Acme Packet Interconnect Conference

Acme Packet held its annual customer conference, Acme Packet Interconnect, last week in Miami. Having attended the last four events, Jim Dalton reports that this was the largest and most impressive so far.

In Dalton’s opinion, the most important news from the conference is Acme Packet’s IMS solution, which is called Net-Net SIP Multimedia-Xpress, or SMX.For years telecom vendors have been promoting IMS solutions (IP Multimedia System), which provide a combination of voice, video and data services over the same network. It is a great concept, but the IMS standard is a mind-numbing, Rube Goldberg network design.

The SMX is a major simplification for network operators because it implements a half-dozen of the IMS network elements in a single session border controller. Reducing network complexity was a major theme of the conference and is an important attribute for Acme Packet in a highly competitive SBC market.

Two big market shifts bode well for Acme Packet. First, is the FCC’s order last year that all carriers offer IP interconnection—that translates into a lot SBC orders. The second is Voice over LTE, or VoLTE. (LTE stands for Long Term Evolution which is an end to end IP mobile network envisioned by the IMS standard.) Acme Packet has been making presentations about VoLTE for the last three Interconnect conferences. Now they are shipping some products and it looks like this will be a big opportunity for the next several years as wireless carriers make the transition to end-to-end IP networks.

Below is a list of interesting statistics presented at the Acme Packet Interconnect Conference:

  • 700 million registered Skype users
  • 33% of all international calls are skype, 50% of those are video
  • 6.3 billion telephones in the world, of which 5.1 billion are wireless
  • 200,000 text messages sent every second
  • 40% of instant messages are business-oriented
  • By 2014, two mobile devices for every man, woman and child on the planet!
  • By 2014, mobile Internet usage exceeds desktop usage
  • Mobile banking is 10% the cost of an ATM transaction
  • Mobile banking is 2% the cost of a bank branch transaction
  • By 2020, 71% work in the cloud
  • 49% work on vacation
  • 47% work in a car
  • 29% work in bed
  • 46% annual growth in mobile malware between 2002 and 2010
  • 42% of CIOs believe their mobile security would not pass an audit
  • 150 million emergency phone calls to 911 in 2011
  • Acme Packet has 1093 service provider customers and 595 enterprise customers in 106 countries