Disruptive Telephony

Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all rushing out "tablet" devices now for the enterprise market - but will they actually matter?  Will enterprises really want to use these high-end and high-priced tablets versus all the new consumer tablets like the iPad and all the various Android and Windows tables in the queue?

Don't get me wrong ... it think it is awesome that Cisco, Avaya and RIM are all coming out with new tablets. Ever since getting an iPad back in early May it has become a constant companion on my travels around and I use it for so many different purposes.

The touch interface is also so incredibly "natural"... I watch my daughters using the iPad and just have to think: "Why shouldn't computers just work this way?"

Any user interface improvements that improve the communications user experience are very definitely a GOOD thing!

So I commend Cisco, Avaya and RIM for coming out with tablets.

I just still find myself wondering why I might want to pay to buy one of these tablets. I had this exchange yesterday with analyst Brian Riggs on Twitter:

As I said, I already have a SIP client on my iPad (and there are several options, in fact). I already have Skype. I already have WebEx and GoToMeeting for collaboration (and many other apps). Sure, I don't have video on the iPad - yet - but there are a range of Android consumer tablets coming out that do, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple announces an iPad with a video camera sometime soon. Apple loves FaceTime right now... I wouldn't be surprised to see the iPad join the game.

I think Brian's point is the key:

avaya, cisco are betting they can do comms on tablets better than apple, etc.

And to a point, they are probably right. Real-time communications IS different than traditional web communications. This is very true.

There is, though, this one wee minor detail:

Apple has an entire ecosystem of developers building apps!

If Apple can deliver a hardware platform that provides the necessary devices (like an embedded camera for video), I would see the developer community rushing to use it. (And the Android community already has multiple devices coming out.)

On a more personal level, I've found my iPad to be much more like my mobile phone... it's a device I take with me to both personal and business functions/meetings/events. It's a "converged" device in that it reflects the blurring of the lines between my personal and business lives. I don't know that I'd want yet-another-device to carry around.

There is certainly the case that in large enterprises where you go to work on a "campus", the ability to have a work-specific device like this that you carry around could be valuable. But even there I'm not sure that I wouldn't also want my personal information, etc. with me. And isn't part of the value of a tablet that you could bring it home with you or while you are traveling?

Again, I commend the vendors on trying out a new form factor and user interface... I just find myself wondering why people won't simply want to use the consumer devices that are rapidly proliferating.

What do you think? Would you use a tablet from a communications vendor? Or would you want them to instead have apps that run on consumer devices?

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I had to laugh when I saw this tweet from Dave Troy last week:

With the ubiquity of mobile phones and the change they bring to the dialing paradigm, will the generation growing up now only really know about "dial tone" as a historical artifact mentioned in places like Wikipedia?

For those of us who are older, we grew up with idea that you picked up the phone, listened for the dial tone, and THEN dialed your number.  But only AFTER you heard the dial tone indicating that everything was working.

Today of course we pull out our mobile phone, enter a number or choose it from our address book - and then hit the "send" or "call" button (or whatever icon is on your phone, usually a green one).  We don't "listen for a dial tone"... because there isn't one!  Similarly, on the SIP phone on my desk that is connected into our corporate IP-PBX, I enter the phone number I'm calling and press the "Dial" button.

Again, no "dial tone".

Amazing times we live in...

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Back almost a year ago, I wrote about the sale of Skype to private investors - Onward the disruption - Skype's sale to private investors is a great step - and wondered how this "new chapter" would work out for Skype. Judging by the news today, it seems to be working out quite well!

Through a SEC filing, blog post and news release today, Skype announced that it is filing for an Initial Public Offering that could raise as much as $100 million USD. Skype's blog post naturally had none of those numbers but others have dived into the details of Skype's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Some of the articles out already:

• The Next Web US: Skype Going Public With $100 Million IPO
• GigaOm: Skype Files for a $100 Million IPO
• Read Write Web: Skype Files for Initial Public Offering
• TechCrunch: Skype Files For $100 Million IPO With Miniscule Profits
• Business Insider: Skype Files For $100 Million IPO

Longtime readers know that I'm a huge user of Skype and have written here quite a bit about Skype. I've certainly had my issues with their direction, but I continue to be one of their paying customers and use the service each and every day. I wish them all the best with the IPO - and it will continue to be interesting to see what they do...

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We are in the midst of a truly fascinating cultural shift right now:

We are losing the "family identity" that has been the main characteristic of telephony for the past 100 years.

Think about it... the other day we were at an evening event and met a great couple with whom we would like to stay in touch. We exchanged contact info and they, like so many people these days, have "cut the cord" and do not have a traditional landline but instead have individual mobile phones. The result is this:

I can't call the "Smiths" and speak to someone.

Instead I can call "John Smith" or "Jane Smith".

If I have a message I want to get to the family I have no simple way to do that. I can no longer call "the family phone" and leave a message on their answering machine inviting them over to dinner.

Instead I need to call one of the individual phones - and perhaps both to be sure the message gets through, given that cell phones can be lost or need recharging or that sometimes voicemail messages simply don't get through.

And if a young child wants to call a young child at a landline-less home - and the receiving child doesn't yet have their own cell phone - you have to guess which parent the child might be with.

Now, I don't expect this situation to change. Two years ago I wrote at great length about why I was thinking of cutting the cord myself (and then about why I kept my landline). Last year I wrote about the decline in the landline business in North America and while I haven't checked the most recent stats on landline decline, my own anecdotal evidence tells me that the decline is only continuing. I, too, continue to periodically re-assess whether I want to still keep the landline intact.

It's interesting to wonder, though, what this means for the larger fabric of our society. Are there impacts as we remove the "family" identity and focus on our individual identities? How does it change the nature of communication between families? Or does it not really change things at all?

I don't have the answers... this is probably a longer-term research project some graduate student needs to take on. Still, I wonder...

Meanwhile, since I know in one family that one cell phone died and the voicemail is full on the other phone, I guess I'll have to forget about the phone entirely and just send them a message on Facebook... ;-)

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This week Network World ran a great interview with Jonathan Rosenberg about his new role at Skype. Jonathan is now the "Chief Technology Strategist" at Skype, but he's known in the industry as one of the co-authors of the original RFC 3261 that defines the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and also for his many years working at Cisco. He's been extremely active within the IETF, writing a seriously large quantity of Internet-Drafts. I think, in fact, I first met JDR at an IETF meeting... and subsequently was on at least one panel with him (I think a VoiceCon or Interop in New York).

It's been interesting to watch Skype accumulate more and more people with strong SIP backgrounds, and hiring Jonathan was definitely an interesting - and good - move on Skype's part.

I don't know that the Network World interview broke any amazing new ground for those of us who have been watching Skype closely, but if you haven't been paying attention to Skype, Jonathan gives a great view into what the company has been doing lately and where it is going. It is definitely worth a read.

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The big news out this morning was that Google is acquiring Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for $68 million USD. GIPS may not be a familiar name to many folks, but for us in the communications / telephony space, they are widely known as the supplier of audio codecs (and increasingly video) to companies creating real-time communication products, including Yahoo, AOL, IBM and many others. Many of us, though, knew them best as the initial provider of the wideband iSAC codec to Skype.

To put this in more normal language, if you know how good a Skype conversation can sound... how rich the audio can be... how it can sound like the person on the other end is right there in the room with you? The quality of that audio connection is because Skype uses a "wideband codec" to send the audio from one end to the other. Up until 2007, GIPS provided the primary wideband codec that Skype used.

At some point in there, Skype realized that, particularly giving away a free product, it needed to control more of its technology stack and stop paying licensing fees to GIPS and so it bought a company, Camino Networks, that had its own wideband audio codec. Skype then moved away from using GIPS and used its own codec technology.

GOOGLE OWNS ITS STACK

This would seem to be the exact same move that Google is making. Through their purchase of Gizmo last year, Google acquired client-side technology and SIP technology for the "control channel" side of communications path. With their 2007 purchase of GrandCentral, Google acquired a SIP-based backend infrastructure (which evolved into Google Voice). They have also had their GoogleTalk product out for some time as well.

What they haven't had until now is control over the "media channel".

IP COMMUNICATIONS 101

To understand why this matters, let's back up and review "IP Communications 101". When you have two "endpoints" (softphones, "hard" phones, applications, whatever), they communicate over IP using two different channels.

The first channel is the "control channel" where commands are passed such as "I want to invite you to a call with me". These days that control channel is increasingly using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) although many other protocols exist (both proprietary and standards-based). The control channel typically passes through one or more "proxy servers" (in SIP lingo) that may be IP-PBXs, call servers, hosted servers, "clouds", etc.

The second channel is the "media channel" where the actual audio or video is sent between the endpoints. Depending upon the exact configuration, this media channel may go directly between the two endpoints, as pictured. Or it may go through media proxy servers, or through Session Border Controllers (SBCs). It is typically transmitted using the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), but inside the RTP stream the actual audio or video is encoded using a "codec".

The point is that it is separate and distinct from the control channel.

The issue is that while the control channel is increasingly around the open standard of SIP, which anyone can implement, the "codecs" used in sending media from one endpoint to another have long been a proprietary battleground, particularly with regard to wideband (or "HD audio" as some call it). Yes, there have been and are standards, but usually there have been intellectual property or licensing issues. Now, there is work within the IETF to create a standard wideband codec (and as I wrote earlier, Skype is involved with this effort) but that may take some time and the outcome is not known right now.

The easiest way to solve all these issues is to own your own codec. This is what Skype did back in 2007... and what Google seems to be doing now.

CONFERENCING

It's also worth noting that GIPS has conferencing engines for both audio and video... and recent events highlight increasing interest in video conferencing:

• Skype is rolling out its multi-way video conferencing.
• The "iPhone prototype found in a bar" has a forward-facing video camera.
• Jim Courtney reports about GIPS technology being using on an iPhone/iPad for video

Put some of the pieces together like this and we could indeed see renewed interest in video conferencing, particularly from mobile devices. (Or perhaps Google might add audio conference calling into Google Voice.)

TO WHAT END?

The question of course is what will Google do now. Naturally neither the Google news release nor the GIPS "letter to customers" says anything. Typical Google style is for new acquisitions to go silent for some extended period of time and then to pop out in some new offering. In this case, of course, GIPS is providing underlying technology that Google could use in many of its other offerings.

Some of the speculation (and it is only that) I've seen so far is that Google could be taking on:

• Skype - As mentioned earlier, with Gizmo and other acquisitions, Google does have the tools to try to create a competitor to Skype.
  
  
• Apple - Naturally with the Android/iPhone war going on, Google could use this technology to offer new services on the Android platform.
  
  
• Microsoft - With their now-branded "Communication Server", Microsoft is challenging the incumbents in the enterprise communication space... perhaps Google will put some of the pieces together to start doing something there.
  
  
• Traditional conferencing vendors - Google Voice offers voicemail and call routing now... why not add conferencing?

Or perhaps Google will open source some of the technology to further try to disrupt the industry... for instance, will Google offer one of the GIPS codecs to the IETF CODEC working group as an open standard?

Time will tell.... in the meantime congrats to Google and GIPS on this acquisition.

What do YOU think Google will do with GIPS technology?

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Congrats are definitely in order to Alec, Andy, Jamie, Larry, Luca and Thomas on the launch of their new portal called "Voyces". As Andy Abramson writes in his first post on the site:

A few months ago a group of us, all of whom will be blogging here, got together and realized that with the declining media environment, less pages in the trade press and the failure of the remaining outlets to be able to provide enough coverage of what is still a very much growing sector, that there was a need to be filled. That need was the Independent voice on voice communications.

Alec Saunders writes in his first post about the changes in the communication space and says this:

The cost of entry to be in the business of delivering communications products is dramatically lower than it has ever been, and continues to fall. As a result we’ve seen an explosion of creativity in this space – a renaissance of sorts in which companies and individuals alike merrily combine communications, web, mobile and desktop technologies into a heady “witches brew” of innovation.

I'm delighted to see this team of six come together. I've known several of them since the mid-2000's when the circle of "VoIP bloggers" was quite small and we all knew each other ... and over the many years of conferences, dinners and other events we've certainly become friends... and the others I've met more recently and have been pleased to get to know them. Congrats, guys!

I look forward to seeing the writing they will do... and would encourage you all to check out www.voyces.com!

P.S. On the About Voyces page, I kept looking at Alec's picture and thinking it looked so familiar... but couldn't place it. Then I realized why... it is a picture I took in my "Faces of ITEXPO" set! Glad you liked it enough to use it, Alec!

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Earlier this week I had a fun moment joining a cast of characters to help the Telecom Junkies podcast celebrate crossing over 100 episodes. In the 101st episode, now available for listening, host Jessica Gdowski invited 7 of her previous guests back to give brief updates. So I joined Martha Buyer, Mark Fletcher, Hank Levine, John Lyon, Dave Spofford, and Allan Sulkin for the ~20 minute show.

In my case, I've been a guest on the show three times previously, most notably in August 2007 with "Interview with a VoIP Hacker" where we interviewed Robert Moore shortly before he was heading to prison.

Moore was part of the VoIP fraud case masterminded by Edwin Pena and discussed on another Telecom Junkies episode back in July 2006. I was also on another Junkies episode in November 2007 about VLAN Hopping.

In this 101st episode recorded this week I gave a brief update on the Pena/Moore case (Pena recently pled guilty) and then talked about VoIP and Unified Communication security issues. It was literally just a few minutes, but I was glad to join briefly and help Telecom Junkies celebrate. 100 podcast episodes is indeed a milestone to celebrate! Congrats!

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Given that I'm a Fairpoint customer, and wrote previously about Fairpoint's bankruptcy, I continue to watch with a bit of fascination the ongoing effort by Frontier to purchase Verizon's landline business in a range of other states. Recently, three more states approved Frontier's acquisition of Verizon's business. And Frontier continues to make assurances that it will somehow not wind up in the same situation as Fairpoint...

I still find the whole process bizarre. I do understand the fundamental motivation... here in the USA, there are only three wires going into (almost) every home:

• electrical power line
• phone line
• cable television line

If you want to get your service into a home in the USA over a wire, you have to ride over one of those three wires. That's it.

So I can see the logic someone out there is thinking... he/she who controls a wire has a platform to launch services.

There are, though, two major problems I see:

1. WIRELESS, a.k.a. WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING WIRES - While there may be only three wires going into the home, there are a lot of wireless signals going into the home. While it may not have the performance of wired connections, I know a good number of folks who now have wireless Internet. And while much of this has traditionally been satellite-based, I'm seeing some folks going for the wireless WAN cards (or "air cards") offered by the cellular networks - and some of the newer laptops with this technology built right in. Plus you have to wonder about newer technologies like WiMAX should they ever start to really take off.

2. LANDLINES ARE LOSING - As I mentioned in my last post, US residents are leaving landlines behind. The NHIS survey I referenced showed the number of homes without landlines at over 20% - and increasing rapidly. My own perception based on comments from people around me is that the cable companies are eating the telcos' lunches when it comes to signing up new people. I need to pull some stats to back up that view - but anecdotally I'm finding more people signing up for cable Internet (often as part of a "triple play") and I haven't heard of anyone in recent times signing up for DSL from their phone company. To me, I just can't see the landline business as a great place to be these days... but obviously some folks out there think they can somehow magically make it work. I wish them luck.

What do you think? Would you invest in the landline business in 2009?

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Yesterday Google made another fascinating move in the telephony space... letting people use Google Voice with their existing phone number. This is key because previously if you wanted to try out Google Voice you had to get a new phone number that was different from any of your existing numbers.

Now a business or individual can move their existing number over to Google Voice... and Google can try to convert users over to their service from other services.

[UPDATE: Note that Google states that you can use Google Voice "with your existing mobile phone number", i.e. not a landline phone number. Others have pointed out that essentially all you are doing is forwarding your unanswered calls to Google's voicemail service instead of your mobile carrier's voicemail service. In this way, Google Voice is basically just like Jott or any of the many other similar services out there. Except, of course, it is from Google.]

When you use an existing number, Google Voice gives you these services:

• Online, searchable voicemail
• Free automated voicemail transcription
• Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
• Email and SMS notifications
• Low-priced international calling

With a new phone number under Google's control, you get additional services like conferencing, call recording, call screening, etc. More significantly, you get what I consider the key feature of Google Voice:

One number that reaches you on all your phones

That's the value I get out of Google Voice. If you call me on +1-802-735-1624, it rings me on my mobile, on my desk phone, on Skype (via SkypeIn), on a SIP phone... and could on other phones as well. That "one number" service is not available for existing phone numbers... but only for new numbers Google controls.

Without that feature, Google Voice is essentially a hosted voicemail provider for your existing phone number.

Except, of course, it is free.

Free and part of the ever-growing suite of Google services.... and still in beta and still invitation-only... but yet, it is Google. It will be interesting to watch over time what disruption this new offering causes in the traditional hosted voicemail market.

Meanwhile, it's now out there and if you want to try Google Voice with an existing number, you can request an invitation or find someone with an existing GV account and ask them for one of their 3 invites. (Sorry, mine are all gone.)

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UPDATE (10/30/09) - Also check out Dave Michel's post about the broader ramifications of this story.

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P.S. You can also watch this video from Google:

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