« Watch #140conf Tel Aviv - LIVE on December 6th | Main | Guest Blogger: The Business Culture of Social Media - Steve Parrott »
December 07, 2009
Introducing HD Telecom and the HDConnect Market Trial
HD communications luminaries including executives from Polycom, Dialogic, WydeVoice, and DSP Group will help launch the HDConnect Market Trial in Washington, DC on December 10, 2009. HDConnect will host a seminar on the emerging HD Telecom category and introduce the HDConnect trial from 10:00AM to Noon. (Contact Daniel Berninger -dan@danielberninger.com for logistics.) The choice of Washington, DC arises from a belief HD offers common ground in the telecom policy wars. It brings me back to Washington, DC for the first time since the FCC's 2004 adoption of the "Pulver Order" declaring FWD an unregulated information service.
HD provides a way for incumbents to reverse the decline of voice revenues and a basis for continuous improvement in telecom. It provides a way for everyone to start rowing in the same direction. Catching up with the rest of the world in broadband will not restore the country's telecom leadership credentials while a mandate embracing high definition very well could. The US can embrace HD now or create another category where the the country finds itself playing catch-up. HD already enjoys support in the rest of the world with France Telecom counting 500,000 customers and Orange making HD available to cellular customers in the entire country of Moldova.
The first generation of HD offers twice the fidelity of standard definition and the first substantial advance in voice quality since the 1950's. The effort involved in setting up HD rewards the caller with an experience that more closely approximates an in-person conversation. Voice communication remains a foundation for nearly all economic activity, so improving voice quality offers the same economic benefits motivating the Obama administration's embrace of broadband. Given half the world's oil consumption goes to moving people from one place to another, improving on standard definition telephone calls reduces the need for travel which in turn serves to reduce global
warming.
HD sets up a change in paradigm that goes beyond simply improving voice quality. HD finally ends the flawed assumption built into the PSTN of equality between all users and uses. Everyone in the world using a telephone suffers the same voice quality without regard to need or willingness to pay. President Obama does not enjoy better voice quality in conversations with world leaders than teenagers planning their social agenda. This is even true for the hotline between the White House and Moscow set up to reduce the threat of nuclear war. HD represents the first attempt to align service quality and need since the invention of the telephone. This in turn represents the best prospect for restoring growth of voice services which remain 2/3's of telephone company revenues.
The benefits of HD calling require both parties to have HD devices, where as, pitches for cheap minutes or cool devices need only address one side of a call. The HDConnect Market Trial addresses the two sided nature of the problem by framing the HD offer as a hotline. The PSTN equality assumption does to reflect a reality where the desire and
frequency of communication can vary dramatically. A lot of relationships are sufficiently strong to justify the time and money necessary to setup a HD hotline. HD typically gets mplemented as a VoIP service with global unmetered termination, so an HD hotline can prove the least expensive option in the case of heavy usage or international calling.
HD moved from being a secret to getting on agenda of every conference in telecom over the last twelve months. This counts as incremental progress, but the goal in 2010 is to convert the curiosity into deployment. The promise of HD deserves the attention of everyone in the telecom ecosystem from the incumbent wired and wireless service providers to the independents and cable companies to the telecom regulators and consumer advocates. December 10th happens to coincide with the 23rd Annual FCBA Chairman's Dinner at the Washington Hilton. The event provides the only time each year where the entire telecom policy community gathers in one place. HDConnect reserved a table at the event in hopes of hearing something other than business as usual.
Request meetings with representatives of HDConnect, more info about the trial, or RSVP for the December 10th HD Telecom seminar via email to Daniel Berninger - dan@danielberninger.com.
Tags: HDVoIP, HD Communications Summit, voip, Jeff Keni Pulver
Posted by jeff on December 7, 2009 11:13 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos