Anyone questioning the need for more fiber or wireless backhaul, or even 4G wireless broadband, need only look at a recent survey from IDC that finds that a constant connection is becoming the expected norm for almost a fifth of the world’s population. Sure, the study was funded by Nortel Networks, a telecommunications gear maker, but I don’t doubt the general theme of hyperconnectivity at all.

Some findings include:

• 16 percent of the global workforce is hyperconnected today, a number that will grow to 40 percent in five years.
• 64 percent of the workforce in Latin America is either hyperconnected or increasingly connected, compared to 59 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 50 percent in Europe, and 44 percent in North America
• Hyperconnectivity varies by industry, from 9 percent in health care to 25 percent in high tech and 21 percent in finance industries

Nortel CTO John Roese says improved capacity at the core of the Internet and an upgrade to 4G wireless will take care of the infrastructure requirements of hyperconencted individuals, but calls for software companies and enterprises to rethink enterprise software.

He envisions communications-from voice to social networking-built into always-on applications for the enterprise. While many companies may not view social networking or virtual worlds as integral to their corporate IT strategy, he points out that the younger generation of workers will demand this from employers.

Motorola has announced the spinout of its handset division, continuing a history of divesting itself from troubled business lines and isolating its potentially attractive networking and equipment business for a future buyer.

Details about the spinout are few and far between, but Greg Brown, Motorola’s CEO, plans to stay with the network and equipment division, which posted profits of $192 million in the set-top-box arena and profits of $451 million in the two-way radio and scanning divisions last quarter. A new CEO is being sought for the handset unit, which lost $388 million last quarter. The key question of who will get the Motorola brand is uncertain, but I think it should probably go to the handset business, if only because it’s the most consumer-facing one. (I will miss my Moto walkie-talkies, though.)

Brown believes the spinout will create “two industry-leading companies,” while the rest of the world recognizes this as an attempt to put a dog of a business unit out, in order to keep shareholders happy. The split comes after activist investor Carl Icahn spent months pressuring the Motorola board to sell off the handset division, which never rebounded after RAZR phones stopped being the next new thing. Motorola rode that wave all the way to the shore and, after trying to sell the division for the last few months, is now spinning it off into a new public company. I’ll pass on those shares, thanks.

A similar fate befell Freescale Semiconductor, formerly Motorola’s semiconductor products sector, back in 2004. As a spinout, the chip company went public in a tax-friendly deal for Motorola. Freescale got certain intellectual property, a new name and Motorola as a customer. But it also had to deal with a bloated management structure and find the attitude needed to fight it out in the tough chip industry as an independent player. Frankly, it was a mediocre business and managed to get bought out by a private equity firm a little more than two years after its IPO. The handset business will face the same challenges.

The networking and equipment business, however, might soon find itself a target for another buyer. The RFID business, which Motorola expanded after a $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies, is growing. Additionally, the set-top-box business has proven attractive to information technology companies eager to get into consumers’ living rooms.

There’s also continued M&A activity in the telecommunications gear business, which is still too big to support the smaller number of carriers in the world today. A deal with Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, Tellabs or Ericsson might one day make sense. If WiMax takes off, the network division might find itself in a good position relative to other equipment vendors who have turned their back on the standard.

Given all this, I wonder who Brown will find to take on the handset business.

Dell begins bundling Fonality’s open-source software with its enterprise servers today, its latest gambit to compete in the already-crowded VoIP market — this time targeting companies with 125 employees or fewer.

This is fertile ground: Analyst Alan Weckel of research firm Dell ‘Oro Group estimates annual PBX revenues, including those from VoIP phone systems, will exceed $7.5 billion by 2011. Much of this growth could come from small- to medium-sized businesses. Weckel told The Wall Street Journal in August that he thinks 35 million small businesses will adopt IP phone service before 2010 (about 11 million currently use it), a number that’s likely to ramp up if the economic situation worsens.

Granted, this is a market that has never fulfilled its promise. Few of the many hosted-PBX service providers are even making money. Yet Dell (DELL) still sees opportunity in hawking VoIP to businesses. Why? They buy more gear than cost-conscious housewives. If there is one thing Dell knows, it is that empires can be built on the incremental profits inside lots of gray boxes and the software that runs on them.

Dell is a relatively late entrant here. Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent, to name a few, are established players in the VoIP space, though their products also target larger customers. In the small business space, Digium and Microsoft, which released its Microsoft Office Communication Server in 2007, will be the chief competitors. (Microsoft has claimed a working relationship with Dell in the past.)

Late or not, Dell lives to put the squeeze on the margins of its peers. The Fonality VoIP Phone System will be priced at about $750 per employee for a five-employee system, or $9,999 for a system that will serve 25. This is far less than Cisco-class proprietary system, which can cost as much as $2,000 per employee. Being open source, Dell-Fonality boxes are simpler than most too, and capable of self-installation — an additional savings worth thousands of dollars.

“The big five phone systems-vendors are going to wake up today and see Dell as a competitor and it’s going to be a watershed event — the end of the phone system-oligolopy,” Fonality founder Chris Lyman said.

It certainly is a watershed event for four-year-old Fonality (as Lyman tells Found|READ), which has been selling its own branded VoIP boxes since 2003. Fonality now has 5,000 business customers (and 130 employees). It could sure use Dell’s sales channel to scale. Dell has between 6 million and 7 million small business customers, according to IDC.

Fonality will get a standard revenue share: hardware proceeds go to Dell, software revenues flow to Fonality (Dell won’t disclose the exact breakdown). Users will get their bill from Dell. Tech support will be handled by Fonality for at least the first year, Lyman says. Dell’s service is available for purchase today, via phone. Customers can order systems at Dell.com by February.

Verizon Wireless, a division of Verizon, is picking LTE — Long-Term Evolution — as the 4G technology for wireless broadband, and will start trials sometime in 2008.

LTE allows download rates of 100 Mbps and upload speeds of 50 Mbps for every 20 MHz of spectrum. It can handle 200 connections per 5 MHz. However, it is said to be spectrally more efficient and can better handle IP connections. LTE networks are based on the Internet Protocols. The traditional wireless vendors — Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Nortel (NT), Motorola (MOT), Nokia-Siemens and Ericsson (ERICY) — are going to be hardware suppliers, while the usual handset makers will make devices for this trial. Vodafone (VOD), joint owner of Verizon Wireless, is also planning an LTE Trial for 2008.

That said, it will be a while before we see the actual 4G network rolled out. This technology evolution when complete will make Verizon’s (VZ) Open Access Development initiative more meaningful. The LTE evolution negates the GSM vs. CDMA debate, and it also promises global connectivity. In a recent chat, AT&T Mobility President & CEO Ralph de la Vega said that his company was going to migrate to LTE as the 4G solution. In such a scenario, you and I can then switch between the two services without worrying too much about handsets.