The best and worst of 2008

Sezmi's IPTV service

As we write this, there are no announced customers, but we're expecting that to change very soon — maybe even before you read this. Sezmi, once known as Building B, has a unique approach to IPTV that actually may enable telcos to quickly get into the video business without billions in network investment.

Juniper's separate control plane

Decoupling the network from its services unleashes carriers to quickly create and deploy new services without having to worry about crashing existing ones. Slowpoke service providers are now out of excuses.

MOST INTERESTING EXITS

GOOGLE FROM THE 700 MHZ AUCTION

After securing the promise of openness and antagonizing the entire telecom industry, particularly Verizon, Google didn't put a penny on the table.

JERRY YANG

It wasn't so much a graceful exit from Yahoo! as a forced goodbye. After a failed partnership with Google and poorly handling a potential Microsoft takeover, Yang proved to be a great start-up leader, but not the go-to transformation guy.

BILL GATES

He realized earlier this year that his time was better spent bolstering his charities than introducing the next in a lackluster line of Microsoft software.

ARUN SARIN

After five years of leading the globe-spanning GSM operator Vodafone, Sarin leaves behind a much more stable company — but not before warning the wireless industry of the dangers of a future technology war.

MYRIO

In one of the industry's more ungraceful exits in 2008, Myrio, as part of Nokia Siemens Networks, angered a lot of its customers by essentially abandoning them in the U.S. market, making them wonder if IPTV was worth it at all. NSN came back with an “open” strategy, but was it too little, too late?

MOST OVERHYPED TECHNOLOGIES

IPTV chat

One of the main reasons people watch TV is to unplug from human interaction. How is the viewing experience enhanced by the constant interruption of “OMG! LOL!”?