Archive for September, 2005
Sep
29
Standards adoption is good
1 Comment
Here is a good article on standards, based on UK business primarily but it hits home.
Excerpt..
Yet the evolution of VoIP will follow a predictable path. It's all about the money. Because the incremental cost of adding VoIP to broadband is effectively zero, broadband users are migrating to VoIP in droves. For a while, there will be revenues from PSTN gateways but not for ever: the cost of using VoIP on broadband is actually zero, so the existing users will draw more people into broadband subscriptions. Eventually, it will become cheaper for BT to service the remaining PSTN customers with a broadband connection and VoIP disguised and billed as an ordinary telephone. For telephony, the digital switchover will be complete.
more..
Sep
27
Several days ago Chris Pirillo and I had conversation about the various IM clients out there and the one that that really pisses Chris and I off is the lack of interop. Open standards of course would be the best way to solve this but as Chris mentions in the interview it will be a while before this happens across the board.
According to Chris, it would seem that he thinks the second best alternative is a hybrid client that can connect to these other proprietary networks ie. Yahoo, AOL , MSN and maybe Skype but also complies with open standards like SIP and SIMPLE and/or XMPP.
Well, I don't know of ANY client that does all of this today but if there were one that was reliable and feature-rich I would download it in a second. I am getting really sick of running 4 IM clients. Hmmm, maybe I am on to something here :)
With Avaya's purchase of Nimcat and eBay's purchase of Skype I think it's obvious that P2P VoIP is one hot topic with investors and press lately.
Something that surprises me is the lack of Video in these offerings. Neither Skype nor Nimcat offer video. Yes, Skype has said it is working on Video but it would seem as though the technology needs work. At the recent VON show Niklas Zennstrom was supposed to make his keynote via Skype's new video component but it failed and hence no keynote.
I think P2P VoIP has merit but in order for it to really take off it must be standards-based and offer all the features.
If 2004 was the year of VoIP maybe 2005 is the year of P2P VoIP.
It looks like the CRTC made the right move lately by denying the incumbents lower price handicaps over the newer VoIP offering e.g. Vonage.
This is great news for consumers and could very well spur innovation due to the stage that has been set here. Combine that with the Telus strike and we might see some interesting new consumer trends.
More...
More proof that P2P VoIP is hot right now and getting hotter, first Skype now Nimcat. Should be interesting to see how this P2P landscape shapes up.
Excerpt from National Post:
"Embedding communications intelligence directly in the endpoints rather than the network will enable enterprises to implement streamlined peer-to-peer IP communications quickly and cost-effectively."
The nimX software includes the most frequently used telephone features such as voice mail, conferencing and auto-attendant.
"All that is required for installation is to plug the IP phones into the same data network used by office personal computers," Avaya said.
VON was such a huge success for eyeball we decided to roll with punches and continue on to NYC to paste a few more zeros on our revenue numbers for the quarter.
On the way a funny thing happened. In order to conserve some time our very patient CEO, who was driving at the time, decided that total gridlock was completely unacceptable and quickly found a solution in the emergency lane. Our driver thought it was very fitting for us to be in the emergency lane since we indeed had an emergency. Afterall, if we did not make our numbers this quarter someone was surely going to pay for it.
The adventure was cut short when a police cruiser jumped in behind us at which time we proptly got back into the right lane. The cop was unimpressed to say the least but then things took a twist... when our CEO told the officer that the emergency was that we had to race to our next appointment or the next floater that was to turn up in the East River would closely resemble a certain sales person the officer was clearly flabbergasted. He was so beside himself he simply sped off muttering obscenities. If that wasn't funny enough, not more than 3 minutes later we spotted the cruiser pulling over another victim. Based on the cavity search posturing of the cop I would say this second group did not have quite as good an excuse for driving in that lane.
It happenend over an hour ago, we are still driving and I am still laughing.
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