Disruptive Telephony

Today is the start of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. The aim of the conference is to update the "International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs)", a treaty between nations that establishes rules for interoperability and interconnection for telecom between countries.

These ITRs were last updated in 1988... and the world of telecom has changed just a wee bit since then! :-)

Unless you've been asleep or offline for the past few months, you'll know that some of the countries out there are seeking to use this WCIT conference as a way to expand the ITRs to cover the Internet - and to thereby control the Internet more or to impose other business models on the Internet. Obviously a lot of people (myself included) are opposed to the expansion of the ITRs to include more of the Internet and believe that the ITRs should remain focused on the telecommunications interconnection related to the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

This all will play out over the next two weeks in the meetings happening in Dubai that will culminate with a series of votes by the member states. The ITU is a United Nations (UN) entity and so each country gets a vote.

I'll not comment further here about the ITRs and WCIT, except to note that if you want to follow along with what is happening, my colleagues in the Internet Society Public Policy team (of which I am not a part) have been maintaining a site where they are curating news about WCIT:

http://www.scoop.it/t/wcit

They've been doing a great job and it's the site that I am using to keep up with what is being said out there about WCIT and the ITU.

That same team also has a great site full of background material about WCIT, the ITRs and other related information - follow the links in the right sidebar for much more material:

http://www.internetsociety.org/wcit/

The material includes a good background paper on the ITRs that explain a bit about how the ITRs evolved and why they matter. The Internet Society's communications team also has a page up that they will be updating throughout the week with news:

http://www.internetsociety.org/wcit-newsroom

You can expect to see social networks filling up with commentary, too... and I know I'll be watching two Twitter hashtags:

• #wcit
• #wcit12

The reality is that true to the title of this blog, the telecommunications industry has been severely disrupted by the Internet. The world of the PSTN has been fundamentally altered by Voice over IP (VoIP), by "Over The Top" (OTT) applications, by SIP trunking... and so many other aspects of Internet-based communications. This WCIT event does provide a chance for all of those who have been victims of this disruption to try to push for changes that will be in their favor. Similarly, all of those wanting to ensure the Internet remains open are fully engaged now, too... and various countries are aligning on both sides.

It shall be an interesting next two weeks...

P.S. Vint Cerf's op-ed on CNN is worth a read on this topic: 'Father of the internet': Why we must fight for its freedom

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I am a huge fan of Martin Geddes, but he and I disagree fundamentally on one key part of what he is now calling "hypervoice".

To back up a bit, Martin has always been one of the "big thinkers" in realm of VoIP and telephony/telecom. Way back in mid-2000s when a number of us all started writing about VoIP, Martin's Telepocalypse blog was brilliant. He was always thinking about the "big picture" and drawing connections where they were not already apparent. His work with "Telco 2.0" was excellent and it was no surprise when he went to work for BT looking at their strategy. Now that he is back out on his own as a consultant, I'm a subscriber to his "Future of Communications" email newsletter (subscribe on the sidebar to his site) and enjoy reading his frequent issues.

Recently he gave a closing keynote presentation at the Metaswitch Forum titled "A presentation about Hypervoice" that is available via Slideshare or PDF.

The presentation itself is very well done. In typical Martin style it nicely lays out the history of both telecom and the web and brings them together to talk about what comes next.

I actually agree with almost all of what Martin writes. Much of what he talks about as "hypervoice" I see already happening in so many ways.

But here is where we fundamentally disagree... this slide early on:

That includes the text:

"However, the Internet cannot and never will carry society's real-time communications needs. It is fundamentally unsuited to the job."

Martin's argument, which he has made multiple times before, including in a comment he wrote in response to my post about how WebRTC will disrupt real-time communications, is that the Internet as it exists today cannot provide the level of service that is truly needed for real-time communications. He believes we need to have different classes of service on the Internet and separate "flows" of communications. He comes back to this point later in his "Hypervoice" slide deck:

This is where he and I part ways. As I said in my own response to Martin's comment to my earlier post:

Martin, yes, I've read your newsletters on this point and while I understand the concern I'm not ready to say that the plain old Internet can't deal with the contention. Back in the early 2000's I was the product manager for Mitel's "remote teleworker" product and there was great concern from the traditional telecom folks within Mitel about this idea that we were going to put an IP phone out at some random point on the Internet where there was no QoS or anything. In fact, some folks wanted us to say that it had "cell-phone voice quality" so that we wouldn't set high expectations about voice quality. The reality was that through appropriate codecs, jitter buffers and other technologies the connections almost always worked and almost always had outstanding quality (usually FAR better than cellphones).

The other reality is that we've seen OTT providers like Skype and others providing excellent services that work the vast majority of the time. We're seeing new and improved codecs coming into the market. We're seeing new traffic shaping technologies. The list goes on...

If the (brief) history of the Internet has shown us anything, it is that the Internet's capacity to adapt and change is boundless. We'll see what happens in the time ahead.

And no, I haven't written off the telcos as having a role in real-time comms. I just don't know that the "role" they may have will necessarily be the one they would like to have! ;-)

I believe fundamentally that the "open" Internet can and will adapt to the needs of carrying real-time communications. I would argue that it already has in so many ways... and it will change even more as we continue to move more and more real-time comms onto the Internet, particularly with WebRTC and other emerging technology.

And yes, you might expect me to say this as a passionate advocate for an open Internet, but I firmly believe this:

We do NOT need separate layers of the Internet based on class of service.

That, to me, is a dangerous path. I want to continue to see an Internet where all nodes are treated equally ... and where real-time communications can work for all.

Martin and I will probably have to agree to disagree on this. It's doubtful he can convince me nor I can convince him.

What do you think? Do we need different layers of the Internet? Or can the Internet adapt without that? Leave a comment here... or join in to today's VUC call and comment there.

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Recently at Voip2day + ElastixWorld in Madrid 2012, Olle E Johansson gave a great presentation outlining where we are at with telecom and VoIP in 2012 - and where we need to go! Olle is a long-time, passionate and tireless advocate for the open Internet, IPv6, SIP and standards and interoperability. I've known Olle for years via Asterisk-related issues, via the VUC calls and via work on SIP over IPv6.

This presentation (slides available) really hits a number of key points about where we are at now:

In particular I was struck by his slides 24-28 that strike the same theme I've been writing about across multiple blogs, namely the way we are reversing the "open Internet" trend and retreating back inside walled gardens of messaging:

He goes on to walk through what happened with SIP and how the protocol evolved - and evolved away from interoperability. His conclusion is that we as customers need to take back control, avoid vendor lock-in and demand interoperability.

He also points people over to his "SIP 2012" effort where he is undertaking to compile a list of what really defines "SIP" in 2012, i.e. more than just RFC 3261. (I'll note he's looking for feedback on these ideas.)

All in all an excellent presentation... and yes indeed we all collectively do need to "WAKE UP" and demand better solutions!

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Do you want to understand what WebRTC / RTCWEB is all about and why so many people are passionate about its potential for extending real-time communications (voice, video, chat, data-sharing, etc.) into web browsers?

I recently wrote about some of the larger issues of how WebRTC will disrupt telecom, but in this video, "RTCWeb Explained", Cullen Jennings, one of the co-chairs of the IETF's RTCWEB working group, dives down into the technical details to explain how it all works and what the various different components of of the solution are. I particularly like how Cullen covered some areas like "identity" that I haven't seen stressed as much in other pieces about WebRTC. The video comes in at about 39 minutes and is well worth viewing:

For more information, I've put together a page about the broader WebRTC / RTCWEB initiative with links to relevant resources.

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If we step back to before 1993, publishing and finding content on the Internet was a somewhat obscure, geeky thing that a very few people cared about and very few knew how to do. It involved gopher servers, ftp sites, archie, veronica, WAIS, USENET newsgroups, etc., and this "World-Wide Web" service primarily demonstrated via the server at info.cern.ch. It was an amazing period of time for those of us who were there, but the number of users was quite small.

Then NCSA released Mosaic in 1993 ... and suddenly everything changed.

Anyone could create a web page that "regular" people could see on their computers. Anyone could download Mosaic and use it. Anyone could share their sites with the installation of server software.

The Web was truly born into public consciousness... the creation of Web-based content was democratized so that anyone could do it... the creativity of developers was unleashed... a zillion new business models were thought of... and the Internet fundamentally changed.

Fast-forward to today...

... and the "Web" is still predominantly a document-based system. You make HTTP queries to retrieve pages and send HTML and XML documents back and forth between web browsers and web servers.

Separately, we have a world of telecommunication apps that have moved to IP. These are not just voice, but they are also video, instant messaging, data-sharing. They have moved so far beyond what we traditionally think of as "telecommunications". The apps use wideband audio, HD video, white boarding, sharing and so many capabilities that cannot have even been remotely imagined by the creators of the PSTN and all the legacy telcos and carriers. They are "rich communications" applications that have severely disrupted the traditional telco world.

The problem is that creating those rich, real-time communications apps is somewhat of a black art.

It is the realm of "telephony developers" or "VoIP developers" who can understand the traditional world of telcos and can interpret the seven zillion RFCs of SIP (as all the traditional telcos have glommed all sorts of legacy PSTN baggage onto what started out as a simple idea).

Deploying those rich communication apps also involves the step of getting the application into the hands of users. They have to download an application binary - or install a Flash app or Java plugin into their browser. Or on a mobile device install an app onto their mobile smartphone.

The world of rich communication experiences is held back by development problems and deployment problems.

Enter WebRTC/RTCWEB

Suddenly, any web developer can code something as easy as this into their web page:

------
$.phono({   
   onReady:   function()   {
       this.phone.dial("sip:[email protected]")
 } } );
------

Boom... they have a button on their web page that someone can click and initiate a communications session ... in ANY web browser. [1 - this is not pure "WebRTC" code... see my footnote below.]

Using JavaScript, that pretty much every web developer knows... and using the web browsers that everyone is using.

And without any kind of Flash or Java plugins.

Boom... no more development problems. Boom... no more deployment problems. [2]

WebRTC is about baking rich, real-time communications into the fabric of the Web and the Internet so that millions of new business models can emerge and millions of new applications can be born.

It is about unleashing the creativity and talent of the zillions of web developers out there and turning the "Web" into more than just a document-based model but instead into a rich communications vehicle. It's about moving these apps from an obscure art into a commonplace occurrence.

We really have absolutely no idea what will happen...

... when we make it as simple for ANY developer to create a rich, real-time communications experience as it is to create a web page.

But we're about to find out... and done right it will fundamentally change the Internet again.

If we think the legacy telco crowd are upset now about how "VoIP" has screwed them over (from their point of view), they haven't seen anything yet. WebRTC/RTCWEB doesn't need any of their legacy models. It bypasses all of that in ways that only the Internet enables. It is NOT shackled to any legacy infrastructure - it can use new peer-to-peer models as well as more traditional models. And it goes so far beyond what we think of as "communication" today. [3]  The potential is there for so much more than just voice and/or video... it's about establishing a real-time, synchronous "communications" session between two (or more) endpoints - what media are used by that session is up to the apps: voice, video, chat, data-sharing, gaming...  we really don't know what all people will do with it!

I see it as the next stage of the evolution of the Internet, disrupting to an even greater degree the business models of today and changing yet again how we all communicate. The Internet will become even more critical to our lives in ways we can't even really imagine.

THAT is why RTCWEB (in the IETF) and WebRTC (in W3C) are so critically important ... and so important to get deployed.

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[1] The code I'm showing is for a library, "Phono", that in fact will sit on top of the WebRTC/RTCWEB protocols. It is an example of the new apps and business models that will emerge in that it makes it simple for JavaScript developers to create these apps. Underneath, it will use the rich communications protocols of WebRTC/RTCWEB. Someone else will come up with other ways to do this in JavaScript... or python... or ruby... or whatever language. But because they will all use the WebRTC/RTCWEB protocols, they will interoperate... and work in any browser.

In full disclosure I should also note that Phono is a service of Voxeo, my previous employer.

[2] And BOOM... there go the heads exploding within the legacy telco crowd when they start to fully understand how badly the Internet has rendered them even MORE irrelevant!

 

[3] Note that a WebRTC app certainly can communicate with the traditional PSTN or other legacy systems. My point is that it is not required to do so. One usage of WebRTC will, I'm sure, be to "web-enable" many VoIP systems (ex. IP-PBXs) and services. But other uses will emerge that are not connected at all to the PSTN or any legacy systems.

Image credit: dmosiondz on Flickr

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Do you want to help get open standards like IPv6 and DNSSEC more widely deployed? Would you like to see other technologies developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) more rapidly adopted by network operators?

Are you passionate about the need to preserve the open nature of the Internet? Do you like to write, speak and create other forms of content? Would you like to be part of the Internet Society, the global nonprofit that serves as the organizational home of the IETF?

If so, the team I'm part of that is behind the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme is looking for YOU!

As we noted on the Deploy360 blog, we're currently hiring a new position into the team specifically to interact with network operators and help accelerate the deployment of open Internet standards.

You can read read the job description for what is called the "Operational Engagement Programme Manager". As noted in the document:

The Operational Engagement Programme Manager is a newly created position within the Internet Society. This position will report to the Director, Deployment and Operationalization. The primary focus areas of this position will be to: 1) develop and coordinate increased industry collaboration and conversations about the operationalization of Internet technologies; 2) work with targeted audiences around the globe to develop operational documentation on technology topics covered by the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme including, but not limited to, IPv6 and DNSSEC.

The job description goes on to list out the responsibilities and desired qualifications... the key point is that we're looking for someone who can help us expand the work we're doing in creating content that helps people deploy technologies such as IPv6 and DNSSEC. We're a small, fast-moving team that is highly focused on finding and creating the best possible content and promoting that through many different channels.

If you join our team, you'll be writing for the Deploy360 site and probably working with video, too. You'll be interacting with network operators through various online channels, including social media. You'll be speaking at events scattered all around the world.

And you'll be having fun while doing it! And serving the incredibly important mission of promoting the value of the open Internet!

Additionally, THIS IS A "TELEWORKING"/VIRTUAL POSITION! You do NOT have to be located in our Geneva, Switzerland, or Reston, Virginia, offices, but can be located anywhere. You can, just like me, work out of a home office. (There's this wee little thing called the Internet that makes this possible!)

One note - you MUST have experience with the IETF, so if you have never interacted with the IETF... well... don't bother applying! Experience with other operator groups is also very important.

If you're interested, the job description has contact information and instructions. We're also going to be out at IETF 84 in Vancouver next week speaking to people about this new role and would be glad to meet with you there. We have already received applications, so if you are interested, please contact us soon!

We've got a lot of great plans ahead of us... and we're looking for the right person to join our team. Please do check it out and consider applying!

P.S. The Internet Society is also hiring a Senior Director of IT Development and several other roles. It's a great organization with great benefits, great people and a great mission!

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What is an "over-the-top" or "OTT" application or service? How does an OTT telecommunications or media app/service differ from a "regular" application?

The answer depends upon your perspective.

For a regular user of the Internet, an "OTT app or service" is something like:

• YouTube, Hulu, Netflix or Apple TV for streaming video
• Skype or Facetime for voice/video calls
• WhatsApp or iMessage for messages on a mobile device
• Xbox 360 or World of Warcraft for gaming

Basically, any service you are receiving over the Internet that is NOT provided directly by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Of course, for an ISP / telecommunication provider, the critical point about an OTT app/service is the part I emphasized - it is NOT a service you are paying them for.

And they are not happy about this.

It's not clear to me when precisely we in the industry started talking about "over-the-top" applications and services, but I first saw OTT mentioned back in 2008 or 2009 when the term was primarily applied to video services such as those coming from Netflix or Hulu. At the time, major US service providers such as Comcast and AT&T were rolling out their video-on-demand services and were being challenged by these "OTT" providers. Netflix and Hulu provided their service "over-the-top" of your Internet connection, without any interaction whatsoever with your Internet service provider (nor any revenue to that service provider).

Since that time, I've seen "OTT" applied to the zillions of messaging apps that have now sprouted up in the mobile environment to provide an alternative to the costly SMS provided by the traditional telcos. WhatsApp, Apple's iMessage, Blackberry Messenger (BBM), TU Me... and a hundred others that keep popping up on a weekly basis. Some would even lump Twitter and Facebook into this category. (And SMS revenue by telcos are facing a serious decline from the use of these apps. Ovum estimated the decline at $13.9 billon for 2011.)

I've also seen "OTT" applied to VoIP apps such as Skype (whose network overlay architecture I wrote about previously). And now we have Apple's Facetime and a hundred startups like Viber, Voxer, Tango, etc.

Recently I saw a document that painted "OTT" even more broadly as a term applying to any "content provider" on the Internet, i.e. basically everyone publishing content in any form.

The key point of all of this is that the OTT apps/services do not come from the traditional telcos or Internet service providers.

The telcos and ISPs are merely providers of the IP connectivity. The OTT apps ride on top of that Internet connection.

The telcos and ISPs are simply big, fat, dumb pipes.

Some of the telcos and ISPs out there are smart enough to see what's going on and are trying to become the biggest, fattest pipe out there and provide the best possible service. Some are launching their own apps/service that are NOT limited to their own customer base.

And some of the telcos are so desperate to hold on to their legacy business models that they are trying to get the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to regulate OTT apps and service providers through the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). They are hoping to use WCIT as a vehicle to re-inject themselves into the revenue stream and somehow start charging "OTT" providers. (But that's a topic for another blog post...)

So when you hear people talking about "OTT apps" or "OTT services," they are typically referring to applications or services that ride on top of your Internet connection - but have no relationship with the provider of your Internet connection.

OTT apps and services are a major component of the ongoing war between "content providers" and "access providers"... a fundamental tension within the Internet that shows no sign of being resolved anytime soon. But more on that another time... :-)

In the meantime, what we all can do is reject the use of the term "OTT" from the telcos and instead focus on referring to these apps instead as:

• "IP communications apps"
• "IP-based communications apps"
• "communications apps"
• "messaging apps"

because they are just apps that work on IP networks... whether those are from the legacy telcos or any other service provider.

How do we manage network congestion as we move real-time voice, video, chat and data communication into web browsers? How do we make sure browser-based voice/video doesn't overwhelm the local network?

If you've been following the excellent work of the WebRTC/RTCWEB initiative you'll know that developers are already using developer builds of browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to move real-time communications (RTC) directly into web browsers - without using Flash or Java plugins.

It's a powerful step to bake real-time communications into the very fabric of the Web. It stands to open up a zillion new opportunities for innovative uses of voice and video... and can fundamentally disrupt so many aspects of today's telecommunications.

It also stands a chance of completely swamping today's networks with RTC traffic!

So what do we do? How do make sure that browser-based RTC plays nice with other traffic? How do we help it succeed?

Those are the type of topics to be discussed and debated in a "Workshop on Congestion Control for Interactive Real-Time Communication" taking place on Saturday, July 28, 2012, in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the weekend before the start of the week-long IETF 84 standards meeting.

The workshop is free of charge, and even has the possibility for remote participation, but you must be invited to attend. It is a working session and the organizers, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), are requiring all potential attendees to submit a position paper basically explaining why they want to attend. More information and details can be found here:

http://www.iab.org/cc-workshop/

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING POSITION PAPERS IS SATURDAY, JUNE 23!

So if you want to participate in what should be an extremely interesting session, you need to go now and submit a paper for consideration.

It's an extremely important topic - and one that must be addressed for WebRTC/RTCWEB to truly be the innovative force that it can be. I hope you'll consider participating!

P.S. If you can't attend that particular day, the outcome of the event will definitely be discussed on the IETF's rtcweb mailing list (Warning - high traffic!!!). Anyone can join that list so you subscribe if you'd like to monitor what is going on. (Did I mention that the list has a high volume of traffic?)

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With yesterday's World IPv6 Launch bringing about the permanent enablement of IPv6 access on thousands of websites around the world (including this one), I recorded a video for the Internet Society's stream of videos about why I see IPv6 as critical to preserve the "open" nature of the Internet.

As I say in the video (below), my big fear is that IPv4 address exhaustion will create a situation where Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will use what is called "carrier-grade NAT (CGN)" or "large-scale NAT (LSN)" to put all their subscribers behind a single public IPv4 address.

The ISPs then become the gatekeepers. They can determine what you will view - or what you will pay to view certain types of content. They could also potentially restrict customer's access to the next great new service... the next Twitter or Facebook, for instance... until that service pays the ISP for access to customers.

It can completely flip the Internet around from one that thrives on "permission-less innovation" where anyone can create any service and make it available to all... to an Internet that is "permission-based" with gatekeepers controlling access at key points.

The migration to IPv6 does not, of course, remove the threat that the Internet very well could move toward a permission-based network... but the move to IPv6 removes IPv4 address exhaustion as an excuse to implement walled gardens.

To learn more about IPv6 and how you can get started, check out the resources we are listing at the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme.

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What does the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) do? What role does it play in setting Internet standards?

As readers are probably aware, I've been a long-time supporter and advocate of the IETF's work on open standards, writing about it both here on Disruptive Telephony and previously quite extensively over on Voxeo's Speaking of Standards blog. In my new role with the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme, of course, I'm even more directly involved and am now regularly attending IETF meetings.

For those who aren't familiar with the IETF, I recently came across this great video that explains the basics of what the IETF does:

The IETF is a great organization that is truly open to anyone to get involved. All you need to do is sign up for one of the mailing lists for one of the working groups and start reading and then participating. You can also attend one of the face-to-face IETF meetings to get even more involved.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with the IETF, do check out this video as it is a great intro!

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