Okay, I've been a little hard on Nortel Networks CEO Bill Owens over his reluctance to articulate the company's strategic direction. But today at the Progress and Freedom Foundation conference he scolded the U.S. government for its slow adoption of always-on wireless networks and location-identifying technologies. "I wonder if the cabinet members, the policymakers, the key people in our government understand how quickly this is changing," he said in a CNet story. "Who in the United States government is at a level where they're seeing that vision (and saying) they must do something?". Well, there you go: Bill Owens believes in wireless technology but we already knew that from his days at Teledesic. Wireless also happens to be Nortel's biggest business, albeit one whose growth prospects don't look as promising as they did a year ago. The upside is Owens revealed some of his strategic cards in terms of technology, which is a nice change of pace from the government, service and security mantra.

IP-PBX is hot; traditional PBX is not. That's the scoop according to In-Stat, which expects server-based IP-PBX shipments to triple to 28.1 million lines by 2009 from 9.5 million this year. This momentum will see the number of IP-PBX shipments will surpass those of traditional PBXs, which are only expected to rise 6.6% in 2005. "The IP-PBX is revealing itself as more than a simple one-for-one replacement vehicle for digital systems," said In-Stat analyst Norm Bogen. The Dell'Oro Group expects sales of IP-PBX and hybrid IP/TDM PBXs will climb to $6.1 billion in 2009, an 11% CAGR. Of PBX shipments in four years, Dell'Oro expects 88% will be IP-based compared with 50% in 2004. I wonder how Mark Spencer and Asterisk are doing these days. The last real news I saw was the release of Asterisk@Home, which makes it easy for individuals to set up a VOIP Asterisk PBX using a Web-based GUI.

How should we read Google's new desktop software? From a strategic perspective, what does version 2.0 say about where the company is going? After loading the software and playing around with it for awhile, there is no doubt it's impressive. In particular, it offers the ability to quickly and easily access all kinds of information from local weather and e-mail to stock quotes, the latest news and frequently used applications/Web sites. Plus there is the ability to personalize many of the different widgets. For the growing number of people who mostly use their computers to access the Web and e-mail, Google Desktop 2.0 has the potential to be a perfect and permanent companion. As far as flaws, Silicon Beat quickly pointed out the toolbar takes up a lot of space, which means I can't open as many tabs in Firefox as I would like. The Kelsey Group's Greg Sterling offers an excellent critique of the software, including his belief its "functionality sits somewhere in between a toolbar and a browser.... allowing users to do a bunch of things without having to go to separate places on their machines or on the Web." What's also interesting about Google Desktop 2.0 is there are no signs of AdSense banners, which suggests Google is not so much interested in monetizing the software as it is about have a bigger presence on the desktop.

A new survey by Telegeography of global backbone providers shows that international Internet traffic has climbed 49% so far this year, compared with 103% in 2004. Even the fastest growing markets - Asia and Latin America - have seen "modest" growth of 76% and 70% respectively. For backbone providers, a key development is prices have fallen
less dramatically over the past year - 23% to 33% compared with 50% in 2004 - while many providers suggest they have no plans to reduce prices.