In his impressive book, “Future Shock”, Elvin Toffler discusses the increasing complexity of modern life as the pace of change is constantly accelerating. It seems that the “Shock” best describes the situation experienced in the Telecom world.
We observe the maturity of distinct technologies, each of which can change the future of Telecom world.
The concurrency of these processes creates relationships which generate immense opportunities for the telecom world.

Some of the trends observed are:

Fixed Wireline. The fast take-off of Broadband applies both to the number of subscribers as well as to the technologies. We are experiencing both an increase in the range of technologies and the constant increasing of rates. A few of these technologies are: xDSL, Cable, FTTH and the newcomer of BPL (Broadband over Power Line).

Broadband Wireless. We are experiencing a large variety of competing technologies. All of them will co-exist in different markets. A number of technologies exist within the greater Broadband Wireless technology and are the following: UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, EVDO Rev A and Rev B, UMTS-TDD, TD-SCDMA, WiMax, Metro WiFi, Flash OFDM and many others.

IP Transport Layer. All the above mentioned technologies adopt IP as the transport layer, and thus call for multimedia services over IP, including VoIP. However due to different media characteristics (BER, packet loss, latency. jitter) they call for different methods of media processing (e.g. new vocoders, packet loss treatments, etc.)

Mobile terminal evolution. This is one of the most dramatic changes that will revolutionize the Telecom industry, similar to the IT revolution which took place 20 years ago. The IT revolution has been driven by the co-existence of desktop computation power (PC) in parallel to broadband connectivity (LAN). We are experiencing the same pattern in the Telecom market. The CPU power of a handset equals early Pentium machines, while the above mentioned broadband WAN technologies equal early LANs. The effect will be the same as with IT namely, Distributed Processing. Traditional TDM Telephony evolves to VoIP based IP Telephony. However the large variety of evolving Broadband IP networks, combined with differences in legacy PSTN networks may take this evolution in different directions.

Evolution of brand new services. Some of these services have migrated from neighboring environments such as the Internet IM. The following are a few of these services: Video conferencing, Video streaming, PoC, P2P communication (e.g. Skype), conferencing Text messaging, Location based services, Mobile Email, MMS and many more.

Technology is dynamic specifically in domains such as barriers, media types, media formats and protocols.

This situation presents many opportunities for operators, while the potential for major risks exist. Operators are constantly being challenged to provide new services based on new platforms. While trying to meet expectations, they face an almost impossible decision of purchasing equipment which can serve a longer life cycle and not become obsolete within a short time period. The life span of the purchased NGN infrastructure is critical for the economic justification of NGN services. In that respect, operators require “Future Safe” network elements which can easily adapt to a future network in terms of media and protocols.

AudioCodes networking products deliver the promise of "Future-Safe-Networks".
By offering converged (Wireline/Wireless/Cable/Fixed-Mobile-Convergence) capabilities, multiple control protocols (SIP/MGCP/TGCP/H.248), a large variety of vocoders and Media Gateways and Media Servers functionality on the same hardware platforms, we provide operators with peace of mind that as their network evolves with different control protocols, interfaces, voice coders, video services, to name a few - our networking products can be re-deployed, protecting the equipment purchase investment.