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 the technologists near this social phenomenon! They don't get it, all they see is information transfers. A "unified messaging client" is an oxymoron. It's like putting a toilet and paddling pool in the kitchen because it's the "water room".

So what should carriers do? That's easy. Stick to the knitting of the services that people have already demonstrated a preference for, namely vanilla voice and SMS. Gently evolve these products. Make them easier to use, particularly voicemail. Make the up-sell better: SMS notifications of voicemails being received; inducements to call in return to each SMS. Incorporate availability into the address book without creating a whole new messaging paradigm for users to learn. Build business platforms that make it easier to send SMS messages from TVs, PCs and consoles.

Launching mobile IM fragments the very same SMS network you want them to stay within, and weakens the network effect. This isn't a question of interoperability. I'm assuming technical excellence. It's a matter of user perception. It also confuses the value perception of the users, who associate IM with "free".

Will users bypass SMS using IM over GPRS/3G? In some markets, yes. Telepocalypse ahoy, there's going to be price pressure. But if they do switch quickly, that's probably because you're mispricing your bundles. Offer them the right package of 100 or 1000 messages, and they'll stay within the system.

Milk the cow, don't be a sheep.

This essay is sponsored by EasyJet: helping bloggers and readers worldwide with our 15 Minute Boarding Delay™ program.

Martin hitches a ride on Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm on holiday, but I'll post more from last week's Internet Telephony Conference and Expo. The photo in the masthead is of a mad rush into the exhibit hall's opening night.

It was bizarre for me, all VoIP but almost no Skype in the hall, and none in the official program. This conference brings VoIP resellers and enterprise buyers (seen above) to the exhibitors, corporate VoIP toolmakers. Skype, as far as these folks are concerned, is in another industry, consumer VoIP, and not their business. Mostly, the exhibitors and speakers don't even mention Skype because their clients haven't bought or sold millions of dollars of Skype products.

The funny part: a number of vendors are pitching Skype-like functionality. Centralized and well domesticated, of course, but some blend of presence, IM, voice, video, and other collaboration. But few in the room (or with checkbooks) seem to buy value-added-VoIP. Most see VoIP as long distance bypass and little more.

And most don't know that VoIM is being smuggled into their workplaces by team leaders and expatriots and the adventurous. By parents with kids and lovers who want privacy. Skype is spreading in typical disruptor style like faxes and personal computers. If this conference is any indication, this wave of new behavior is well below the radar of nearly all IT and telephony vendors.

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

Web 1.0: Lots of websites which offer personalised portals with domain names like "my.foo-inc.com".

Web 2.0: Shouldn't we see lots more sites with domains like "our.corporate-inc.com"? Their absence speaks volumes.

Exercise for the reader: is it possible to transition an institution from control to co-creation of value, or can you only build such edifices on greenfield sites? Or to be more blunt and specific, does the journey from Telco 1.0 to Telco 2.0 on average require the capital and goodwill to be split apart and re-cycled via the bankruptcy courts or distressed asset sales?

Martin thinks aloud at Telepocalypse.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday I received, as an evaluation unit, a Sony Mylo via the folks at Trinity Convergence whose voice engine software is embedded in the device. The Mylo has turned out to be an interesting personal companion and nothing has changed my opinion that this could be for Sony in the 2000's what the Walkman was for them in the late 80's.

The Mylo merges personal entertainment and personal communications  into one device. I expect I will be learning its many features over the next couple of weeks but a few initial comments:

• That blue ring around the right side is not an illusion; it indicates that it has an active WiFi connection.
• It is a device through which a group of friends can maintain ongoing remote contact, whenever they are in WiFi range, sharing (but not swapping) music, pictures and video, talking and IM'ing. (The agreement with T-Mobile in the U.S. is an ingenious piece of marketing.)
• On our first Mylo-to-Mylo call this evening with Andy Abramson, who bought one today, we both remarked it had the best Skype voice quality either of us has experienced. Suffice it to say that, remotely, Andy got right inside my head! (I have yet to decide if that is good or bad <gr>.)
• The Skype experience on a stand alone WiFi device has been all positive. The user interface and Skype feature set is much more intuitive and feature rich than on those Skype WiFi phones. It reinforces my recommendation that Skype move beyond the simple Skype WiFi phones, especially given that the Mylo can handle the full combination of voice communications, instant messaging and file transfer inherent to legacy Skype.
• Is there some irony that you can only IM with the embedded GTalk capability? (Same for the Yahoo Messenger)

The marketing challenge for Sony will be to transition the iPod generation from a pure multimedia device to an Internet-enabled communications and multimedia companion. More to follow once I have explored more of its features.

Note for fellow Canadians: I probably have the only Mylo outside Sony Canada's offices (and even all their employees have not heard of it); it has not yet been introduced outside the U.S. Two issues re Canadian availability (and probably for any other country outside the U.S. as well):

• They need to negotiate the Canadian rights with respect to music that can be bought through the Mylo's Sonic Stage store. This was also an issue that delayed the introduction of the iPod in Canada
• To facilitate market penetration they need to negotiate a WiFi arrangement similar to the T-Mobile arrangement in the U.S. with the Canadian Hotspot consortium.

Sunday Update: Andy has posted his first impressions here.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 08:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

On Wednesday I was asked to moderate a second panel at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa on Alternative Networks. Having spoken with a couple of the speakers this session is going to provide an update on what amounts to further unbundling and disintermediation in the voice communications infrastructure space. These developments, which include demonstrated profitable business models, are resulting in the separation of network access, service provisioning and content delivery required to achieve not only net neutrality but lower costs of Internet participation.

The conference is filling up; however, there's still time to register here. See you Monday.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just over a week ago Phil reported that Jordan's telecom regulator had ordered that Skype be blocked. It was a short-lived blockade; the decision has been reversed. According to a report from Middle East North Africa Financial News:

Director of the commission's regulatory department, Al Ansari Al Mashaqbah, confirmed yesterday that the recent decision to block Skype had been reversed.

The official told The Jordan Times that the security issues, cited as the reason for the block, had been resolved.

The same report mentions that David DeBartolo, a Fulbright researcher in Jordan and author of the letter in Phil's original report on this story (linked above), had received a response to his initial contact with the commission "that Skype services had been blocked for security reasons:"

"Justification that it was blocked for security reasons is unfounded and absolute nonsense," said Omar Qawas, a professional in the IT business, who has been using Skype for two years to stay in contact with friends and colleagues around the world.

Qawas told The Jordan Times that Skype was "a reliable alternative to using regular phones or mobiles, and much more cost-effective."

Can this story and the San Jose State University story, where a Skype blocking decisions was also reversed, finally put an end to concerns about Skype security?.

(Hat tip to Jeremy Hague at Skylook for bringing our attention to this story.)

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I have just been asked to moderate a Round Table at the Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa next Monday; Topic: the Future Visions for Telecom. Recently there have appeared three posts that provide a foundation for discussion of the subject:

First, James Enck, a highly respected telecom analyst and blogger, based in London, posted details of his keynote presentation last week, Ten Things I Hate About You, at Telco 2.0 in London  James has developed a strategic framework around which he sees the future of telecom:

• Telcos have lost control of their core product
• Voice is becoming a feature, not a service
• Telcos can't grasp that consumers may not want what they're being sold
• Telcos thrive on scarcity - future value will be built around abundance
• Command and control culture is dead, open API's rule
• Telco DNA is fundamentally unsuited to the current dynamics of content
• Telcos expand their footprints physically, not virtually
• Telcos can't innovate
• Telcos shouldn't try to innovate
• Maybe the entire foundation is wrong

Definitely a landmark post. So what should the foundation of telecom become? Alec Saunders presents a first anniversary update on his Voice 2.0 Manifesto:

The customer experience predicted by the Voice 2.0 Manifesto is not of a single carrier, but rather of three classes of entities - access, directory, and applications.  As a customer, you'll pay to be part of the network, you may pay for an identity (and this is an idea who's time will come, although it's hard to see today), and you'll pay for applications that that help you communicate in a diverse number of ways.  This is a very different model from the traditional, vertically integrated, communications network.

Alec builds cases around several of James' statements; for instance:

• Unsurprisingly, the biggest stumbling block to the Voice 2.0 vision is the incumbent service provider. Not only do these folks move at glacial speeds, but most regard the Voice 2.0 model as a threat, rather than an opportunity.
• In a Voice 2.0 world, control is with the customer. I buy the services I want, from whom I want.

Finally Robert Young at GigaOM has written a definitive post on the role of communications embedded into social network infrastructures stating that "communications ultimately serves as the anchor feature and the driver of retention and growth". Robert concludes with:

Social networks, which are rapidly becoming the portals of the next generation, must place high strategic priority on their communications functionality if they wish to continue their pace of traffic growth, usage, and retention.

Three "primer" posts that serve to help us understand the opportunities provided in a Voice 2.0 world. And provide a framework for assessing where the voice communications space will evolve as Skype, AIM Phoneline and similar services become integrated into Web 2.0 and mobile communications offerings. Yesterday Malcolm Geddes (who will be on the panel) summed it up in posting his thought for the day:

Exercise for the reader: is it possible to transition an institution from control to co-creation of value, or can you only build such edifices on greenfield sites? Or to be more blunt and specific, does the journey from Telco 1.0 to Telco 2.0 on average require the capital and goodwill to be split apart and re-cycled via the bankruptcy courts or distressed asset sales?

Update: James was taken aback by the widespread response to publishing his bullets.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 04:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(The second of three posts on the newly released Skylook 2.0.)

Two legacy features carried over from earlier versions are the Skylook Answering Machine and Skylook Recording, both of which recorded Skype voice mail messages and calls as MP3 files.. Building on the experience with handling audio in developing these features, Skylook 2 has been enhanced such that voice mails can be incorporated into business processes for timely follow up and retrieval while Skylook Recording is an ideal solution for recording podcasts. The new features include:

• Recording in multiple formats: MP3, PCM, etc.
• Record the caller side or both sides of the call
• Split the recording of each side of a call as "raw PCM audio" into separate WAV files; this facilitates later editing of recordings as podcasts.
• Store audio files either in Outlook or in any Windows folder. This allows call centers to store files in Public folders accessible to all members of a call center
• In the Skylook Call Monitor window you can also store (free text) Notes to associate with the recording. These notes, which can be made either during or after the call, become searchable tags that facilitate later retrieval of audio files.
• When deploying Skype Answering Machine a voice mail (optionally from designated callers) can be automatically forwarded to any designated email address as an attached MP3 file.

As with earlier versions of Skylook all Answering Machine and Recording activity is archived within Outlook.

If you are looking for more than simply receiving voice mail and want to not only have several recording options but also have all your call activity archived for later search retrieval, Skylook 2 offers some interesting value-add features, especially for call centers, customer support operations and podcast producers.

First Post: Skylook 2 - Building Business Processes Around Skype

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marcelo Rodriguez rounded up five products that connect Skype and SIP products in his post, Is a Skype-SIP Peace At Hand? 

• VoSky Exchange
• Skype2PBX
• Uplink
• ChanSkype 
• Pika Connect for Skype

We all want interop, and these products are gaining loyal followings. They build audio pipes between SIP and Skype voice callers. We've been calling these Level Three Skype integration in our Skype Journal Connectivity Maturity Model. 

Skype Journal Connectivity Maturity Model

Level 0. No connection.
What's VoIP? What's Skype?

Level 1. Skype indifferent.
Devices doing nothing but input or output like the most basic of USB phones. On the software side, the only software is Skype.

Level 2. Skype aware.
Configurations are Skype-aware or Skype-smart devices, like the Kensington Vo300, the YapperNut YapperBox.

Level 3. Skype conversant.
Level 2, plus audio pipes between apps, especially across the SIP barrier. You call with your SIP phone, something happens in between, and my Skype phone answers.

The move from Skype to SIP at Level 3 costs you all the benefits of rich conversation. You lose:

• Availability and geopresence
• Mood messages
• Caller authentication
• Access to caller profiles
• Launching text chat or video in the same call
• File transfer and folder sharing
• Voice messaging
• Access to Skype voicemail
• Skype multichat and conferencing
• Broadband audio quality 
• End-to-end encryption
• Chat/call permalinks 
  (e.g. skype:?chat&id=%23leedryburgh%2F%24evanwolf%3Bd5b446f89da627a3)

Level 4. Skype equivalent.
Level 3, plus restoring most of the missing elements. 

Does this model work for you? What's Level 5? What do you call it when the other system has capabilities beyond or different from Skype and you can't translate them?  

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Jan in Malaysia teases: Russian engineers reverse engineer Skype.

VoIP Hacks by MacVoIP's Ted Wallingford is shipping. It's a must-have if it's half as good as Ted's blog, or the other Hacks books.

❦

Incident Commander looks so cool. Sim City for crisis training. Can't wait to try it, to check out the multiplayer communication and collaboration. Any VoIP inside?

Stop Conflict Before It Starts. Temporary foreign aid that targets sharp drops in income may stave off civil unrest, says a Berkeley economist. imho, MetroFi and secure Skype should be part of aid packages that prevent crises.

Slideshare.net is kinda brilliant. Elegant, simple to use. I don't know how much knowledge (ignorance?) is trapped in slide shows, but people have been using PowerPoint for a generation. Can't wait to see how they pitched invasions to presidents, disastrous mergers to CEOs, disruptive startups (Skype) on the demise of the disruptees. Slideshare is history by bullet point. The social media elements aren't bad either: blog-like and YouTube elements are familiar.

eWeek compared three "conference" systems this summer. Elluminate Live, Interwise, and Sonexis. The cheapest is $100 per seat. How does that compare with Skype, Unyte desktop sharing and freeware?

Vishing. Phishing by VoIP. As if Spit, spam via internet telephony, wasn't bad enough.

Tracks in the Snow. Three measures of success come long after IT projects are deployed. Professor Nelson says key success measures include usage, value to the organization, and building an org's knowledge capacity.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Those handsome guys at the big CES booth in the Skype Journal banner are from a startup called YapperNut. I coulda sworn I wrote them up last January but a quick search didn't pull it up. Fresh out of Stanford engineering (some of them not even out of school), they started YapperNut to create products for Skype.

First came Amy, one of the first answering machines for Skype, and still a very nice and free program. It was the first add-in to screen incoming calls based on the caller's social proximity, leading Iotum by more than a year. Amy offered voice messaging before Skype's. Skype still doesn't have scheduled voice transmissions or office hours that direct calls to voice mail when you're sleeping, a feature Skype still doesn't have.

Their first hardware was the stylish YapperBox, a gateway letting you make either Skype or normal phone calls from your home phone. It was the first gear for Skype with serious design flair. Violet plastic ribs made it memorable, nice to look at and lightweight.

YapperMouse for Skype, a combination mouse and phone for the traveller, came out in time for the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. It vibrates when Skype rings (vibetones?). You hold it up to your ear to talk. Crafted for laptop users, they can leave their headsets at home and keep on Skyping. Exceptional precision as a mouse, and the top has a velvety texture.  

YapperNut began at roughly the same time Skype Journal got going in early 2005. Skype didn't offer much in the way of third party support then, at least from the business side. Certification definitions were hazy, took forever, and cost a lot. Co-branding or pushing partner hardware through distribution channels was just a vague idea.

In short, these guys were betting on something so new and a company so small (remember, this was pre-eBay) that everything depended on their skill and talent. Operating on a shoestring, they borrowed CES booth space from another company. They launched, and ...

Haven't heard from them since. Guys, care to check in?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the toughest challenges I encountered in managing the Canadian operations of a PC hardware and, later, PC software vendor was to ensure that customer support flows seamlessly between the resellers and the vendor. It is the responsibility of the vendor to set up training and support programs that provide appropriate tools for the reseller but it is also the responsibility of the reseller to ensure that all its support employees get the proper training and support policies in place such that problems can be either resolved or elevated appropriately in a timely manner. Now I know the reseller support people take pride in their ability to solve a problem; however, when the going gets tough they need to understand when to elevate a problem beyond their experience and resources. And to a large degree it is the responsibility of the reseller's management to define that line within their support policies and then to communicate it effectively to their support reps.

The same applies when it comes to mobile devices sold through the wireless carriers. Andy Abramson (VoIP Watch) seems to have encountered a situation where a T-Mobile carrier rep just did not know when to escalate and persisted in tying up Andy's time when in fact the problem was beyond her/his skills and resources. So he spends almost three hours on a Saturday morning talking with a T-Mobile support rep trying to restore his Blackberry into service when after fifteen to twenty minutes it would have been obvious, in this case, to escalate the problem back to a RIM support person.

The smart person at RIM, Glenda on the Handheld Team, within 45 seconds diagnosed the problem. The RIM has run out of memory. That was one of the comments/questions I first made to one of the T-Mobile people with whom I spoke with over two hours ago. Of course, they didn't know where to have me look. Time of call almost three hours. Time to cure problem, under a minute.

Seems like T-Mobile needs to review their support policies to address the customer issue rather than internal logistics. With over 200 carrier partners, we know RIM has the support programs in place; I can personally vouch for both Rogers and Bell Canada's ability to effective provide Blackberry support. And this situation serves notice to Skype and its channel partners as they enter the hardware space this fall with all the new Skype-based devices coming out this fall. Om and Alec comment.

Oh, and it seems Andy was drinking Om's kool-aid in deciding to get back onto his Blackberry.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The new Skype API command "SET SILENT_MODE {ON |OFF}" is only a baby step toward the idea of a "headless" or "naked" client. Silent mode tells Skype to turn off its user display and alerts. They are still there, just not seen, a programmatic parlor trick. A high tech version of Peek-a-boo! I see you! with the same old software.

This is progress, of course. All the app's user messaging is now under the control of fewer pieces of logic, a simplified design you need before allowing alternate user experiences.

Since the UI is only hidden instead of omitted, the operating system must have all the parts to run a full windowing interface. Linux servers, for example, often dispense with a display or presentation system to save computer resources and avoid bugs. Asterisk experts, for example, write that display overhead is contraindicated for Asterisk installations on Linux. So "silence" doesn't help service-oriented developers much.

Also missing: Skype hasn't brought all the client's UI functionality into the API. So there are still things you can only do in the UI. Nor does the client support multiple user accounts simultaneously. So servers need to make and run a separate copy of Skype for each user. And a web interface to admin the Skype service. All things you need for a server-friendly, scalable, extensible developer platform.

Skype has a long way to go if they want to offer a GUI-free server client or create an ultra-light client like Adobe or publish a naked API library like LibJingle. Those would open up new levels of integration and interoperability, new markets, new industries. Peek-a-boo is a game for babies or adults. I voted for the full featured adult version.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week Skype announced a new Skype 2.6 beta release for Windows.  Two new features:

• Skypecasts controls are now directly available within the Skype client
• A bandwidth indicator is enabled via the Advanced Options (Tools|Optiions|Advanced)

However, the most interesting for partners is this line in the announcement:

For developers, there's a feature here that has been requested a lot: you can turn off the visible Skype UI through the API now. For more info on this, please stay tuned for updates on our developer zone and the developer blog.

As Alec Saunders points out, this is Silent Skype where developers can turn off the visible Skype UI.. Is this on the path to the long requested Naked Skype where developers can build around a core Skype engine?

Skype's Developer Program has launched a developer newsletter. But it begs the question as to why it is simply a traditional web page as opposed to being published with RSS feeds for those who want automatic updates and all the other benefits of RSS use.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype Security Bulletin SKYPE-SB/2006-002 reports on a potential risk. Skype fixed it so you may want to upgrade Skype for Mac version 1.5.0.80 or, if you're using the Beta release, to version 2.0.0.3. There are no new features or other bugfixes in this release. Hat tips to Dan Ferris for telling Skype, to Laurie Duncan for posting about the fix.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not much to do with Skype but I have just watched (via my Slingbox) the press conference where it was announced officially that Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of Research in Motion, has signed an agreement to purchase the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. Jim's comments were interrupted at one point as his Blackberry phone rang (even in Silent mode mics will pick up the rf signal coming in and "buzz" nearby speakers). At the end photographers were taking pics of him holding his Blackberry with a Penguins logo on the display. (He spent most of the press conference saying he was committed to the previous owners' commitments to a new arena in Pittsburgh.)

I have been lucky enough to have had some behind the scenes exposure to hockey as a business (my neighbor's son plays for the Boston Bruins); as a RIM shareholder for the past eight years I have been watching Jim (along with Mike Lazaradis, Co-CEO) demonstrate how to build and operate a very successful high tech business.  (Who else can take a patent settlement and get more marketing buzz than any traditional marketing campaign costing the same amount?) It will be interesting to observe how Jim adapts to the professional sports culture and what contribution he can bring to professional sports in terms of business expertise and acumen. Jim has always been approachable and has integrity beyond reproach. (Maybe HP should recruit him to restore their image?) At this year's annual meeting he took time to give me a personal demonstration of the new Blackberry Maps GPS-based navigation feature that will be available this fall (yes, it will retrofit to more recent older models). His enthusiasm is infectious.

While most of the local press will speculate on whether he will move the Penguins to Hamilton, Ontario (it won't happen -- remember I said Jim has good business acumen), I wonder how long it will be before Penguins games become available on your Blackberry. Now there would be a revenue generator for the service providers and RIM gets some fraction of all that service provider revenue. And if they got to the Stanley Cup finals, the traffic demand could bring down the (at least Canadian) wireless networks! (I did watch one period of last spring's finals via my Slingbox during an intermission at a theatrical performance.)

And, let's face it, Jim is living the Canadian dream. How often will we find high tech entrepreneurs who can build their business virtually from scratch  to a level where they can own their own NHL franchise?

Now if we could just get a Skype client onto the Blackberry!

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 06:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last weekend Netralia launched Version 2 of Skylook - a tool that links Skype to that ubiquitous contact management and email tool, Outlook 2000/XP/2003, and extends facets of the Skype experience to your mobile phone. In an interview with Jeremy Hague, Skylook's CEO, I learned that Skylook is rapidly becoming a key business tool for that 30% of users who use Skype in business. Key points include:

• over 60% (and rising) of Skylook licenses are known to be for business use;
• its major appeal is to hard core Skype users
• its business users have as many as 15,000 contacts in Outlook
• its US$99.95 per year per user price tag includes a 12 months 24 hour response time support warranty as well as all updates during this period

While working with Outlook, Skylook 2 also introduces audio technology for several key features, incorporates enhanced SMS messaging into Skype's Instant Messaging features and uses Skype's API's to forward voice and email messages to your mobile phone. In the image above I have "wrapped' the toolbar to show all its features. Skylook 2 offers six key functions:

• Communicate with Outlook Contacts: for instance, you can even send an SMS message to any Outlook contact, including those who do not have a Skype account, provided they have a mobile phone
• Record Skype calls (with several new features in Skylook 2.0 - the subject of a separate post - ideal for creating podcasts using Skype)
• Alerts and Forwarding: a totally new feature that will be the subject of a separate post.
• Answering Machine provides full voice mail functionality
• Archiving and organizing all your communications: emails, IM sessions, SMS activity and voice mails.
• Synchronize your Outlook and Skype Contacts.

Skylook has a more detailed outline of its functions on its web site along with links to examples of how several features work.

Finally, Skylook will be a revenue generator for Skype itself; two examples:

• Normal Skype SMS charges apply when IM chat sessions are forwarded to your mobile phone (in addition to any charges that may be applied by your wireless service provider for receiving SMS messages)
• SkypeOut charges will apply in instances where voice-based messages, such as the reading of emails from designated senders, are involved.

While Skylook overlaps with some of the basic functionality of Skype Email Toolbar, features such as recording calls, answering machine and the Alerts and Forwarding take Skylook in a different direction. On the other hand Skype Email Toolbar (besides being free) can handle multi-party conferencing and file transfer. And PayPal payments! (Personally I have both products installed due to their different feature sets.)

This post is a brief introductory overview of Skylook 2. In two future posts I will discuss in more detail the Recording features, especially how they have been enhanced to facilitate recording podcasts and the Alerts and Forwarding feature.

In closing one should not overlook that Netralia, through its Skylook product, has successfully built a business by providing unique value-added features. Through them a significant number of business customers enhance their use of Skype and further augment their business productivity. And Skype itself has a supplementary revenue generator. A win-win-win for all three parties.

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

By now you've read the BusinessWeek interview with Janus Friis and Om Malik's interview with Friis. The Venice Project is Friis and Zenstrom's video play. We still can't believe eBay let them build this outside of Skype. As I wrote in July, The Venice Project steals an opportunity from SkypeBay by not building video distribution into Skype's network. The whole point of Skypenomics was to bring eBay (c2c cash-for-atoms) into the intangibles economy.

21talks sees the problem when asking: "Does it mean that sharing TV content could be already available through Skype and its video functionality? At an average quality and requiring a small to medium size bandwidth. Is their next move to combine the Skype's, Kazaa's and Venice Project's networks to enhance the general quality of service of the service?" Sorry, but the few indications say no.

They are designing this new network to follow the money, fitting its rules and architecture to the special needs of the content producers and advertisers. I'm sure they won't have any problem lining up anchor tenants like television channels and movie archives for their DRM'd TV streaming network. If you want a taste of the TVP experience, sign up for a very limited Beta Test of the client.

I can only hope eBay owns a little of Baaima N.V., the Netherlands Antilles limited company doing business as The Venice Project.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jordanians have been using Skype without problems for years. Until now. For example, JRBT wrote "My ISP is Batelco and it does appear to be blocked. I am unable to gain credit for skype out from Jordan I have to get a friend in uk to get it for me."

Researcher David DeBartolo confirms that Batelco blocks Skype as directed by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. Presumably for "security." Here's the letter from DeBartolo and the fax from the ISP.

Dear Philip,

My name is David DeBartolo, and I am an American working in Amman, Jordan. I am the chair of a nonprofit organization with colleagues in Washington, London, and Cairo. I have been using Skype to keep in touch with all of them, and it has been tremendously useful -- until two weeks ago.

At that time, I started to have severe interruptions to my Skype service here in Jordan. It is forbidden to access the Skype website, and I have even been unable to make regular Skype-to-Skype or SkypeOut calls. Other colleagues of mine in Jordan have reported similar problems. The problems abated for the last week, but have now returned.

I inquired with our ISP in Jordan, named "Batelco," and they claim that the Jordanian Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has required them to ban access to Skype's website and to its authentication server. As proof they sent me the attached fax that they received.

I called the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, and they confirmed that they had ordered it banned, for "security reasons" responding to concerns of the government of Jordan. Most folks here don't believe this ridiculous justification; they believe that the state communications companies are upset about losing long-distance customers to Skype.

I've been told that complaints should be directed to the director of regulatory department of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, Dr. Al-Ansari. His email address is alansari.almashagbah@trc.gov.jo. The contact information for the commission is on the attached fax; Dr. Al-Ansari's extension is 2300.

I wanted to let you know about this issue because I am furious at the Jordanian government's self-serving decision. I hope that you will get a good blog post out of this, and that you may be able to mobilize Skype executives to officially protest the commission's decision. Jordan has a very close relationship to the US, and if they believe that Americans are upset at the decision, or that international investment will be jeopardized, they may be persuaded to change course. I also hope that you may be able to get Skype technicians working to counter whatever obstacles they have created to using Skype in Jordan.

Thank you for your time and please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any additional information.

Sincerely,

David M. DeBartolo
Fulbright Researcher, Jordan, 2006-2007
Binational Fulbright Commission
Amman, 11185
Jordan

Are you having difficulty with Skype and your ISP? Do you believe the "security" reason for blocking Skype.com?

Posted by Phil Wolff at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I like the new USB speakerphone for Skype Kensington is shipping the United States. The Kensington Vo300 USB Internet Speakerphone (product code K33378US) is small, unassuming, very fast to set up, and tightly integrated with Skype for Windows XP, release 2.6 or later, MSRP $89.99.

Designed for laptop users so it emphasizes mobility. Just for scale, I took a snapshot of it on my stove (left). It's 5 inches wide (13 cm), 4-3/8 inch high(11 cm), and less than an inch thick (2.25 cm).

Kensington's distribution muscle will make this one of the most visible products in consumer electronics. Now at Amazon ($70), soon at Office Depot ($76) and Best Buy.

Software.

I spoke with Frederic Frapperau, the Vo300's product manager. Software was the hard part to build. They nailed ease-of-setup; it took only a minute to install the blue CD's app. This program speaks to both your Skype client and the speakerphone, living in your Windows system tray.

In a first, from what I can tell, this speakerphone not only opens your addressbook, but also your Call History tab and Skype voicemail. This is a great use of Skype's API. One effect: the phone can show all your contacts, even hundreds or thousands of them. You can jump through a long list of names using the letters on the numeric keypad.

The little "envelope" button lights up when you have Skype voicemail waiting.

The "plus" and "zero" symbols share a button and you need to use both for SkypeOut calls. If you hold the Zero down when you're dialing, it changes to a "+" sign.

The Windows software doesn't have a user interface beyond the system tray. Wishlist: automatic update, so the Vo300 can add new features and adapt to future changes in Skype and Skype's API.

The display text is large and simple, easy to read and uncluttered.

Headphone jacks.

You can plug an analog headset (ears and mic) into your speakerphone. There's a button on the front panel that toggles between speaker and headset so you don't need to unplug them.

Audio

The speaker is clear and sounds good, though not perfect. I find it's more than good enough for Skype-to-Skype conversations, a higher sound quality than mobile or landline phones. Jim says it's clearer than some of my headphones. I also wind up using the speaker to watch short videos instead of listening tethered to stereo headphones.

The range fits one person, maybe two, sitting in a 1.5 meter circle. An array microphone would have increased this range, but it would also have pushed the street price over $100.

Echo cancellation is great, better than most headsets. Frapperau says his Vancouver, BC, research lab benchmarked the Vo300's echo cancellation against the Polycom Communicator and came out ahead.

Unlike headphones which use two microphones, there is no ambient noise cancellation.

Skype Certification Pending

The product just finished final packaging, so it is now in Skype's queue for hardware certification.

Posted by Phil Wolff at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

While well-known as Canada's capital and, for hockey fans, as home of the NHL's Ottawa Senators, the Ottawa region has transformed itself over the past quarter century into Canada's high tech capital (dare I say Silicon Valley North?). Ottawa is headquarters for Mitel, Corel, and Versatel Networks (amongst others), hosts significant facilities for Nortel, JDS Uniphase (the JDS part), Alcatel (formerly Newbridge Networks) and a major Dell support center, and is a breeding ground for many high tech startups, especially in the telecommunications sector. Under the sponsorship of OCRI,  Ottawa is the site of a new conference - Voice 2.0: beyond telecom - a week from Monday (October 16).

"There is a great need for a venue where practitioners at the forefront of building next-generation communications networks and applications can get a broad perspective on the changes in telecom," said Ross MacLeod, Voice 2.0's conference host. "Voice 2.0 will provide an environment where attendees can share experiences that will speed the adoption of leading technologies and practices in the sector."

As one primer check out Alec Saunders post: Voice 2.0 A Year Later.

Skype Journal will be there and reporting on the activities. Check out the agenda. If you are interested in attending you can register via their website. (Hint: check out Terry Matthews' Brookstreet Hotel. They serve a great Sunday brunch if you arrive a day early and want to work in some pre-conference golf.)

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During Canada's Centennial Year (1967) I was host for a student exchange with Finnish students; we have kept up contact over the past 39 years. Last week I asked one of them if s/he could translate the actual Helsingin Sanomat article reporting on their interview with Niklas Zennström (registration required) or at least give me the gist of it. Below (with minimal editorial correction of spelling and grammar)  is what my friend calls her/his "amateur translation".

The interview certainly goes well beyond the content of the Reuters summary report. (On the other hand there is nothing there that is going to impact eBay's stock price!) Note that, while my friend has been using English in both personal and business activities all these years, Skype Journal is not responsible for any mistranslation.

Of note in Niklas' comments:

• Niklas sees the future for wireless as being in WiFi (and WiMax) networks once they become more ubiquitous and more easily accessible. (reinforcing Ted Wallingford's recent comments on WiFi as the primary VoIP wireless medium)
• The issues with developing Skype for GSM or other wireless mobile phones relate to both processing power and memory issues (which translate into latency issues discussed in a post last weekend).
• He sees current rates for calls to wired lines as being the lowest we will see as someone has to pay for at least the connection.
• He only sees an explosion of mobile VoIP only once there are unlimited use fixed rate data plans available.
• The path to Skype as a ubiquitous mobile platform may be through "rebel" or "challenger" mobile operators who want to challenge the larger legacy service providers. But this is along the lines of what Andy was concluding in his recent "Being on the Inside" post.

A summary translation paragraph by paragraph goes as follows:

Title: Skype for Cell Phones Delayed

• 1st paragraph: Skype should have been available for mobile phones already last year, but the availability will take longer than anticipated.
• 2nd: Zennström says they are working hard, but he cannot give exact schedules
• 3rd: Zennström became a billionaire last year when eBay bought Skype. Skype has kept its name and identity but Zennström now is forced to follow the stock exchange rules. He cannot reveal things that could affect the rate [Ed: stock price].
• 4th: There is a Windows mobile application available for Skype, but its sales figures especially in Europe are very small.
• 5th: To the disappointment of many Skype has not published a Symbian version.
• 6th: Zennström says Skype is working hard for the Symbian application
• 7th: In an interview for Helsingin Sanomat in 2004 Zennström said the Symbian application would be available "sometime next year". Now it seems the delay is minimum a year or even two, which in Internet world is a very long time.
• 8th: Skype now has 113 million users compared with 50 million a year ago.
• 9th: Zennström says they didn't foresee all the problems involved when they started the development
• 10th: The difficulty is that the mobiles have less processing power and memory and that every manufacturer needs its own application. Whereas 95% of computers use Windows.
• 11th: Zennström adds that the timing is important, too. One gets most out of Skype if WLan [Ed: WiFi? and/or WiMax?] connections and possibility to use free Internet networks are available .
• 12th: In most areas this has not been possible until this year. It has not been rewarding to bring the system to the market before. (Zennström says)
• 13th: Skype and other companies offering Internet calls wait for the day when the operators sell to their clients unlimited data connections with fixed monthly rate. This opens the market for Skype.
• 14th: However, a call to the the wired network or to another mobile number may not become much cheaper as the operators still would charge the connection fee.
• 15th: Skype may take a big chunk of the traditional operators' income and that may be a reason why the launching of Skype has been so troublesome. The manufacturers are slow to develop properties that would make operators angry.
• 16th: Zennström didn't say the above, maybe, because even Skype is forced to co-operate with operators.
• 17th: He says: A challenger operator may see the co-operation with Skype as a way to challenge those operators currently in dominant position.

That all. Hope my amateur translation helps you!

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Posted by Jim Courtney at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[Yes, I know it's Sunday! But I started to write this up Friday.]

The past couple of weeks has seen much higher visibility for attempts to duplicate the landline long distance calling revolution generated by VoIP technology in the wireless space.

First Jajah launched Jajah Mobile at DEMO Fall 2006, where a Jajah client on your mobile phone redirects any calls starting with, say, "+" or "00" via a VoIP-enabled  backend. Your cell phone sends dialing instructions via either a SMS message or a GPRS over-the-air data service to trigger calls which bridge your phone and the called party. The beauty of this plan is that it does allow you to continue using the standard dialing algorithm; however, there can be a 20 to 30 second pause while the bridge is established. Almost simple but not all the way there. Alec Saunders provides a more detailed discussion; Russell Shaw has nine reasons why it is not a threat to neither mobile carriers nor VoIP service providers; Luca agrees; Alec rebuts.

In a trial using my Jajah-supported Nokia N70, I found that the GPRS/EDGE/3G connection worked whereas via the SMS service it did not perform satisfactorily. It does have a problem recognizing that long distance calls to within North America ("+1") should be handled via Jajah.  They have assumed a U.S.-centric model where it is probably just as cost effective to use the various fixed monthly rate all-you-can-use plans available through U.S. mobile carriers; the Canadian mobile space is one where we still pay 10 to 25 cents per minute for long distance calls outside a local calling area. With their primary focus on the U.S. market Jajah Mobile sends all North American calls via the underlying wireless service, not the Jajah Mobile backend. To correct this they need to differentiate between US and Canadian phone numbers.  (This is easily done; Skype users may note that flags associated with "+1" phone numbers differentiate between Canadian and US area codes.) Calls using the SMS connection need some more work by the Jajah people to get the software right; Alec tells me they are aware of the issue and working on it.

Another service introduced at DEMO Fall 2006, GrandCentral, offers "One Number for Life" designed to aggregate all your phone activities, including voice mail, ring tones, call blocking, call redirection and call recording. Unfortunately since it's only available in certain area codes in the U.S. the economic argument only works in the U.S. However, to get two sides of the picture read the comments by Alec Saunders, Andy Abramson who thinks "it rocks"; Ken Camp and Ted Wallingford who basically remind us not to forget the basics of consumer telephony and the potential of Voice 2.0 for the sustainability of its value-add. Ted sums it up with:

We need to focus on increasing ACTUAL functionality and lose the obsession with placing band-aids on the infrastructure of yesterday in order to save a half-cent a minute, which is the basis of these firms' business models. When clients ask me about VoIP, they always bring up carrier cost savings. That may've been the case in 2001, but it's getting tougher and tougher to make that case. So I switch them off of cost savings and turn them on to new ways of thinking about communications.

Thursday a Helsinki newspaper reported on an interview with Skype Founder Niklas Zennström where he mentioned Skype's frustrations with trying to develop a mobile phone VoIP client for Symbian devices (such as my Nokia N70 and N91). A few comments:

• My network of contacts include a team that has successfully built a VoIP client for the Symbian OS. They tell me to speculate that Skype is potentially experiencing problems with both processor speed and latency issues; acceptable quality VoIP on mobile also appears to require the speed of 3G networks to handle all the necessary processing associated with transmitting and receiving voice packets.
• It is known that attempts to use VoIP for "Push-to-Talk" services on 2G wireless mobile networks result in a noticeable and annoying 3 to 15 second latency as each party commences to talk. (These services are in high demand in service industries with dispatch-managed mobile work forces such as construction, landscaping and HVAC where wireless mobile emulates the operation of walkie-talkies.) Nextel's IDEN and, in Canada, Telus Mike services use a different wireless network infrastructure where latency is not an issue for "Push-to-Talk" services. As indicated in the referenced Wikipedia post, Sprint/Nextel and Telus would like to migrate these services to run over their CDMA service to eliminate the need to support a second network for their "Push-To-Talk" requirement. VoIP provides the potential for a solution but latency issues are holding them back.
• Mobile VoIP is one application where WiFi currently has a distinct advantage over GPRS as the wireless communications method; I have not observed any latency issue running Skype Mobile from my Dell Axim over WiFi. With my dual mode Nokia N91 Personal Entertainment Assistant, I find that I attempt to wait until WiFi is available before downloading new programs, services and videos as any data service usage can run up the bill pretty quickly (especially when you are a Rogers customer). T-Mobile would appear to have it right as a starting point for using wireless VoIP if the rumor mill is true about their forthcoming launch of a service that uses traditional wireless network "on-the-road" and seamlessly transitioning to WiFi when entering a WiFi-enabled zone, such as at home. Later in the same post reference above Ted Wallingford sums it up with:

Think about the global adoption of WiFi systems. Think about WiMax. Ask yourself-how fast has consumer wireless (not carrier-based cell wireless) become pervasive? Consumer-empowering technologies (of which WiFi is the principle example) have exploded, to the detriment of the big carriers. T-Mobile hotspots? PLEASE. Those will be gone sooner if not later. WiFi is cheap to provide and free to consume. Ask yourself-how long can a solution which dotes upon the druthers of the slow, cranky, old-hat cellular carriers survive in an environment of increasing global consolidation of those carriers?

Wireless VoIP, whether from Skype or anyone else, is going to be a case of "walk before you run" in terms of its introduction into mobile communications markets. And it needs to address a mix of technology and business model issues as well as useful Voice 2.0 applications to be broadly accepted.

P.S.: Late breaking posts that came out while I was writing this: Andy Abramson I: Is Jajah leading towards a Plaxo mobile offering? Andy Abramson II: On Cooperative Technology with the conclusion:

But for these new 2.0 ideas to advance, at the end of the day they have to be favorable to the insider forces in power that really run the world of mobile telephony around the globe. Those groups are far broader in reach than the VC's and have more to do with what happens when, and are really at the heart of the key issues we all are aware of like the net neutrality issue, as well as these new advanced services offers, because both transcend economics, politics, finance, legislation, regulation and technology.

Alec Saunders questions Andy.

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