Category: Telecom Industry
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Keynote at AstriCon on Oct 14: Open Source And The Global Disruption Of Telecom – What Choices Will We Make?
Continue Reading: Keynote at AstriCon on Oct 14: Open Source And The Global Disruption Of Telecom – What Choices Will We Make?Two weeks from today I’ll be in Orlando giving the opening keynote address at AstriCon 2015. The abstract of the session is:
Open Source And The Global Disruption Of Telecom – What Choices Will We Make?
Wednesday, October 14th, 2015 – 9:00 am to 9:45 am – Pacifica Ballroom 7
There is a battle raging for the global future of telecommunications and the Internet. Taking place in networks, board rooms and legislatures, the battle will determine how we all communicate and what opportunities will exist. Will telecom support innovation? Will it be accessible to all? Will it give us the level of security and privacy we need to have the open, trusted Internet? Or will it be restricted and limited by corporate or government gatekeepers?
The rise of voice-over-IP has fundamentally disrupted the massive global telecommunications industry, infrastructure and policies. Open source software such as Asterisk has been a huge driver of that disruption and innovation.. but now what? What role do platforms such as Asterisk play in this space? And what can be their role in a telecom infrastructure that is now mobile, increasingly embedded (Internet of Things) and more and more using proprietary walled gardens of communication?
Join…
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WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!
Continue Reading: WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!As I checked my AppStore updates on my iPhone this week I was surprised but pleased to see that WhatsApp now includes “WhatsApp Calling”. As it says:“Call your friends and family using WhatsApp for free, even if they’re in another country. WhatsApp calls use your phone’s Internet connection rather than your cellular plan’s voice minutes. Data charges may apply.
How many ways can you spell “disruption”?
(Hint: w – h – a – t – s – a – p – p)Sure, there have been a zillion mobile apps providing Over-The-Top (OTT) voice services, many of which I’ve written about here on this site.
But this is WhatsApp!
This is the application that just passed 800 million monthly active users! (Techmeme link) With projections to hit 1 billion monthly active users by the end of the year.
Oh, and it’s owned by Facebook! 🙂
Now, I personally don’t use WhatsApp that much right now. The people who I want to message are primarily using iMessage, Facebook Messenger or Wire. (And every once in a great while I’ll fire up Skype on my iPhone.)
But obviously there are 800 million people who do use WhatsApp each month… and…
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Goodbye, Gigaom – So Long And Thanks For All The News!
Continue Reading: Goodbye, Gigaom – So Long And Thanks For All The News!This one hurts. There have been many failures in the tech media industry, but the death of Gigaom is one that hurts. The word started filtering out early last week from people such as Mathew Ingram:
This hurts more than I can say: I was just told Gigaom is shutting down — it has run out of money. We tried our best, but it wasn't enough.
— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) March 10, 2015And then there were the confirmations from people such as Om himself:
Just walked out of Gigaom for the last time. Thank you everyone. I will miss you all for rest of my life! http://t.co/IBOhRuZ4DZ
— Om Malik (@om) March 10, 2015And the starkly worded message on the main page of Gigaom that said in part:
Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased.
“All operations have ceased.”
And there it was… the end of this particular dream of Om’s. He followed with his own post, ending simply “Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you!”
MUCH…
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Net Neutrality: Did We “Win” A Battle, Only To Possibly Lose The War?
Continue Reading: Net Neutrality: Did We “Win” A Battle, Only To Possibly Lose The War?Friends don’t understand why I’m not jumping for joy after the FCC’s “Network Neutrality” decision yesterday. After all, they’ve been hearing me passionately argue for years about how we need to wake up and pay attention to the choices we have to make for the future of the Internet. They’ve heard me rail against the Internet access providers here in the US who seek to be the new gatekeepers and require people to ask permission or pay to get new services online. They’ve heard me strongly say that “The Internet Way” is for services to be “decentralized and distributed”. They’ve seen me write about “permissionless innovation” and the dangers we could face. In fact, I’ll be in Austin, TX, next week speaking at the NTEN conference about “Our Choice of Internet Futures”.
They know that I joined the Internet Society in 2011 specifically to fight for the open Internet – and that a large goal in my life is to be one of the voices helping advocate for the open Internet and ensuring that my children have the same “Internet of opportunity” that I’ve been able to have. Friends could hear in the closing words of FCC Chairman Tom… -
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Congratulations To Alec Saunders On His Move To Microsoft
Continue Reading: Congratulations To Alec Saunders On His Move To MicrosoftCongratulations to Alec Saunders on his new role working with Microsoft Ventures in Canada! Alec’s been a long-time friend and fellow blogger dating way back to the mid-2000’s when he was proposing his “Voice 2.0 Manifesto”. When he was leading Iotum a group of us were doing the daily “Squawk Box” podcast that was a lot of fun. Alec and I used to see each other all the time on the VoIP / Unified Communications conference circuit (which is where I took the photo that he now uses on his blog). Back in September 2011 I wrote about his joining Blackberry and then a year later when he made rock music videos with Blackberry.And now he’s returning to his roots! He was one of the first product managers for Internet Explorer at Microsoft… and now he’s back at Microsoft again! As he says in his post:
As of last Monday, I’ve rejoined Microsoft in the role of Principal Technical Evangelist. My beat is Canada – not just Kitchener-Waterloo. My boss is Microsoft Chief Evangelist and Corporate Vice President for Developer Experience, Steven “Guggs” Guggenheimer. I’m part of the global Microsoft Ventures team. And we run programs, like the Microsoft…
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Aswath Rao Says I’m Wrong About VoIP In India
Continue Reading: Aswath Rao Says I’m Wrong About VoIP In IndiaAs a follow-up to my post yesterday about how Indian telcos are complaining to the the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) about WhatsApp’s plans to launch VoIP, long-time VoIP blogger Aswath Rao took issue on Twitter with one particular sentence in my article:India has NOT been a very friendly place for VoIP historically, and so we’ll have to see what happens here…
In a series of tweets Aswath pointed out that the TRAI has in fact been very supportive of IP-to-IP VoIP services and has left them unregulated. The regulation has all been around VoIP services interconnecting to the Indian PSTN. Aswath’s tweets: https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548681349344034818
You are mistaken when you say “India has NOT been a very friendly place for VoIP historically”. And I have pted it out many times.
https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548681697227980800From the get go, TRAI has regulated only IP to Indian PSTN. IP/IP & IP to foreign PSTN have been unregulated
https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548687939862290432My point is that TRAI has been very enlightened in its ruling. Even after 11/26 attack & pressure it has not reg IP/IP
Given that Aswath has been very involved in VoIP in India for many years, I’ll defer to his opinion on this one.
Thanks,…
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To No Surprise, Indian Telcos Want to Block WhatsApp OTT VoIP
Continue Reading: To No Surprise, Indian Telcos Want to Block WhatsApp OTT VoIPTo the surprise of absolutely no one, telcos in India are objecting to plans for WhatsApp to launch VoIP and complaining about it to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). So reports The Hindu Business Line that includes this glorious quote from a representative of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI):“Allowing the use of VoIP/ Internet telephony at such massive scale without licensing regime would lead to a significant disruption in the existing business of TSPs and can substantially derail their investment capability”
Gee… allowing a new innovative entrant into the market would lead to “significant disruption in the existing business” of the existing telcos.
Yes. Exactly.
And the representative further pointed out that this could lead to a “significant loss of revenues” for the government in the form of taxes.
Yes. Exactly.
This is the nature of Over-The-Top (OTT) applications and services. In providing better services for customers they very often DO cause “significant disruption” to existing businesses.
This is the nature of innovation.
This is the value of the “permissionless innovation” that has made the Internet the amazing tool for communication, collaboration and creation that it is today.
The folks at WhatsApp don’t need to…
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The Directory Problem – The Challenge For Wire, Talko And Every Other “Skype-Killer” OTT App
Continue Reading: The Directory Problem – The Challenge For Wire, Talko And Every Other “Skype-Killer” OTT AppAs much as I am enjoying the new Wire app, there is a fundamental problem that Wire faces… as well as Talko, Firefox Hello and every other Over-The-Top (OTT) or WebRTC application that is seeking to become THE way that we communicate via voice, chat and/or video from our mobile phones and desktops. That is:How do they gather the “directory” of people that others want to talk to?
The fundamental challenge all of these applications face is this:
People will only USE a communication application if the people they want to talk to are using the application.
And where I say “talk” it could also be “chat” or “message” or… pick your communication verb.
It’s all about the “directory” of users.
There’s a war out there right now… and it’s a war for the future of our communications between each other. It’s a war for messaging… and it’s also a war for voice and video.
And it all comes back to… which communications application or service can provide the most comprehensive directory of users?
Which communications tool will be the one that people use the most? Will any of them replace the default communications of the mobile phone? NOTE:…
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Catching Up With Mitel …
Continue Reading: Catching Up With Mitel …By way of a tweet I stumbled upon analyst Blair Pleasant’s UC Strategies post, “Change – The Only Thing That’s Constant“, that showed me that while I’ve been off in the worlds of IPv6 and DNSSEC there has been a great amount of activity happening in the world of my former employer Mitel.Heck, I didn’t even realize they had a new logo! 🙂
But indeed they do (apparently back in 2013 in October 2014 (see comments))… and Blair’s great look at the world of Unified Communications mentions that and a good bit more. I was aware of the acquisition of Aastra, but did not realize that PrairieFyre had finally been folded into Mitel (it had always seemed to be a likely acquisition candidate as its products worked primarily with Mitel’s systems).
With my focus changing a bit, and most of my interest here on Disruptive Telephony focused around WebRTC and some of the newer disruptions to Internet communications, the last time I really mentioned Mitel was back in April with the passing of Simon Gwatkin. My posts about Mitel prior to that go back to 2011 and before.
In looking at Mitel’s web site, their rebranding is clear…
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More Observations About The “Wire” App
Continue Reading: More Observations About The “Wire” AppAfter yesterday’s launch of Wire, I continued to use it a bit today and am writing these notes, mostly for my own memory.Group Chats ARE Persistent
In my post yesterday I said that it seemed like Wire group chats were “persistent” (something I’d previously written about with regard to Skype). Today I can confirm that they ARE persistent. When I fired up the Wire app this morning I received all the messages that had been posted into the group chat overnight while I’d been offline.
Further, when I went to add someone to the group chat, I received this message:
The Wire team also deserves credit for how smoothly they make the scrolling back through the chat history. Works very well!
No IPv6… yet
Friends tested Wire in an IPv6-only network and confirmed that it unfortunately does not yet work. In reaching out to someone at Wire the word was that they are definitely investigating this to see what can be done. The issue is that the Wire app connects to Amazon EC2 servers – so it’s really an issue of Amazon’s capabilities.
I will say again that Wire at the very least deserves credit for coming out with…