Disruptive Telephony

Skype seems to be coming back up... s..l..o..w..l..y..

My Skype client just started working again, as the Skype Heartbeat blog post indicated, I did not have to login again or do anything else. Once in, though, my Skype client shows only a bit over 2 million users online:

Considering that on a normal day there are usually 25+ million users online during the day (and often closer to 30 million), I would say that more than just "a small number" of users were affected!

As I wrote this post, though, the number of connected users dropped to 1.8 million... let's see how this recovery goes!

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Skype is experiencing another outage today... to what extent is not clear, but my own anecdotal experience is that it could be large. Skype, of course, is claiming that only "a small number" of users are affected in their only tweet on the subject so far:

They also posted this as a blog post on their Heartbeat site. On a side note, I completely agree with Robin Wauters at TechCrunch that it seems silly to say "a small number":

Companies always say only a small subset of users experience problems when they occur.

I have no clue why they insist on pointing that out like it makes a difference.

Customers are down... and unable to communicate. It doesn't matter if it is a "small number" if you are one of them!

But I digress... the reality is that this does seem to be a much wider outage than "a small number":

• the comments to an Engadget article this morning show people all around the world saying Skype is not working for them;
  
  
• a Twitter search on 'Skype' is FULL of comments of people saying that Skype is down for them;
  
  
• my own colleagues at Voxeo are down around the world (we've fallen back to a Jabber-based backup system)

As I've been writing this post, Peter Parkes at Skype updated the Heartbeat blog post with this news:

A configuration problem has meant that some of you have been disconnected from Skype.

We've identified the cause of the problem, and have begun to address it. If you've been affected, you should start to see improvement in the next hour or so. You shouldn't need to manually sign back in to Skype - it should reconnect automatically when it's able to do so.

We apologise for the disruption to your conversations.

We'll see how quickly we all come back online...

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Has a Russian engineer truly reverse-engineered an older version of Skype and made it available on the web as open source?

That is what Efim Bushmanov is claiming on his new site:

http://skype-open-source.blogspot.com/

Now, as he notes in his first blog post on the topic, his reverse engineering is based on an older version of Skype and so it's not clear to me how well it would work with the current Skype infrastructure. He claims, though, that it can send a message to Skype now.

How long the code will remain online is anyone's guess. As TheNextWeb notes:

It is against the Skype’s terms to reverse engineer its software but both US and European laws state that it is legal if it helps in terms of interoperability, if the technology is also not patented. Whether Skype will be able to force researcher to either remove the files or put pressure on the company hosting them is not fully known.

Meanwhile, I'm sure a good number of folks will be downloading the source code to see what they can learn...

P.S. The Hacker News discussion thread on this topic is also worth a read.

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How does IPv6 impact telecommunications networks? How will IPv6 affect the SIP protocol? If you work in telecom, what should you be aware of with regard to IPv6? With World IPv6 Day only a week away, if you have been wondering about these kind of questions, please feel free to join me live in a free session hosted by the US Telecommunications Association:

IPv6 and Telecom Networks
Thursday, June 2, 2011
1:00pm US Eastern

Registration is free and if you are unable to attend it will be recorded for later viewing. (And if you register now, you'll be notified when the archive is available for viewing.) The description of the session is:

The networks that make up the Internet and IP communications are in the middle of a sea-change with the transition to IPv6. What impact will IPv6 have on telecom and communications networks?

Join USTelecom and Voxeo for a look at the various challenges that telecom and broadband services providers face in keeping their communication services working while transitioning to IPv6.

I'll be explaining briefly why there is all the attention on IPv6 then getting into the basics of IPv6 addressing. After a brief overview, I'll then dive into how IPv6 affects the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and get into some technical detail. I'll then wrap up with some resources about how to learn more and get started with IPv6 and finish with a Q&A session.

If you attended the Voxeo Developer Jam Session I presented back in May on IPv6, I'm going to be covering basically the same material although with a vendor-neutral perspective (i.e. I won't be explaining and demonstrating how Voxeo Prophecy and PRISM now natively support IPv6). Obviously the live Q&A session will be new, too, and I find the questions around IPv6 always quite fun to discuss.

Please feel free to join us at 1pm US Eastern tomorrow. Registration is free - and if you can't join live the session will be archived and available for viewing on US Telecom's website for 90 days. With World IPv6 Day coming up on June 8th, it's a great time to learn about what is going on with IPv6!

P.S. If you are interested in IPv6 in general, you may be interested in the IPv6 Resource Page I put together for Voxeo at:

http://bit.ly/voxeoipv6

Lots of good links to tutorials, VoIP resources and more...

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What is the best way to deploy communications applications? In the hosted "cloud"? On your premises behind your firewall? Or some kind of hybrid approach? Back in February I presented in a Voxeo "Best Practices" webinar on just this topic: Best Practices in Deploying Communication Applications: Cloud vs On-Premises vs Hybrid. While a recording and the slides of the hour-long session have been available on the webinar page, it is also now available via Voxeo's YouTube account:

The great part about YouTube is that you can view it on many different devices, including mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad.

It was an enjoyable session to present with lots of great questions. If you have any feedback on the session or would like to know more, please contact me.

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Fascinating stats out of an article at TheNextWeb this week:

China has become the first country to reach the 900 million mobile phone user milestone after amassing about 11 million mobile phone users in April alone, according to a report by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The report itself is available in Chinese. Looking at it via Google Translate did back up the numbers quoted in the article (assuming Google Translate was accurate).

By any measurement, 900 million is a staggering number of mobile phone users. TheNextWeb's article goes on to say that India is second worldwide with 811 million mobile phone users followed distantly by the US with 303 million users.

Said another way... China has almost 3 times as many mobile phone users as the US.

Consider, too, that China's population is 1.3 billion... and you have to imagine that like folks here in the US some % of people have multiple mobile phones... so there's obviously plenty of room to grow.

I found this intriguing from the article:

China’s 3G networks, which launched in 2009, are still used only by a small portion of the country’s total mobile phone populace. In April, China had a total of 67 million 3G users, which given the massive mobile subscriber base, is believed to have the potential to exceed the rest of the world.

Fascinating to see the growth there... and if you are providing services or apps to the mobile market, you obviously need to be paying attention to what is going on in China!

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Cool news from the good folks at Voxbone yesterday that they have been chosen by the U.N. to implement a new "888" country code for agencies offering disaster relief.

It's not clear from the news release exactly how this would work, but Alec Saunders spoke with Voxbone CEO yesterday and wrote this in a post:

As Ullens explained to me, +888 is a real country code assigned by the ITU to the UN. In cases of humanitarian need, where telephone systems may be inoperable because of natural disaster, the first teams on the ground would deploy a local GSM antenna, connected via satellite to the rest of the world. Then Voxbone would simply forward calls to the +888 country code via satellite to the local GSM station on the ground. The impact is that UN inter-agency, intra-agency, and external users will be able to dial a +888 number assigned to a relief agency from anywhere in the world, and be immediately connected to that relief agency in the field, in whatever country being served. Not only that, the numbers need never change. Relief staff will be reachable on the same numbers in whatever location they are currently assigned.

If this sounds somewhat familiar, Voxbone was the company behind rolling out the iNum country code of +883 back in 2008 (see my video interview with Rod Ullens from that time), which is designed to be a "global" country code that people could call from anywhere. (You can learn more about iNum's recent activity by listening to a January 2011 VUC interview with Voxbone.)

Congrats to Voxbone and the United Nations on this agreement and I look forward to seeing this effort get deployed!

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Before writing my story yesterday about Skype killing off Skype For Asterisk, I had reached out to Skype's PR agency to see if there was any statement from Skype. There wasn't at the time, but today they sent over this statement from Jennifer Caukin, a spokeswoman for Skype:

Skype made the decision to retire Skype for Asterisk several months ago, as we have prioritized our focus around implementing the IETF SIP standard in our Skype Connect solution. SIP enjoys the broadest support of any of the available signaling alternatives by business communications equipment vendors, including Digium. By supporting SIP in favor of alternatives, we maximize our resources and continue to reinforce our commitment to delivering Skype on key platforms where we can meet the broadest customer demand.

Being a huge advocate of open standards, I of course applaud Skype's commitment to supporting SIP. However, as I noted two years ago in my detailed review of what was then "Skype For SIP" (and is now "Skype Connect") the fundamental difference between Skype For Asterisk and Skype's SIP offering is this:

Skype For Asterisk is/was two-way - you can make outbound calls TO Skype users.

You can't do that with Skype Connect. You can receive calls from Skype users. You can receive calls to PSTN numbers that come in across the Skype network. You can make outbound calls to PSTN numbers via the Skype network. But you can't make outbound calls to Skype users.

Skype For Asterisk could.

And therein lay much of its power.

Additionally, Skype For Asterisk passed along your Skype presence which could be used for call routing... and also supported Skype chat, too.

Neither of which Skype Connect can do right now.

Skype For Asterisk provided a 2-way, multichannel connection into the Skype cloud in a way that Skype's SIP-based offering simply doesn't at this point in time. (Having said that, of course, SFA is certainly no where near as easy to set up or understand, a point Dave Michels made today.)

However, as Alec Saunders pointed out today, the economics also clearly favor Skype Connect in terms of monthly and per-minute billing versus the low one-time fee of Skype For Asterisk. Tim Panton also indicated that the Skype For Asterisk program had some challenges including the licensing of the product.

While perhaps understandable as a business decision, I know that Skype For Asterisk will be missed by many in the technical community.

Now, let's see what Skype will truly do with their SIP support in the time ahead...

P.S. And while it is of course easy to try to blame someone like Microsoft for this demise, as I noted in my first post, the acquisition deal isn't even remotely done yet...

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UPDATE: Skype has issued an official statement about the end of Skype For Asterisk.

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Word breaking out right now from multiple sources is that Skype has killed off the Skype for Asterisk product developed in conjunction with Digium. In an email sent by Digium product management that was subsequently posted on web sites (including Digium's), the company says (my emphasis added):

Skype for Asterisk was developed by Digium in cooperation with Skype. It includes proprietary software from Skype that allows Asterisk to join the Skype network as a native client. Skype has decided not to renew the agreement that permits us to package this proprietary software. Therefore Skype for Asterisk sales and activations will cease on July 26, 2011.

Skype will apparently continue to support the SFA software for an additional two years until July 26, 2013.

The Promise...

Skype For Asterisk was announced with great fanfare back at Astricon in 2008. I wrote about how it might tear down some of the walls of Skype's proprietary walled garden and posted multiple follow-up posts, including a detailed dive into Asterisk interconnection and how Skype could help with that.

The beautiful part was that Skype For Asterisk allowed two-way communication into the Skype cloud... allowing you to make calls to Skype recipients in ways that you couldn't with other options.

There was certainly great hope within the open source sides of the VOIP world that Skype For Asterisk, a.k.a. "SFA", would go far to connect the world of Skype to the larger world of SIP and IP communications.

In September 2009, Skype announced on their blog that Skype For Asterisk was available to all and there were ongoing posts on other sites about SFA usage. (Including Tim Panton's cool integration of Google Wave, Skype and Asterisk)

Sign of the Microsoft Era?

Now obviously we're not privy to the contract negotiations between Digium and Skype. Perhaps it is simply a case of the two companies not agreeing to terms. Maybe Skype wanted more money... maybe Skype didn't want to do the support for SFA... maybe it didn't hit Skype's revenue targets... maybe it's just cleaning up Skype's various business units before the Microsoft acquisition...

... or maybe it is a sign of the new Microsoft era at Skype, even though the deal has not formally closed. That is certainly the prevailing sentiment on Twitter right now.

Let's hope not... but time will tell.

Fred Posner perhaps stated this concern best in his blog post this afternoon:

Digium announced today the official end of Skype for Asterisk– ending anyone’s dream of a more friendly, open, Skype under Microsoft.

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UPDATE - May 25, 2011: Tim Panton, a developer who was among the early users of Skype For Asterisk and has been involved in the Asterisk and VoIP community for years, wrote a thoughtful post: The long slow death of Skype for Asterisk. Tim notes the apparent tension between Skype and Digium from the early days of the product and offers the opinion that Skype probably just had no intention to renew the agreement in any event. Tim's post is well worth a read as he is someone who actually worked with the SFA product a great bit.

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Want to build text messaging (SMS) applications for a very cheap price? My colleagues over in Voxeo Labs recently reduced the price of sending or receiving SMS messages to only 1 cent per message. (As a bonus, they also came up with the cute graphic I'm using on the right.)

As Adam Kalsey writes in the Tropo blog post, "Announcing New lower SMS pricing" sending an SMS is a trivial matter in Tropo. His language of choice is PHP, so he shows:

<?php
call('+14155551212', array('network' => 'SMS'));
say('d00d, Penny SMS? ');
?>

But you could obviously do something very similar in Python, Ruby, Groovy or JavaScript in Tropo Scripting... or with any language using the Tropo WebAPI.

Personally, I like seeing what I can do to merge SMS with Twitter... back in December I wrote about how to use Tropo to trigger alerts via SMS based on text in Twitter, which is a variation of an app I do actually use for Twitter monitoring. My colleague Justin Dupree also wrote a cool post about using Node.js to build a Twitter IM/SMS service.

Anyway... all of these SMS apps are now able to be deployed in production for only 1 cent per message to and from US numbers. Text messages to numbers outside the US are still the low 2 cents per message. If you'd like to try it out, Tropo is free for developers to build and try apps... you just have to sign up for an account.

P.S. In case it wasn't crystal clear, Tropo is a service of Voxeo, my employer. However, I wouldn't write about it here if I didn't think it was cool!

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