Calm after the storm?

It's tempting to suggest that the coming months will be a period of relative peace for the telecom industry after what was probably the industry's most active and turbulent year since 2002. Companies weren't laying off staff and shutting down quite like they were back then, but 2006 had a little of everything: carriers consolidating, vendors consolidating, a rise in patent infringement accusations, mobile TV and IPTV beginning to make an impact, VoIP continuing to be a powerful influence, video franchising, Net neutrality — the list goes on.

After such an active year, you have to wonder if the consolidation trend could be nearing an end — or at least a hiatus. Consolidation of large carriers has gone as far as it can realistically go for now. Consolidation among independent telcos could be another matter, but activity there probably won't go much beyond obvious regional pairings. Vendor consolidation has created a strata of five or six huge players, with all their respective specialist partners on the next layer below.

A new period of less consolidation might be just what the industry needs right now to give consolidated companies a chance to complete their integration projects, and to allow the organizations themselves to grow more comfortable in their new skins.

Yet, if the telecom industry is ready to stabilize in a structural sense, it still has the further active evolution of those service trends to look forward to. TV and other forms of content are beginning to provide real evidence of the bandwidth demand that both wireline and wireless network operators have been anticipating for a long time.

The wholesale market experienced its share of consolidation over the last year and a half, and after that rocky period, things have cooled a bit. But as Carol Wilson points out in her cover story on page 32, bandwidth demand and usage is on the increase from video and other applications. This makes clear that even as the wholesale carriers work to finish their integration projects, they will have to devote new energy to the evolving market.

Elsewhere in this issue, contributing editor Joan Engebretson, in her story on page 26, looks at how the Net neutrality debate is evolving and whether or not the concessions mega-carriers made to gain approval for their consolidation deals will change the course of that debate.

On page 12, Tim McElligott assesses industry activity in advance of the compliance deadline for the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Tim also will be delivering further information on the subject in a Telephony Technology Update e-newsletter being distributed on Feb. 26 (CALEA has been 13 years in the making, so there's a lot to say.)

Meanwhile, check out Kevin Fitchard's 3GSM reports on pages 8 and 9, and a status report on the IP edge market by Ed Gubbins on page 10.

And if you're just beginning to settle on a new understanding of the telecom industry, don't get too comfortable with it.