SAN JOSE--The consolidation of carriers over the next several years will inevitably force the vendor market to follow suit, according to speakers this morning at Fast Net Futures. At the same time, start-ups still will play a key role in developing innovation, but they likely will be forced to change their sales channels.

Hank Kafka, Chief Architect at BellSouth, said the carrier is not necessarily more open to buying from start-ups now than it has been over the past two years, but that it relies to some extent on small vendors for pushing technology boundaries.

“I can’t say anyone has a monopoly on innovation,” he said.

Speaking on the opening panel of what amounts to a small sub-conference at the Voice On the Net show, Nikos Theodosopoluos, wireline equipment and data networking analyst with UBS, said because overall carrier capex is growing very slowly, consolidation must happen.

Kafka, though, pointed to BellSouth’s Enterprise VoIP offering, which relies on Broadsoft servers, as an example of how smaller vendors will play a vital role.

“Not all of these are coming from telecom giants,” he said. “There are models that work. We’re going to have to rely on innovation.”