Sessions

The Emerging Telephony Conference will feature a lively cross section of one-on-one interviews, keynote-level talks, issue-driven panels, and short, high-impact presentations, all with ample time for audience participation and Q&A. Below is a preliminary overview of the plenary program. We expect it to change as we add more speakers, more topics, and more surprise events.

View the Sessions Schedule.

Case Studies
You are not alone in your quest for better service, more features, and lower prices! Learn from pioneers and peers who have made VoIP deployments, built voice applications, and migrated to IP telephony platforms. Find out how they planned, what worked, and what didn't.

• The Friendly Skies: Hear from the national airline who used VoIP platforms to build a better customer service experience by retaining customer context.

• I Integrated My IP and Voice Systems And All I Got Was This Lousy Phone: How one company's VoIP deployment bled resources and won them nothing (and how to avoid repeating their mistakes!)

• Emergency Roundup: In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, several companies turned to innovative telephony solutions for the problem of reaching, connecting, and helping their hard-hit customers.

Business Opportunities
Web development for voice applications brings a world of promise. Entrepreneurs are building applications today that will boost your business tomorrow by helping employees communicate better, opening new channels to customers, and creating new services for existing customers. At ETel, you'll discover the products you'll be using by 2007.

• What Telephony Can Learn From ISPs: the new voice applications are built using web development techniques. What lessons can the industry learn from ISPs, the dot-com bubble, ASPs, and the last decade of experience in web tool development?

• Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft/AOL: What are they doing? All the major Internet players have Voice-over-IM. Will they offer the ability to call into and out of the POTS? What effect will this have on the consumer and enterprise telephony markets?

• What application development possibilities will there be on these new platforms?

Knowledge Sharing
Learn what's coming in this rapidly changing field, from the people who will be bringing it to you. No vendor pitches, just thoughtful analysis about the future of the industry. You'll come away knowing who's who, what's what, and how to use the technology and providers in your business.

• 802.11 and VoIP: With all the noise about WiMax, many are forgetting the existing national wifi infrastructure. Learn what's coming and how to build on it.

• Harnessing Open Source: How to take advantage of open source telephony offerings without risking stability, security, or your staffing budget.

Innovators
See the newest crop of voice applications and IP telephony technology from the R&D labs, open source developers, and startups. From ad-hoc infrastructure for developing nations to better voicemail for your networked family, the latest and the best is on display for you.

• Baghdad Telco: The ultimate startup experience of building a carrier-quality telco in post-Saddam Baghdad.

• Home Phone Hacks: Developers are building the features that your home phone should have, such as the ability to forward telemarketing calls to the sounds of screeching monkeys. Find out what your phone can do for you!

• From The Labs: R&D labs from major computer companies and carriers demonstrate their latest projects.