5:35 PM -- After a month of trying to track him down, I finally got a briefing with John Longo, VP of marketing at NexTone Communications Inc. .

For those of you not paying attention, NexTone's the No. 2 player in the session border controller (SBC) market, and the recent target of some choice words coming from the CEO of the No. 1, Acme Packet Inc. (Nasdaq: APKT).

(Full disclosure: John also once served as an analyst for our research arm, Heavy Reading.)

While most of the hour-long talk was spent on the truly exciting world of SBCs and SIP and policy control, Longo couldn't help but mention the blog entry and felt the need to respond.

So what did he have to say about Andy Ory's comments?

"Here's a guy who is CEO of a company that, admittedly, has 50 percent market share. So why would he spend his energy badmouthing somebody he sees as a small competitor, or somebody insignificant? I interpret that as him feeling some pressure in the marketplace."

Whether that pressure was coming from NexTone or another competitor, he didn't say.

— Ryan Lawler, Trouble Maker, Light Reading