March 20th, 2006
Sorry, the VON Show is not "CES for VoIP"
Busy all of last week with my reporting from the Spring VON 2006 show in San Jose, I’ve just gotten around to reading assessments of the conference from colleagues.
One of these colleagues, Marguerite Reardon, has posted a thought-provoking piece entitled "VoIP: Are We There Yet?"
Marguerite makes several valid points, but I must differ with her on one of them.
"Representatives of (leading consumer VoIP providers) were sent to the VON conference to provide an update on what they’re doing, but they barely even mentioned residential VoIP products," Marguerite writes. "AT&T talked more about its business VoIP service, while Verizon touted its Fios fiber-to-the-home network, which is costing the company billions of dollars to build."
Although Fios is consumer-themed, I would like to present an alternative view of why consumer-themed VoIP applications were far less prominently displayed at this conference than enterprise-grade VoIP solutions were.
If you are an exhibitor, keynoter or panelist at a show like this, you tailor your presentation to your audience. This particular conference is more oriented toward enterprise users, VoIP carriers, and technology solutions partners than it is toward consumers or even retailers who either carry VoIP products, or who are in the sales sights of vendors who would like them to.
A Consumer Electronics Show for VoIP, the Von Show is not.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
