VoIP: the right business in the wrong hands
May 28th, 2007Remember: VoIP the Zero billion Euros business?
Sometimes offering the right thing in the wrong way, can produce unsuccessful results.
That is going to happen if the companies who deliver it do not understand the real customers’ needs and the power of this new technology.
They have the wrong approach to it.
They see VoIP as a cheap replacement of the actual telephone service.
They hope in the blooming business of offering something similar for less.
Usually the cheap product means a widespread market.
But it is hardly like that in the specific case of VoIP.
The expensive parts of the telephone service are the international and intercontinental calls.
But those are not usually the need of the mass; the usual people mostly call locally.
This is even more valid for a country like Europe, which is not even a Union like the USA, since its many languages and nations.
We are still not a real Union.
The users of international and intercontinental calls are usually companies, but for them quality and services are still more important than cost in itself.
If VoIP fails to provide what the actual telephone service does, then most of them will just use it as a second line, the “cheap one”.
But VoIP in its own nature is something that not only can offer a very cheap alternative in the case of telephony, but a huge number of services that the usual telephony lines cannot.
That is because its particular structure, see :
http://www.worldonip.com/endtoend.htm
and the fact that we have a “stupid line” and “smart devices” at both ends.
Using VoIP is using a computer directly connected to a phone line, that acts as a computer and a communication center in the same time.
You do not have to dial numbers, you just click on a name on your outlook list and you are immediately connected. You can have conference calls, you can send pictures, you can have video conferences you can do all what your computer can do.
This is the Power of VoIP
http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A//woip.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Nature and Spirit
May 28th, 2007http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A//woip.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Wi-FI, Wi not?
May 28th, 2007Content, content, content.
This is the heart, the brain, the blood and the Internet is the vessels.
Without blood there is no need for veins, without veins there is no humanity, without humanity the world would be different (I still have doubts if better, but this is my humble opinion).
Narrow vessels mean bad circulation as much as narrowband Internet means narrowband future.
Broadband will allow better communications, better downloading, faster streaming and spreading of content.
The next need is broadband at low cost.
DSL doesn’t allow more than a certain limit, Fiber Optic is getting too expensive, especially in rural or semi rural zones.
Wi-FI is the natural evolution of the actual technology and the actual way of living.
Without considering the ubiquity of Wi-Fi that by itself would relegate to oblivion the wired world.
Wasn’t the portable phone the biggest success by far?
I do not want to enter in discussion if it was a good thing or not, also that could be my humble opinion.
The fact is that it was a winner and Wi-Fi is its natural follower.
You need more, the telephone line cannot deliver, let’s look for something else.
Wi-Fi, Wi not?
http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A//woip.blogspot.com/atom.xml
xMax revisited - a Qualcomm employee is critical
May 28th, 2007A month ago I put up a brief post on a company called xG Technology, which generated rather more entertainment and vitriolic comments than I’d anticipated. It’s funny how I can regularly criticise UMA technology or metro-WiFi & still have cordial relationships with Kineto and assorted WiFi mesh vendors and hotspot providers (and their investors), but a relatively off-the-cuff post (which wasn’t even that negative by my standards) could generate a call for me to be “strung up”.
Since then, I’ve had few interesting emails and conversations about xMax. Last night I also had a blog comment added to an old post of mine, referring to a rather searing critique of xMax and one of its underlying patents, from a guy called Phil Karn who works for Qualcomm and who seems to enjoy taking shots at things that seem “to good to be true” - from timeshare sales pitches, through to “free energy” machines. See www.ka9q.net/xmax.html and www.ka9q.net/tristate.html . I’d actually been told about these articles a week ago or so by a 3rd party from the investment community, but didn’t have time to write up a full post or moderate the inevitable stream of comment spam I’m going to get.
Now Mr Karn’s writing style is pretty abrasive about both xG and it’s main technology guy Joe Bobier. I’m not a huge fan of attacking people rather than organisations, but nevertheless, it’s an interesting read. I don’t know enough about either the finer details of RF modulation or information theory to critique his critique, but nothing jumps out at me as being obviously wrong - as far as I can see there’s no major public debate about things like Shannon-Hartley theorem, for example. On the other hand, he does work for Qualcomm and his ka9q site is also accessible directly via http://people.qualcomm.com/karn so there will understandably be people who’ll shout “but he would say that, wouldn’t he? Qualcomm’s scared” so caveat lector.
Anyway, it’s an interesting diversion while the world waits with baited breath to hear what Telefonica Mexico makes of xG’s products in its ongoing trial. Some observers think this might happen soon, but I can’t imagine any service provider making snap judgements, in just a couple of months, about a strategic technology shift without exhaustive & lengthy large-scale trials. On the other hand as it’s billed as a “joint venture” rather than a conventional supplier relationship, it could be that Telefonica is just providing cell sites, masts or backhaul infrastructure as its part of the deal, perhaps letting xG bear more of the financial risks about the radio side and sales/marketing of devices and retail services. Given the early stage of the technology, I could envisage some sort of vendor-financing arrangement being more palatable to CFOs.
I’ve also spoken to the CTO of another operator who’s skeptical but keeping an open mind and watching brief on xMax “If it’s true, then I can’t afford to ignore it”, although he’s wary of the way the technology is being marketed and is also working on WiMAX in any case. No additional news from pioneering xMax customer, Florida ISP Far Reach on their ongoing deployment, either.
Now, some housekeeping notes:
I’m expecting some hatemail on this, just for giving Karn’s views an airing. I guess my old friend Mr Anonymous, who so graciously dispensed his wisdom on my last post, may return. I suspect he is one of the regular bullish posters on this board, who have also been shooting at Karn’s analysis and who specialise in burning heretics, rather than engaging in debate. I think my erstwhile interlocutor is quite possibly the one with the handle “marcsanpedro”, as the syntax & language & style of multiple consecutive posts is similar, plus he refers to me in one instance. If so, I can quite understand why he doesn’t like Google as a research tool. And if he’s who I think he is, he also randomly phoned me last year asking my opinion about xG.
Anyway, I’ve got a busy week ahead, so I’m going to be ruthless with deleting comments from the more rabid xG fans that are offensive rather than factual, as I don’t have time to debate endlessly. It also looks like Blogger now has a “lock comment thread” facility for individual posts, although I hope I won’t have to use it.
If you call a phone a “computer”, do you regulate differently?
May 27th, 2007I was just reading through some document about VoIP regulation, and noticed that in some countries like Canada, the regulators make a distinction between ordinary telephony and “computer to computer” Internet telephony:
“The CRTC will not be regulating private computer -to-computer voice services over the Internet or peer-to-peer (P2P) as these do not connect to the public telephone network which is consistent with previous CRTC decisions not to regulate retail Internet services”
So, if we take Nokia’s current N-series branding at face value and refer to an advanced mobile device as a “multimedia computer”, this presumably has some interesting implications for regulation of mobile VoIP…..
No comments:
Post a Comment