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

Yesterday I wrote a post for GigaOm, Skype: Coming to a Cell Phone Near You, discussing how the announcement of two new beta versions of Skype on mobile devices gave a hint of Skype’s future mobile strategy.

At the same time Truphone announced a new version of their iPhone application. Whereas the version released at the time of the Apple App Store launch back in July only supported outbound calling over WiFi access points, the new release not only supports inbound calling to your iPhone number but also makes outbound calls via the 3G carrier networks that offer the iPhone.

Innovation driven competition in delivering low cost international calling services appears to be heating up during these challenging economic times – at least for calls originating in your “home” calling country or area code(s). Here’s a brief summary of what is evolving:

We’ve seen the evolution of two architectures for making VoIP-enabled calling from mobile devices; it’s all a matter of where the calling party’s Skype (or VoIP client) session is opened up – directly on the device or on a dedicated hosted server. This leads to two other considerations:

• Carrying the voice portion of the call from the mobile device into the network cloud: either via the carrier’s robust and proven (GSM) voice channel or over via a WiFi access point
• The need to support Skype’s instant messaging (chat and presence); this always occurs as a data activity

VoIP Client on the Mobile Device; VoIP over WiFi

Skype for Windows Mobile places the VoIP client directly onto the device. As a result the device must handle the “VoIP processing” to generate the packets that are transmitted over the supporting data network (either a carrier’s 3G network or via a WiFi access point.) As mentioned previously, it places heavy demands on the device’s resources, especially the processor (running at much lower speeds than on a PC) and the battery.

Truphone’s original voice offering also runs on the device (usually a Nokia Smartphone). While both Skype for Windows Mobile and Truphone can run over either WiFi access points or a 3G network, it is strongly advised to use these only over WiFi access points to have a reliable, robust, high quality voice service. For instance, the Skype for Windows Mobile download page says:

• Log into Skype from any WiFi zone to make free calls and send instant messages to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world, any day of the week.
• WiFi connection or 3G/2G data connection (we cannot guarantee voice quality over 3G/2G. You may also be liable to additional data charges so please check with your operator before using)

Truphone’s original iPhone outbound calling offering was also only available using the iPhone’s WiFi capability; however, details of their architecture were never revealed.

Accessing VoIP via a Wireless Carrier

Over the past year we have seen the rise of several services that use the alternate architecture where a call is placed via a local access point to a hosted server that then opens up a Skype client. The server-based Skype client then completes the call as a Skype-to-Skype call.

While originally pioneered by iSkoot, a service using this architecture, such as Skype Lite beta, makes a call to a SIP Gateway server via a local point of presence while data about the call is concurrently sent via the underlying data network to a hosted Mobile Gateway. This dedicated gateway then sets up a Skype-to-Skype call between the SIP Gateway — now connected to your cell phone — and the destination Skype contact. Skype chat messages can also be exchanged concurrently over the data network. We are now seeing various offerings using this architecture:

• The highly successful Skypephone offered by 3 in nine countries.
• iSkoot providing service for a wide range of phones including BlackBerry, Nokia and T-Mobile’s G-1.
• Truphone Anywhere: when Truphone found they could not offer a highly reliable service over 3G networks (largely due to device resource considerations), they launched Truphone Anywhere that allows Truphone calls to be made over a 2G (GSM/EDGE) or 3G (UMTS/HSPA) voice/data network as well as over WiFi access points.
• Skype for Mobile beta – Skype’s first attempt to go beyond Skype for Windows Mobile onto other platforms such as Nokia N-Series and E-Series devices. This never got out of the beta phase; while you could use Skype chat anywhere, the voice service was only to be available in a limited number of  countries (that did not overlap with countries where Skypephone was available).
• Skype Lite beta: building on the Skype for Mobile beta experience to a service that supports not only smartphones but also over 90 cell phones that support a Java client and include basic web browsing and data capability. According to the Skype Lite page it appears that Skype is working with carriers in ten countries to support this service.
• Truphone for iPhone 1.12 release: makes Truphone calls either over WiFi or any cellular network using an iPhone, building on their Truphone Anywhere experience.

Key features of these server-hosted VoIP client services:

• They are most cost effective when calling from your home country or local calling area. You could incur long distance or, when outside your home country, roaming charges that would run up quite quickly.
• An unlimited or high cap data plan minimizes costs associated with using these services.
• Only Skype provides a full Instant Messaging capability covering both chat and presence. Some Truphone offerings have shown support for SMS messaging.
• Calls to Skype contacts are free.
• Calls to mobile numbers outside U.S. and Canada will still invoke the charges incurred in “caller pays” mobile services.

Why only the cost of a local call? Your cell phone makes a call to a local number which puts the call through to the service’s SIP Gateway. At this point you connect into a Skype-to-Skype call for which there are no termination charges involved as a result of Skype’s unique (and secure) peer-to-peer architecture.  The same applies to Truphone where Truphone-to-Truphone calls are free.

This Skype Lite beta announcement portends that we could be seeing Skype-to-Skype calling, along the lines of 3′s popular Skypephone service in nine countries, become available to mobile customers having a much broader range of cell phones and in up to ten additional countries.

One other service that can be accessed from any phone is Mobivox. However, there you have to build up and manage your address book online such that VoxGirl can help you make your calls; it does not access your mobile phone address book. It’s purely a voice service with no messaging component (other than using SMS to facilitate setting up calls under certain circumstances).

While we’re getting a first step in driving down mobile costs for international calling, the next step needs to be finding a user-friendly way to drive out roaming costs. MaxRoam and Truphone’s SIM4Travel are starting to offer some hope on this front; however, at the moment their costs for USA-Canada calls are much more than my Rogers roaming charge. The winners will feature not only lower costs but a very friendly user interface, interacting with the device address book, that also provides the most complete ranges of services in terms of coverage and complementary conversation modes, such as IM.

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• Truphone for iPod Touch: Accessing Skype Contacts and Social Media

Yesterday UK web publication TelecomTV put out a post “Skype claims mobiles are involved in a quarter of its calls“. But a “correction” comment by the author, Tony Chan, disclaims his basic premise:

CORRECTION: As the original author of this story for CommsDay, I am corrected by Skype that the 4 billion minute figure is actually for Skype-to-Skype minutes with video, NOT mobile.

Turns out to be a confirmation of what we have heard in the past: 25% to 30% of all Skype-to-Skype calls invoke video calling.

So how can one generate Skype-to-Skype minutes from a mobile device? What % of Skype-to-Skype minutes are generated from a mobile device?

• iSkoot: sets up a Skype session on their server using information delivered from the iSkoot client on a supported mobile device, such as BlackBerry or Nokia N-Series. When you make a Skype call, it’s Skype-to-Skype from the iSkoot server to your called Skype contact.
• Skypephone: uses iSkoot’s algorithm with the one difference. 3 has set up their own “iSkoot” servers to support this service. As of October 1, 3 customers using iSkoot or a Skypephone can now make SkypeOut calls from any 3 Skype-enabled phone also.
• Skype for Windows Mobile: here the limitation is the small, and decreasing, market share for Windows Mobile devices. It requires either a WiFi connection or 3G but the former is favored but both call quality and robustness reasons. But you can make both Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls from this client. (And it’s the only instance of a true Skype VoIP client on mobile device — challenging both processor speeds and battery life.)
• Skype for Mobile – currently at a beta stage with limited outbound calling; this service fundamentally uses the same architecture as iSkoot. (I suspect iSkoot has any appropriate intellectual property protected under this. After all, Skype and iSkoot are working together on Skypephone, etc. But it is interesting to experience the difference in user interfaces between iSkoot and Skype for Mobile) Again this does not put the full VoIP client on the device but rather back at a server. Probably not too many minutes here yet.
• Update: Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich emailed to remind me that their voice-enabled service also has the ability to launch Skype-to-Skype voice calls. From any landline or mobile handset worldwide the caller makes a “local” call to VoxGirl who, in turn, launches and connects to a Skype session on a Mobivox server. Effectively creating a landline- or mobile-to-Skype call, Mobivox requires no downloads or client software. VoxGirl will determine presence information to decide whether to proceed with a call; however, there is no IM/chat capability.
• I have described my experience with Fring for iPhone when it launched almost two months ago. My problem with any iPhone application of this nature is that there is currently no background processing such that you can allow an IM session to run in background while executing other applications.

And how successful has 3′s Skypephone service been? We initially heard some qualitative information at eComm 2008 last spring. But, information supplied by Skype’s PR this morning provides us the basis for an order-of-magnitude guestimate:

“…. since Skype launched the 3 Skypephone in November last year, there have been over over 100 million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls by users of the 3 Skypephone and other mobile handsets with Skype and there are currently more than a million minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls each day on 3 mobiles in the UK.”

So out of 16 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes each quarter (as reported in the last eBay quarterly analyst call), it would appear that, at the current > 1 million minutes/day on 3, 75 to 100 million minutes per quarter are via mobile handsets. Hmmm, that makes about 0.5%  to 0.8% of all Skype-to-Skype minutes.

Why can 3 offer this service at such low prices? As explained by iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein at eComm 2008 last March, there are no termination charges for Skype-to-Skype calls, even when one Skype session is on an iSkoot server.

P.S. – Want to keep up-to-date on these issues? opens a week Monday.

Full disclosure: the author uses iSkoot on a BlackBerry Bold when out of the office; he has also experienced successful use on a Nokia N95.

Tags: Skype, iSkoot, Skypephone, Skype Mobile, eComm2008, Mark Jacobstein, Tags: TelecommTV, Tony Chan

About three weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Mobivox’s new CEO Peter Diedrich, a telecom industry veteran who brings both telecom executive and VC-funded startup experience to the table. Mobivox has traditionally provided a low cost worldwide calling service, including free calls to Skype contacts. Key features included (i) no client downloads, (ii) launch a voice call from any telephone handset and (iii) access via over 340 points-of-presence in 40 countries. However, unpublicized has been that they also provide a platform for voice enabling the user interface to many other potential communications service partners.

Historically, Peter sums up Mobivox as having proven they can provide and host a simple service with a voice-enabled user interface; their primary challenge is to determine what should be free. The gems he sees in the current platform include:

• a voice user interface, incorporating VoxGirl, with support for many languages
• a team experienced in voice recognition and management technology
• web-based calling from a (user generated) address book
• the ability to set up and manage contacts via a voice recognition engine (and to include voice tags for each contact)
• an little publicized ability to send email and SMS messages via voice

Going forward Peter sees the challenges for the Mobivox service to include:

• make the user experience dead simple
  • determine what we do vs what we don’t do
  • easiest to just tell customers what they do
  • most important for “hands-free” requirements
  • no client download
• making the address book their stickiest asset
  • seamlessly import Outlook/Gmail/etc.
  • obtain access to mobile device address book
  • create contact voice tags
• provide an access number directory “download” to mobile devices
• make the service “from anywhere at anytime on any device”

Given the challenges of generating a worldwide user base, going forward Mobivox plans to continue the current service but also look for opportunities to find service provider partners who can take advantage of their voice-enabling platform. To have a more complete offering they are also looking to include API’s that go beyond “call control in the cloud” to include support for call completion, backend billing, CRM interface and fraud management.

Their final challenge is to improve monetization; reversing a pre-appointment decision to make all but calls to Skype contacts chargeable, Peter sees the need to develop both a retail and partner customer base.

• member-to-member calls remaining free
• pricing packages incorporating modified PSTN access “minute buckets”
• text messaging services with, say, the first five messages free, then pay
• study customer demand and usage; tailor packages to customer needs
• agreements with service providers

The first service provider partnership was announced today with Jajah; Phil has seen a demonstration and will be commenting further.

Tags: Mobivox, Peter Diedrich, Skype, Jajah

A little sanity moving into the blogosphere? Local blogging colleague Mark Evans¹, in a post earlier today, “The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 Whining”, comments on the demands for seven nines reliability and unlimited support from “free” services:

It’s bad enough no one wants to pay for anything, but the expectations placed on free services to deliver 99.99999% reliability are astounding. Come on, what do you expect for nothing?

Still, kvetching about popular services such as Twitter, Skype or Facebook when they have technical hiccups has become a popular game. When it happens, everyone wants to get into the action by complaining, criticizing, attacking and pontificating. The best one recently was Webware’s Rafe Needleman suggesting Twitter should close until its technical issues are resolved.

Ha!

For some more rational thought on the warped sense of free these days, check out broadstuff, who succinctly pointed out that:

“There is this weird idea in the air that if something is free to a user it is free to produce, and thus must still reach all those other norms we take for granted in paid-for services, like reliability, privacy etc.”

“Free” can be a great inducement to try out a service. Skype-to-Skype calling can remain free because there is little capital or operating cost associated with providing the underlying peer-to-peer service with several million positive user experiences. (You and I pay the capital cost when we buy the “peering” hardware between which Skype makes calls.) Skype is a marketer’s dream for sustainably building a user base while keeping the recruitment cost per user close to zero. Having built up this base, it becomes a target market for premium services such as SkypeIn, SkypeOut and partner offerings such as Pamela and Skylook.

Yes, we know Skype support is often via user forums and slow to respond; but then what can one expect for a “free” service. Skype can use their forums as feedback for determining which features are required to reduce support requirements while building more positive user experiences. New features such as providing CallerID for US/Canada users can drive adoption and usage.Of course they are missing a revenue opportunity by not providing a support service such as Red Hat does for Linux and Digium does for Asterisk.

Truphone, a great mobile VoIP service on Nokia N- and E-series mobile phones when in an accessible WiFi zone, finally started charging last week for calls to/from the PSTN while Truphone-to-Truphone calls remain free². Mobivox is finding they need to cover their costs, even for Mobivox-to-Mobivox calls; this tells me the infrastructure behind Mobivox Girl is an ongoing operating expense due to a different underlying architecture.

The Voice 2.0 Manifesto predicted that “voice will be free; the meter is off”. But we are now starting to see some of the lower bounds of what voice will truly cost, even if minimal, in a Voice 2.0 world.

¹Mark is known to be a heavy Skype user in his business activities.
²Truphone also launched Truphone Anywhere a couple of weeks ago allowing users to call Truphone users for the cost of accessing a “local” GSM wireless PoP.

Tags: Skype, Mark Evans, Twitter, Facebook, Truphone, Mobivox, Voice 2.0 Manifesto

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Luca Filigheddu, CEO of Abbeynet, has put up a guest post on IPCovergence.TV: Mobile VoIP Services – Conusmers Seek Usability and Real Cost Savings. His whole thesis is summed up by the statement:

…. it’s very difficult for me to see another major disruption coming in the short term to impact mobile communications. I’m referring to changing the way people use their mobile phone to communicate. In a nutshell, people are used to performing two simple actions: dial a number on their mobile phone’s keypad and click the green button.

Alternatively, they look for a contact in their address book and, again, they press the green button. How can anyone be so brave as to try to convince customers that they have to change their habits and offer them a different way to do this?

This is what I like about Truphone on the Nokia N95 (aside from the call quality itself); you simply look up a contact in your address book, select which phone number, press the green button and my connection to the contact is completed over a VoIP service. Of course the one drawback is that I can only do this currently from a WiFi connection but I have had non-technical people use Truphone this way.

iSkoot is almost there. On the Skypephone simply look up a Skype contact, press the green button and a call is started (even when calling a Skype contact). Using iSkoot on my Blackberry is just as easy for reaching Skype and SkypeOut contacts in your Skype contact list – select the contact, press the green button and the call is completed. The secret here is that, even though there is a “call back” in the iSkoot algorithm, you do not have to answer the call back … the connection is handled automatically. One improvement for iSkoot would be to access my Blackberry address book and be able to call any number directly from the Blackberry address book. The advantage of iSkoot is that I can effectively make the call from any location with GSM wireless voice and data access for the cost of a “local” wireless call when I am in my “Home” territory. Hopefully, multi-country SIM cards, such as Truphone’s recently acquired Sim4Travel or Cubic Telecom’s MaxRoam services will resolve the roaming charges issue in the near future. To return to Luca’s post:

The promise behind mobile VoIP is surely challenging. There are many innovations and valuable services brought by different players like Rebtel, Truphone, Mobivox or Jajah, just to name a few, but I don’t believe consumers will embrace every new functionality they make available to users.

Bottom line: as Luca so eloquently points out, users are familiar with the legacy process for placing a call; changing behavior patterns — such as required by call back services such as Jajah, Rebtel or even Mobivox will take second priority in broad user adoption. Mobile VoIP calling does not need to be a “disruptive innovation” from the user perspective.

Tags: Luca Filigheddu, Abbeynet, IPConvergence.TV, Mobile VoIP, Truphone, Skype, iSkoot, SIM4Travel, MaxRoam, Cubic Telecom, Jajah, Mobivox, Rebtel, Skypephone, Nokia N95, Blackberry

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CES 2008 generated a few items in the blogosphere that may be of interest to our readers.

Mobivox gets Scoblized: Nitzan Shaer, COO of Mobivox, whose calling service provides access to your Skype contacts from any phone device, was interviewed for one of the last editions of the Scoble Show. Hat tip to Andy.

Don Albert, Skype’s North American General Manager, was interviewed by CBC News reporter Peter Nowak. Of particular interest to Canadians is Don’s response about SkypeIn numbers for Canada:

PN: You don’t offer SkypeIn in Canada because regulations require phone service operators to offer enhanced 911, which allows the operator to locate where a caller is. What are you doing about this situation?

DA: That is the gist of it. We are working on it and we hear from Canadian users all the time that they want to have that available, so we’ve been working with partners who we think can help us with a solution there. We’re hopeful that in the course of this year we’ll be able to offer that.

In this interview Don also addresses some misconceptions about getting access to Skype via wireless carriers.

Tags: Skype, Mobivox, Nitzan Schaer, Don Albert, CBC News, Peter Nowak, SkypeIn Canada