February 2005 Archives

In this corner, the only city with its own liberty bell. The city of brotherly love… The city with its own cheese steak, Philadelphia.

And in this corner, the undisputed wireless leader. The only service provider mighty enough to buy MCI with lunch money. The incumbent of incumbents, Verizon!

Al Bredenberg details the latest in this nasty brawl between the incumbent and the ILEC.

If you thought the train was a place where you could catch up on your reading without intrusions from the rest of the world and especially your boss, think again. T-Mobile UK just announced they gave WiFi access on trains. In fact, Redline Communications is announcing that its AN-50e broadband wireless platform is being deployed by UK-based Nomad Digital for this high-speed Internet project for Southern Trains. Nomad Digital is a company formed in 2002 that provides WiFi services and hotspot deployments while Southern Trains provides service throughout the UK.

Here are the highlights of the announcement:

Perhaps the most interesting part of this announcement is that some links can pass data to and from the moving train at 32 Mbps, making this the fastest data link to a train anywhere in the world. So not only can you e-mail your boss and friends, you can stream a few channels, a movie and listen to streaming audio simultaneously. Now that is going from relative isolation to serous overload virtually overnight. Still, web junkies everywhere will stand in line to get a taste of wireless broadband, British style.

Tonight I have the most interesting assignment of all. I have to tear down open source telephony. Not literally mind you but next week I go on stage with Mark Spencer the guru of open source, founder of Digium and Asterisk and have to debate him one-on-one. He is taking the (no surprise here) pro-open source side of the argument and I am against it (or at least that's the role I play onstage).

If you can believe it, we couldn't find a PBX vendor to debate Mark and I thought my idea was great (I have my moments) and I wouldn’t let it die.

This is how the scenario worked out... We called Mark and asked him if he would do an open source telephony shoot-out with another PBX vendor. He agreed. We called a few PBX vendors and no would debate him. I called Mark back and said, the Hell with it... I will fill the role of the PBX vendor.

So here I am now, coming up with the questions and framing the session. I am looking forward to seeing how it shapes up next week. Hope to see you at the show. If you have any ammo for me (I know this isnt fair but open-source uses the web to its advantage, so can I :-) send me an e-mail.

Check out http://www.itexpo.com for details.

Getting wireless access in the New Orleans airport is not for the faint of heart. Verizon’s 1xRTT service is pretty slow here and the WiFi supplied by PJ’s Coffee and Tea is slow now and doesn’t seem to be speeding up any time soon. It was OK for an hour and then all these other laptops started to show up and strangle the connection. It seems like someone is definitely streaming Shrek 2. BTW this coffee shop is incredible, with about 10 outlets or more and lots of comfortable seating. They will even give you an hour free WiFi with any purchase. Now that’s good business.

Two of the world’s richest people and most savvy investors are eying the cable industry. Is this a sign that video-on-demand and other such services will be highly profitable or that a wave of consolidation will make the big bigger and stronger?

Yesterday I wrote about Cablevision mulling a possible takeover bid and now this… It seems that consolidation fever is contagious.

The most important question may be why don’t these investors see Verizon and SBC as strong competition? If they did see a serious threat, would they be making these investments? Is it possible they see an acquisition in cable by SBC and Verizon? Would the FCC allow such a merger?

As Tom Keating blogged yesterday... Time to take the popcorn out.

PS: Here is a letter Warren Buffet wrote to TMCnet last summer.

At least three MCI shareholders are not happy with the offer from Verizon and they suggest either doing nothing or looking at the Qwest offer. While this could be an attempt to raise the price Verizon pays, it could also present a roadblock to a deal that seemed like a sure thing

The three shareholders in question are John Paulson at Paulson & Co.; Bruce Berkowitz at Fairholme Capital Management LLC and Leon Cooperman at Omega Advisors Inc and represent three of the six largest shareholders.

Verizon is paying $20.75 a share for MCI, including $14.75 in stock, $1.50 in cash and $4.50 comprised of a special dividend and MCI's planned quarterly dividends, including a 40-cent dividend approved by the MCI board on Feb. 11.
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Qwest's $23 offer comprised $15.50 in stock and $7.50 in cash. Including $1.60 in dividend payments, the bid would be valued at $24.60, or about $8 billion. Qwest's bid consisted of about $3 billion in cash, compared with Verizon's $2 billion, they said.

For more information on this evolving story check the Verizon, MCI merger page on TMCnet or read this article on Bloomberg.

I second Tom’s opinion on the Verizon, MCI deal while I understand fully why Verizon is almost forced to do this deal. The last thing Verizon wants is to be standing without a chair (read national carrier) when the music stops.

But the situation seems to get worse as time goes on as Cablevision , the provider in my own backyard seems to be mulling a merger as well. In a country where broadband is slower and more expensive than many parts of Asia and penetration rates are not in the top 10 in the world, we need more competition, not less.

Industry consolidation doesn’t seem to aid the consumer in any way I can ascertain but perhaps WiMAX or some other technology will come to the rescue and give us meaningful broadband competition in the future.

RADVSION is making some great progress selling into the wireless space:

ASUSTEK CHOOSES RADVISION 3G-324M TOOLKIT FOR DEVELOPMENT OF NEW 3G VIDEO SMARTPHONE

New Technology Leverages RADVISION Toolkit’s Support of Windows CE Operating System and Intel’s New Chipset for 3G Multimedia Services

3GSM World Congress, Cannes, France (Hall 2, Stand E23) and Fair Lawn, New Jersey, February 14, 2005 -- RADVISION (Nasdaq: RVSN), a source of award winning, industry-standard products and technologies for real-time multimedia communications, today announced that its popular 3G-324M Developer Toolkit was chosen by ASUSTeK Ltd. to develop its upcoming line of 3G multifunction video phones, operating on the Microsoft’s Windows CE operating system and using Intel’s chipset.  

The choice of the RADVISION 3G-324M developer solution, including the industry’s first implementation of the ITU’s recently ratified version 10 of the H.245 call control, will enable ASUSTeK to develop a new breed of 3G visual communication devices that offer the best in quality, functionality, low power consumption, minimal call setup time and support of advanced multimedia services.  Powered by the RADVISION 3G Developer Toolkit, ASUSTeK’s new line of smartphones will enable users to experience video streaming and video portal-based services in addition to participating in high-quality one-to-one and multiparty visual communications with other users.

To enable equipment providers to create best-in-class products that leverage advanced features, RADVISION has ported its 3G-324M and SIP developer solutions to support a host of operating systems such as Windows CE, Symbian and Embedded Linux and multimedia chipsets including Intel, TI, Qualcomm, and others.  The 3G-324M toolkit is part of RADVISION’s 3G developer solution suite, a comprehensive architecture of developer toolkits and applications for the creation and testing of voice, video, and data collaboration services for mobile or fixed broadband communication. 

“After looking at a number of 3G-324M developer solutions , we found RADVISION’s developer solution to be the ideal platform for building our upcoming line of advanced 3G multimedia devices due to its powerful functionality, robust developer APIs and its tight integration and support of both the Windows CE operating system and Intel’s multimedia chipset,” said HC Hung, Vice President of ASUSTeK  "The RADVISION solution will not only dramatically decrease our time to market but also, due to the availability of their SIP developer platform, provides us with an elegant upgrade path to a SIP-based IMS architecture.”   

Support for Windows CE
ASUSTeK will use the Windows CE version of the RADVISION 3G-324M Toolkit to develop a complete reference design for its new line of 3G Smartphones running the Windows CE operating system.  Windows CE, a market-leading flexible software platform for mobile devices and applications for devices, is licensed by many of the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers to provide advanced data and multimedia functionality in an integrated, intuitive user interface.  Windows CE provides a robust platform to developers to build applications in a familiar development environment for a new class of mobile devices, allowing them to be delivered to market quickly and inexpensively.

About the RADVISION 3G-324M Toolkit and Associated Solutions
The RADVISION 3G-324M Developer Toolkit enables the creation of wireless multimedia applications and services such as videoconferencing and video streaming for 3G mobile phones over existing circuit-switched networks. The toolkit complements RADVISION’s existing support for mobile networks, which includes its award-winning SIP Toolkit for 3G mobile application development and the viaIP 3G-324M Gateway for bridging 3G wireless mobile videophones to IP or ISDN based videoconferencing systems.

RADVISION’s 3G-324M toolkit enables vendors to develop and offer service providers differentiated delay-sensitive real-time multimedia (voice, video, data) applications and services, including:
·           Multimedia/video conferencing with other 3G mobiles, fixed or WiFi IP terminals using H.323/SIP
·           Video Portals
·           Multimedia/Multi-participant gaming

The 3G-324M Toolkit provides network equipment and mobile device manufacturers the ability to improve time-to-market by simplifying and accelerating the development process for high performance, standards-based 3G-324M wireless products. Based on RADVISION’s award-winning H.323 Protocol Toolkit, the 3G-324M Toolkit incorporates sophisticated call-control functionality (H.245 version 10) that allows developers to implement enhanced functionalities including advanced terminal capabilities exchange and rich conference control services such as multi-point, multimedia session handling.

This developer toolkit is complemented by RADVISION’s full line of developer solutions that address the needs of developers building servers and mobile devices for 3G and WiFi based services.  RADVISION provides its development partners with all the tools and complementary components to effectively design and bring to market solutions for virtually every point in the IP and 3G mobile network and supports the development of products based on the following protocols:
·         SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) according to RFC3261
·         SIP/SIMPLE (Presence and Instant Messaging)
·         3G-324M (for real-time multimedia over 3G)
·         RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol)
·         RTP/RTCP (Real Time Transport Protocol/Real Time Transport Control Protocol)
·         MEGACO/MGCP
·         IP Phone/Video Phone

About RADVISION
RADVISION (Nasdaq: RVSN) is the industry’s leading provider of high quality, scalable and easy-to-use products and technologies for videoconferencing, video telephony, and the development of converged voice, video and data over IP and 3G networks.  For more information please visit our website at www.radvision.com.

A few new speakers I thought you might like to know about. Come see them all next week in Miami.

Time Warner Telecom

Mr. Michael A. Rouleau, Senior Vice President – Business Development and Strategy, has been with Time Warner Telecom since November, 1999. Mr. Rouleau’s extensive experience in the telecom and data communications industries has resulted in the successful implementation and delivery of many advanced and innovative products. In his current position, Mr. Rouleau is responsible for developing Time Warner Telecom’s strategic direction and integrating new services and technologies over the next several years. Prior to joining Time Warner Telecom, Mr. Rouleau spent fifteen years with U S WEST, now Qwest, where he was responsible for the development, deployment and management of data, Internet and DSL businesses.

NEC
Bruce Grant, director of product management for NEC.

Toshiba
John Carson is director, mobile communications solutions of Toshiba Digital Solutions Division (DSD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. (TAIS).   Mr. Carson brings more than 25 years of experience in the computer industry to his position in which he is responsible for business development for the division’s VoIP, roaming, connectivity, and mobility communications solutions.

See www.itexpo.com for details.

I am pretty excited to announce that Mike Heberling Director of Business Development IP Solutions at FrontRange Solutions will be speaking at breakfast next Thursday at ITEXPO in Miami.

Here is a brief bio:

Mike Heberling is responsible for FrontRange Solutions sales in the company’s Americas region, which includes the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Mike comes to FrontRange from 3Com Corporation, where he was responsible for U.S. Service Provider National Accounts and Business Development for their VoIP products.

Interesting tidbit: FrontRange’s Goldmine division was launched by the two founders at a TMC event around 1991 in Orlando, FL as I recall.

Off to Comptel today. I am looking forward to the day soon when there is broadband access on the plane. Well at least half of me is. The other half cherishes a bit of quiet time so I can read, write and article and do anything else that is aided by an “interruption-free” environment.

Here issome good blog reporting from Al Bredenberg. I am very impressed with the FCC’s stance on broadband wireless. If they can help get this market off the ground, we will have a viable competitor for broadband access besides ILECS and cable companies. This is exactly what they should be doing.

Does the following line make you laugh? It made me smile – In a Beavis and Butthead sort of way

Microsoft Corp., world largest software maker, and Pfizer, the Viagra maker, has teamed up to fight Spam rigorously.

Read the story

Teleo is a new VoIP company that wants to bridge the desktop with the tools mobile professionals use today. They will be announcing their strategy at demo this week. According to Peter Sisson, Teleo President & CEO, “Mobile professionals use cell phone, e-mail and web browsers. They shouldn’t have a new VoIP interface as well”. He continued, “They should have the ability to click on an e-mail and initiate a call and should be able to click buttons on a web site to initiate a call.”

According to Sisson, You should be able to integrate VoIP with cell service as cell service is the future. We need to turn VoIP into a feature, not an application. He also believes in plug-and-play portability. “You should be able to receive your calls from anywhere,” says Sisson. “The trick is to use SIP and get through firewalls.” As curious as I am, I wanted more. I asked for details. Apparently they have a split-client design that is patent-pending.

One of the visions the company espouses is to make software and services to enable communications person specific not number specific.

In order to use the software, you download the client and get toolbars in Outlook and IE so both of these software apps become phones. You can use a phone that is USB based, use a TA or a new adapter from China they will sell that converts USB to RJ45.

The intelligence lives in toolbar. Applications will allow you to click and dial automatically. If the system can’t find a number you can highlight, right-click and dial. It can also translate 1-800-flowers into numbers. You can SIP forward from an enterprise system to Teleo as well.

One of the differentiators from free P2P software is that they can keep track of all calls not just PSTN calls. These are important considerations for enterprise users and of course will keep our government happy from a CALEA perspective.

I am happy to see companies realize it is not just about free or cheap minutes but we need to look at VoIP as a huge enabling technology. Applications are the future… VoIP is just a key that unlocks the door.

Lots of blogging software and other tools to help workgroups work more efficiently according to this article.