Be afraid said Businessweek (via VoIP Watch)

The big mistake many people make with new technologies, from personal computers to the World Wide Web and, most likely, VOIP, is to compare them with existing ways of doing things, and then–big surprise!–they don’t measure up. Yet already, more than 22 million people, plus 70,000 more every day, think Skype is more than good enough, and no doubt it will get better. What’s more, it offers much more than POTS–such as the ability to know if someone’s available before you call and set up conference calls with a click. Let the so-called experts argue over how many years away the tipping point is. I and 22 million other people already know it’s here.

How true. The greatest mistake most people make is looking at disruptive technologies with the same old lens.

Just a couple of weeks ago, one friend was arguing that WiFi VoIP isn’t ready for mass adoption – it still has many problems like power (handset battery life), WLAN authentication, seamless session handover across base stations, etc etc. You know what? In the famous words of Bill Gates – “it doesn’t matter!”.

It is not how well it compares to the existing technologies; Neither is it about how many problem the new technologies has. It is question if it is good enough and you don’t argue with numbers.

The latest hot news on VoIP is Bellster, a P2P phone service by Jeff Pulver and friends. And it is really hot – just barely a week into the launch, the market is buzzing about it, from Wall Street Journal to CNet and of course, in the blogging world.

Now, I won’t tell you what it is all about – you can read that from Bellster. I am interested what this means for the industry (at least over here).

First, this have been tried before (technically speaking) with less buzz. Back in the early-mid 90s, people are hooking up gateways and helping long-distance companies doing local call termination. The main difference is that the hardware and software to do this is pretty expensive (20k++) back then unlike now which can be done on a 500$ linux box with open source Asterisk. Because it is expensive, it is usually done on commercial scale and thus quickly been shutdown by regulators or become legit IDD players.

Now, while it is technically the same, the difference now is the audience. In this case, it is the end-users who will be doing voice minute sharing among themselves. This pose an interesting debate – can individual who already bought X minutes of voice call share it with their friends?
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Once in a while, I would get call or email from friends who wanted to do a ‘Vonage for Asia’ and ask me what I think. By “Vonage of Asia”, the general idea revolves around an ITSP (IP Telephony Service Provider) providing flat-rate unlimited calls across Asia (or a variant of that).

Well, the first and foremost problem is the lack of harmonization of regulatory framework across Asia. This means licensing, getting phone numbers, negiotate interconnections, implementing emergency services, wiretapping, universal service obligation would be very different across each economy where unlike US or EU. And this does not include the lack of understanding of such new services (many still trying to understand Internet) among the regulators and also the lack of open market¹.

So other then requesting for a licensing, you need to educate the regulators and fight the incumbent rejecting you at the same time (and repeat that for each economy). The latter could also call up and have coffee with the IT/Communication Minister anytime whereas you likely not to enjoy similar privilege.
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Saw this on the newsstand yesterday. Great article about VoIP industry with an excellent review of Jeff Pulver, Vonage and many others! Phone of the Future indeed. I look forward more frontpage news for VoIP this year!

Speaking of VoIP, sometimes I wish we would use IP Telephony for what’s happening today. There were many long distance players who uses VoIP and they called themselves VoIP player too. The technology might be similar but the features and issues are very different.

Unfortunately, when I mention VoIP, most people would immediately associate it with calling card or cheap IDD calls. I always have to start the discussion by making proper definition.

Okay, let me be join the echo chamber regarding the problem with Skype voicemail.

I called a colleague using skype, not knowing he was in another skype session. His Skype Answering Machine picked up and I left a message. First the parties on the call with him heard me. Secondly, I heard them. Both calls were clear as a bell to the others.

No doubt it will be fixed soon :-)

In the last few days, I would use Skype to call home talk to my wife from my hotel. But what’s interesting is that we don’t hang up anymore when we done. We would leave the session on whole night while I go bath, watch tv, sleep while she will be doing her own stuff.

We can always hear each another background noise and when we need each another, we just call out each another. It is as if I am at home, but in a different room. Now, …I need to start travelling with webcam … :-)

Columbia University published a paper title Peer-to-Peer IP Telephony using SIP (by Kundan Singh & Henning Schulzrinne) with some modification to SIP architecture … Neat idea but not that useful.

Today is a local Singapore newspaper. Several VoIP articles published today on Today created quite abit of storm so much so that i can hear it from the far-away land in Amsterdam. Check it out :-)

Is that my PC that’s ringing? by Yew Hock Meng (old friend of mine from LGA).

Taking the shackles off IP telephony by Tan Ming Liang (another friend now with T-System)

VoIP gains traction as quality, reliability and ROI issues are resolved – dunno who…

I have the honour to be mentioned by Jeff Pulver as one of the VoIP bloggers. Thanks Jeff.

I have great admiration for Jeff: continue to evangelise VoIP after so many years and willingness to put a greater cause (VoIP) before his self-interest. His perseveration afterall these years finally paid off and he is definately the most influential figure in VoIP industry right now (quote Leo).

Did I mention I am going to meet Jeff on this trip to New York?

I know I am late…I saw it a couple of days ago but I was too busy to blog it then.

Last week, I was thinking how nice would it be to have some sort of interface to Skype so new applications can be developed on a platform with 12M users (I said something similar for Orkut before). Wala, Skype make my dream comes thru: Skype API ^_^

The second is that FCC granted Vonage petition so that is not subjected to different states regulation, with endorsement from the Congress! Great News! Now, the State just have to figure out how to pay for the basic social obligations like universal service obligations and emergency services…And there is no easy answer here…