Disruptive Telephony

The SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) is an outstanding event happening in Herndon, Virginia, USA, from April 22-25. It brings together network operators working with SIP / VoIP networks for several days of talks, networking (of the human kind) and education. I've gone the past two years, speaking about IPv6, and they are truly excellent conferences. Not too big, not too small... and with an extremely high quality of people both attending and speaking.

If you think you'd like to present, TODAY, January 25, 2013, is the end of the call for presentations for SIPNOC 2013. They are seeking presentations on topics such as (see the CFP for more detail):

• Peering
• SIP Trunking
• Congestion Control
• Applications/content Development
• Interoperability
• Call Routing
• Security
• Monitoring/Troubleshoooting and Operational Issues
• Testing Considerations and Tools
• Availability/Disaster-Recovery
• WebRTC and SIP
• SIP-Network Operations Center Best Practices
• Standardization Issues and Progress
• FoIP/T.38 Deployment
• User-Agent Configuration
• IPv6 Deployment Challenges
• Emergency Services
• Scaling and Capacity Issues
• HD-Voice Deployment Challenges
• Video Interop Issues

They are seeking individual talks, panel sessions, research sessions and BOFs.

Even if you just have an idea for a session, I'd encourage you to submit a proposal so that the SIPNOC 2013 Program Committee will know of your interest and can reach out to you for more details. More info about the process can be found on the CFP page.

If you aren't interested in speaking, but are now intrigued by SIPNOC and would like to be learning from all the excellent sessions, you can go to the SIPNOC 2013 main page and find out information about how to register and attend.

If you work at or for a telecom/network operator who is involved with SIP and VoIP, I highly recommend SIPNOC as a conference you should attend - you'll learn a huge amount and make great connections.

P.S. I have no affiliation with SIPNOC other than being a speaker there in the past. SIPNOC is a production of the SIP Forum, a great group of people focused on advancing the deployment and interoperability of communications products and services based on SIP.

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Voice calling through Facebook has the potential to be hugely disruptive... rather than calling on your phone over your regular phone connection - or even rather than using Skype, you can just call from directly within Facebook. This is the kind of "Over-The-Top (OTT)" app that gives telco operators a fit... goodbye, telco voice minutes!

Plus, it's using some HD voice codec so the sound quality is outstanding.

And since the folks at Facebook want you to live your life inside of their very pretty walls, this just provides yet one more reason for you to stay within those walls.

BUT... there's a big huge caveat that I'll get to in a moment.
 

A Quick Walkthrough

First, though, let's look at how it works. When you go into the Messenger app and open a chat with a friend (in this case, Jim Courtney), all you have to do is click the "i" button in the upper right:

After you do that you will get a window that I showed at the beginning of an article where you have a "Free Call" button.

When you press that, you begin a call experience very similar to any other call on your iPhone. First you are connecting to the other person and then you are in the actual call:

There is apparently the standard accept and decline buttons. (I neglected to have Jim call me back to get a screenshot.) While you are in the call you have a button to hang up, a speakerphone button and a microphone mute button. The last button is very nice in that it lets you remain in the call while using other features of your iPhone. In these two screenshots you can see that I could access our Messenger chat and also go back to my main iPhone screen to launch other applications. I can always tap the bar at the top to return to Messenger and the controls to our voice conversation:

The voice quality during the conversation was outstanding. It was crystal clear and rich enough that we knew it was some kind of HD voice codec being used.

All in all it was an excellent experience.

The Big, Huge Caveat

So what's the problem? Well... the reality is that right now trying to find someone to call is a struggle!

Going down through my contacts in the Messenger app was an exercise in futility. Person after person after person had the "Free Call" button greyed out:

Here's the fundamental problem:

You must be running the MESSENGER app on your iPhone!

It doesn't matter if you are running the Facebook application on your iPhone... you must be running Messenger.

And bizarrely there is no linkage between the two applications. If I am over in the Facebook application and go into a chat with Jim Courtney, notice that I have only the ability to "View Timeline":

And of course you must have an iPhone or iPad. If you have an Android device or some other device you are out of luck right now.

So the only people you can use this with are other people running Messenger on iOS.

Presumably Facebook is assuming people will just keep Messenger running... but I know that I, for one, try to limit the number of apps I keep running on my iPhone for battery life reasons.

More fundamentally, I never have used the Messenger app for chatting with other friends in Facebook. The Facebook app already provides the ability to chat... so why would I use the Messenger app? (And I know Facebook focuses on the speed that you can get to sending messages... but that's not critical for me.)

Potential For Disruption?

Now if Facebook gets their act together and makes this more intuitive and ubiquitous, the potential is there for more serious disruption. If it can be integrated into the main Facebook app... and can work for Android as well as iOS... and can work for people outside the US and Canada... THEN we might see more people shifting voice calls over into Facebook's voice service.

The potential is certainly huge, given Facebook's massive size.

Until then... it's an interesting option to have available... but I just don't see many people using it.

What About The Technology Behind It?

My other natural question was to wonder what they are using for the technology behind their voice service. As The Verge pointed out, Facebook and Skype have had a partnership to deliver video calling within Facebook's website. Could this be another component of that partnership? Is it a partnership with another VoIP provider? Is it something homegrown?

For now, I haven't seen any details that help explain that, but I'll certainly be watching to see what we can learn.

UPDATE: A tweet from Aswath Rao pointed me to a TechCrunch article from earlier this month when Facebook rolled out free voice calling in Canada that indicates that the technology is NOT from Skype. Separately I asked a Skype representative if Skype was involved in today's rollout and received the simple answer of "no".

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https://plus.google.com/communities/114149566116254233716

Given that Randy is very active on Google+, this community is also very active, both through Randy's posts as well as the comments and posts of others. I've already learned a good bit from a couple of the discussions that have occurred there.

There are other Google+ communities that you might find interesting, too, such as those related to DNSSEC and IPv6, but Randy's is a great one for VoIP / IP communications / UC topics. Check it out and join in the conversations....

Plus, if you haven't checked out the VUC calls that occur each Friday at noon US Eastern, they, too, are definitely worth listening to and participating in.

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There is, of course, the caveat that HD voice (also called "wideband audio") is only available using specific smartphones:

To experience HD Voice, both parties on the call must use capable T-Mobile 4G smartphones such as the HTC One™ S, Nokia Astound and Samsung Galaxy S® III

TheNextWeb also suggests that the iPhone 5 should support HD Voice when T-Mobile makes it available on their network sometime this year.

Over on AnandTech, Brian Klug dives into a bit more detail about T-Mobile's HD Voice, specifically naming the AMR-WB codec, and relays some of his own testing that confirmed that it is live now.

This is an excellent step forward, even with the caveat that it only works on T-Mobile's 4G network and only with specific smartphones. As more and more people get used to the richer and better quality of wideband audio, expectations will rise and continue to push the ongoing migration of all telecom over to IP-based solutions.

Kudos to the technical teams at T-Mobile for making this happen!

P.S. I'm also personally pleased to learn about this because T-Mobile supports IPv6 across their mobile network, too. Now if only they could improve their coverage in southwestern New Hampshire, I'd be able to actually consider switching to them.

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• The Verge: Facebook tests free voice calling in Messenger app
• iPhone Hacks: Facebook Testing Messenger-Based VoIP in Canada (And it’s Amazing)

I was alerted to this by (appropriately) a Facebook post from Tris Hussey, author of the iPhone Hacks article.

Since I'm not in Canada, I can't test it myself... an update to the Messenger app for me will only get me the ability to leave "voice notes". But I'm looking forward to learning more from my friends in Canada.

If this rolls out to users outside of Canada, this has the potential to be huge and a major disruption to telecom. Yes, there is Skype on mobile phones, and a dozen other apps like Viber and Voxer, but...

... Facebook has the directory and the eyeballs!

You have your friend connections already in Facebook. Plus, people are already spending a significant amount of time in the Facebook app. This just makes it simple to move into real-time communications with someone.

I'm looking forward to learning more from friends up north... and to hopefully trying it out at some point!

UPDATE: Here's the iOS update message for Facebook Messenger:

So the way I read that, we should all be getting this capability in the next few weeks.

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http://isoc-ny.org/p2/4609

http://livestream.com/internetsocietychapters

The session will be archived for those who can't attend. It should be a very interesting discussion!

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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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Skype today brought its increased integration with Microsoft services to the iPhone and iPad with the new release 4.2.1 available in the iOS AppStore. As you can already do in the Windows, Mac and Android versions of Skype, the big feature is that you can now sign in with your "Microsoft account" and merge our Skype contacts with those from Windows Live Messenger (WLM) and Outlook.com. You will now be able to chat back and forth with your WLM contacts directly from within Skype.

This is very cool from the point-of-view that Skype has always been a "walled garden" of instant messaging (IM) that did not interoperate with any other service. Many of us long ago wound up having to use two IM clients on our system: 1) Skype; and 2) a multi-service client (like Adium or Pidgin) for all the other IM networks. This doesn't quite solve that problem because it is now really just expanding the Skype client to work with two IM networks, but it is at least a step toward greater interop.

In a post on Skype's "Garage" blog, Beom Soo Park indicates these new features:

• Sign in with your Microsoft Account to merge your Windows Live Messenger, Outlook.com and Skype accounts - then IM those contacts direct from Skype. 
• Ability to edit and delete instant messages 
• Choose an emoticon while typing an instant message via a new emoticon picker 
• Animated emoticons for devices with a Retina display
• Edit phone numbers from the dial pad
• Create a new Skype account when you download the app 
• UI improvements

Skype's post on their "Big Blog" has a bit more detail and mentions that Skype for iOS has now been downloaded over 120 million times.  The improvements to the chat interface, particularly the editing, will definitely be useful.  I personally don't really care about the improved emoticons, but I know some people do like those and will be pleased.

My only criticism is that in order to make use of the Microsoft integration you have to log out of your Skype account and then login with your Microsoft account, at which point you presumably can merge the accounts.  It's not a big deal to me, as I don't use a "Microsoft account" these days.  I certainly did have a WLM login that I used to use years ago, but I haven't used it in years and don't really feel any compelling need to do so.  Still, it would be nice if the Microsoft account could just be added to your existing Skype login as you can do in so many other IM clients.

Anyway, Skype 4.2.1 for iOS/iPad/iPhone is now out there and ready for download from the AppStore.

P.S. If you installed Skype 4.2 yesterday, you'll need to go back to the AppStore today to get Skype 4.2.1 as there were some critical bugs that were fixed in 4.2.1.

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All these questions came to my mind today when I dipped into Google Analytics and noticed that for the month to date in November 2012, my old (March 2011) post about Google Voice and SIP addresses continues to receive a large amount of traffic:

Slightly over 3,000 pageviews in the first 13 days of November - and if I go back a bit I see over 71,000 pageviews since January 1, 2012. In fact, it's had about 232K pageviews since I wrote it over 1.5 years ago, and has accounted for almost 25% of all traffic to this site in that time.

And this particular article was just one in a series of articles I wound up writing about Google Voice and SIP as we all collectively tried to figure out what was going on.

Digging into the traffic sources to the page, almost all of it this month comes (somewhat predictably) from search. The search terms, at least the ones we can see (since Google now shows "Not Provided" for all searches done over SSL), show a range of interest in SIP:

And all of this for a service from Google Voice which seemed to be a temporary service and subsequently stopped working... kinda, sorta... and then did work... and then didn't work. (And I just checked... and it doesn't work for me right now.)

I find all this interest fascinating. I hope it's a good sign that people out there do want to see more usage of SIP addresses.

And I do hope that at some point Google will open up the connection again and let us connect in to Google Voice numbers using SIP URIs. It would be a great move.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to be fascinating by all the traffic still coming to those old articles...

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When Facebook Starts To Become More Useless - Irrelevant In-Feed Ads

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