The past year has seen some significant activity within the carriers. Most notably, two of the largest mergers in the history of telecommunications brought Verizon together with MCI, and AT&T together with SBC (with the addition of Bellsouth coming soon). Getting a bit of insight as to how any of these companies views itself in the present and for the near future is valuable to anyone related to the telecommunications industry, either as a customer, a supplier (e.g., an equipment vendor), a partner, or a competitor.

Eric Shepcaro is the Senior Vice President of Business Development at AT&T. IT Conversations has recently posted a podcast in which Mr. Shepcaro discusses the AT&T mindset and strategy. Some of the topics discussed include the shift to a softswitch architecture, network neutrality, and open source. The podcast, recorded on July 22nd, 2006, is slightly less than half an hour in length and can be found here.