The end of the networking year was categorised by several mega-mergers. The City was shocked by the surprise announcement that Richard Branson had engineered what some analysts have deemed a reverse take over to merge Virgin Mobile with UK cable giant NTL.
The deal is far from done and dusted, though. As it stands at the moment Virgin has rejected NTL's courtship because £817m not enough, the virtual mobile operator's board has told the cable operator.
This proposed merger, takeover or reverse takeover came after NTL agreed earlier in the year to merge with the UK's only other significantly sized cable company, Telewest.
NTL's purcahse of Telewest for $6bn makes NTL a credible rival to BSkyB. NTL chief executive Simon Duffy will lead the combined company, which provides the triple play of TV, voice and broadband data.
Another surprise acquisition was BSkyB's move to snap up pan-European broadband firm Easynet for $375m.
Easynet is one of BT's main rivals in the provision of broadband services and would give BSkyB the opportunity to match BT and NTL/Telewest in the provision of such services.
The move would strengthen the view that the three operators are likely to dominate the future market for so-called triple-play services comprising TV, broadband and telephony.
The other major acquisition standing out in all of this suddenly reinvigorated corporate M&A activity at the end of the year is the announcement that Carphone Wa rehouse is to buy OneTel, the telecoms unit of Centrica, the energy giant that runs British Gas.
The deal sees OneTel swallowed up for $272m in cash and will create a major rival to BT in the fixed line telephony sector.
Much of this corporate activity has been prompted by a desire for operators and telcos to line up their triple play offerings. According to reports the vast majority of European broadband subscribers would like to receive services incorporating voice telephony, internet access and video on demand from their broadband provider.
Indeed according to a poll of ADSL subscribers in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK, 81 per cent would be in interested in signing up for so-called triple play services.
Continuing in this vein 2006 saw networking giant Cisco shell out $6.9bn in cash for Scientific Atlanta, one of the world's largest makers of TV set-top boxes and equipment to deliver video signals.
Although this move was, in the strategic scheme of things for Cisco, very small potatoes, the firm vowed to offer customers and industry partners an 'advanced technology' every three to four months in the coming fiscal year.
In Cisco's vocabulary these so called advanced technologies form part of a product group that has the potential to reach $1bn in annual sales, and will see a focus of the company's investments in research, acquisitions and partnerships.
This was also the year that BT offered an olive branch to Ofcom in the form of concessions including reducing prices and opening up its network to rival operators.
The UK's former incumbent responded to the second stage of Ofcom's strategic review of the UK telecoms industry by promising rival operators lower wholesale prices, faster broadband services and highly regulated access to its local network.
The telco has offered the concessions in a move that aims to "form part of a regulatory settlement between BT, Ofcom and the industry".
From a more technical perspective this was the year that saw European IP VPNs plug in to hyper-growth. The western European market for managed IP VPN services grew by a healthy 23 per cent in 2004, but the sector's period of 'hyper-growth' will come to an end next year, industry analysts predicted.
According to a recently published study from IDC, the market was worth $4.3bn in 2004 and will grow to $5.8bn in 2009, with over 80 per cent of that growth taking place in 2005 and 2006.
And delving even further into the big networking technology developments of the year we were pleased - and a little surprised - to learn that Cisco and Nortel have buried the hatchet at least to some extent in a bid to agree a standard for bridging optical and IP networks.
US cable firm Comcast unveiled a scheme that aims to improve the interoperability between optical and IP network layers and so boost compatibility among multiple networks vendors' equipment.
The Open Transport Initiative aims to identify and define a set of common interfaces which will be used to integrate and manage Nortel dense wavelength division multiplexing and Cisco IP equipment.
2005 was also the year when Voice over IP rang the death knell for traditional telephony. Private VoIP applications such as Skype rose up to threaten the core business of traditional telephony operators and could take as much as 13 per cent, representing €6.4bn, of the western European residential voice market by 2008, newly published market research predicted.
According to the latest report from UK research firm Analysys, over 50 million broadband users in the region could be using private VoIP by 2008.
In the consumer VoIP market there have been seismic shifts, but for the time being at least it seems that Skype is still top dog. Skype claimed the top spot in the global voice over IP league, according to web traffic analysis by broadband management firm Sandvine.
However, the firm is facing increasingly stiff competition from some of the industry's biggest guns. BT has announced plans to undercut Skype prices on its own VoIP service, and will launch a new service in February combining its two existing VoIP offerings.
And if BT and Yahoo were not enough competition Microsoft and MCI sealed a global multiyear partnership to provide software and services that enable Windows users to place calls from personal computers to " virtually any phone".
Courtesy - Robert Jaques, vnunet.com
The deal is far from done and dusted, though. As it stands at the moment Virgin has rejected NTL's courtship because £817m not enough, the virtual mobile operator's board has told the cable operator.
This proposed merger, takeover or reverse takeover came after NTL agreed earlier in the year to merge with the UK's only other significantly sized cable company, Telewest.
NTL's purcahse of Telewest for $6bn makes NTL a credible rival to BSkyB. NTL chief executive Simon Duffy will lead the combined company, which provides the triple play of TV, voice and broadband data.
Another surprise acquisition was BSkyB's move to snap up pan-European broadband firm Easynet for $375m.
Easynet is one of BT's main rivals in the provision of broadband services and would give BSkyB the opportunity to match BT and NTL/Telewest in the provision of such services.
The move would strengthen the view that the three operators are likely to dominate the future market for so-called triple-play services comprising TV, broadband and telephony.
The other major acquisition standing out in all of this suddenly reinvigorated corporate M&A activity at the end of the year is the announcement that Carphone Wa rehouse is to buy OneTel, the telecoms unit of Centrica, the energy giant that runs British Gas.
The deal sees OneTel swallowed up for $272m in cash and will create a major rival to BT in the fixed line telephony sector.
Much of this corporate activity has been prompted by a desire for operators and telcos to line up their triple play offerings. According to reports the vast majority of European broadband subscribers would like to receive services incorporating voice telephony, internet access and video on demand from their broadband provider.
Indeed according to a poll of ADSL subscribers in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK, 81 per cent would be in interested in signing up for so-called triple play services.
Continuing in this vein 2006 saw networking giant Cisco shell out $6.9bn in cash for Scientific Atlanta, one of the world's largest makers of TV set-top boxes and equipment to deliver video signals.
Although this move was, in the strategic scheme of things for Cisco, very small potatoes, the firm vowed to offer customers and industry partners an 'advanced technology' every three to four months in the coming fiscal year.
In Cisco's vocabulary these so called advanced technologies form part of a product group that has the potential to reach $1bn in annual sales, and will see a focus of the company's investments in research, acquisitions and partnerships.
This was also the year that BT offered an olive branch to Ofcom in the form of concessions including reducing prices and opening up its network to rival operators.
The UK's former incumbent responded to the second stage of Ofcom's strategic review of the UK telecoms industry by promising rival operators lower wholesale prices, faster broadband services and highly regulated access to its local network.
The telco has offered the concessions in a move that aims to "form part of a regulatory settlement between BT, Ofcom and the industry".
From a more technical perspective this was the year that saw European IP VPNs plug in to hyper-growth. The western European market for managed IP VPN services grew by a healthy 23 per cent in 2004, but the sector's period of 'hyper-growth' will come to an end next year, industry analysts predicted.
According to a recently published study from IDC, the market was worth $4.3bn in 2004 and will grow to $5.8bn in 2009, with over 80 per cent of that growth taking place in 2005 and 2006.
And delving even further into the big networking technology developments of the year we were pleased - and a little surprised - to learn that Cisco and Nortel have buried the hatchet at least to some extent in a bid to agree a standard for bridging optical and IP networks.
US cable firm Comcast unveiled a scheme that aims to improve the interoperability between optical and IP network layers and so boost compatibility among multiple networks vendors' equipment.
The Open Transport Initiative aims to identify and define a set of common interfaces which will be used to integrate and manage Nortel dense wavelength division multiplexing and Cisco IP equipment.
2005 was also the year when Voice over IP rang the death knell for traditional telephony. Private VoIP applications such as Skype rose up to threaten the core business of traditional telephony operators and could take as much as 13 per cent, representing €6.4bn, of the western European residential voice market by 2008, newly published market research predicted.
According to the latest report from UK research firm Analysys, over 50 million broadband users in the region could be using private VoIP by 2008.
In the consumer VoIP market there have been seismic shifts, but for the time being at least it seems that Skype is still top dog. Skype claimed the top spot in the global voice over IP league, according to web traffic analysis by broadband management firm Sandvine.
However, the firm is facing increasingly stiff competition from some of the industry's biggest guns. BT has announced plans to undercut Skype prices on its own VoIP service, and will launch a new service in February combining its two existing VoIP offerings.
And if BT and Yahoo were not enough competition Microsoft and MCI sealed a global multiyear partnership to provide software and services that enable Windows users to place calls from personal computers to " virtually any phone".
Courtesy - Robert Jaques, vnunet.com