April 2005 Archives

Jeremy Jaynes allegedly sent 10 million of spam messages a day (prosecutors presented evidence of just 53,000 illegal e-mails) and is only getting nine years in jail. Worse yet, this article infers that there is a chance the decision will be overturned on appeal! Solution to the spam problem? Simple. Let's emulate the California 3 strikes and you're out rule. You send 1,000,000 spam messages and you go to jail for at least ten years. No questions asked.

According to the TIA, the U.S. broadband market is expected to reach an estimated 56.9 million subscribers by 2008, growing from 32.5 million subscribers in 2004. For details, check out the TIA's 2005 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast, an annual study of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The broadband market has grown substantially since 2001, when there were only 5.1 million subscribers.

According to the survey, in 2004, the number of high-speed subscribers in the United States grew by 35.4 percent to reach 32.5 million subscribers, consisting of the following access technologies: cable modem (17.0 million), DSL (12.6 million), fixed wireless (2.2 million), fiber-to-the-home (0.2 million), satellite (0.4 million), mobile wireless (3G) (0.1 million) and broadband over power line (less than 50,000).

Comparison Between Cable and DSL Broadband Access

Faster speeds are driving demand for cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) providers. With telephone companies becoming more aggressive in rolling out bundled DSL services and cable operators losing subscribers to direct broadcast satellite, the gap between cable and DSL narrowed in 2004 and will continue to decrease through 2008. In 2005, for example, DSL is expected to experience a greater percent growth (19.8 percent) than cable modems (17.1 percent). Despite DSL gains to 12.6 million subscribers, however, cable modems remained the dominant broadband technology in 2004, with 17 million subscribers.

Broadband Market To Reach 56.9 Million Subscribers By 2008

Even with fewer subscribers, DSL leads in service revenue and will grow at a 14.3 percent compound annual rate to $13.6 billion in 2008 from $8 billion in 2004. This growth will be fueled by a 14.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in DSL subscribership, from 12.6 million in 2004 to 21.7 million in 2008.  Cable modem service revenue, on the other hand, will expand at a 6.1 percent CAGR from $8.6 billion in 2004 to $10.9 billion in 2008.

Some thoughts after reading this report. Cable companies will always have free ads on their networks so how will DSL compete with free ads? Will WiMAX or BPL or broadband over power lines make a more noticeable dent in such surveys in the future? BTW, who is using BPL? If you are, please respond to this entry as I would like to write about your experiences.

Has anyone noticed that this company is charging a fortune? It is outrageous. I am paying about $80-$100 a day for a mid-size car with NeverLost. This is in every state from California to Indiana (where you would think you would pay less). Is it just me or is this astronomical? Perhaps it is the low airfares that have me thinking Hertz should charge less (it costs less to fly across country than to rent a car). I like Hertz a great deal and I'm a Hertz Gold member which means I don't wait for my car. Between this benefit and the NeverLost GPS system I fell like a moth drawn to the flame every time I travel.

Amazingly, if you look at the receipt, there are all sorts of taxes and miscellaneous fees that are unintelligible. I feeling like I am reading a cell phone bill.

I am considering getting a portable GPS unit with an MP3 player built-in. I probably won't do it as it is yet another device to carry. On the other hand, NeverLost is costing about $10-$12 a day depending on fees and taxes so 30 days of rental will be the break even to purchase such a device.

I am on the list to get a demo unit of this GPS device which could be a NeverLost killer. Assuming they send it, I will review it and let you know how it goes.

I think this past week's podcast went really well. Much thanks to Al Bredenberg, TMCnet Editorial Director and Michelle Pasquerello, Channels Editor for making this so much fun to produce. Our first podcast focused on The National Show sponsored by NCTA, where I moderated a session. We also discussed the VoIP initiatives from AOL and MSN. We rounded out the "cast," with new fax regulations that can result in a fine of $11,000 per infraction, Canadian VoIP research and my recent trip visiting communications companies in San Jose.

OK, you want to know a secret? I have never really listened to a podcast. I am perhaps not young enough or cool enough and I don't (sit down before you read this) even have an iPod. Please don't tell Steve Jobs. I don't want to annoy him. So if you are like me; too young to retire but too un-hip to have an iPod or just to know how a podcast works, then do what I do and just click here to listen to the podcast on your computer. It is just a standard MP3 file anyway.

Here are some recent VoIP URLs that are interesting. The following service provider is buying up domains such as brazilvoipcalling.com, australiavoipcalling.com, argentinavoipcalling.com, etc.

Primus Telecommunications
25 Bridge St.
Red Bank, New Jersey
United States

I didn’t think it possible but the pace of URLs being registered with the word VoIP in them is still accelerating.

4kidsvoip.com
all-voip.info
argentinavoipcall.com
argentinavoipcalling.com
australiavoipcall.com
australiavoipcalling.com
bestratedvoip.com
bestratedvoipservice.com
brazilvoipcall.com
brazilvoipcalling.com
canadavoipcall.com
canadavoipcalling.com
chilevoipcall.com
chilevoipcalling.com
chinavoipcall.com
chinavoipcalling.com
colombiavoipcall.com
colombiavoipcalling.com
comparevoipphone.com
comparevoipphones.com
comparevoipservice.com
comparevoipservices.com
costaricavoipcall.com
costaricavoipcalling.com
cybercomvoip.com
dalevoip.com
egyptvoipcall.com
egyptvoipcalling.com
elsalvadorvoipcall.com
elsalvadorvoipcalling.com
eyeonvoip.com
francevoipcall.com
francevoipcalling.com
germanyvoipcall.com
germanyvoipcalling.com
globalvoipcommunications.com
globalvoipcommunications.info
globalvoipcommunications.net
globalvoipcommunications.org
guatemalavoipcall.com
guatemalavoipcalling.com
hawaiianvoip.com
hawaiianvoip.net
hongkongvoipcall.com
hongkongvoipcalling.com
horizonvoip.com
i2voip.com
indiavoipcall.com
indiavoipcalling.com
internationalvoipcall.com
internationalvoipcalling.com
iraqvoipcall.com
iraqvoipcalling.com
israelvoipcall.com
israelvoipcalling.com
italyvoipcall.com
italyvoipcalling.com
japanvoipcall.com
japanvoipcalling.com
lebanonvoipcall.com
lebanonvoipcalling.com
linkvoip.net
mexicovoipcall.com
mexicovoipcalling.com
myvoipitz.com
netzerovoip.net
netzerovoip.org
philippinesvoipcall.com
philippinesvoipcalling.com

No sooner did I break the news that Howard Bubb was leaving Dialogic – I just found out that Mike Ross left Aculab a few days ago. Mike was another major player in the DSP resource board space. Mike worked as VP of Sales at Dialogic in the 1980s and was instrumental in their success.

He later left to found Rhetorex, a Dialogic competitor. Under his management Rhetorex grew to be a major force in the DSP resource board space. Many voicemail systems including the one at TMC have Rhetorex boards in them. The company was later sold to Octel which was sold to Lucent and the Rhetorex division was subsequently spun off to Brooktrout.

Most recently, Mike has been the President of the US division of Aculab and was the US face of the company. He did an incredible job growing the UK/Florida based company, while many competitors scrambled to deal with post-bubble times. He steered the Aculab ship with steady and consistent vision while others were lost. Mike understood technology and saw the Linux telephony market evolving before many of his competitors. This allowed Aculab to be an early player in this space. Not only did he understand technology, he was an excellent marketer, a straight shooter and perhaps the nicest person I have known in the industry over the past decades.

I view this as an industry loss but on the bright side, after two decades of service, growing the telecom space by being instrumental in the success of many companies, Mike may decide to relax for a while. He certainly deserves it. I envision more great things from Mike Ross as he looks to whatever comes next.

Ditech Communications is a veteran in the telecom space and they have some high-tech solutions to many carrier problems. I spent some time discussing their VoIP solutions and their strategy boils down to making VoIP sound better. They are able to cancel acoustic echo (the noise from the microphone reflection), background noise and hybrid echo (the echo that results from converting 4 lines of voice into two) for example.

They are also very focused on helping carriers with VoIP peering. In the VoIP space, different carriers use different formats to carry their voice packets. Cable companies, wireless providers, Skype, Vonage, etc... They all use their own format and when it comes to peering they have to find a way to interconnect the disparate voice networks.

One way is with a session border controller or media gateway. Some SBCs will handle this task and a media gateway based solution requires many DSP boards to be added which has drawbacks. Another more inexpensive option is Ditech Communications' Packet Voice Processor. This category of product can also be referred to as border services platform. This company has been working with DSPs and transcoding since they were founded menaing they have lots of experiance.

In addition to transcoding Ditech Communications can improve voice quality at the same time so they have a solution that saves money, space and improves sound. They can also monitor voice quality in real time as opposed to some other companies that infer voice quality based on packet loss percentage against a look-up table. Many customers these days require MOS scores per call and SLAs to be met across each voice call.

In short as carrier networks peer more and more with one another you need solutions that enable transcoding of massive amounts of calls. Improving voice quality and being able to measure calls are a valuable plus. I suspect that helping carriers perfect VoIP peering will continue to be a rapidly growing market.

Look for this company to be making some big news -- some product rebranding and the 3.0 release of their unified messaging and conference bridge software. Here is another company doing well in the VoIP space. After weathering the storm they seem to be perfectly positioned to sell to what has become an eager VoIP market.

I am taking a red eye flight back home and look forward to getting to work. I met with a number of VoIP companies and they all seem to be doing well. I heard that Q1 was a bit slow in the enterprise VoIP space for some reason but there are a record number of deals on the table for many companies. In all I saw companies selling to OEMs, enterprise customers and service providers. All are doing well. Most are setting records.

I also saw a few companies in the IP-Contact Center space who told me that their sales are doing well. This bodes well for our IP Contact Center Summit event next month in Dallas. This event is collocated with Speech-World. There is a surprising amount of carrier interest in this show and the reason seems to be that service providers not only have contact centers that can benefit from speech, many are looking to speech as a differentiator. By offering speech based dialing as an enhanced service, a carrier can make nice incremental revenue. These sorts of services are needed in a crowded VoIP market.

I am on yet another whirlwind national tour. I have so much blog content to post but haven't had a chance to proof any of it. I'll do my best to catch up on Friday and this weekend. By the way, you should definitely check out TMCnet.com for a number of other blogs from gadgets to WiMAX. There is a box in the top right corner of many of our pages with a list.

I had a few nice comments about the TMC communications podcast site. We are really excited to be bringing our leading edge news and articles to yet another medium. The site will be found at www.tmcnet.com/podcast.

Here is a write-up about the event from LightReading but strangely they seem to have forgotten to mention I moderated the session. There is no mention of me. I wonder why.

AOL will bring Net Centrex powered VoIP to Germany. Utilizing the NetCentrex MyCall solution they will introduce new SIP based services.

An industry Icon, Howard Bubb is stepping down from Intel. Bubb was the head of Dialogic during the roaring days of computer telephony/CTI where the market grew at an astronomical rate. Those of you at industry events remember Bubb speaking at events hosted by the likes of Harry Newton... In fact there was even a Howard Bubb show at suc events.

Dialogic was a leader in DSP resource boards and although Natural Microsystems really discovered the VoIP gateway market before Dialogic, Bubb's company powered back to lead the space and soon thereafter sold to Intel.

Many in the industry complained that Dialogic which sold for under a billion dollars to Intel was undervalued. Steering clear of the finances I will just point out that Intel gained from the experience Dialogic brought to the company and was able to develop a host media processing strategy using Dialogic technology and intellectual property.

Doug Davis the VP and General Manager of the Infrastructure and Processor division will replace Bubb.

This is a historic day for the VoIP market. Many of the companies and components that made VoIP so popular today were founded by companies that were Dialogic partners in the nineties. VoIP is nothing more than a natural extension of what the industry had been building up to in the nineties. Coupling the best of the CTI market with experience gained by companies like Micom (later sold to Nortel) in the voice over frame relay space allowed us as an industry to have knowledge to successfully deploy VoIP on the grand scale we are now experiencing.

Howard, we will miss you. Please send us all an e-mail from your yacht :-).

Lingo Mexican VoIP

Lingo VoIP Phone Service Now Offers Universal Phone Numbers In Mexico Markets

Phone numbers in the following Mexico markets have been made available to new and existing Lingo VoIP customers:

• Mexico City

• Monterrey 

• Guadalajara 

With this announcement, Lingo consumer and small business subscribers can now select phone numbers from over 300 major U.S. markets, and international phone numbers from over 25 cities in 15 foreign countries -- more domestic and international coverage offered by the major U.S. VoIP providers today.

Now U.S. Lingo customers who have relatives or colleagues residing in Mexico can select a phone number for use with their VoIP service that is “local” to a particular city in Mexico. Then, their family and friends in those cities can use the phone number to place a call to the Lingo customer - at the price of an in-country, local call. 

With today’s announcement, Lingo “International Universal Numbers” are currently available for the following cities outside of the United States:

• Argentina – Buenos Aires

• Australia -- Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney

• Brazil – Curitiba, Florianoplis, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro 

• Canada – Toronto, Vancouver

• France -- Paris

• Guatemala -- Guatemala City

• Hong Kong

• Italy -- Milan, Rome

• Japan – Tokyo

• Mexico – Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara 

• Puerto Rico -- Caparra (San Juan) 

• South Korea – Seoul

• Spain -- Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Tenerife

• Taiwan -- Tapei

• U.K. – London

Lingo customers may sign up online for two phone numbers on their Lingo VoIP service. In addition to selecting an International Universal Number for Mexico and other countries, they also have the opportunity to transfer their existing phone number to their new Lingo VoIP service, or to select a “U.S. Universal Number” from over 220 area codes.