@article {82,
	title = {Open Source Telecommunication Companies},
	journal = {Open Source Business Resource},
	year = {2007},
	month = {08/2007},
	publisher = {Talent First Network},
	type = {Articles},
	address = {Ottawa},
	abstract = {Little is known about companies whose core business is selling telecommunications products that lever open source projects. Open source telecommunications (OST) companies operate in markets that are very different from typical software product markets. The telecommunications market is regulated, vertically integrated, and proprietary designs and special chips are widely used. For a telecommunications product to be useful, it must interact with both access network products and core network products. Due to specifications in Service Agreements Levels, penalties for failures of telecommunications products are very high.

This article shares information that is not widely known, including a list of OST companies and the open source projects on which they depend, the size and diversity of venture capital investment in OST companies, the nature of the commercial product-open source software and company-project relationships, ways in which OST companies make money, benefits and risks of OST companies, and competition between OST companies. Analysis of this information provides insights into the ways in which companies can build business models around open source software. These findings will be of interest to entrepreneurs, top management teams of incumbent companies that sell telecommunications products, and those who care about Ontario{\textquoteright}s ability to compete globally. 
},
	issn = {1913-6102},
	url = {http://timreview.ca/article/82},
	author = {Peter Liu}
}
