.

This is a clear indication that we are moving towards a more converged world, as local companies are provided with the technology to meet increased bandwidth needs. Much of the success and failure of the Internet’s capabilities will be based on the ability to boost bandwidth to support interactive media.

As social networking sites dominated much of the media’s attention, the next hurdle is to enable easier communication between different platforms – which is what Cisco wants to do. The days of the copper wire have come a long way, as Chambers gives us a glimpse of what the future will look like. Listening to music on your PC and easily moving it to your cell phone as you walk out the door, starting a chat session with your buddies as you watch Sunday’s football games, or loading pictures on your home network to be viewed in the family room. Indeed, the world of “converged” communications is going to move very fast over the next few months and years.

This is one reason why last year marked a paradigm shift in the way companies manage telecommunications. An increasingly more complicated mix of telecom services has made it imperative that an organization go beyond spreadsheets or standalone software to manage invoices telecom and track inventory. The introduction of next generation telecom expense management solutions now provide companies with a solution that allows companies to manage services from procure to pay through an automated system. But perhaps even more important is what companies can do with the data.

The data that is accumulated provides a blueprint for conducting advanced analytics associated with Business Intelligence solutions. The data is proving to be a goldmine in terms of forecasting and budgeting that give organizations a better idea of the impact of what is needed with regard to network migrations and overall costs for services. Indeed as the types of telecom services increases in sophistication, so do the solutions used to manage them.

The impact will have far reaching results. For one, it will provide competition to cable and traditional carriers that offer Internet access. This will also give rise to Wi-Fi enabled phones that theoretically will allow people to make free calls through services like Skype.

What would the New Year be without some early predictions:

1. There is bound to be a sharp increase in technologies like Skype and VoIP. The adoption rate for these services are hitting a growth stage and as one collegue said to me, “It is not too long before everybody has this peer-to-peer chat on their computers.” This also means companies are going to have to pay closer attention on how to monitor this activity, similar to instant messagining.

2. It will also be the year we see an increase in video as more prevalent form of communication. Suddenly the Jetsons does not seem so far fetched.

3. Finally while 2006 was the Year of the Blog and social networking sites, we think 2007 promises to be the Year of the Podcast, taking blogging to a more interactive (and spontaneous) level. Now sure Podcasting as been around for awhile, but much like blogging, the explosion is Podcasting is right around the corner.

Check in as the Copper Wire continues to cover the changing world of how we communicate.

You have two outlets available in your wall socket; however, you have to charge your cell phone, your PDA, your MP3 player, and your digital camera.

What to do?

The smart people over at Malleable Devices Inc. have solved the common socket-crisis with creating the SynCh Universal Sync Charger. The ability to manage the many facets of our communication devices is consolidated into a single, comprehensive tool.

What makes the SynCh a cinch is that you can purchase their MDI mTip, an adapter that makes it possible to charge an extensive variety of brands and devices.

Malleable Devices Inc. has added a mini SynCh which charges through a laptop making it ideal for charging on-the-go.

The phones on the market today can do just about anything. The November issue of Law Technology News had a small write-about the Sharp SH 903i. This telephone boast an array of features including facial recognition software linked through the 3MP camera so you can lock the phone with your face and even more impressive, an ultrasonic mosquito repellant.

You can talk on the phone, lock the phone with your face and zap mosquitoes all at the same time! Not sure why or when you would need this feature but today’s cell phone has certainly surpassed the DynaTac’s luxuries and the evolution is only progressing.

Personal information is constantly being sent and received through the internet. Users may not realize that this information can jeopardize their identity, making it easy to become a victim of identity theft.

At one time, running a credit report was the hallmark of ensuring a valid credit history; however, the ease of online identity theft has required that consumers ensure proper handling of their personal information.

Avivah Litan, an analyst with Gartner, recently quoted in PC Magazine that identity scoring will “overtake credit report monitoring” by 2009.

The best protection, above and beyond any identity monitoring services, is to use common sense. Before sending any information through a website, look for the Verisign symbol, this ensures that there can not be third-party interception. It is easy to protect your identity if you are prudent but it is excruciatingly, difficult to recover your identity once it’s been stolen.

Electronic billing data is changing that and allowing companies to literally step into the light. By using electronic billing feeds companies can build a billed inventory to create a complete view of their telecom assets and resources across the entire enterprise. By extracting this data from the billing feeds, companies then have a starting point for creating a complete inventory of assets.

And behind these new technologies that improve the corporate WAN, comes the increased importance on the overall management of the network. Much of these new initiatives aimed at supporting an ever increasing remote workforce, that utilize these on-demand applications, will place more emphasis on knowing which employee has what, is accessing which applications, and the types of connections being utilized.