Freedom of the press

Afew months ago during the DSLCon event in Boston, I interviewed a group of executives from TalkingNets. This company, if you're not familiar, dubs itself a "telephony ASP" because it's using the ASP model to equip traditional data service providers with carrier-class IP voice applications.

At one point, John Philips, the president and CEO of TalkingNets and one of the company's founders, used the following phrase: "This is the liberation of telephony."After scribbling down this quotable nugget, my inclination was to peer around me to make sure no one else heard him. I didn't want my media counterparts - or, worse yet, my Telephony colleagues - to think I was plotting some sort of coup. I warned Philips that he should be careful to articulate the lower-case "t" in "telephony" if he was going to make a habit of tossing around that bold declaration.

I've been thinking about it a lot since, however, and I've changed my mind. I've decided the sentence makes sense even if you apply the upper-case "T" because it accurately depicts the transformation this publication has been in the midst of for some time. The concept of liberation, as a matter of fact, applies to Telephony in a number of different ways.

The editorial focus of this publication was liberated from the concept of pure telephony years ago. I joined the staff in 1993, and at that time, Telephony had already expanded beyond coverage of the regulatory-laden circuit-switched voice realm to encompass wireless technology, CATV, data networking and the burgeoning world of the Internet. The concept of broadband communications was being invoked even then, and Telephony had been on top of it from the beginning.

The communications industry becomes further liberated from its telephony-oriented beginnings every day. TalkingNets is just one example: Here's a company that is redefining the archaic concept of telephony not only by creating an IP-based network architecture to generate it but also by adopting a new method of application hosting and delivery.

Along with the evolution of this industry has come a corresponding shift in how information is delivered - including information from industry-focused news magazines.

A few years ago, Telephony embraced the Internet phenomenon like everyone else by launching a Web site that would serve as the online companion and complement to our print publishing efforts. We've accomplished a great deal since then, even as we grappled with the notions of what the Web format means for traditional print periodicals and how our content should and could be adapted to coincide with the capabilities and competitive implications of the Internet. This week marks the next phase of that modernization.

Later this week, the lights will go on at TelecomClick (www.telecomclick.com), a Web portal operated by a subsidiary of Primedia, Telephony's corporate parent. The aim of TelecomClick is to create a community where the broadband industry - and factions from outside its boundaries - can gather to be immersed in information about the technologies, applications and business workings of everything related to communications.

Telephony - along with other Primedia publications like Upstart, Cable World, Telecom Business, Wireless Review and Satellite Broadband - will be an anchor tenant in that community. Our content will be aggregated there and combined in unique ways with the editorial efforts of the TelecomClick staff, led by the Telephony-and Upstart-bred Dan O'Shea. As the community develops, you'll see that content transformed by broadband capabilities, resulting in new approaches to delivery that leverage audio and video and communityoriented functions like interactive chat and online conferences.

None of these developments will change Telephony's commitment to delivering a comprehensive, analytical and timely package of information about the technology and business workings of the broadband communications industry every week. Our involvement in this new Internet initiative is simply the latest step in the ongoing liberation of Telephony.