Against the Grain

After a long hiatus, I'm going to start blogging again and make TMC my primary home for doing so. For people who know me, I'll have a bunch of things to say about the evolving world of video conferencing.

Any other ideas are greatly appreciated!

Scott

That's the ratio of small technology companies that successfully generate business from big telcos in any given year. I attended the Silicon Valley Telecom Council annual event focused on carriers. Many of the big carriers (e.g., AT&T, Orange, Swisscom, SingTel, BT etc.) presented their innovation strategy and provided a roadmap for how smaller companies can best work with them.

Here is some example math: a typical telco will have 500 meetings on average (not inquiries but real in person meetings), narrow down the list to 50 companies of interest, and typically lead to business with only 3-5 of them.

Continue Reading...

So Apple finally launched their long-awaited 3G iPhone on Monday.  And as impressive as the new phone was, of course there were a string of complaints for wish list items that did not make it into the iPhone v2. 

Chief among the complaints was a lack of video calling and a second front-facing camera.  I've written about this topic before questioning why the US is so far behind the rest of the world on this but still have not gotten a satisfactory answer.  Continue Reading...

For years, telecom insiders have derided flat rate billing as "fad" that was not practical and going away.  As recently as 4 years ago, I moderated a panel at the VON conference with leading industry analysts who unanimously said that that flat rate billing for voice would never take hold. 

We all know that in the US, flat rate calling for both local and so-called long distance calling is now the norm.  And in the last year, some of the independent residential VoIP players made International calling part of their flat rate packages (e.g., Lingo, BroadVoice, and more recently Vonage).

Skype took this to a whole new level last week by introducing a package of flat rate, unlimited international calling for $9.95.  Continue Reading...

Hello TMC Readers!

This is my first posting to introduce myself.  So here it goes:

I've been in the VoIP for more than a dozen years starting with VocalTec in 1995 -- the pioneering company in the industry.  During the past 9 years, I've led the marketing efforts at BroadSoft - the leading VoIP applications software company.

I've been fortunate to see the entire lifecycle of voice over IP (once called "Internet Telephony" and "IP Telephony").  I've primarily focused on the marketing aspect of VoIP but in a lot of capacities.  Continue Reading...