IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

Femtocells the Answer?

There have been some very interesting developments in the wireless world as of late.  Femtocells are basically Access Point Base Stations that permit wireless operators to extend coverage in places where “dead spots” are problematic.  This sounds like a great idea for those that have experienced the issues where a wireless phone call drops due to one moving into an area where coverage is “shady” at best – for instance an elevator or a remote location in a campus or building.  But with this concept, comes some problems that need to be resolved, like E911, Lawful Intercept and other such governmental obligations.  

First note the informal poll below from www.cellcoverege.com - this is a problem the industry wants to address.

Poll: How do DropZones Affect You?

Annoying & inconvenient (36%)

Cannot replace home phone (15%)

Creates a safety gap (13%)

Crimping social life (16%)

Poor reflection on business (14%)

Other (5%)

Femtocells have been designed to use licensed and unlicensed wireless spectrum.  In the licensed scenarios, there are concerns around Interference with the already established towers that provide subscriber access.  There are limits to the number of adjacencies that mean special attention needs to be spent with regards to the placement of the femtocells. This concern stems from marketing such solutions direct to the consumer base, and this means a “willy nilly” approach to spectrum access for subscribers causes confusion with regards to E911 and Lawful Intercept requirements that mobile network operators much meet.

Though femtocells are gaining momentum as an alternative, there are concerns that first need to be addressed before an expectation of widespread use can be realized.

Adam “voiploser” Uzelac

DISCLAIMER: The comments here are mine only. They don’t necessarily reflect intelligence, refined thoughts, or anything that the reader should take too seriously. Should the reader expect a polished thought process in the content addressed here, then a strong dose of medication should be prescribed to address that misconception.

This weekend I read a commentary by PC Magazine’s  editor and Chief Lance Ulanoff “Don’t Give Google 700Mhz”

I posted  a response at their website and I am still bothered by the position he has taken.

“ The position that 700Mhz digital data services may require antennas as broadcast analog TV is totally off base.  An analog broadcast !=  (not equal to) digital data, broadcast TV is just that a broadcast signal without any protocol between the receiver and transmitter, whereas digital data receiver and transmitter have defined protocols that optimize reception given the available data rate e.g. WiFi, GPRS etc …

Some  of the biggest advantages of wireless digital data at 700Mhz is not needing line of site ,  not prone to moisture (water in leaves) and a huge chunk of to be available spectrum.

The position that Verizon, Sprint and ATT know the business and can do better for the American public is weak at best.

“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.”

The FCC’s job is to manage American spectrum for the country , e.g. the people.

When was the last time Verizon, Sprint and ATT acted on behalf of the people?  Checkout your Verizon RZAR and you’ll find out they feature lock Motorola’s features (like local access to Bluetooth to transfer files), whereas T-mobile does not.

Google is acting to further itself , but there’s a difference here.  Google’s advocacy on Open Access to Spectrum is disruptive   and will create innovation in the wireless industry that will benefit the people.

Google’s greatest strength is their  success, their greatest challenge is maturing as a regulatory influencer against the incumbents who have decades of experience on playing the game.”

I had to rewrite the post several times just to get my emotions out.

Google has and will change the wireless industry.  The position they have taken on open access on spectrum will create innovate  environment , which will open the markets to more companies that develop hardware, software or services (content).

The big three will need to be competitive to protect their base, this is no different than the FCC open market position in the 90’s that opened local markets which benefited users with more choices and lowered costs.

Here's the second part of our Virtualization series  and a continuation of Virtualization -  Part 1 – The Abstraction of the Internet.

A computer consists of several key elements that along with software (and firmware) provide useful applications like the browser you are using to read this blog from our web servers.

Here are some of the items that are noteworthy:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) – aka Pentium for you wintel folks, is the heart of the computer and executes instructions (software or firmware) that are programmed by a software engineer.

Input/Output Devices – Provides a method to enter , display or share information from the computer, for example:  Display, keyboard, mouse.

Random Access Memory (RAM) – Is memory that is accessed by the CPU which losses its contents when you remove power.  RAM (Typically) is the fastest memory that a CPU and “read” or “write”.

Disk Drive – Is memory that is also accessed by the CPU which doesn’t lose its contents when you remove power.  Disks are slower than RAM.

Flash Memory – Is like RAM but has the characteristics of a disk drive.

Data Bus – Depending on the CPU (8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit or 64 bits wide) is where the CPU can read or write data from or to the various memory devices,  Input/Output devices.  Each bit is a “1” or “0”.

Address Bus – Also dependent on the CPU , this is where the CPU (using bits) selects the location in memory to read or write data.

Firmware – aka BIOS for wintel folks, is software that is used to “boot” (restart from a known state)  the computer that resides in Flash memory or a Programmable Read Only  Memory (PROM).

Software – eg Office.

Operating System – eg Windows, is a layer of software that abstracts the hardware and controls the overall operation of the computer.

Networks – Are communication systems that allow computers to share information.

Programming Languages – A CPU can only understand binary (“1” or “0” s) for the  instructions it executes.  There are various instructions to read , write, add, multiply, subtract , divide and move data. However, Humans need to abstract the instructions into words to make it easier.  These languages define the way words are used forming a grammer (just like English or Spanish) .  The first form of languages are assembler languages which are specific to a CPU and not portable, the subsequent languages like C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal provided more functionality with Database languages like 3GL, 4GL etc..

A computer can be a main frame, a desktop or your laptop which were confined to a area (room, your desk or your lap).

Advances in networking have provided efficient methods of distributing the CPU from Disks, Input/Output devices. 

Storage Area Networks are clusters of disk drives that are no longer directly connected to the computer using the various buss’s described above. This is a key level of abstraction which has allowed distributed computing to evolve into GRID computing where the software is one place, the CPUs in another and memory in yet another.  Distributed computing provides more efficient use of computing at unparalleled  level of disaster recovery.

Why is this important? 

Computing has and will continue to be the mother of invention for advances not only in the hardware or software but also in the networks that connect everything together like the Internet or also an Enterprise VPN.

More later :

Virtualization – Part 3  - The Abstraction of Applications
Concepts of a Application Programmers Interface (API),  examples and pitfalls for APIs and the abstraction of  Web Services.

Could it be possible?  Now here's a rumor that's worth spreading.  Apple is thinking about reviving the Newton brand.  Russell Shaw, over at ZD-Net is reporting that there might be some truth to this rumor.


Here is part of the article...
Apple Insider’s take in part:

Externally, the multi-touch PDA has been described by sources as an ultra-thin “slate” akin to the iPhone, about 1.5 times the size and sporting an approximate 720×480 high-resolution display that comprises almost the entire surface of the unit. The device is further believed to leverage multi-touch concepts which have yet to gain widespread adoption in Apple’s existing multi-touch products — the iPhone and iPod touch — like drag-and-drop and copy-and-paste."

Stay tuned for more on this one.  All I can say is that Apple might be pushing this limits of what their brand can handle if this is true.

Adam "voiploser" Uzelac

DISCLAIMER: The comments here are mine only. They don't necessarily reflect intelligence, refined thoughts, or anything that the reader should take too seriously. Should the reader expect a polished thought process in the content addressed here, then a strong dose of medication should be prescribed to address that misconception.

7 easy ways to use VoIP

1) Setup a Skype account and get Skype-in/Skype-out.

2) Setup a Gizmo account at SIPphone.

3) Get a Google account

4) Setup yourself with a Grand Central Account(owned by Google)

5) Get a Dual-mode wireless phone.

6) Install Fring on the dual-mode phone.

7) Associate all numbers from Skype, Gizmo, Wireless phone, deskphone, etc to your Grand Central number, and publish your Grand Central Number.

This is what you get from all this:

INBOUND CALLING:  When someone dials your Grand Central number, all the associated numbers in your Grand Central profile will ring simultaneously.  You have your choice which phone to answer with.  You also have the ability to "move" the call or "switch" the call from one device to another associated device.  It's the coolest thing - all you do is press the '*' key and all the phones start ringing again.  You just pick up another phone and hang up on the phone you are moving from.  There are also loads of other features with Grand Central.  It's just great!!!

OUTBOUND CALLING:  The selection device when placing a call to someone else is normally dictated by your location at the time you are making the call.  If you are in a car, then wireless is really all you get due to availability.  If you are in an area that has wifi service that works with your dual-mode phone (like an airport or coffee shop), then Fring is your friend because you can use numerous options.  If you are in the office with your choice, then use the phone or network of your choice.  If I know that I am about to leave the office, I might take the call on my cell.  If I am about to settle in to a marathon of conference calls, then it's desk phone with speaker or head-phones on.

VoIP works and VoIP is mainstream nowadays.

Adam "voiploser" Uzelac

DISCLAIMER: The comments here are mine only. They don't necessarily reflect intelligence, refined thoughts, or anything that the reader should take too seriously. Should the reader expect a polished thought process in the content addressed here, then a strong dose of medication should be prescribed to address that misconception.

OK, so Web Services has been around for some time now.  XML and SOAP have been used as an easy to implement mechanism to serve as an API for distributed applications.  However, only until the last year or so has web services come to the forefront of telecom services, and I believe it will be used as a foundation for many innovative solutions that will be built under the Unified Communications/Integrated Communications umbrella.

VoIP has traditionally been relegated to basic telephony services in the telecom industry, such as VoIP/SIP Trunking and Hosted IP Telephony services.  However, with the advent of Unified Communications (check out the Unified Communications Conference at the Fall VON Show in October), which brings together telephony, messaging, collaboration, data and mobility into an integrated solution, we begin to see services using VoIP as becoming more visual in nature, bringing telephony into web interfaces rather than to phones, and using multiple distributed applications which are blended to create solutions.

Global Crossing has announced that it is providing innovative Unified Communications solutions to the UK Government.  These services will soon be expanded to provide even greater capabilities to the Enterprise, and globalization is a key element of this strategy.

Does this mean IMS?  Not necessarily.  Many solutions in the market have built interoperability through vendor partnerships using SIP from a voice signaling perspective, and Web Services brings another element into the mix which greatly improves interoperability and improves usability.  IMS is not nearly as innovative as Web Services, and certainly not as easily implemented.  However, IMS can be combined with Web Services to anchor control, signaling, and provisioning of multiple applications in a standardized fashion.  My belief is that it will take the industry some time to pull everything together using IMS.

As an example of how web services can be introduced into telephony, clients can be built into web pages using internet API's which use click to call functionality.  In addition, web services can be used in a unified communications "Dashboard" interface where a user can view presence status, conference attendance, manage services through voice portals, and trigger entirely new communications business models.  Two innovating vendors highly leveraging web services in the telecom space are Sylantro and Iperia, which bring call control and management extended to web communications, and provide visual voicemail and unified messaging services as a solution.  Very cool stuff.

Web Services brings easy programming interfaces to industry standard transport (HTTP) to bring innovation to telecom services.  As enterprises become more distributed in nature, with remote offices in multiple countries, their key workers are also becoming more distributed and mobile.  Telecom needs to keep up with these trends and the increading demand for requirements of the changing workplace with real time communications.  This is bringing traditionally separate applications together via Unified Communications, and the "unification" or blending of these distributed applications can use a combination of signaling techniques and web services functions to bring a highly visual element to the solution.

Mesaging is undoubtedly the fasted growing method of e-communication in the industry today, spanning both consumer and enterprise segments.  In the wireless industry alone, the statistics on text messaging volume are staggering.  CTIA's president Steve Largent was quoted as saying that 158 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. alone in 2006, translating to approximately 300,000 per minute, which is almost a 100% growth compared to 2005.  He also notes that consumers can use text messaging to save lives.  Huh?  Well, Amber Alerts is now wireless, so you can receive text message with the Amber Alert information (that is displayed on digital signage) when one occurs, provided you submit your mobile phone number and area zip codes.  BTW, I encourage everyone to sign up for this.  The reason?  We all look at a text message when we receive one, and most of the time we respond to it.  This is a very viral form of communication, and an extremely high margin service; up to 85% in some cases.  Combine this with Instant Messaging, and the transactional volumes far exceed voice by a huge margin.

Aside of the convenience and trendiness aspects of SMS, texting is also very cost effective.  When users are low on their cell phone minutes, they often resort to sending text.  Also, due to excessive roaming costs, sending text messages is a way of avoiding expensive voice roaming and ILD rates from the mobile operators.

Identity-based services are a unique way to bridge communications between the wireless and wireline worlds.  Many innovative service providers are creating offerings which provide a single number (or second line) to the external community, but which allow the subscriber to manage inbound calling to various destinations (mobile, home phone, work phone, etc.).  GrandCentral and TalkPlus are two such providers of this service.  This identity is can be enabled through a VoIP DID-based carrier such as Global Crossing, which provides phone numbers and voice origination and termination capabilities.  Unique solutions like this are rapidly growing in the industry and are likely to continue, bringing voice beyond basic peer to peer dialing.

Another innovative use of identity based services is one where the purpose is to hide the true identity of the called party.  Jangl provides such an application to Match.com which enables dating prospects to communicate with each other without having to know each other's phone number.  Obviously, you don't want to advertise your phone number to what seems to be a decent date but who turns out to be an obsessive nut job.  Again, a powerful use of application-based communication.

Applications such as this can leverage more than just voice.  Text messaging can also be applied just as easy (if not easier) to these identity services, which opens up a powerful enabler and revenue opportunity.  In fact, most users with a mobile phone expect SMS to be a supplementary service, even when using a service such as one of those above.

Text messaging has, and will continue to be a key communication service requirement coupled with voice.  Wireline has some catching up to do, but you can expect some very innovative additions to enable messaging services to continue to be an essential component of the converged services equation.  Expect more from Global Crossing.  Stay tuned.....

The slurpr combines multiple wifi (or in French wee-fee) network access interfaces, and then attempts to concatenate them to provide an aggregate bandwidth.

So this guy meets up with a buddy in Amsterdam and ponders over some drinks about all the open wireless access points in the city.  The next thing you know, one of them actually attempts to build something to take advantage of all the “openness”.  Catch the story here.

 There appears to be some legal ambiguity to these situations though – see how this guy was arrested for lurking on a coffee-shop’s wifi network without buying coffee.  

By using a wardriving device, uncovering open wifi hot-spots to exploit, errr - I mean use, is a favorite pastime for numerous geeks, nerds and/or folks desperate to get an Internet fix. 

But then again - you don't need an automobile to wardrive....

Adam “voiploser” Uzelac

Wow, things really do happen fast and a great example of “internet time”.

Here’s the result of my prediction on March 19th.

Watch out Voice based directory services have just been disrupted and expect Google to be leader in this space.

It looks like momentum is gaining steam heading into the launch - ATT is reporting that they have gotten 1mil inquires.

"While Cingular is not taking advance orders for the iPhone, it set up a section on its Web site inviting visitors to leave their e-mail addresses to receive information about the phone when it is released."

I sure hope that Apples doesn't disappoint!

-Adam