Congratulations to my friend Thomas Howe on being added as a regular contributor to Fierce VoIP. Tom is one of the most widely respected people I know and he's surely someone we should all listen to. Here's a link to his first article, a thoughtful piece that's well worth appreciating.

Howe: Congratulate Failure

By Thomas Howe

The recent demise of Jangl is an excellent sign for the
overall health of the Telco 2.0 marketplace, and although difficult for their
investors and employees, portends great things for this market. My
sincere wish is that Telco 2.0 failures become more commonplace and numerous,
and I firmly believe it will be so. As stakeholders in this market, we
need to expect and encourage such failures. Congratulations to those
involved, and I mean that sincerely and with no animosity whatsoever.

Not too long ago, new telecom services and applications were costly to develop
and deploy, with only a chance of success in the end. Even for those that
succeeded, competitors typically replicate the service in short order, gutting
profits. The logical conclusion of many managers is to be cautious with
new service deployments, and to concentrate on maximizing existing services,
stifling innovation. They are afraid to fail, because failure costs
money. However, something's changed.