Special Report: Telephony's Best and Worst of 2007

Top Six Feuds

Qulacomm Vs. The GSM Theory: There aren't many GSM vendors left that don't have a legal, regulatory or personal beef with Qualcomm. Nokia in particular has taken up the anti-Qualcomm standard, challenging its CDMA royalty rates, but Qualcomm isn't giving any ground.

Open Vs. Closed: Carrier networks must begin more open-application/service development, but how open should they be? Open to all developers, sandboxed for close partners or un-siloed but still carrier-proprietary?The future of telecom services rides in that balance.

Privacy Vs. Control/Customization: Consumer groups have protested network operators' use of deep packet inspection to watch what Internet users are doing and manipulate their traffic. But as more specialized applications such as video and gaming come online, operators must know how to treat them. The debate will continue to heat up as targeted advertising evolves beyond Facebook, with more personal information being collected, used and, possibly, misused.

PBT Vs. MPLS: Many vendors say these two technologies actually can live in harmony, despite Scott Kriens, CEO of Juniper Networks, fanning the flames of the debate when he called provider backbone transport potentially “catastrophic.”

IT Vs. Operations: This new guard (IT) against old guard (telecom operations) turf war has raged for more than a decade. IT appears to be winning the battles in the telecom back office and in service delivery, but core and access networks remain under the control of operations. Unlike other tech conflicts around the globe, this one will end soon, and amicably.

USF Vs. The World: The only ones trying to protect current Universal Service Fund rules are Independent telcos. They're outnumbered and out-lobbied, but they have their friends in the FCC and still can tug on heartstrings in the name of mom 'n pop, apple pie and small business.

Next Page: Top Web Trends Service Providers Shouldn't Ignore