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April 08, 2003
The Pulver Report - April 8, 2003
The Pulver Report - April 8, 2003 Issue
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In this Issue:
- Heard on the Net
- Free World Dialup FCC Petition: Update
- Reality TV @ Spring 2003 VON
- Spring 2003 VON Tradeshow & Expo Recap
- We need to better Communicate with Government Agencies regarding VoIP
- Questions for the Readers of the Pulver Report
- VON Europe 2003: "Early Bird" Discount ends on April 25th.
- Call for Speakers - Fall 2003 VON: Deadline is June 28th.
- pulver.com 2003 Conference Calendar
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Heard on the Net
The overall buzz at Spring 2003 VON was positive and as some observed
"It seems the nuclear winter [for telecom] is over." While our Spring
VON community of 1,800+ people wasn't the same 4,000 people we had the
last time we visited the San Jose Convention Center in the Spring of 2000,
I left Spring 2003 VON feeling positive and re-energized about the future
of our industry. The second coming of the VoIP Industry is well
underway. :-)
Business Week named me one of their five April 2003 "tech gurus" earlier
this month. Please feel free to visit: ( http://tinyurl.com/8nzn ) and
let me know what you think of the story.
- Companies on the Move:
UTStarcom recently acquired CommWorks for a deal valued
at US$ 100 million.
Cisco recently acquired SignalWorks in a deal valued at
US$ 13.5 million.
Sentito recently closed $14 million of Series B funding.
- People on the Move:
David Gurle recently left Microsoft and joined Reuters.
Jonathan Christensen announced plans to leave Microsoft.
Ed Guy left EMC Software and joined pulver.com.
George Kloak left RADVISION and joined New Media Technology as
Senior Vice President of Business Development.
To be listed in a future "People on the Move" column, please
email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your position.
Please refer to: "People on the Move" in the subject.
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Free World Dialup FCC Petition: Update
On April 2, 2003 it became clearer that the fight to keep Internet
Telephony Regulation Free inside of the United States will continue to be
an uphill battle.
For starters, both the States of Michigan and Minnesota filed
against the Free World Dialup petition. Their premise seemed a little bit
out of the movie "Minority Report." These states joined the list of
entities against the FWD petition which today include: BellSouth, SBC, the
USTA and FBI/DoJ.
Those in favor of the FWD Petition include: AT&T, Qwest, Worldcom,
Global Crossing, Cisco and the EFF.
The FBI/DoJ reply comments prompted some recent news stories, including
a story in SecurityFocus posted to:
All of the reply comments, including our April 2nd reply, can be read by
visiting:
03-45 in the Proceeding Box.
If there are Pulver Report readers from either the states of MI or MN who
feel FWD should not be regulated in their states at this time, it couldn't
hurt if you made this point well known. The Michigan reply was filed by
the Michigan Attorney General's office on behalf of the Michigan Public
Service Commission and the Minnesota reply was filed by the Minnesota
Department of Commerce.
As a side note, special thanks to everyone who reached out in February and
made your points with your respective State PUC offices. I heard back last
Monday night (March 31st) during Spring 2003 VON that your voice and
actions were noticed by NARUC. Thank you for your support.
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Reality TV @ Spring 2003 VON
It felt a little surrealistic but when I met two of the people from
NASH Entertainment responsible for casting NBC-TV's new show
"Who Wants to Marry my Dad" I realized that they did their
demographic research when they ended up at Spring 2003 VON on Thursday,
April 3rd on their quest to find candidate single dads to be on their show.
I spent a little time with the casting team walking them around the exhibit
floor. If I thought about it in advance, it would have been fun to tape
them interviewing some of the delegates and watching the expression on
people's faces when they realized that this wasn't a joke but in fact
reality TV coming out to VON.
I'm told they need to cast the show in the next few days, but if there
are any Pulver Report readers who are single dads from the US with
teenage kids, please feel free to visit:
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Spring 2003 VON Tradeshow & Expo Recap
After months of planning, The Spring 2003 VON Tradeshow & Expo took place
March 31st to April 3rd at the San Jose convention Center in San Jose, CA.
Given everything going on in the world at the time Spring VON commenced,
it was great to see that over 1,800 came out to be counted, including
some familiar faces that had not been seen for a few years. In some ways
it felt like a high school reunion but more enjoyable than I can remember
any reunion being.
Special thanks to our speakers, delegates, exhibitors and sponsors who
helped make Spring VON 2003 happen. I realize I took a gamble when I
re-acquired VON from Key3Media in January and I'm glad I did. One of my
goals is to grow VON over the next 12-18 months into something bigger and
for this to happen, I need to engage the help of the entire community.
Of all of our recent VONs, more business seemed to be taking place than
in the past and it seemed that we had moved as an industry "from theory"
"to practice." Spring VON brought out for us a record number of telecom
and financial analysts and industry and business press. Another good
sign was the return of the Venture Community and the Investment Bankers.
It looks like Wall Street is getting ready to take another look at the
IP Communications space.
I thank Microsoft for choosing to use their Keynote at the Spring 2003 VON
Tradeshow & Expo to be the platform for their announcement of a
Windows CE .NET VoIP solution that enables the integration of voice
communications into a variety of IP-based client devices and services
for desktops and mobile phones. Personally, I thought their announcement
was real cool and I look forward to the introduction of new products
which will happen as a result of their announcement.
This was the first VON that I spent a significant amount of time inside
a booth on the exhibit floor when I wasn't in meetings, so my perspective
from this event was different than past events. It was a little difficult
to juggle the role of being a host to someone who wanted demonstrate a
concept for a new consumer electronics product but I tried. The end
result for me was a case of "VONBlur."
For me, Spring 2003 VON was the VON which introduced the US$ 75
IP phone. With a little cost reduction, I expect to see the US$ 50
price barrier broken before the end of this year. This should be
a welcome sign to those trying to bring IP Communications to consumers.
This also means that we are 18-24 months or so away from a time that
VoIP technologies start to become embedded in everyday consumer
electronic products.
I found Bob Pepper's "FCC Town Hall Meeting" on Monday night to be
especially interesting and also enjoyed the Regulatory Update panel that
took place the following afternoon. Some of our conference sessions were
standing room only, including our SIP Tutorials. WiFi VoIP continued
to be one of the buzzy subjects at VON and I expect this to continue
the rest of the year.
While my attempt to covert the VON Community into a community of
bloggers was not successful this time around, I will work harder on
getting more people to blog Fall 2003 VON in Boston.
For a good example of what a VONBlog can look like, please visit
the blog of Charles Gerlach where he commented on both the
General Session at Spring VON and FastNet Futures.
His blog is available at:
Those of you who missed out on the great content presented at
Spring 2003 VON can still order the conference CD online by
visiting: ( http://pulver.com/von/register.html ).
At our "All Conference" party the Herding Cats maintained their
reputation of being one of the best cover bands in the USA. Look
for the Herding Cats to be back at future pulver.com events.
This week I've started working on the schedule for The Fall 2003
VON Tradeshow & Expo. Please feel free to suggest people and topics
that you would like to see covered at Fall 2003 VON.
News links from Spring 2003 VON Tradeshow & Expo include:
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We need to better Communicate with Government Agencies regarding VoIP
As the IP Communications Industry starts to goes mainstream, it is
important for everyone to be aware of the "old rules" and keep a watchful
eye to everyone who VoIP disrupts along the way. As an industry we need to
figure out how to deal with the legacy thinking and related regulations
and the overall resistance from some people to change.
The more "real" the IP Communication industry becomes, the harder and
nastier the issues will be and the larger the potential exists for future
fights.
VoIP is on the FCC's radar and agenda for sometime in 2003. Many people
from both the US and around the world will be looking to the FCC's actions
as guidance as to how VoIP should be treated from a worldwide regulatory
perspective. My hope is that the FCC will continue their policy to
forbear from regulation.
911 and VoIP is an on-going issue. So is E911 on for Wireless.
A "Consumer Communications" bill is now being looked at in various States.
NATs may one day in the future become illegal.
Now may be the time for some of us to rally together and create a real
presence in Washington, D.C. to help lobby some of our ideas/concepts.
Please let me know if you are interested in supporting such activities
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Questions for the Readers of the Pulver Report
During Spring 2003 VON, the following are the five questions I asked
those who gave Industry Perspectives to address:
1. Now that VoIP has gone mainstream, how has this effected your business
plans?
2. What are you doing differently?
3. How do you plan on capitalizing on the mainstream acceptance of VoIP
Technologies?
4. What have you seen in terms of actual, concrete deployments and money
being
spent on VoIP, vs. evals, RFPs and contract 'announcements'?
5. What is the actual, solid traction?
When you have a moment, please feel free to share your answers to
these questions with me.
I am compiling the results and will look to share my findings in a
future 2003 Pulver Report.
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VON Europe 2003: "Early Bird" Discount ends on April 25th.
VON Europe 2003 Tradeshow & Expo will be taking place in London June
9-12th. "Early Bird" registration ends on April 25th. To take advantage of
our special registration pricing, please visit:
( http://pulver.com/europe2003/register.html )
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Call for Speakers - Fall 2003 VON: Deadline is June 28th.
We have just started working on the schedule and sessions for
Fall 2003 VON which will be taking place September 22-25th at the
Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Please feel free to email:
the content which you would like to see covered in Boston.
Our formal "call for speakers" is open now and the deadline for
submitting speaking proposals is June 28th
Please feel free to submit your speaking proposal to:
( http://pulver.com/speak/submit.html ).
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pulver.com 2003 Conference Calendar
( http://pulver.com/conference )
"Events for the Communications Industry" (tm)
June 9-12 - VON Europe 2003,
Olympia Conference Centre, London, UK
( http://pulver.com/europe2003 )
July 8-9 - Supernova 2003, Washington D.C.
( http://pulver.com/supernova )
July 22-24 - 2003 SIP Developers Conference, Melville NY
September
22-25 - Fall 2003 VON Tradeshow & Expo, Hynes Convention Center,
Boston, MA
( http://pulver.com/von )
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The Pulver Report to: jeff@pulver.com.
Jeff Pulver Tel. +1.631.961.8950
The Pulver Report Fax. +1.631.396.3996
April 8, 2003 http://pulver.com/reports
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