VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

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Act Teleconferencing Problems

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ITEXPO Early Bird Ends Monday!

Why is this woman smiling?? She just saved $1,000 on a conference registration for Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. You would smile too and in fact you should.

Come to the best-attended VoIP show in the world and while you’re at it save your company or yourself enough money to buy iPOD Nanos for the whole family.

See you next month!

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Belkin Exits VoIP

Sources inside Belkin recently told a fellow TMC team member that Belkin is exiting the VoIP business soon. Too bad. They seemed to have lots of momentum the last time I spoke with them.

More specifically it is the "service" side of VoIP they are exiting from. I wonder why.

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The UN Of VoIP

Once again the international community is pouring into ITEXPO. We are not only getting Tier one carriers and Fortune 1,000 companies at a rapid clip we are seeing a massive amount of international companies registering. We do expect to easily hit 7,500 attendees onsite.

I am absolutely amazed at how much activity there is in our database. I have never-ever seen so many people signing up for ITEXPO… Not even during the 2000 timeframe.

People always ask what sort of attendance breakdown we will have.

Expect about 2,000 service providers – tier 1,2,3. These are cable companies, ILECS, wireless providers, WiMAX providers, etc.

Expect 2,000 enterprise/government customers. Many of the Fortune class companies will be there along with SMBs.

Expect 2,000 resellers. These are interconnects and international resellers looking to make money selling VoIP products and services.

Expect 1,500 developers/industry/venture capitalists/financial people.

On top of this we will have easily over 100 analysts and press people at the show. This will certainly be a record for ITEXPO. We have many TV stations and major media outlets telling us they will come. These media vehicles have never to been to other industry events as far as I know. I am excited because it signals that ITEXPO has hit mainstream. This is very exciting.

I wished back in the summer of 2003 that the market would come back. I knew it would some day but I always thought it would take longer. In the summer of 2003 I envisioned having to wait till 2008 to see serious growth once again. What I am seeing now is beyond my wildest expectations. It is truly amazing. If the concept of voice communities begins to grow it will turbocharge an already amazing market.

But when you consider the financial markets and business community basically ignored VoIP from 2001 to 2003 while the technology was perfected… You can understand the pent up demand to get back into the space. One VC told me he swore off VoIP for a few years but was an idiot for doing so… He is now back in full swing looking at the various opportunities in the market.

To paraphrase Cher -- and I believe I speak for the VoIP industry when quote – “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor… Rich is better.”

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Building Voice Communities

The concept of voice communities is getting more traction. I am sure we will see these pop up on popular websites. If you haven’t read my past comments on the matter, voice communities are going to be an integral part of the web in the future. It is just that simple. Just like we have message boards where we can type to one another we will have voice message boards and voice conversations. Sometimes there will be heated debates and other times we will reach consensus.

The point is VoIP is going to bring communities closer by allowing people with like-minded interests to communicate more effectively. Andrew Sviridenko the Chairman of Spirit DSP has a similar vision and mentioned to me that in a restaurant you have a lot of people but they are broken into groups of 2-5 people having conversations. The same will happen online. Spirit DSP is perfectly positioned in this space by the way as they make enabling software to allow these communities to more effectively converse.

If I am half right, VoIP will enjoy a surge in interest and growth as all websites of substance scramble to voice enable themselves. I can’t fathom how much more excitement we can have in this market as VoIP is surging already.

The next phase of this transition to voice will be speech recognition that allows search engines to catalogue all of the conversations that take place on the various sites. Podcasting will come into play as well. Imagine being able to subscribe to all podcasts that mention keywords you want to track. If there is a conversation on a website about how Coke is much better than Pepsi, there are a slew of soft drink executives that will want to hear what is being said about their companies.

The catalyst for all of this of course is the eBay acquisition of Skype. Once we see the exiting things these companies do together, others will no doubt follow.

Amazingly, I am the only person I know who thinks the eBay/Skype deal was smart. Others are telling me that eBay has money to burn and isn’t sure of what it’s doing. I have probably spoken with 20 people on this topic so I am really amazed that no one agrees with me.

If you believe that voice communities will one day exist then you can imagine that eBay and Skype together are the right players to allow this web transformation to take place. eBay has a vibrant community and also owns part of craigslist, another vibrant community. They “get it.”

Beyond the above companies, the most obvious community sites that should take advantage of this trend are sports sites because sports brings out the passion in people.

I guarantee that if FIFA, the World Cup organization was to have voice debates on topics like “is Brazil the team that will win the cup this year?,” people will listen and try to get in on the conversation. Will people pay for the privilege? Possibly but I see voice communities as being ad sponsored on sites that don’t already have transact ecommerce.

You see ecommerce sites have two ways to generate revenue from voice communities. The will allow sellers to pay a fee for allowing calls to be placed to them. In addition, some items naturally lend themselves to conferencing and sellers will pay to allow these conferences to happen. Auto sales are a prime example – especially used autos. You will want to have a conversation with multiple parties before buying a used car. Especially a classic car. Potential buyers will want to know if the car has been in any damage and if so, exactly what was the cause of the damage. Were you in a severe accident they may query? Other potential buyers will want to listen in to size up the competition.

It will be a great world as we can now use speech, the most natural interface to communicate online. Sure text is great but speech is a more natural interface and many people prefer to speak instead of typing. I believe this is especially true in e-commerce. Most people can tell if the other person on a phone call is shady. This is not so easy to do with e-mail.

The only problem with my analysis is that there are zero voice communities today. Regardless, I believe in them so much that we will be discussing them at future Internet Telephony Conference & Expos – the show next month in Los Angeles and we will have a full day of education on the topic at the next ITEXPO in Fort Lauderdale.

I am looking forward to a future ladened with voice communities of interest – let’s connect online in one of them.

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Hotel Bandwidth Rant

All I can say to Andy is Amen.

PS: My most recent hotel experience had internet access that didn’t work at all. Thankfully I don’t need to complain as Andy did it for me.

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Apprentice With Martha

I had a chance to see a little Donald and Martha Apprentice last night and the comparisons were amazing. Donald’s boardroom is an intimidating place while Martha’s seems a lot more cozy and relaxed. Not only the décor put me at ease but Martha’s demeanor was very pleasant.

My wife wondered if she isnt being especially nice so as to mellow her image. Many people call her the B word (one day I imagine my kids will read my blog). I didn’t get to see Martha fire anyone but hopefully a rerun this weekend will allow me to see the full episode. No TiVo in the Tehrani household yet.

I get the feeling if you are let go from Martha’s show, you will get a warm cookie as a parting gift with a glass of milk. She will let you down more easy than Donald. I am looking forward to seeing both episodes and comparing the different styles. The Martha/Donald combo really spiced things up and was a pretty smart move.

In other related news, I heard that Donald’s wife is Melania is pregnant. I hope I spelled her name right.

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