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February 04, 2007
Q. When will Service Providers offer Innovative Services?
A. Only when they have to. Or in other words, when their customers demand it.
Between the words of Aswath, Andy and Mr. Blog, it seems that some of my friends are starting to realize something that I've been in search of since 2002.
Over these years, while the enabling communication services platforms have continued to evolve, the reason innovative services were not deployed has nothing to do with how difficult they were to deploy, but rather a lack of consumer demand. Just because someone provides a great toolkit does not mean that there is someone else who is excited to use the applications that are created from leveraging the tools.
So if someone from within this community is expecting service providers to leverage the tools and applications that they have built, they need to lead the way, validate the consumer demand and find a friendly network which is willing to be used in such a way to showcase the innovation. From there, traction is a necessity so when there are thousands, then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and then eventually millions of people subscribing to the innovate “purple” service, someone from the outside will pay attention. Yes, I am exaggerating a bit here, but the point it is that unless the "cool new service" proves it has the traction, it will never move from the PowerPoint slide decks from the innovators into the marketing materials of the relevant service providers. With service providers, for the most part, the services offered are the ones needed to satisfy the perceived needs of their targeted mainstream customers.
A long time ago I suggested that the RBOCs (when there were RBOCs) should consider empowering consumers to upload scripts that managed the call flow logic of residential phone calls. A concept that was difficult but possible back then, and much more doable today, but I don’t expect to ever see such a service become available to the mainstream consumer because most people don’t know and don’t care what this means and there isn’t anyone out there today promoting the benefits of why consumers should want to have control of their call flows. So, guess what? Nothing changes.
Yes, in some markets it is possible to create a new breakfast cereal and get people to eat it, but that is the exception, more than the rule at least in how most consumers react to new communication services.
These days, Ringtones remains a huge multi-billion dollar business but it was a business that happened by accident, and not one that was initially driven by the cellular providers. And with the advent of Camera Phones, five years ago, I never would have guessed that a factor I would seriously take into consideration when purchasing a new cell phone was: the pixel resolution of the camera; did it come with a built-in flash?; And how much internal storage capabilities did it have?
I just found my notes that I used during for my talk at Fall 2002 VON that are relevant for this discussion. For people who were not involved in the IP Communications industry back than, 2002 was not a great year for many of us. In fact, back then it took a lot of courage back then to stay the course and follow the dream of what IP Communications would evolve into. Four and a half years later, my wish list referenced below still remains very much “a wish list.” (And yes, I have been pushing for Voice over WiFi since 2002)
Notes from Fall 2002 VON: Carpe Diem!
In the weeks leading up to Fall 2002 VON I spent a lot of time looking at the state of where thing were, worried about what to say about where things are going, and what I realized is that the same fundamentals that made it clear that the Internet would absorb voice as just another application still remain.
”Our industry doesn't need hype to survive. No one doubts the future of communications is IP communications and I believe that IP Communications is unstoppable. But what the industry still needs are customers, and to get customers we should consider starting with a clean sheet of paper. Why a clean sheet a paper? Looking at our recent past, gateways to the PSTN provided bridges but not much innovation and in fact created bottlenecks. The opportunity we have is to enhance communication between people and we should not be limited by dialing locations and phone numbers. To date, we have been limited in our thinking based on what previously existed rather than what was possible. We were limited by the artificial barriers of being as good as the PSTN when in fact we could always (in theory) deliver something better. We need to be able to build and create without regard to legacy protocols and legacy requirements. Having a clean sheet of paper would give us the opportunity to have a fresh start and to try again to take advantage of IP. It is up to us as an industry to harness the real power of IP and convert its potential energy into kinetic energy. As an industry we still need to take chances and we must continue to experiment.
In the October 2002 issue of Red Herring I found the following quote which seems to make this point: "When Visionary people use different technologies as interchangable parts, unexpected and important combinations results. The Wright Brothers used bicycle parts to build their airplane."
We can't be afraid to take chances and make mistakes. We still need to stumble across our future together and dare to be different and dare to make the mistakes that will turn into tomorrow's inventions and innovations...We need to become viral again! We as an industry need to go back to a time when internet telephony was viral and people were scared of our power, of our future. The community building power first demonstrated by iPhone back in 1995. For 2003 another viral opportunity exists, this time look for the growth of dedicated consumer electronic devices that deliver VoIP over WiFi. Our future is bigger than the past, 95% of what Communications will be was developed in the last six years. Looking at my wish list of what I believe the Industry needs, my short list includes:
- A royalty free, single variable bit rate adaptive codec from dialup to broadband.
- Low cost, low end IP edge devices.
- Service Providers to deploy an architecture that distributes service execution.
- Take advantage of the great QoS available today on the Internet's backbone.
- IPv6 needs to be supported and rolled out.
- The Purple Minutes battle cry has yet to be truly heard.
- Drop the IP in front of IP Communications since we really represent the future of the Communications Industry.
Carpe Diem!
Seize the Day!”
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My words of advise to everyone delivering APIs and platforms for service providers in 2007: Carpe Diem! Seize the Day!
Tags: VON, voip, Purple Minutes, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on February 4, 2007 08:40 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
how pricing can b done for qualitative services and how to know about when to develop new services in the market
Posted by: savindra at November 29, 2007 08:06 AM
re: ViiBlast.
Another fine tool for the spamming community.
Posted by: The Censory at September 14, 2007 06:27 PM
My point is that the PhoneGnome platform for third-party providers transforms every network into the "friendly network which is willing to be used in such a way to showcase the innovation".
It provides a practical means for service providers to market test their innovations with an addressable footprint of hundreds of millions of users, regardless of underlying network (or telephone service) provider, thereby tranforming an "unfriendly network" into a "friendly network" with no major up-front build-out costs, and without ANY negotiations with, approvals of, or sanctioning by the underlying telco.
Posted by: David Beckemeyer at February 10, 2007 03:09 PM
Okay,
Talk about innovation, Tool-Kits and a service for the end users..
Take a few minutes, play with our application www.ViiBlast.com ( tool Kit), and get back to me... ( Once account is created, then go to your WEB enabled Cell Phone and try it out!.
I belive we do have a GREAT NEW SERVICE for the end user, and Commercially CORP America will use it to provide the end users access to " item/Product or EVENT "X".
PS: the Developer of this is the same person that Brought us "WARBIRDS" in 95-98 1st ever Massive MultiPlayer Game for users over the Internet.
Amado C. Salinas II
760-835-0739
www.ViiBlast.com
Posted by: Amado Salinas II at February 6, 2007 12:08 PM
There is no such thing as Voice 2.0. Saying so assumes that one we are building on Voice 1.0 and two, voice communications differ from other kinds of communications. We actually should use the term CoIP (Communication or Collaboration over IP) which expresses our future communications better. I elaborate on this in my blog at http://flatplanetphone.com/wordpress/?p=38
Maybe Jeff can change VON to CON ?? Doesn't sound so good :-)
Posted by: Moshe Maeir at February 5, 2007 03:05 PM
Jeff:
All these may years after you and I sponsored a contest for innovative VoIP applications, I've come to think there won't be a Voice 2.0. Not discouraged about this because I think it's not needed.
As you like to say, "voice is just another application on the Internet". Innovation in mobile phones has made it possible for us to run other communications applications on the same device.
The role of VoIP, I think, is to make it possible for us to concentrate our voice communication on one or two IP devices that travel with us (so we don't need complicated call routing logic) and to continue to drastically bring down cost and reduce distance sensitivity in pricing. Cheaper voice (much thanks to VoIP)is essentially a new application in the developing world.
More thoughts on all that here http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/02/voice_20_fugget.html
Posted by: Tom Evslin at February 4, 2007 02:49 PM
I distinctly remember reading this back in 2002 via Pulver Reports, especially because I had to look up the meaning of the phrase. With the passage of time, it is worthwhile to look at that list, because the industry should have treated it like Hilbert's problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems Here is my take:
1. The codec of choice should be Speex. But does not much exposure among thought leaders. Actually we should extend the scope to Ogg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg with the video codec, Theora.
2. At that time it may have been appropriate to restrict our attention to the cost of the device. Now we should be demanding sophisticated user interface - Moor's law will take care of the cost.
3. Who cares about service providers, be they old guard or Young Turks. Power to the ends.
6. Amen to Purple minutes/applications.
Posted by: Aswath at February 4, 2007 10:18 AM
The one thing thats missing from that list that is more relevant than ever is that the law - particularly surrounding copyright and intellectual property - needs to catch up with the technology. Part of that means that technology has to become so accessible and easy that lawmakers and their staff members can quickly and intuitively grasp the technology, and part of that means that companies need to grasp the revenue potentials of new models, rather than try to prop up old, dying ones.
For our part, especially in the world of podcasting, that means making content that is not only good, but easy to get, and growing audience in as many ways as possible, so that more and more constituent voters are behind the technology. Only then can we influence the law.
Posted by: Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast at February 4, 2007 09:57 AM