What comes around

Almost exactly 13 years ago, my summer vacation from my job as Telephony's top editor was spoiled by the news that a valued member of my staff had been recruited away by a publication that purported to cover this new Internet thing.

As it turned out, another one of those Internet magazines recruited me away from Telephony a few weeks later.

Neither of those two magazines exists today. But I'm back in the top editor's seat at Telephony, and if you look to the right, you'll notice my former colleague, Rich Karpinski, has rejoined the staff as well.

What Rich will be writing this time around, however, will bear more resemblance to his work over the last decade-plus than what he excelled at during his first stint at Telephony. He will head up a brand-new beat at Telephony — what we are calling the Web 2.0 turf.

There is no underestimating the extent to which Web technology is affecting the telecom world. From the competitive concerns about eBay, Google and other Web-born companies to the reality of Web services technology moving into the IP multimedia subsystem domain and the political debates in Washington over Net neutrality, this influence is significant. The only confusion comes in deciding the extent to which these players and their technologies represent competitors, partners or role models. Most likely, it's all of the above.

We have been covering this arena at Telephony for some time now, but by focusing one talented journalist's time and effort on this space, we will be able to bring you better coverage, in both quality and volume.

That is not the only difference you are likely to notice at Telephony and telephonyonline.com in the coming months. Another veteran member of the staff, Ed Gubbins, is stepping into a new role as executive editor of our news effort. While he is primarily focused on developing our Web news, print readers will benefit as well from more in-depth analysis from Telephony's well-seasoned reporting staff.

We realize you are bombarded by news every day, and what we are promising to bring you is not just more content, but more context to help you put the industry's events into perspective in a way intended to help you do your job better by being better informed.

As always, we'd like to hear from you, our readers, about what you want to get from us, both online and in print. I invite you to contact me or any of our other editors to share your thoughts, ideas and, yes, criticisms, about what Telephony is and what it should be.

I fondly remember my first stint as Telephony's editor-in-chief, and I'm looking forward to even bigger and better things this time around.

P.S.: Telephony's editors have created a two-day conference, Telephony LIVE, to explore the future of telecom. We hope to see you Oct. 10-11 in Dallas. Learn more at telephonyonline.com/telephonylive.