Recently in Internet Category

There are a bunch of debates raging over the telecommunications infrastructure. 

Congress has looked at Open Access bills for cellular networks. By this we mean that a consumer can use any available handset or device on any cell network. This is kind of the Carterphone concept for cellular.

The 700 MHz auction had open access provisions built right in, so VZW's 4G/LTE network will need to incorporate Open Access.

Spectrum is a finite resource. TV, radio, public safety and the cell companies all share access to various licensed spectrums. Other companies, like oil companies to communicate with rigs and ships, have purchased spectrum licenses. There is also the unlicensed bands like 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 3650 MHz that are shared by any and all. We are seeing in the 2.4 GHz band that too much usage causes crowding and in some cases makes the spectrum useless. (Your little blue Linksys wireless AP's use 2.4 GHz, as does quite a few cordless phones and other consumer products). As more and more products and consumers go cordless and wireless, this resource will be used up. It must be allocated better. 

(An aside: Open Access has one advantage: less handsets in the landfill.)

Net Neutrality is based on network management. Both cable and DSL have bottleneck issues in your community. To manage those issues, the service provider uses tools, hardware and software, to prioritize traffic. This same set of tools can be used to degrade Vonage while prioritizing the ISP's VoIP service offering. These same tools can be used for DPI (deep packet inspection) to read every unencrypted packet that passes through the box. This same tool can be used to police the network (or Internet) of child porn, illegal downloads, and the like. Do we really want that kind of Big Brother action? 

At the heart of the NN debate is the fact that a few ISP's have degraded VoIP packets and legitimate P2P (peer-to-peer file-sharing) traffic. As networks go all IP, there needs to be a set of guidelines for peering traffic and network management. I don't think the FCC or Congress should be the ones making these rules. Any rules they come up with will be a compromise that will ultimately solve nothing, but create new problems.

The final debate in DC is about Fair Competitive Access to the telco infrastructure. After court rulings and Forbearance petitions in 2004-06, CLEC's and ISP's have been losing ground in the ability to get access to telco network elements to provide service to customers at a fair and competitive price. In so many cases, the CLEC "wholesale" rate is higher than retail. Make sense? Docket 05-25 at the FCC is the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Special Access Rates. 

While they may seem similar in that they are all about access to the network, they all are about different aspects of the network access. In the end, Open Access Rules and Net Neutrality guideleines will define how we use the networks for innovation, collaboration and communication.

I'm in Atlanta speaking at the Microcorp One-on-One event about Trends in 2010. The three trends that I see for agents are the following: Applications, Quality of Service (QOS), and Mobile Broadband (MBB). But they are kind of inter-dependent. Ubiquious broadband leads to innovative uses and applications. Applications like on smartphones lead to a greater need for mobile broadband networks.

Mobile Broadband is growing. Smartphones are replacing cellular handsets. Social networks are moving to mobile devices so people can Facebook and Tweet. RIM's Blackberry brought us mobile email, but it is a standard on many phones now. Netbooks and data cards are presenting the US cellular companies with some fits. They like the additional revenue, but have to keep dropping billions on the network backhaul and capacity upgrades. (And another $45B+ on the upgrade to LTE/4G).

All this means that there are new uses for the mobile broadband, like the Kindle. Sprint's Wispernet allows Amazon to instantly download books, magazines, newspapers and blogs to Kindle devices. Machine-to-machine devices can utilize the cellular data network to provide connectivity for ATM machines, security cameras, and a host of other devices that need to communicate with a NOC or remote server.

All of this is a cycle of applications driving network usage. Ubiquious broadband driving more apps. It's one reason that the FCC needs to maintain open network and Net Neutrality guidelines in place.

Applications - like email, databases, office suites, CRM - are creating a demand for managed services, such as an outsourced IT department. In addition, businesses are looking at the Cloud - moving applications to a data center for redundancy, security, and availability - as a way to save money and stop worrying about the IT department. With applications being delivered in the Cloud or by way of SAAS or even Virtualization, Agents have a chance to offer more than just Internet Access or WAN circuits, like private line. Agents can sell Layer 2 to Layer 7 - pipe to apps. It's a way to get deeper into accounts. It's a way to offer a complete solution. It's a way to deliver on the label of Trusted Advisor.

Applications are driving sales. Voice and email are just the primary apps. Business critical data is also driving mobile broadband. Ubiquious broadband is allowing for innovative ways of accessing data. The problem becomes reliable access to the data. That's where Quality of Service comes in. QOS on the WAN is what is needed to access data reliably and quickly. The MPLS trigger is the Class of Service reliability and prioritization of data over the network. This is paramount for businesses running a truly converged network with video, database, VoIP, email and Internet riding the same pipes. WAN Optimization is selling due to the cost containment and the performance enhancement. Big bang for the buck.

So the agents can sell mobile broadband, applications via Virtualization or SAAS, and add QOS to the WAN to provide reliable access to these business critical data.

My buddy, Derek Thompson, just started at Fishnet Security. Besides peddling Bluecoat and SonicWall Managed Services, he is also selling WAN Optimization. While I have heard of this, I had no idea what it was or how it worked. So Derek invited me to sit down with Doug Kruger of Riverbed. Doug explained it simply enough.

One reason companies consider WAN optimization is if the company needs more bandwidth. It may not need more bandwidth, it may just need to better utilize the Internet Access it already has.

Multi-location companies sometimes have servers at each branch instead of consolidating the servers in one data center. This saves money on maintenance and storage, but in some cases may mean a bigger pipe to access the servers in real-time from the data center.

By consolidating servers into one location can save on manpower, maintenance, and data storage/back-up costs. This is also the sales trigger for Virtualization and Cloud Computing. Save on hardware, labor and storage.

TCP and latency are other reasons that companies buy bigger pipe, when perhaps they could just optimize the current WAN connections (or change to MPLS pipes instead of DIA or dedicated Internet access circuits at each location). TCP is not the most efficient protocol, but it works, just sometimes creating excess packet traffic across the WAN.  Latency for real-time applications is also a real problem across the Internet. Lastly, many applications, including Microsoft Office, create excess traffic on the WAN when any document is being opened. 

One of the ways that companies like Riverbed optimize the WAN is to eliminate duplicate data traffic. It's called De-Dupe and the effect is to eliminate up to 80% of traffic across the WAN. WANO technology usually will work on eliminating all the excess packet traffic on the WAN, which will usually result in a bandwidth savings. 

Riverbed tweeks TCP headers to modify the TCP window sizing issue. The tech here gets beyond me and my discussion, but by modifying the TCP packet headers much of the TCP "noise" on the WAN is cut down. By diminishing the excess packet traffic from apps and TCP, WAN optimization technology is able to save a lot of bandwidth. 

Riverbed also works on application latency in a similar vein, by the mitigation of excess packet traffic from apps like Microcosft Office. The technology guesses what the application will ask for and deliver it all at once instead of in 20 different packet streams. Many Fortune 5000 companies use WAN Optimization due mainly to cost cutting force on them by the economy. Data is business critical, so any way that you can save money on the WAN is a good thing.

It's funny to watch Ma Bell fight Google, because Bell isn't used to fighting another company that also has billions of dollars - and millions of users. No CLEC was ever this big - nor cable company. And Google is kind of both -- or at least that is what Ma Bell is crying to the FCC about. 

Google has more video on YouTube than any DVR or cable company can match currently. Google Voice is the online VoIP service many people wish that an innovative telecommunications services company would have delivered years ago.  But Ma Bell isn't innovative. heck, they don't even own the Labs any more - that went out with Lucent.

PC World has some coverage of the fight. The LA Times and 399 other news sources wrote about the complaint. Many in the blogosphere think that this is just AT&T's way to deflect the FCC from pinning them to the ground and perhaps delay a Network Neutrality NOI.  

Google responded on their blog quickly. 

Note to Randall and Crazy Ivan:  Consumers just want you to be a fat pipe to the inter-webs. Not the Weight Watchers version you currently offer and over-charge for. A 10MB super-info-highway. Get out of the way! We want to choose our own content, apps, and Layer 7 providers.  You had your chance, but as always greed kept you from doing anything. Heck, you are closing the doors on CallVantage on Oct. 20. And that was such a great service. (Oops, did I just say that?) You could have givrn us Google Voice just like you could have given America fiber-to-the-home in 2000 when you promised many states you would if they would let you have a rate hike. 

Keep pouring those billions into TV and 4G. If Sprint and T-Mobile could get out of their own way, they would own your ass already.

At IT EXPO WEST I will be moderating a panel on Leveraging Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to Maximize Network Efficiency. Our panelists will be Zeugma Systems, Voxeo and Voxel dot Net.

While we hear discussions all the time about CDN, not many folks know what they are, how they are designed, or what it means to the customer experience.

The session description explains that "the network throughput has become the bottleneck in delivering high quality video. A variety of solutions to these challenges are being developed today, however, there's room for significant debate on which solutions are best."

We will be talking about CDN as a Network Optimizer and What the Business Models are for CDN beyond how it changes the Customer experience.

Join us Wednesday, 09/02/09 at 11:30-12:15pm for this discussion.

Another great panel at IT EXPO West will be Leveraging Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to Maximize Network Efficiency. We will be discussing what a CDN is; where it fits in the network architecture and why; what the business model is; and how it affects the Customer Experience. Voxel dot Net, Voxeo and Zeugma Systems will be on the panel. Stop by Wed., 9/2/09, at 11:30 AM.

If your model is free, how do you pay the bills? How do you pay for the infrastructure - the servers, switches, collocation, bandwidth, labor, etc.? How do you pay developers and engineers to scale it and keep it up?

Twitter is still free and so is Facebook. Popular too. But both have issues with keeping it running. 

The funny part is that the longer it is free, the harder it will be to charge for it. 

The only app I can think of that transitioned to paid was Google Apps and Gmail for Business.

Recently, a Twitter app for Blackberry, UberTwitter, (that is free) decided to try ads with its update. OOPS! (Read it here). Was it the way the ads were presented ( with no lead up or announcement)? Or is it the Entlitlement mentality of most Internet users? 

There's a group on Facebook literally with the name We Won't pay for FB. I was told recently that FB's revenue is about $550M. How? There aren't that many ads running. And how much do you think it costs to keep Facebook and its CDN running? I would image over $1 million per month for bandwidth, gear, salaries, collocation, and the like. 

Advertising doesn't even bring in that much. The online advertising spend is much less than what marketers pay offline (like for print or billboards). So how will all these free apps survive?

Jaduka and StrikeIron announce partnership. Millions of NetBeans, IBM and SalesForce developers can now add voice to their apps in minutes. Here's Thomas Howe's announcement post. Here's StrikeIron's blog post. The press release is here.

NOFA Reactions

July 16, 2009
Speakers: Peter Radizeski, Marketing and Sales Consultant at RAD-INFO, Inc. and  Juan Vela, Occam Networks

Juan and Peter discuss their reactions to the BIP/BTOP NOFA in the second in our series of Broadband Stimulus related podcasts.  (The NOFA is the notice of funds availability for the Broadband Stimulus package. BTOP and BIP are separate programs that both the RUS and the NTIA are in charge of. Each agency will be administering grants and loans for delivery of broadband to unserved and underserved areas).

Click here to listen.

While speaking at the FISPA meeting this week, I kind of focused on sales and marketing. Why? Mainly the E-Myth. Most of the ISP owners are technical but are very uncomfortable talking about business, marketing and especially sales. One point that is important is that ISP's are NOT selling Internet Access. ISP's are selling reliable, dependable high-speed access to Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the websites and Web Apps that people desire to use. SAAS and VoIP means that ISP's need to be cognizant of the fact that if you keep selling Internet Access you will relegated to a dumb pipe. Instead, you should be offering not just the access but also some of those Apps. (That's what the RBOC's want to do).

ITSP's are NOT selling replacement phone service. They are selling business productivity and efficiency through a new, reliable and redundant platform for voice service. It's NOT about saving someone 10% -- it is about understanding how the business uses the phone (and other communications services) to interact with prospects, customers, and employees.

Google Voice is now going public. Luckily, for some providers Google announced that it will charge for enterprise and premium users. At the FISPA meeting, IKANO (Disclaimer: I rep IKANO's Google Apps for ISP's) presented the concept of ISP's moving their email service to Google. This was at the tail end of a CLEC session where the discussion centered around becoming a CLEC is about controlling your destiny and your services. Well, outsourcing your email - still the killer app for users - for an ISP is tantamount to losing control. And the fact that Google - IKANO's partner for email - is launching Google Voice is just one more reason that the ISP's will say No to Google Apps. They see Google as the new AT&T.