March 2006 Archives

Any business can use a shot in the arm. While you're at it why not put some steroids in that shot? Hey if they can do it in professional sports, why not try it in your company? Of course I am kidding. Well kind of. I think I have found a way to help your small company get big quick. While we aren't talking about giving you more office space I can safely say any small business can quickly appear bigger if you just keep reading.

The largest pain in small business communications is trying to figure out how to be productive and efficient without spending a fortune. Enter RingCentral a company that hosts communications for SMBs generally under 10 people in size. I am told they have over 24,000 paid subscribers which is a healthy amount of hosted customers.

The company's hosted voice service handles incoming calls, voicemail and fax seamlessly. Instead of having cell phones, home phones and office phones you can keep all your calls on a single service and allow the calls to follow you anywhere. More importantly you can make sure that all calls are greeted with a unified corporate greeting and your users can have a single voicemail store.

Music on hold is included in the service as well and you can interject messages into the music if you choose. You can also upload a personalized on-hold greeting or you can have an automated voice convert your text into speech.

I admire the company's positioning as they aren't based on VoIP. The company says they give you dial tone independence and you aren't required to have a broadband connection. In this day and age everyone wants to be a VoIP company. RingCentral explains they aren't VoIP-based in a way that makes it sound more flexible. The service is billed as a second line solution with very sophisticated inbound call handling features. It does allow outbound calling as well but this isn't a Vonage competitor but more of a mini ACD service for the SMB.

Does it matter that they aren't a VoIP-based service today? Absolutely not. They support any phone including VoIP phones and that is enough for now. They will support direct VoIP clients down the line but you shouldn't stop looking at this solution because they aren't IP telephony based. The irony is that until recently being VoIP-based scared some customers away. Now of course the tide has turned 100%.

What I really like about the product is the sophisticated calling rules allowing you to route calls at different hours, based on day of the week and whether the caller is in your address book or not. You can use the telephone keys to transfer calls in your company or use an application to do this.

Perhaps my favorite feature is the black hole which is a place you send people you don't want to speak with.

The latest release of the service is 3.0 and includes more functionality in how you deal with callers based on their phone numbers or even range of phone nunmbers.

The system scales to as many people as needed; at least theoretically. 200 is the most customers from one company on the system at the moment.

The service starts at $9.99/month and it is obvious that a hosted system such as this projects a much more professional image than a bunch of people using cell phones, home phones and office phones. At a certain point every company wants to look bigger than it is and can use all the help it can get. If you're looking to put on lean business muscle, do what the pros do, use the proper supplements.

This morning on CNBC there was a market researcher from ACNielsen explaining that graphical banner ads don't work. Joe Kernan was interviewing the researcher and was almost ranting about how banner ads don't work. He was agreeing 100%. He says he never looks at them. The upshot of the interview was that banner ads stink and are a waste of money.

I just went to NBC's site and saw lots of banner ads from companies such as LoanWeb, Orange, Chevrolet, and AT&T. If I had all day I am sure I could have found dozens more advertisers on this site.

I just wonder if Joe Kernan and this market researcher know more than the people spending money buying banners on NBC.com.

Probably more likely is that Kernan and ACNielson have bias and are hoping the Internet won't take away their livelihood -- TV advertising revenue.

The one thing this survey didn't mention at all is that web advertising is measurable down to the second and results can be proven through IP addresses, cookies and other methods to ensure you are getting the results and even the audience you seek.

With TV you spend oodles of money and hope that your target audience doesn't Tivo your message away.

CNBC, Squawk Box and Joe Kernan lost a great deal of my respect today because of what I see as a biased segment. I am still an avid fan of Kernan and watch Squawk Box religiously.

And as someone who speaks for a living I often say things that upon further reflection I don't agree with. So if this is the case, Sorry Joe.

But let's realize that Internet advertising is outpacing all other media today because of its unmatched levels of measurability. One day, TV advertising will merge with web advertising to allow the same benefits for TV ads but for now TV suffers from its lack of accountability and relevance in a Tivo-world.

The following quote was made by Dr. Christian Stredicke at the second day of the Voice Peering Forum Spring 2006 in Miami.

This is the year where a purchasing manager has to explain why they are buying TDM equipment.

Prior to this time you had to explain why you were purchasing VoIP equipment.

I was quoted today in the cover story of Investor's Business Daily or IBD. The title of the story is Supreme Court's eBay Patent Right Case Has Both Sides Saying Innovation At Risk. Here is an excerpt containing my quote:

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"The reform has to happen at a more fundamental level," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "Congress has to go back and reform the laws. The process is broken. It needs to be fixed."

The trick is to preserve entrepreneurial incentives while routing out "bad" patents. Some 40% to 50% of current patents are worthless, Dulaney says.

He and others want to see the patent process opened up for review, as in Europe and elsewhere. Each patent application would get outside input, helping ensure that it covers something truly innovative.

"The problem is, we see fairly obvious patents," said Rich Tehrani, president of the Technology Market Corp., a publishing house. Peer review would help solve that problem, he says.

Others would like to see a dedicated patent court system - an idea that's been tried in Japan. That would let more informed judges rule on cases without stripping away any patent protections, says Bill Merritt, CEO of InterDigital, (IDCC) which develops wireless technologies. "The patent system itself is very good," he said. "Let's just fix how we implement it and put more resources into it."

Some reformers want to go further by prohibiting companies that don't sell a product from making a patent claim in that area. The idea is to stamp out so-called patent trolls.
But everyone has a right to license their patents, Belt says.

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The patent issue is not going away any time soon and lawyers studying technology and patents will continue to do very well. Expect many more high profile cases.

When I arrived at the show today I met with Shrihari Pandit the person who invented the concept of the Voice Peering Fabric (VPF) and we spoke for a great while about all the things going on with the VPF and all the new members who have joined. Perhaps most important is AT&T. Incidentally I blogged about the rumors of AT&T joining the VPF a few days back.

I went to Excel's booth first -- whoops -- the new name is Cantata and when I got there someone was literally going off on a competitive board vendor based in Israel. He continued to explain how technicians from the company are supposed to call but never do. He apparently supplies the hospitality industry with equipment. He had no idea who I was but emphatically told me repeatedly not to purchase boards from this company. Like I have said before -- I seem to be the industry complaint magnet. Even when people don't know who I am, I hear about their telecom vendor problems.

This person was looking to replace his current equipment with Brooktrout products.

On a separate note, Shrihari told me to check out Carrius and when I got to the booth I found that their Compleat 200 device has been reworked to allow Class 5 switches such as a 5ESS to work with the VPF. The way it works is when a number is a dialed on a POTS phone the digits generate numerous ENUM queries to various databases. The first positive response that is received -- directs the call over the appropriate VoIP network. If there is no match the call routes over the PSTN.

The company figures this can save a service provider about $1/month/subscriber or over a million dollars in a year for 100,000 subscribers.

I am still working on my presentation for tomorrow morning and am very excited to be speaking here. I just got back from dinner a and it is a real pleasure to be able to eat outside on a sidewalk. The last few trips I have been on to Atlanta and San Diego were actually pretty cold -- almost as cold as Connecticut. Thankfully Miami does not disappoint. Oh and by the way I ate at Yuca and highly recommend it -- but it is pricey. You definitely want to try the yucca fries, empanadas and the langostino special if it is available.

Feel free to check out TMCnet's snapshot pages such Google, Skype, Nortel, etc. The purpose of these pages is to allow easy bookmarking of pages that can help you keep tabs of important companies and topics/issues.

We have recently automated at least some of our blogs to have keywords automatically link to the snapshot pages. This post serves as an FYI to my readers as well as a test of the system. Here are some more... Lucent, Avaya, IBM, NCTA, CeBIT, BellSouth.

I just landed in Miami and am pretty excited to be at the Voice Peering Forum later today. I met with Andy Voss of Sansay already and hope to catch up with more colleagues and friends later today.

I am still working on my presentation for the keynote tomorrow. Hopefully the crowd won't stay out too late and will be sufficiently caffeinated for my presentation. If not I will just have to blow them away with content and enthusiasm

I am currently eating lunch/working on Miami Beach (where the hotel's only open restaurant is located) and it will be very very difficult for me to go inside soon. Hopefully Shrihari who runs the show will understand if I am a bit late

The following is a portion of my April 2006 Internet Telephony Magazine Publisher's Outlook:

I have been on a trade show tour recently and I can't tell you how excited I am to have chosen the VoIP industry as my home. There are more new products and innovations being announced daily and, everywhere you look, there is boundless optimism. More importantly, we're seeing real sales and profit from not only the vendors to the VoIP market, but the customers themselves.

I am seeing a revival in the contact center industry as well and companies like Mitel and Inter-Tel are announcing new contact center initiatives. These companies weren't traditionally entrenched call center players, but they are increasingly getting into the space.

In addition, IMS is taking off. I recently attended an IMS Forum meeting and it is exciting to see the level of optimism that exists in this space. Some of the companies to watch for in IMS are Sonus, Nokia, and Nortel, who are all jockeying for leadership position.

At the last Internet Telephony show I heard a bunch of complaining about Continuous Computing. Complaints about service levels, responsiveness, etc. In addition I overheard a conversation of an irate Continuous Computing partner.

I am sure every company has a customer or two that that feels this way about them from time to time. In my position I get to hear many customer complaints… Perhaps too many. I usually disregard the first one or two but when get many in a row that is a sure sign of potential problems.

Until recently I never heard anything bad or good about the company and they have an A+ list of investors behind them.

That is why I was surprised when I was faced with similar comments at other industry events – I have been on the road for many weeks now -- but no one wanted to go on record. Apparently there is some abrasiveness in the company’s ranks but insiders felt uncomfortable with me revealing the details.

I have calls into Brian Wood the company’s VP of Marketing who I know. As soon as I can connect with Continuous Computing I will let you know the details of my conversation.

Consider this story developing.

While it’s been decades since my last geometry class here is the first proof I have written since high school. After rereading this a few times it is obviously not a proof but still reminds me enough of one for me to post it. Hope you enjoy it.

1) Phone companies don’t support net neutrality
2) The argument goes, why should they have to subsidize competitors if they own the pipes?
3) The nature of the Internet will be changed worldwide as phone companies convince the US government that net neutrality is bad
4) They argue they cannot afford to build out their networks if companies like Google can ride for free and make money
5) Although they promise not to interfere with the Internet and imply they will only add a high-speed lane they charge for, most experts expect them to enforce their monopoly positions by extracting royalties from companies they compete with
6) Industry experts argue net neutrality is fair
6A) Phone companies are about making money for shareholders and not about being fair (which they are legally bound to do)
7) Recently phone companies have started to complain that cable companies will not run their ads
8) Cable companies argue that they shouldn’t run ads from their competitors
9) AT&T, filed a complaint yesterday with the FCC claiming that cable companies are trying to thwart competition.
10) The phone companies argue the cable companies aren’t fair
10A) #6A applies to cable companies as well
11) While broadband policy in the US centers around who has the best lobbyists and lawyers, other countries continue to surpass the US in broadband access because they have real broadband competition or because those countries have decided that real broadband access is a priority
12) Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free from Iliad that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet.
12A) For now France lags behind the US in broadband penetration
13) Iliad has created intense competition in France, and that has resulted in faster broadband speeds. Free offers download speeds of up to 24 megabits per second. In the U.S., the average broadband connection offered by telephone and cable companies is about 1.5 megabits per second, although a few companies offer speeds comparable with Free's or even faster.
14) Free spends $49.08 in marketing for each new customer it adds, compared with France Telecom's $82.32, according to market research firm Secodip
15) Some 40% of France's overall market for traditional fixed-line phone calls will switch to calling using VoIP this year from about 15% in 2005, according to France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard.
16) French regulators are hoping to increase the number of broadband connections in France, which currently trails many other countries. In June, 12.8% of the French were broadband subscribers, compared with 14.5% in the U.S. and 25.5% in Korea
17) With consumer triple-play pricing so low in France while the price of everything else in France is so expensive, one wonders how long it may take France to surpass the US in broadband penetration
18) France seems to have figured out how to keep the CLEC market working
18A) US policy makers have decided the CLEC experiment will never work again
19) The CLEC model is what makes broadband and triple-play serves so affordable in France
20) An upstart triple-play provider has shaken up the market the way Southwest Airlines has done in the airline business
21) The US will never be able to compete effectively without a market that ensures competition from a healthy field of new broadband upstarts

The following is a portion of my April 2006 Internet Telephony Magazine Publisher's Outlook:

I think this year will see serious wireless disruption. In my life, I have witnessed many a technology look to replace Ethernet only to find out that Ethernet was an evolving standard that kept changing with the times.

So, instead of replacing Ethernet, we just kept upgrading it. No matter what new technology came onto the scene, it never gained traction.

History repeats itself and, if you picture WiFi as the wireless equivalent of Ethernet, then you can figure the technology will keep evolving as well to fight off the replacement technologies.

In this case, I think WiMAX may be the technology that gets hurt by WiFi. Technology already exists to extend the reach of WiFi, but I anticipate this will be the year where we see a technology emerge that extends the range of WiFi in such ways that WiMAX loses its edge in many applications. Mesh networking may be this technology, but I imagine that WiFi's range can be extended to a few miles without too much effort, and mesh networks, coupled with long-range WiFi might eliminate the need for WiMAX in areas where it is feasible to pepper your access points.

I am about to leave for most of the day for a one-day trip to see some exciting VoIP and related companies. I am not sure if I will be blogging as I will be in the car for much of the day. If I get a chance I will for sure. I am glad to see the weather picking up. It was about 45 degrees when I got to work today.

Here are some news items of interest I noticed and wanted top pass along:

BroadSoft Announces IMS-ready Media Resource Function Server
Amdocs Brings CRM to Kazakh KaR-Tel Contact Center
Nortel To Host Bharti Contact Center" href="http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/03/28/1509441.htm">Nortel To Host Bharti Contact Center
Centillium Marries Optical Tech, VoIP
BroadSoft Announces IMS-ready Media Resource Function Server

The following is a portion of my April 2006 Internet Telephony Magazine Publisher's Outlook:

Most business magazines will tell you the phone companies will have a tough time unseating the cable companies when it comes to TV transmission. Here is why every one of those magazines and newspapers is wrong: HDTV selection stinks today. Apparently, I spent a fortune for a 60" HDTV so I could watch but a handful of channels on it.

Most of what I watch is not HDTV and I either can have a black square around what I view or choose to stretch the picture to fill the whole screen. Every actor gains 20 pounds if I use the latter approach, and I am sick and tired of paying more for a TV that, most of the time, makes my TV viewing experience worse.

The phone companies should supply 50 HD channels, or even more. If they did that, I would switch to IPTV tomorrow and never look back. I understand fully that, without HD content, this isn't possible, but Hollywood and content providers need to realize that HDTV will be the next big thing for the industry. They need to start putting out the programming. There certainly is an audience for it. The question is, how much more will people pay for more HDTV programming. I would say $20–$25 per month - about $1 per HD channel per month - is painless if you get another 20–30 HD channels. Hopefully, this can be a profitable idea for the phone companies.

Everywhere I look there is more VoIP peering news. Take a look at this New Telephony story on peering. Well it is a story about my peering panel last week at Comptel but it is a good story and news nonetheless

Furthermore I just learned that XConnect is doing amazingly well with their peering network. Almost 200 ITSPs are connected to their network and they've partnered with a consortium (mentioned in above article) that includes all the cable operators in the Netherlands, including Liberty Global's UPC Netherlands.

There will be a time soon where the service providers that aren’t peering in one or more peering communities will be the exception.

Just over a year ago I got fed up with the term parasitic being used to describe VoIP vendors. Countless people I knew actually went out and got broadband connections so they could use Skype. I understood fully well that VoIP providers are not parasites as many called them but instead added a tremendous amount of value.

I was inspired to write VoIP: Not Parasitic.

I argued that broadband and VoIP providers are symbiotic meaning both services benefit from one another.

Today I read an article on Techdirt that was pointed out by Ted Wallingford. The argument goes, why is Verizon paying CBS to carry their stations via IPTV and thinking of charging companies like Vonage? For many people, Vonage was the reason they purchased broadband access in the first place. Now Vonage and others are being threatened by the very service providers who benefited from their service in the past!