Kevin Werbach tells a nice story in " Not Your Parents' Phone System" and asks "Who is the biggest voice over IP service provider in the US? Every piece that adds to the VoIP stretch puzzle is worth thinking about. While he makes the point (illustrated with Gaming and IM) that VoIP isn't the same thing as telephony he identifies "activities" (watching TV, difficulty with your camera etc.) as the critical focus for identifying where VoIP may provide solutions that depart from traditional telephony and a standalone device.

It is worth reading. My question is still how fast? We've seen BT's play and Consumers are moving much faster. To counter the go fast trend we still have money pouring into Vonage which makes no sense at all to me.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm completely bored with yet another stupid P2P telephony play. Last week it was TelTel and this week it is Buzzfon. Oh and I forgot GeckoPhone Really, these aren't newsworthy and the claims they are making are not compelling. Before saying anymore I should add I'm rather jaded so I've not downloaded any of these.

The similar claims start with everything from dialup connections to fantastic sound quality. Most of them use a dial format and eschew any instant messaging capability while centralizing something in the process. Some are giving away the free calling to anywhere on earth just to get you in the door while the "operators" try to build volume.

At this point there should be some marketing basics. If these are the products dreamed up post Skype then the designers failed to do their due diligence on the product, explore consumer behavior and work out how to position a better product. Even the feature sets on these products don't stack up much less the real benefits. Let's be clear a better product than Skype is possible and given time and some rapid learning even one of the motley crew above could evolve into something interesting.

However, these are starting points.

I'd like to learn more about the behavior of people that have more than 150 people on an IM buddylist. As a potential indicator of change MSN Scobleizer and AIM have recently increased the allowable size of their buddylist. AIM doubled theirs from 150 to 300.

While my list of buddies is too distributed across AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Skype to have reached any thresholds, I recently learned from my 12 year old daughter that AIM was limiting her list and she was dumping names. (Many of these kids have more than one handle.)

Not everyone will be happy about bigger buddylists. Is this an interesting early warning signal? When IM lists contain the contact names and information approaching 150 people will the utility be way ahead of e-mail? I think so! Where's the tipping point? Is it an organization size? Is it the size of your network? For my 12 year old it has already tipped with e-mail hardly ever used.

There's another post in this, and it has got to do with interruptions, presence, availability etc. For another day.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

In a little item on Smart Mobs there is a post that is much more intriguing. Visiphoneuses visual aids to help you and me improve our awareness of each other. It enables a new form of visual communication to support audio and enhance the communication experience. I particularly identified with the graphics below as a monitor for individual or group exchanges.

Using an audio-only speaker phone to provide a continuous, long-term connection has several drawbacks: in a noisy environment, it is difficult to know whether one's voice has carried or to know to pay attention to new voices emerging from the phone; long periods of silence make it easy to forget the device, which then takes on the unwanted quality of unobtrusive surveillance.

VisiPhone displays two parallel visualizations, one derived from the local sound reaching the device (input audio) and the other from the sound emanating from it (output audio). We are experimenting with several designs for the visualizations. For example, one basic design depicts filtered frequency with hue, creating bursts of color when someone is speaking. With this display, one is able to see at a glance if someone is speaking at the other end and can tell if one's own voice has carried over the ambient noise to audibly reach the listeners at the other end.

Representing Speaker A & Speaker B

Representing both Speakers

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is there a connection between lousy customer service and being an incumbent telecom manipulating for advantage. Perhaps only if lousy Vonage service mimics the old telecom format while incumbents work on raising consumer prices for landlines. That will squeeze them! How much longer can they survive financially?

Some time ago I added a fax line via Vonage for an extra 9.99 per month which I really don't need and wanted to cancel it. So I went to the website and looked and looked for how to cancel it. It is easy to add services on Vonage. Just a point and click will do. Dropping their services is more difficult.

Finally after searching a second time for a simple delete option I called customer service. 1-866-Vonage. It took 16 minutes of which I spent less than two minutes with the operator. I have the cheapest Vonage account limited to 500 minutes. Their accounting system lodged the call against my minutes. So I pay for their lack of responsivness. Had they answered at the ring rather than after 14 minutes I'd be a lot happier.

I'm not quite ready to give up my Vonage line although the only reason I have it is because my cell phone service isn't reliable in the office.

Separately, each day sees a new player in the ATA - VoIP solution space. Lingo offers international numbers as a option as part of your plan. As you might expect the countries are limited. Still now rather than taking that ATA box to Japan Joi you can simply get a second international line. Bet call forwarding to a local cellphone from either one works too.

Another way of getting that unique inbound number may come from LibreTel who promises to disintermediate the relationship between "inbound" and "outbound". Costs are similar to a very stripped down phone line. Then there are moves afoot to hike those rates too.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Combine 330 million IM business users with the 600+ million cellphones to be sold this year and think new real-time collaborative applications. Then consider presence, mobility, and commerce and then ask how you can make it all disappear. Tomorrow's IM solutions exist for those that facilitate connectivity agents. What do I mean? Your PIM can handle millions of micro data exchanges on your behalf without you knowing. It really begins to work when IM and Mobility converge. This is beginning to happen now.

People are waking up to IM. >"Yankee Group projects that there will be 330 million business users by the end of next year (up from 65 million in 2004)". Stowe Boyd looks at InterComm from a collaboration perspective and wants shared calendaring, tasks and project management and includes a passioned plea to integrate it with blogging. That's before including voice and video.

While the merits of collaborative solutions are increasingly obvious, the discussion around communication should pay more attention to IM as a data transport. If you are to run a scenario that suggests that IM (or IM / VoIP / Presence / Blog CMS) is likely to replace the phone system then we shouldn't focus just on the voice part, or the click to connect. The real value will be in the zero cost of shuffling almost unlimted data between individuals. This little clip I recently saw sort of supports this. DIM - Hijacking. Unfortunate I don't think it is from a user centric perspective.

Move over teenagers, the heaviest users of instant messaging are about to become computers themselves. In the beginning, IM communication was strictly a human-to-human affair. A few years ago companies starting sending alerts (and increasingly spam) via IM making it a computer-to-human affair. Now, with the advent of Data over Instant Messaging (DIM) technology, IM is rapidly set to become a computer-to-computer affair.

Why send data over IM? One reason is that IM infrastructures have solved a lot of tough technical problems such as firewall traversal, multi-protocol transformation, and real-time presence management. Sending messages over these networks allows applications to leverage the investments made to solve these tough problems. Another reason is that many companies already have IM "friendly" infrastructures which means that all the necessary firewall ports are open, the clients are already certified and installed, and operations infrastructure like logging, back-up, and even high-availability are already in place. Thus by using IM for computer-to-computer communication, developers are able to "hijack" all the valuable investment made in IM and use it for a purpose that its creators likely never intended.

Burnham's Beat

I tend to think of this as creating an eBay environment for sharing personal information.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Packet Pick Pockets is the best review I've seen on the FCC ruling this last week. I alluded to this in my FCC post, Martin just says it so much better.

The way out from the conumdrum of whether to wiretap VoIP is to understand it’s the wrong question. There’s a paradox at the heart of the wiretap concept. Wiretapping is aimed at real-time communications. These are connection-oriented; there is a session in place. But session encryption is (now) easy. Store-and-forward data encryption is hard, because you need to involve all sorts of third party key management and directory services. The very data you want to intercept is the least likely to be interceptable on an Internet-style network.

So we’ll see a shift in focus from the real-time intercept of transient data on the fly, to after-the-event recovery of transaction data. The real questions are do we force all intermediary application services to retain and hand over copies of stored messages and transactions? And if not, is there a well-defined subset of those service capabilities that should be intercepted? My take is “maybe” and “yes”.
That said the core routing services "directory, presence and identity" are clearly defineable and limited in scope. A reasonable trade-off is to make it easy for the state to know who is associating with whom, even if the state has no knowledge of the purpose of the interaction.
Telepocalypse: Packet pick pockets

Plus I'm warming to the the opportunity to re-think "status" in terms of sharing and who might need your presence information. For example it may be useful for my neighbors to know I am away, or it may help to know to simply have a system that acts as a watchout notifier someone approaches my house while I am gone. Police may receive different data to the Neighborhood Watch. It is too easy with today's simple IM presence to stop with the current definitions rather than thinking about how it could serve us in new ways. I googled "Intellgent Presence" and in a quick search found little. Far from just being visible to everyone, "intelligent presence" may just serve us in ways yet to be dreamed up. I'd think the IM/VoIP platform that enables a "Presence Agents" market may shock incumbents.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a great example from Eugene Kim on how to bridge the digital divide between excellent facilitation and creating a "project" that assembles up the work as one goes along. In his post Eugene explores the value of "creating a book". What's important here is it is not the tool (wiki) it is the concept of the "book" that made this work. He also highlights a simple initial exercise for getting involvement.

.... the primary group exercise at the event was to write a book. The exact topic and format was not specified -- that would evolve as the workshop unfolded.

The book exercise solved many problems. .... it built knowledge assembly into the workshop process. More importantly, it made the participants responsible for that assembly, which kept them invested in the content.... At this event, the participants documented the workshop themselves using the Wiki.

As an initial exercise, we precreated pages for every participant. We then asked people to add some information about themselves, then to go through the Wiki and comment on another page that interested them. Having people write in their own pages allowed us to avoid a massive edit conflict problem. It also gave people a fallback if they were unsure of where to add content, and it populated the Wiki with a lot of useful and interesting information. People are social animals. We like to read about other people. (212)
EEK Speaks

I believe there is not enough thinking going into how we shape the leaders and managers of tomorrow. They will learn to use these tools however the discovery and integration of them into learning programs must be focused on managerial and leadership skills and performance. They use them as part of the program. It happens without thinking and as part of enhancing their skills and how they will project themselves and manage their boss, peers and team. So go use the book metaphor and include a moblog learning journey around the organization. Do audioblog interviews of each other. Add in some leadership development or TMI programs. Discuss what it takes to be a principled blog leader etc. Consider management and leadership style. Then let them decide on what the benefits are who should do what and put a program into motion. I'd keep a group like this to 8-12 people and focus on accelerating the leadership of creativity and innovation..

Now if you are an HR professional I presume you will say... time and efficiency and will these new "things be additive to my workload? I'd suggest certainly not by design, in fact quite the contrary. Still it begins for any organization with an exploratory leap and a small group.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

If you take on the global telecom companies then you are social activists. Activism is probably in the Skype teams DNA. However activism requires a grass root movement and leverage to topple what was. Skype now has a lever in SkypeOut and millions and millions of minutes so now it has to empower the army. There can be no conscription, membership is voluntary. Skype must now understand that the tech alone won't change the world but its users can by participating. It is time for Skype to take a bold step forward and embrace users with a new compact. This little scenario below may scare the VC's. It would be a great step towards changing telecom forever.

So, create a Skype Members program, add in an understanding of social marketing and activism and a new threat emerges to telecoms. Members programs are not new ideas (eg American Express, mileage programs etc.) although membership participation in this program may swing collective real benefits for the community rather than just the individual. For an example consider how the eBay community works and interacts.

Create leverage by using Skype's potential for talking billions of minutes served. The paid minutes are a number that Niklas won't be ready to share yet and the PC to PC minutes are unknown. From the markets perspective Skype is either smaller than expected or much larger. It is a no win. However, if they go "open" combining reporting of paid minutes and PC to PC minutes then the data becomes more interesting.

When "paid" minutes becomes public knowledge as they certainly will given time then they will represent only a small portion of Skype's "connectivity" value. Skype would be understating it's case. As incumbents play their games "paid minutes" can't determine economic arguments or fuel protection into the future.

Thus Skype should create an open rates dialogue with members as part of an open and transparent policy. This completely changes the playing field. What we have learned is Skype now has the minutes to start wielding power. (The interconnects may still be shakey.) So now they have to rapidly build the number of minutes used.

When Skype goes public with contract numbers then we as a skype community also reap benefits when together we achieve these targets... get these rates etc. Thus as each new mega million minute threshold is reached Skypers get lower rates. By adding statistic and time we engage users in the conversion. This is part of the daily tracking and monthly community reporting. This is smart business move with additional side benefits. Currently no other VoIP network can match Skype for minutes connected. Thus an important "market" statistic is created. Concurrently traditional telecoms are threatened by "open" VoIP statistics. Should Skype talk minutes then the regulators may have to look at minute costs and values. In Skype's case money spent this month divided by the total of free minutes plus paid minutes is the average cost per minute. No current telecom on earth can match this figure further highlighting inefficiency and the need for change.

The statistics and numbers game here is Skype’s to be won. The telecoms cannot afford to publish the same data. If they do their share prices will tank. Right now Skype remains a minnow. Soon Skype will be larger than some countries and then one day maybe with enough consumer participation it can present numbers to the FCC and say game over.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This links to a post written four years ago. Even then "better audio quality" was predicted for telephony. It's part of a changing paradigm. Sometimes it takes a long time for these things to work their way through.

What can a movie critic, a fat man in a tweed jacket, teach us about telephony? A lot, as you will see. Telephony, because it is so widely used, is about what people want, much the same as making and showing movies.

-------------------

What about telephony? Both IP telephony and voice-over-ATM systems have the prospect of delivering a truly better product, in audio quality, in call information, in lightning-quick connection, in integration with PC and Palm-based information, in the richness and friendliness of voice interface. Why use bells and tones and buzzes when you can explain things to the user and offer alternatives? Still, makers of new-style systems seem to think their work is done when it is "almost as good as" phone calls delivered over the very first, and now decades-old electronic exchanges.

Are the developers of new telephony systems stupid? No, they are merely tired. By the time they have gotten their products to work, with their investors breathing down their necks, they are happy to have something that will satisfy a specification and a business plan, rather than make a customer say "Wow!" But if you really want success, you won't stop until you have something that is really remarkable, not just respectable.
Telirati:

The Q3D audio positional technology brings a surround-sound experience to the wireless device by controlling the position of virtual sound sources in the space around the listener's head. QUALCOMM See also QSound

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To me via Smart Mobs.

The handset is rapidly consuming every other aspect of mobile consumer electronics: PDAs, cameras, GPS receivers, MP3 players, DVD players and game consoles. In the process, the SoC companies and intellectual-property (IP) providers that had planned to make a living in each of those areas will be drawn in — for the most part, to their doom.

Convergence is being driven by a simple consumer want: "Don't make me carry a bagful of toys when one will do." Two electronic gizmos in a package are better than one, as long as the form factor doesn't get out of control or the user interface become inscrutable. This is what's happening with second- or third-generation PDA/cell phone combinations, which are rapidly spreading through the ranks of professional users.

At the same time, the very cellular handsets that are bringing them nothing are destroying the SoC vendors' original markets. Free handsets with 2- to 3-megapixel cameras, good MP3 players, decent organizers and good videogames will decimate each of those standalone markets. The only survivors among mobile consumer devices will be high-end niches temporarily beyond the reach of the handset's electronics — professional digital cameras, for example.
EE Timesl

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)