Wednesday’s keynote panel at the VON Conference & Expo, “The Future of Enterprise Telecommunications,” will feature frank discussions on the future of enterprise networking. Previewing the panel, Jeff Pergal, I/S BT communications and telephony manager at American Family Insurance, talks about the company’s reliance on IP and unified communications and some of the challenges involved.

For nearly a decade the term “unified communications” has also stood for “Wait Till Next Year.” No more. UC is here, but its exact definition is no clearer.

In the ‘80s, the danger zone was littered with fighter jets and vestiges of Tom Cruise trying to act. Nearly 10 years into the 21st century, the danger zone encompasses IP network security, and the highway leading toward it is fraught with darker, tighter turns than we’ve perhaps ever seen.

Boosting its market share in a tough economy, softswitch provider MetaSwitch in 2009 has moved beyond its tradition focus on Tier 2 and below service providers in the U.S., targeting larger carriers as it broadens its offerings and opens its platforms to third-party developers.

Calling itself “North America’s largest provider of enterprise hosted VoIP, Alteva has become a pioneer in showcasing reliabile, carrier-grade hosted VoIP service. By e-mail on the way to Miami for the VON Conference & Expo, CEO William Bumbernick answered a few questions from VON editor Richard Martin.

Cordia recently debuted an international calling card service with widespread retail distribution centers to promote its prepaid VoIP products.