Two years ago at CES 2010 Skype announced Skype for TV with two partners (Samsung and LG). It was only available on very high end Internet-enabled TV sets and required vendor-specific webcams. Effectively the cost of adoption was over $1,500. CES 2011 saw an expansion of the number of TV set vendors (Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, Vizio) and the support of Skype for TV on BluRay DVD players from Panasonic and Sony, bringing the cost of adoption down to about $400 for the player and a supporting webcam.

One other complication was that all these offerings required a webcam that was specifically designed for the individual TV/player vendor. At a July 2011 panel discussion, Skype President Tony Bates mentioned that Skype for TV was installed into over 50 million TV sets; however, again these were mostly high end sets with a price point that did not encourage mass consumer adoption.

At CES 2012 there were some demonstrations and announcements that effectively make it possible to enable every television set to support a Skype for TV video or voice call at a much more reasonable cost:

• Tely Labs launched its TelyHD platform – an Android-based webcam that embeds HD video support of Skype for TV. Most significantly it is TV vendor-agnostic as it can work with any TV set that has an HDMI input. More on TelyHD to follow in an upcoming review. Total cost: $249.00 including webcam, available at the Skype Store.
• The newly announced Sony BDP-S790 BluRay player, available later this spring, is unique from a Skype perspective in that it will work with any webcam that supports Skype.

• Sony was also demonstrating a prototype of its forthcoming Android-based “Smart TV” set top box as its version of Google TV. It will deliver all the common Internet social networking applications such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype, amongst others, to any TV set and again work with any webcam.
• Samsung announced its inTouch Android-based webcam supporting Skype and other social networking applications; deliveries to commence later this spring.
• All of these devices support not only HDMI and 720p HD video resolution but also an embedded WiFi internet connection.

Samsung was demonstrating Skype for TV where, as shown on the right, the webcam was embedded into the top frame of the television set. While apparently still supporting Skype for TV, there were no demonstrations in the Toshiba or LG booths.

Panasonic and Sony had new versions of their BluRay player, as well as new firmware supporting Skype for TV on their Viera and Bravia lines respectively. As shown in the video below, Panasonic’s firmware allows you to watch TV during a Skype call where you can switch the audio between Skype and the TV channel audio within the context of the conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQhj7za2uNk

A couple of the booth personnel mentioned that the one feature missing in a world where all TV vendors are actively encouraging 3D TV was the ability to adopt Skype for TV to 3D; apparently many of their other “smart TV” social networking applications somehow have the ability to “upscale” 2D to 3D. Not something I’m holding my breath waiting for, especially given what the webcam requirements would be.

Bottom line: The launch of products lowering the adoption cost of Skype for TV, especially on existing TV sets, significantly expands the potential user base of Skype for TV, not only for consumers but also for business use. The number one advantage is the ability to hold video calls where the other end point can be a PC, smartphone (iPhone, Android phone) or tablet – or another TV set that supports Skype for TV.

On the other hand, at the time of writing this post Skype for TV does not support Group Video Calling; in fact, currently one cannot even be a participant on a Group Video Call with Skype for TV.

While the webcams for Skype for TV are currently vendor-specific, it appears that the ability to use a generic Skype-certified webcam should appear later this year on the Sony devices. On the other hand TelyHD offers a complete solution in one hardware package.

Related articles

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The Consumer Electronics Show is the industry’s largest international gathering that tends to take over Las Vegas for four days. Skype at CES 2012 is rather low key this year with no press announcements, a small “open air” Skype Lounge in the Central Plaza in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center and a kiosk in the Microsoft booth.

The Skype Lounge features a demonstration of the recently announced TelyHD Skype video calling for any TV set and Skype Video Calls on a large screen with various local Las Vegas locations such as a museum and some school attractions. Occasionally they get worked up with “jump time” throwing out free cell phone socks to passersby. The biggest issue here is visitor traffic; due to its location barricaded largely by a key roadway for shuttle busses and taxis, it’s a little like the barriers put up by an urban freeway.

Meanwhile over at the Skype kiosk in the Microsoft booth are two sides; one with four PC’s where visitors can make Skype calls; on the other side a 55” LCD TV screen receiving an HD video transmission from the Skype Lounge. Lots of traffic; but no presentations as done at some other Microsoft kiosks (Windows 8, Kinect, Windows Phone, etc.)

Make Free Skype Calls	Skype for TV at 55” (720p HD, no pixelating)

On the show floor so far I have seen Skype in the Logitech booth (new C920 1080p HD webcam), Blue Microphone with a unique USB microphone for laptops and NVidia where there is another TelyHD demonstration.

I’ll have more to report on TelyHD after an interview later today.

And our presence did get tweeted.

Bottom line: It is called the Consumer Electronics Show where the focus is on the business relationships behind end user experiences for consumers. While Skype had no news announcements, they focused on demonstrating the user experience and applications of video calling. At the same time I suspect Skype is working out the path to its incorporation into Microsoft products – Live, Xbox/Kinect, Office, Windows Phone, etc. And we’ll hear about it at some Microsoft -sponsored event – tying in with their reasoning for dropping out of CES as both keynote and exhibitor.

Over the past six years of covering Skype, there have been three “Masters” – the original founders – Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (2003 to 2005), eBay (2005 to 2009) and the Silver Lake consortium (2009 to MS acquisition). And, once regulatory approvals and due diligence are completed, Microsoft will become the fourth later this fall.

But we’ve never heard the full background to some of these transitions. We knew there had been a major intellectual property issue – “you can’t drive the car without the engine”; we heard presentations on the Skype business model as Skype was presented to the investment community by eBay. But what happened behind the scenes that resulted in the many business decisions made to justify these ownership changes has never come out as one complete story.

At this past week’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech event in Aspen, a most interesting panel discussion revealed some of the history and reasoning behind this evolution, starting with, on John Donahue’s assumption of the eBay CEO position in 2009, eBay’s decision to “carve out” Skype as a non-core asset. On the Fortune event panel were three key players in this evolution: Skype CEO Tony Bates, Silver Lake Managing Director Egon Durban and Andreesson Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz.

It’s most interesting to watch the entire video but some highlights:

• Dealing with the dichotomy of a “wildly popular and deeply troubled” company that was in full blown litigation with its founders.
• How Skype continues to operate as an independent company and its sole responsibility to Microsoft during the due diligence period leading up to the closing of the Microsoft acquisition, expected in October, 2011
• Why Silver Lake, working with Andreesson-Horowitz, was able to execute on the two steps necessary to acquire Skype, in the process rescuing a “terrific asset that continued to perform, [had] fantastic network effects and continued to produce great product” from a “horrible cataclysmic outcome”. But seeing Skype as “resilient notwithstanding”, these investors recognized a unique opportunity that required a unique solution.
  • Yet they came up with a solution that would eventually give eBay investors a net gain on their initial 2005 investment in Skype.
• The internal Skype business issues that the Silver Lake consortium recognized and why they hired Tony Bates out of a senior executive position at Cisco to take over the reins.
  • In the course of this there is a lesson on how a private equity takeover can be highly successful and grow a business built around existing key resources. It’s a stark contrast to the more often publicized “slash-and-burn” approach of many private equity acquisitions where employee and product cuts become the recipe for repackaging a business investment for a subsequent sale.
  • There are some interesting comments mentioning one additional key asset, beyond the technology and user base, that made the Skype acquisition a “magical opportunity” when Microsoft was considering the acquisition last spring.
• What Tony Bates has done behind the scenes that has resulted in the release of five new products over the past six weeks¹– more than had been released in the previous two years.
  • What Tony Bates sees as a bigger revenue opportunity than SkypeOut calling.
• How the pending Microsoft acquisition of Skype will result in an entirely new business model for how Microsoft embeds an acquisition into it overall operations.

Bottom line: starting with the Silver Lake consortium acquisition, the Skype business case study is unique in how a wildly popular yet deeply troubled, engineering resource rich company can be converted into a an asset that will continue to be the “gold standard” for worldwide ad hoc communications in both the consumer and small business markets.

Watch the video; it’s a compelling – and revealing – story ….

Fortune: Lessons from Skype

¹Five new products:

• Comcast as a new platform for Skype calling
• Launch of video on Android phones
• SkypeKit public beta launch
• Mac 5.2 client announcement (post forthcoming)
• Facebook Video Calling

Related articles

• Skype CEO Teases In-Call Ads (mashable.com)
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Just over a year after Skype’s first announcement of SkypeKit as a closed beta program for third party developers, Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s Vice President, Emerging Opportunities, announced the opening up of the SkypeKit developer program to a public beta at eComm 2011 this afternoon.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to discuss the program with Chris Andrews, Sr. Business Development Manager at Skype. The primary function of SkypeKit is to provide access to a “headless” version of Skype from which developers can provide their Skype functionality through their own product’s user interface. Otherwise SkypeKit provides access to the same functionality as standard desktop clients; however, it does not support screen sharing or multi-party video (Group Video).

To join the SkypeKit developer program developers create a developer account and pay a one-time fee of $10 to download the SDK and participate in the developer community forum. With its ability to support embedded Skype in hardware, hardware partners will also need to obtain Skype certification at the standard costs for that program. Software application developers have no additional cost. At this point there is no revenue sharing expected by Skype; that’s the one issue that will have to be addressed at some point if Skype is to demonstrate ROI to Microsoft.

Chris confirmed access to the video stream is available via Skype’s proprietary RTP interface which has been designed to address the various screen formats developers will encounter with either their own hardware or, in the case of a software application, the various PC and other intelligent device displays. Documentation is available at the Skype Developer site.

While SkypeKit provides support for both hardware and software, most of the development to date has centred around hardware devices. At CES Skype announced that SkypeKit was being used for a baby monitor based on the Panda chip and is being tested for incorporation into GM’s OnStar service. One new player he mentioned is Tely Labs, a startup with no website, who are developing a “living room experience” for their own branded TV accessory; we’ll have to wait to see what this means beyond the various Skype for TV/BluRay offerings.

An initial software platform incorporating SkyepKit is Imvox, a social voice communications platform for gamers. From their website:

The biggest benefit of Imvox’s participation in the SkypeKit developer program is it allows us to offer the gaming community crystal clear voice quality, which is used by hundreds of millions of people across the world every day. The Skype partnership also enables Imvox to work cross-platform, so Windows and Mac users enjoy the same high-quality audio. It’s about time a solution works for everybody in the gaming market.

I had an opportunity to experience Skype’s SILK codec in a gaming platform a year ago November with the launch of the Blabbelon “click-to-talk” voice service for gamers. It’s a different market space from the traditional consumer and business voice conferencing.

Long time Skype partner InnerPass has been awaiting the launch of SkypeKit’s open beta to incorporate Skype into their newly launched Group Mix team collaboration service – an evolution of their previous InnerPass Meeting and Sharing service that was offered as a Skype Extra.

The SkypeKit Developer Site provides documentation and samples to assist with the development process covering topics such as TV, audio and video and various development tools. However, Chris did mention that, while all the tools are there to support software development, they still need some work to make a software developer totally comfortable with using SkypeKit.

Bottom line: With Skype’s pending acquisition by Microsoft it will be interesting to see what uptake there is from developers and how this developer program works in conjunction with other Microsoft developer programs. Certainly Microsoft brings the financial heft and experience required to establish and attract a large developer community for SkypeKit as it evolves.

According to Stacey Higginbotham’s GigaOm discussion with Jonathan Christensen there are 2,000 developers who have been part of the closed program but there are over 10,000 developers who have applied and can now participate. As with the iPad and smartphone market spaces the evolution of the real time communications space will really depend on how readily users will adopt the resulting applications. Until other services can offer a combination of high quality voice, the ability to call a wide range of devices and platforms, HD video and over 170 million active users, Skype certainly starts out with an initial performance lead over pending competitors.

Skype Journal: Skype for iPad; SkypeKit launching at eComm next week?

Related articles

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At his eComm America 2010 keynote presentation Monday morning, Skype’s recently appointed Chief Technology Strategist Jonathan Rosenberg provided his perspective on where Skype can introduce real time communications into “social sharing” activities.

Positioning the current state of social networking as personal broadcasting where a Twitter or Facebook message “broadcasts” your information out to a selected set of Followers or Friends, he went on to outline how these “broadcasts” were missing two key elements: emotion and interaction. And these broadcasts have a “random” aspect in terms of who receives them:

• Followers and Friends could cover a random mix of interest groups: family, work colleagues, special interest groups
• It’s a bit of a gamble as to who sees your ‘broadcast” message; some may follow every Tweet while others may be selective in what they see and take a few days to see a Tweet; others, for whatever reason, may never see it.

Bottom line is that current social networking is missing the emotion and interactivity associated with “social”.

Jonathan sees three “i’s” that need to be added for social networking to become totally social:

• involvement
• investment
• interactivity

And sees real time communications, integrated into a web property, as the infrastructure required to bring these to the table.

Jonathan then proceeded to give an example of each of the three “i’s”:

Real time and involvement: The quality of the real time call experience matters, as supported by statistics that Skype has mined out from their call detail records. It turns out that Skype’s SILK superwideband codec not only provides a higher quality, more readily understood voice conversation but also has been demonstrated to result, on average, in ~45% longer conversations, based on real Skype call detail records data. Phil Wolfe over at Skype Journal has more to say about this.

Real time and investment: here the example involved multiple people planning a trip together by sharing a desktop browsing travel web sites while carrying on a voice or video conversation.

Real time and interactivity – the virtual couch potato. While Jonathan gave an example, my own experience occurred a few years ago during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy when I was on a Skype call with a person in Sweden. We were both watching the ceremonies on our local television networks while discussing them in Skype voice and chat conversations.

This also brings to mind the couple who used Skype a few years ago for a remote courtship a few years ago; not only did a marriage result after a year of courtship via Skype but also a family with a couple of young ones.

According to Jonathan the bottom line is about turning a “me” experience into a “we” experience by escalating an asynchronous conversation (an initiating email or chat message) into a synchronous experience that can involve voice, chat, video and desktop sharing. And it involves bringing emotional and interactive elements into social sharing activities.

So what are the implications for Skype:

• These experiences need to be easy to invoke. What does it take to make users realize they can easily have these experiences?
• According to Jonathan, creating these experiences would involve invoking a web-based infrastructure into the Skype software offerings. Sounds like something we can expect to see later this year.
• What role would multi-party video play in these experiences? Can we expect to see multi-party video later this year?

Bottom Line: Is this all a precursor to some new Skype experiences or features that will be launched over the next few months?

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This week I am attending the fourth Emerging Communications Conference, or eComm America 2010, with the byline “What’s Next in Telecom, Mobile and Internet Communications”. The first morning was probably one of the best overall sessions for providing an update of where several major players are taking their offerings and how they are contributing to bring more value add into real time communications experiences.

For example:

Erik Winkler, CEO of Bit Torrent, whose  peer-to-peer file transfer service gets caught up in the Net Neutrality debate since their service has the potential to take over all the traffic to an end user during a download, talked about management of congestion and differentiated it as an issue that is independent of management of content issues. Offering a solution that represented a win for consumers, the communications industry and publishers, he talked about taking a “congestion control approach” to address the problem with recommendations that leave management of content out of the issue:

• manage for congestion
• manage in a protocol agnostic manner
• meter fairly
• re-think download caps since they have no obvious link to congestion
• incent network friendly behavior

Next up was Craig Walker, Group Product Manager, Google Voice who talked about moving communications into the cloud. (As a hint to Google’s overall tactics, I had attended a Mobile Monday event in Toronto two weeks ago; the feature presentation talked about “moving communications into the cloud” from a mobile device perspective.) Craig started out with the economic arguments for this shift, eliminating server hardware and oversight resources from a business’s communications costs. As a result a startup can generate interesting communications applications without having to deal with the capital cost overhead of a traditional telco. And he concluded with an overview of Google Voice and how it can provide a person with a “Find Me, Follow Me” single number to reach the person at any of multiple end point devices, while at the same time managing the voice mail that can arise from having multiple “numbers” to reach those end points.

Next we learned some insight into the U.S. National Broadband plan from Carlos Kirjner, Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. His three major discussion points: “Why the Plan?”, “The ‘Aha’ Moments” and “How to Make It Better”:

Why: Congress mandated it but there’s really a fundamental revolution, at a level similar to the introduction of the printing press and electricity, taking place that will impact the U.S. economy

The Aha’s: The need to consider the entire ecosystem that brings together a national broadband infrastructure: not simply connectivity but also devices, applications, network, consumer issues, regulatory issues and legal constraints. He went on to define what FCC sees as the role of government including competition policy that will drive and foster innovation, assets to be managed such as spectrum allocation, universal service mechanisms and, not to be overlooked, laws, rules and standards for key sectors.

With respect to competition he emphasized the importance of tracking and benchmarking actual behavior, lowering barriers to entry, device competition, application innovation and empowering consumers. In closing his third major point was to ask for feedback while noting that real data beats analyses which, in turn, beats out opinions when it comes to setting policies.

After the morning break, we heard from Jonathan Rosenberg, Skype’s Chief Technology Strategist, whose presentation on Social Sharing 2.0 and the role of Real Time Communications will be the subject of a separate post.

Jonathan was followed by one of his former Cisco colleagues, Cullen Jennings, a Distinguised Engineer in the CTO office at Cisco, on the subject of Identity for Global Communications and that least common denominator of voice calling identity, the phone number. Cisco’s proposed ViPR technology combines a Distributed Hash Table, the PSTN and SIP to provide “Blue Sky Computing” that can validate that a number being called is actually reaching the party whom one really wants to communicate with for privacy or security reasons. It’s a peer-to-peer solution that has implications for communications business models.

The morning session concluded with two product announcements; both designed to provide intelligent business communications solutions that facilitate PBX-type functionality for managing calls to the appropriate end point within a business’s ecosystem: Ringio (a startup launched yesterday) and CounterPath’s new Nomadic PBX. Both could be represented as solutions for a mobile Call Center with different approaches to the issue and target markets.

Bottom Line: Overall I came out this session with a lot to absorb but impressed with not simply the thinking behind these offerings but also the execution that is taking place to make these solutions a reality.

Note re photos: Photo by James Duncan Davidson, the show photographer.

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When Martin Geddes started out his eComm Europe launch keynote talking about real customer pains and how they needed to be addressed from a user interaction viewpoint, I had hope that maybe we would be hearing more about real business cases in the emerging communications world. What we have learned from the subsequent presentations include:

• Carriers and operators are gradually figuring out they need to be in the “Internet pipes” business (as a channel simply for transporting IP packets) OR the service provider business (acting as a retailer providing specific services as basic as email or as complex as multi-currency transaction processing engines). Those that don’t get it will fade away.
• We’re a long way from having LTE accepted, let alone available, as an ultra high speed wireless protocol. The business case, from both a technology and financial perspective, has yet to be made.
• Value add is through “wow” user experiences; value your customer’s time when handling voice communications and the issue of cost goes away.
  • Calliflower detects callerID to eliminate need for PIN numbers
  • Time Warner will auto-confirm that a service person is coming.
  • Voxygen’s “revolutionary callerID” demonstrates a “rich callerID” experience for both the customer and the merchant in completing an online sales transaction.
• The most promising and innovative application: Layar – an “augmented reality” web browser that sets new levels of performance for location-based services; they won the eComm Application award. Available at the Android Market and the iPhone App Store. Watch for Layar to spawn a network of location-based services application developer partners such as Winvolve.
• Small but important facts that came out:
• GIPS Video engine is using the H.264 SVC codec to allow the viewing experience at the end points of a video conference call to reflect the quality of connection at the end points.
• Skype’s SILK codec is the first voice codec that has not evolved from a TDM codec which has implications from an engineering and development viewpoint (noted by Tim Panton of phonefromhere.com in his presentation on deploying the SILK codec in a yet-to-be-announced project).
• Skype’s Sten Tamkivi pointing out that, whereas most carriers will have, on average, 2,000 calling corridors for completing calls internationally, Skype has over 40,000 calling corridors. Very significant as Skype for Business launches its new services. (A calling corridor determines that actual routing of an inter-carrier call from the caller end-point to the terminating end point.)
• Perhaps the most interesting prototype demonstration was Tim Panton’s Google Wave – Skype – Asterisk prototype demonstration. Phil Wolff at Skype Journal calls it a “Cool  Demo”.

But, I’m with Alec Saunders on a key point: we heard lots about the technology, the carrier and financing issues, “neat” applications. But we heard little, if any, about business implementation cases. We need to hear more about:

• • Who is using these offerings?
  • Where have the new paradigms for telecom allowed small businesses to take advantage of what were previously enterprise level services, such as call centers and voice as a service?
  • Where are the business case studies of implementations?

Alec sums it up best in his post, eComm: Time to Change the Station,:

It is, however, time to stop talking about the death of the incumbent. Let’s instead change the conversation – acknowledge that the carrier network is a platform, and that the carrier has a need for an application community, and begin the dialog between network partners and developers about the ability for those operators to help us get to market.

While we’re at it, let’s also change the channel, dial away from the conversation about “mash-ups”, and focus instead on user needs, the user experience of communications, and the economics associated with that user experience.  By focusing on the business value of the services being developed instead of the technology platform, we can all become better able to reach the customer with game changing new communications services.

Make sense?  It’s an idea who’s time has come.

Full disclosure: Why do I have this viewpoint? I have recently completed managing a project that takes advantage of cloud computing and software-as-a-service to develop a website for a vacation home condominium project where the primary hotel renting our units went under and closed due to Mr. Madoff’s impact on the owner’s finances. As a result we, as the condominium owners, had to implement our own reservation management and booking website with services that would have cost over $500,000 fifteen years ago but had an initial cost this  summer under $20,000. We replaced a telephone switchboard, an onsite reservation system and guest registration system with much more flexibility in the entire guest experience from initial reservation to final check-out. We incorporated WordPress, OnState (with Skype as a calling option), InnRoad, YouTube, Google Maps and Twitter.The entire story will be in another post but you can check out the website here.

There must be many similar stories building up these days; eComm needs to find and tell these types of stories. (And, Lee, you have your first submission for eComm America 2010.)

However, to end on a positive note, eComm Europe 2009 was still the learning experience I was looking for. How important was eComm? My own home carrier, Rogers Communications, had two attendees – one of the few carrier companies at this most important industry-altering event.

Acknowledgment and disclosure: The author’s attendance at eComm Europe 2009 was supported by In Store Solutions, vendor of the FreeTalk Everyman Headset for Skype. In Store Solutions provided an Everyman headset to all eComm Europe 2009 attendees. The author provides business development services to In Store Solutions due to his previous experience with distribution channels and partner programs.

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In the lead-up to the forthcoming eComm Europe Conference organizer Lee Dryburgh interviews some of the speakers. This past weekend he posted an interview with GIPS CTO Jan Linden (picture below) and CMO Joyce Kim where they talked about (i) the role of codecs in delivering overall high quality HD voice and (ii) the emergence of H.264 SVC as a video codec standard.

Lee started off the questioning by asking about where the audio codec plays its role in delivering wideband audio and HD voice; Jan responded by talking about “the total HD voice experience”:

A codec is obviously an important part, but it’s not everything that makes the HD Voice experience. If you look at the analogy of a car, you have a lot of different things like tires, body, steering wheel, etc. and – the codec – let’s say that’s the tires. It’s one very important part that makes the whole thing run smoothly, but without all the other pieces, you don’t get the full experience.

That said, we’re very much focused on HD Voice, and the things we do, in addition to codecs, is things like jitter buffer and packet loss concealment. Those are things to address what happens on the network. We also address things that handles on the device, like sound card. For video, it’s cameras, microphone adjustments, speaker adjustments; all those things are necessary for the great experience.

They go on to talk about how GIPS is emerging as a full R&D facility, innovating incrementally and building voice quality expertise in a way such that third party attempts at replication run up against time-to-market issues due to GIPS’ long term experience with codecs. (Ed. – Perhaps Skype, with its SILK codec and experience with network bandwidth management is the only other company developing superwideband HD voice at this level.) When asked about where SILK could play a role Jan responded:

We do so much more than a codec, and in fact, SILK is a very attractive codec for our customers to use, in conjunction with the rest of what we do. Again, we look at SILK as the wheels or the tires of the car and we provide the rest of it to put the whole car together. That means that SILK, standard codecs like G72.1 AMR [G.721] wideband, you name it; they all fit into our solution.

Lee then opens up a discussion about GIPS’ widely implement iSAC wideband codec and the recent development of a superwideband mode for this codec. Lee effectively summarized GIPS role in the market, for companies that want to incorporate voice and video calling into their offerings, stating:

Okay, so what you’re doing is knocking down time to market for companies and you’re also knocking down the cost of providing voice – audio, I should say, to be more general, and video solutions for devices, software, and so forth. It’s about time to market, it’s about saving money.

Lee, Jan and Joyce then went on to talk about the emerging H.264 SVC video codec and its layering architecture that optimizes performance in a video conference that bridges a range of end point devices and the various devices’ respective network speeds. Click here for the complete interview. But since that will be the subject of Jan’s talk at eComm Europe 2009, I’ll end this post by suggesting that you consider attending for the conference to learn more details.

Click here to register with a 10% discount.

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During my three plus years of blogging, the most educational and informative conference for keeping up with innovation in the “Emerging Communications” space has been eComm, the Emerging Communications Conference (and now Awards). And now eComm is coming to Europe in two weeks.

Conference organizer Lee Dryburgh and his team of advisors have assembled many of the top thinkers and activists in the IP-based communications space with the goal to “promote and accelerate communications innovation”. On the website’s home page is an outline of the forthcoming changes foreseen:

Telecom is becoming software

Today’s model of the telephony and SMS cash-cows will significantly dry up long-term

“Phones” are becoming general purpose always-on computers

A march is underway to change how spectrum is allocated and utilised

Applications innovation is being democratised

The media industry is converging with personal communications

Internet-style ecosystems are starting to pressurise the traditional value chain

Search engines and computer manufactures are encroaching into the space

App downloads; media content and even communication streams are increasingly routing-around operator’s billing systems

The telecom kingdom is fragmenting daily.

It’s only at eComm that you will find respected experts such as Martin Geddes, Thomas Howe, Alan Duric, Brough Turner, Dean Bubley, James Enck, Jonathan Christensen, Jan Linden and Gerd Leonhard all under one roof at the same time. But amongst the others, there’s always at least one or two who will surprise us and challenge our thinking about how the telecommunications industry will evolve. While we all talk about “networking” from a technology perspective, the personal networking at eComm is just as valuable as the presentations.

Also this week it was announced that Skype has taken on the role of Headline Sponsor of the show while innovative companies such as Voxbone, Voxeo, GIPS and Voice Sage are Platinum Sponsors. Without their support Lee would have to triple the registration fees and probably put the conference out of reach for many of the attendees.

Alec Saunders has bought his tickets to go; have you? Click here for a 10% discount when registering.

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• The Emerging Communications Conference & Awards (gigaom.com)
• Dryburgh: What’s after Skype? Intent. (skypejournal.com)
• Skype Says Next Generation Platform Will Embrace Developers (techcrunch.com)
• Skype for Asterisk Release Marries Skype Calling into Popular Asterisk PBX Platform (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Is WiFi Becoming the Unregulated Stealth Carrier of the Future? (voiceontheweb.biz)

This week about 50,000 people have gathered in the northern Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man ritual. You really have to visit their website to get a feel for what it is about and the principles that guide this annual one week experience.

Started in the mid-1980s, Burning Man is designed to generate a society that connects individuals to their creative powers, participation in community, civic life, and the world of nature. Gathering on an ancient lake bed, about 140 miles north of Reno, participants decide how and what they’ll contribute to the community.

But one guarantee – neither AT&T nor Verizon, neither Sprint nor T-Mobile had a cell tower within the horizon of the Black Rock City playa. As a result, working with Voxbone’s iNum service, up to 10,000 participants can receive SMS messages or, within capacity limitations, receive voice calls at country code +883, iNum’s worldwide country code accessible for free from many partner service providers and via local access numbers in 45 countries worldwide.

So, with no coverage by the commercial wireless carriers, how does this connect? Voxbone has worked with the Open BTS Project:

…. an effort to construct an open-source Unix application that uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to present a GSM air interface (“Um”) to standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk software PBX to connect calls. The combination of the ubiquitous GSM air interface with VoIP backhaul could form the basis of a new type of cellular network that could be deployed and operated at substantially lower cost than existing technologies in greenfields in the developing world.

In plain language, we are working on a new kind of cellular network that can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but that will still be compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market.

The OpenBTS team has constructed a cell tower at Black Rock City, that, in the “leave no trace” principle of Burning Man, will be taken down at the end of the event on Labor Day (next Monday). Effectively working together, Voxbone and the OpenBTS project have demonstrated how to set up and install at a low cost a complete GSM-based wireless service in remote and otherwise unserviced regions of the world. Full details are here but it is interesting to note:

• Who is doing this? This is an activity of the OpenBTS project. The entity legally responsible for the test is Kestrel Signal Processing, Inc.. The actual on-site engineers are David Burgess and Harvind Samra.
• Is this legal? Yes. We have an experimental license, WD9XSP, and a consent letter from Verizon authorizing us to operate in their KNKN224 block A cellular spectrum. We are also coordinating operations with Commnet Wireless to prevent interference.
• How much does the service cost me? Nothing.
• What do you do for emergency calls? Nothing. We are an experimental service and do not support emergency calls.

and

• My phone shows service but I can’t make a call. Why not? Only the first few hundred subscribers will get full speech service. Everyone else will just get SMS. There are two good reasons for this:
  1. We don’t have enough equipment for everyone to get normal speech service.
  2. Widespread speech service would change the nature of BRC in ways a lot of people would not like.

• Will my carrier charge me for every text message I send or receive on the Papa Legba network? No, the Papa Legba network is a separate isolated network from your normal carrier’s network, and no charges will apply as no SMS is being sent or received through your normal carrier.

Note that “Voxbone is providing funding and most of our VoIP connectivity”.

OpenBTS Chronicles: We Loaded the Truck Today and co-founder David Burgess reports on getting it going:

So we turned on the PA for the first time today and immediately got swamped with registration requests, which is actually normal and a good sign given our operating conditions. We also got a report of someone receiving a text message at Center Camp. That’s only about 1 km, but the impressive part is that the guy with the phone was in a
sealed shipping container (the BRC NOC) at the time. We were delayed seriously by high winds that made tower work dangerous, so a 4-hr tower job took just over 11. But it’s up thanks to the heroic efforts of the rigger. It was a little scary to watch.

From the Voxbone press release:

Voxbone worked with the OpenBTS Project to automatically assign iNums to cell phone users at Burning Man, making them instantaneously reachable from networks such as Skype and Google Talk.

“We are showcasing how iNum can be used to connect remote or unconnected areas of the globe with the rest of the connected world, using cell phone infrastructures such as OpenBTS,” said Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens.

“In addition, we are demonstrating to people attending Burning Man that they can receive voice calls and text messages from services like Google Talk on their cell phones at the festival. Burning Man is a great event at which to highlight these types of services because the attendees are open to new ideas and new experiences, and we are enthused to be a part of that.”

The iNum service is provided free to users at Burning Man. At the same time, it will enable users to spread the word about how valuable iNum is when it comes to connecting the unconnected.

“In partnerships like this one for Burning Man, there is an opportunity to demonstrate a technology for quick and cost-effective connectivity to regions that urgently need it,” said OpenBTS Project co-founder David Burgess. “In this case, the connectivity is a convenience to Burning Man participants, but iNum also can play a critical role when war, natural disasters and other emergent situations require quick communication.”

Alec Saunders, in OpenSource Meets GSM at the Burning Man, asks “Why do this?”

Naturally it’s a nice showcase for VoxBone’s iNum technology.  More to the point, OpenBTS believes that by making inexpensive mobile base stations available built around open source solutions, telephone service can be made affordable even in the remotest parts of the world.

Would be interesting to hear how it turns out in terms of number of cell phones connected and conversations handled. but the project is certainly a contributor to the overall spirit of innovation and creativity encouraged by the Burning Man ritual.

Question: while Skype for Asterisk was just released this week, can we expect the OpenBTS Project to add a Skype for Asterisk channel to their PBX next year?

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• OpenSource Meets GSM at the Burning Man (saunderslog.com)
• Burning Man Gets an API (and a Whole Lot More) (radar.oreilly.com)
• How the iPhone Is Driving a Wireless Bandwidth Boom (gigaom.com)

It all started when I attended the June 2 Android launch on Rogers Wireless. During a scrum I had asked “Fringe” actor Joshua Jackson if he had made a call from Paris, France to his wife in Vancouver using Skype for Android (Skype Lite). Rogers Wireless CMO John Boynton interjected that Rogers allows all applications to run on their networks; the inability to run Skype was an issue that required Skype’s initiative to resolve (there’s a regulatory issue). Later during a demonstration of the Android when I had noticed the Skype Lite beta icon on one of the HTC Android phones, a Rogers marketing person volunteered that Rogers does not block any applications.

Fast forward to the Canadian Telecom Summit two weeks later when recently appointed Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed made similar points about Rogers policy on network management during his leadoff keynote presentation. But it was during a Net Neutrality forum presentation the following day by Rogers Chief Strategy Office Mike Lee that we got to the meat of the topic; three of his slides articulate the story:

followed by:

followed by:

In his commentary, Mike pointed out that the focus of Rogers’ network management policy is on optimizing the behavior of the network such as to give customers the response they expect. Other points Mike made:

• In today’s world a service provider needs to deliver the best possible experience for the broadest range of customers.
• Rogers primary business is providing Internet access in a market that has a focus on speed and accessibility.
• Rogers is not in the business of managing applications or specific customer uses.
• Rogers’ traffic management is designed specifically so that Skype works well.
• The only throttling of traffic relates to p2p file sharing traffic (i.e. BitTorrent) to which a dedicated channel is assigned so that p2p traffic does not swamp the network and interfere with other customers’ access to the network.
• In response to query from the audience, Rogers only provides network management for their retail customers. Any MVNO using the Rogers backbone via a wholesale arrangement gets the “raw” Internet and must establish their own network management practices.

Mike’s presentation was followed by Skype’s Christopher Libertelli, Director of North American Government Relations, making Skype’s usual pitch supporting network neutrality. The final forum participant was Dave Caputo, CEO of Sandvine, a provider of network infrastructure software focused on improving the quality of customer experience. Dave’s main point was that an unmanaged network does not equate to network neutrality; however, Internet service providers have the most to gain from permitting the diversity that attracts the most customers.

In the end all three agreed that a focus on the customer experience, while managing the network only to the level of protecting the network’s integrity while achieving customer satisfaction, will make a sustainable win-win for both the network operator and the end user.

But the Rogers’ approach to network management really hit home when, the day after the forum, I found a post by Skype’s Director of EU Government Relations, Jean-Jacques Sahel, “’You touch my Skype, you touch my freedom of expression and communication’ – access to the Internet recognised as a fundamental human right (at last)” where it appears the European Parliament is at odds with individual European governments over net neutrality issues.

EU law should ensure that citizens can exercise their freedom of expression and communication and can benefit from Internet access that is open, taking into account the requirements expressed by users to make use of, and distribute, content, applications and services on the Internet. Access to Internet content, services and applications, as confirmed by the French Conseil Constitutionnel, is an explicit part of the fundamental rights of citizens to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference and regardless of frontiers. Additionally, unrestricted Internet access to content, services and applications is also a necessity for the preservation of the effectiveness of European and national policies designed to combat social exclusion, promote education, training, employment, etc.

Seems like some European carriers have not quite yet got the message being put forward by Rogers – these operators can’t quite deal with the gradual shift in power from the carrier to the consumer.

My own experience: When I am able to run SlingPlayer for BlackBerry over Rogers 3G service, whereas AT&T feels that this application would overload their network, I am getting the response I expect. When Skype video calling runs such that, on full screen mode, I feel the other party appears to be “across the desk” I am getting the response i expect. When Rogers is offering WiFi-based services that complement their 3G network service I get the response I expect (hello Verizon!).

Bottom line: Under new CEO Nadir Mohammed Rogers’ focus is on the customer experience as their ultimate sustainable advantage. Their network management practices address network integrity issues: spam, viruses, denial of service attacks and ensuring that p2p file sharing does not deprive others of their expected service level. They simply do not have the time nor resources to worry about “limiting” or manipulating access to Internet traffic based on applications or offerings.

Certainly there are still issues outstanding at Rogers with respect to, say, roaming charges and length of contracts. But, in response to my question to Nadir about roaming charges, he stated there is currently a disconnect when there is such a disparity between local and roaming “per MB” data charges. However, he continued by saying that this is an area that Rogers is reviewing. In fact, Alec Saunders found a “customer service fairy” when he called Rogers this past week in anticipation of a forthcoming trip to the U.S. On the other hand, Alec would like to see increased upload speeds for the coming flood of video applications. (DOCSIS 3.0, anyone?)

In summary, Rogers appears to be establishing a world-leading benchmark for adhering to application-agnostic net neutrality policies in practice; they are not simply mouthing the network neutrality message but also executing on it.

Footnotes:

• My thanks to Rogers CSO Mike Lee for providing me with a copy of slides used at his Net Neutrality forum presentation at the Canadian Telecom Summit.
• Rogers WiFi-based services include participation in the Canadian HotSpot Network and Rogers TalkSpotTM service that allows one to make voice calls via any WiFi access point in Canada for a fixed monthly fee.

(As for the issues Skype is facing with respect to offering SkypeIn, Skype To Go, Skype for iPhone and Skype for BlackBerry in Canada – that will be the subject of another post. But they are NOT Rogers issues.)

Full disclosure: the author is a full paying Rogers customer for all their services: wireless, cableTV, high speed Internet and Home Phone.

We all know that Skype for iPhone currently requires that you be at a WiFi access point in order to make a Skype call from the iPhone, even though it supports 3G data. So, when highly respected technology reporter Larry Magid, attending today’s D:AllThingsDigital conference, sends out the Tweet, shown to the right, quoting AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, many questions arise:

• Has AT&T heard that Skype really provides communications software? I think that is the message that Skype President Josh Silverman has been trying to deliver when he states, “software will drive the future of real time communications innovation and efficiencies going forward, not the existing telcos”
• Is failure to allow Skype for iPhone to run over AT&T’s 3G network a tacit admission that AT&T continues to suffer from 3G data network capacity and quality issues? Once again my most recent trip roaming on AT&T in Chicago four weeks ago demonstrated nothing to say service availability and robustness has improved over my previous experiences in PA, WV, VA, NC, SC, CA and NV.
• Is AT&T’s response to SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone (or BlackBerry) one more challenge to, or subtle admission of, AT&T’s network quality and robustness issues. Is the following statement a cover-up for their failings:
  

  “Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network,” an AT&T representative said in e-mail to reporters. “The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service.”

I would invite Mr. Stephenson to Canada where I can demonstrate Rogers’ high quality 3G GSM data network that:

• has robust and reliable 3G data coverage in not only major population areas but also all our major tourist and recreation areas (Whistler, Central Ontario, Tremblant, etc.)
• is always there when I expect it
• has no issue with using SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry (and has made no issue with SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone either)
• Rogers is offering its Rocket Stick mobile data service over its  7.2Mbps 3.5G HSPA network, placing additional demand on their network capacity.

Bottom Line: Sorry, Randall, but AT&T has a long way to go to show that they understand the real potential of, and that they’re serious about, their mobile business.

For more amusement check out John Paczkowski’s report on Walt Mossberg’s Q&A with Randall Stephenson at D7.

Update: Om Malik reports this afternoon at GigaOm: AT&T Moves Up Its LTE Rollout, Admits To Network Issues. Seems that AT&T is finally admitting they have some issues to address.

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• Have You Tried SlingPlayer for the iPhone? (chris.pirillo.com)
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• SlingPlayer for iPhone Arrives…Partly (netnewsdaily.com)
• AT&T Says Its Network Can’t Keep Up With All The Cool Stuff You Can Do With The Smartphones It Sells (techdirt.com)
• AT&T Uses Semantics to Justify Locking Down SlingPlayer For iPhone [At&t] (gizmodo.com)
• Canadian Experience with Skype Access and Boingo WiFi (voiceontheweb.biz)

Stefan Öberg, Vice-President, Skype for Business, provided his overview on “the future of modern business communications” at Interop last week. He started off by outlining his perspective on how consumer adoption of Skype is building business adoption from consumer experience; he feels this is driven by:

• • Economy: 43% percent of knowledge workers in US enterprises with 500 or more employees already use non-company-owned equipment on enterprise networks and systems.
  • Connectivity: We live in a world with an increasingly ubiquitous, pervasive and affordable communications infrastructure, which encourages new acquisition and delivery models, especially those using the web.
  • New technology: A combination of affordable devices, low-cost communications, widespread ownership means that access to and acceptance of new technologies is growing.
  • Employees: Employees bring their experiences and expectations from the ‘real world’ into the work environment – this is particularly relevant when considering an increasing population of digital natives in the workforce.

Recently Voice On The Web has reported on a couple of examples of this trend:

• Stealthing Skype into Larger Businesses
• Stealthing Skype into Healthcare: Consumer Experience Drives Practitioner Adoption

Stefan went on to provide some statistics coming out of user studies carried out last year:

• 20% of our users make Skype video calls for business purposes †
• 95% say they are saving money *
• 62% say they communicate better with customers using Skype *
• 70% say they are using it while traveling on business *
• 80% say they are seeing increased productivity *

* Source: Skype user study of 4,000 users in the US, UK and China conducted in March 2008
† Source: Results from a December 2008 online survey of 2452 active Skype users in the US and UK

Stefan makes some good points, supporting more quantitatively what we have suspected about perceptions of Skype use in business.

However, when he went on to talk about Skype’s expanding ecosystem via Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP for penetrating the business market, his brief mention of business infrastructure for Skype (including the Business Control Panel) neglected the services provided by several of Skype’s Software Partners on which Voice On The Web has reported in the past:

• OnState: Virtual Call Center and Virtual PBX
• Managed Collaboration:
  • InnerPass: Team building that Integrates Skype with business grade document management
  • Yugma: desktop sharing across Mac and Windows platforms
  • Lotus Live Unyte: the pioneer in business grade desktop sharing using Skype
  • HiDef Conferencing (now Citrix Online Audio Services Group): a high quality, managed conference calling service
• PamFax: converting your PC into a worldwide accessible fax machine
• Pamela: a comprehensive Skype utility for call management, conversation archiving, personalizing conversations and a bit of fun
• Skylook: combining Skype with Outlook to deliver effective, yet low cost, customer relationship management; turning Outlook into a conversation manager and archive
• Evoca: hosted voice recording for building audience engagement and participation across news services, television documentaries and websites or weblogs (a description and review of Evoca’s new Express services is in preparation).
• (and, if I have missed any Skype Software partner with a business application, add a comment and I’ll update)

Bottom line: While certainly Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP will expand the reach and promotion of Skype through their respective distribution channels (Digium/Asterisk ecosystem and PBX vendors), ongoing innovation is also occurring and being adopted in the Skype Software Partner ecosystem. The current economic conditions are accelerating adoption of these conversation management services as businesses, whether entrepreneurial SMB’s or business units of larger enterprises, search out ways to grow their business but at significantly lower costs. More examples of Skype Everywhere driving business model disruption.

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• Stealthing Skype into Larger Businesses (voiceontheweb.biz)
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• Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX’s (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Opens Up To SIP, Finally Eyes Enterprise Customers The Way It Should (techcrunch.com)
• Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer (skypejournal.com)
• Skype targets businesses with new service (news.cnet.com)
• Skype For SIP: Sorting Through the Issues (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy (voiceontheweb.biz)

With the announcement of the Skype IPO a few weeks ago we are starting to see the devolution of any previous attempts at Skype – eBay synergy. Yesterday Phil reported on eBay’s removal of Skype voice and chat buttons in eBay listings effective June 10, 2009.

My major introduction to Skype personnel and the Skype ecosystem was the 2006 eBay Developer’s Conference at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Convention Center in Las Vegas in June, 2006. One to two hundred developers interested in exploring how they could work with the Skype Software Partner program showed up. Some common themes developed in terms of developer needs. But other than to have a common meeting location, there was really no cross-pollination of eBay developers (who tended to focus on building eBay reseller websites) and Skype developers (who were deep into programming “Extras” for Skype, hopefully to establish a partner business for themselves).

This week I received a “snail mail” postcard inviting “Alumni” to attend this year’s eBay – PayPal Developers Conference – at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose. No mention of Skype anywhere. And no enticing Las Vegas (2006) or Boston Convention Center (2007)location but rather at the eBay home office location in San Jose. At the same time eBay Live 2009, eBay’s annual event for eBay resellers that normally ran immediately after eBay DevCon, was cancelled about a year ago.

Not simply a sign of eBay weaning off Skype but also a sign of the challenges eBay Markets is currently experiencing as they work their way through the current economic conditions and the challengers to their domination as the Internet’s leading e-commerce site. It’s all about rebuilding the eBay franchise. (Did anyone notice that eBay’s quarterly reporting in April led off with PayPal – with its ongoing success – and eBay being second?)

With Skype’s restructuring and the appointment of Jason Fischl as Director of Developer Relations, can we expect a dedicated Skype Developer Partners event to be forthcoming?

A few final notes on eComm 2009.

First, conference organizer Lee Dryburgh and the Comunicano team need to be commended and thanked.

With the termination of the eTel conference two years ago, Lee took it upon himself to organize an Emerging Communications conference that would serve to keep a broad audience of communications specialists and evangelists updated on topics that demonstrated the benefits of IP-based communications. Lee did this at his own personal risk; in fact, I believe he took a bit of a loss last year. While he passed break-even this year with a 20% increase in registrations at a new venue, I don’t think his surplus was anything that could come close to appropriately rewarding the time and effort he has put into this event.

Andy Abramson’s Comunicano team provided marketing communications support at no charge to Lee. Many of his team members provided support at the conference; many of his clients made presentations (iotum, Voxbone, Global IP Solutions, Mobivox, Fonolo, IfByPhone). These presentations either outlined an evolving technology or were case studies demonstrating Voice 2.0 in action; none could have been considered as being close to “commercials”. And therein lies the value of eComm; it is an educational and networking forum.

About three months ago Lee, who lives in Europe, sent an email to the eComm Facebook group members asking for suggestions for a Bay Area charity to whom he would present a donation covering 10% of any surplus. I had submitted Shelter Network, providing housing support services for distressed families in Silicon Valley, as a candidate; a few days later Lee sent me an email saying he wanted to support Shelter Network. On Thursday, Amy Wright, a Shelter Network manager, accepted a check for $2,000, a number which Lee had, in the interim, guaranteed as a minimum donation.

Check out Duncan Davidson’s entire eComm 2009 Flickr photostream; the photo above is included.

Lee will continue to post information about content availability on the eCommConf Twitter feed.

Other posts covering eComm 2009:

• Saunderslog: eComm – strong stuff
• Andy Abramson’s VoIP Watch: eComm Was a Hit
• Jon Arnold: eComm 2009 Posts and Photographs
• Martin Geddes: My eComm Presentation with a link to the video we viewed due to his “Error 24: Insufficient Hours In Day” situation at BT.
• Richard Sprague WebLog : eComm 09 virtually
• Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless: Thoughts from eComm
• Fierce VoIP: eComm 2009: Ditech Networks announces toktok voice-enabled web apps service

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• eComm Conference Wrap Up (ubergizmo.com)

Over the past three days there has been a continuous stream of presentations that provide insight into a wide range of issues, opportunities and perspectives in the IP-based communications space going forward. While there will be more posts covering individual presentations, it’s worth taking time to mention a few highlights:

• Most innovative, outside-the-box, presentation: Ge Wang of SMULE (Sonic Mule) and his presentation including recordings of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Become your own iPhone musician by breathing gently into the iPhone’s mic using their Ocarina iPhone application (warning: small fee $0.99).
• Most outstanding announcements: three offerings that open up new user experience opportunities in a Voice 2.0 world (Yes, I already blogged about these but they still stand out as winners for both the service providers and end users.)
  • Voxeo: Tropo.com opens up the Voxeo platform,  previously limited to the small population of voice developers, to hundreds of thousands of web developers.
  • Skype: making the superwideband SILK codec available royalty-free to any relevant hardware or software vendor that wants to bring new user experiences to voice calling.
  • Jaduka: the appointment of Thomas Howe as CEO will accelerate the adoption of voice into existing business processes, eliminating the error-prone mundane while opening up new standards for applications such as healthcare procedures, customer satisfaction and service deployment.
• Other presentations of note:
  • Martin Geddes, Head of Strategy, BT: there is value in addressing issues of efficiency and effectiveness inherent to business processes. Martin proposes that the key business model is to satisfy the needs of parties who want to interact with customers; for instance, improve the productivity of call center employees
  • Shai Berger, Fonolo, whose deep dialing service has now mapped out the IVR trees of over 500 companies and presents new opportunities for customer service operations.
  • Mobivox, expanding their voice-activated mobile services platform with their CRM for Voice business tools.
  • iNum, announcing support for IM and presence, initially with Google Talk
  • Alan Duric continues to see ongoing profitability and success at Norwegian service provider Telio. Why? a continuous stream of innovation and new value-added services.
• Some themes and issues across multiple presentations:
  • Spectrum 2.0: several presentations and a panel covering issues related to (the lack of) spectrum management and “white space”. In major markets over 90% of available spectrum remains unutilized.
  • Regulatory issues: the challenge of creating and executing a user-oriented regulatory framework under “the first technology administration”. Network neutrality: is it more a “buzz phrase” than a real issue? Seeding the policy makers with players who understand regulatory issues from both an innovation and business opportunity orientation as opposed to supporting monopolies or duopolies. Aligning regulation with the application potential of emerging communications technology.
  • API’s: several presentations from vendors who provide free API’s that support third party developers in writing applications that are then hosted by the vendor: IfByPhone, Voxeo, Jaduka, Ribbit, Adhearsion (whose Jay Phillips, right, provided a tutorial incorporating programming to Skype for Asterisk),

One note: there were a lot of innovators and forward thinking people amongst both the speakers and the audience. Most interesting was that there were at least six attendees from carriers who were asking the questions about how carriers can adapt to this emerging communications world: SaskTel (2), T-Mobile US, Rogers, NTT. eComm’s biggest challenge for next year will be to attract a larger audience of carrier personnel. In personal conversations I learned a lot about their issues that may work its way into future commentary.

Overall, eComm 2009 once again provided a primer in a wide range of aspects of the emerging communications space. With Thomas Howe leading Jaduka’s CEBP charge into larger enterprises, Voxeo addressing a huge community of web developers, Skype offering new levels of call quality to the entire communications hardware and software community, Fonolo solving that PITA known as punching your way through company IVR systems and Calliflower offering new user experiences in conference calls, the next few months will prove most interesting. Most challenging to observe will be how these technologies and services assist business and personal issues in times of a most challenging overall economy.

Timothy Hay, Wall Street Journal wrote up Jon Arnold’s panel on “New Ways to Monetize Voice” : VoIP Start-Ups Scramble To Find Niche (subscription may be required)

Alec Saunders: eComm – strong stuff

With the launch of Skype for Windows 4.0, Skype delivered its first client incorporating Skype’s new superwideband SILK codec providing a new user experience in voice calling. For example, Alec Saunders in “Skype 4.0 audio: smooth as SILK”:

Perhaps the biggest improvement, though, is audio quality.  We all thought that Skype audio was great, right?  Skype’s internally developed SILK codec slipped into the final release, despite not having been in prior betas. A wideband codec that delivers the goods at half the bitrate of prior codecs, SILK makes talking on Skype a pure pleasure.

The SILK codec will be rolled out with the final release of Skype for Mac 2.8 (currently in beta but without the SILK codec) in April and in the next Linux release (no date given). The coding was designed to allow easy embedding into hardware devices, such as sound cards, headphones and Skype phones. But this still limits the SILK experience to Skype-to-Skype calls. So they looked at the question of how can Skype most readily advance the deployment of this high quality codec  and the resulting user experience at billions of additional voice conversation end points?

At eComm 2009 this afternoon Skype announced, during Jonathan Christensen’s keynote presentation, that the SILK codec will be licensable, royalty-free, to device manufacturers and others; it has been designed independent from Skype signaling protocols such that it can be used in voice streams incorporating the SIP protocol. Jonathan mentioned that there is no requirement to use the SILK codec in conjunction with a Skype implementation.

From an interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s GM for Audio and Video, with Alec Saunders in Skype’s SILKen bear hug: “Further, SILK media streams pass unchanged across Skype’s own media gateways, meaning that SIP endpoints have suddenly become much more compelling in the Skype world”.  Alec goes on to discuss two reasons for Skype’s strategy: (i) to spread superwideband audio everywhere and (ii) to give existing carriers a bear hug. Read the post for details.

In his post on this announcement, Jonathan pointed out what the three year Skype SILK development process focused on:

• • improving audio bandwidth going from 8 kHz to 12 kHz, meaning that a SILK conversation sounds like you are in the same room as the person you are speaking with
  • providing real-time bandwidth scalability to deal with degraded network conditions
  • balancing codec optimization between voice, music and background noise, each of which can have an impact on the overall user experience
  • delivering a robust solution that delivers a more consistent audio experience, regardless of network conditions and an individual user’s voice signature

I have watched as a wireless carrier attempts at new video calling services are introduced and subsequently fail due to a lack of adoption – the primary reason being there are too few devices out there supporting video calling and thus, there’s nobody to whom one can make a wireless video call. Skype’s announcement today overcomes a major barrier to allowing a much broader user base to take advantage of superwideband audio. It’s a first, but key, step towards a broader goal than “Skype Everywhere”, namely, superwideband audio on all voice calling.

Finally, this afternoon I had a chance to meet many members of the SILK development team who attended Jonathan’s presentation. They deserve kudos and congratulations for all their ground breaking efforts and success in setting new standards in voice call quality.

Developers can find more information at Skype’s SILK website.

Phil Wolff, Skype Journal comments on the SILK performance slides shown at the presentation: SILK performs better

Update: The transcript of Jonathan Christensen’s Codec Evolution and Industry Proposal presentation.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to San Francisco for eComm 2009. Kudos to organizer Lee Dryburgh, who on his own initiative and at his own personal risk, launched this event last year. Late last week Lee was able to announce that registrations had surpassed last year’s attendance.

Attendees should come away with not only a much better understanding of how this will be a watershed year for telecommunications. The combination of shaky economies, emerging Voice 2.0 offerings and opportunities for more effective personal and business communications is creating a “Perfect Storm” for a watershed year in the communications space. Smartphones, video calling, collaboration services, communications enhanced business processes, communications infrastructure, business models and regulatory issues will all be on the menu. From the eComm press release last week:

Included among the dozen keynote speakers and scores of other presenters over the three days of eComm2009 are:

•    Ge Wang, assistant professor at Stanford University and co-founder, CTO and chief creative officer of Smule.com;
•    Jonathan Christensen, general manager for audio and video at Skype;
•    John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian;
•    Malcolm Matson, founder of the OPLAN Foundation and entrepreneur;
•    Michael Calabrese, vice president, and Sascha Meinrath, research director, both of the wireless future program at the New America Foundation;
•    Tony Jebara, co-founder and chief scientist at Sense Networks and assistant professor of computer science at Columbia University;
•    Media futurist Gerd Leonhard;
•    Richard Whitt, telecommunications and media counsel for Google in Washington, D.C.;
•    Martin Geddes, head of strategy at BT Design;
•    Benjamin Joffe, founder and CEO of +8*;
•   Mark Rolston, chief creative officer of Frog Design.

Sponsors include Skype, MetaSwitch, NEC Sphere, Voxbone, Global IP Solutions, Voxeo, Jaduka, Ribbit and Broadsoft.

I have already been approached by some companies for interviews (although with full days through to 9 p.m., scheduling interviews may be a challenge) and been made aware of announcements coming from Skype, Voxeo and Jaduka. I’m sure there will be others; it will be a most interesting week.

As Lee says at the end of the press release:

Those wishing to register online may do so at  http://www.amiando.com/ecomm2009.html. For an additional $100, attendees may register on site.

And by entering the promotional code “one touch”, you’ll get a 20% discount courtesy of Voice On The Web.

P.S. – Given that there are many these days in need of social assistance, whether food, shelter or otherwise, Lee has announced that “10% of any profit from the event will be given back to the local community by donating it to the Shelter Network (http://www.shelternetwork.org)”, a Bay Area non-profit undertaking that assists families and individuals with housing issues. Lee has personally guaranteed a minimum $2,000 donation and undertook an interesting social networking experiment to help raise additional funds.

Breaking News: Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor is to make a significant announcement at eComm 2009. Click on the eComm logo below to register.

When Dan York had to find a new employer in the fall of 2007, he kept hinting he had found a great employer but could not reveal it until he started his position. Turns out that Dan had become employed by one of the true innovators and success stories in the voice applications space: Voxeo, a vendor of IVR and VoIP platforms and services.

I have previously had the opportunity to interview Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor for a couple of stories (see links below). I find that Jonathan always has an interesting and informative story to tell. Voxeo is a case study in innovation leading to business success and is a sponsor of eComm 2009 (which means their business must be accelerating). Last week conference organizer Lee Dryburgh interviewed Jonathan and has put both the podcast and transcript up on the eComm 2009 website. Jonathan goes back to his unconventional roots in learning about telecomm and information technology and subsequently contributing to their convergence.

Voxeo turns out to be the outcome of his lack of deep exposure to, or history with, the business side of either telecomm or information technology but rather a passion to figure out “how things work” and “what customer pain” can be addressed by new products and services in a convergent world. He learned early on that, if I solve someone’s problem, the business will come.

In the interview he talks about:

• How he acquired, in one weekend, over 800 access numbers to bulletin boards in the days when “’We’re going to call your grandmother, but let’s only talk for a couple of minutes’.  Long distance was expensive.”
• How his activity led to a visit from the Secret Service. Turns out the Secret Service got a lesson in new communications technology from Jonathan and some of his acquaintances.
• His experience selling storage equipment and Novell Netware LAN’s to large BBS’s (including his first lesson on how  important email would become):

At the time, most BBS software was not multi-line, suffering on DOS, largely.  To build a large VBS [BBS?] was like thirty lines.  You would actually get thirty computers with one modem on each computer and connect them together with Novell NetWare.

• Moving from Sound Blaster to Dialogic cards to solve his problem of “There must be a way to connect a telephone to a computer”. And how it resulted in his first experience with an offering called ”Unified Messaging”: “We accidentally built a unified messaging platform.  We had no idea that there was a concept called Unified…” He went on to build his first business that eventually got sold to MediaGate.

I was thinking about what I wanted to do next.  I kept thinking back to when we first started developing the phone interface for the IRDG Unified Messaging product.  I was remembering, especially as someone not from a computer telephony or telephony background, how unbelievably arcane and difficult it was to get the Dialogic card working right, getting it to work consistently, and then dealing with phone companies to get T1 lines and Wink Start, Loop Start signaling, and DID’s and literally all the stuff I had never heard about. ….

… Right, but I had never heard of before.  I would sit down to have conversations with people and I literally had no idea what they were talking about.  I would just pretend I did and take notes, and then go home and try to figure it out.

• The other key learning from his first company: “’How is it that some of the largest companies in telecommunications don’t have enough people with enough experience to get all this stuff up and running?’  We’ve been doing telephony for eighteen months, now.”
• The three key words that resulted in starting Voxeo: “computer telephony sucks” So how did they make it not suck (in 1999)?

We roughly divided the problem into two domains.  First, it was incredibly difficult, especially outside of telephony, to create applications for the phone, learning all these API’s and the terminology.  We said what if we take web technology and apply it to the phone so you can build a voice application the same way you build a web application.  What would that look like?

The second domain was deployment.  We said rather than selling a box or software to people, and then they have to go deal with carriers or their local phone companies and all that strange terminology and process, we will just pre-deploy it all for customers, in our own data centers, and they can access that platform over the Internet.

Essentially, it was XML-driven telephony development, hosted or what we would now call Software as a Service or cloud-based deployment.

Jonathan then goes on to describe the evolution of VoiceXML, CallXML (built a prototype while at home with pneumonia) and CCXML that became core to Voxeo’s services and platforms. He also talks about being turned down by VC’s because he was only asking for $3 million; his solution to get funding: same business plan, ask for $30 million. And he talks about how Voxeo has leveraged web services into a space that did not understand the potential and value-add of web services a decade ago.

Go to Lee’s eComm 2009 blog post with both a link to the podcast as well as the transcript of the interview to get the full story. It makes a great case study in how technology evolves into a very successful business.

In closing, two comments:

• Columbia Data Products, where Jonathan was first employed, had tape drives that were a key module to a demonstration setup I used to manage for demonstrating graphics plotters for IBM mainframes and DEC/Data General mini-computers.
• At BBS Con which I attended in the summer of 1995, Jonathan should have stopped by the Quarterdeck booth to solve his problem of having a separate phone line for each BBS computer. A significant portion of Quarterdeck’s DESQview sales were to BBS operators so that they could have eight lines coming into a single PC.

Finally I have just confirmed with Lee Dryburgh that Jonathan will be speaking at eComm 2009 and making a significant announcement at that time. Register here and use “one touch” for a 20% discount.

Last day to register today for Regular Pricing; Late pricing applies for registrations after Feb.17, 2009. Enter “one touch” for a 20% discount.

Two weeks ago eComm 2009 organizer Lee Dryburgh observed that:

With the heavy backdrop of economic doom and gloom everywhere I’d been finding it ever more strange that virtually every company I was dealing with in relation to the 2009 conference, was reporting accelerating business let alone [as opposed to] flat or declining business.

Via a Skype multi-party call he held a virtual panel discussion involving:

• Jonathan Christensen (Skype)
• Irv Shaprio (IfByPhone)
• Rodrigue Ullens (Voxbone)
• Graham Brierton (Voicesage)on this topic.

When asked about today’s economy he repeatedly found eComm 2009’s sponsors saying “Oh no, we’re actually doing better, due to the downturn”. So he asked each of the panelists what their offering was doing such as to accelerate their business.

Graham Brierton (VoiceSage):

For example, we had a company that the key thing they wanted to do was bring in their debts cheaper and quicker, instead of reminding people to pay their bills.  Part of the paying the bill process was transferring them back into a call center to actually collect the money.  What we noticed when we analyzed the data was they were getting a hell of a lot of people that were wanting to pay between 3:55 p.m. and 4:05 p.m.  We still don’t know the reason why there is a peak at that point, but there is a peak at that point.

One of the issues that these guys had was that they couldn’t actually take all of those calls because they had a shift change at 4:00 p.m.  They were unaware that because they had a shift change there were a lot of people that wanted to engage in a process with them but they weren’t allowing it because of their internal business processes.  They actually changed that.  That came as a direct result of simply looking at the data generated from the interactions that their customers were having with us, and us trying to collect money from them.

Irv Shapiro (IfByPhone):

Batteries Plus is a franchise-based business in the United States and Canada that has hundreds of retail stores that sell only batteries.  If you need a battery for anything, you go into Batteries Plus or you go to their website and you can purchase a battery.

In many, many cases, people need a battery right away so they want to go to a store.  Batteries Plus was finding that they were fielding hundreds and hundreds of phone calls to stores asking for routine information such as “What are your hours of operation; which is the closest store to my address…?”  We automated that process for them.

In fact, they automated it themselves by going to our website, provisioning a toll-free number, putting in a IVR on the front end that asked a couple of very simple questions to determine whether the customer was looking for information about batteries.  In that case, the call was transferred to a central call center corporate.  Were they looking for the closest location, in which a geo-coded application automatically provided them with the closest location and driving information.  If they were looking for store hours of operation, same geo-code process except in this case we retrieved the hours of operation.

They found a dramatic increase in the productivity of their in-store personnel because now those personnel could concentrate on spending time with customers in the store.  The side effect of that is they sell more batteries.

Rod Ullens (Voxbone), who reported business growing at 15% per month:

At some point, they [cloud based services such as VoiceSage and IfByPhone] need to reach the PSTN.  Most of them actually need a telephone number to be activated.  The bigger they get, the bigger we get.  That’s already one reason.  It’s not necessarily because of us, but because of our customers that have services that are interesting, and we grow with them.

If you look at the way numbers were used in the past, where you had a telephone number that was just linked to a physical location, that’s all you can do with it.  The cost to dial such a number is pretty expensive.  What we’ve done is to just completely take away the geographical link.  Now a number is just a software-based identifier that people can use to call you on.  It’s very flexible.  You can just build up a service.

First of all, that service can be completely Internet based.  You can just use telephone numbers from Voxbone to make it reachable from traditional phone networks, from mobile phones and so on.  Basically, you can be a company and have a virtual presence in a lot of countries.  From day one, you can start a service provider, in forty-five countries.  I think that’s one major reason why we’ve grown, especially now.

Jonathan Christensen (GM Audio and Video Platforms, Skype), in response to Lee’s question: “What do you think is driving these minutes?  Is it businesses using Skype, for a change, in order to save money, for example?”

We’re seeing two things.  One is just consumer migration to value; people want to avoid long distance, but we also see in the consumer space a network effect around your friends being there, the quality being great, it being convenient and easy.  We have a large constituency of people where it is the convenience, free, and easy factor.

On the business side, Gartner, for example, recently said they kind of backed off their position that Skype is dangerous, evil, and will introduce Trojans into your network, and so on.  We hear; we have a bunch of case studies and we hear more and more from corporate IT, these commandments to their workforce saying, “When you’re travelling, when you’re making long distance calls, when you’re going to be faced with insane roaming charges, please try to use Skype.  It works, it’s easy, you can download it, it’s free”.  We are seeing acceleration in that sector, as well.

These are snippets from the discussion; Lee has transcribed the entire session in a eComm 2009 blog post.

Note that while all the participants in this call will be presenting, Jonathan Christensen will be delivering a keynote presentation: “Codec Evolution and Industry Proposal” along with a Skype announcement.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for value in communications services that drive business decisions, if you want to be a player in the emerging communications space, eComm 2009 provides the best opportunity to get a three day education in how the Voice 2.0 world will evolve. It’s an opportunity to network with the thinkers and business leaders who will be providing services for that market space. That’s why I’ve convinced a friend who is a 34-year veteran in the Canadian telecomm market to come; he wants his new consultancy to have relevance going forward.

Register here; enter “one touch” to get a 20% discount. Speakers. Schedule.

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