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wrong time,” which is “likely going to prove to be a very wrong thing.”

What about the over-the-top providers? How will they fare this year? Any over-the-top provider still has to have a business when the hype dies down,” said Ruzicka. “Consumers have short attention spans and all the bells and whistles have to work and have to contribute to something, be it entertainment or productivity or convenience.“ Therefore, it's time to move beyond marketing lip-service and into real value if the over-the-top providers are to survive.

A slightly different take: “I see the over-the-top VoIP providers continuing to gain market share and expect they will get economic help and favorable regulation from the Obama administration,” said Greene. “But the main competition to CSPs will be increased services from software companies and internet giants like Google. Sometime Microsoft will step in and buy/release a better application package for smart phones, but not until the early OTP winners are established.”

Indeed, the future of smart phones is directly tied to the success of many industry players. “A trend in CSPs is to require data packages with smart phones and this is slowing consumer acceptance of these devices, thus keeping the costs up,” said Greene. “I'm not sure Microsoft will accept this for long with the now apparently cheaper pricing of android and Apple phones. Probably the costs to consumers of all you can eat data plans will plummet in the 3 quarter of the year.” That's a prediction that will likely be welcomed by anyone for whom mobility is key.

Ruzicka summed up the year to come in the communications space in a way that takes the bigger picture into account. “I think the bigger change in the access landscape is that we’ll all start to not care what it is. We’ve been sort of trained to deal with home and mobile and cable and data and each variation

for consumers, but a less-than-desirable one for CSPs. Ruzicka conceded this point. “That makes it harder on CSPs because they can’t distinguish themselves because of the technology that they implement – although I’m not sure that anyone picks AT&T or VZ because of they say they have the biggest or fastest or whatever 3G network. It’s still about coverage and price on the mobile side.”

Ruzicka was less-than-quick to offer any grand, sweeping, bold prediction beyond that because, she said “we all know that CSPs don’t move that fast.” In order to predict the moves that will be made in the coming year, “our best course is to go back a couple of years and recall the buzz and that’s what’s being implemented now”, said Ruzicka.

Cutting Edge in 2009

“Cutting edge in 2009 will be redefined,” said Rainge. “In 2009 the cutting edge suppliers will be those who are most well versed in business efficiencies -- not technology,” though she offered that LTE is a possible exception. With that in mind, I asked some of the experts I spoke with about this piece if they had any companies to keep an eye on. Here are some they mentioned by name.