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May 12, 2008
Still looking for Innovation in Voice Services:
Since July 2007, when I attended and spoke at IPTComm 2007, an event organized by Henning Schulzrinne and Greg Bond on a panel called: “Where are the VoIP Services?”, I have been looking for an answer to this question.
These days a number of people in the VoIP Industry are selling and launching what can be distilled down to be simple variations on Call Forwarding and/or Voicemail. Sometimes this comes in the form of a platform pitch which include APIs and a call for developers to use the platform to enable such services. But in any case, this does not empower the kinds of innovative services I would have expected to see. Not in 2008.
Yes, “Voice” remains the killer application in this sector. And “voice” and voice related services may be the only killer application in this sector. Only time will tell.
And while this is all true, what I continue to look for was looking for is something different. Something cool. Something that can truly help to redefine communications.
I am looking for people who have the guts to take advantage of IP based platforms to deliver innovative services. What I continue to see are people who 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.
As time goes on, one thing that is clear to me is that 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 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 seeds 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 my offer for Entrepreneurs who are looking at the Communications 2.0 space: 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, twitter, Facebook, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on May 12, 2008 10:49 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
@Jack Jeff knows Sitofono very well. Thanks for the tip. Luca
Posted by: luca Filigheddu at May 13, 2008 07:03 AM
Rob Hagens was the original engineering lead of Internet MCI. He was among the senior most members of the technical team that built Level 3. Among his claims to fame was leading the development of Level 3's Vipor softswitch.
Rob and a team around him used their knowledge of VoIP architectures to build a solution for video. See managedvideoblog.com for an overview of the MVaaS (or Managed Video as a Service) space. Rob's specific implementation is www.envysion.com.
Posted by: Dan Caruso at May 12, 2008 07:55 PM
I'm not sure I'm reading you correctly, but you seem to be using an unnecessarily narrow scope here. There are all kinds of companies innovating in this area.
Communications 2.0 is not about VOIP specifically, is it? Maybe there's a big market for VOIP specific APIs, but Communications 2.0 is as much about adding voice to apps as it is about adding functionality to voice.
Posted by: Khyle at May 12, 2008 02:32 PM
Try Sitòfono: http://www.sitofono.com
Posted by: Jack Black at May 12, 2008 01:10 PM