user, I used to have a BlackBerry for many many years.  If I did not have an iPhone, I would be using the BlackBerry and standing in line at the AT&T store to buy the Bold.

Here’s the joint press release from AT&T / RIM:

Download BlackBerry Bold Launch FINAL 10-22-08

Key Features Include:

•    Tri-band UMTS/HSPA; quad-band GPRS/EDGE
•    Nation’s fastest 3G network
•    Voice capabilities in more than 200 countries and data coverage in more than 150 countries, including more than 60 with 3G networks
•    First BlackBerry sold by a U.S. carrier to provide 3G capabilities in Japan and South Korea
•    Simultaneous voice and data capabilities
•    Built-in Wi-Fi® (802.11 a/b/g)
•    Built-in aGPS
•    Bluetooth® 2.0
•    624 MHz mobile processor
•    1GB included memory and optional 16MB MicroSD
•    Brilliant half-screen VGA (480 x 320) color screen
•    Newly designed full QWERTY keyboard
•    2 Megapixel camera with video, built-in flash and 5x digital zoom
•    Robust media player and music experience
•    Corporate and personal e-mail access, and other BlackBerry productivity applications
•    Tethering support for notebook computers
•    Large 1500 mHh removable battery

Source: www.voip-news.com

Well, that didn’t take long. Vonage announced that they were letting interim CEO Jeffrey Citron go last week. Today, they announced that Marc Lefar has been named chief executive officer of the company. Citron, who took on the CEO role in April 2007, will remain chairman of the board of directors.

“I believe there is no better person than Marc to lead Vonage at this time. He possesses a wealth of telecom experience and a strong mix of strategy, finance and operating skills. His marketing expertise is second to none,” Citron said. “The Board believes he will bring a fresh perspective to addressing the opportunities and challenges ahead and will help the Company to realize future growth and profitability.”

Lefar was previously chief marketing officer of Cingular Wireless.

“Jeffrey and the talented Vonage team have helped to change the way people think about communication,” Lefar said. “Moving forward, we will continue to improve the customer experience from end to end. A friendly user experience combined with meaningful, intuitive features will accelerate growth and improve loyalty.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

Mediacom has renewed its contract with Ceon for 3 more years, which extends the agreement to 2010. Ceon began providing service to Mediacom in 2005. Mediacom uses Ceon’s Intelligent Order Manager for its residential  VoIP and high-speed data services.

“As we continue to grow our bundled broadband and VoIP services, we are relying on Ceon to provide the backbone of our service fulfillment architecture,” says Peter Brown, Senior Director of IP Development, Mediacom. “Ceon’s service fulfillment solution enables us be more responsive to customers and allows us to scale our services more efficiently.”

Ceon IOM’s flexible, customizable software can handle advanced order handling and workflow capabilities for VoIP and other IP-based services.

“Mediacom’s contract renewal is a significant vote of confidence for Ceon,” says Peter Burke, CEO of Ceon. “It reinforces our position as a leading provider of operations support systems solutions in the MSO marketplace. We look forward to providing additional value-rich, high-performing solutions and further strengthening our partnership with Mediacom as it continues to rolls out advanced IP-based services to its subscriber base.”

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

The UK version of ZD Net is rife with commentary about the lack of any forward movement by Skype since the non-event arrival of the very silent, Josh Silverman.

In the case of the ZDNet story, my guess is now that Silverman has had a few months under his belt that Skype will shortly come out with some news in the next quarter dealing with some revamping of this or that. Pricing models in the era of declining cell phone plans comes quickly to mind, but I’m simply speculating.

One thing that I hope Skype brings back is that unlimited bundle they had last year that was a far better value than Skype Pro. It’s the one thing that many readers have been asking for. With the eBay Developers program coming about this June in Chicago you can also likely expect some ramp up in the developer arena would be my second guess. Lastly I’d expect to see more of the Skype Mobile play develop. iSkoot is on a roll with a new management team so sooner or later that has to benefit Skype.

My advice. Take a few days and check back with me next week.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

eBay in what could be viewed as an inside corporate deck chair shuffling type move has named a new CEO for Skype. I say could, because the selected CEO actually brings some very good chops to the once disruptive telco-pipe-IM player, and he himself has been on the leading edge with at least two companies. The pick comes after a very exhaustive search for a new Skype leader that included at least two external candidates having extensive meetings late last year with former eBay leader Meg Whitman and other Skype/eBay executives, one of whom eBay may have actually made an offer to who was already London based, a European with mobile industry experience.

The new CEO, Josh Silverman, brings some very impressive credentials to Skype, from eVite and Shopping.com. He’ll initially relocate to Tallinn and start to fix what eBay has to considers the most challenging part of Skype, the technology team, according to some eBay folks. He’ll base there for twelve weeks, starting in March and then relocate to London, to run Skype day to day.

After conducting their search with headhunters and executive recruiters sometime in late Fall 2007 ebay pulled back to explore "strategic options" which have included their shopping Skype to potential suitors for sell off. Since they didn’t get close to their asking price, enter Silverman who now has the arduous task of fixing things that help eBay extract value out of Skype post write down, which he seems more than capable of doing.

In a note to me, Silverman said that, "joining Skype is a very exciting opportunity for me. Over the near team, I plan to focus on looking at ways that we can improve our execution and continue to grow Skype."

Silverman has past experience working in Europe so his pick from inside eBay was the best move they could make from the current crop of executives to manage the Estonians and the team in London according to well placed sources close to the search. It’s a smart move on his part to go to where Skype’s future lies. The technology is the core but customer support, which other bloggers have picked up on at Skype is also a challenge these days, and he’ll need to fix that while he’s over there. Take a look at pal Tom Keating’s post on this. It mirrors a regular number of similar comments that have come my way.

My take is simple. Good hire by the new eBay CEO to promote from within. But don’t expect much news from Skype and Silverman for a few months. He’s got a lot of internal work to do, including sifting through the current team in three different locations and building his own model for the company.

Update-Om Malik, has similar thoughts to mine. Ironically, I had not read his post until after writing mine.

Update 2–Take a gander at Jim Courtney’s post too while you reading.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Looking for something to do next Monday?

Bryan R. Martin, chairman and CEO of 8×8, Inc., and Dan Weirich, the VoIP company’s CFO, will be presenting at the 4th Annual Winter Technology Conference on Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. The conference is hosted by Security Research Associates and will take place at the Omni Hotel in San Francisco. 8×8’s leaders will give a 25 minute presentation followed by a break-out session (as will 35 other companies like uWink and Looksmart).

Can’t make it to San Francisco? Fear not. You can follow along online with webcasts. Click here to enter the webcast lobby.

For more information on the conference, click here.