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October 31, 2003

Trying to find the cure for: “Too Much Asynchronous Communication Syndrome”

During the work day, if you wish to contact someone, it is generally pretty easy these days to send just about anyone an email or try to leave them a message on their office voicemail. What exactly happens to that message once it is left is generally never known by the sender and in polite terms it becomes the burden of the recipient to deal with it, whether they want to or not.

While this is a basic assumption which one can generally assume, the reality is that when your message isn’t returned promptly, you never know if it was ever received at all. Does the person who you just left a message for screen their voicemails and/or emails and if you are not on their list of recognized senders do you not get a call back? Is it just the corporate culture not to return calls? Is it a quirk of the person you are trying to deal with? Does inbound communication to that office just fall into a black hole? Or what if the reality is that the person you just tried to contact gets swamped on a daily basis with too many calls that even if they wanted to call you back, they just couldn’t. This is something that you just would never know.

At least when you email someone, unless you get an immediate bounce, you feel as if the message was delivered. What you don’t know is whether that person gets 25-50 emails an hour and it will be days (or never) before you get a response back. When you leave a voicemail for someone you just expect the person to call you back, since that is the polite thing to do.

But finding the time to call everyone back is challenging at best and even when you want to, if you are spending most of the day in meetings, or are just being flat out busy, remembering to take the time to call someone back is hard. I used to think the best thing to do would be to write down the list of people who called you and call them back late at night and just leave a message. But with so many people working virtual these days that is a dangerous proposition for the times when you wake someone up who works from their home just because you tried to do the right thing and leave them a reply voicemail.

In my daily business life I’ve been dealing with these “open communication loops” for years. If you email me and don’t get an almost immediate response, if you are in the same time zone that I happen to be at the moment, and it is not the middle of the night, then try me again. With email I try to respond back the moment I read an email whenever I can. From what friends tell me, I’m getting better at it.

I don’t believe that “unified communications” is the immediate answer to the problem, mostly because many of the makers of “unified communication” software don’t generally know the exact problem they are trying to solve and end up assuming that their application will force others to change their evolving work habits rather than the other way around.

But I am convinced that this syndrome shows up in different forms to different people depending upon their own work habits and that like a virus, mutates into different forms as it moves from person to person. My hope is that one day a solution for those of us who suffer from too much asynchronous communication will be found.

I just find it ironic that after 3 days of being un-plugged, this is what is on my mind this morning. ;-)

Posted by jeff at 07:41 AM | Permalink

October 30, 2003

FWD Update: 70,000+ Users and Counting

Yesterday Free World Dialup issued our 70,000th Free World Dialup number.

In a few days we will begin to sell the new SIPURA Technologies analog-telephony adaptor, the SPA-2000, which represents a next generation ATA in terms of design, functionality and overall performance.

Posted by jeff at 06:51 AM | Permalink

Goal Setting: Relax so you can see your goals again.

Over the years, I’ve proven to myself the hard way that the more I relax, the more clearly I think.

For me, going thru the motions of relaxing can and will open up the doorway to clearer thinking.

These past few weeks have been some of the busier work weeks that I can remember and after awhile it became easy to be swept away with the notion of how busy I was without remembering what the end goals in sight really were.

One advantage of unplugging every once in awhile is that it can help you gain a better perspective on things and help you think about what is important and what isn’t.

So, every once in awhile I find it productive to STOP, think, listen and take a hard look at what I’m trying to accomplish and then work out the plan and restate my goals. Building to-do lists are ok but sometimes you need to look at what the sources of the to-dos are and then prioritize them by establishing and rechecking your own goals.

For me, I’m only able to gain perspective when I’m able to relax and take it easy… otherwise I’m too blinded by the work to get done…and while I can “feel” real busy, I sometimes forget what it is I’m really trying to do

Posted by jeff at 06:43 AM | Permalink

October 29, 2003

Trying to take a vacation from an “Always-On” World

One might expect that given the opportunity to spend a few days in the Green Mountains of Vermont, while the Fall Foliage is still visible, it would be a relaxing vacation. Factor in that the rest and relaxation was taking place at a resort which Zagat’s rates: R/29, S/28, D/27, P/28, with quotes from Zagat’s which includes “The most amazing place in the universe”, “Rooms and cottages right out of Architectural Digest”, one would expect to have a great vacation.

And trust me, I’m trying.

But within ten miles of the Vermont state border my T-Mobile phone lost coverage and it looks like I won’t my cell phone back until I’m back on the road towards home. Factor in that this place does not offer high-speed internet access and that on a good day I’m fortunate to be able to get a 21.6k dial-up connection, it is easy to get frustrated trying to keep up with all of the things going on around me. Then again I’m supposed to be on vacation so maybe it’s a good thing that I’m in an environment which just forces me to relax.

This is my third trip to this place and while I was in a state of digital shock the first time I came here and realized that I would be effectively offline while I was here, it didn’t really sink in the second time I was here because I had secretly hoped that this resort would get with the program and provide high-speed Wi-Fi access for their guests. Turns out that there are still some places which cater to people who actually want to get away from it all and enjoy the outdoors and relax a little and enjoy themselves while they are away. Sorry to report but there are no plans to provide high speed access at this place anytime soon. ;-(

The ironic part of vacations like the one I’m on is that by the time I usually get used to where I am, it’s time to go home. Maybe this time will be different and I will be able to
Forget about things for a little while and get away from the always-on world which we live in.

Posted by jeff at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

October 28, 2003

Vonage FCC Petition: Update

This has been the year that the threat of VoIP Regulation in the USA became real.

While recent ruling of Judge Davis may have provided Vonage with the immediate relief they were seeking inside the State of Minnesota, the FCC reply comment filings made by the various interested parties make for some interested reading and provide immediate insight into where things really are at from a regulatory perspective in the USA.
In some cases they may be a foreshadowing of things to come. ;-)

All of the reply comments, can be read by visiting: http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.cgi and entering: 03-211 in the Proceeding Box.

Posted by jeff at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 27, 2003

pulver.com Wi-Fi Summit: Nov 10-11 in Santa Clara, CA

I'm hosting our 2nd Wi-Fi Summit in Santa Clara, CA, November
10-11, 2003. Program Chair, Glenn Fleishman, editor in chief Jiwire and
editor Wi-Fi Networking News will lead some of the most prominent people
on the Wi-Fi landscape in discussions about accumulating controversies.

Dewayne Hendricks and Bob Frankston present the case for unlicensed
spectrum. Matt Peterson, BAWUG and Matt Westervelt, Seattle Wireless will
discuss how community driven freenets challenge the paid hotspot model.

Interactive discussion between panels and the audience will address other
controversies complicating deployment and investment decisions:

- Impact of Wi-Fi on 3G
- Role of proprietary protocols
- Long term impact of Wi-Fi
- Voice over Wi-Fi as killer app
- Meeting business versus consumer needs as primary driving force
- Do security concerns limit the long term potential of Wi-Fi

Nokia, Vocera, and SpecraLink will describe new wireless devices. Leading
innovators including Tropos Networks, Wayport, Surf&SIP, Atheros,
ByteMobile, Good Technology, Facetime, Air Magnet, Icefyre, Sputnik,
Airflow and others will outline their current activities.

Reed Hundt and David Isenberg offer their perspectives on what Wi-Fi means
for the larger telecom landscape

I will be in town November 10th and 11th and will have our WiSIP phone with me.

To register for the Wi-Fi summit, please visit: http://pulver.com/wirelesssummit/register.html.

Posted by jeff at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 26, 2003

Rediscovering a Hobby: Ham Radio as a Lifestyle

Every once in awhile, I believe that it is important to rediscover a hobby or passion and have in effect something planned for a lazy day.

Back when I was in high school, there were times when I used to spend what seemed like 40-60+ hrs a week on the Ham Radio just having fun and speaking with people all of world.

"Contesting" was a passion of mine and to this day, I remember the last weekend of October to be the weekend of CQWW, a time when I didn't sleep much over a weekend but had the fun in trying to connect with as many people as possible in as many different countries around the world over a 48 hour period.

Times are different now and for the longest time the best I could do is log in to a local packet cluster and watch the DX being spotted around the world.

With the help of my uncle, I recently was able to setup my ham radio station in my office and I've made it a point to spend a few minutes each day that I'm in the office on 15 meters.

Over the next few months my hope is to setup a HF station at home as well so that once again I can be a part of the Ham Radio Contest scene.

Posted by jeff at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 25, 2003

Free World Dialup (FWD): Explained

Since the launch of Free World Dialup (FWD) last November, FWD has evolved as a heteromorphic communications network and today the value proposition to a new customer is much more compelling than it was when we first launch. While some of this has to do with what we have been able to add as features, most of the incremental value comes from contributions from the community at large. FWD is not a closed PC-to-PC communications network although this is how many people from the press have explained it.

Somebody who has broadband internet access, today, can visit the FWD website, download X-Lite and within a few minutes have a FWD Number assigned and be in a position to start making and receiving calls from all over the world. X-Lite is a software based “IP Phone” that runs on PCs and PDAs. If our customer chose to use their own hardware based “IP Phone” they could just as easily manually request a FWD account and a number would be assigned within moments. There are quite a number of commercial IP Phones available in the marketplace. One such phone from Grandstream, is available for sale from the FWD website. There are many other hardware based IP Phones which have been tested and are known to work with FWD.

Once somebody is setup with their own FWD Number, they can visit the IPKall website and instantly get, for free, a US 360 area code number mapped to their FWD number. What this means is that the new customer can now start to receive direct-dial phone calls from traditional home phones and cellular phones. A similar sounding service from XtraPhone and CallUK offers the ability, for free, to map a FWD number to a UK 0870 phone number.

In addition, there are free “gateway” services available in the US, UK and Netherlands which offer the ability for two-stage dialing from a regular phone to someone’s broadband FWD phone number.

From inside of FWD, it is possible to place “toll-free” calls into the US, and “free phone” calls into the UK and Netherlands. These services are made available thanks to members of the FWD network who have chosen to connect with us. If your friend has a toll-free number at their home or office, they can now be reached on FWD.

Also, FWD provides the services of an Instant Messaging network when someone configures Windows Messenger 5.0 with FWD.

All in all, this means that as long as someone has broadband access and can get to the FWD website, they can start receiving calls from “regular” phone networks in just a few minutes. In addition, FWD, for free, offers such features as: Voice Mail, CallerID, Call Waiting, Multiple Presence, Conference Calling and other cool services which admittedly are hard to describe in a few words but for those people who like to experiment with communications, offers some fun activities for a free afternoon.

At this moment, there are over 68,000 people who have subscribed for FWD. By the end of the year I expect this to top 75,000 and we should be a community of 100,000+ in early 2004. As we continue to grow, look for many new and innovative services to be continue to be introduced.

Posted by jeff at 09:03 AM | Permalink

October 24, 2003

Current Technologies: Wi-Fi Coming soon to a Telephone Pole Near You

Over the past few years, over twenty million US homes have joined the "Always On" revolution.

This has happened as internet connectivity/access has become available at competitive prices via DSL and Cable modems in many US markets. Now, while we were all sleeping, a new alternative form of internet access has matured and in the very near future, broadband power line communications (PLC) equipment and networks will start to be available as an alternative source of IP access in many neighborhoods around the US.

This means that your local power utility company has a new product to sell besides power. It's called: Access.

Companies like Current Technologies will be able to sell you high-speed Wi-Fi access in your home by simply plugging in transformers into your home outlets. This may seem like science fiction but in fact the technology works and before you know it may have the effect of disrupting the DSL and Cable operators who feel only they have the ability to provide high-speed access to the homes of consumers.

Current developed its own proprietary PLC solution and by doing so resolved transmission issues over both low voltage and medium voltage electric distribution lines. Current is one of the first companies to announce the deployment of a proprietary, safe, commercially viable transformer-bypass solution that can transform an electric distribution network into a broadband communications platform. In English this means that while there are other BPL companies which are being fought by my friends at the ARRL (American Radio Relay League), who represent the Ham Radio lobby in Washington, D.C., Current has taken the steps necessary to make sure that their technologies and solutions will not interfere with the ham radio operators living in the areas around their deployments.

Current has placed their bets by developing a PLC system that is compatible with the HomePlug® power line modem standard. Their solution is capable of providing multi-megabit speeds for residential and commercial Internet access users and supports various IP applications.

Current has quietly recently announced initial deployments with US power utilities, Pepco and Cinergy. My guess is that over the next 3-5 years, consumers will have the benefit of additional choices as more players are able to jump in to the marketplace and offer competitive high-speed, high availability solutions for internet access.

Posted by jeff at 08:07 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2003

Pending threats of International VoIP Regulation

As a direct result of certain US States taking a stand against VoIP, there are now some rumblings around the world that is engaging some regulators to take another look at their stance on VoIP and re-think their approach and strategy.

My hope is that when they take that second look that international regulators will continue their pro-innovation, no-regulation approach to VoIP and continue support the concept that the nascent technology should remain unfettered from regulations and given the chance to continue to change the face of communications as we know it today.

Along the way be prepared for some countries to cave-in to certain PTTs who would rather see the technology stopped than deal with the effects of being the local monopoly which was disrupted by IP communcations.

In the end the policy of "hands off the internet" and hands off "IP Communications" should be the path that most countries eventually follow.

Posted by jeff at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 22, 2003

Introducing pulver.com Research

Since 1996, pulver.com has produced over twenty VON Conferences and many other events whose primary focus has been in the emerging field of IP Communications.

Now for the first time, pulver.com is making available, to the public, for FREE, all of the presentations from our libraries for the events we have produced from 1996 thru 2002 with the launch of pulver.com Research.

Once you register for access to the past presentations, you will have access to literally hundreds of past presentations and you can see for yourself how the positioning of some companies, technologies and visions have morphed over the years.

Posted by jeff at 08:22 AM | Permalink

October 21, 2003

Blogging: Now a Part of my Daily Routine

One new habit which I've taken on since the end of June is the time I spend blogging each day.

Being mostly set in my ways, I wasn't quite sure how I would take to blogging, especially since there are times when I feel as if I should be using a WiKi, but blogging has somehow made it into part of my daily routine.

The obligation to blog seems to be agnostic to the environment which I'm in at the time that I am blogging and blogging doesn't seem to take many vacation days, not at least so far.

I've found that blogging is another form of quasi-real-time communications which has been an effective way to circulate an idea or concept amongst readers of the Pulver Report and a technology which it seems at least for the moment that I will continue with for the foreseeable future. Blogging seems to be a good way to share a concept and communicate with a community at-large.

During the past couple of years there was a time when I "experimented" with other blogging platforms, ranging from trying out LiveJournal to hosting a community blog for our own events, but in the end, I fell back to my daily routine and stopped blogging.

Now, for some reason, it feels different.

Days that I forget to blog in the morning feel at times feel empty until I find the time to blog in the evening. And these are days which have otherwise been real busy.

While my community blogging experiment failed at Spring 2003 VON, even though it seemed to be super successful at the Supernova events, and while I have yet to find a way to blog an event myself, I'm confident that the advent of community blogging at conferences will help shape the future of how information is presented and how group communication is dealt with in the future.

For now my decsion to blog has been made and I for one am looking forward to the ways that the advent of blogging will contribute to the various forms of asynchronous communication which I'm now faced to engage with on a daily basis living on the net.

Posted by jeff at 06:40 AM | Permalink

The Hotel @ MIT: One Cool Hotel!

If you find yourself on the road in the greater Boston area in search of a hotel that "gets it" with regard to broadband connectivity, one hotel that stands out in the crowd is the HOTEL@MIT.

Maybe it is because they offer complimentary High Speed T-1 access from their hotel rooms and free Wi-Fi access from their lobby, or maybe it was because their rooms are available for only US$75 a night if you get lucky with your biding on Priceline, but regardless, this hotel stands out as a place to return to the next time I'm visiting Boston.

I for one, appreciated the sleek design of their lobby which is a direct reflection of being on the MIT campus where this hotel located. There is also just an overriding coolness factor to this place as compared to many other hotels that I've stayed at in the past in the greater Boston area.

The only drawback that I found is that their room service stops at 11pm.

Overall, if you are looking for a place to stay connected when you are on the road in the greater Boston area, route yourself to the Hotel@MIT.

Posted by jeff at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 20, 2003

Looking for a Five Year Moratorium on VoIP Regulation

After reading my published commetings from both the USTA show and a San Francico Newspaper, I think now is the time to explore the real possiblity of asking the States for a Five Year Moratorium on the possible regulation of VoIP.

The US position to 'not tax the internet' has so far proven to be effective, and taking a forward thinking approach with regard to IP Communications policy requires an equal forward thinking approach to how such decisions will effect the future of the communications industry in the US and in other places around the world.

Instead of regulating, let's take the time to create effective dialog between all of the parties and come up with a working agenda of the items to to be dealt with and combine this with milestones and deliverables which we can all try to agree with.

Once we have taken the time to work together and air out our differences in person, rather than via the press, my hope is that we can chart our future together.

Posted by jeff at 01:57 PM | Permalink

October 19, 2003

End-to-End IP: The End Game

While we have been talking about the power of End-to-End IP for quite some time, it turns out that the advent of end-to-end IP will be disruptive to the established telecommunications industry and will again be an example of how the world of IP based communications is just different.

For example, imagine the case where SBC and BellSouth support ENUM on their consumer DSL services, and they roll out their own broadband voice services and decide to enter into an interconnect relationship between their respective customer bases. In theory this means that when a SBC customer "dials" a number which appears to be in BellSouth territory, the call could be routed over the public internet and the traditional inter-exchange carrier and associated long-distance carriers could be totally by-passed, and the call could be completed directly connecting the SBC customer with the BellSouth customer, and when this happens, it will strike a major blow to the incumbent IXC and LD businesses.

The same example can be extended between a US location and a UK destination when, for example, BT rolls out their voice over broadband service. In that case the international LD company can in theory also be bypassed.

And this only gets worse (from the prospects of long-term revenue decline) as more of the world goes voice over broadband and supports ENUM.

And this is just one example of End-to-End IP. With this as a setup, if I'm right, this will lead the forward thinking LD companies into setting up their own clearinghouses where they can establish peering relationships with other service providers and justify a role for themselves in this new world order of communications.

And watch out for the Enterprises who have made the commitment to support VoIP with their corporate PBXs. Just wait until the enterprises start connecting to each other using end-to-end IP and by-pass the need to place calls over the legacy phone networks and route their calls to their customers and other members of their respective food chain via the Internet. In my book this is called "end user empowerment."
This in effect will take out the need for an Enterprise to need anything more than just "access" and over time will remove the need to use a "service provider" for what will become a growing percentage of local and long distance communication services.

While I'm not saying that the advent of IP Communications will bring about a day when phone calls are free, it may, and until that happens, the future success of IP Communications will continue to put downward pressure on pricing. These costs will have to be balanced against the costs phone companies will continue to incurr which force them to deal with legacy regulations. It won't be until the world morphs into a place where IP based communications are commonplace and just a fraction of the traffic is on the legacy telephone networks.

We are a few years away from seeing this happen with any kind of scale but some of this thinking is reflected in the way that Free World Dialup has approached our own interconnect relationships, with both Enterprises and Service Providers.

Posted by jeff at 09:01 AM | Permalink

October 18, 2003

Enjoy the Sunshine...before the Rain Clouds Return

While the nascent VoIP industry in the US celebrates the recent victory with Judge Davis, the sunshine will only last as long as it takes someone to challenge the ruling on appeal.

While it would be nice to believe that the ruling will set the precedence in the US that all IP Communication Service Providers should be treated as "Information Service" providers, this may not be the case for everyone involved and it will take only one challenge to bring back the clouds to the future regulatory treatment of this space.

Ever since I first sent out the warning emails back in February, 2003 that VoIP was under attack in the US, most people waited until the attack actually happened before doing something about it.

Having spent the past 8 years watching how this game is played, I feel as if I need to caution everyone involved that there are people hard at work looking at ways to stop the immediate growth of IP Communications in the US and in some places around the world. Just because I'm a little paranoid doesn't mean that there aren't others out to get us. ;-)

Now is the time to reach out to those who are most disrupted by the success of IP Communications and look for ways to extend ourselves and establish common ground. It will only be by working together with the legacy communications industry can we ensure the future success of where IP Communications can reach.

Posted by jeff at 01:13 PM | Permalink

October 17, 2003

Victory for the Age of IP Communications!

For the past few months a grey regulatory cloud has been hanging above the nascent US IP Communications Industry due to attempts from some of the more over aggressive US State Public Utility Commissions to treat the nascent IP Communications industry as the established telecommunications industry.

This all changed yesterday when Judge Davis published the words behind his ruling from last week which preempted the Public Utility Commissions (PUC) of the State of Minnesota from treating Vonage like any other telecommunications company operating in their State.

I found the timing of the published ruling ironic given that it was published in-between the come-from-behind victory of the Marlines on Wednesday night and the come-from-behind victory of the Yankees last night. This was clearly a come-from-behind victory for the IP Communications Industry and in some ways brings us also into our own virtual "World Series."

While the State of Minnesota can still try to appeal this decision, which they may depending upon the realities of their State politics, my feeling is that this decision will create a precedence which will help other Judges put in similar situations to also preempt State PUCs from forcing IP Communication Service Providers from being treated as traditional telecommunication service providers.

In the end, while this is for today a major victory for the IP Communications Industry, one must not ignore the fact that there are on-going proceedings in a number of States and that a decision in the other direction should be expected at some point. There is too much at risk to think otherwise.

The only way the threat of additional storm clouds will truly go away is when the FCC provides guidance on whether or not IP Communication Service providers are indeed providers of "Information Services."

My hope is that this day will come sometime soon.

Posted by jeff at 07:46 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2003

Destructive Use of Disruptive Technologies

I just read a story in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle "Arrest in bomb threats
S.F man accused in Moscone incident." The story is about a 19 year old from San Francisco which used MCI’s innovative IP-Relay.com website as a way to place “…A string of bomb threats against targets including a Navy warship and the Moscone Center.”

This is one case where an innovative technology platform was deliberately used for destructive purposes. The fact that the accused chose to use a service that translates text to speech and relays the messages via a live operator to third party and that he didn’t realize that each call may be logged may have provided a record for authorities to track and eventually be in a position to be able to arrest him. (Maybe I’m watching a little too much “Law and Order.”).

While there are significant privacy concerns to be worked out, being that the basic service that MCI offers is designed to help hearing-impaired people to: “Place calls confidentially and when they terminate in the U.S. and its territories they are free”, my hope is that when someone types in a keyword such as “bomb threat” that a trigger occurs and that a person’s expectation of privacy can be removed and the proper authorities are duly notified about the incident.

By exploiting the MCI service, the person accused was able to place for free, bomb threats to a variety of locations in and around the US and on the surface the only piece of information which was logged with each incident was the IP address of the computer used to take advantage of the service.

In the past I had heard of people abusing this service by placing phone sex calls, but in reality, how does one differentiate from one who is calling such a service who is and/or isn’t really hearing impaired?

Hopefully there won’t be others who follow in the keystrokes of the accused and continue to use innovative technologies for destructive purposes.

Posted by jeff at 08:24 AM | Permalink

October 15, 2003

VoIP now being challenged in Oregon!

Add Oregon to the list of States that now have open proceedings going on in the VoIP space.

This time it is the Oregon Exchange Carrier Association (OECA) asking the Public Utility Commission to order IP Communications Service Provider, LocalDial
Corp. to pay access rates and charges.

This case is similar to the currently open case in the State of Washington.

Look for VoIP to continue to be an action item at State PUCs over the coming weeks and months...stay tuned.

Posted by jeff at 08:51 AM | Permalink

October 14, 2003

Living with the Telecom Dinosaurs: USTA Telecom '03

The pulver.com and Free World Dialup team has spent the past couple of days in Las Vegas at the US Telecom '03 show. I tried to make the most of the keynote session which I participated in yesterday. Luckily for me, only one person rushed the stage when the presentation was over and Carl Ford jumped in to my rescue and took the brunt of the feedback/noise from a rural telco based in Nevada who had issues with the thoughts associated with offering a disruptive voice over broadband service in their territory and how universal service should be dealt with. Suffice to say, that session was, well, at least interesting.

While the senior folks at the USTA are on stage talking about their "triple play" strategy of Voice, Video and Data over IP Networks, they are talking about this as if this represents future vision. In reality, this is something which is not only not new, it is a subject that we started looking at the first VON conference backed in April, 1997.

Looking around the general session room I found myself surrounded by what can best be described as "Telecom Dinosaurs."

There seems to be a disproportionate number of people worried about the effects of Universal Service and who would rather see a nascent VoIP technology stopped by heavy regulation than face the reality that their infrastructure may need to be redone and reinvestment may need to happen in order to stimulate growth in their rural marketplace if for no other reason than to be able to compete against the upstart Wireless ISPs and Voice over Broadband service providers who are enabling alternatives and competition in a local marketplace generally dominated by just a single vendor.

I'm looking forward to my second day on the show floor and hope to meet some of the forward thinking rural service providers who are interested in developing and investing in a Voice over IP technology strategy.

Posted by jeff at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 13, 2003

Now VoIP is being challenged in New York State!

Not to be left out in the cold, the New York State Public Service Commission has just announced that they are giving people until October 31st to submit their comments regarding Frontier Telephone's recent complaint against Vonage.

In its petition, Frontier alleges that Vonage is providing "telephone
service" in New York without regard to the PSC's laws and regulations.

To the credit of the NY State PSC, since the complaint raises generic concerns
related to the regulation of VoIP which could affect many others, the NY PSC is seeking comments from third parties on it.

Seems to me that now more than ever would be a great time to exlore supporting a five year moratorium on possible VoIP regulation, a concept I floated in an interview in today's New York Times.

Posted by jeff at 09:22 AM | Permalink

Skype Hype!

After reading the story in yesterday's New York Times - To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call? one might be lead to the conclusion that Skype is the only freely available PC-to-PC VoIP application on the net today, and that is just not true. Consumer VoIP applications have existed since before 1995 and there are other free networks available today like SIPPhone and Free World Dialup whose communities use the internet as a primary means of communication.

In reality and to their favor, Skype is the first mainstream VoIP in the post "Internet Telephony" era to deliver an application which leverages the genius of Global IP Sound, a company whose existence is not a secret to anyone who has attended a VON Conference and whose technology helps solve the issue of providing high quality voice over the internet under circumstances when most applications just don't work.

Skype provides a freely available product that well, just works.
And this is a breakthrough and is a significant step forward in the evolution of consumer VoIP services. Add to this fact that Skype comes from the same team that delivered KaZaa and knows a thing or two about viral marketing on the net and you can be assured that every kid who has played with KaZaa will eventually take the time to download Skype just to experiment.

The Skype team has proven to me that there are millions of people who don't mind using their PCs as a platform to communication. Until now this was an open question in my mind. While there are millions of other people who at the moment can't be reached on Skype, eventually these communities will become interconnected when independent third-parties start to build proxies and bridges which link the world of Skype with those living within the restrains of the current world of communications.

Those using Skype today represent a new generation of people, living in an always-on broadband empowered world who are engaging in incremental conversations because of the availability of an easy to use application like Skype.

One should thank the Skype team for an application which is helping to introduce a new generation of people to the killer app of the Internet...Voice. Eventually people will realize that Voice will be a part of other applications and that once we can look to voice as an application, voice will start to become embedded into many other IP based applications in the near future.

For those of us who have been around since the beginning, it would be nice to eventually see some of the newspaper and magazine writers engage in a little research and take a look at all of the other similar applications which have existed during the past eight years.

While it is great to see that millions of people have already downloaded Skype and millions more will be doing so over the next few months, it was the success of VocalTec's Internet Phone software back in 1995-96 which helped blaze the trail for what is now the IP Communications industry. Back then when the net population was significantly smaller, VocalTec end up with something like 15+ million plus downloads of their software and more than a million people who paid a few for the commercial version of Internet Phone.

As Skype continues to evolve as an internet application, it will be real interesting to watch how extensions to Skype based presence starts to evolve and the kinds of additional connectivity which becomes available as a result of the advent of Skype.

Posted by jeff at 04:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

October 12, 2003

First Impression of JetBlue

After hearing so much about JetBlue I finally had a chance to take a trip on one of their planes from JFK to Las Vegas.

To my surprise, terminal 6 at JFK has become the JetBlue Terminal and the chaos was organized as people who needed to check luggage were separated from those with nothing to check while waiting in-line at the passenger check-in counter. Except for the thermal paper receipt which also doubled as my boarding card nothing was unusual.

Getting to the gate I see the message - "Last Stop 4 Food" which meant to me that if I thought I was going to be hungry on the flight, now was the time to find something, anything to eat.

Boarding was quite a pleasant experience and while we ended up having to change planes at the gate because the DirecTV service was not functioning on the first plane, I found the airplane crew to be outgoing, focused, engaged and totally interested in servicing the needs of the passengers.

The one class of service made the long trip feel like an extended shuttle trip (referring to the NY/Boston and NY/WDC shuttles) on one hand but then having the DirecTV in the seats did significantly increase the cool factor. Turns out that most of the 24 channels they provide are not channels I would normally watch when staying locked in a room with nothing to do other than stretch my legs and walk around in small circles.

The only network channel they currently show is NBC.

But...I do think that JetBlue is a great showcase for how the airline industry can be disrupted by new technologies and that the advent of DirecTV in the seats should be the first of many new innovations which JetBlue customers will grow to expect. I was a little disappointed to learn that their WiFi service wasn't enabled yet but that will happen soon enough.

JetBlue has been on my personal radar screen ever since they announced that their call center agents are 100% distributed and that they rely on VoIP technologies to enable their call center agents to work from home.

As JetBlue continues to add routes, as long as they can continue to scale their customer centric approach to doing business, I have high expectations that JetBlue will help lead the way and drive the future of the airline industry.

p.s. Next time let me pay for optional services at my seat and turn on additional channels and/or enable video on demand.

Posted by jeff at 04:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

October 11, 2003

Another reason to visit Iceland: Digital Reykjavik

Iceland is one of my favorite countries to visit in the world and is a living example of what a broadband based, always-on community represents.

A friend of mine, Gudjon Mar Gudjonsson is producing Digital Reykjavik in Reykjavik from November 26-28th.

The Digital Reykjavik conference explores the potential of a society where
every home is connected to a fiber network; how it affects citizens' lives,
the applications that will be available, the business models that will
sustain it and what is needed to make such a society a reality. This is
highly relevant as Reykjavik is on the verge of becoming the first major
urban area where every home is connected with a fiber connection.

Among their speakers are Esther Dyson from EDventure holdings; Gordon Graylish
Director of Communications Business at Intel; Tim Johnson the founder of
Ovum & Point Topic; Paolo Pastorino at Telecom Italia Lab; Taylor Reynolds
in the Policy Analyst, Strategy and Policy Unit of ITU; Mario Mella from
e.Biscom / FastWeb and more.

They also have company presentations from Microsoft, Cisco, nCube, Minerva
Networks, Tandberg Television, Scientific-Atlanta, Amino, TeleNor and others.

Digital Reykjavik seeks to cover the entire broadband industry, with special
focus on the business cases that will drive it.

If you are involved in the world of IP Communications, I strongly suggest you think about spending a few days in Iceland and catching up with the future.

Posted by jeff at 06:33 AM | Permalink

Invitation to attend our "Silicon Valley 2003 Holiday Party"

I am hosting a holiday party on November 10th in San Jose for the worldwide members of the pulver.com Community.

The event will be taking place from 7:30 to 11:00 pm at the Spy Club in San Jose and our special music guests are one of the best cover bands in the US, Seattle's own Herding Cats.

This will be just like any of our other parties except that it is not tied to any VON conference. We happen to be in town for our Wireless Internet Summit.

If you are 21 or over and would like to join us at our party, please R.S.V.P. by November 7th.

Posted by jeff at 06:29 AM | Permalink

October 10, 2003

Getting ready for my Keynote at USTA - Telecom '03

Next Monday, October 13th, I will be giving one of the keynote presentations at the USTA "Telecom '03" show in Las Vegas.

Those of you who know me may find it ironic that I was invited to give a keynote at the annual tradeshow for members of the USTA, an organization which was one of the more vocal opponents to the Free World Dialup Petition.

On one hand, I now have a good feeling how one of our "friends" from NARUC must have felts keynoting our Telecom Policy Summit at Fall 2003 VON and other other hand maybe there is just a meta message here that even the established "telecom" world was looking at their future and they realized that if it doesn't include the worlds of IP and Broadband that this was a problem. Future survival of what have been traditional homomorphic telecom companies are actually at stake.

While some companies have been sleeping thru the IP Communicaions Revolution, there are some who have noticed that their competition will continue to grow as the advances in the communications space continue to reduce the barriers to entry. This means that at point in the near future, anyone and just about everyone can come forward and compete in what is becoming the nextgen communications marketplace.

I'm looking forward to testing the pulse of the US 'Telecom 03 community and getting a read on which directions and roads they are following.

If you are attending Telecom '03, please be sure to drop by the Free World Dialup booth on the US Telecom '03 exhibit floor and say hi.

Posted by jeff at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 09, 2003

VoIP: Page One news in the Wall Street Journal

The IP Communications space has gone mainstream!

Just glancing at today's stories in both the New York Times and
Wall Street Journal, it is clear that the second wave of IP Communications is already upon us. It will be real interesting to watch how long the wave lasts this time. My hope is that this is a momentum that will be able to continue to carry forward.

There is a risk that by bringing so much attention to the space, the resulting "noise" may create an artificial bubble in the market caps of the public companies playing in the VoIP space at a time when the the long term winners and losers are still not clearly defined...and we have already seen the results of having too much hype has had on getting the premature attention of the regulators.

Posted by jeff at 07:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Spring 2004 VON: March 29th to April 1st

Spring 2004 VON will be taking place March 29th to April 1st in Santa Clara.

This is represents the shifting of the first one day of when we had thought the event would be taking place. The exhibit hall will be open from Monday night to Wednesday night which is different than our past events and there will be no exhibit hours on Thursday.

On the plus side, by shifting everything one day, we are no longer forced to start the conference on a Sunday.

Posted by jeff at 06:39 AM | Permalink

October 08, 2003

Developing Hetermoprhic Communication Solutions

Over time it will become clear which communication services were heteromorphic and which where really homomorphic in nature.

Right now many of the emerging voice over broadband service providers on the surface seems to be doing little more than replicating the legacy network which they are competing with. While this is not true in all cases, from the eyes of a consumer, it is difficult to see what the real differences are, besides price, between the wireless, wireline and broadband voice offerings?

Mobility is a key way to differenciate but there needs to be more than just a price vs. mobility tradeoff.

The fact remains that when delivering services over IP, by default the services have heteromporphic roots, but it is up to the team of people delivering such services to recognize this and then for them to "rub the magic stone" (to steal a concept from Pokemon) to act as the catalyst to help in the heteromporhic process of transforming what looked like traditional telecom services into what became a unique group next generation communication which truely redfined what communication services were all about.

Posted by jeff at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 07, 2003

Federal Court Throws out Minnesota VoIP Regulation against Vonage!

Earlier today, a federal appeals court issued a permanent injunction against the recent ruling by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to regulate Vonage.

Full details regarding the ruling will be available on Friday.

On the surface this looks to be great news and a major victory for the IP Communications Industry. This victory should help preempt other US States from taking similar actions against other IP Communication companies around the US.

Posted by jeff at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rooting for the Cubs and the Red Sox

Being a lifetime Mets fan, with nothing much to cheer about this baseball season, I found myself rooting for the Cubs and the Red Sox during the playoffs.

Now if both teams manage to win their respective divisional series, it would be great to see a Cubs vs. Red Sox World Series.

Given that it was back in 1908 when the Cubs last won a World Series title and it was 1918 when the Red Sox last won a World Series title, it is about time to see these teams play in the Fall Classic.

Add to this the fact that back in 1918 that the Red Sox beat the Cubs for the title, for baseball romantics like myself, it just makes for great baseball.

Posted by jeff at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

911 on 9-1-1

We now have a great opportunity for the IP Communications Industry to shine.

The existing 911 network in the US was built in the days of high transport and switching costs. The switching was restricted to only four area codes per switch and the end points at the emergency services locations were trunked for a world without wireless services.

Area code overlays and wireless growth have shown the need for migration to a "Next Generation" of 911. Most importantly, the 911 industry is looking to use Voice over IP. It is clear that as Wireless 911 improves, some form of VoIP technology will be involved.

Last week in Washington, DC pulver.com attended a friendly meeting with our new friends from NENA (National Emergency Number Association). NENA is also trying to cope with the issues facing VoIP for 911. At the meeting we discussed the use of a "trunking gateway" (think BRI) to enable 911 calls to come to the 911 network from the Internet.

What is of critical value is that this would enable call back for the PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) using ENUM.

Those interested in this activity should contact Rick Jones at NENA. Rick's email is: Rockford9@aol.com. The technical "working group" is meeting in Las Vegas, NV November October 8th - 10th.

We are looking to have some proposals and prototypes in time for NARUC's annual meeting in Atlanta in November.

Posted by jeff at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

October 05, 2003

Go see School of Rock!

Rock'n'Roll needs a School of Rock and Jack Black seems to be a fine teacher for those who wish to experience the art of Rock'n'Roll.

If you were a fan of the movie The Commitments, you would enjoy seeing the movie School of Rock.

I'm not trying to be a movie critic but rather share the fact that I thought the movie was good, (not great) but good enough to be listed with all of my other favorite fun movies that have a theme of artists / bands within the context of a movie.

During the past few years, my life has been filled of movie musicals which somehow managed to transcend into my real life in one form or another.

Included in my list of movies that I can just watch include:

• Almost Famous
  
• The Commitments
  
• Eddie and the Cruisers
  
• Coyote Ugly
  
• The School of Rock.
  

I'm not sure of all of the connections but so far I produced a US tour for the "Artists from the Commitments" back in 2001. They also played VON Europe 2000 and Spring 2001 VON. John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band - the band behind the movie soundtrack of Eddie and the Cruisers are now friends of mine, and played at Spring 99 VON, VON Europe 2001 and some other pulver.com events along the way. The Calling whose first hit song premiered in the movie Coyote Ugly played the Fall 2002 VON party, and if Stillwater the band from Almost Famous would ever like to get together for one last gig, I have an open request into Cameron Crowe to host a reunion concert.

The kids who made the School of Rock happen should have a great future in music and in acting in front of them.

Posted by jeff at 02:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Case for a Non-Geographic Area Code in the US

As we cope with alot of literal people who mistake IP Communications for "Internet Telephony" and lobbyists trying to ban Peer to Peer Networking,
it is critical that we offer alternatives to the regulators.

A nongeographic area code that is available for wireless and IP Communications
services makes a lot of sense to me.

The advent of such an area code would enable many of the IP Communciation
Providers to qualify as a new type of network provider and enable nationwide
plans to be easily marketed.

Another key benefit is that IP Communication's ability to offer landline
customer mobility could be better understood by the mass market. Whether
using Voice over Broadband or "dialup" technology to reach your IP
Communications provider, one could make the case for mobility.

Finally, as a greenfield area, code rules about CALEA, USF and other
important regulatory objectives can be discussed without the threat of the
impact to legacy systems.

Posted by jeff at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

October 04, 2003

Spamm filters for Bloggers

Just about everytime I'm about to post to my blogg I take a moment to review the recently posted comments.

Many times these comments are read and appreciated. But yesterday I had to delete at least 20 replies to various postings which were of all things spamm postings. 19 for Viagra and a few others for some X-rated materials.

Before yesterday this happened once or twice a week.

It's bad enough when 75% of my email inbox is filled with spamm but to have spamm attached to my personal blogg is just a bit much to understand. I guess there really are some people out there with absolutely nothing to do other than to spend the time it takes to manually post spamm reply messages to this blog.

Amazing.

Not!

Posted by jeff at 12:36 PM | Permalink

October 03, 2003

Regulation should not get in the way of Innovation!

European regulators got it right a few years ago when they adopted a principle whereby the effects regulation do not get in the way of innovation.

I think the FCC and the State PUCs need to be reminded about all of the great innovation which has come out of the tech sector and remind them that it is the innovation we see today that may in fact has a positive effect on the way we work and live tomorrow.

Adopting a public policy of going after nascent VoIP technologies and applying regulations at this time may in fact have the intended effects of discouraging investment in the IP Communication sector and scare enough people away that all that is left is the hetermorphic skeletons of the IP Communications companies that could have been rather than the homomorphic telecoms companies that they eventually became.

People seem to forget that it is the effects of Moore's Law that has gotten the IP Communications Industry where it is today and not the effects of what was once the Telecoms Industry.

It is getting pretty obvious to me that in the end there are some regulators lobbying to fight this innovation because they are fearful of losing their jobs in the future and possibly because they are tying not to relive the same mistakes they made in the past when the wireless industry was incubated an allowed to follow a path separate from the wireline industry.

Posted by jeff at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 02, 2003

We didn't start the fire...

When thinking about the current confused state of possible regulation of IP Communication Service Providers inside the US, the words from Billy Joel's "We didn't start the Fire" start to play in my mind:

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it..

Telecommunications Law in the United States is over 100 years old and like the song says, "we didn't start the fire." Now that a new communications industry has formed in some cases from the ashes of what was once telecom, my hope is that we now have a chance to set the record straight and bring forward a new vantage point with a forward looking eye towards less regulation rather than more regulation.

If the US Wireless Industry had to face the same harsh potential regulatory fight 20 years ago, chances are that the wireless industry would never have evolved to where it is today.

Now is the time to let the nascent IP Communications industry grow up in an unfettered matter and over time let's watch how it contributes to all of the other horizontal markets that it touches.

"We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it..."

Posted by jeff at 05:35 PM | Permalink

October 01, 2003

Free Voice Mail - now available on Free World Dialup!

Innovation continues on the Free World Dialup Network.

Members of the FWD Community can now opt-in to have free voicemail added to their account by visiting:
this link.

Special thanks to both IPeria and Snowshow Networks for providing the equipment to enable free voicemail to the FWD community.

Posted by jeff at 08:48 AM | Permalink