Datapoints

Two items, in case you missed them.
First SIP is it when it comes to emerging VoIP standards.
The latest from Frost & Sullivan suggests that many developers are using SIP, versus other standards in building multimedia communication applications.

The caveat is that there's a growing need to standardise video services, which spells the need for regulatory bodies to weigh in. The FCC has already proven to be rather telco-friendly under Chairman Martin, but other standards bodies are likely to have influence on this front, both within and outside the U.S.

Datapoint Two: VoIP use is growing. Eighteen percent of Americans are using a residential VoIP service, up four percent from last June, with Vonage holding slightly under a third of the market.

The show gets better and better.

Enter Redmond

So the hype surrounding Microsoft's entry into the VoIP race has already burned through its second stage.
First, there was the announcement: Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer had unveiled a mobile version of the software giant's voice-capable business IM system, Microsoft Office Communicator at 3GSM.

Some believed that this Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones could, essentially, kill companies like Vodafone.

Then a day or two passed, and Vodafone's stock held steady. What gives?

Seems analysts were unimpressed. Talk went along the lines of, okay, so they have a client now, so what? Is there a 3G version? Techworld had a nice piece featuring an analyst from Disruptive Analysis. It's too good not to quote: "The main importance of the announcement is to show that mobile VoIP is now important enough for a sluggish brute like Microsoft to lurch aboard, said Bubley: "The history of Microsoft has been to leave it up to third party developers, and then move in when it is important enough. It's instituionalised mobile VoIP."

Good on MSFT to show us that VoIP had reached prime time, something we've been saying for many, many, many months.

The open question, now that the opening salvo has been fired, is what Microsoft will do next.

And also, what AOL will do next. Looks like AOL and MSFT are chasing the same market: business-class users that like the chat function of the various IM products, and get how taking it to the mobile VoIP level would be a good idea.

Without going out too far on a limb, it's safe to say that Microsoft, not to mention Yahoo, AOL, Skype, Vonage (with its IPO pending), and many others have ushered in the mobile VoIP era.

Microsoft's primary option would be an Office bundling (Office is its cash cow, after all, after Windows) which would take VoIP to the streets. AOL is still struggling to justify its existence in a post-we-are-no-longer-the-top-dog-at-Time-Warner-era. For them, VoIP's a good play in its rapidly eroding proprietary-Internet play. Skype and Vonage will be the ones to beat in the open market, as will Yahoo, and perhaps, in time, Google.

Personally, I can't really see how Microsoft can mess up an Office integration, except for the fact that the savvier the market gets, the more people migrate away from closed systems.

On the other hand, packaged products continue to have their appeal, and the more successful MSFT is at making VoIP integration completely transparent, easy to use, and virtually cost-free, then that will be how Redmond claws into the VoIP space. Witness how they killed a third of Netscape's business, and how they took on Quicken.

Of course, Netscape and Intuit are still around, the former in radically changed form, and the latter less so.

Proving that Microsoft can't kill every space it targets, can't dominate on demand, and can't prevent nimble competition from flanking it at will.

It's Goliath. And there's lots of Davids.

A new Telecom Publication -- on IMS

In response to a discussion about TMC's new publication on IMS, which Rich Tehrani blogged about in a post titled "IMS is our future".

Rich -- thanks for the response.

I guess that my need to critique your position stems from the unqualified first sentence of your post --

"Never before in my history in the telecom space have so many agreed on something so quickly."

I felt it was important to point out that many people do NOT agree. I believe (as many others do) that IMS carries with it as many pitfalls as it does solutions.

In the end technology is neither good nor evil -- people are. And the uses people put technology to are in service of their good or evil intentions.

I understand the mercantile impulse to promote your new publication, but a healthy debate about the role of different players in the ecosystem and how IMS could be used as a technical front for cartel behavior by network operators should be at the forefront of your publication -- if you intend this to be a service to our industry at large and not just a vehicle for certain large and entrenched players.

Vonage files IPO

Andy Abramson has the news here on his VoIPWatch blog

$250 million raise

Citron out as CEO

Also, Jeffery Citron steps down as CEO Michael Snyder takes over. Snyder signed an agreement and will join the Vonage board of directors and become its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Snyder was the President of ADT Security Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Tyco International Ltd., from 1997 to 2006. He is expected to assume his duties with Vonage on February 27, 2006.

Snyder better be planning on some big cost cutting moves... otherwise $250 million won't last long. Or maybe this is a feint in an M&A negotiation?

Net Neutrality Debate Gets Rough

A lot of good stuff coming out of Michigan... Here is a good summary of the latest in the net neutrality debate: Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog: Another good, if discouraging summary of the net neutrality issue, plus telco attempts to influence the press? Within the post are some excellent excerpts from two articles:

David Utter in WebProNews --

Telecoms like Verizon and ATT have been pushing harder to get their dreams of a two-tiered Internet supported by Congress and content providers.

Telcos Up Ante In Net Neutrality Game

And in John Batelle's Searchblog --

According to sources that are very well informed inside the paper, SBC (now ATT after the merger) is quite upset with the way a Chronicle columnist has been covering the company. Now SBC is pretty much the top Old School corporation around here (the SF Giants ballpark is named after it, for example), and it spreads its advertising budget around like oxygen in an intensive care ward. I'm told that annually, SBC spends around $5 million with the Chronicle.

But recently, SBC has turned off the spigot. Seems Chronicle columnist David Lazarus pissed them off one time too many,

John Battelle's Searchblog: AT&T/SBC Plays Hardball

David Utter in particular has some amazing passages from a Verizon senior VP... Follow the links. Read the articles. Get ready for the debate that will determine the future of the Internet.

technorati tags: Internet, Neutrality, SBC, ATT

Cable VoIP Set to Skyrocket

What would the industry do without bullish surveys? Suffer more, we're sure.
Our friends at IDC have unleashed a new one. Seems the US market for VoIP-by-cable is set to mushroom from 2.2 million last year to 19.8 million by 2009, or, a nine-fold increase.

That's if they get their gameplan right, and take into account the shifting standards landscape.

Right now, the MSOs have adopted the PacketCable architecture and standard, and the emergence of IP multimedia subsystems (IMS) could throw a spanner into MSO VoIP plans.

So the challenge is for PacketCable to embrace IMS, so as to take advantage of SIPs multimedia potential.

In summary, big market opportunity, and the challenges of getting a homegrown standard to get with what's happening in the broader IP universe. Our take? Given how cable companies have long considered their networks as a walled garden, the cultural barriers to adopting IMS will likely be stiff. Then again, a 9x increase in audience is a lot to leave on the table.

Head of ATT Labs Resigns

Behzad Nadji has resigned from AT&T. Here is the text of his email announcement:

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

After 18+ wonderful years at AT&T I have decided to leave AT&T in search of other opportunities. It was not an easy decision for me, but I had many reasons weighing in favor of it. I will probably be taking the next few months off and then I will start looking at other possibilities.
My last day at AT&T is March 1st.

Regards,

Behzad Nadji
Sr. VP. , AT&T Networks, Research, and Architecture,
Head of AT&T Labs

Tell the CEOs: Hands Off Our Internet

A public service announcement on behalf of FreePress:

After destroying TV and radio by hoarding the public's airwaves for profit, mega-media corporations have now turned to the Internet. They're scheming to control what content you view, which services you use online, and whether others can see the content you create.

The only way to stop them is to raise hell right now.

Join me and other Media for Democracy/Free Press activists by sending a letter to the CEOs of the nation's largest ISPs and telling them to keep their hands off our Internet.

Go here to take action:

http://www.freepress.net/action/neutrality

Go. Sign. Now.

Conspiracy to Control the Internet?

Jeff Pulver has recently been beating the drum to rally our attention to the fact that broadband providing phone companies are looking for ways to create a new multi-tiered Internet in which they can exercise pricing and content control. Back in October when I attended the WiMAX conference and had my first close look at IMS, I started writing about this threat (which due to the magic of print publishing finally appeared in VoIP Magazine's January issue -- Paranoid about IMS?). As I observed in this column, the story is not just about landline Internet providers, but includes the mobile operators as well.

Richard's excellent VoIP and ENUM blog has this article and a link to a recent post by Bob Frankston entitled Assuring Scarcity in which he explores the question of whether there is a conspiracy within the mobile industry to create market conditions in which they can insure pricing control. These posts are in response to recent presentations at the TRIS - TISPAN WG4 Workshop on NGN Interconnection and Numbering in Copenhegan. Bob writes, "...here we find the cellular carriers themselves decrying the dangers of abundance..." He goes on to write:

If you think about it, this is a clear and blatant call for manipulating a marketplace so that only the privileged few can create new products and they can even specialize without worrying about competition. Best of all they can charge as much as they want.

So has Bob joined me in the club of the paranoid? Since writing my column back in October, both BellSouth and SBC (AT&T) have clearly stated their intentions to charge Internet application providers like Google for access to customers of their Internet access products. I am feeling a lot less paranoid today, and a lot more worried about the future of a free and open Internet that creates an environment which promotes innovation and equal access to information.

If the telecommunications industry is self-documenting attempts at price-control and market manipulation, perhaps the FCC need not weigh in at all -- how about going straight to a Justice department and EU inquiry? Do the telecommunications companies have a motivation to "Assure Scarcity?" Do they have the ability to re-construct the Internet into a multi-tiered "...marketplace so that only the privileged few can create new products... (and) charge as much as they want?" And where there is motivation and ability, shouldn't the rest of us be very concerned? Read Bob's article.