Telepocalypse by Martin
"On the other hand...
It’s election time here in the UK, and the media are required to give a “balanced picture” by offering equal time to the main parties.
So in case you think I’ve gone completely Skype nuts, here’s a few balancing news items.
I had a Skype conference call with a client a few days ago. It was embarassingly bad, mainly because one of the participants was on a flaky hotel Wi-Fi link. In the vertically integrated telco model, this would be the telcos problem. Skype’s layered model tends to push them towards a “not our problem” approach. Mistake! The Skype client needs to be aware of the connectivity quality underneath it. If it can’t deliver, and is disrupting a conf call, then it needs to inform the participant, end the call, or somehow manage the situation. Skype needs to manage the user experience better, even the bits they don’t have control over.
I’m also having too many Skype calls where I need to re-dial to get a better connection. Plus I’ve had several failed SkypeOut calls (what is a 10040 error, or whatever it was, I don’t know — but that’s not my idea of a great user experience).
Skype also has some blind spots and weaknesses. It’s a winner so far at consumer-to-consumer chat, both for close buddies and strangers. Yet there’s space for Google to build a C2B VoIP service (“click here to talk to Acme Rotavtor Supplies”), Microsoft to federate their RTC/Outlook universe (B2B2B2B^n), and the PSTN to soldier on as the B2C preferred means of contact. Skype’s assumption that all calling is free doesn’t jive well with what we’re seeing elsewhere.
That said, some of Skype’s competition don’t get that “great user experience” idea. Yahoo have some dreadful advertising pop-up in their IM client, and you have to hunt for a configuration setting to turn it off. They litter their IM client with irrelevant crap. They force-feed users on upgrades to try to sell them BT’s VoIP services. And the webcam experience in Yahoo — and its ability to deal with firewalls and NAT — sucks like grandma’s lost her dentures. Last time I tried their voice client, it wasn’t good. Skype does things like automatic volume control very well.
In our world of toothpaste, Yahoo is the cap that rolls off into the sink, the tube that splits in your toiletries bag, and the dispenser that squirts a bit too much out when you squeeze the end. Skype has the perfect flip-cap, a tube that stands on its end, and even tastes good.
I’d also like to clarify one thing… I said:
Anyone who thinks they can roll a VoIP strategy without taking Skype into account has lost the plot.
What I mean is that you need to take it into account, not necessarily automatically embrace it. If you’re a telco, it means either fighting or co-opting Skype in some way. (What to know how - click here.)
Skype isn’t perfect. It hasn’t taken the feature set very far past the PSTN. (What can you do in Skype but can’t do with an all-you-can-eat PSTN plan and an IM client?) But the bar anyone else needs to cross is raising out of reach real fast. You’re not only going to have to outflank Skype in product features and usability, but you’re going to have to outdistribute Skype when Skype has an army of tens of millions of pushers already in its grasp.
No matter how much you love SIP and ENUM, there’s no “Perfect for the VoB” sticker on a box in Costco that assures you your SIP phone will interoperate with the rest of the universe, and that it’ll fulfill your full set of needs (voicemail, call control, etc.). The Vob is a marketing failure, not a technology one. The “promise” isn’t clear and the brand non-existent. Compare to WiFi, whose ascent is as much an accident of cute naming as meeting customer need. Also score another similarity between Skype and Microsoft — the genius of both is not the technology, it’s the sales and marketing.
As far as I’m concerned, Skype’s well past the Mum Test — my mother is now getting her friends onto Skype. If you dismiss or ignore Skype, flawed as it may be, you do it at your peril."
Posted by Martin
Perfect for C2C, perfect for now.
But it misses the full picture.
First:
1) Right now VoIP is NOT a Mass Market Product, let me be clearer: it is NOT a PROFITABLE mass market product.
The users of Skype, the enthusiastic of it, are the ones who use it for IP to IP.
Skype out is "dirt cheap", but in most cases "clean useless".
For local calls the PSTN and the Telcos still have better pricing (Flat unlimited rates), better quality and you can use your normal phone.
The cost of a cell phone call local or national is almost the same.
Why should you use a termination? Unless you need to call Internationally.
But how many in the C2C market have the need to call Internationally?
Not many, at least in Europe.
"I love Skype because I can call for free my girlfriend"
That is a good commercial and marketing advertisement for Skype, but doesn't produce many revenues, does it?
Monday, May 02, 2005
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The biggest invention
If somebody asked you:
Who is a great name?
Everybody would answer: Einstein, Rudolf Diesel, Edison, Marconi, and so on...
But nobody knows the name of Antonio Meucci, even though his was one of the biggest invention of the 20th century:
The Telephone
ANTONIO MEUCCI
An invention none of us could live without, a tool of modern communications so basic that many of today's business and social activities would be inconceivable in its absence, the telephone, is at the center of a series of events so strange as to amount to a "whodunit."
Most of us were brought up on the story of Alexander Graham Bell, the romantic figure of an inventor with dash and charm. Some of these favorable impressions must have come from the famous, if apocryphal, "Come here Watson, I want you" legend of the invention of the device, a tradition augmented by the movie version of the tale, in which actor Don Amiche became more or less permanently attached to the persona of Bell.
But it seems that history must be rewritten if justice is to be done to an immigrant from Florence, Italy: Antonio Meucci, who invented the telephone in 1849 and filed his first patent caveat (notice of intention to take out a patent) in 1871, setting into motion a series of mysterious events and injustices which would be incredible were they not so well documented.
Meucci was an enigmatic character, a man unable to overcome his own lack of managerial and entrepreneurial talent, a man tormented by his inability to communicate in any language other than Italian. The tragic events of his personal and professional life, his accomplishments and his association with the great Italian patriot, Garibaldi, should be legendary in themselves but, curiously, the man and his story are practically unknown today.
Antonio Meucci was born in San Frediano, near Florence, in April 1808. He studied design and mechanical engineering at Florence's Academy of Fine Arts and then worked in the Teatro della Pergola and various other theaters as a stage technician until 1835, when he accepted a job as scenic designer and stage technician at the Teatro Tacon in Havana, Cuba.
Absolutely fascinated by scientific research of any kind, Meucci read every scientific tract he could get his hands on, and spent all his spare time in Havana on research, inventing a new method of galvanizing metals which he applied to military equipment for the Cuban government; at the same time, he continued his work in the theater and pursued his endless experiments.
One these touched off a series of fateful events. Meucci had developed a method of using electric shocks to treat illness which had become quite popular in Havana. One day, while preparing to administer a treatment to a friend, Meucci heard an exclamation of the friend, who was in the next room, over the piece of copper wire running between them. The inventor realized immediately that he held in his hand something much more important than any other discovery he had ever made, and he spent the next ten years bringing the principle to a practical stage. The following ten years were to be spent perfecting the original device and trying to promote its commercialization.
With this goal, he left Cuba for New York in 1850, settling in the Clifton section of Staten Island, a few miles from New York City. Here, in addition to his problems of a strictly financial nature, Meucci realized that he could not communicate adequately in English, having relied on the similarities of Italian and Spanish during his Cuban residence. Furthermore, in Staten Island, he found himself surrounded by Italian political refugees; Giuseppe Garibaldi, when exiled from Italy, spent his period of United States residency in Meucci's house. The scientist tried to help his Italian friends by devising any number of industrial projects using new or improved manufacturing methods for such diverse products as beer, candles, pianos and paper. But he knew nothing of management, and even those initiatives which succeeded were to have their profits eaten up by unscrupulous or inept managers or by the refugees themselves, who spent more time in political discussion than they did in active work.
Meanwhile, Meucci continued to dedicate his time to perfecting the telephone. In 1855, when his wife became partially paralyzed, Meucci set up a telephone system which joined several rooms of his house with his workshop in another building nearby, the first such installation anywhere. In 1860, when the instrument had become practical, Meucci organized a demonstration to attract financial backing in which a singer's voice was clearly heard by spectators a considerable distance away. A description of the apparatus was soon published in one of New York's Italian newspapers and the report together with a model of the invention were taken to Italy by a certain Signor Bendelari with the goal of arranging production there; nothing came of this trip, nor of the many promises of financial support which had been forthcoming after the demonstration.
The years which followed brought increasing poverty to an embittered and discouraged Meucci, who nonetheless continued to produce a series of new inventions. His precarious financial situation, however, often constrained him to sell the rights to his inventions, and still left him without the wherewithal to take out final patents on the telephone.
A dramatic event, in which Meucci was severely burned in the explosion of the steamship Westfield returning from New York, brought things to an even more tragic state. While Meucci lay in hospital, miraculously alive after the disaster, his wife sold many of his working models (including the telephone prototype) and other materials to a secondhand dealer for six dollars. When Meucci sought to buy these precious objects back, he was told that they had been resold to an "unknown young man" whose identity remains a mystery to this day.
Crushed, but not beaten, Meucci worked night and day to reconstruct his invention and to produce new designs and specifications, clearly apprehensive that someone could steal the device before he could have it patented. Unable to raise the sum for a definitive patent ($250, considerable in those days), he took recourse in the caveat or notice of intent, which was registered on December 28, 1871 and renewed in 1872 and 1873 but, fatefully, not thereafter.
Immediately after he received certification of the caveat, Meucci tried again to demonstrate the enormous potential of the device, delivering a model and technical details to the vice president of one of the affiliates of the newly established Western Union Telegraph Company, asking permission to demonstrate his "Talking Telegraph" on the wires of the Western Union system. However, each time that Meucci contacted this vice president, a certain Edward B. Grant, he was told that there had been no time to arrange the test. Two years passed, after which Meucci demanded the return of his materials, only to be told that they had been "lost." It was then 1874.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent which does not really describe the telephone but refers to it as such. When Meucci learned of this, he instructed his lawyer to protest to the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, something that was never done. However, a friend did contact Washington, only to learn that all the documents relevant to the "Talking Telegraph" filed in Meucci's caveat had been "lost." Later investigation produced evidence of illegal relationships linking certain employees of the Patent Office and officials of Bell's company. And later, in the course of litigation between Bell and Western Union, it was revealed that Bell had agreed to pay Western Union 20 percent of profits from commercialization of his "invention" for a period of 17 years. Millions of dollars were involved, but the price may been cheaper than revealing facts better left hidden, from Bell's point of view.
In the court case of 1886, although Bell's lawyers tried to turn aside Meucci's suit against their client, he was able to explain every detail of his invention so clearly as to leave little doubt of his veracity, although he did not win the case against the superior - and vastly richer - forces fielded by Bell. Despite a public statement by the then Secretary of State that "there exists sufficient proof to give priority to Meucci in the invention of the telephone," and despite the fact that the United States initiated prosecution for fraud against Bell's patent, the trial was postponed from year to year until, at the death of Meucci in 1896, the case was dropped.
The story of Antonio Meucci is still little known, yet it is one of the most extraordinary episodes in American history, albeit an episode in which justice was perverted. Still, the genius and perseverance of an Italian immigrant - genius, poor businessman, tenacious defender of his rights against incredible odds and grinding poverty - is a story which must be told. Antonio Meucci is waiting to be recognized as the inventor of a key element in our modern culture.
Italian Historical Society of America.
Who is a great name?
Everybody would answer: Einstein, Rudolf Diesel, Edison, Marconi, and so on...
But nobody knows the name of Antonio Meucci, even though his was one of the biggest invention of the 20th century:
The Telephone
ANTONIO MEUCCI
An invention none of us could live without, a tool of modern communications so basic that many of today's business and social activities would be inconceivable in its absence, the telephone, is at the center of a series of events so strange as to amount to a "whodunit."
Most of us were brought up on the story of Alexander Graham Bell, the romantic figure of an inventor with dash and charm. Some of these favorable impressions must have come from the famous, if apocryphal, "Come here Watson, I want you" legend of the invention of the device, a tradition augmented by the movie version of the tale, in which actor Don Amiche became more or less permanently attached to the persona of Bell.
But it seems that history must be rewritten if justice is to be done to an immigrant from Florence, Italy: Antonio Meucci, who invented the telephone in 1849 and filed his first patent caveat (notice of intention to take out a patent) in 1871, setting into motion a series of mysterious events and injustices which would be incredible were they not so well documented.
Meucci was an enigmatic character, a man unable to overcome his own lack of managerial and entrepreneurial talent, a man tormented by his inability to communicate in any language other than Italian. The tragic events of his personal and professional life, his accomplishments and his association with the great Italian patriot, Garibaldi, should be legendary in themselves but, curiously, the man and his story are practically unknown today.
Antonio Meucci was born in San Frediano, near Florence, in April 1808. He studied design and mechanical engineering at Florence's Academy of Fine Arts and then worked in the Teatro della Pergola and various other theaters as a stage technician until 1835, when he accepted a job as scenic designer and stage technician at the Teatro Tacon in Havana, Cuba.
Absolutely fascinated by scientific research of any kind, Meucci read every scientific tract he could get his hands on, and spent all his spare time in Havana on research, inventing a new method of galvanizing metals which he applied to military equipment for the Cuban government; at the same time, he continued his work in the theater and pursued his endless experiments.
One these touched off a series of fateful events. Meucci had developed a method of using electric shocks to treat illness which had become quite popular in Havana. One day, while preparing to administer a treatment to a friend, Meucci heard an exclamation of the friend, who was in the next room, over the piece of copper wire running between them. The inventor realized immediately that he held in his hand something much more important than any other discovery he had ever made, and he spent the next ten years bringing the principle to a practical stage. The following ten years were to be spent perfecting the original device and trying to promote its commercialization.
With this goal, he left Cuba for New York in 1850, settling in the Clifton section of Staten Island, a few miles from New York City. Here, in addition to his problems of a strictly financial nature, Meucci realized that he could not communicate adequately in English, having relied on the similarities of Italian and Spanish during his Cuban residence. Furthermore, in Staten Island, he found himself surrounded by Italian political refugees; Giuseppe Garibaldi, when exiled from Italy, spent his period of United States residency in Meucci's house. The scientist tried to help his Italian friends by devising any number of industrial projects using new or improved manufacturing methods for such diverse products as beer, candles, pianos and paper. But he knew nothing of management, and even those initiatives which succeeded were to have their profits eaten up by unscrupulous or inept managers or by the refugees themselves, who spent more time in political discussion than they did in active work.
Meanwhile, Meucci continued to dedicate his time to perfecting the telephone. In 1855, when his wife became partially paralyzed, Meucci set up a telephone system which joined several rooms of his house with his workshop in another building nearby, the first such installation anywhere. In 1860, when the instrument had become practical, Meucci organized a demonstration to attract financial backing in which a singer's voice was clearly heard by spectators a considerable distance away. A description of the apparatus was soon published in one of New York's Italian newspapers and the report together with a model of the invention were taken to Italy by a certain Signor Bendelari with the goal of arranging production there; nothing came of this trip, nor of the many promises of financial support which had been forthcoming after the demonstration.
The years which followed brought increasing poverty to an embittered and discouraged Meucci, who nonetheless continued to produce a series of new inventions. His precarious financial situation, however, often constrained him to sell the rights to his inventions, and still left him without the wherewithal to take out final patents on the telephone.
A dramatic event, in which Meucci was severely burned in the explosion of the steamship Westfield returning from New York, brought things to an even more tragic state. While Meucci lay in hospital, miraculously alive after the disaster, his wife sold many of his working models (including the telephone prototype) and other materials to a secondhand dealer for six dollars. When Meucci sought to buy these precious objects back, he was told that they had been resold to an "unknown young man" whose identity remains a mystery to this day.
Crushed, but not beaten, Meucci worked night and day to reconstruct his invention and to produce new designs and specifications, clearly apprehensive that someone could steal the device before he could have it patented. Unable to raise the sum for a definitive patent ($250, considerable in those days), he took recourse in the caveat or notice of intent, which was registered on December 28, 1871 and renewed in 1872 and 1873 but, fatefully, not thereafter.
Immediately after he received certification of the caveat, Meucci tried again to demonstrate the enormous potential of the device, delivering a model and technical details to the vice president of one of the affiliates of the newly established Western Union Telegraph Company, asking permission to demonstrate his "Talking Telegraph" on the wires of the Western Union system. However, each time that Meucci contacted this vice president, a certain Edward B. Grant, he was told that there had been no time to arrange the test. Two years passed, after which Meucci demanded the return of his materials, only to be told that they had been "lost." It was then 1874.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent which does not really describe the telephone but refers to it as such. When Meucci learned of this, he instructed his lawyer to protest to the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, something that was never done. However, a friend did contact Washington, only to learn that all the documents relevant to the "Talking Telegraph" filed in Meucci's caveat had been "lost." Later investigation produced evidence of illegal relationships linking certain employees of the Patent Office and officials of Bell's company. And later, in the course of litigation between Bell and Western Union, it was revealed that Bell had agreed to pay Western Union 20 percent of profits from commercialization of his "invention" for a period of 17 years. Millions of dollars were involved, but the price may been cheaper than revealing facts better left hidden, from Bell's point of view.
In the court case of 1886, although Bell's lawyers tried to turn aside Meucci's suit against their client, he was able to explain every detail of his invention so clearly as to leave little doubt of his veracity, although he did not win the case against the superior - and vastly richer - forces fielded by Bell. Despite a public statement by the then Secretary of State that "there exists sufficient proof to give priority to Meucci in the invention of the telephone," and despite the fact that the United States initiated prosecution for fraud against Bell's patent, the trial was postponed from year to year until, at the death of Meucci in 1896, the case was dropped.
The story of Antonio Meucci is still little known, yet it is one of the most extraordinary episodes in American history, albeit an episode in which justice was perverted. Still, the genius and perseverance of an Italian immigrant - genius, poor businessman, tenacious defender of his rights against incredible odds and grinding poverty - is a story which must be told. Antonio Meucci is waiting to be recognized as the inventor of a key element in our modern culture.
Italian Historical Society of America.
Numbering
It looks like the numbering is the only real issue of all the VoIP market.
It looks like nobody sees the real point, at least for what concerns the Mass Market.
They are building every day new Networks, of course proprietary stuff, like the Telecoms' business model, where you have to pay to get in or out.
And of course internal P2P are welcome.(as long as they are sure you will need to go in and out.)
The main difference is that the old business model (the Telcos') had a meaning and a justification.
They owned the infrastructure and with the ins and outs you paid for the leasing of the line.
VoIp is totally a different Scenario.
Finally we have a "customer's owned infrastructures" or at least leased directly by the user.
So why SHOULD the USER belong to a private NETWORK to do call that he can better do in HIS OWNED Network ( The Internet)
The only issue is directing them.
That is all what is required by a Provider.
Everybody owns a computer, everybody can buy an IP phone or a softphone, everybody PAYS for his access to the Internet.
Why should we be so stupid?
OK you can talk about the VoIP-PSTN connection.
But there are out there so many "terminators" you can choose among good services, bad services, no services, but you are not obliged to buy the Termination from a VoIP provider.
I tell you what we risk with this stupid behaviour.
One day the Telcos will feel treatened and will do just that: offer VoIP on THEIR Network and interconnectivity with the other Telcos.
In five minutes they will have the biggest VoIP Network ever seen and we will all agree that in the end, it is much simpler...
But we all will have lost a chance to have done a revolution when the oppurtunity was there.
You win a battle if you are able to take the enemy by surprise, oterwise if you have good chances to loose...forget it...
Patrizia
It looks like nobody sees the real point, at least for what concerns the Mass Market.
They are building every day new Networks, of course proprietary stuff, like the Telecoms' business model, where you have to pay to get in or out.
And of course internal P2P are welcome.(as long as they are sure you will need to go in and out.)
The main difference is that the old business model (the Telcos') had a meaning and a justification.
They owned the infrastructure and with the ins and outs you paid for the leasing of the line.
VoIp is totally a different Scenario.
Finally we have a "customer's owned infrastructures" or at least leased directly by the user.
So why SHOULD the USER belong to a private NETWORK to do call that he can better do in HIS OWNED Network ( The Internet)
The only issue is directing them.
That is all what is required by a Provider.
Everybody owns a computer, everybody can buy an IP phone or a softphone, everybody PAYS for his access to the Internet.
Why should we be so stupid?
OK you can talk about the VoIP-PSTN connection.
But there are out there so many "terminators" you can choose among good services, bad services, no services, but you are not obliged to buy the Termination from a VoIP provider.
I tell you what we risk with this stupid behaviour.
One day the Telcos will feel treatened and will do just that: offer VoIP on THEIR Network and interconnectivity with the other Telcos.
In five minutes they will have the biggest VoIP Network ever seen and we will all agree that in the end, it is much simpler...
But we all will have lost a chance to have done a revolution when the oppurtunity was there.
You win a battle if you are able to take the enemy by surprise, oterwise if you have good chances to loose...forget it...
Patrizia
If we paid the bananas the right price...
The point is not what Skype should do, it is what the OTHERS should do.
I see a big opportunity in the Market for VoIP and I see also a big number of IT specialists out of job or near to.
VoIP and the Internet are a huge opportunity for small companies, in the fact that they allow a one man comapny to enter the market and compete with the giants.
You need a small investment, good skills and of course a clear vision of what you want to achieve.
I see a much better economical growth if the market is divided among many instead of being in the hands of a few.
We have seen a world where the rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer. No matter how and when.
Now, this process can be reversed, must be reversed, otherwise there will be a day in which also the rich will become fewer and fewer and the society will neeed to be replaned.
(if there is just a few that can afford to buy, how can you sell?)
If we paid the bananas the right price, in Africa they would have the money to buy computers and software produced in other countries.
Globalization is also that: giving opportunities...
Patrizia
http://woip.blogspot.com
I see a big opportunity in the Market for VoIP and I see also a big number of IT specialists out of job or near to.
VoIP and the Internet are a huge opportunity for small companies, in the fact that they allow a one man comapny to enter the market and compete with the giants.
You need a small investment, good skills and of course a clear vision of what you want to achieve.
I see a much better economical growth if the market is divided among many instead of being in the hands of a few.
We have seen a world where the rich tend to get richer and the poor tend to get poorer. No matter how and when.
Now, this process can be reversed, must be reversed, otherwise there will be a day in which also the rich will become fewer and fewer and the society will neeed to be replaned.
(if there is just a few that can afford to buy, how can you sell?)
If we paid the bananas the right price, in Africa they would have the money to buy computers and software produced in other countries.
Globalization is also that: giving opportunities...
Patrizia
http://woip.blogspot.com
Is VoIP for everybody?
VoIP IS for everybody, but for the moment it is not CONVENIENT for everybody.
Let's say: It is not yet a mass market product.
Why?
It is true, it has all the features to be, it is a cheap way to make calls, much cheaper than the actual telephony, it is relatively easy to deploy.
That is not enough to make it a widespread product.
85% of the calls are local and relatively cheap.
More: most calls are on cell phone and VoIP is not a competitor to cell phones, especially when we talk about LOCAL calls.
It will undoubteluy be a mass market product, because it has all the features to be.
But only when most of the people will be on IP.
Then the local call will be completely FREE, the user won't have the need to have two lines.
Now the question is: Who will make that possible?
The easiest and fastest way should be the Telecoms who are also Internet providers.
But would they be so stupid to loose the huge income of their voice line?
There is a big hole in the Market and it needs to be filled.
There is a huge potential out there, a lot of good unemployed people in search of a job.
Will they be intelligent enough to see the opportunity, or will they let the market in the hands of a new and old monopoly?
The Internet is a Revolution, but only if the people understand it.
Free lancers, intelligent people of today, let's all fight for a new generation where the power is no more in the hands of a few...
Patrizia
Let's say: It is not yet a mass market product.
Why?
It is true, it has all the features to be, it is a cheap way to make calls, much cheaper than the actual telephony, it is relatively easy to deploy.
That is not enough to make it a widespread product.
85% of the calls are local and relatively cheap.
More: most calls are on cell phone and VoIP is not a competitor to cell phones, especially when we talk about LOCAL calls.
It will undoubteluy be a mass market product, because it has all the features to be.
But only when most of the people will be on IP.
Then the local call will be completely FREE, the user won't have the need to have two lines.
Now the question is: Who will make that possible?
The easiest and fastest way should be the Telecoms who are also Internet providers.
But would they be so stupid to loose the huge income of their voice line?
There is a big hole in the Market and it needs to be filled.
There is a huge potential out there, a lot of good unemployed people in search of a job.
Will they be intelligent enough to see the opportunity, or will they let the market in the hands of a new and old monopoly?
The Internet is a Revolution, but only if the people understand it.
Free lancers, intelligent people of today, let's all fight for a new generation where the power is no more in the hands of a few...
Patrizia
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