August 2005 Archives

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

Let's look at this closely. We will have over 2,000 service providers, over 2,000 resellers, 2,000 enterprise attendees and the remaining 1,500+ will be government, developers, analysts, the media, VCs and the industry. You will not find more attendees at another event.

Why? No one has TMC's reach. We not only run super-successful shows we run the most popular communications site in the world as ranked by every independent online media analysis company we know of.

More importantly we have a massive database of VoIP buyers we have been building with the industry's magazine, Internet Telephony and Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.

Sure anyone can run a show but filling the aisles with decision makers is what differentiates TMC events from all others. You get more value as an exhibitor at TMC events and conferees too tell me at every show that TMC events are the best they attend!

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

This one is debatable but I am partial to LA. I love it out there. I have a ton of relatives within a few miles of the convention center. They have some of the best restaurants in the world. The airport is a stone's throw away from the convention center and as an international hub you can get convenient flights form anywhere. As many exhibitors have told me, they are thrilled that the city of Los Angeles is not under constant construction like a few other metropolitan areas.

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

OK, I am kidding once again. Unless they slip by security I don’t want a single student in the conferences. We restrict attendance to purchasers only. People with buying power. Decision makers. We are not targeting students but I respect the opinion of others who are sure students are the kind of conferee that speakers and exhibitors are trying to reach.

US airplane superiority is something I grew up with. Yes, Europe had the Concorde and although the planes were never profitable -- costing European tax payers millions, the Concorde was the pinnacle of flight. I never flew on one but came close a while back. Alas, I never will fly in a Concorde now as they no longer fly.

Other than the Concorde, Boeing was always an airplane powerhouse and until recently they were the undisputed airplane king.

Now that the Concorde is gone, Europe has lost some bragging rights but in its place however may be a joint French/Japanese plane scheduled to be tested over Australia potentially by next month. JAXA or the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency crashed their last test plane 3 years ago but this test will not suffer the same fate according to Takaaki Akuto, a spokesman for JAXA.

A rocket will carry the new plane to an altitude of 12.4 miles and will fly at Mach 2 (for those of you that missed Top Gun, that is twice the speed of sound).

The cost for this run is about 10 million dollars or what NASA refers to as “petty cash for errands this week.” Of course this plane could crash like the last one did or it could eventually fly at Mach 5.5 which is the theoretical speed of a new Japanese engine. BTW it would take all of four hours to get from Tokyo to LA at Mach 2 according to this article. My back of the napkin calculations show at Mach 5 the flight takes an hour and a half.

So if this test plane makes it, the question I have to ask is why we aren’t publicizing that we have something better, faster and stronger than everyone else being developed in the US? Sure I understand the plight of the US airline industry but I assume that companies like Boeing and agencies like NASA should be working together or separately to make sure the next generation of planes are manufactured by US based companies.

I shudder to think that in five years we will see articles comparing Japan’s aerospace efforts to Boeing’s the same as we compare Toyota and GM and Ford today.

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

OK I am just kidding on this one. We will have good parties but if you are coming to show exclusively to drink in a dark dingy room, we won't have the best place for you to do this. Don’t get me wrong LA is filled with night life (yes a few dark and dingy bars) but we have decided that it is better to devote our resources primarily on education.

By focusing on education primarily we attract the most influential and important purchasing decision makers in the industry. We feel this is the most important differentiator of all.

This recent article I read stating that there is no increased risk of cancer due to cell phone use seems counter-intuitive but is good new for those of us living in an increasingly wireless world. WiFi phones will soon be common and WiMAX, EVDO and other technologies are going to keep massive amounts of wireless signals near us at all times.

Still the study only has 10 years worth of data so the long-term effects of exposure to strong radiation is unknown.

Regardless of the study’s findings, there is no scientist I am aware of who advises children spend large amounts of time on cellular phones as their brains are still developing.

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

There are an infinite number of companies it seems that are looking to help service providers differentiate themselves by providing products that can be sold to customer s to allow their services to be different from others. There are ATAs for example that are mini-PBXs that are perfect for the SMB market. These units may have built-in WiFi, voicemail and the ability to solve the 911 problem by having PSTN support.

Then there are WiFi phone makers that have amazing products that will help you differentiate your service at retail establishments such as Best Buy.

There is no other place in the world where service providers and equipment manufacturers will come together to help customers solve their problems. TMC is actively helping you sell more product by connecting you the service provider with the equipment manufacturer so that together you can differentiate yourself and blow away competitors.

I hope to see you at TMC’s Service Provider Solutions Day collocated with ITEXPO.

This is part of the ITEXPO: Best VoIP Show In The World series of Blog entries.

We started our conference guarantees last year (2004) at our South Florida (Miami) ITEXPO and thought it was a great way to show the confidence we have that our conferences are better than any other conference in the industry. We pioneered this concept in the VoIP conference space. No one has yet copied us because frankly I don’t believe they have the confidence in their conference programs. They know that they have many sales pitches at their events. The industry knows it and the conference attendees now know it.

TMC has been producing communications conferences since 1986 under the same management with the same people expertly educating audiences. As they say... There is no substitute for experience.

I read this morning in the Wall Street Journal that Teleo was picked up by MSN. I wrote about Teleo back on February 13 of this year. They have impressive technology and integrating it into Microsoft applications will likely make it that much better. In my article I talk about some of the unique features Teleo brings to the table such a toolbar that allows you to control telephony from a multitude of applications. So we aren’t just talking about bare bones VoIP but applications bundled with VoIP that make the experience of communicating that much more efficient.

Alas, I also wrote about a crash of the Teleo system and I am sure with Microsoft’s help, they will have more resources to fix these issues.

The coming VoIP wars are all the rage. Who is going to win is the question I keep hearing about. Skype and Vonage are current winners and the cable companies aren’t far behind but Google, MSN, Yahoo! and AOL are really going to get this market to the next level and quickly.

I still have one concern and that is how smaller service providers will compete in this market. Obviously providing plain vanilla VoIP is not going to cut it anymore. You need to differentiate yourselves and stay ahead of the new entrants that want to give away everything for free and sell ads around the experience.

If you are a smaller VoIP service provider and aren’t dealing with these issues your days may be numbered. Start thinking about niches you can fill and essential services customers want to pay for. The stickier the services, the better.

Here is a link from the Washington Post (registration required) on all the places you can donate. I heard the president of the American Red Cross say today that they could really use the money to help victims.

Lately I have seen analyst reports touting the fact that VoIP hype has far surpassed consumer adoption rates and interest. Here are some excerpts from a recent InformationWeek article titled VoIP Promises Are Overhyped.

In "VoIP Liberates Voice from the Phone," Forester’s Maribel Lopez notes that, despite its promise and a 200% increase in adoption last year, VoIP is overhyped. Even when they are aware that VoIP even exists, Lopez found that fully 70% of consumers surveyed have no interest in switching to a VoIP service. Providers still haven't made a compelling case for their services.

"Offerings focus on price, not compelling applications," Lopez writes. "Today, providers lead with cheap unlimited calling packages that mirror circuit-switch offerings. Consumers aren’t going to switch providers just to get free 'repeat dialing' and 'click to call.' At this point, the only reason for consumers to switch would be to save $15 to $25 off their monthly bill."

Lopez has some good points in the article and to her credit she realizes that our industry will be in deep trouble if we continue to focus on price, price, price. Studies have show that a massive focus on price alone without the realization that it is the services and ancillary benefits of VoIP that are more important will wreck this market.

Let’s remember that Skype, Google and other services allow free phone to phone calling so in the future focusing on price will be difficult to do as there will be a slew of free services that are widespread and well known.

In this sort of market it is the services that will differentiate one service from another. Just in Time Communications or technologies that make us more productive and efficient are some of the areas we should be focusing on as an industry. The find me/follow me functions of today’s Internet telephony services are far superior that that of traditional telephony but yet most consumers aren’t even aware of this important fact.

The do not disturb function of the latest IP telephony services have allowed me countless hours of sleep. Anyone with newborn babies can appreciate the value of this precious commodity.
Yet service providers are all about price today. They don’t focus on features, convenience and other attributes that VoIP calls possess and the PSTN does not.

Worse yet, studies have shown that if you focus too heavily on price, consumers will think your service is poor. In a world where VoIP E911 is in the news almost daily you have to ask yourself if your customers would rather have their ambulance made by Honda or Yugo. I don’t want my VoIP service provider to be so cheap that I have to be concerned that 911 calls won’t go through.

If you price too inexpensively, this is exactly the perception your service provider business will give off.
The whole issue of pricing is so important to me that I decided to launch a Consumer VoIP Marketing Summit at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo this October 24-27, 2005 in Los Angeles. The point of this summit is to ensure that carriers will learn from the available research in the market on how to price and position and market their services most appropriately.

Some industry pundits write repeatedly about how telephony should be free and they even launch their own free services. This may be good for consumers in the short run but is short-sighted. As an industry we need to find ways to make sure that numerous service providers can make it while finding ways to differentiate their services from each other. I fear if we continue to focus exclusively on VoIP pricing, we will wake up one day and find no one will pay for any services, no matter how valuable. It is time to change industry momentum and it is time to start educating consumers about the true value of services that make them more productive and efficient and most importantly make their lives easier.

Om has a great post this morning on how p2p is driving broadband adoption and vice-versa. I am very excited about this post because it supports a premise that I have written about before and that is that VoIP is symbiotic and not parasitic.

Well VoIP is not necessarily p2p-based so perhaps my argument is a bit of a stretch but it certainly applies to Skype. Skype can be considered a killer application for broadband (to borrow from Om’s headline which I wholeheartedly agree with). Blocking Skype would logically lead to decreased levels of broadband adoption.

Here are some salient concepts from the article:

• The service providers have a little or no reason to block P2P traffic in the near term, because it drives growth. And since most service providers are in growth mode, well, you know…. ehm!
  
• In the long term, however P2P traffic if not managed properly is going to become a big problem.
  
• The explosion in P2P traffic is going to have an impact on the people who don’t use the P2P services as well.
  
• Due to P2P’s symmetrical nature on average 80% of upstream capacity is consumed by P2P

So p2p applications in general are good for broadband service providers (for now anyway). If broadband service providers want to make more money they should consider giving us faster pipes and charging us for them. At least the one certainty going forward is that there will be a greater need for bandwidth and people will pay for faster connections.

It goes without saying that the world feels terrible for the people in Katrina’s path. I can not imagine a more horrific experience than being in winds that are over 100 miles per hour and even if you escape the hurricane itself by leaving town, the fear of not knowing whether your belongings are in tact when you return has got to be terrible. I have lived through a few hurricanes myself but after seeing the footage this morning, what we’ve experienced in Connecticut seems mild in comparison.

As I browsed the web this morning I noticed some commentary on Cybertelecom.org regarding New Orleans that discussed what might happen if there is significant telecom damage as a result of the hurricane. The theory is that if the copper was destroyed, this could turn out to be a good thing for the residents in BellSouth territory stricken by this calamity.

You see BellSouth could end up rewiring the city with fiber instead of copper. New Orleans in turn could become the most wired city in America.

It is no secret that the US falls farther behind other countries in broadband adoption every month. US broadband choices are slower and more expensive than many other countries in a world – countries we don’t consider our technological equals by any means. We live in a time where broadband connectivity is crucial. Many people find our situation unacceptable, and for good reason. In a world with such fierce global competition, broadband access at high speeds and low prices is more important than new roadways in my opinion. Living in a digital age means we need to focus more on the digital thoroughfares. We need real “information super-highways.”

Although the government and FCC tells us they want faster broadband adoption and that broadband adoption is crucial for the future of the country, in the last few months alone a death blow has been dealt to hundreds if not thousands of ISPs due to decisions like Brand X.

So it seems that New Orleans could become a broadband leader due to not the government, not the FCC, not the benevolence of the RBOC but an act of God. Maybe there is something to that intelligent design talk after all.

If you live the sedentary life of a blogger you should take note of a recent article in USA Today discussing the links between insulin levels, diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Basically a high fat diet and increased fat in the system increase your chances of getting Alzheimer’s. Diet and exercise seem crucial in keeping the disease at bay.

I advocate an hour for exercise each day where bloggers and blogees (did I really just say that?) take a break and hit a treadmill or some weights.

Last Time I saw Andy Abramson he showed me how he can blog from a cell phone so we expect him at least to keep blogging during the blackout period. Perhaps Andy can share his secrets with the rest of the blogging community.

Here is an excerpt:

Cole's research found that mice fed a fatty lab chow developed insulin resistance. That condition, in turn, fueled a problem thought to be central to Alzheimer's: a build-up of a poisonous short protein called beta amyloid.

Beta amyloid clumps together, damaging brain cells and connections. It is thought to play a central role in memory loss and other symptoms of the disease. Cole published his findings in December in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The findings highlight the risks of excess weight, but they also suggest novel ways to deal with Alzheimer's, which typically strikes after age 60 and can take eight years or longer to ravage the brain.

The entire VoIP E911 debacle is amazing to me. In this article about the FCC VoIP E911 extension you can learn the details of what is happening with the FCC and the cut-off date that was extended 30 days. The article gives a good history of what is happening in the market.

Here is a salient portion of the article that:

"During this additional period of time, the Bureau expects that all interconnected VoIP providers that qualify for this extension will continue to use all means available to them to obtain affirmative acknowledgements from all of their subscribers," the notice said.

I also wrote about the FCC E911 Extension but from the viewpoint that the VoIP industry is not being treated fairly. I get the feeling we are second class citizens in the eyes of the FCC. In reality VoIP is providing what the FCC has not been able to effectively provide over the years –true telephony competition.

One would think the FCC would spend more time promoting the technology and educating consumers on how for the first time ever, they have real competition. For the first time in history a venture backed company can take on a giant like AT&T and actually win!

Perhaps I am just too emotional because I am in the trees but even the FCC commissioners must see Vonage ads… Right? They must get it. All I ask is for a bit more recognition of what our industry is doing to make real competition in telephone service a reality.