Disruptive Telephony

Skype 4.0 beta discussion on Squawk Box podcast now available

I realized today that although I wrote that Skype's Mark Bartlett would be joining a Squawk Box conf call back on Friday, June 20th, I never followed up with the link to the show.

That discussion about the Skype 4.0 beta is available from Saunderslog.com. I could not participate in the actual call, but it sounded interesting. I'm still not thrilled by Skype's cross-platform "answer", but it is what it is. Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal has a longer writeup about the call which covers some of the main points of the call.

Technorati Tags: skype, voip, skype 4.0, squawkbox

VoIPInsider: "101 Things You Can Do With Asterisk Contest"

Garrett Smith and the team at VoIP Supply have partnered with Digium to have a little bit of fun with a new contest: "101 Things You Can Do With Asterisk Contest". They started out looking for 101 unique things you could do with Asterisk and the idea that when they got 101 submissions they would pick one random winner for a $1500 VoIP Supply shopping spree.

However, they discovered there are a lot of people out there with ideas for what you can do with Asterisk. They put up their blog post at 11:08am and their 101st comment came just over two hours later at 1:21pm (a few comments had multiple ideas). As I write this, the list has grown to 151 comments and Garrett and crew have indicated that they will be leaving it open until Friday and then making their drawing.

Some great ideas in the comments to the post - well worth a read!

Technorati Tags: asterisk

Is Craigslist blocking VoIP, Prepaid phone numbers in anti-spam effort?

Is Craigslist really blocking phone numbers from VoIP service providers or pre-paid cell phones as an anti-spam measure?

Last night over on the VoIPinsider blog, Cory Andrews wrote that Craigslist is apparently blocking VoIP or prepaid cellular numbers as part of their anti-spam measures. Now I'm a huge fan of Craigslist and we've sold lots of items (including, now, our house) via Craigslist. But we've also seen the spam out there and personally been contacted in response to one of our ads by a sleazy individual who was trying to scam us out of money. Techdirt, in fact, says that the battle has been lost and that the spammers are taking over Craigslist. While it wasn't that dreadful in the Vermont Craigslist area, there certainly was some spam and you can understand the folks there wanting to do all they can to block spammers.

But to block VoIP service providers? Just as increasingly large numbers of users move over to VoIP services?

THE APPARENT ACTIONS

It seems a rather draconian - and misguided - measure. As the VoIP Insider article states:

A few months back, Craiglist instituted a telephone verification process that places an automated outbound call to a user placing a classified ad in certain categories. The call delivers a unique code using text to speech, which is then used by the poster to authenticate the ad they are placing.

This is an effective measure for dealing with spam, and a great thing for legitimizing the Craigslist user experience….but not so great if you are a Craigslist user and you also happen to be a VoIP or prepaid cellular user.

The problem is that Craigslist is categorically blocking legitimate VoIP and Pre-paid cellular users from authenticating themselves.

While I've not encountered the phone verification process in any posting I've done to Craigslist (but have seen CAPTCHA images all the time), I can see how the process would be useful in combatting spammers. The article goes on:

Craig’s uses a 3rd party service, ReduceFraud.com to screen out VoIP and Pre-paid cellular numbers, and will not deliver an automated verification call to a number that is determined to be such. (Since only SPAMMERS use VoIP and Pre-Paid Cellular!!!) What sophisticated algorithm does ReduceFraud.com use to identify VoIP numbers, you ask? They check the DID number to see who owns the NPA NXX X number block, and if the DID number is owned by Level 3 Communications, they classify it as VoIP of course. Whizbang!

Oops.

My immediate question was whether this is for all VoIP service providers. This BroadbandReports.com forum thread would seem to indicate that "fixed lines", even fixed VoIP lines, would come up as okay. So phone numbers from VoIP services from telephone carriers or cable providers would probably be okay. So it may just be the phone numbers of VoIP service providers who are not tied to a fixed infrastructure (and who provide connectivity to so many of the innovative services out there today!).

THE PROBLEM

There are, though, some fairly obvious problems with this approach to blocking phone calls:

1. LOCAL NUMBER PORTABILITY - Here in North America, phone numbers are "portable" (to a degree) via "Local Number Portability" (LNP) between carriers. So a phone number that may come up as "fixed" may in fact go to a VoIP service (and possibly to a spammer) due to LNP. Now perhaps the third-party service used by Craigslist is doing LNP database lookups.

2. FORWARDING SERVICES - There are plenty of services (including one identified in the VoIP Insider article) that will forward calls to another phone number. I could even do this easily with something like Asterisk running on my (fixed) home phone number that then forwarded the call out via SIP.

It seems to me that it would be relatively trivial for any serious spammer to obtain a "fixed" phone number that would defeat this blocking mechanism. Certainly this would block some of the less savvy spammers who are just trying to use disposable phone numbers... but in the meantime it may well block legitimate posters who happen to use telephone numbers from VoIP service providers.

THE ANSWERS?

So is Craigslist really blocking VoIP phone numbers? Garrett Smith (from VoIP Insider) indicated in an email that someone there was in touch with Craig and Craig indicated he was not personally aware of the blocking. Obviously, someone within the Craigslist organization has engaged this external company, ReduceFraud.com, in their ongoing efforts to fight spam. The blocking seems to lie in there. What needs to happen now is some conversation with those folks to understand what exactly it is they are doing.

We'll have some conversation, in any event, about this issue on today's Squawk Box at 11am US Eastern Time. Feel free to join us if you would like (you need to login via Facebook).

It's an interesting question - in the era when people can obtain cheap (even free) "disposable" phone numbers, how do you balance providing access to legitimate users while blocking using those numbers as a way to spam or perform other malicious actions?

Technorati Tags: craigslist, voip, spam, fraud

Four reasons I am choosing NOT to cut the landline cord

Twelve days ago I asked the question, "Do I cut the landline cord and move my new home phone number into the cloud?", and the responses have been great to read. Today, I can write the answer...

No, I will NOT cut the cord.

Around noon today my landline in Keene should be installed by Fairpoint Communications (who recently bought all of Verizon's landline business in Maine, NH and Vermont).

Why did I finally give in and get a landline installed? Four reasons:

1. FAX - Unbelievably to me, perhaps the primary reason for keeping a landline is an old archaic technology that I absolutely can't stand... fax. This was brought home to me during the process of closing on the purchase of our Keene home and the sale of our Burlington home. As much as we may hate it, there are still some transactions that require fax. There were documents that had to be faxed to the bank. Documents that had to be faxed to lawyers. Documents that had to be faxed to real estate agents. To contractors.

   To a techie like me, it was unbelievably annoying not to be able to simply use email. But in many cases, it came down to this:

   Documents required our signatures.

   Because we still haven't come up with an agreed upon "digital signature", we as a society rely on good old hand-written signatures.

   Now in some cases I was able to scan in those documents and email them off. But not everyone would accept those documents by email. Some of the folks I had to interact with needed them by fax. There were also times when fax was admittedly faster than scanning in the doc and attaching it to an email message (and perhaps I need a better scanning solution). Just put the pages in the document feeder, punch in the number and hit send.

   Now I know there are solutions like eFax (which I use for inbound faxes) but I haven't yet found one that works in the way I need it. I've also seen that fax over VoIP lines doesn't always work well. So for the few times a year when I need fax, I seem to need a landline. (And the problem is that typically when I need to fax something, I really need to fax it for some critical reason.)

2. 911 - As was mentioned in the comments to my original post, "guaranteed" access to 911 is certainly a consideration. Not as much for my wife and I as for our daughter or visitors/guests. My wife and I can pick up our cell phones and dial 911. But if something were ever to happen to one of us, I want our daughter, or anyone else visiting us, to be able to simply pick up a phone and dial 911 and have the emergency services come.

3. DSL - My choices for Internet access in Keene basically come down to Time Warner Cable or DSL. Since I've been using them since the early 1990's back in the dialup / uucp ages, I'm going to be going back to using local ISP MV Communications (who is even now still handling all my personal email) for DSL access. The thing is that getting DSL is easier with a landline. The MV folks said they can do a "standalone" install without an actual phone line that I'm paying for (as I understand it, they would basically have the link they need installed) and if the reasons above didn't enter the picture I'd probably pursue it.

4. The Cloud isn't quite ready - After writing my last post, I spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out how I could get this to work. How could I build my "abstraction layer"? Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my last post, the only service I could find today that gets you most of the way there is GrandCentral, but it still has problems. For instance, I have this perhaps archaic desire to have an area code 603 phone number and GC doesn't have any. I also don't want to have to press "1" to accept a call on a given phone. I just want to answer.

   So it seems like I would have to build my own. Now the pieces are certainly there. I can get phone numbers from any number of SIP providers (although perhaps not my desired 603). I can get call-in numbers for services like Skype or Yahoo (or AIM or MSN or Gizmo). Heck, I can build much of the abstraction layer using Voxeo's app platform (and I probably will as an experiment). Write some CCXML scripts and away we go.

   But the question is - in the midst of everything else I am trying to do - do I really want to be building and *maintaining* a phone number abstraction layer for my home phone? (And the equally important corollary: do I really want to be responsible for it when it inevitably breaks when I'm off on a business trip and suddenly my wife can't get calls at home?)

   No, I don't.

   Now maybe there are other services out there that I don't know about (feel free to pitch me in the comments if you offer one), but for the moment I think I'll let the cloud evolve a bit more. We'll see... maybe in six months or a year there will be better options out there.

So that's the scoop. For the moment, I've got a landline. We're paying the extremely basic rate plan (where if I make any long distance calls on it they are at 12 cents a minute!) and we'll see how it goes.

Fun, fun, fun...

Technorati Tags: phones, phone numbers, voip, sip, telephony, telecommunications, grandcentral, google

Do I cut the landline cord and move my new home phone number into the cloud?

UPDATE - May 21: Today I posted my answer to the question...

---

In our new home, do I get a land line?

Or do I move our home phone number into "the cloud"?

We're closing on our home in Keene, NH, next Thursday and as we get set with the utilities that is one of the key questions on my mind. Do I actually "cut the cord" and NOT sign up for a land line with Verizon/Fairpoint?[1]

On one level, we don't need it. My wife and I both have our cell phones. Our daughter is six and isn't yet at the age to make phone calls. I work in the world of voice-over-IP and can certainly get a solution there.

Why should we get a land line?

ADVANTAGES OF A LAND LINE

In thinking about this, it seems to me there are the following reasons to get a land line:

1. 911 - UPDATE: As PhoneBoy reminded me in a comment, the overarching reason for having a landline is 911! A landline is the only guaranteed way to dial 911 and have emergency services arrive at your house. Precisely because it is tied to your geographical location it does indeed provide this critical function!

2. SECURITY/AVAILABILITY - Even when the power is out, your land line still works. VoIP solutions are tied to your Internet connection - which requires power. Okay... but how often does your power really go out? Or... how often does the power go out and your cell phones aren't available?
   
   
3. NO BATTERIES/CHARGING - Similar to the above, landlines (at least, the wired landline phones) don't need batteries and are always available. Cell phones need recharging.
   
   
4. LOCAL DIRECTORY LISTING - Your landline is listed in your local phone book. It's in the "411" directory. If people in your community want to find your number, they can dial 411 or look in the local phone book. With cell phones or VoIP, you aren't in those directories.
   
   
5. LOCAL PHONE NUMBER - Your landline is tied directly into your local exchange and so you have a phone number with an prefix that is "known" in your local community. Neighbors will "expect" that your phone number has one of the local prefixes. With cell phones or VoIP, your number may be somewhere else (and even have a different area code). However, in this era of "10-digit dialing" here in the US, and even more so with people simply programming numbers into their cell phone directories, does having a local number even matter?
   
   
6. LOCAL DIALING CHARGES - One point of having a local phone number is that others in your neighborhood (maybe only a few) may still have dialing plans from Verizon/Fairpoint that cost more if you dial outside your "local" area and so it may cost more to call you. However, in this era of "unlimited calling plans" these local charges are pretty much nonexistent for the vast majority of users.
   
   
7. MULTIPLE HANDSETS - How many times in your household in the past did multiple people get on the same call through using different handsets? (Or in how many households did someone eavesdrop on a call by silently picking up another handset?) A landline gives you this option where a cell phone does not (easily, at least). Still, how many times do you actually do this these days? And with the increasing quality of speakerphones, even on cell phones, is there really the need for multiple handsets? (And yes, you could do this with a VoIP solution.)
   
   
8. COMMON IDENTITY - Until recent years, it's been the norm that a family has had one number that was their identity. "Oh, yes, you can reach the Yorks at 660-9675." There was one number that would reach your household. Today in the era of ubiquitous cell phones, this concept is going away. It's not "you can reach the Yorks" but rather "you can reach Dan York at.... " and "you can reach Lori York at..." It's not "our phone is ringing"... it is "your phone is ringing".

DISADVANTAGES OF A LANDLINE

It is also easy to highlight the reasons not to get a landline:

1. EXTRA COST - FOR WHAT? - Why should I pay my local carrier for a phone I almost never use? I simply don't call as many people any more, even for business, and very often make those calls on my cell phone. Who do I call on my home phone right now?
   • local vendors/contractors when I need to get something fixed
   • local stores to find out their hours or if they have something
   • delivery of pizza or Chinese food
   • family members usually once a week (but we've moved much of this to cell phones because of the "unlimited" plans)
   • very occasionally friends (but we've moved more to cell phones, IM and email)

   Who calls us?

   • family (but they'd call whatever number we gave them)
   • friends (but they'd call whatever number we gave them)
   • political campaigns and charites
   • people responding to Craigslist postings (but they'd call whatever number we gave them)
   • other parents of kids at our daughter's school (from the number in the school directory or from the phone book)

   That's about it... so outside of the people in our community (like the parents) who might look up our number, most other folks get our number from us. So they would use whatever number we have.

   I'm already paying for my cell phone - why should I pay for another phone that I seldom use?

2. LACK OF MOBILITY - The landline is by its nature locked to our house. If a call comes in and I'm outside, I have to run to get the phone - or carry a wireless handset. But if I already have my cell phone with me, am I then carrying two handsets? And if I'm traveling, I can't get the phone calls to my home number (unless I've forwarded it).

Those are really the key factors. My cell phone is almost always with me. Now currently at home I leave my cell phone in my office at night, so if a call came in while I was sleeping I wouldn't easily hear it. But with one change of habit I could simply bring it into the bedroom and have it there to receive calls.

So do we need a home landline?

BUILDING AN ABSTRACTION LAYER IN THE CLOUD

Perhaps of all the advantages I outlined above, the one of most interest to me is the "common identity". I like having a single number that family and friends can call and reach either my wife or I (or, we know will soon be the case, our daughter). If I cut the cord and drop the landline, can I maintain that identity?

The reality is that in this era of VoIP it is possible that I can maintain that common identity through a very simple action:

Push the phone number up into "the cloud".

Move the phone number that you give to everyone up into the VoIP cloud. Think about it... with a service like GrandCentral (now Google-owned) or similar services, I can give everyone one number that rings:

• my cell phone
• my wife's cell phone
• my SkypeIn number
• any VoIP handsets I have in our house (if I actually get around to installing Asterisk or any of the other IP-PBX systems (or my employer's Prophecy app server))
• any other phone numbers I want to have it connect to

In fact, I can phase this in and add/remove numbers as I evolve services. Start out with my our current cell phones. Change that as we get new cell phones. Add the VoIP handsets when I set something up. Remove them if I change the system around.

I have incredible flexibility if I move the number up into the cloud.

CHALLENGES WITH THE CLOUD

There, are though, some challenges with this approach:

1. AVAILABILITY - The PSTN has been around 100 years now and the folks who run it have a pretty good clue about how to keep it running. Even as our landlines pass from the age-old world of Bell (now in Verizon) to a new company, Fairpoint, it's still all in the world of telco solidity. On the other hand, the cloud has a certain amount of inherent fragility. Networks break. Computers fail. Routers get clogged up. Packets get dropped. DO I TRUST THE NEW "2.0" COMPANIES TO GET MY PHONE CALLS TO ME?

2. BUSINESS STABILITY - For that matter, do I trust the new companies to be around? The telcos that run the PSTN and provide landlines aren't going anywhere. Due to regulations, legislation, emergency services, etc.... as well as certain (usually older) parts of the population that will never part with their landline... due to all of that the telcos will be here probably as long as we have phones. (Perhaps smaller, or amalgamated... but still here.) Can the same be said of the "2.0" companies? It sure looks like Google will be around for a while, but will they keep their "beta" GrandCentral service around? Who wants to bet on the long-term viability of Vonage (another option)? Look what happened to all of the SunRocket customers...

3. TRUST - Do I trust these new companies with my data? The telcos have all sorts of legislation regulating what they can do with my data... both my identity (address, phone numbers, etc.) data and also my call detail records. The new companies really have no such limitations, do they?

4. LOCAL NUMBERS - While the whole notion of "area codes" here in the US is fading into irrelevancy with the rise of "unlimited" calling plans, I still have this perhaps quaint and archaic desire to have a "603" number if I'm living in New Hampshire. To those of us who have grown up with area codes, there is still a geographic connection that is of interest. Some of the "2.0" services can get phone numbers in your area code... others can't. (For instance, Grand Central doesn't have 603 numbers right now.)

5. LOCAL NUMBER PORTABILITY - With the PSTN and the telcos, I do have a degree of portability of my phone number. I can move my telco-assigned phone number to another service (but not always back). But it's not at all clear to me that I have that with the 2.0 companies. If I have a number with GrandCentral, can I later move it Vonage (or vice versa) or to SkypeIn or to Gizmo or somewhere else? From what I've seen, that's not likely to be an option (you currently can't move a GC number). I don't like lock-in. I want to be able to move to another provider if I don't like the current one. I want to be able to take my number with me! It's part of my "identity". I want to control it.

6. EASE OF USE - For all its faults, the PSTN has one thing going for it - it's insanely easy to use. Pick up the phone. Talk. No buttons to press (with typical wired phones). Cell phones have certainly added complexity, but we do seem to be doing okay with that. Adding a cloud-based abstraction layer has the potential to add more complexity.

   For instance, GrandCentral rings the range of devices you have indicated and requires you to press 1 to accept a call on that device. So when my cell phone rings, I have to:

   • Take my phone out of my belt holster (or potentially find the phone if it's not on me).
   • Press the green "talk" button to accept the incoming call.
   • Listen to know if this is someone calling me directly or a call coming in from GrandCentral.
   • If a GC call, press "1" to accept the call
   Now, GrandCentral requires this "press 1" stage presumably so that they can hold on to the call and ultimately route it to messaging, but it's an annoying step and one that has caused numerous GC calls to go to voicemail by the time I find the phone, figure out it is a GC call and then press 1.

   Now in fairness maybe there's a way in GrandCentral to configure it differently, but I couldn't find it. I just want to accept the call on the end device of my choice and as soon as I "accept" the call on that device - whether it's picking up a handset or pressing the green button - I want to start talking to the caller.

7. MESSAGING - So if you can ring a whole bunch of phones on different services, where do your voice messages go if you don't answer the phone? Today we have a home "answering machine" where we get all our messages. We walk into our kitchen, look at the machine, see how many messages there are... and start listening. When we first moved to VT in 2005 we tried the Verizon voice messaging service that effectively moves messaging into their cloud. You picked up your landline and if you heard a quick set of tones you knew you had messages. It was nice, in a way, that if you were on the phone and someone else called they would automagically go to voicemail. The thing is... we usually forgot to check for messages. Especially after we were on a call with someone. It is not intuitive to hang up a call and then immediately pick up the phone again to see if you have messages.

   I think you do need some kind of message waiting indicator. That's largely why we dropped the Verizon central voicemail and went back to a home answering machine. When we get a message there's a blinking light (in fact, it blinks on all our wireless handsets).

   So how does this translate into the "2.0" world? Going back to GrandCentral, because they retain control of the call, they can route it to your voicemail box there at GC and then send you an email saying you have voicemail with a link back to the message. With my Blackberry 8830, this works out rather well because I just click the link in the email message, confirm that I want to "Open" the link and... ta da... the audio file is downloaded and played on the 8830's speakerphone. (Paying Verizon for the data download, naturally.) It works out well because I get the message in several places (it actually goes to a Gmail account that is then pulled down to my MacBook and also sent to my Blackberry, so I can read it wherever).

   Is an email enough of a message waiting indicator? I don't know. Can I configure it to send the email to both my wife and I? (Sure, if not directly through GC then through setting up an alias somewhere.) If I set up some voip phones at home could I somehow configure them with an MWI? I don't know.

8. TRANSFERS - In the world of the landline, a "transfer" to someone else involves handing someone a phone or having them pick up another handset. With an abstraction layer, you are answering on different devices on different systems. Obviously you can still physically pass the phone to someone. I remember hearing of a service that let you press a number and essentially park the number and pick it up on one of the other devices in your account... but I can't remember what that service was (GrandCentral does not seem to list this as a feature if it was them). I don't know that I'd realistically ever need this feature, but it's interesting to think about.

9. LOCAL DIRECTORY and 411 - One detail with a number in the cloud is that it won't be listed in the "yellow pages" directories that are passed out by the local telcos. Nor will it be in the 411 directory or probably in any of the online phone number directories. Now maybe this is fine. From a privacy perspective maybe it's good to not be in the directories. And anyone entering my name into Google can quickly find a page of mine with a phone number on it. (This happens to work for me because of my prolific writing and public life. Someone less prolific/public would have a harder time being found.)

10. COST - In end, what's a cloud-based solution going to cost? Today, the cost can be free (GrandCentral), $35-ish per year (Skype or Gizmo call-in number, which could be redirected to other phones), or $25/month (Vonage and friends). Plus, naturally, the cost to accept and make calls on the different devices. But we'll already have cell phones with essentially unlimited calling (at least, for the amount of calling we do). Will the cost stay this low? I don't know.

CONCLUSIONS (such that they are)

Are these challenges surmountable? Can I truly "cut the cord", not install a landline and push my home phone number out into the cloud?

I don't know yet. It seems like an interesting experiment to at least try (I can always get a landline installed later). I like the idea of building an "abstraction layer" in the cloud that lets me control the devices associated with my phone number.

I still get concerned about the challenges #1 and #2 that I outlined. Can I trust companies like GrandCentral to always get my phone calls to me? Can I trust that they will be around for some time?

My next step I think is to dig into a bit more what options there truly are out there for pushing my number into the cloud and building an abstraction layer. GrandCentral is obviously one option. I could build my own using some of the VoIP application platforms out there (including that of my employer). Are there other services that compete with GrandCentral? I need to investigate a bit more. (Suggestions are welcome)

What do you think? Should I do it? Or should I get a landline? Or should I just stick with multiple cell phones and forget about the "common number" concept?

In the end, I look forward to the day when we're done building the IP interconnect and we can purchase phone numbers just as we can domain names today. Why shouldn't I be able to do so? I can go to any of a zillion registrars and spend $10/year for a domain name that can point anywhere. I can move it between registrars. I can change where it points. I remain in control of that domain name.

Why shouldn't I be able to that for a phone number?

(And maybe I will be able to for some other SIP identifier that is not a "phone number", per se, but can be reached by other phones... but that's a subject for another blog post some other day... (and one that I saw *some* other VoIP blogger writing about but I can't for the life of me find that post!))

[1] Fairpoint Communications bought Verizon's land line business up here in northern New England.

P.S. And yes, I could do all of this running Asterisk or something like that on a server in my home network - but I don't want to do system administration! I don't want to set up a server. I don't want to maintain and upgrade a server. I don't want to deal with security issues on a server. I don't want to have to deal with connectivity issues to that server. I just don't want to deal with servers, period! I'll pay, if I need to, to make those sysadmin/security/reliability/availability problems someone else's problems!

Technorati Tags: phones, phone numbers, voip, sip, telephony, telecommunications, local number portability, grandcentral, google

Can the carriers/telcos really create a Skype-killing replacement?

That's the question raised by Om Malik in "Global Telcos Plotting a Skype Rival?" and will be one of the topics of discussion on tomorrow's Squawk Box podcast. Om starts:

AT&T, in conjunction with some 10-15 incumbent telecom carriers — British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom and NTT among them — is plotting to launch a Skype competitor, according to a research report issued this morning by ThinkEquity analyst Anton Wahlman.

And goes on from there at some length into the theories, timeframes and capabilities of the rumored network. While I haven't had time personally to contribute directly to the conversation, others have:

• Tom Keating dismisses this as utter hogwash and pure speculation
• Jim Courtney (Skype Journal) sees this as much ado about nothing
• Andy Abramson notes the connections to GSMA and ITU
• Eric Lagerway thinks it could be exactly what the industry needs but that the telcos will probably screw it up
• Carolyn Schuk believes that we'll see this skype-killer from the telcos about when elephants fly
• Dameon Welch-Abernathy (PhoneBoy) says the carriers need to get back to their roots (and embeds a great 1980 Bell commercial)
• Alec Saunders doubts the carriers can do it and thinks the things he said four years ago are now coming true

What do you think? Please join us on tomorrow's Squawk Box[1] (May 8, 2008) at 11am US Eastern time to discuss/debate the matter. (Or, if you can't join us, feel free to leave a comment here.)

[1] Note that to join a Squawk Box call, you do need to have a Facebook account and install Iotum's FREE Conference Calls Facebook application.

Technorati Tags: alec saunders, squawk box, voip, telcom, telecommunications, phone, carriers, skype

AOL launches OpenView API and gives us half a phone connection...

Does accepting SIP connections at your SIP proxy constitute an "API"? Does providing SIP termination services to the PSTN constitute an "API"?

Those were the questions I found myself asking after AOL announced yesterday their "Open Voice API" (also see CNET article). Since I work with voice application platforms, I'm always interested in new voice APIs and naturally had to check it out.

WHAT IT IS

I have to admit it took some time to figure out what the "Open Voice Program" really is, even after reading the program page and the accompanying blog post. Largely I think the issue was that I was looking for something more.

So here's what is going on. As part of their "AOL Voice Services", AOL has a service called "AIM Call Out". This allows a user of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to make outbound calls from their AIM client to the regular phone numbers on the PSTN for competitive rates (under 2 cents a minute here in the US).

From a network topology point-of-view, what happens with the call is that the call goes from your AIM client to the SIP gateway on the edge of AOL's network across some SIP trunks provided by some SIP Service Provider (one of the carriers probably) out to the PSTN. Picture it something like this:

Now what the "Open Voice Program" does is allow you to use an external SIP client to connect to AOL's SIP proxy and make outbound calls. So for example, if you had one of the following:

• a SIP softphone like X-Lite on your laptop or PC
• a SIP "hardphone" on your desk or any of the many WiFi SIP handsets
• a SIP softphone on your dual-mode handset (such as those from Nokia) that would let you make connections over WiFi

you can use the service to make outbound calls using your AIM Call Out connections and minutes. The picture would now look like this:

The SIP phone connects to AOL's SIP gateway, logs in with your username and SIP password and makes the outbound call. You now do not have to be at your PC and can make calls from another device that may be more convenient (like your dual-mode phone or a WiFi SIP handset). In fact, you don't need to be logged into AIM or have the AIM client running anywhere. The SIP device makes calls completely independently.

CONFIGURATION

The process of configuring your SIP phone to work with AIM Call Out is relatively straightforward. (Assuming you have an AOL/AIM "screenname". If you don't, you need one of those first.)

1. Go to the AIM Call Out page and click the Sign Up Now page.

2. Once in the "Dashboard", buy some Call Out credit (I bought $5 for the sake of testing) through a process that is not exactly intuitive but involves:

1. Choosing Billing->Payment Method and setting up a credit card.
2. (the non-intuitive part to me) Clicking the "Add Credit" link in the upper right corner of your screen and then going through that process.

3. Still in the Dashboard, assign a "SIP device password" on the Settings->SIP Clients page:

4. Switch to your SIP device/phone and configure it with this information (along with the possibly the STUN server found on the config page).

5. Start making calls.

Like I said, it's a relatively straightforward process.

You naturally have to agree to their Terms of Service whose main point (made repeatedly) can be summarized as "This is not a telephone replacement for emergency purposes."

INITIAL USAGE

After configuration it worked fine (once I remembered how to configure X-Lite to use the correct microphone and speaker devices) and I made several calls with no problems. I actually wound up calling into today's Squawk Box podcast (where we discussed this AOL Open Voice Program at some length) using the service. It all worked well.

AOL is to be commended for their support of open industry standards like SIP!

While my initial experience was positive from a user point-of-view, there are to me a few problems.

NO INBOUND OR PC-TO-PC CALLS

First, the service is outbound-only. You can make calls from the SIP device, but you cannot receive them. While AOL is very clear about this on the Open Voice Program page, it still is a disappointment. Now, AOL does not appear to have a "Call In" program like Skype's SkypeIn or Yahoo's PhoneIn that ties a PSTN number to your AIM account, so you can't get inbound calls from the PSTN. (I thought they did at one point but I can find no sign of it on AOL's Voice Services pages.)

But you also can't receive inbound calls from other AIM users! It seems to me that if the idea is to make it more convenient to use AIM's voice services, you ought to be able to receive calls from other AIM users on your SIP device. Perhaps this is a future development. (So from a technical point-of-view, they are currently not operating a SIP registrar. Your SIP device does not register with AOL's server.)

NO SIP-TO-SIP CONNECTIONS

My second disappointment was that it did not appear to support direct "dialling" of SIP addresses. I tried both Blue Box comment lines, "sip:bluebox@voipuser.org" and "sip:9992002622@sip.voxeo.net" (with and without "sip:") and the result in both cases was a message "Sorry, that number cannot be dialled":

Now, granted, maybe 0.01% of the public out there actually has an interest in direct SIP-to-SIP dialling, but that is the world in which I move... both with Voxeo's platform and also the work I do with the IETF. If we are to ultimately build the massive interconnect that let's us have an IP-only network, we need to have services and devices that let us do direct SIP connections.

(NOTE: I fully admit that I may not have used the X-Lite client correctly in calling these SIP URIs. I believe I did, but if someone else can get this to work, I certainly am open to my failure being operator error.)

SECURITY?

Given my background, you can't NOT expect me to say something about security, eh?

The good news is that they do have you use a "SIP device password" that can be different from your regular AIM password (assuming you set it to be different). Smart move. Well done. (if people use different passwords)

Per the the Open Voice Program page, AOL supports RFC2617 Basic and Digest Authentication and I confirmed with a packet trace that they are, in fact, using Digest authentication. While that isn't incredibly secure (it basically involves a MD5 hash of a password and a server-supplied nonce), it is pretty much what the industry is using right now.

Also like most of the industry, they are not encrypting the SIP with TLS and they are not encrypting the voice with SRTP. Just plain old unencrypted SIP and unencrypted RTP. Given that almost no one else in the industry is doing this, I can't exactly fault them.

SO WHO IS GOING TO USE THIS?

In the end, though, I still do have to wonder who will use this. (And that was part of the Squawk Box discussion today.)

If you already use AIM as your primary IM service and are an existing AIM Call Out customer - and are a techie enough to own and configure a SIP device - then this may be a great way for you to make cheap calls using another more convenient device. (Although some have pointed out there are cheaper services, but again it's the convenience of already living inside of AIM.)

I do like the fact that you can use any SIP device. This is a stark contrast from, say, Skype, which requires either that the device be connected to an always-running PC, have Skype embedded inside of it, or use another software program like iSkoot that essentially proxies your Skype connection. AOL's program lets you use any device you want - and you don't need to be logged in to AIM. So for folks more comfortable with a "hard phone", they can use any of the SIP hard phones out there.

The detail here, however, is:

How many AIM users are actually using AIM Call Out?

Especially when there are competing services from Skype, Yahoo and Microsoft that offer similar rates as well as inbound calling. How many users will actually be able to make use of this?

Perhaps AOL is hoping that this will attract users...

On a different note, it is not entirely clear to me how developers might use this. The AOL blog post from Mark Blomsma in the AOL Developer Network talks about how developers can use this new "API", but I'm still missing... for what?

Essentially it seems to me that all you could really do is create an application that uses AIM Call Out for SIP termination to the PSTN - with the AIM account providing the authentication and also billing/charging. Perhaps that will be useful. I'm not sure.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I am, though, intrigued by one line of the AOL blog post:

Part of the Open Voice program is AIM Call Out.

So are we just seeing the beginning of this program? If so, that's not at all clear - from what I read - anywhere on the pages.

Overall, it's great to see AOL using SIP and it's great to see them opening up their infrastructure in some small way. I'm not sure I'd call this an "API", exactly, but let's hope that this is just the beginning and that they will do more in the months ahead. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I've still got $3.84 of calling time to use...

What do you think about this service? What's in it for developers? Is there value in having access to the AIM credentials for authentication? Or is this ultimately just yet another SIP termination plan?

P.S. For those curious, my 55-minute call into Squawk Box today cost $0.94 or about 1.7 cents a minute.

Technorati Tags: aol, aim, aim call out, aol open voice, open voice, voip, sip

Jajah to provide PSTN connectivity for Yahoo!Voice!

Yahoo! announced today that they are outsourcing all PSTN connectivity services for Yahoo!Messenger over to the startup Jajah. This is a huge win for Jajah who also announced today that it has hit over 10 million users in two years. Congrats to the Jajah team for the win!

Two parts of the release explain a bit about what is going on:

The "Phone In" and "Phone Out" service will enable consumers to make high-quality, low-cost PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC voice calls over the JAJAH network to more than 200 countries using Yahoo! Messenger, the leading instant messenger application in the United States with nearly 97 million users worldwide (comScore, February 2008).

and:

Since 2006, Yahoo! Messenger users have been able to use "Phone In" and "Phone Out" to make and receive voice calls on their PC to and from landline and mobile phones. With low rates and premium voice quality, users can talk for hours and save on their phone bill. This deal means JAJAH will take over the provision of the telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care for Yahoo!'s premium voice users who make and receive voice calls through Yahoo! Messenger.

So essentially Yahoo is centralizing all the PSTN interconnection for Yahoo!Voice with Jajah. I don't know what their infrastructure was previously. If I had to guess I would say it was probably a series of SIP gateways connected out to various SIP service providers who provided the PSTN connectivity. In today's environment that would seem to be the logical way to set it up. Now, though, Yahoo appears to be simply outsourcing the entire PSTN-interconnect side of operations over to Jajah.

What will be interesting to see is how this might work for existing Jajah customers. Will Yahoo!Voice customers be able to call Jajah customers at no (or low) charge? And vice versa? Will Jajah's various web integrations such as "click-to-call" now be able to work with Yahoo!Voice customers? There are some interesting integration ideas that could happen here. We'll see what emerges.

Given that Jajah just announced today it's managed service offering, having a brand like Yahoo as their first customer is a huge win! On today's Squawk Box podcast (recorded at 11am Eastern US time), we're going to talk to Jajah co-founder Roman Scharf about what this all means. In advance of the call, Alec Saunders has posted these charts from Jajah that show their platform:

and their VoiP backend:

Between that and the information in their news release, it sounds like quite an interesting set of services.

The reality is that as much as many of us want to completely bypass the PSTN and have an all-IP network, we're going to have this beast known as the PSTN around for quite a long time and companies will be needed who can provide the best possible interconnection between the two and manage the integration as the evolution toward IP continues. Jajah clearly aims to be a player in bridging those worlds.

If you'd like to discuss this more - or simply listen in to the discussion - please do join us on today's Squawk Box. It's a live call-in conference call recorded at 11am Eastern US time. It's controlled through Iotum's "FREE Conference Calls" Facebook application which the link to the show provides information about how to install. It should be a fun discussion!

[Full disclosure: My employer, Voxeo, does provide hosting (including PSTN connectivity) for voice applications which may or may not compete with pieces of Jajah's vision (I don't know yet).]

Technorati Tags: yahoo, applications, voice, pstn, jajah, yahoo!voice, squawk box

Jeff Pulver's resignation and the apparent demise of Pulvermedia and VON

In a short and direct statement yesterday, Jeff Pulver yesterday confirmed the fears many of us have had for some time:

A little while later, notes like this were showing up in his Twitter stream:
(Note: I am not PhoneBoy - that's Dameon Welch-Abernathy.)

Jeff's resignation was not unexpected, given the rumors swirling around since the end of March (chronicled here: Marc Robins blog, GigaOm) when Pulvermedia's primary investor, TICC, apparently shut all operations down. Regardless, it was sad to see the finality of this action. While Jeff had turned most of the Pulvermedia operations over to others and was no longer as directly involved with the company, I know given Jeff's passion for the company and this industry - as well as the fact that the company (Pulvermedia) includes his name - this was obviously a hard personal decision.

So what does this mean for Pulvermedia's various events and conferences, most importantly VON?

Good question... and one that we perhaps don't know the answers to yet. I'd held off writing about this whole saga in part because I hoped that Jeff and crew would be able to figure things out behind the scenes to continue operations. Perhaps they still will. In a crowded conference space, I always enjoyed going to (and speaking at) VON shows and enjoyed getting to know Jeff, Carl Ford and many of the others in the Pulvermedia circles. Jeff's shows brought many of us in the "VoIP blogging" circles together and through that some truly great friendships have formed. Obviously Jeff can't say much about what is going on... we'll have to stay tuned to see what does develop.

In the meantime, I just have to join Andy Abramson, PhoneBoy and I'm sure many others in thanking Jeff for all this passionate work promoting our industry, bringing people together to see what would happen next and his tireless efforts in evanglelizing his vision of how communication can be. Andy wrote in part:

As a Pulver Media advisory board member, I think I speak for all by saying "thank you" and "your contributions were endless in creating an industry around your beliefs and dreams. We, as a community THANK YOU and hope for your return in whatever form or fashion that may be."

Best wishes, Jeff, as you continue to "explore Life 3.0"... and we look forward to see what that might be!

Technorati Tags: pulver, pulvermedia, jeff pulver, von, voip

Equals' "Party Line" app uses Voxeo's platform to bring voice to Facebook

Have you ever wanted to quickly get into a conference call with a group of people? What if you could just call a number and initiate a conference call that automatically dialled out to bring in the other participants? Would you see yourself using this for a group (or groups) of your friends? Could you see this being useful for a group of coworkers? Over on Voxeo's blog today, I wrote about a new Facebook application called "Party Line" that does exactly this.

As I outline in the blog post, Party Line, available (to Facebook users) at www.equals.com/partyline lets you create an unlimited number of "party lines", each of which can have up to five participants. To initiate a group call, you either dial in to 1-877-4-BUZZ-ME or you initiate the call from within the Facebook page. The application calls all the other participants and brings you all into a group conference call. You can talk for as long as you want. No bridge numbers to remember. No passcodes. Very simple to use.

For Equals, the company who developed this Facebook application, this is their first product and platform. They've indicated that in the end they want this app to also work with OpenSocial and be able to connect into the other social networking services out there supporting OpenSocial. I'll be very interested to see how well it is adopted.

From a Voxeo point-of-view, as I mention later in the blog post, this is the first Facebook app (that we know of) that uses our SIP/XML application platform, so it is admittedly exciting for us to see. We know we have a great platform for developing these kind of voice applications, but to see someone else recognize that and actually go off and develop such an application is rather cool to see.

On a technical level, it's great to see an example of what you can do with Call Control XML (CCXML). Before joining Voxeo six months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about CCXML but as I learned about what it could do, I was truly amazed. Essentially, it is an XML layer that lets you drive and control SIP-based applications. There's an amazing number of tasks you can do with CCXML and it's something I'll be writing more about here and over on Voxeo's blogs in the future. (If you'd like to learn a bit more now, you can look at the CCXML documentation, check out some CCXML tutorial videos or look at the recent post about sending telephony presence to Twitter.)

Anyway, for the moment I would encourage you to check out my Voxeo blog post with more details about Party Line, install the Party Line app and try it out! Please do let us know what you think.

Technorati Tags: applications, voxeo, equals, facebook, voice applications, voice mashups, social networking, voip, voice, conferencing, collaboration, sip, voicexml, ccxml, party line, opensocial

Squawk Box: Is the Mobile Web Dead?

Yesterday we had a fascinating conversation on Alec Saunders' Squawk Box podcast/conf call about "Is the Mobile Web Dead?" This all came about because of Russell Beattie's piece (and the resulting conversation) about shutting down Mowser and declaring that "the mobile web" is dead in light of new phones like the iPhone that allow users to see the web through a "regular" browser. Mowser was a company that existed to help companies make their websites work better on mobile devices/phones and he ultimately found that the market never really appeared.

The discussion was a good one although I think the truth is that we are all violently in agreement that at the end of the day there is just "the Web" these days and there is no need for a separate "mobile" web as the devices we use continue to evolve. We also spent a chunk of time talking about the iPhone SDK, fring and the long-term prospects for apps that use the Jailbreak installer.

All in all I think you'll find it an enjoyable conversation - give it a listen! And note that you are always welcome to join into the calls that happen most weekday mornings at 11am Eastern US time. Watch Alec's blog for more info. P.S. By the way, Russell is looking for work.

Technorati Tags: squawk box, wireless, mobile, mobile web, web, internet, apple, iphone, mowser

If you missed eComm 2008, the presentations are now online...

If, like me, you missed out on eComm 2008 last month you can at least now view (or download) almost all of the eComm 2008 presentations via SlideShare. You can view all the different presentations and download them as well.

eComm organizer Lee Dryburgh also said that he's working on getting the audio recordings of the presentations up online as podcasts which will be great to have, too. (As I wrote about on a Voxeo blog, you really need audio to understand many of the slide decks (which I actually view as a good thing!).)

Kudos to Lee for getting all the presentations up there - there's 58 right now and it's good to see the range of presentations given. As a longtime fan of SlideShare, it's also nice to see it being used for a conference like this.

Technorati Tags: eComm, eComm2008, presentations, slideshare, voip, telephony, telecommunications, communication

My "Black Bag Security Review" hits IT Conversations' Top 10 Downloads for March 2008...

I was rather surprised but pleased to see that my "Black Back Security Review" was on the list of the "Top Ten IT Conversations Shows for March 2008". My "surprise" was mostly because that particular talk is over a year old and was given at the ETel 2007 show back at the end of February 2007.

To be honest, I was not actually aware (or didn't remember, anyway) that the IT Conversations Network had distributed my talk but I'm guessing they did so with a number of the ETel sessions.

Unfortunately, they don't include the slides, which I put up in the Blue Box posting and also just generally made available on SlideShare. Without the slides, I suppose it works perfectly fine.. I've just never listened to it that way. It was still one of the most fun presentations I've ever given. Also took a ton of time to prepare. 243 slides in 14 minutes... :-) (I did write up some notes about the presentation and the style, etc.)

Anyway, it's cool to see people discovering that session again. Nice surprise!

Technorati Tags: voip, voip security, dan york, etel

Creating voice applications that interconnect with Skype and SIP

Given that I write on Voxeo's blog site, I tend not to write much here about things we are doing at Voxeo.

But I thought I'd mention here one specific post I put up recently called "Skype-ifying your voice applications" which talks about the intriguing ways in which you can use our hosted platform to make voice applications accessible through a number of different mechanisms.

As shown in the diagram to the left, an application that you write and is hosted on our platform can be called into over the PSTN, over a direct SIP connection or via Skype or FWD. Likewise calls can go out to PSTN numbers or to SIP endpoints.

This flexibility is one of the many things that intrigues me about the platform (of which I knew nothing about prior to joining the company in October).

Anyway, more information is in the full blog post. I just thought I'd mention it here. (By the way, if you'd like to try it out yourself, developer accounts are free.)

Technorati Tags: voxeo, skype, sip

Nortel's fascinating move into open source telephony... but NOT with Asterisk

Nortel and "open source telephony"? Huh?

That was admittedly my thought when I received the list of who was going to be on the panel I moderated last week at VoiceCon on open source telephony. The other two panelists were obvious choices: Bill Miller was from Digium (makers of Asterisk) and Raza was from 3Com who have recently announced that they would be reselling a version of Digium's Asterisk Business Edition. Both Bill and Raza made sense to me. But Tony Pereira of Nortel? Nortel does not leap out at me as a company working with open source telephony - what in the world are they doing with it, I wondered?

It turns out that the answer is... "quite a bit!"

As Tony Pereira outlined in our panel as well as in conversations afterwards, Nortel is in the process of launching their "Software Communications Server 500" (SCS 500) targeted at small businesses and built using open source telephony software!

Interestingly, though, it does NOT use Asterisk.

Instead Nortel is using the "other" major player in open source telephony, the "sipXecs" product from SIPfoundry.org. (Previously called "sipX" but renamed "sipXecs" about a year ago.) I've not written all that much about sipX here but it certainly has been a product I've known of over the years. It started out as a PBX product from Pingtel which they then released as an open source version ("sipX" and now "sipXecs") and also had a commercial version called "SIPxchange". sipX garnered perhaps its most attention back in October 2006 when it was announced that Amazon.com would be using it for their internal phone systems (see the links on the SIPFoundry.org site). At a fundamental level, sipX provides similar functionality to Asterisk but where Asterisk is focused on being a "platform" for telephony that can work with a wide range of protocols, sipX is focused exclusively on SIP and also provides an extensive GUI management tool. (Pingtel provides a (obviously biased) comparison of sipXecs vs Asterisk on their wiki.)

From what I learned at our panel, Nortel is essentially creating their own supported version of "sipXecs" that they will sell as the "SCS 500". It will have full commercial support from Nortel. Target market will apparently be "small" businesses. No info really available on Nortel's site yet, although glimpses are visible through support documents (such as here and here(although this appears to be about an earlier 1.0 version last year)).

All in all it's to me a fascinating move by the folks at Nortel and I look forward to learning more about the SCS500 product over the next weeks and months as they launch it. It's a rather nice boost for the whole world of "open source telephony", too, to have Nortel making this move as well.

Technorati Tags: nortel, open source, asterisk, sipx, sipxecs, pingtel, voip, sip

How do YOU see social networking changing enterprise communication?

How do you see "social networking" and "social media" changing communication within companies, enterprises, etc.? How do you think blogs, wikis, etc. will change enterprise communication? What about Facebook and other similar sites?

What would you say on this topic to an audience at VoiceCon Orlando this week?

That's the task ahead of Irwin Lazar and I as we talk with Eric Krapf and Fred Knight in a keynote "conversation" from 10:30-11:00am on Wednesday. The panel, called "Social Networking Meets Enterprise Communication"has this for a description:

It's no secret that world of enterprise communications is undergoing a transformation; IP Telephony and Unified Communications are changing the nature of the game. Now new forms of interaction, which began in the consumer/personal communications market -- blogs, wikis and online services like Facebook are migrating into the enterprise. Where do these social networking systems and mindset fit into the enterprise communications landscape? Join us for a discussion about what's real today and what's likely to happen in the future.

Obviously, this is a topic about which I am rather opinionated and have been writing about in my various blogs for years (including this blog, as well as on Disruptive Conversations and in my reports into For Immediate Release), so I'm very much looking forward to the session with Irwin on Wednesday.

We've already got a long list of points we can cover... and obviously won't be able to cover them all in only 30 minutes (and we've got a hard stop at 11am as what's next is a presentation with Al Gore and Cisco CEO John Chambers!). But I thought to myself - how can I do a keynote panel on the impact of social networking in enterprise communication if I don't somehow include social networking into the prep for that panel?

So here's my question for you all -

What do you see as the top one or two ways that social networking / social media will change the ways in which people communicate within enterprises?

Both internally among employees and also externally between the company and its customers and partners?

To perhaps get the conversation going, here are a few of the topics that Irwin and I already have in our list:

• interest in the opportunities to improve collaboration among employees, especially virtual/distributed
• interest in the opportunities to improve collaboration with customers and partners/vendors
• concerns over enterprise usage of public sites/services, i.e. what security is there for corporate data out on these sites?
• challenges with rolling out these services internally (from a deployment point-of-view as well as business case, who owns it, integration of different systems, etc.)
• expectations of new generation of incoming workers

What do you think? How do you see social apps/services changing enterprise communication? (Or do you take the contrarian view that it won't?) Your feedback is definitely welcome... (thanks in advance)

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voicecon orlando, facebook, socialnetworking, socialmedia, irwin lazar, enterprise, irwinlazar, danyork, dan york

My presentations at VoiceCon this week...

I'm down in Orlando this week for VoiceCon Orlando and will be part of three sessions. Tomorrow, I'm moderating a panel at 8am on VoIP security and on Thursday I'm moderating a panel on open source telephony. On Wednesday, I'll be part of a keynote panel with Irwin Lazar on "Social networking and enterprise communication", which should be quite fun. I'll include below the full descriptions of the various sessions. If you are attending VoiceCon and want to connect, please do contact me.

---

Session Title: Top VOIP Security Threats
Date: 3/18/2008
Time: 8:00 AM
Room: Osceola B
Session Description: There's been a lot of concern about voice over IP security, but have there been many actual exploits? This session will inform you about the state of VOIP security. You'll learn about generalized IP attacks that have affected IP telephony systems deployed on IP networks, and you'll also find out what VOIP-specific attacks have actually been observed "in the wild"--and what to expect in the future.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the most serious voice-oriented attacks that are actually being carried out? What potential attacks haven't occurred yet but probably will before long? * How do you protect your VOIP systems against these attacks? * What types of equipment and technologies must you implement to stop voice-oriented attacks? * What specific kinds of damage can these attacks cause?
Moderator(s): Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Panelist(s): Sachin Joglekar - Vulnerability Research Lead - Sipera Systems
David Endler - Director of Security Research - TippingPoint
Mark Collier - CTO - SecureLogix

---

Session Title: Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?
Date: 3/20/2008
Time: 11:45 AM
Room: Sun C
Session Description: Open source PBXs are gaining a higher profile: Asterisk and other open-source PBX software packages continue to gain acceptance, and some traditional PBX vendors have implemented open source code for their products. But these efforts still aim mainly at smaller implementations. In this session, you'll learn why open source PBX software has growing appeal, and whether it will appeal to larger customers as the market progresses.
KEY QUESTIONS: * What level of market share and acceptance has open source PBX software attained? What is expected? * Which products use open source PBX software? * What are the most compelling reasons for choosing open source PBX software? What are the greatest areas of concern in making this choice? * What are the technical challenges of an open-source PBX deployment, and how are these overcome? * What are some real-world customer experiences with open source PBX software?
Moderator(s): Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Speaker(s): M Raza - Product Management - 3Com
Bill Miller - VP, Prod Mgt & Mktg - Digium
Tony Pereira - Business Leader Business Communications - Nortel

---

Session Title: Social Networking Meets Enterprise Communications
Date: 3/19/2008
Time: 10:30 AM
Room: Osceola C
Session Description: It?s no secret that world of enterprise communications is undergoing a transformation; IP Telephony and Unified Communications are changing the nature of the game. Now new forms of interaction, which began in the consumer/personal communications market -- blogs, wikis and online services like Facebook ? are migrating into the enterprise. Where do these social networking systems ? and mindset ? fit into the enterprise communications landscape? Join us for a discussion about what?s real today and what?s likely to happen in the future.
Panelist(s):
Dan York - Dir of Emerging Comm Tech - Voxeo
Irwin Lazar - Principal Analyst & Program Director, Collaboration & Convergence - Nemertes Research

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voiceconorlando, asterisk, opensource, socialnetworking, communications, danyork, irwinlazar

R.I.P., Russell Shaw, VoIP blogger for ZDnet

A little bit ago, Andy completely surprised me with a call via Skype (it was 8pm-ish on a Saturday night and I just happened to be at my computer printing out boarding passes for tomorrow's flights) with some terrible news.

As Andy relays in his blog post, fellow VoIP blogger Russell Shaw passed away suddenly in his hotel room in San Jose sometime over the past couple of days. Russell was out there to attend eComm 2008 and Andy said that several folks were wondering where he was as he never made it to the actual show.

I've enjoyed Russell's writing on his IP Telephony blog at ZDNet and while I never really worked with him in any way, I would often run into him at the various VoIP conferences (and often at Andy's famous dinners). He was "one of us"... those who choose for whatever reason to write about VoIP/IP Telephony/Unified Communications/whatever... and so it is definitely sad to learn of his passing.

My thoughts right now are certainly with his family, wherever they may be, as they come to grips with this very sudden change.

Rest In Peace, Russell... you will definitely be missed!

P.S. ZDNet's Editor, Dan Farber, also has a nice post up about Russell.

Technorati Tags: russell shaw, voip, zdnet, voip bloggers, bloggers, life, death

The Oprah-tization of VoIP via Skype!

Did you ever think that we would utter "Oprah" and "VoIP" in the same sentence?

Well, we are... or more precisely "Oprah" and "Skype". If you have no idea what I am talking about, you need to head over to Skype Journal and read Jim Courtney's piece: "Skype Sponsors Oprah's 'A New Earth' Web Event"

Essentially, Oprah has taken her Book Club online to host a weekly web collaboration session for the next ten weeks with, oh, 750,000 members of her club! More information - and an audio introduction from Oprah - is available on the Skype campaign page. Monday night was the first first session and as Jim subsequently noted (as did Howard Wolinsky on the new Skype US blog), the session didn't go so well with regard to technical issues. As Oprah's company, Harpo Productions (Hint: spell "Harpo" backwards) said in their statement:

Monday night's webcast was one of the largest single online events in the history of the Internet. More than 500,000 people simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet. Unfortunately, some of our users experienced delays in viewing the webcast. We are working to identify the specific causes for the problems experienced and will work diligently to rectify them.

252 Gbps, eh? I think that's bringing new meaning to "disruptive telephony/communication!" I'll have to ask next week at IETF-71 if anyone there ever thought we'd see that kind of throughput! Pretty cool, on one level, but it obviously taxed the Internet a wee bit - or at least the connections into the servers running all of this. They go on to say:

Harpo Productions, Inc., Move Networks and Limelight Networks recognize that interactive Internet broadcasting to a mass audience is still an emerging medium

Yep!

But as Jim notes in his post, there are some definite wins for Skype here. Apparently the Skype portions of the web conference, which involved people asking questions over Skype High Quality Video, worked very well. There were also apparently some great statements from Oprah about how great she thought Skype was.

Kudos to Skype for getting in there in such a massive event - I can honestly say that I never would have thought I'd be writing about Oprah here. It will be interesting to see how the subsequent sessions go.

And for all us who are not joining in - for the next 9 weeks, Monday nights are probably a good time to stay off the Internet! (You know... read a book... play a game... go for a walk... ;-)

Technorati Tags: oprah, voip, skype, collaboration, Internet

I'll be down at VoiceCon Orlando in March 2008...

FYI, I will be down at VoiceCon Orlando on March 17-20, 2008. I'm moderating two panel sessions (see the schedule). First, up, bright and early at 8am on Tuesday, March 18th, I'll be moderating a panel on "Top VoIP Security Threats". This should be a fun one as it has VOIPSA Chair Dave Endler, Mark Collier of SecureLogix and Sachin Joglekar of Sipera Systems. I know all three of the guys, particularly Dave and Mark who have both worked on VOIPSA matters, and this session should be a good bit of fun. I'm planning on making it a rather interactive session. :-)

At the other end of the show, on Thursday, March 20th, at 11:45am, I'll be moderating a panel "Open Source for Enterprise Voice: How Much, How Soon?". This would should be interesting because it has Bill Miller from Digium (makers of Asterisk), who I know well, and M Raza from 3Com... and then Tony Pereira from Nortel! 3Com's presence on the panel isn't particularly surprising given their relationship with Digium, but it will be interesting to see Nortel's view on the matter.

All in all it should be quite an interesting show. Lots of good sessions and, I'm sure, interesting people to meet. If you're going to be down there, please do drop an email as I'm always interesting in meeting readers of the blog.

Technorati Tags: voicecon, voxeo, voipsa, securelogix, sipera, 3com, digium, asterisk, voip security, open source

Congrats to Skype on hitting 100 BILLION minutes!

A huge congrats to Skype for hitting the milestone of over 100 BILLION minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls! As Skype's Villu Aruk notes in his amusing post, it's rather hard to wrap your head around numbers of this size. Congrats to all the folks involved with Skype... it is a milestone to celebrate.

See also Jim Courtney and Jon Arnold with their views of this announcement.

Technorati Tags: skype

Join us tomorrow (2/15) morning for a discussion of eComm 2008 on the Squawk Box conf call / podcast

What are you doing at 10am Eastern time tomorrow morning? (Friday, February 15th) How about joining us for a "Squawk Box" conference call to discuss the upcoming eComm 2008 conference?

The call will take place using Iotums Facebook app called "FREE Conference Calls". You can just visit the show web page and RSVP (and add the Facebook app if you need to). I'll be hosting the show tomorrow while Alec Saunders is flying back from Barcelona and Thomas Howe and I will be interviewing Lee Dryburgh about the upcoming eComm 2008 conference... what it is, who is speaking and why people should attend. It should be a lively conversation with a great group of folks.

Bring your questions and join us!

P.S. The show will be posted later in Alec's blog and I'll provide a link here.

Technorati Tags: alec saunders, applications, etel, ecomm,