GigaOM today reported on Vonage's latest results: new subscribers down, churn is up, ARPU is down, subscriber acquisition costs up.  All indicators going in the wrong direction; in fact, one could say that Vonage continues to dig its own hole (as predicted here and here).

Maybe Vonage's board could use Vonage's latest service announced yesterday: calling 811 for assistance in digging holes. Hat tip to Garrett Smith at VoIP Supply for digging up this story.

Questions this raises:

• Should not the FCC be developing e811 regulations? From the press release:
  • Note that 811 access depends on its availability within your area. States set their own timelines and procedures on when to call. In some states it is the law to call before you dig. Subscribers should check with their state and local governments for further information.
• Is there a Vonage VP who became totally confused when he heard about Digg.com as a "user driven social content website"?

But we'll all know when Skype is getting desperate - when they start stating: "Skype is not a telephony replacement service and cannot be used to dial 811 or other hole digging assistance phone numbers".

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Get the newest WLM release. Microsoft improved a few of the identity bits so your presence shares more of your profile with Microsoft sites if you like. They've tweaked a bunch of small things and - wait for it - if you sign up for Verizon Web Calling, you can make two free three-minute calls to nearly anywhere. I wonder if that promotion will work. Meanwhile, I still groove on their "shared folders" feature, perfect for team collaboration.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

TalkPlus today announced plans to revolutionize the way people use mobile phones by offering new and innovative Voice 2.0 calling services that work with existing mobile phones globally. Under development for more than two years, TalkPlus' patent-pending technology will provide customers a wide array of new and advanced calling services previously unavailable from mobile phone carriers.

First Offering: A Second Number That Works on Your Mobile Phone

With an additional phone number from TalkPlus, mobile users can now take advantage of having two numbers on their mobile phone. This additional mobile number is fully functional and unique; it works just like a mobile number issued by a carrier. By having a separate number to both place and receive calls on the same phone, subscribers get greater convenience and flexibility, as well as the benefit of an additional layer of privacy. With a second number, TalkPlus subscribers will be able to easily manage personal and work lives, while carrying only one mobile phone.

Subscribers will also benefit from an online management center, where they can easily control the TalkPlus Number's advanced call screening, voicemail, and contact management features.

Incorporated into the "Second Number" feature set will be an independent voice mailbox, a rules based engine for call management, bidirectional calling (in and out) such that a user can, say, separate her personal and business life, while using one phone handset with one carrier account. If you want to apply these management features to your original (well publicized) mobile number, you can port that number to the TalkPlus service and have a new (probably unpublicized) number applied to your basic carrier service.

But the calling support services go beyond capturing voice mail. Here are a couple of  examples:

• Designated number assignment: You designate, for each contact, which number will be used to call which party. (More below)
• Call log history - as you can on current Blackberries and Nokia (Symbian) phones, you build a log of dialed, missed and answered calls -- but this list includes all calls and attempted calls whether your phone is on or off. As with Blackberry and Nokia phones you can go to any call record in the log and trigger a return call to a calling party.
• Voice mail retrieval - you can organize your voice mails for retrieval by caller (callerID), caller profile (designated number) and use a call list to go directly to a particular call in the voice mail sequence without the need to listen to all voice mails received prior to the one of interest. So if you know that Joan Doe is going to make a critical call announcing a deal at 3:15 p.m. you can skip all her previous voice mails and jump to the one confirming the deal announcement.
• Bidierectional - you can both make and receive calls using your virtual phone number.

Users must have a wireless carrier service and, initially, a phone that supports Java or WAP applications. (Future releases will natively support Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry operating systems. Jeff's eventual goal is to fully support the approximately 160 mobile phone handsets covering both those currently out in the market as well as phones that have been in the market over the past, say, three to four years.) To support the call initiation and connection phase of a call, your account needs to include a data plan; the actual voice conversation passes thorough the standard voice channels of the handset.

A client is installed on the phone along with a unique TalkPlus phone book; again later versions will integrate into the native phones books of the mobile handset. Within the TalkPlus phone book (or TalkPlus-enhanced phone book) on your mobile phone you designate which number is used to call an individual contact. The called party will then see the callerID for the designated number.

While initially access to logs and other services will be via either the phone handset or a web browser, eventually all logs and services will be accessible directly from the phone using not only its display but also IVR and voice recognition for providing certain information in context.

Ken Camp, in a second reprise post this afternoon - "WhyTalkPlus is Important, What Matters to You", has envisioned many of the features and benefits of TalkPlus; Tom Keating, in a thorough comprehensive review, states, "I consider TalkPlus the Voice 2.0 company within the mobile phone space."

Jeff discussed some future expansions of the service, such as having multiple virtual numbers, availability of international numbers and calling to VoIM voice services such as Skype, MSN Messenger and AIM PhoneLine.; they are discussed in more detail in many of the referenced posts. Alec Saunders positions TalkPlus relative to iotum in his post:

Fundamentally, TalkPlus is an identity play that leverages an idiom we're all familiar with -- the telephone number. ... TalkPlus offers the same capabilities as having multiple email addresses, all reaching the same inbox, or multiple IM identities terminating on a single multi-headed IM client.

The metaphor is understandable, but the real magic may be in presenting a single identity from any handset. With a single contact point presented to the world, the value of one-number solutions is dramatically multiplied. Certainly that's an issue we've wrestled with at iotum. TalkPlus is a welcome and complementary solution.

TalkPlus is an identity play while iotum places the call in the context of the call recipient's contact categorizations along with his/her current and scheduled activities. We are starting to see examples of how Voice 2.0 applications evolve and even have the potential to mesh. The challenge will be to keep the user experience simple with a short learning curve.

However, of particular interest for Skype is this statement which Tom Keating made in the review referenced above:

One final interesting thing we talked about at ITEXPO is that TalkPlus has built their own Skype gateway. In fact, when pressed further, Jeff mentioned they actually reverse engineered Skype's protocol. Although the Skype gateway isn't part of TalkPlus's launch today, Jeff explained that they have tested it in their labs and it's working very well. He explained that from the TalkPlus Java application you will also be able to view the presence of your Skype buddies and initiate a Skype call or even receive a Skype call or even initiate a chat session. I believe he mentioned that they are also working on getting SkypeOut calls to ring to your cellphone as well. Thus, your mobile phone truly becomes your single communications device - able to handle multiple phone identities, and even your VoIP Skype identity. Similarly, they have a SIP gateway will be able to handle SIP calls - including direct SIP URI (email address) calling so you can simply dial "someone@domain.com". Other popular IM clients (AOL, GoogleTalk, Yahoo! Messenger) could be added as well.

Phil has seen a demonstration of this Skype gateway at ITEXPO two weeks ago; it is planned for introduction in the next phase of TalkPlus early next year. It will be interesting to see how it fits into the Skype ecosystem.

The "single number" public beta will be launched in mid-November with early January the target for a service launch. Pricing is yet to be determined; however, it appears about $10 per month will be the charge with revenues split with partnering parties.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am always happy that I did not buy anything (that was tough) last year. Or should I say the past 6 months... I am going to wait till one of those PDA/Smart phones states that it has been Skype certified and that it comes with Skype Out credit. As a gift... Or maybe I should just buy something now. Some remarks :

• no 3G support (no UMTS, no HSDPA)
• has EDGE (fast GPRS)
• has 802.11g (fast Wi-FI)
• has built-in GPS receiver
• has Bluetooth 2.0!
• very thin and small
• fast 400 Samsung MHz processor

Now that configuration will do for Skype VoIP communications, so why not buy something now and start saving on the phone-bill. It does do browser based authentication, yes? X500 Product Page.

No test report yet by Skype-gadgets.com. In mean time read this one.

Posted by Jan Geirnaert at 01:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first new idea I've seen in a long time on the stale network neutrality debate came from following a comment to this post (whose conclusion doesn't match the quotation -- if big enterprises want to waste shareholder capital on me, please bring it on!). Anyhow, here's the deal:

The false dichotomy of net neutrality, and the Tariff Rebate Passthrough solution

...and the nutshell version from the previous comment:

The idea is Tariff Rebate Passthrough -- i.e., the ISP can charge by byte for QOS (but only by byte) and the information service provider (Google) can rebate the costs directly to the consumer (but only to the consumer). This works because it meets the need to pay for differentiated QOS, without letting the telecom companies' control over that payment become actual control over content. I.e., all the good parts of net neutrality are preserved, but there's no need to give something costly away for free.

Now, I'm not sure how practical it is (any large change to a large system causes large pain), but it sure stimulates the grey cells. What it does acknowledge is that you need to look at the interests of the various actors and see how they align under different models. The one that lines them up best, wins -- just as capitalism harnesses greed to do good.

I have a bone with the original academic papers on the end-to-end principle of the Internet. (This basically says "a dumb pipe is good because it preserves option value and only the edges have the context to know how and when to add value to the bits".) The argument was presented against a technical framing. Really, it a question of economics. If fat, dumb pipes can be deployed and scaled at a lower cost than an equivalent hybrid or centralised architecture, then that ecosystem will grow faster. The honest truth is that we don't know if the Stupid Network is a local anomaly in history (although a damned big and important one) or a permanent fixture of the landscape. It could be a by-product of the relative technical and cost constraints of CPU power, storage, transmission and battery power. Not to say the limits of the speed of light, quantum physics and human-imposed legal and social constraints. (No nuclear-powered mobile handsets, please.)

The timing whole P2P/broadband/filesharing phenomenon can in some ways be traced back to an upswing in the rate of progress of hard drive capacity. Without that we'd have had the technolgy to build the pipes, but not to create the demand.

It is possible to conceive of radically different distributed computing architectures. They'll come about not because of some religious war between technologists, but because of cost and demand curves changing position.

The study of choices in the allocation of scarce resources resources has a name -- "economics". By publishing in the proceedings of the ACM, they picked the wrong type of journal. It's good to see the economics coming back into the neutrality debate and the political ranting take a back seat for once.

Unlock Geddes' choices via Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Several people have been pinging me lately about Belize. Lovely, small (287k people) Central American country on the Caribbean. Belize Telecommunications Limited, seems to be interfering with Skype calls on BTL's Internet services. Skype user comments via chat and Skype Journal tips:

• "Yes, Belize Telecommunications Ltd. frequently tries to block skype"

• "I do know most of my friends from Belize got the blocking problems. It goes on and off. Can't really tell when will be okay or not."

• "Go directway in belize
  why btl is blocking skype
  i lost alot of money. and
  we pay 300.00 per month to be blocked
  thats not right
  belize needs a lawer to fight for our rights they are steeling our freedom.
  and money is being lost in belize city everyday.
  we are a small country now even more broke."

BTL public relations hasn't returned my calls or emails; a customer service rep didn't know anything about it.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Initiated when Andy invited me to participate in the Nokia blogger program back in June, I have now had the opportunity to work with several mobile platforms and, over time, made several attempts to work with programs that access Skype from the mobile phone. I've also been following the Skype perspective on mobile here, here and here where expectations are set for processor power (minimum 400 MHz on Skype for Mobile), wireless access requirements (WiFi and/or 3G) and other operational limitations on a mobile platform.

As a guideline for user simplicity, I look for an experience where I can (i) easily "ping" a contact and enter text for a chat session and (ii) simply access a (Skype) Contact or dial a number to make a voice call - an experience that has a minimal installation and learning curve for the user public; an experience that will readily gain broad market acceptance. For the record the platforms I have worked with include:

* also accepts SMS messages

At the moment the best platform on which to experience Skype on a mobile device is the Sony Mylo with its embedded Skype client. It has both the standard Skype IM and Voice functionality (as well as supporting file transfer). It does not require any special setup other than to use the embedded Opera browser to log onto fee-based WiFi Hotspot services. Of course its other limitation is the availability of WiFi connectivity although Jon Arnold is already proclaiming 2007 as the Year of WiFi. The Mylo does present the most authentic and most complete Skype user experience. Skype-to-Skype calls are straight forward. Calling any PSTN number worldwide, provided you have SkypeOut access to the dialed number, is a simple matter of going to the Skype Dial menu, entering the PSTN number (with +Country Code) and clicking. Finally, as noted by both myself and others, the Mylo has superior voice quality due to its embedded VeriCall voice engine. One minor shortcoming is the lack of Outlook Contact synchronization; but this is not necessary given the overall intended Mylo experience as a personal communicator and not primarily a wireless phone.

A close second for a true Skype experience would be the Dell Axim X50v; however, its speaker/mic configuration falls short of a real phone experience. The more recent Windows Mobile 5 Smartphones, with QWERTY keyboards, are limited to having the full Skype experience when accessing 3G networks. In cases where they also have WiFi support (and access) - such as the forthcoming HP 6900 shown on the right, the experience has the potential to approach that of the Mylo. With Skype for Mobile all your Windows Mobile Contacts can be easily called via SkypeOut if they don't have a Skype account. Both Windows Mobile devices and the Sony Mylo can execute Skype activities independently of a PC hosting Skype. A major issue not to be overlooked: can a Skype call, using a 3G data plan, be made at a lower cost than simply making a call via the underlying mobile phone carrier's service?

Using the Nokia N-series phones - which has the best "traditional" phone interface, I have found, using QuickIM, the limitation for text chat to be the T9 keyboard. For some characters it is necessary to push a key several times to get a desired character. SMS messages, with their 160 character limitation, provide a handle on the maximum size of text messages that would also be suitable for Instant Message chat sessions with such a keyboard. On the other hand the N91 with WiFi support provides low cost or free access to the Internet when WiFi is available. Nokia's E-series phones include a QWERTY keyboard; however, they are not a participant in the Nokia blogger program. The N-series phones do have full Outlook synchronization.

At the other end of the spectrum are my experiences with EQO and SoonR (via the Nokia N-series phones) where it is necessary to download clients to the PC (and with EQO to the mobile device), leave Skype running on a "host" PC and then make a Skype call in a callback algorithm where there is a phone call back to the mobile device while also calling the remote party (and using SkypeOut credits in the process). Establishing a call using SoonR took an unacceptable three to five minutes. EQO does have a Skype IM capability but again it runs into the T9 keyboard limitations discussed above. In trying to make a Skype call with EQO, a diversity of problems occurred including the first "crash" I have had with a Symbian device. Suffice it to say I was not able to complete a call via EQO from my (supported) mobile device to the called party. These mobile bridge services are simply too complex experiences for main street usage; at best they amount to technology demonstrations without an end user product management strategy.

Web Messenger is the one service currently available to handle Skype on a Blackberry; however, it is again a bridge service that requires a "host" PC connection. In addition it requires alteration of the standard Skype setup on the host PC and has the potential to cause issues with selecting sound devices.

With no IM capability other than delivering presence information, the Skype WiFi phones are effectively excluded from any discussion of a full Skype experience.

I recently interviewed James Wanless of the forthcoming T@lkster service whose key feature is its aggregation of IM services as a means to enable voice conversations. From a web browser in a mobile device you can make calls initially to contacts on MSN Messenger, GTalk and Gizmo Project; they hope to add Skype once the service has launched later this year with the initial three services. Ken Camp best describes T@lkster in his "second look" revised assessment reprise. I can see where T@lkster could be a complement to Skype on a mobile device.

Skype France Managing Director JéromeArchambeaud recently revealed in a French videocast panel discussion that Skype and Nokia will introduce a WiFi-enabled GSM phone before year end. (Skype Journal first reported on a prototype Skype for Symbian phone last February.) To quote a translation of Jérome's comments:

"We work with big brands like Netgear, Phillips and Sony. We have around 100 partners and around 250 products around the world, of which around 70 are sold in France. These partners are really important quite simply because with the Skype program running on the PC, on the phone and soon through Wifi-enabled GSM phones (notably with Nokia who we will be making a big launch with towards the end of the year), we have to really make the Skype ecosystem come to life and forge partnerships where we can."

With emerging platforms such as this, which is effectively an evolution from the legacy Skype client experience and traditional wireless phones to which users can readily adapt, one has to wonder what the sustainable future is for more complex "mobile bridge" services such as EQO and SoonR. The most challenging technical question here is which Nokia platforms have a processor powerful enough to handle both voice and IM.

WiFi access - optionally with 3G, QWERTY keyboards, minimal downloads, adequate processor power, Outlook Contact synchronization and total independence from hosting PC's combine to provide the basics for a mobile device capable of the full Skype experience while gaining widespread and sustainable market acceptance. Differentiation will come through accompanying platform features such as Blackberry's push email, the Nokia video applications (camera and video calling) and availability of unique Windows Mobile applications such as SlingBox Mobile. The next few months promise to be interesting times with the evolution of Skype Mobile platforms.

P.S. Once you have decided on a Skype Mobile platform, you can always use this as your Bluetooth-enabled speaker/mic configuration It would actually solve the problem alluded to above for my Dell Axim. And the price is right!.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:04 AM | Permalink

VoIP Now wrote yesterday that "Skype's closed protocol seems to be ruffling feathers everywhere" as he mentioned Jordan's brief Skype ban.

It's a question of whose feathers are ruffled, I think.

First, you have those protecting economic interests, like phone companies and those who tax long distance calls. They'll get over it when they bring their own rival solutions to market or when consumer demand is overwhelming.

Second, you have those opposed to encryption (and secret speech) in the public's hands, like law enforcement, intelligence and internal security agencies. If they can't kill Skype when it's small, they'll wait for a monsterous event they can blame on Skype's security.

Third, there are people paid to be control freaks who run private networks. It's their job to be skeptical about new things, to protect and nurture their information and communications infrastructure. They get over their anxieties as the true nature of useful tools becomes clear and they learn to bring deployment of new tools under daily and lifecycle management.

For all of these "hostile" parties, Skype's biggest enemies are the apathetic, the millions of people who're saturated to the point they don't want to try new channels of communication.

This is Skype's breakaway marketing challenge in every market. Yes, Skype will compete against other VoIM products, but that's straightforward and more of the same. The real challenge will be getting those who live offline to come online, joining the 21st Century's social fabric, using Skype as they come online. And to convince mobile lifestylers to blend Skype into their communication habits. Both are very hard marketing challenges, like getting tea drinkers to switch to coffee, or futbol fans to embrace chess. Skype is doing its bit with free trials, but it's a long game, just beginning.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Walking across the river this afternoon in central London. Thinking of home, missing the wife and kids. Have been on the road too much in the last month or two, and too much travel in prospect too.

So I want to call Dr Mrs G to pass on my heart's desires etc. Problem is, the younger daughter tends to sleep at various slightly random times. Too often I've called just as the little madam was falling asleep on mama's shoulder, and ruined the whole afternoon for my wife who then has a grumpy, sleepy baby who will whine all afternoon.

So what I want to be able to do is make the phone flash gently, or solicit an outbound call. No ringing!

You can't do this on the PSTN. Sure, you could have handsets that have custom rings per caller based on the caller ID. But I want control per call over the ring at the other end, and it doesn't support that feature.

It's really hard to see the route from "here" to "there" in enabling these niche markets to be addressed. Telcos don't do niche, telco standards bodies don't understand the needs of households with young children. On the other hand, the Internet players don't seem to be any better. I don't have many hopes of a Skype device replacing my DECT phone and offering the reliability and features I need. As an application, Skype is great. As a technical and business platform that enables others to attack the niches, there's a long way to go. Voice 2.0 -- where the system adapts to the user, and not the other way round -- is going to be a long journey.

Posted by Martin wonders as he wanders through the Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today Skype released Skype for Pocket PC 2.1, a release whose accompanying documentation reflects the reality of the limited resources of handheld mobile devices. A full list of new features is available here; however, key items include:

• A new multi-chat interface which supports chats with several participants.
• Skype Launcher, a small 'launcher" application that checks available memory and verifies that Skype is installed correctly. (Hopefully this will avoid the situation I previously encountered where sometimes I had to reboot a Windows Mobile device before Skype for Pocket PC would start if other programs, such as SliingBox Mobile, were running.)
• Built-in call management that detects incoming mobile calls (via your normal mobile service) during a Skype call and offers the user the choice to hang up or ignore the call. You can switch to Skype calls when in a mobile call.
• Detailed contact search including specification of country, city and language as options.

However, buried in the details are the following that reflect a more realistic approach to Mobile Skype:

• Minimum processor speed is 400 MHz if you wish to use voice; otherwise it is really only effective for Skype IM.
• Wireless connection over WiFi or 3G only; the latter reflecting the latency issue that arises when attempting to use any VoIP service on a 2.xG data service. If you have GPRS/EDGE, you can use Skype for PocketPC for Instant Messaging only.
• A warning to only use wireless connections where there is minimum (via an unlimited data plan) or no cost for the data service:

When using Skype over 3G data networks, please be aware that you will be subject to data usage costs in accordance with your service provider tariff. Please avoid using Skype on 3G when roaming abroad, as this can be expensive. Remember, if you are using WiFi or an unlimited 3G data plan you can talk as much as you like for free.

• Obviously reflecting the reality that VoIP has heavy demand on the volume of data required when using wireless data services.
• You can participate in conference calls; however, you cannot act as a host who sets up a conference call.

A couple of caveats:

• You must uninstall any previous version of Skype for PocketPC prior to installing this new version 2.1
• You need to manage the number of applications running on your device such that Skype has sufficient memory to run properly.

Update: Skype has finally put the associated press release on their About Skype blog..

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

by guest blogger David M. DeBartolo

I would like to update you and your readers on the situation of Skype in Jordan. As you reported, the Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) recently reversed its decision to block Skype in Jordan, and Skype is back online. On Oct. 17, I had the opportunity to meet with the Jordanian Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Eng. Omar A. Alkurdi, who shed some light on the situation.

Minister Alkurdi, a Skype user himself, stressed that he and the Jordanian government are committed to an open, competitive and transparent telecommunications environment. He stated that the telecom market is practically fully liberalized, and that the government looks at the telecom sector as a main contributor to national GDP and as a major enabler of further economic growth.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission does not resort to blocking services, Minister Alkurdi said, unless there is a genuine security justification and all other options to address the issue have been tried. In this case, the minister said, Skype had been blocked by the TRC because of legitimate security concerns relating to its codes and protocols. He noted that similar steps had been taken in the United Arab Emirates, and perhaps soon in Egypt. He added that the government will address these issues by approaching Skype directly, and he said that he sincerely hopes Skype will be able to remain online.

Minister Alkurdi also emphasized that the TRC is an independent regulatory body and that its decision was based upon security concerns alone. The minister said that when he was notified of the TRC's decision, he immediately asked for written justification. After investigating the issue, he said he wrote a letter to the prime minister, and within a week the issue had been resolved and Skype was back online in Jordan.

As a dedicated Skype user here in Jordan, I very much appreciate the government's expeditious investigation and resolution of this situation in accordance with its principles of openness and competitiveness. Jordan's initiatives fostering a free and transparent telecommunications environment, in addition to Jordan's welcoming people and sublime natural beauty, make Jordan an attractive place for Americans like me to live and work.

Sincerely,
David M. DeBartolo
Fulbright Researcher, Jordan, 2006-2007

Posted by Guest Blogger at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last May Skype announced their first "free" SkypeOut promotion -namely all SkypeOut calls within North America would be free until Dec. 31, 2006. In early September Skype announced a similar program covering France. Basically, if you were not already a Skype user, you simply sign up for Skype, and all your SkypeOut calls within the designated territory are free; however, you pay normal SkypeOut rates for calls outside the designated region. And the promotions expire in just over two months, Dec. 31.

Last week Skype UK announced Talk for Britain, a new promotion that probably gives a hint of what will happen to these earlier promotions after December 31. Talk for Britain involves :

• Purchase £10 of Skype credit using PayPal or a UK-issued credit card
• Wait for up to 72 hours to confirm eligibility
• Free SkypeOut calling within UK for the subsequent six months.
• Program expires Dec. 31 for acquiring the six months free SkypeOut credit. (If you buy Dec. 31, you have free calling to June 30, 2007)
• Call Forwarded calls are not included in the promotion.

Over the past few weeks I have had several queries as the what will happen to these promotions after Dec. 31. Does Talk for Britain start to provide some clues?

With a small monetary commitment required, maybe Skype will get a better handle on the percentage of registered Skype users who are serious about having and using Skype.

In conjunction with this promotion today Skype released the results of their Talk for Britain survey, based on interviews with 1000 members of the general (UK) public. Amongst other revelations:

• Seems like the loo is a very significant component of the mobile call termination infrastructure
• Phone calls have replaced sleeping pills for a significant number of respondents
• We can expect from politicians desperate for attention a cry to enact laws against making calls while driving a tank.
• A caller's worst phone nightmare is being told what they did the night before because they were too inebriated to remember.

According to Alister Shrimpton, Skype's Market Development Manager for the UK:

"The bathroom seems to be a popular place for Britain to do most of its talking. And that goes for both men and women!"

"Skype wants to get everyone talking and our Talk for Britain campaign aims to inspire people all over the UK to start looking at new ways to talk to people for free, or for very little money,"

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the file sharing world of Kazaa and bittorrents, members of a network share two things: the files, and offers/bids for those files. More specifically, they ask for or offer little chunks of files ignoring the chunks' order in the file. You pass along what chunks you have and grab the chunks you need and, eventually, getting little bits from many sources, you have all the parts you need to assemble a copy of the whole file.

But what do you do with a live event, like a news broadcast or a university lecture? How do you get the benefits of scale-free p2p distribution while keeping all the viewers in sync? How do you accommodate people tuning in and tuning out during the event?

Skype conference calling goes part way. It distributes little bits to/from the conferenced people in streamed order. To keep a conversation rolling it will tolerate dropped chunks and accommodate resource challenges like poor CPU power.

The Company That Will Soon Be Formerly Known As The Venice Project promises to extend this to sharing your bits with strangers. Like bittorrent, you're giving the network a little control over distribution of the bits. You shouldn't mind sharing a little upstream bandwidth with the community since you're sipping from the same stream. Part of their art will be a balance of:

1. Centrally managing the publishing and initiation of streams (think YouTube),
2. Peer to peer distribution of those streams (like bittorrent, but first-bits-first), and
3. Playing on a rich client (like Skype).

At the application layer, the network forms users into groups depending on the channels they are watching. Great for targeting advertising. Can the same kind of behavior inform the network layer for optimizing p2p topology?

The closest existing technology to The Venice Project I can find is made by Network Foundation Technologies (NFT). Al Bredenberg posted an interview with NFT CEO Marcus Morton in March 2006. He describes just this architecture, already well deployed. The p2p distribution recently saved one client 78% bandwidth costs. It delivered a five-fold improvement in scale. In their supernode-free design, each node rebroadcasts to 0 to 2 people.

I talked with Marcus yesterday, just back from the Distributed Computing Industry Association's P2P Media Summit at Digital Hollywood. He said The Venice Project is doing for his business what eBay's Skype purchase did for VoIM: instant credibility. But where TVP is a direct consumer play, NFT white labels infrastructure for content partners (like the Simple Green U.S. Handball Open) and content distribution partners. Where TVP will layer their clients with social media and community publishing, NFT leaves that to their partners.

I hope to meet Marcus face to face next week at Streaming Media West in San Jose, California.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Naked Conversations co-author (with Robert Scoble) Shel Israel and American-converted-to-Canadian VC and blogger Rick Segal (and our former Microsoft evangelist when I was at Quarterdeck) are currently traveling through Europe. With an objective of learning about Europeans who have been bitten by the technology development bug, as well as about the integration of technology into European societies,. Shel is planning to write another book, Global Neighborhoods, while Rick may be seeking out new ventures that would complement current ones funded by  J.L.Albright Venture Partners.

Yesterday they met with Sten Tamkivi, Skype's 28-year-old COO learning about Skype's strategy, vision and operations.

The core of that strategy, according to Sten, is Skype 's intention to increasingly derive revenue from non-telephony services such as text, SMS and video.

"Very few VOIP services do not compare themselves to Skype." That means they are positioned to follow not lead. "Skype is more focused on staying ahead by focusing on its own opportunities," he told us..

Consistent with what we heard at the Voice 2.0 Conference in Ottawa last week, Sten states,

"the biggest threat to Skype today is not being able to develop non-telephony streams of revenue. There is excitement in eating our own revenue streams,"

Other highlights:

• There is a focus is on migrating its telephone services to handheld devices.
• Over the past year, since the eBay acquisition, Skype has doubled its Tallinn-based team to 270, mostly technical, employees.
• The technical talent pool in Estonia, a country of 1.4 million, is getting tapped out; there are some unique challenges in recruiting from outside, especially given its geographical location and history.

Read Shel's full post to learn about the advantages of operating in a small country and the end of paying for calls by-the-minute. And follow Shel's travels through his Naked Conversations blog to learn more about how technology is impacting education and European cultures.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week's Voice 2.0 Conference in Ottawa exposed examples across the entire range of infrastructure and services that lead to voice-related applications. Martin Geddes led off with a keynote asking What's telephone for? What's the unmet user need? Where's the money and What's next? Sam Aparicio of  Angel.com provides an excellent commentary on Martin's presentation ending with Martin's economic model for Voice 2.0 telephony:

• Martin talks about an inversion of the model. While most of the money was being made once the call was connected, now most of the money is to be made pre- and post-talk.
• Before talking you have devices, connectivity, privacy, presence, availability, directory and integration
• After the call, social networking.
• Google managed to create $400B of market value by exploiting digital social gestures around hyperlinks, but Telcos still fail to see how CDRs are a goldmine.
• Some of the growth areas: B2C (I'm soo glad he mentioned this...), C2B -- whenever you cross the trust of a social boundary. An example: In Finland, some people organized a grassroots, non-official Voice Idol type system, creating tons of value for the carriers without much of their involvement.
• Some examples of new thinking: considering a cell phone as a retail outlet you get to carry with you wherever you go.
• In the end, whoever controls the context in which conversations happen. (Following the Starbucks model, where they get to capture the bulk of the value generated by the chain starting at the bush of Juan Valdes). He mentioned how, in the future, when in a hotel, options for room service will be in a buddy list.

A vibrant session followed on the role of Open Source as a key Voice 2.0 disruption tool. Jim Van Megellan led us through the evolution of Open Source towards becoming an enterprise grade technology through the development and maturation of Asterisk, the commoditization of hardware (eliminating vendor lock-in while deploying best of class components) and the embedding of PBX capabilities into virtually any device. He sees the challenges of Open Source as:

• complexity
• cost (Open Source is not "free")
• security, and
• finding new ways of looking at products.

While Open Source contributes to the Voice 2.0 infrastructure and services it was mentioned more than once that we still need to consider Windows integration when it comes to user interfaces and Voice 2.0 clients. Just because it is there! Another eye-opener that came out in Mike Milinkovich's presentation on the Eclipse Foundation was that vendors of products based on Open Source compete in an environment where over 90% of Linux developers are full time employees in commercial enterprises. Yet they work in cross-vendor Open Source communities co-developing and sharing "stuff that doesn't matter" when it comes to building basic infrastructure software tools. They define their competitive differentiators around customers' needs.

In the Alternative Networks session, Bill St.Arnaud described some promising alternatives to wireline, cable and traditional wireless access using fiber for the last mile. But there are still struggles to build appropriate business models that can finance the initial capital costs while maintaining a sustainable ongoing service level. On the other hand, fibre appears to be one of those technologies that, when you see it perform, you have to have it. Martin Geddes talked about post-apocalyptic Europe operating in a highly competitive environment where access, basic service provisioning and content have become totally unbundled -- to the point where net neutrality is not an issue. Stephane Monette of Unlimitel talked about "trunking for IP-PBX", basically hosting PBX services for small-to-medium, geographically challenged businesses. With over 90% of his customers using an Asterisk-based service, he differentiates on QoS and technical support.

In summing up Voice 2.0 is about:

• building infrastructure for social networking, incorporating communication of context, presence and information while building mutual trust relationships
• opening up API's that allow developers to freely and rapidly build mashups
• energizing Open Source communities that can share basic building blocks
• providing infrastructure for collaborative activities
• creating user interfaces that create passionate users
• mining the Long Tail for new business opportunities

And one final tip from Bill Buxton, Principal Researher at Microsoft and award winning researcher in human-computer interaction: "Voice 2.0 needs to be easier than Voice 1.0".

Other blog posts with further commentary: Alec Saunders, Ross MacLeod - who did such a great job organizing this event, Ron Lewis. In closing I quote from Ross's article:

VoIP has become a key trigger to challenging the supremacy of the walled garden; however, on its own it is not sufficient to unleash the potential innovation around voice applications. But, when combined with several maturing technologies including; voice recognition, the Web markup language VoiceXML, and open source telephony, VoIP will enable an avalanche of new voice enhanced Web applications.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some more random thoughts on how our minds have been poisoned by 100+ years of Bell (or was it Meuccian?) telephony.

The signalling system in the analogue era was very simple. I want to talk, your phone rings, you pick up. We then enter a manual signalling exchange. "Hello, this is Mary." Confirms I got through to the right number and callee. "Hi Mary, this is Kevin calling. Is this a good time for a chat about next week's meeting?". Identity, availability.

Now imagine a system where we could press the green "call" button on our mobiles either once or twice. Pressing once would just request a call with the person. They would then have a queue of "people who want to talk to you", and those present/online would appear in that queue in time order. I could even, if calling from a PC or other rich UI, suggest times to call back. My phone would have a special ring for returned calls.

Alternatively, press the green button twice and make a normal interruptive "ring now!" call.

I wonder how we would use the telephony system differently under these circumstances? What would be the etiquette? How would people "subvert" the system for their own uses, layering on alternative semantics by playing games with the system? (We do this today: "Call me when you get to the station and I'll come pick you up -- let it ring twice, I won't answer.")

Would we have eliminated the queue in an IVR system for a human operator? The problem then is that you've already connected the call and gone through some menus before we get to the point of understanding this is just a request to talk to someone, and that the actual conversation has been postponed for a few minutes. So it's no panacea to voicemail tag or hold musak.

It's interesting how few (i.e. none) of the IM or other private voice application players have meddled with the basic flow and semantics of telephony. Indeed, earlier versions of Skype had an old-fashioned telephone ring sound to invoke the Pavlovian pick-up response.

The telephony system is as much a network of compatible user expectations and behaviours as it is a bunch of switches and gatways. VoIP makes it easier to change the technology and features, but the humans are the bottleneck in the system. So for new features to be adopted, they have to not disrupt existing usage patterns too much. I'm a bit too young to remember, but I'm sure the introduction of answering machines and caller ID caused no shortage of social angst at the time.

Why do we not use conference calls for two-person conversations? Why does everyone use conference calling for three person calls, and not 3-way calling (with an outbound interrupt)? What's making us use a different pattern?

Martin queues his thoughts with Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

How does Skype fit into the mix of other social media? If you recall, Lilia Efimova started using the ULRTMT - Universal Language Real-Time Message Translator this summer. Lilia and her online friend Andrea Ben Lassoued wrote "Weblog-mediated relationship: a co-constructed narrative" and it's being included as a chapter in a new textbook.

Their essay documents their professional relationship's evolution. The chart, at left, has three columns: Lilia's blog on the left, Andrea's blog on the right, and mutual territory in middle. The top of the chart is 2003 and the bottom is April 2006. They discovered each other in the blogosphere, reading each others' posts. After a while, they commented on each others' blogs, bookmarked each others' posts on del.icio.us, and swapped the occasional email. After a few months of more intense intercourse, they escalated to Skype conversations.

It is a solid ethnographic case study by professional social scientists. It spans a long time and covers multiple media channels (how we really interact with each other online). In this case, discovery and low level interaction earned (banked) a small amount of trust.

I'd love to see this analysis of online relationship-building extended to other groups and situations. How do entrepreneurs find each other? How do job seekers discover potential employers and choose media during job search? How do new project teams negotiate the fit of modes to communication tasks? How long do some patterns persist, and do people repeat them across different relationships? How effective is shifting into work/task mode before fully establishing lower levels of trust?

I'd also like to see the end of a relationship. Can you salvage a fading relationship by experimenting with other communication channels? What are the textual or other early warnings indicators that a person is fading from "friend" to "former friend" or "contact"? How much asymetric communication can most people tollerate?

Which behaviors affecting user adoption and migration: What factors affect the success rate in dragging your (family, friends, work colleagues) into new channels? Are social network hubs more able to migrate their networks? Or do hubs who switch lose their power and start from scratch?

The ability to create great experiences comes from deep understanding of human nature. If you'd like to fund a more exhaustive study, let me know. I'm organizing research proposals.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning Skype announced the gold release of Skype for Mac 2.0; finally a released Skype for the Mac with video support. Just in time to take advantage of all those iSight cameras built into more recent models such as MacBook Pro and MacBook. And, of course, one can now hold two party cross-platform video calls between Mac and Windows versions of Skype.

We would appreciate receiving your feedback via comments on your experiences using this much requested and long awaited version. I am working with one test case to check out this statement:

We've improved the video quality and made changes so that video calling can now work on older systems allowing more of our Mac community can use it.

The next challenge for Skype is to develop video conference calling similar to that already available with SightSpeed.

We look forward to hearing your feedback. It gives us an incentive to get the handling of Skype Journal's Comments fixed asap.

Update re Test Case: My acquaintance had attempted to use the beta Skype for Mac with his G4 800 MHz Mac - now the minimum requirement for Skype for Mac 2.0. He had reported problems with the beta version; however, on downloading the released version, we were able to establish a cross-platform Windows-to-Mac video session this afternoon with no problems - backing up Skype's statement quoted above. The biggest issue was that his three year old Mac's video camera does not provide the sharpest quality but it certainly delivered an acceptable quality for a video conversation. [As an aside, this G4 800MHz Mac does not meet minimum specs for use of SightSpeed on the Mac. On the other hand, SightSpeed's ability to do a three party conference with his two daughters in two different cities has become one inducement to upgrade to a new Mac soon.]

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I could do a long critique of every softphone out there, and there's plenty to pick apart. I thought I'd just select one little detail to show why the portal IM clients and Skype remain top dog: they just deliver what the user wants, no hassles.

Every time I log in to Windows I get this:

Go away! Shoo! Don't irritate me with unnecessary login screens. Fade into the background. I don't want to think about you until you're needed. (If the wireless Internet connection comes up too slowly, it also tends to crash.)

I suppose I should also point out some of the other usability issues. As Amazon long-ago discovered, the way you present the login/new user screen makes a big difference. If it's confusing (high cognitive load) people bail out, probably (rightfully) assuming the rest of the experience inside will be equally bad.

Gizmo fluffs this with a strange radio button layout. In the user's mind, registering is a different process from logging in, even if the information requested is identical. The drop-down text entry box is the wrong cue for creating an account name, because it implies a selection of existing data. (Yahoo is superb at managing this process in a crowded namespace.) Gizmo operates from the perspective of the programmer, not the user. Contrast with Skype:

(MSN and Yahoo follow the same overall scheme.) The registration process is separate because that part of the experience needs to be managed on its own. It isn't about just filling in a bunch of data fields, but about setting user expectations. I enter a random user name and password into Gizmo, but I've no idea where the process leads me or what other information or configuration I'll need to do. Capture of essential user info like email address needs to be in the same form. (If the Gizmo designers wanted to be brave, drop the radio buttons, and say "Enter user name and password -- if you don't have an account, we'll create one for you.")

Likewise, anything to do with Asterisk, PBXs, or any other jargon my mother doesn't understand needs to be hidden under an "Advanced..." button. Also note how Skype, MSN and Yahoo all place the contextually relevant configuration check boxes on the login screen, not hidden away under an options tab.

This might seem a bit nit-picky, but if you want adoption of your softphone client to be viral, it's got to pass the "mother test" -- you need to be confident she'll install and configure it without you being there to help. And that's a far stiffer and unforgiving challenge than pleasing bloggers.

(PS - If this isn't the lastest version of Gizmo, don't complain to me -- fix your auto-update.)

Martin pays attention to user experience at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I just want to acknowledge that I have had a few reports this week to the effect that Comments are not appearing or, in some cases, have been reported as "not allowed". Rest assured that both Phil and I are disciples of Shel Israel's and Robert Scoble's book, Naked Conversations.  We want and appreciate your comments; we want Skype Journal to be a conversation amongst both Skype enthusiasts and Skype users.

Both Phil and I have been taken away on family matters this week; however, I took a few minutes this evening to check out these reports.  There are some problems which only Phil can address as he is the only one who has experience with managing and supporting our Movable Type platform. He will look into them on his return next Monday; in the meantime you can find the comments (to all posts in chronological order going backwards) at http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/recentcomments.html.

I have seen the three comments about the Skype and US Traction story; they are much appreciated. Thanks... and thanks to all who have commented such as to create a constructive conversation about any post.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the "joys" of being a US-controlled public company is that SEC requires the breakout of International from domestic sales. So today's 3rd quarter report from eBay provides some information that allows us to look at Skype registrations coming from the U.S.

With over double the registrations from two quarters ago, it certainly demonstrates that the free SkypeOut within North America is probably helping to build some traction but Skype remains essentially a non-US business with over 84% of registrants outside the US. This is corroborated when you compare the % revenue increase with the % user increase; certainly some of the difference can be attributed to absence of revenue for SkypeOut calls within US/Canada.

The results are even more impressive when you consider there has been very limited marketing of Skype within North America - Phil has noticed some media ads in the Bay Area; there are some Skype ads on the eBay website.

These results also reveal some other interesting information:

• Skype has grown to a $200MM annual business; however, it would be a stretch to expect them to hit $200MM in calendar 2006. That would require a $70MM quarter. What could drive that increase?
  • Royalties from the launch of new Skype devices such as the cordless phones shown at Fall VON and the Sony Mylo but it's still early in those products' life.
  • Increased SMS revenue, especially when driven by programs such as Skylook which will drive Skype Chat messages to your mobile phone via SMS if you are Away or Not Available.
• Skype's overall revenue growth is slowing; however, it is still the quarter-to-quarter % revenue growth star for eBay where both auction (Marketplaces) and PayPal (Payments) revenue essentially stagnated (+2%, +3% respectively). On the registrant side, Marketplace accounts grew 5% while PayPal accounts grew by 8%.

Looking at the overall results, eBay has to be a nightmare for financial analysts to figure out and forecast. You have three (or more) totally different business models that have different financing and margin requirements. For instance, PayPal is essentially a financial transaction business that should be compared with, say, credit/debit card companies while Skype is a mix of high margin royalty and low margin communications transaction businesses. However, we don't get to see the margin breakdown by business unit; that would certainly provide a much better handle on how each of their business units is doing.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

"WAP is Crap!"

Well, in fact it was quite good given the technology constraints it had to work within. As an implementation of the wired Web on mobile devices, it was well thought through, surprisingly effectively implemented, and funded to the gunnels.

The difficulty was that it was in general a solution to a problem the users didn't have. The power of the wired Web is the hyperlink and browsing of information. Users spend a lot of time "transaction hunting", where you decide where to put your money and attention. The wired Web is about bubbling up of important, interesting and useful information. This doesn't match the use case of the wireless Web, which is about quick hits with sites where you already have a relationship.

All this is well documented. So it's rather sad that the industry is about to go through the same harrowing learning process all over again with mobile instant messaging.

Once more, there's a well-established and successful model from the wired Internet. "Presence" as it is usually constituted grew up from the always-off world of dial-up Internet. Online rendezvous was hard, presence solved that problem. For the first time, you could have multiple conversations on the go at once. Distance didn't matter, a novelty for those separated by countries and continents. Parents and partners were excluded from this private chat world.

Mobile IM is also the solution to a crisis the user doesn't have. The buddy list reflects a closed world that doesn't match the openness of the actual tools the users prefer, namely SMS and voice. We already have a universal identifier system, the phone number. Users already manage multi-threaded conversations using SMS. The idea of the "chat window" doesn't make sense on mobile. The interruption model doesn't match, either. A new IM whilst you're browsing the web means a flashing taskbar icon and minor context change from one app to another. Mobile interruptions mean suspending real life. That's why you ask the sender to stump up a few cents to demonstrate the value of the interruption.

It doesn't even bridge the worlds of fixed and mobile well, since you won't easily be able to tell the context of the other user. Today a "mobile" IM user is flagged up from a PC client because the message will be sent via SMS. A true interoperable IM system would either lack the "third state" of "mobile but on IM", or requires a complete refresh of all PC desktop clients to understand this new phenomenon.

The presence model of mobile IM is broken anyway, becuase it confuses presence with availability. I'm not the first to note that an always-on mobile means the green smiley "online" becomes irrelevant. If you take presence to mean "the sense of other" (thanks, Douglas) then the kids are already are engaged in deep presence exchange under the duvet at night by texting away. The stored "precious" SMS from the boy you have a crush on is presence. Don't let