AT&T's Shepcaro: Standalone Voice "Unacceptable"

January 25, 2006

Greg Galitzine, editorial director, for Internet Telephony magazine, has been filing a superb series of stories this week from the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Among his stories from last night was an article about the thought-provoking�keynote speech by Eric Shepcaro, AT&T's vice president for business strategy and development -- Greg describes�Shepcaro as "AT&T's chief strategist," so what he says rightfully�carries a lot of weight.

To open his presentation, Shepcaro showed an amusing video in which an interviewer asks New Yorkers if they know what IP and VoIP are -- only one elderly woman knows.

In reality, it wouldn't surprise me if in the long run, by far the greater number of VoIP users never do find out what VoIP is and many people who did know end up forgetting. Seems to me that most people who use technologies don't care that much what they're called and how�they work, as long as they can meet their goals. And it probably doesn't matter much.

From the quotes Greg includes in his article, I suspect Shepcaro would agree. Shepcaro advocates "XoIP" as the future of IP communications,�meaning "all things over IP" or "services over IP." Voice is the obvious first application, and, as Greg says, "cost savings remains the key driver" -- at least for now.

I was particularly struck by this quote from Shepcaro:

"It’s unacceptable today to offer standalone voice services. It is unacceptable to have my voice mail stored separately from my e-mail, forcing me to check it in several different places."

AB -- 1/25/06

Related Tags: shepcaro, Shepcaro, voice, unacceptable