Thomas Anglero's Telecom Tsunami blog, besides having a great name, is a fabulous resource. I've never met Thomas, but I read everything he writes. He's got some of the keenest insights going in to some of the crucial telecom issues impacting us today.

Yesterday he posted his Top-5 "Must Deploy" Innovative Mobile Start-ups. They are:

• Apertio
• Vanu
• BridgePort Networks
• Tatara Systems
• XG Technologies

Readers here will recognize BridgePort Networks from the interviews I've done with Sanjay Jhawar here. Here's my one sentence observation about BridgePort from that series of conversations - BridgePort, in my view, provides an incredibly powerful enabling technology. It enables VoIP service providers to step up to IMS, service integration and providing not just VoIP, but truly integrated unified communications systems.

Anglero says - Why are "these" 5 so important? Simple, combined together they provide a mobile network, architecture, and solution that would decimate any existing mobile offering in Telecom today.

The other companies weren't as familiar to me, so I began digging for information.

Apertio offers a solution that delivers a single, open, subscriber-centric architecture that unifies and liberates the customer data currently locked away in siloed, proprietary infrastructure. Not really VoIP market, but the integration of VoIP with mobile solutions, or fixed mobile convergence, is one of the hottest segments in telecommunications today.

Vanu offers a software radio solution that enables rapid deployment of radio networks enabling communications between disparate wireless devices. They're about using the radio spectrum efficiently from what I read. They've got a high performing, software-based mobile base station.In software, a new frequency operation can be deployed in new spectrum in hours. Hours! I don't do a lot of work in the wireless market myself, but this has the potential to be an enormous competitive edge. I suspect it changes the rules of engagement for wireless providers in some ways.

Tatara Systems offers solutions for service and content providers who want to deliver converged mobile offerings to their customers across networks and devices. Anglero describes them as a mirror to BridgePort Networks with a focus more on the data/internet side of the equation. I'm not sure I'd agree, as I think BridgePort's approach is pretty rock solid. Certainly the two must view one another as competitors in some areas.

XG Technologies I only knew about from reading Thomas' post about their Wireless VoIP phone, but Matthew Gast did some detailed evaluation and writeup last November over on the great O'Reilly Emerging Telephony blog. They've got a low-pwer, long-range wilress technology that's taking off.

While much of this isn't directly related to VoIP, it is part of the broader telecom sector and these are definitely companies to watch, especially for those of us involved in mobile communications.



Technorati Tags: Apertio, Vanu, BridgePort Networks, Tatara Systems, XG Technologies, telecommunications, telecom, mobile communications