While last month’s Enterprise Connect 2024 (EC24) show seemed a bit light in terms of headline news, it did offer one high impact storyline around the integration of AI services with the PSTN. EC24 showcased the addition of AI services, including transcription and meeting minutes, to PSTN call using popular UC services (Teams, Zoom, Webex, Ring Central). While these have been in place for conference calls for almost a year, AI for one-to-one calls via the PSTN is new in 2024.

Automation uses software to control network resources dynamically with minimal human intervention. It can speed up services delivery and keep the network running at peak efficiency, boosting revenues and reducing costs. With this potential, one might think that automation of telecom networks would be widespread, but that is not the case. Automation in telecom lags compared to industries like transportation, shipping, and cloud computing services.

For the first time, the newest generation of high performance optical transceivers are available in a pluggable form factor. Using 5nm-140Gbaud technology, these transceivers deliver blazing fast 1.2T wavelengths for short haul, and 800G over large geographic regions. As pluggables, they are a huge leap over the previous generation of bulky, power-hungry modules that needed integration into line cards.

Moving to Teams Phone as your primary voice system can save money and provide a great user experience, or it can “crash and burn”. In a two-part workshop, I had the opportunity to explore insights to help migrate successfully to Teams Phone with Greg Zweig of Ribbon. (Ribbon was kind enough to sponsor both workshop sessions.) This article summarizes the information we covered in the workshop.

Hyperscalers are driving the shape of new metro optical networks – literally. AWS, Microsoft and Google have reshaped data center to data center connectivity over the years and now, as they populate their data centers with telecoms equipment, they are deploying it in higher density, with a better power utilization than telcos get. This is because they are not depth constrained so can go up to 600 millimeters deep unlike the standard telco 300mm hard limitation.

For many businesses, especially large enterprises, contact centers are a key contributor to revenue and customer satisfaction. While “omni-channel” (voice, chat, email, social) is how many if not most contact centers operate, calls are the still the most critical element of their communications.

Voice over IP (VoIP) technologies and solutions have been widely adopted by consumers, businesses and service providers since the mid-2000s, but the rising popularity of remote work means businesses of all sizes are even more rapidly turning to VoIP for voice calls.