Technology, Geopolitics, Culture and Marketing

Hibernating

au24 — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:06:52 +0000

ZZZZzzzzz….
ts been a whole year since our last post. Not that it hasn’t been a busy & exciting year. Just focused on other work.
Thanks for visiting,
au24

Voice Interconnect and Peering Conference

au24 — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:06:39 +0000

The 1st VIPeering conference in Los Angeles was held on October 5th, and featured speakers and sponsors from many of the leading companies and organizations in the industry including: Acme Packet, NetNumber, XConnect, Voxbone, Audio Codes, Orange, i3Forum, SIP Forum, Telcentris/Voxox, Arbinet, Sonus, Genband, DIDX and TNSI.

The 2nd VIPeering conference is now planned for Miami Beach on February 2, 2011. Acme Packet is the Platinum event sponsor, and we will be announcing another key sponsor very soon. The call for speakers is open, interested parties are invited to send abstracts & proposals.

Topics Being Considered For Sessions Include:
Corporate and Enterprise peering and UC – models and strategies
Peering in Latin America – unique regional challenges and opportunities
Cable Telephony Peering – update from the MSOs
Video Telephony – Over the top, Mobile and Corporate interoperability
Mobile carrier interconnection scenarios
Successful business models for Peering
The role of ENUM in LNP and Interconnection
Numbering and Identifiers in Peering and Interconnection
Endgames for Peering: Key Enabler updates

US market video telephony breakthrough…Sprint 4G EVO

au24 — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:31:22 +0000

Sprint has emerged as the first major US carrier to market the promise of mobile video telephony. The HTC EVO 4G will feature dual cameras, including an 8.0 MP primary and a 1.3 MP front-facing. Many video telephony proponents lamented the timidness of the iPad launch on this particular front, which makes this Sprint/HTC/Qualcomm/Android gauntlet all the more provocative.

AP reporter Peter Svensson pin-pointed video as the key selling proposition for the companies 4G network. Sprint’s own marketing material refers to the revolutionary front facing camera as “opening up new frontiers for user-generated content, social networking and streaming video.”

Sprint’s director of product marketing, David Owens is quoted on the fact that “Sprint doesn’t have a video chat application for the Evo yet, but will help developers create such software.”

Radvision announces patent for initiating video conferences via IM

au24 — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:28:42 +0000

The patent (7,631,039) for initiating a video conference session via instant messaging. The application was made in December 2001 and was granted in December 2009 and covers the initiation and support of video conferencing using instant messaging. The patent was originally part of the Intellectual Property acquired with the assets of First Virtual Communication, and its subsidiary CUSeeMe Networks, which Radvision purchased from Chapter 11 status in Mid-2005 for a reputed USD$5 Million. Radvision, which after its March 2000 IPO flirted with a Billion $ market cap, today trades at just under $120M with nearly the same amount in cash and short term investments, and $81M in 2009 revenue. Radvision stock was knocked down 35% by investors in two days at the start of October 2009 on news of its key customer Cisco’s planned acquisition of competitor Tandberg. At a recent trade conference, Skype reported that up to 20% of their users IP communications sessions incorporate video.

Interpreting the Nexus One

au24 — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:35:16 +0000

I switched from a Blackberry to an Android phone about two months ago – and found it a great improvement. I’d compare the switch to maybe a Windows PC to an Apple in the late 90s, but that would be ignoring the clear leader in smart phone innovation over the last years, Apple itself, which is gearing up to launch its Slate to great fanfare shortly. The Android OS poses a reasonable competitor to the iPhone, and clearly much “smarter” than a Blackberry. The main repercussion of going Android, is that users will be fully tied in with Google’s complimentary software universe. Mobile integration with Google Calendar, Gmail, GoogleVoice, and even YouTube make using these services vastly more compelling than stand alone PC web apps.

My personal interpretation is that this move is an experiment, upping the ante on the Android strategy bet, and possibly a harbinger of M&A activities. What does Google get by reselling an HTC phone directly for a comparable price that T-mobile sells similar HTC phones already ?

1. the obvious point: ability to optimize the user experience and speeding up the development cycles by asserting (more but hardly total) control over processors, hardware and components independent of manufacturer and network operator’s own priorities.

2. if that is successful in boosting interest in the OS, then it can be seen as an experiment with vertical integration, i.e. the acquisition of a device hardware company and/or wireless broadband /network services operations (perhaps connecting Google’s interest in open access for 700 MHz spectrum). Per the New York times, Motorola Co-CEO Jha commented: “I think the Nexus One is a good phone; I think the Droid is a good phone,” … Mr. Jha appeared to embrace Google’s plan to market phones directly to consumers. “I see this potentially as an expansion of the marketplace.”

Internet Telephony Winter conference schedule announced

au24 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:43:49 +0000

The conference schedule for the Internet Telephony Expo in Miami, January 20-22, 2010 has just been announced, Registration is now open

I’m looking forward to moderating two extremely interesting sessions:

“Rich Services – to be delivered “ 1/20/2010, 9:00-9:45am / Service Provider Track

The world of communications is migrating to IP-based technology to enable the delivery of new multimedia services. For those involved in delivering content and entertainment-based services, this technological change demands a fundamental new paradigm of federation-based, all-IP scalable interconnect. These new services will enormously disrupt current communication and telephony business models. This session will address how service providers, from mobile to CSOs, can address this shift, reduce transit charges, and enable the introduction of new, rich multi-modal, real-time communications services.

And

“The Mobile Video Revolution” – 1/22/2010, 9:30-10:15am/ Video Communications Track

Mobile video telephony is about more than just the ability to watch movies on the handset or make 3G video calls. And it’s not just something to consider for the future; many operators are generating revenue from video telephony services today. For businesses and service providers alike, mobile video will prove a vital tool for generating revenue. This presentation will provide a full overview of the various video telephony opportunities in mobile: from consumer-based services like video ringback tones and entertainment services, to next generation business applications, such as video blogging and conferencing.

Internationalized Domain Names

au24 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:20:11 +0000

ICANN just announced a big step in their ongoing IDN efforts, with plans to enable the registration and use of Internet domain names based on non-Latin alphabets and characters. A complex undertaking, more than half of the world’s 1.6 Billion Internet users native languages use non-Latin alphabets, characters or symbols, including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Cyrillic. Interesting to see how Brand Managers as well as Domainers react to this coming Continental shift in web addressing. Expect a race to register thousands of “premium” domain names, for example the Perso-Arabic script equivalent of www.farsi.com which sold for over $70,000 in August 2009.

Social Network Overload

au24 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:18:41 +0000

Many of the free social networks are now showing signs of overload on a regular basis. Not surprising as they are now serving heavy corporate and business users, for whom outages are not a semi-welcome break from their over-sharing friends, but a potential loss of revenue and commercial readiness. The demand for paid industrial strength commercial user accounts appears ripe.

Free Voice; Bill & Keep?

au24 — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:12:16 +0000

I think Om Malik is very on target in his recent summation of the state of the voice industry, republished on BusinessWeek online. With the US wireless biggies finally conceding weakly justified defenses to mobile VoIP apps, it appears to be a major milestone in the 15 year slog towards the “death of distance. ” Its nearly to the stage , where just about everyone in the industry views voice as a commodity and gear their business models towards value added applications built around free voice and flat rate broadband plans.

Interestingly, Malik goes to the next step to briefly reference the implied business and technology drivers for voice peering , stopping short of the drivers for multi-lateral vs. private interconnection approaches. After helping guide XConnect for its first three years when peering was rarely discussed in public outside of 8:00 AM conference sessions on day 2 for an audience that barely outnumbered the panel; its nice to see the theme of Free Voice and Peering written in the same keystrokes.

VON in Miami Beach

au24 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:29:49 +0000

The rebirth of the VON show, eagerly awaited, took place last week. The VON saga has been widely covered, but do want to say that Mike Saxby, Rick Martin, Khali Henderson, Leez May and team did a great job. The quality of the panels and reporting, as well as the behind the scenes management was excellent.

The panel I moderated; “Flying Blind: Navigating the International Wholesale Voice Market” featured Chris Lengyel, Director of Product Management at iBasis, Vanessa Matamoros, VP Sales for Latin America at Arbinet and Andriy Zhylenko, CTO of PortaOne. Andriy argued that there is still a good business case in 2009 for entering into the Wholesale marketplace, but pointed out that margins were often extremely low, even averaging 1% in some markets, which underscored the need for vigilant fraud protection and proactive billing management. He made the practical suggestion that carriers ought to standardize rate change sheets using a web-based technology rather than emailing .xls files back and forth. Sounds a bit like Arbinet I thought as Vanessa dived into their systems for managing trading, codes, billing and settlement. Chris amusingly pointed out that within iBasis any route with margins in the 1% zone would be termed “Toxic Minutes” and made a strong case for outsourcing the International wholesale equation for overall cost savings and route quality. The complexities and risks of the business all seemed to tip the scale away from service providers developing large carrier services departments at this stage of the game, and towards outsourcing these functions to dedicated outfits such as Arbinet and iBasis.

The VON conference concluded with a Keynote by Christopher Dean, the extremely sharp Chief Strategy Officer of Skype. Mid-way through he transitioned into Skype’s plans to integrate the Channel into their applications, which was fitting since his speech was also the kick-off for sister show Channel Partners. Among many interesting points, Christopher made the case that while Skype is estimated to account for 8% of the overall International voice market, it has not cannibalized the legacy minutes to the extent many had speculated in years past but rather grew the overall pie, i.e. that voice utilization when reduced to free or next to free follows the “price elasticity of demand” principles. This resonated with me, since as a Skype user I have on several occasions managed to forgo transatlantic flights and contribute effectively to full-day meetings via a string of hour-plus free Skype calls.

This brings us back to one of the most important sessions in my opinion which was “HD Voice: the future of VoIP.” Jeff Rodman, Founder and CTO of Polycom, Alan Percy, of Audio Codes and William Bumbernick of Alteva. Jeff is a visionary and when he claimed in his presentation that any enterprise phone system purchased today that didn’t support HD would be obsolete in five years my ears perked up. Yes this is a sales pitch, but in a world of 1% wholesale margins, free voice and unmetered broadband – its seems inevitable that the communications industry will turn its marketing focus on consumer and business applications for high definition audio and video telephony.

Revesoft

Broadview Networks

Ron Pass, Sales Director for ReveSoft enjoying South Beach

ifbyphone