Colleague Dan Rosenbaum over at FierceVoIP posted his Top 15 VoIP companies list this morning -

And the winners are:
Airvana Brix Networks Convergin Digium Empirix	Firsthand Technologies GrandCentral Ingate Systems Iotum Jajah	NexTone Nominum Psytechnics SIPPhone Sunrocket

After deep thought, long and careful deliberations, numerous trips to the coffee pot, three bottles of Visine and an absolute minimum of coin-flipping, I am delighted to present the 2006 Fierce 15.

This list, as any such list must be, is subjective and as such can reasonably be debated more or less endlessly. At the end of the process, I was surprised to find that there is only one repeat from the 2005 list, which itself held very few repeats from the year previous. That speaks to the vigor of the VoIP business. It's not that the earlier winners have vanished. It's that they've either grown and gone public or have been supplanted by a neater newer idea or a fiercer company. Heat, however, is a cheap commodity in the blogosphere. We tried to look past the sizzle to find the meat.

It's an interesting list, and there are certainly some companies listed that fall in my personal top 10-15 companies. But opinions vary and there are some on the list I wouldn't put in my picks too. That's the thing about lists. They vary widely. It's one reason I generally don't try to put one together myself. To Dan's credit, he made an effort to include the infrastructure, carrier and application companies, which makes the list an interesting mix.

Whether Dan and I agree on where they fall doesn't matter. What does matter is these are companies to watch. Check them out.