Disruptive Telephony

FYI - you can sign up for my email newsletter...

2009-10-30T11:52:07-04:00

I know that the concept of setting up an email newsletter sounds so... well... 1990's... but as I outline on my Disruptive Conversations blog, I'm doing some experimentation with email management tools... and so decided to create a list as an adjunct to my online writing. If you'd like to join my little experiment, the form to do so is here:

Over on my Disruptive Conversations blog, I do get into a bit more detail about what I'm doing (or think I'll be doing) with this...

If you do choose to subscribe, thanks!

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Tim Panton's VERY cool demo: Google Wave + Skype + Asterisk + Ibook

2009-10-30T10:00:38-04:00

Over on Skype Journal, Phil Wolf posted about Tim Panton's VERY cool demo which he gave at Astricon and then apparently just yesterday at eComm Europe. Tim from phonefromhere.com mashes up Google Wave, Skype, Asterisk (with Skype for Asterisk) and Ibook to make Skype calls from within a Wave, complete with recordings of utterances and, naturally, the ability to have an annotated collaboration session in Wave:

Phil quotes Jason Goecke (a colleague of mine at Voxeo) describing how it works:

"it is a Google Wave Gadget with his PhoneFromHere.com IAX2 Java softphone as the client. Then, the IAX2 Java phone connects to Asterisk with Skype for Asterisk installed. Then, there is a server-side element, Ibook, that is breaking apart utterances into individual files. So that as each person speaks, it captures it into its own file. Then, as that happens, a text frame is sent from Asterisk to the softphone with the file details. The gadget then uses some Javascript to embed a link. IAX2 supports text frames."

Read Phil's full post for more info and for Phil's views on what this all means.

VERY cool demo!

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Out at VoiceCon next week in SF - Presence, Web 2.0, Voice Mashups

2009-10-29T17:42:20-04:00

If any of you will be out at VoiceCon or Enterprise 2.0 next week in San Francisco, I'll be out there speaking at both conferences. I have the full schedule in a post on the Voxeo Talks blog, but for VoiceCon it looks like:

Monday, Nov 2 3:15 – 4:15 pm – Presence – Current Progress and Future Trends Wednesday, Nov 4 3:15 – 4:15 pm – Developing Voice Apps Using Mashups and SOA Thursday, Nov 5 8:00 – 9:45 am – Web 2.0 and Enterprise Communications – Fad or the Future?

The full descriptions can be found on a page on our Voxeo Events page. I'm very much looking forward to all three sessions out there. The first is a "reactor panel" where we have a discussion around the issue of getting richer presence info between systems - and moderator Don Van Doren specifically asked me to be there to react to what the larger vendors will be saying. The second panel is just two of us (myself and a gent from IBM) talking about creating mashups and then the last is a "Deep Dive" that Irwin Lazar and I will be doing into what is the state of "Web 2.0 in Enterprise Communications".

Should all be fun.... if you are out there at either conference, let me know. See some of you out there...

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Google enters the hosted voicemail game - Google Voice now lets you keep your existing phone number

2009-10-27T06:20:02-04:00

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.)

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

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

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Is anyone surprised Fairpoint filed for bankruptcy? (How's that landline biz in 2009?)

2009-10-26T15:13:42-04:00

From the "Duh! What were they thinking?" desk, the big news up there in the northeastern part of the US is that our major local landline provider, Fairpoint Communications, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. Last year, Fairpoint paid $2.4 billion for Verizon's landline business in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and formally took over the network earlier this year, with all sorts of ensuing service challenges which have been well-documented.

As FierceTelecom points out, this bankruptcy has been expected for quite some time now. Last week there was much publicity up in these parts about Fairpoint working with its unions and banks to try to avoid the formal filing... but obviously today's filing indicates that they couldn't pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. This morning, Fairpoint issued a news release and set up a web site about their restructuring:

http://www.fprestructuring.com/

Now, I should mention that I am a Fairpoint customer and do have a landline from them - I've also not personally had any customer service issues with their service. I am also not at all surprised.

I thought Fairpoint's acquisition of Verizon's landline business last year was an exceedingly dumb idea then - and I still think that today.

I mean... you don't need to be a rocket scientist or industry analyst to figure out that landlines are a dying business. Here's part of the overview from the most recent "Wireless Substitution" report from the US National Center for Health Statistics (my emphasis added):

More than one of every five American homes (20.2%) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) during the second half of 2008, an increase of 2.7 percentage points since the first half of 2008. This is the largest 6-month increase observed since NHIS began collecting data on wireless-only households in 2003. In addition, one of every seven American homes (14.5%) received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones, despite having a landline telephone in the home.

I personally expect that trend to continue and if anything to accelerate as we collectively continue to choose mobile devices - and also as the cable companies and other players out there continue to offer compelling alternatives to the traditional landline. (Hmmm... and gee, do you think the cable companies up here aren't going to seize this opportunity to court Fairpoint customers?) And while I kept our landline for several reasons, I don't necessarily expect that I'll need it for a long time.

Sure... perhaps Fairpoint thought it could make money off the Internet access side of the house... I mean, buying your way into being the incumbent utility ought to be a good thing, right? But then again, the cable companies are right in there... as are the satellite folks and many others offering Internet access...

All I can say is kudos to whomever it was within Verizon that thought up this strategy of selling off their dying businesses to other companies... and let's see if they succeed in doing it again with Frontier Communications.

In the meantime, we will see what kind of chaos this filing stirs up today up here in both terms of business and political maneuverings...

It's also interesting to contemplate: what would happen if such a major utility like the "local phone company" were to completely fail?

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eComm Europe in Amsterdam this week (Oct 28-30) - THE show for communications disruption

2009-10-26T13:42:59-04:00

For those out there interested in how telephony - and all communications - is being disrupted, the place to be this week is very definitely eComm Europe in Amsterdam. It's definitely a gathering of the "tribe" of people who are on out there defining the bleeding edge of the communications space. Great speakers, great schedule... it should be a great event!

Sadly, a schedule conflict prevented my attendance, but as I wrote about on the Voxeo Talks blog, Voxeo will have a presence there in the form of multiple speakers as well as a booth. More info can be found on the Voxeo event page at:

http://blogs.voxeo.com/events/ecomm-europe/

If you are at eComm Europe, please do say hello to RJ Auburn or Jay Phillips... or stop by our booth. Also, look for the fun giveaway in the eComm bag. ;-)

And if, like me, you can't get there... you can follow along in the eComm tweet stream and see info posted up on the eComm blog. It should be a great show, so I'm definitely looking forward to hearing and reading more about what goes on there.

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Of Skype, SIP, P2P and P2PSIP...

2009-10-19T14:20:59-04:00

Over on Voxeo's Speaking of Standards blog, I put up a post today on:

Could Skype realistically replace its P2P algorithm with P2PSIP?

I decided to write it after reading the comments on Phil Wolff's post last week over on Skype Journal... mostly to talk a bit more about what P2PSIP is and how it compares to what Skype is using now.

While it's interesting to talk about on a technical level - and I admit to a complete fascination with the technology behind P2P networks - the reality is that none of us really know anything about what Skype is up to. :-)

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Humorous video - in how many movies is the "No Signal" theme over-used?

2009-09-25T07:59:39-04:00

It's Friday, so here's a bit of humor... I admit that I had not really paid attention to how incredibly over-used the "my cellphone has no signal" theme has been in recent movies until I saw this video. Keep watching, though, because after the "no signal" theme, it does go into other amusingly over-used themes like dropping mobile phones in water, ripping them apart, burning them, etc....

Kudos to someone named Rich Juzwiak for apparently editing together pieces of 66 movies!

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Skype takes a SIP of Cisco with UC500 Skype For SIP certification

2009-09-23T09:27:51-04:00

It's been a busy month for the folks in the Skype For SIP project. First, back on September 9, Skype announced ShoreTel interoperability. Then last week on September 17, Skype announced interop with the open source SIPFoundry sipXecs product.

Today, though, is Skype's biggest announcement yet - they are announcing the certification of Cisco's Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business as interoperable with Skype For SIP.

Beyond simply the interop, what's perhaps more interesting is to note the direct Cisco involvement with this news release (through a quote). Looking at the overall industry, it's interesting to see Cisco and Skype connecting. I admit that I haven't studied Cisco's UC500 product much at all, although per the news release it sounds like they are doing some interesting things with it:

The Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series platform is part of Cisco’s Smart Business Communications System which continues to expand having just added a new set of IP phones with high definition audio, a unified threat management device as well as support for third party application integration, including products from healthcare, automotive and insurance industries.

Congrats to both Skype and Cisco on this announcement. I expect we'll be seeing more of these announcements in the weeks and months ahead as Skype continues to aggressively court partners. The Skype For SIP offering does provide some useful functionality for on-premise IP-PBX systems:

Ability to receive inbound calls from Skype users
Ability to receive inbound calls from PSTN users through "online numbers" (formerly SkypeIn)
Ability to place outbound calls to PSTN users

The Online Number functionality is particularly interesting as you can easily set up any series of numbers in other parts of the world that ring back into your IP-PBX. Sure, you can do that with any other SIP trunking provider, too, but Skype makes it incredibly easy to provision those numbers - and for a very low annual cost, too. Making your IP-PBX accessible to all the Skype users, too, is quite powerful.

Now if only you could make outbound calls to Skype users... (NOT possible with Skype For SIP, but possible with Skype For Asterisk).

Anyway, congrats again to Skype and Cisco on this announcement.

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I'll be at VON in Miami on Monday, Sept 21, 2009

2009-09-18T17:21:47-04:00

If any of you will be down at VON next week in South Beach, Miami, FL, next week, I'll be part of two presentations on Monday, September 21, 2009. The full abstracts are outlined on a Voxeo events page, but the titles are:

10 – 11:15am, Beyond Boxes: The Future of the PBX 11:30 – 12:30pm, The Apps Race: Building a Developer Community in the New Telecom World

The second one should be fun as it's with my good friend Thomas Howe (who also has a spiffy new website). It's just Thomas and I and a moderator, talking about developer ecosystems. Good stuff!

I'm only there at VON on Monday. That evening I'll be driving up to Orlando where I'll be spending Tuesday through Friday at Voxeo's corporate office. But if you are down at VON, please do say hello.

P.S. And yes, this is the "new" VON put on by Virgo Publishing after they purchased the VON name and tradeshow from Pulvermedia. It will be interesting to see how it is as a show.

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Onward the disruption - Skype's sale to private investors is a great step

2009-09-04T09:26:10-04:00

Back on Tuesday, the online news and blogs sites were buzzing insanely with the word that eBay was selling Skype. Somewhat bizarrely, Skype was also issuing a news release the same day about Skype For Asterisk now being available to all. As if that even remotely had a chance of being written about...

In the midst of all that, I was in transit to ITEXPO in Los Angeles where I was speaking and had no time to add my own commentary. So let me just point to some others. First, the "official" statements:

There were obviously MANY blog posts written, but here were a few that caught my eye:

Om Malik: "Who Invested How Much To Buy Skype"
Jim Courtney: "17 Million Canadians Will Have an Interest in Skype’s Success"
Phil Wolff: "Skype sale: 20 Things We Don't Know"

Phil also created a great chart based on Om's data:

From my perspective, the sale is a great step forward for Skype. The acquisition by eBay always seemed a bit odd and never seemed to fit quite right. Returning to a private and focused ownership will hopefully give the company a chance to focus and grow.

Despite any criticism I may make of Skype (primarily around their fractured product strategy), I'm a huge fan of Skype, a HEAVY user of Skype on a daily basis, a paying Skype customer (for inbound numbers and calling credits) and yes, I do write about them a good bit. They are a fun company to have around the industry... they have definitely disrupted the industry in so many ways... and it's definitely good to have them around to keep people thinking about what's possible. Plus, the product's just a great communication tool. So I am glad to see this news.

Now let's see how this "New Chapter" really does begin...

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I'll be out at ITEXPO this week in L.A.

2009-08-31T19:59:51-04:00

If any of you are heading out to ITEXPO tomorrow through Thursday in Los Angeles, I'll be there on Wednesday. As I note on a Voxeo events page, I'll be speaking twice, pretty much back to back:

9:30 – 10:15am, Exploring Applications in the Cloud

11:00 – 11:45am, SIP Trunking and Security

The first is a panel discussion that should be quite interesting. The second is another version of the VOIP / SIP Security talk that I've been giving at Ingate's SIP Trunking Seminars for the past few years (and that always seems to be popular). More details and session abstracts on the events page I set up.

I'm looking forward to catching up with many friends at the show, including Andy Abramson, who I haven't seen for a while.

If you will be out there, please do say hello.

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After 2 years, Skype finally brings the Linux client closer to parity...

2009-08-28T09:13:19-04:00

After pretty much giving the public view that the Linux version of Skype was basically dead for the last two years, Skype announced yesterday the first beta of a Linux version 2.1 client. The blog post notes that the Linux 2.1 client includes a number of features found in the clients on other operating systems, such as the SILK codec:

Skype's SILK codec for outstanding quality with negligible bandwidth usage,
HQ video support,
PulseAudio support,
SMS send support (*Sending SMS requires available Skype Credit),
Contact groups,
Contact labels, or tags, for easier contact organization,
Chat window improvements (typing notification, message editing, s/geeky text/replacement/, new emoticons),
Nicer contact list with mood messages and video capability icons,
Nicer tray icon.

It's good to see movement on the Linux client front, although it continues to be frustrating as a user of Skype to see Skype's continued fragmented product strategy (which I've ranted about previously here and here). Still, at least this brings the Linux client closer to the others, and that is a good thing.

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Technorati Tags: skype, linux, voip

Rich Tehrani interviews me about Voxeo's SpeechTEK booth and the 2,000 node cluster built on netbooks

2009-08-28T09:05:36-04:00

As I mentioned over on one of Voxeo's blogs, Rich Tehrani pulled out his iPhone 3GS down at SpeechTEK last week in New York and shot a quick video of me talking about Voxeo's booth and the 20 Acer netbooks we had there running a 2,000+ node telephony cluster. Rich blogged about the interview and posted it in a way that I can embed:

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Technorati Tags: voxeo, danyork, speechtek, prophecy, itexpo

Skype announces "Skype for Business Competition" winners

2009-08-14T16:32:28-04:00

Over on their Skype for Business blog, Skype announced this week the winners of their "Skype for Business Competition". They announced three winners each for EMEA, the Americas and Asia. Not much in the way of details, yet, but some of the abstracts sound interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing the case studies that come out of this. Overall it's just good to see Skype looking at pulling out the innovative ways companies are using Skype. ... let's see what the detailed stories show.

Congrats to all the winners!

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Silicon Alley Insider: How Comcast Ate Vonage's Lunch

2009-08-10T17:26:17-04:00

Fascinating chart out of Silicon Alley Insider today showing the incredible growth Comcast has had in terms of IP phone subscribers versus that of Vonage:

I doubt the chart is a huge surprise for anyone following the industry, but it still does make for an interesting graphic. Despite all the advertising money that Vonage can throw out there, Comcast and the other cable providers have the inherent advantage that they can easily offer powerful "triple-play bundles" of cable TV, Internet access and phone service.

Comcast is no longer my provider (Time-Warner services Keene, NH, where I live.), but when I lived in Burlington, VT, we had Comcast for Internet access and Verizon for phone (and we didn't have anyone for TV, since we don't watch it). The offers that Comcast kept sending us, though, encouraging us to switch, were quite compelling. The amount I paid for Internet access would have been lower if I had either phone or TV with Comcast, and even lower if I had all three.

If we actually watched TV and therefore wanted cable TV, the economics of the "triple-play" would be very hard to beat... so it's no surprise at all to me to see this chart. I would expect we'll continue to see the growth of one and the continued stagnation of the other.

What would be more interesting to me would be to see the subscriber growth of Comcast versus the other MVNOs and the DSL providers. Fascinating times we live in...

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Technorati Tags: comcast, vonage, voip, consumervoip, ip telephony, telephony, telecommunications

Skype launches version 4.1... (yawn)... still only Windows... still a fragmented product strategy

2009-06-30T21:29:07-04:00

Skype today announced Skype 4.1 for Windows. As Raul Liive outlined in a post about the 4.1 beta (see also Jim Courtney's take), this version brings to Windows users the "screen sharing" feature that we've had in the Mac version of Skype for a bit. It also restores several of the features that were in the previous Skype 3.8 for Windows but that got left behind when Skype rushed 4.0 for Windows out the door. And it adds the SILK codec and some other odds and ends.

Per Raul's Skype blog post today, the final 4.1 version fixes a whack-load of bugs as well.

If I were on Windows, I'd definitely head over and download 4.1. The bug fixes alone are probably worth it.

Of course, I'm not on Windows (I'm a Mac user) and so today's announcement is pretty much irrelevant to me. Just as whenever Skype comes out with a new Mac version or beta, it's irrelevant to Windows users. And if by some miracle Skype should actually come out with a new Linux version (no update to their blog in 6 months), that would be irrelevant to both Mac and Windows users.

It's hard to get excited about a new Skype release when regardless of what is new in it, you can generally only use it with people on your platform. Maybe. If they care enough about Skype to download the new version.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Skype fan. It's open for me all the time and I have something like 40+ group chats (IM) open at any time for various projects and teams.

But Skype's continued belief in a fragmented, fractured, siloed platform-specific product strategy is still a path of monumental stupidity, in my opinion. I've ranted about this before. It's still the same.

In contrast, Mozilla comes out with Firefox 3.5 on the same day across all three operating systems. For any given Firefox release, there is tons of attention and interest because everyone can download, try it out, write about it, tweet about it and generally use it. There's a good buzz that can happen.

I know, I know... Firefox is "just a web browser" and Skype is a much more complicated real-time communication tool... etc., etc. And yes, I know that Windows still has the largest market share so it makes sense to focus there to reach the largest % of customers. (Although I'd wonder if that is true of the "influencer"/word-of-mouth/blogging community that seems to have a higher Mac %.) And sure, maybe there is good sense in both those statements. (or not)

Still, as a Skype fan, I'd love for maybe Skype 5.0 to be a release that came out across all platforms and let me share the excitement with Skype users across all the different platforms.

Probably not. But it would be nice.

Meanwhile, if you are a Windows user, you can get 4.1. And if you are a Mac user, you can safely keep ignoring Skype... no update for you, yet.

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Technorati Tags: skype

Speaking at the Enterprise 2.0 conference this week in Boston

2009-06-22T07:34:49-04:00

This week, I (Dan York) am at the Enterprise 2.0 conference today through Thursday at the Westin Boston Waterfront in downtown Boston. The keynote panel I'm on, The Future of Social Messaging in the Enterprise, doesn't happen until Wednesday morning at 9:15am... but I came down early as a good number of the sessions are of interest.

If you are at the show and would like to say hello, please do email me. I expect to also be posting updates to Twitter on both danyork and voxeo.

You can also follow along with the conference "backchannel" on Twitter by following the hashtag "#e2conf". Here's an easy search URL:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=e2conf

I expect to have a very cool Voxeo announcement out on Wednesday, too... but more on that then... ;-)

P.S. And why do I do the silly "I (Dan York)" construction at the beginning of this post? Because I see my content being scraped and so "I" alone doesn't make sense in other places the content winds up :-)

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Technorati Tags: e2conf, voxeo, danyork, dan york, enterprise 2.0, boston

For a brief bit - Skype video calls from 30,000+ feet on Southwest Air WiFi!

2009-06-15T09:11:33-04:00

Upon entering the Southwest Airlines plane this morning on my flight to Orlando to visit Voxeo's headquarters, I immediately noticed a "WiFi zone" sign on a column by the entry door. Naturally, I had to pull out my Macbook Pro and give it a whirl... and, given the issue of Skype-blocking last summer... try out Skype.

To my great surprise and pleasure, it worked great. (For a little while - see below.) Here's Bruce Lowekamp:

As you may or may not be able to see in the graphic, our call had been up for 3 minutes and 33 seconds when I snapped the picture.

Unfortunately, I didn't have easy access to my headset, so I couldn't really have a great conversation. The ambient background noise in the plane was really too much for my voice to be heard unless I bent down toward the microphone... and likewise even with the MacBook Pro volume up all the way it was a bit hard to hear Bruce unless I bent down toward the laptop.

And, of course, I didn't really want to annoy my fellow passengers. :-)

You can see on the right the technical stats for the call. Packet loss was surprisingly low. At the time I captured this window, I had a 3% receiving packet loss... but through much of our call that was hovering down around 0%. A roundtrip of 789ms is, of course, rather entertaining.

Sadly, though, the connectivity didn't last forever. After about maybe 30 minutes of trying this out and making video calls to different people, my Skype account went offline.

COMPLETELY offline.

No instant messaging/chat, either. Which is exceedingly annoying.

Out in Twitter-land, Fred Posner asked Southwest if they were blocking VoIP, to which Southwest replied:

@fredposner yep...we do.

Bummer.

Actually, what annoys me more is Southwest blocking Skype IM. Other than the novelty today, I don't know that I really want to be making calls from the plane... although I could see the usefulness from time to time.

What I do want is the Skype IM... since I use Skype IM heavily for communication with people including my team. It seems, though, that my Skype connection is completely blocked. Which is unfortunate, given that all my other IM services seem to be working fine.

Southwest, can you please figure out how to block the Skype voice and video, but still leave us the chat?

Despite the VoIP-blocking, though, it was seriously great to be able to use my laptop and work online during the flight. Even better, on this flight the Southwest WiFi was free while they are apparently testing it out. I did a couple of speed tests from DSL Reports, naturally, and seemed to be getting around 3Mbps down and around 200-250 Kbps up. Here's one of the results:

What a crazy world we're now in... 3 Mbps downlink... on a plane!

P.S. And of course I had to snap a picture like this:

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Technorati Tags: internet, connectivity, southwest, wifi, travel, voip, skype, airtravel, airplane

Video: Sir Terry Matthews on startups, Canada, what's exciting...

2009-05-15T14:30:46-04:00

By way of a tweet from Matt Roberts, a friend from my Mitel days, I learned of this video interview with Sir Terry Matthews on Canada's Business News Network:

Sir Terry Matthews speaks to BNN about the state of the industry in Canada, why he loves home-grown startups and what he sees as the next big thing in technology.

If you've not heard him before, the interview is a good view into the passion, enthusiasm and charisma that keeps him starting up companies all over the place. The report says he's now up to 80 companies or so that he's started up... and I'm not surprised.

His overall message, though, is what he has been consistent saying for many years now... we are in an age where incredible broadband capacity is coming online - as that happens, what will we do to make use of all that bandwidth?

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Technorati Tags: terry matthews, canada

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