The number of calling minutes in the world is growing since it was created in 2003, but their shift towards Skype is growing faster. Sten Tamkivi, chief spokesperson for Skype, looks behind this trend, sharing what Skype has learned about simultaneously serving both the most and less developed markets in the world and why this is important. Skype handles one-third of all call minutes, is the only quality video conversation provider with a global footprint and sees increased growth due to video cameras on mobile phones and notebook computers.

Speech technology expert and noted author Moshe Yudkowsky laments, " ...the models and information required by speech technology is simply too great for today's open source collaborations." Yudkowsky discusses the practical edge of speech technology, covering solutions for both large and small businesses.

Leading a panel of several investing experts, James Enck points out several challenges the telecommunications value chain faces after the recent recession. Several problems might mirror the dot-com bubble, but investors and entrepreneurs also have new obstacles, including the increasing importance of online businesses and infrastructure, the varying need for capital and smaller profit margins, and the continued instability of the credit market.

Dean Bubley exposes the obstacles and politics surrounding development of the 3GPP LTE effort for optimizing radio access architecture. LTE is being held hostage by the telephony industry and the mobile world is being overlooked, but this must change. Several possible solutions exist, such as IMS voice and Circuit Switch Fallback, but they pose excessive call setup times and compatibility issues. The best resolution is a collaborative effort by carriers and third party VOIP vendors to produce a test vehicle.

We have all heard that technology is changing, and that the world is changing alongside it. RJ Auburn, CTO at Voxeo, presents several ways his company keeps this idea in mind by changing their customer service and products in reaction to and anticipation of present and future technological trends. He also explains how technology is changing the ways in which people hear, communicate, and use communication tools altogether.

Jay Phillips is technical lead and project manager of Adhearsion, an open source Ruby framework designed to make building voice- and telephony-enabled applications as straightforward as building web applications. He discusses a handful of technology trends that have paved the way for small and mid-sized development teams to create phone-enabled applications in a matter of days or weeks, not months.

The disruption of innovation has yielded as many opportunities for those prepared to take advantage as it has brought disruption for those unprepared to adjust. New businesses have been able to profit with solutions that solve problems or enable previously excluded people to participate on their own terms. Michael Jackson explores some history and characteristics of disruptive technology.

We should be less concerned about what people can do with networks and pay more attention to what networks are doing in conjunction with people. This is the essential point that Jaap van Till expounds on in this brief lecture. He discusses the significance, for the telecom sector, of the Nobel Prize recently awarded for the political theory of The Commons and relates that to the 2010 revolts in Iran.

With several of the world's largest telecommunication based in Europe, the region has always been in the forefront in communication thus pioneering the household adoption of broadband internet. Julien Salanave, the Managing Director of IDATE speaks of how the European telecommunication industry will shape up in 2015. Based on the uncertainties in the industry, he predicts which of the four possible scenarios including "Silent Death" and "Generative Bazaar" will ultimately prevail by then.

Telecom innovation has been stagnant for too long. Andy Abramson of Comunicano, Inc. leads this panel of experienced analysts and strategists to explore what or who is holding the industry back: regulators, vendors, technologies, or markets? Are telecom legacies like seven digit phone numbers and copper wires impeding new possibilities, and if so, is it technology or psychology that prevents us from moving forward?