This week at VON a lot of so called news was generated. Two points that I brought to light at the last VON in San Jose BACK IN MARCH that some called news now in September.
Earthlink works with Sonus.
AOL adds Global IP Sound.
In both cases I didn't break any embargoes. In the case of Sonus and Earthlink the Sonus VP of Marketing broke an appointment with me, his PR person said he had to fly to the East coast (an outright lie) while sources who knew him personally told me they saw him with Earthlink at the time of our cancelled meeting.
In the case of GIPS when I walked into the AOL briefing room I saw the AOL Biz Dev team huddling with Gary of GIPS. I blurted out "I guess we know who's working with GIPS next" to him with a wink. This time around AOL added screens around each of their two or three "meeting rooms" to insure privacy. Call it the Andy effect at Work.
Who said bloggers don't have an impact on the industry? Guess they were wrong.
P.S. I really liked LightReading's coverage of the Earthlink story, especially the part about Vonage. I wonder how many subscribers Vonage has from Earthlink in their Million Lines and the impact of that business moving to Level3 on Vonage's so called $600 million dollar offering?.