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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">>> I'm giving a talk at SCALE 2009 (Southern CAlifornia Linux Expo) on<br>>> Sunday in Los Angeles, and the topic of my talk is "Open Source in an<br>
>> Economic Downturn". I've got lots of talking points for this talk,<br>>> but it would be interesting to hear some short anecdotes about how you<br>>> in the Asterisk community are thriving, or at least surviving, by<br>
>> virtue of the benefits of Open Source. I find that real-world<br>>> examples are worth more than all of the bullet points in the world,<br>>> and timely stories from the community would be more interesting than<br>
>> hearing me prattle on.<br>>><br></blockquote>
<div>I'm a Texas based service provider, VoIP and Internet for business customers. The last 2 month are actually picking up a bit. We are finding that business folks are really wanting less expensive alternatives for voice and data services, not so much for the new VoIP technology we offer. A year ago, we really had to effectively sell the new technological advantages and promote business enhancing solutions based on voice and data convergence. Now it is all about the bottom line cost. I'm not real concerned for the reason businesses are buying our service, but I'm glad they are.</div>
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<div>Competitively speaking, we are seeing the LEC (ATT) and other CLEC providers dropping their prices to capture market share. They are getting real aggressive, but it make a good statement about why their prices where high for the past few years. The technology and how it is delivered has not changed much over the past year so the "Economic Downturn" has affected them enough to reposition their margin strategies.</div>
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<div>JR</div>
<div>-- <br>JR Richardson<br>Engineering for the Masses<br></div></div>