As the VON Conference & Expo wound down in Miami on Sept. 23, it was clear that the telecommunication industry has entered a new era in which traditional business models, and traditional approaches to product and technology development, no longer apply. If any theme dominated the three days of the show, it was “Growth through openness.”

That’s a rather Maoist-sounding term for the realization that many service providers and vendors have come to: If you stick to conventional, closed, proprietary systems – for devices, for platforms, for customer relations – you are going to find yourself on the sideline.

Employees are demanding more open IT and telecom policies, customers are demanding more open and interoperable systems, and suppliers and partners are demanding more equal access and inclusion in product and marketing decision-making, said Joe Burton, the CTO for unified communications at Cisco (CSCO), in his industry address on Sept. 22.

In recent years, the industry has seen a series of “bizarre alliances” spring up, often among rival companies, Burton added. “We’re doing business with companies we would never imagine doing business with 10 years ago.”

Even the major wireless carriers, not exactly known for their open networks and business practices, are having to face the new sunshine realities, said Skype chief strategy officer Christopher Dean in his closing keynote.

Mobile VoIP is key to Skype’s strategy going forward, and “our interests are aligned with the carriers’ interest, in delivering high-quality calls to customers,” Dean asserted. “We are very interested in partnering with the wireless carriers.” Dean cited as an example Hutchison Whampoa’s “3” service, which includes a Skype client on the mobile phones. That addition has resulted in half-a-million subscribers, he claimed, 80 percent of which are new customers.

‘Keep Out’ Signs Falling

Some transparency is even beginning to reach the market for long-distance interconnections, long plagued by fees charged by the major carriers and archaic bilateral relationships. “Our view is that the solution to this problem has to include an economic incentive for everyone to open up their network,” remarked TransNexus CEO Jim Dalton in a panel entitled “The Peering Puzzle: VoIP Interconnections and Peering in a Distributed-Network World.” “Today the model is how to keep people out.”

Openness is also fostering growth in the hosted VoIP provider market. Speaking on the Sept. 23 keynote panel on “The Future of Enterprise Telecommunications,” Dean Parker, CEO of Callis Communications, said that his company is growing by double digits annually through a combination of cost-savings and the ability to share APIs and other network resources with customers. “Our customers can’t believe how much easier it is than dealing with the incumbent carriers,” Parker commented.

Those new entrants, including hosted VoIP providers and third-party developers running applications over Google Talk, find it “much easier to get in the market,” agreed Joda Schaumberg, senior director for enterprise network services at Global Crossing Ltd. (GLBC), during the panel on “New Competitors: Rise of the ISP, the MSO Challenge and Others,” held on Sept. 21.

"We have to understand how we position ourselves against that type of competitor, or we will find ourselves relegated to being pipe providers," added Schaumberg.

Nowhere has the open-platform movement gathered more force than in the development of apps stores, where outside developers can hawk their wares, not only for the iPhone, but for less-heralded devices and networks. A week before the show, Skype said it was shutting down its “Extras” program for third-party developers – a move roundly criticized in the blogosphere as a step back from the openness to which Skype has committed. But Dean said Skype remains “100 percent committed” to opening its platform to developers. “The Extras program was not well designed, and we decided to end it,” Dean explained. “But we are at work now on our next-generation platform strategy, which will be properly supported with a broader set of capabilities.”

He concluded with a remark that could be applied to the broad new day of openness now dawning for service providers, device makers, and end users: “Stay tuned.”