« The Nomadic Camera Project: | Main | Offline Comment from a friend regarding my "Call for More Innovation in Voice Services" »
July 23, 2007
A Call for More Innovation in Voice Services:
I have a challenge for innovative disruptors with regards to the voice applications industry, a “homework assignment.”
On Friday I attended and spoke at IPTComm 2007, an event organized by Henning Schulzrinne and Greg Bond. I was invited to be part of a panel called: “Where are the VoIP Services?” and the panel included: Chakrapani Gorrepati (Senior Architect – Vonage), Jiri Kuthan (Tekelec - AVP Next Generation Networks and father of OpenSER), Jonathan Rosenberg (Cisco Fellow - Voice Technology Group - Cisco Systems and someone who knows how to SIP), Henning Schulzrinne (Professor and Chair - Dept of Computer Science - Columbia University and another person who knows how to SIP) and Brian Whitton (Executive Director of the Access Network Design & Integration organization - Verizon Labs who took on the role of “Talking Suit”) and myself.
The audience was a mixture of academics, industry executives and students of the communications revolution from Europe and the States. There were a number of VON alumni in attendance and a few people who I had never met but with whom I shared an email with over the years.
I was the third person to speak, after Jiri and Chakrapani gave their best answer to Henning’s question of “Where are the VoIP Services?” From my perspective, I didn’t want to hear about a service that was simply a variation on Call Forwarding and/or Voicemail. What I what I was looking for was something different. Something cool. Something that truly helped to redefine communications. But I didn’t hear about anything remotely interesting. So, I answered the question by suggesting to my fellow panelists and to the delegates in attendance that “they had no guts. “ That they failed in talking advantage of the IP based platform presented to them to deliver innovative services and instead chose to take the easy way out and simply use their platform to replicate the same services that TDM based systems gave us. That they decided to build equipment for the telcos where the money was and in the process sacrificed empowering the communications revolution and our ability to deliver services never before possible without the advent of IP.
And after listening to Brian Whitton speak, it became clear to me there is still a great opportunity to disrupt the communications industry, if for no other reason, than because of the amount of business processes in place at Verizon (and other incumbent Telcos) before a new service is deployed. In fact, in the time it takes for the financial analysts at Verizon work out the operating budgets for doing a voice over ATM rollout and the time engineering spends trying to justify the “risks” for deploying an IP Voice solution, the seed of a communications revolution could planted and sown. All it takes are like minded people who want to change the way we communicate and the guts to take on the status-quo. And what is better than the present time to reboot and restart the Internet Communications revolution?
So here is a homework assignment for would be communication industry Entrepreneurs: Think about presence and voice and instant messaging, take a look at the APIs of twitter and Facebook and pitch me on the service that you want to create. Those who get my attention might end up with the early-early seed capital needed to turn their dream into a reality.
Tags: voip, Henning Schulzrinne, Greg Bond, Chakrapani Gorrepati, Jiri Kuthan, Jonathan Rosenberg, Brian Whitton, Vonage, twitter, Facebook, Cisco, Columbia University, Tekelec, Jeff Pulver
Share this post:
Digg |
del.icio.us |
Reddit |
Newsvine |
Google Bookmark |
Yahoo MyWeb |
StumbleUpon
Posted by jeff on July 23, 2007 07:32 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Internet TV Online Guide @ Network2.tv | Voice on the Net Conference | Video on the Net Conference
Comments
Regarding comment of Jay Hodges above
> Why don't people send voice messages instead of
> emails? ... Because it is currently inconvenient
> to record, save, send, or attach a wav file
That's exactly what we are trying to do: to combine recording and uploading, so people just insert links to voice files to their email messages.
Posted by: Henry Brier at August 30, 2007 10:34 AM
Hello Jeff,
as your blog is quite US centric I would like to recommend a German company: 4S newcom (http://www.4snewcom.de/) from Berlin connectsixed line telephony, internet and cell phones. Thus facilitating entirely new services and unimagined cost savings. Fixed line calls are answered by a server and redirected at no cost to mobile phones. International cell phone calls are channeled through the internet and nearly free.
I could recently get to know two products of them:
1.) blue4S is the is the world’s smallest IP PBX, which is booted off an iPod Shuffle to a Mac mini. It's much more versatile and ten times cheaper than a conventional PBX. With few clicks a system administrator can configure inbound numbers, users, extensions or advanced features like auto attendant or conferencing. The PBX is configured over a simple and intuitive web front-end. In default environments, the PBX will operate strictly from boot medium (iPod Shuffle or Compact Flash) with no need for a hard disk. This means no moving parts, which is important for mission-critical systems such as telecommunication.
2.) 4S FMCd converges fixed and mobile VoIP, making use of Wifi handsets or flat-rate tariffs - with almost no costs on the mobile phone’s bill. Calls to fixed office numbers are routed for free over a GSM module to mobile phones. International mobile phone calls go trough a cheap local number which is redirected nearly for free to an international destination.
4S newcom's core software, 4S ITSP solution, is one of the most advanced IP PBXes in the market. Its code was originally developed for the world's best IP phones from Snom. Therefore it's super small, flexible and extendable. 4S newcom is a spin off from Snom, which inherited and further develops it's software business.
You look for "innovations from people NOT involved in a startup yet". That's quite difficult. If someone has a great idea why should he wait to implement it? I would definitely recommend to have a look a 4Snewcom.
Best regards,
Markus Göbel,
German VoIP blogger
(http://www.goebel.net/technews/index.html)
Posted by: Markus Goebel at July 27, 2007 03:31 PM
I am personally missing a "Hosted Fring with Grandcentral's filter rules and international mobile callforward over GSM". Hopefully at least in parts something like this gets developed soon.
I explain it here:
http://www.goebel.net/technews/2007/07/my-answer-to-jeff-pulvers-call-for-more.html
Posted by: Markus Goebel at July 27, 2007 03:08 PM
have a few ideas to throw around, beyond the scope of this entry , please feel free tocontact above email.
Posted by: lee barley at July 25, 2007 06:59 PM
I thought some readers of this story may be interested in my open source softswitch (FreeSWITCH). FreeSWITCH is a potential tool for doing lots of disruptive innovation. We have several early adopters creating services ranging from embedded devices to voice dialing and other things of that nature.
The software is licensed MPL so it has little license restrictions and runs on unix windows and mac.
We are currently in beta and The release of the first stable version is coming probably by the end of the summer.
Posted by: Anthony Minessale at July 24, 2007 07:48 PM
guts is good innovation with guts is better but to get to the future we will have to suspend our mind and dive into the unimaginable and somewhere between where we are today and where ever we will be tomorrow we will find a convergence of the unimaginable meeting the impossible and that my friend is the challenge to suspend our minds and look back at the future - iphone and blackberry have the seeds of the future but are a long way from tomorrow - geo (at) diarRHETORICS.com
Posted by: geo at July 24, 2007 01:00 PM
I had the similar experiences as you during last weeks mobile monday. The service providers were keen on keeping their walled gardens, and they were pushing dicey justifications regarding spamming their subscribers with advertisements. That provoked me to think something about their spamming atleast. I could think through some points that i jotted down on my blog at http://jatspeak.com/blog/?p=12
Posted by: Ashish at July 24, 2007 03:19 AM
Hey Jeff, long time no talk. Have you seen YackPack's Walkie Talkie? A bit like my old Lipstream stuff...
Posted by: Bret Savage at July 23, 2007 06:49 PM
@Jay Hodges:
Which is preferable - the whole universe using a crippled version of a feature/service or a limited group realizing the benefit of the full feature set? I go for the latter because time and time again, the technology allows others to catch up.
Posted by: Aswath at July 23, 2007 05:37 PM
Why don't people send voice messages instead of emails? instead of IM's? instead of having to type a "referral" why can't we just record one and attach it? Because it is currently inconvenient to record, save, send, or attach a wav file, and microphones do not come standard with the average person's computer. Start at the root of the issue, or your target audience has been drastically reduced by people who already own/use the equipment.
The obvious solution is for a central server to handle the hard parts and the user to use the device most people have... the cell phone. How easy can we make the normal communication process for the average user...
Posted by: Jay Hodges at July 23, 2007 04:50 PM
I share yor interest in developing a new facet to this emerging communications platform. In my view, necessity is the best 'mother of invention' and not marketing. What problems can we solve by combining existing technologies into a communications platform.
How about money? Not yours, but transacting money over the phone during the conversation? Why can't I call the pizza place, order the pizza from a real person (I still prefer real people, call me ol'fashund) and then press a keycode to send the funds to that same destination number? I could buy vacations, Harry Potter books, whatever. Combine an online wallet (not my bank account info) and my phone service and maybe add a bio-ID marker - like those infra red thumbprint readers Compaq used to send with their workstations.
Easier said than done?
Let me know what you think. When it comes to new ideas, all my friends say I'm full of it.
JT
Posted by: John Tobin at July 23, 2007 03:04 PM
So far I think both of you are missing the point.
What I am looking for are new ideas and new innovations. From people NOT involved in a startup yet. Looking for people who have the seed of an idea in their mind that are waiting to take the next step and make their dreams come true...that's were I come in. That's what this challenge is all about.
Posted by: Jeff Pulver at July 23, 2007 12:28 PM
Great article! I think you're completely right, and I believe as you hint that they key is in the mash-up of the online services we use. Not only taking them to a mobile phone browser or giving them a mobile phone interface but actually combining the voice services with these.
It seems the guys here at Rebtel seem to be thinking hard about what can really be the next step and how to get there. I have got the impression that they are looking forward quite far into what we can do next.
I hope you keep us updated on your challenge to the community.
Posted by: Linus Kendall at July 23, 2007 12:22 PM
Refreshing article and highly relevant to us! Mr Pulver please take a look at our website, and if interested drop me a note. We would be delighted to give you an account on our SaaS Unified Communications System. Furthermore, we are just raising another small round of finance and are keen to talk to imaginative and intelligent investors - long since given up on trying to get Telcos and Mobile Operators to understand the opportunity a fully developed system like ours could afford them to control the desktop and mobile with their name and raise the stakes from being a commoditized supplier to developing powerful relationships with their users.
kind regards
Symon Blomfield
CEO Presence Networks Limited (UK)
Posted by: Symon Blomfield at July 23, 2007 10:20 AM