Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Interview with Dean Elwood of voipuser.org

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

deanelwoodDean Elwood runs the industry leading website voipuser.org. Over the 6 years this has been going Dean has come into contact with most of the major thought leaders in the communications space. He has also seen many of the new developments in VoIP play out in the form of discussion and comment on the website’s forum which has given him an unique insight into the workings of the VoIP industry.

TD I understand that for many of us there was life before VoIP and that you were in the legal profession. How did this enormous career step change come about?

DE Organically. 16 years of corporate law has its way of taking toll on you. I always maintained an interest in technology and looking back that’s really where my heart was. The defining moment happened in 2000 when I originally built a GSM conferencing system for two-way radio. VoIP User came about because of that in 2003.

TD VoIP has gone from being in the domain of the technology enthusiast (quite a long time ago now) to being mainstream. Has the growth in voipuser.org subscribers reflected this and how has the nature of the discussion topics changed in this time?

DE That’s an interesting question and one I re-visit myself from time to time. VoIP User has experienced a growth rate average of 50 new members/subscribers per day and it has not deviated from that in 6 years. It’s still the same as it was at day one. I’m not sure I can explain the reason why, other than to say that I feel VoIP User is an attraction to the early adopter and this maybe represents the rate of growth in the early adopter space.

We have noticed a change in the discussion topics to more mass market type threads however. I’ve noticed that in particular in the business space – a lot more IT professionals realising they are having to become PBX specialists due to the fact that telephony is more and more falling into their remit. These days if you’re an IT manager, that will typically involve you in voice services. 5 years ago that was a role relating to PC hardware and software management. That’s a change which is very obvious when you look at some of the threads in our Business Forum.

TD Would you say that you had had a scoop of any kind on voipuser?

DE Several over the years, but recently as we’ve become a bit more mainstream we tend to get embargoed. I had the scoop on GrandCentral/Google Voice back in December but was asked (very nicely) not to publish as it would interfere with Google’s marketing plan. So I obliged which is what we typically do. We do not wish to be seen in the same light as traditional media – we’re not here to interfere with marketing plans, we’re here to inform users. So with that one we waited until it was public and then talked about it. What I did do was have a detailed piece pre-written and ready which sat on my laptop for about 2 months awaiting the go-ahead. I prefer it that way. Making scoops can mean making enemies of marketing directors ;)

TD In the early days VoIP service providers had pride of place at conferences such as Voice on the Net (VON) and would attract the attention of every single device and handset manufacturer in the world. Nowadays there are hundreds if not thousands of ITSPs and almost as many device manufacturers. Do you think that it is too late for new players to get in the game.

DE I don’t think being too late is the issue; I think the issue is understanding what “the game” is. From my perspective there are huge opportunities. For example, the compliance and regulatory space is wide open. Life is getting tougher on lawyers and accountants to produce audit trail evidence of conversations.

There are plenty of ways that a niche specialist could build a business in that space alone and there is precious little out there serving that customer base. I think a product that serves those specific industries and integrated SMS and voice call trails into existing systems (MimeCast for example) would do extremely well.

That’s a simple example of providing a solution to a very real-world problem and I still feel there is scope for that approach in this space. Niche yourself, attack a specific market and do it extremely well. Long gone are the days of wanting to be the next Vodafone or IPO or Skype level sale, but that’s not to say that there is no room left. I think there’s plenty.

TD What in your mind have been the major milestones in the VoIP industry?

DE I could say the obvious – Skype sale to eBay, ubiquity of broadband and of SIP etc. But the truth is I don’t feel we’ve really seen any major milestones yet from a consumer perspective. VoIP as a technology is still yet to prove it’s value in terms of offering advantages over TDM.

At the moment it remains an alternative technology for voice and that’s all (with most providers playing on the cost-saving end). It’s not yet become an alternative *product* in it’s own right. That needs to happen. That would be a real milestone.

TD What is the recipe for success for a VoIP business today?

DE  Understand your customer. Release products that are a direct reaction to their specific requirements or solve their specific problems. Don’t release products or buy other companies simply because your engineering department thinks it’s a “cool” technology.

Technology is meaningless without a valid product reason for its existence and a sales channel to get it out. We saw a lot of meaningless and/or cheap minutes plays in 2008. The only things that people will buy from you in 2009 are products that solve specific problems your customer or target market is experiencing.

Martin Geddes (BT Director of Product Strategy) is someone that understands this very well. His headline statement is “People are expensive, minutes are cheap”. If you can get an employee off the phone 20 minutes more quickly then your customer (as an employer) will be quite happy paying you 5p/minute more than your competitor is charging because the customer saves real money, not pennies. That’s where the profits lie in this business, not in cheap minutes. If you’re in the latter space, watch out for the price wars and high customer churn rates. VoIP as a technology is actually an enabler to doing clever things like call avoidance and dynamic call control and routing.

TD VoIP has come a long way since the beginning. Quality of Service has all but disappeared as an issue and we are now starting to see VoIP calls with much better sound quality than traditional PSTN calls. How much farther do you think VoIP has to go?

DE I’m not convinced that QoS has all but disappeared. I still have clients experiencing this issue today when not in control of the last-mile of connectivity (where most of the QoS problems actually arise). Timico solves this problem because you’re in control of that last-mile as an ISP, so QoS is something that you can offer your customer and perhaps it’s therefore something you don’t see anymore. That’s a good place to be in, but many are not in that position and have to look elsewhere for their value adds.

Moving further forward, I think hi-def audio is a good place to be in. That really makes a difference, especially in conference calls or when you’re speaking to people with strong accents or native language differences. The clarity of hi-def solves the problem of understanding someone in those situations. It is something that requires the support of hardware manufacturers though, for obvious reasons, to really come to fruition.

Most ITSP’s that I speak to really want to do hi-def, but don’t have the hardware support to make it possible for their customers. It’s a critical mass/chicken and egg problem but I do think that loop will be broken. Jeff Pulver is going all out to try and break that loop at the moment as you know.

TD Do you think the term VoIP has had its day? The world seems to have moved on to using the term Unified Communications and even this in my mind is inadequate as a description of the experience that users are going to get with new communications technologies and tools. How should we be describing this new experience?

DE VoIP as a buzzword and sales point has definitely had its day. If you take 100 consumers and ask them what VoIP means 95 of them will respond with “Skype” in the sentence. The other 5 are early adopters/technology enthusiasts. Skype achieved that brand position by productising the technology. Unified Communications is an inadequate expression only because the 95% don’t understand what you mean. Nobody has productised it yet.

If you say to an accountant that their voice calls can be logged into the same compliance system as their email they’ll understand the point and see the value to them. That’s what productisation is. I don’t believe there is any single expression that will make that point to the mass market. Like Skype, I believe this movement will be product-led and not technology or catch-phrase led. There is an opening right now for a brand to immerse itself into the UC space in the same way that Skype immersed itself into the VoIP space or Google in the search space.

TD We do live in a world where volumes are almost the be all and end all. Who do you think will be the major players in the global VoIP game. A couple of players seem to be nosing ahead of the pack, in the consumer market at least.

DE I only see one player ahead of the pack at the moment in the consumer space and that’s Skype. Everyone else, as Jeff Pulver remarked at the ITSPA 2007 event, is “just noise”. Whilst there is money to be made in the noise it’s becoming much harder in the economic downturn that we’re experiencing. I honestly don’t believe for a moment that many of the tech-household names that we know in this space will be around in Q1 2010. I still feel the market is wide open for a clever product play and I think it will take that to ensure survival.

TD You personally produced an embedded client for Truphone for Facebook. Where else are we likely to see such clients and will we recognize them as such? Is the VoIP enabled fridge any nearer happening (it being one of the trendy futuristic uses of VoIP for almost the whole 10 years I have been in the industry).

As soon as the VoIP enabled fridge is available you and I will be buying one, so there’s two customers! I don’t think we need to recognise what they are, as consumers, I think we only need to recognise value in the product. We don’t really care what’s driving it or how it works, just that it adds value somehow. If that value is simply that I can make hands-free calls from my kitchen then that’s great. That might be all that device needs to do to satisfy me as a customer. In that case it could be my toaster – we don’t have to stop at fridges!

I do think we’ll see more voice oriented applications within the social networking space and there is definitely an opportunity to be capitalised on there. Second Life is currently routing one billion minutes per month between its users, for example.

TD Where is it all going?

DE Voice minutes are a commodity. I think many business models exist with a long history that shows us what happens when a service gets commoditised so we don’t really need to guess, we can just look back.

Aviation is one such example. When you look at times in history when the airline industry has hit rock bottom (through price cuts in times of trouble), a few go bust, several consolidate and a scarce few do well. The ones that do well are the ones that are selling an expensive service with a value add. They rise above the commodity price by adding value to the raw service.

During a terrible climate for the aviation industry between 1999 and 2003 the airlines that did well looked at user-experience and made changes there. They did video on demand. They created rapid check-in processes. They saved you time (see Martin Geddes quote above) and gave you good in-flight entertainment which meant the time you had to spend (in flight) at least had some value. A good end to end user-experience.

That’s all they needed to do to pursuade flyers that it was worth spending the extra money to fly with them. They started selling expensive airmiles, coupled to value-adds focussing on the value of peoples time.

I see the telecoms industry going the same way. But while everyone else is jumping on to the cheap minutes bandwagon and causing commoditisation the best thing to do is the opposite. Be in the expensive minutes business with a value add and great user-experience that saves your customers more money than cheap minutes alone. All of this really just equates to recognising the value of your customers time and recognising that VoIP is a technology that has the capability to rise above the low-end proposition of cheap minutes.

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interview with Sebastien Lahtinen of thinkbroadband

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Hard as it may be to believe ADSL has been around in the UK for 10 years or so. In this time we have seen big changes in the industry. Market penetration has reached 58% of households (Ofcom 2008 review) and we are onto our third generation of technology.

Sebastien Lahtinen is known to many as the driving force behind thinkbroadband.com and before that ADSLguide.org.uk. As such he has been at the heart of the UK broadband industry as both an observer and participant since its beginnings.

TD Seb, tell us a bit about how you got into the broadband industry and what inspired you to originally found ADSLguide.org.uk

SL Back in the late nineties I was looking to get onto a cable broadband service but my cable operator Nynex (which became C&W, then NTL and now Virgin Media) wasn’t offering the service in my area. I then heard about this ‘ADSL’ technology and that Demon Internet was running trials in some areas. Whilst I couldn’t get onto a trial myself, John Hunt, a good friend of mine who started the site up with me was able to do so.

I felt that that there was a need for somewhere impartial for users to go, to find out about this new emerging technology. Of course these days, the providers have perfected their support and provisioning systems so our role has slightly changed. We now have to serve a far wider, less technical, user base.

TD ADSLguide.org.uk morphed into thinkbroadband.com. This was mainly because adsl was no longer the only driving technology in this space. Has this made a difference to how the website is perceived/used.

SL There are still people that consider us as an ‘ADSL’ site but we’re working hard to cover other broadband technologies including cable and mobile broadband. Our staff obviously understand the development and background of ADSL technology far better, but we are trying to build relationships with non-ADSL providers so we can offer users the best advice no matter what technology they want to use.

TD What makes thinkbroadband different to all the other comparison sites that now exist?

SL We don’t regard our site as a ‘comparison’ site in that we set it up to provide users with information about broadband generally, not just as a way comparing service providers. You can see this by comparing our front page which is more about news than trying to get you to switch service provider. Obviously, the ability to find a suitable supplier is part of what we do, but it’s by no means the primary role of the site.

The majority of the broadband sites out there (with ourselves and ISPreview.co.uk being obvious exceptions), were set up when service providers started offering commission for websites which referred a customer to them. In fact, this is the business model on which they operate. Some of them even compare insurance, credit cards, etc. as well.

Obviously, we have costs too and we need to ensure we can pay for those big servers that run the speed tests and to employ staff who can help to improve our site, but the major difference between us and most other sites, is we set the site up for the community, rather than as a business, and most of us are still doing this part time alongside full time jobs which pay our salaries.

TD The site has become very popular and this must put strain on your infrastructure. How did you manage the growth?

SL Around the same sort of time in early summer of 2000, I co-founded a hosting business with Jeremy Ainsworth who also got involved in ADSLguide. In fact, our very first server dedicated to serving ADSLguide was a spare box Jeremy had available which we put into Telehouse. We kept throwing more resources at it as it grew.

Our forums too gained their own momentum and we started seeing load issues when Pipex users took over the forums following some heated discussions about their service. David Rickards of Pipex was kind enough to donate a new server to us which helped us grow the forums to the next phase.

We started providing speed tests, and much more and our infrastructure had to grow with that. This is still very important to us to ensure we can deliver the fastest and most reliable speed test services.

TD Since that time what are the milestones that stick in your mind that measure the development of broadband in the UK

SL I think the first key milestone was when BT introduced the ‘wires only’ install which meant you didn’t have to use the ‘Alcatel frog’ (or ’stingray’ as some people call it) with drivers that didn’t always work and the setup fee dropped from £150 to £50 making the service more universally affordable.

The second milestone I believe was BT’s “Broadband Britain” campaign which encouraged communities to get involved in raising broadband take-up and getting virtually all the exchanged enabled.

The third was the introduction of rate-adaptive ADSL and what we now know as the ‘up to 8 meg’ services. Since then, many other providers have started pushing the speed boundaries with LLU and especially recently Virgin Media on its 50 meg service too.

I believe the next challenge will be bringing those who are currently outside of broadband coverage into the digital world.

TD We are now seeing the Government talking about Universal Service Obligation concerning the provision of 2Mbps broadband to all homes. Do you believe this is practical?

SL We do believe that a USO is absolutely necessary and that the level at which it is set should be reviewed regularly. Our current concern is more for those who cannot get any broadband service, than those who are stuck on say 1Mbps services, as this is a far more fundamental problem that needs to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. I could probably survive on a 1Mbps connection, but I can’t imagine living ‘without broadband’ at all.

We also have some doubts as to whether it is possible to simplify a USO as just “2Mbps downstream” service.  There are factors such as upstream speed, latency, jitter, etc. that could for example prevent access to next generation telephony service over the Internet which have the potential to revolutionise how we communicate. These don’t make as interesting a sound bite but they are still important.

TD As the internet becomes more important to our every day lives the Government is increasingly seen as becoming involved with decisions that affect the direction of the industry. Do you see this as good or bad and is it inevitable? What are your thoughts on the Digital Britain Report?

SL The Government has an important role in ensuring a regulatory environment which both fosters innovation and diversity of supply, but also protects those who may not have the resources or skills to protect themselves. However, it is important, that in achieving the latter, it does not stifle the former.

The Internet has developed in an environment with very minimal regulation and low barriers to entry, and it is these unique circumstances that have allowed it to develop so quickly. The Internet feeds on the concept of rapid innovation and improvement. One day you launch a brilliant new service; the next, your competitor has outdone you. It’s a bit like a car manufacturer being able to release a new updated model every week.

The way we think and use information since the evolution of the web has changed. We now combine information from different sources in new ways. This is only possible if those with an idea have the means and willingness to execute it. It does however mean re-thinking the way intellectual property rights are protected, both to preserve the incentive for those who work hard to benefit from their efforts, but also to allow for people to take advantage of new technologies without being criminalised.

In my view, the role of the Government is to encourage good practice and getting directly involved only where it is absolutely necessary to protect the interests of the country and its economy. So far, the UK Government has taken a ‘light touch’ approach which has helped us become a key capital at the heart of the Internet.

I suspect that Government will become more involved in the discussion about the future of the Internet as it is so fundamentally linked to the success of the country and the Digital Britain report is evidence of this. We also have to accept that there is a role for an entity to represent the interests of the minority who are unable to use the Internet for whatever reason. It is no longer sufficient for us to cover 99.9%; The Internet should be for everyone.

TD We now hear of talk of 1Gbps fibre to the home in Japan which doesn’t even appear on the long range radar here in the UK. How do you think the UK will fare in the international competitive stakes when it comes to internet technology.

SL The UK has a habit of comparing itself to other countries and being very negative about its position. The fact is, there is very little content on the Internet which can truly benefit from a 100Mbps let alone a 1Gbps connection today. Quite simply, the core Internet infrastructure can’t  cope with delivery this level of service on any scale at a price that most of us would be willing to pay.

I do however have concerns that we aren’t looking at a national fibre network more seriously. Whilst I accept that the needs of the next few years will be met by new ways to push more out of copper (both in ADSL and cable variants) and hybrid fibre-coax/copper solutions, sooner or later end-to-end fibre optic cabling will be needed and it is likely that this will require Government support by way of easing regulation or co-ordinating the efforts of communications providers to build an efficient and competitive network.

The reason fibre makes sense is because information travels along it at the speed of light so its capacity to deliver next generation services is far greater. The fibre optic cabling used to deliver 100Mbps or 1Gbps a decade ago is used to push multiple links of 10Gbps each today and 100Gbps in the not too distant future. It is a technology that is more future-proof than copper.

TD Finally would you care to make any predictions regarding the internet in the UK over the next year or two?

SL I think we will start seeing more new developments receiving next generation broadband services at up to 100Mbps in cities as the costs of linking these back to the data centres (the buildings where the ‘core’ of the Internet is based) is falling.

I also believe that the the much talked about convergence of technologies will start happening, initially with TV-on-demand services being delivered over the Internet to your set-top-box. Eventually (probably a few years later), I think Internet-connected fridges are likely to become more common.

TD Thanks very much for your time Seb.

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Interview with Jeff Pulver for “Hardcopy”, newsletter of ISPA

Monday, February 23rd, 2009
Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver

The Digital Britain report dominates current debate in the UK internet related industry. Its aim is, broadly put, is to promote universal use of broadband and to stimulate the digital knowledge economy thus keeping the country competitive in the 21st century. Although facilitating the plumbing of this digital economy, the Government quite rightly leaves the innovation of new ideas for delivery down the pipes to industry.

New York based innovator Jeff Pulver was a prime mover during the pioneering years of the VoIP industry. He started the Voice On the Net conferences and was founder of the company that evolved into Vonage, the US based VoIP telco. Jeff has since moved his attention to helping to create the wave of the Social Networking technology revolution. Both areas of technology, whilst requiring an underlying network to support them, hinge on the development of new ideas and applications.

TD: What parallels can you see between what was happening in the early days of VoIP and today in Social Networking?

 JP:  Social Networking has been part of the human experience since there was documented human experience. My focus is on the evolution of social communications, something I call: SocComm and what happens next as the world shifts from a dial-tone generation to a presence based one.

Back in the early days of VoIP we had dialup and slow computers and limited quality for the voice experience but it did not hold back a generation of people who were hobbyists by night but technology explorers by day who experimented with the technology and understand the power of what it meant when voice could be an application and no longer be a utility service.

I believe the advent of the widespread availability of social networking platforms such as Facebook and twitter are going to have a more profound impact on the future of communications in the next 5 years ahead than what we have seen in the VoIP space in the past 15 years.

TD: Aside from the by know well known business models associated with advertising, where do you see the moneytization of Social Networking?

JP: I am not a fan of pushing business models into nascent industries. Business models are disruptive to innovation and should never be forced into an ecosystem. What we will see emerge is another example of how disruptive technologies change the face of business in ways that were obvious to some by blindsided by others.

I believe presence will be moneytized with the advent of social communication. Presence will emerge to be a 25 billion dollar business.

TD: The battle against regulation of VoIP in the USA has been a feature of your career activities over the past ten years. Is there a similar debate to be had in the space you are in now?

JP:  The fight is about to begin. Any platform which attracts 175 million active users (and growing) will get the attention of the government. My challenge is to see this space remains regulation free for the foreseeable future. (Maybe this is the foreshadowing of a future unannounced statement from me. hint hint)

TD: The UK has traditionally been strong in the production and delivery of content such as music and TV and this is recognised as a strength that our Government wants to maintain. Do you see any signs of internet innovation coming out of the UK in other areas?

JP: There were other signs in the late 90s and the post dot-com bubble but at the moment there are not a lot of hi-tech UK companies on my personal radar. I would like to change that.

TD: Can you paint a picture of life in the new Socially Networked world

JP:  It is world where people are more real, we know the identity of the people we are communication with and a world where each of us contribute daily to the social sculpture known as the Internet.

TD: Whilst initially slated as a consumer oriented technology, Social Networking has now been adopted by large corporations as a marketing tool. Do you have an example of where this has worked successfully?

JP:  Just ask the CEO of Zappos – @Zappos on twitter. They did a billion dollars in sales in 2008 and they have just about their entire organization focused on social media and on twitter. The Blue Shirt Nation of BestBuy is another example. This is the case where BestBuy launched their own internal social network for 130,000 people. These enabling technologies can and will change the world.

TD: Thank you very much for your time Jeff. You have had a punishing travel schedule over the past few months promoting Social Networking and have now started to raise the bar with conferences such as SocCom. Please accept my best wishes for the success with this activity.

Thanks for the opportunity to be read today. If you would like to learn more about my activities, please visit my blog – http://jeffpulver.com/ and follow me on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/jeffpulver .

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