The company

Investor expectations were high for the company, as the clear leader in the SBC market, which will help wireless carriers beef up their infrastructure to the inevitable shift to voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP. The days of carriers operating voice and data networks are numbered, as everything will shortly be transmitted as just data.

That transition just isn't happening as quickly as Acme Packet had thought, and the company's third- and fourth-quarter revenues results left investors wanting more as big deals at clients AT&T and Verizon were taking longer to close than expected. I think its first quarter will be the bottom for its business, and 2013 will be an inflection point as voice over LTE (Long Term Evolution, latest standard in the mobile network technology), or VoLTE, begins to roll out.

The same pricey

Acme Packet is all the same pricey, however it leads a growing market. Cisco offers SBCs, yet its market share plays second fiddle to Acme Packet. Juniper picked up SBC innovation from its acquisition of Kagoor networks in 2005, nevertheless subsequently killed its offerings in order to integrate SBC functions into its existing products. Sonus just reported first quarter revenues, predicting a loss straightway quarter.