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Microsoft Buys Nokia – Was There Really Another Choice?
Continue Reading: Microsoft Buys Nokia – Was There Really Another Choice?Microsoft accomplished something today they haven’t done for a while (at least in my memory) – they dominated the main page of Techmeme and had a great amount of the tech media talking about them.
The news, of course, is of Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s Devices and Services business and licensing of Nokia’s patents and mapping services.
Is anyone truly surprised by this?
Consider:
- Microsoft is being beaten in the market by Apple and Google as everything moves to mobile. Their only hope was Nokia, who provided a hardware platform that would run Windows Phone.
- Nokia is being beaten in the market by Apple and Google as everything moves to smartphones. Their only hope was Microsoft, who provided a different mobile operating system for their devices that gave them a competitive angle.
Given those conditions, the marriage makes a certain amount of sense.
But… you only have to scroll down that Techmeme page (captured at 1:30pm US ET today) to realize how desperate a situation this is for both companies.
First, news is out that Apple is holding an event one week from today on September 10 where they are widely expected to announce new iPhones, including potentially a lower…
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10 Years Of Skype – Massive Disruption… But Will Skype Remain Relevant?
Continue Reading: 10 Years Of Skype – Massive Disruption… But Will Skype Remain Relevant?Ten years ago today, on August 29, 2003, a group of entrepreneurs and developers from Denmark, Sweden and Estonia unleashed a small software program that would fundamentally and irrevocably disrupt telecommunications and just communications in general. Everything would change. Skype has a 10th anniversary blog post out today that highlights some of those changes that have been brought about by Skype, although I personally find their 9th anniversary infographic a bit more interesting because it traced back the history of Skype.Massive Disruption
There is a GREAT amount for Skype to celebrate on it’s 10th birthday. The disruption that has occurred within telecom is truly massive:
- The cost per-minute of international phone calls has been commoditized to near zero. (Indeed, how many people actually make real “phone calls” internationally anymore?)
- Telcos – and governments! – who depended upon those per-minute fees have seen almost that entire revenue stream evaporate, or at least show that it is rapidly fading away. Economic disruption on a massive scale!
- Skype came to be a prime example of how “over-the-top (OTT)” apps could exist on top of the existing telecom networks – and take both marketshare and revenue from those networks.
- Skype introduced the masses…
- The cost per-minute of international phone calls has been commoditized to near zero. (Indeed, how many people actually make real “phone calls” internationally anymore?)
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Can We Create A “Secure Caller ID” For VoIP? (Join Tomorrow’s STIR BOF To Learn More)
Continue Reading: Can We Create A “Secure Caller ID” For VoIP? (Join Tomorrow’s STIR BOF To Learn More)Can we create a “secure Caller ID” for IP-based communications, a.k.a. voice-over-IP (VoIP)? And specifically for VoIP based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)? Can we create a way to securely identify the origin of a call that can be used to combat robocalling, phishing and telephony denial-of-service (TDOS) attacks?
That is the challenge to be undertaken by the “Secure Telephone Identity Revisited (STIR)” group meeting tomorrow morning, July 30, 2013, at 9:00 am in Berlin, Germany, as part of the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The meeting tomorrow is a “Birds Of a Feather (BOF)”, which in IETF language is a meeting to determine whether there is sufficient interest to create a formal “working group” to take on a new body of work within the IETF. The proposed “charter” for this new work begins:
Over the last decade, a growing set of problems have resulted from the lack of security mechanisms for attesting the origins of real-time communications. As with email, the claimed source identity of a SIP request is not verified, and this permits unauthorized use of source identities as part of deceptive and coercive activities, such as robocalling (bulk unsolicited commercial communications),…
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Reminder – Opus Codec Presentation Streaming LIVE From IETF 87 in 2 Hours
Continue Reading: Reminder – Opus Codec Presentation Streaming LIVE From IETF 87 in 2 HoursWant to learn more about the Opus codec and why it is so important? As I mentioned at the end of my last post about why Opus matters, there will be a special presentation about Opus as part of the IETF 87 Technical Plenary happening in about 2 hours starting at around 17:45-18:00 in Berlin, Germany (Central European Summer Time, UTC+2, 6 hours off of US Eastern time).
There are three options for watching and participating live:
- using a WebRTC-capable browser (latest editions of Chrome and Firefox) and connecting to: http://www.meetecho.com/ietf87/tech_plenary
- listening to the audio stream at for either Potsdam 1 or Potsdam 3 (the plenary is in the combined room and I don’t know which stream will be used)
- watching a video live stream at: https://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/ietf87techplenary
The technical plenary begins at 17:40 but there are some other reports before the Opus section. The agenda can be found online and includes:
1. IAB Chair Report
2. IRTF Chair Report
3. RSE and RSOC Chair Report
4. Technical Topic: Opus Codec
a. Introduction
…
b. Overview of Opus
c. Testing
d. History of Opus in the IETF
e. Opus Deployment Panel
f. Future Work -
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Why The Opus Codec Matters – Even If You Don’t Care About Audio
Continue Reading: Why The Opus Codec Matters – Even If You Don’t Care About AudioWhat makes the Opus codec so interesting? Why is there such a buzz about Opus right now? If you are not in telecom or doing anything with audio, why should you even remotely care about Opus?
In a word…
Innovation!
And because Opus has the potential to let us communicate with each other across the Internet with a richer and more natural sound. You will be able to hear people or music or presenters with much more clarity and more like you are right there with them.
Opus can help build a better user experience across the Internet.
You see, the reality is that today “real-time communication” using voice and video is increasingly being based on top of the Internet Protocol (IP), whether that communication is happening across the actual Internet or whether it is happening within private networks. If you’ve used Skype, Google+ Hangouts, any voice-over-IP (VoIP) softphones, any of the new WebRTC apps or any of the mobile smartphone apps that do voice or video, you’ve already been using IP-based real-time communication.
Dropping The Shackles Of The Legacy PSTN
Part of the beauty of the move to IP is that we no longer have to worry about the…
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IETF Journal – WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser
Continue Reading: IETF Journal – WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web BrowserSeeking to understand the basics of WebRTC and why there is so much interest in it? There is a new July 2013 issue of the IETF Journal out this week that includes an article I wrote titled “WebRTC: Moving Real-Time Communication into the Web Browser” that looks at WebRTC from a high-level user perspective.My aim with this IETF Journal article links was to summarize some of the links on my my WebRTC/RTCWEB page and is admittedly similar in style to my 2012 post, “How WebRTC Will Fundamentally Disrupt Telecom (And Change The Internet)“, although this newer article focuses on the work happening within the IETF and provides links to get more involved.
On that note, the RTCWEB working group within the IETF will be meeting next week in Berlin (twice, actually) and has an agenda for IETF87 focused primarily on security questions and looking at the “data channel” aspect of WebRTC/RTCWEB. It should, as always, be an interesting session to listen in to.
If you can’t get to Berlin, there are audio streams you can listen to remotely and a Jabber chat room where you can raise questions. Links to both can be found on the top…
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Video: Great WebRTC Tutorial and Demonstrations by Cullen Jennings
Continue Reading: Video: Great WebRTC Tutorial and Demonstrations by Cullen JenningsWant to understand more about WebRTC and where it is going? Want to see some demos of new WebRTC apps? At the recent INET event in Bangkok, Thailand, Dr. Cullen Jennings, one of the co-chairs of the IETF’s RTCWEB Working Group, gave an excellent presentation that walks through the basics of WebRTC and provided some demos as well:The presentation is about an hour and is followed by a question period. Well worth watching if you want to understand the current state of WebRTC and how it may impact telecommunications today.
Note, you can also view the video directly on YouTube to better see it in a larger size or on a mobile device.
P.S. For more information about WebRTC, see the links off of my WebRTC/RTCWEB page.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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Moving Beyond Telephone Numbers – The Need For A Secure, Ubiquitous Application-Layer Identifier
Continue Reading: Moving Beyond Telephone Numbers – The Need For A Secure, Ubiquitous Application-Layer IdentifierDo “smart” parking meters really need phone numbers? Does every “smart meter” installed by electric utilities need a telephone number? Does every new car with a built-in navigation system need a phone number? Does every Amazon Kindle (and similar e-readers) really need its own phone number?
In the absence of an alternative identifier, the answer seems to be a resounding “yes” to all of the above.
At the recent SIPNOC 2013 event, U.S. Federal Communications Commission CTO Henning Schulzrinne gave a presentation (slides available) about “Transitioning the PSTN to IP” where he made a point about the changes around telephone numbers and their uses (starting on slide 14) and specifically spoke about this use of phone numbers for devices (slide 20). While his perspective is obviously oriented to North America and country code +1, the trends he identifies point to a common problem:
What do we use as an application-layer identifier for Internet-connected devices?
In a subsequent conversation, Henning indicated that one of the area codes seeing the largest amount of requests for new phone numbers is one in Detroit – because of the automakers need to provision new cars with navigation systems such as OnStar that need an…
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Did Google REALLY Kill Off All XMPP/Jabber Support In Google+ Hangouts? It Still Seems To Partially Work
Continue Reading: Did Google REALLY Kill Off All XMPP/Jabber Support In Google+ Hangouts? It Still Seems To Partially WorkDid Google really kill off all of their support for XMPP (Jabber) in Google+ Hangouts? Or is it still there in a reduced form? Will they be bringing back more support? What is really going on here?
In my excitement yesterday about Google Voice now being integrated with Google+ Hangouts, I missed a huge negative side of the new Hangouts change that is being widely reported: the removal of support for the XMPP (Jabber) protocol and interoperability with third-party clients.
But yet a few moments ago I did have a chat from an external XMPP client (Apple’s “Messages” app) with Randy Resnick who received the message in a Google+ Hangout. I opened up a Google+ window in my browser and I could see the exchange happening there as well. Here’s a side-by-side shot of the exchange in both clients:
So what is going on here?
Reports Of Google Removing XMPP
This issue has been widely reported in many of the tech blogs and sites. Matt Landis covered this issue very well in his post: Hangouts Won’t Hangout With Other Messaging Vendors: Google’s New Unified Messaging Drops Open XMPP/Jabber Interop which then generated long threads on Reddit and Slashdot.
The Verge in…
Disruptive Telephony
Dan York on how Voice over IP is rewriting (almost) everything you thought you understood about telephony…