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ANY OTHER UNAUTHORIZED RE-DISTRIBUTION IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this Issue: - Heard on the Net People on the Move Companies on the Move - IP Telephony Jobs - Positive signs of Life within the IP Communications Industry - Congrats to Sarah Hughes - Bringing the Gold to Great Neck - 2002: The Year of Survival - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Revolution - Watching Visions become Reality: Introduction to the Cellsocket - Spring 2002 VON: Time to book your hotel room - Recap: 2002 IP Communication Industry Executive Summit - The RIAA's attempt to join the Luddite Movement - Jeff's Question: Where do you do your thinking? - Reader feedback on January 2002 Kids on the Net Story - Carl's Corner: Layers upon layers - New: Pulver Report Readers' Mailing List - Web Change Agents: Websites which make Living Easier - Connectivity 2002: Presenting leading Indepedent Internet Commentators - Call for Speakers: VON Europe 2002 and VON Asia 2002 - pulver.com 2002 Conference Calendar ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ======================== Heard on the Net ======================== People on the Move: - Adam Roach left Ericsson and joined dynamicsoft. - Herbert Molina left Network Associates Latin America and joined Sybari Software as Vice President and General Manager. Companies on the Move: After almost a year long drought, the venture markets are starting to open up. A number of companies are in the process of closing new albeit mostly down rounds. Look for announcements over the next 4-6 weeks. - Cedar Point Communications recently raised $19 million in private equity financing. (Please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your position. Please refer to: "People on the Move" in the subject) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IP Telephony Jobs from: ( http://pulver.com/jobs ) As the recovery inside the IP Communications Industry continues, when your company has job opening, please consider posting them with pulver.com. Please email: jobs@pulver.com for job posting information. Recent job postings (as of February 25, 2002): - Software Engineer, iTopia Inc. - Lead Software Engineer, Media Gateway Development, iTopia Inc. - Sales Engineer for VoIP Network, Telverse Communications - Senior Network Technical Support Engineer for VoIP Network, Telverse Communications If you are interested in pursuing any of these positions, please visit ( http://pulver.com/jobs ) for full details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Positive signs of Life within the IP Communications Industry Based on the activity which I've recently observed, I'm seeing signs that a recovery is currently taking place within the IP Communications Industry. Reports of a "radioactive Spring" following this "nuclear Winter" are just false. :-) While my own internal indicators come from the signs of a relatively strong Spring 2002 VON, I believe this will become evident later this year when people realize the level of business which took place in Q1 and Q2 of 2002. Note: The dust was taken off last year's House bill HR 1542 and it is currently slated for vote on February 27th. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Congrats to Sarah Hughes - Bringing the Gold to Great Neck Being a long time Great Neck resident, it was with amazement that I, along with millions of others, watched Sarah Hughes win the gold medal for figure skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was my kids who are in the 2nd grade who first brought my attention to Sarah and I thought it was very cool that an 11th grader who is currently attending my former high school - Great Neck North was competing in this year's Olympics. I had no idea she was an honors student or represented such a great role model for our kids. Dylan and Jake have taken Sarah's success pretty much in stride, as it seems they would rather focus on visiting cartoonnetwork.com, visiting Cartoon Orbit and collecting their cToons than on watching figure skating. If I was still 7, I think I would might act the same way, so I can't blame them... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2002: The Year of Survival "go as slow as you need to" "go as fast as you have to" These are the words I heard when I was at an off-road driving school but they seem so relevant with respect to guiding your company in uncertain times. In these times, even those who can execute will be challenged. Nothing is easy and all bets are off. Now is the time for your team to put in that 150% effort to help get things done. And it might be difficult if you are resource challenged due to a recent downsizing. I've heard that for some, sales cycles have been pushed out to 18 months. If this is the case for you, now more than ever you should engage your customers and re-establish your relationships. Now is the time to be there for your customers so they can be there for you when their budgets open up. The biggest challenge may just be keeping your focus and not allow yourself to get distracted. Those who manage to get through this storm should be in great shape once the recovery starts to fully set in. While we may be starting to see positive signs of a recovery happening with business starting to get better, better to focus on s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g each and every dollar now so that your company's survival in 2002 is ensured. If you end up with extra dollars at the end of the year, you can always share them as a special bonus with those responsible for getting you there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Revolution Six years ago, during the winter of 1996 there was a lot of talk about the near term future of the wired telecom industry and the potential threat which VoIP over the public Internet represented. Six years later, while a lot has been accomplished and a lot has changed, my prediction that the nextgen telecos of tomorrow would be the incumbent phone companies of today also came true mostly at the expense of startup CLECs which had the vision but just didn't make it. One of the observations we had at this year's IP Communication Industry Executive Summit in Maui was that most of the vendors were now focusing on selling the equipment to the incumbent LECs and Cable MSOs and that selling products to the Enterprise was an attractive business. In fact, most companies from the IP Communications Industry who didn't wake up one morning and decide that they were now wireless players, have focused on delivering products and services to the Enterprise. And I agree, the Enterprise marketplace represents a great opportunity. In fact this is why at Spring 2002 VON I am introducing our Enterprise Forum. The idea of the forum is to provide a summit enviornment for Enterprise customers to talk about the state of IP Communications within the Enterprise as well as a channel for the vendors and the service providers who serve them. Now where some of the logic starts to fail is the belief that just because somebody wants to become a vendor to a large enterprise it can easily happen. It turns out that it is still access to the channel which is the limiting factor for most of early Enterprise sales. Knowing and focusing on the kind of Enterprise customer also matters. Targeting the Small Medium Enterprise (SME) marketplace is a lot different than selling into the Fortune 500. And yes, size matters. Typically the large Enterprise customers will show similar buying characteristic as some of the ILECs. Big companies buy from big companies. If you are a small company without any connections, good luck, because you are going to need it. On the front of the IP Communications revolution, it is my belief that the best has yet to come and those who have the "Been There Done That" attitude about our space and our industry will be missing the next great wave of opportunity in Enterprise Communication Services. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Watching Visions become Reality: Introduction to the Cellsocket During the summer of 2000 I spent some time observing how much extra money pulver.com was paying the wireless carriers because we didn't manage the breakage of our pre-paid cellular minutes that well. After speaking to my uncle, Fred Pulver, we decided to do something about it and as a result, we formed WHP Wireless, in honor of my late dad, W. Howard Pulver. The other trend which we started to observe was the one of "wireless conversion" where consumers have started to reduce their dependence on POTS circuits for their homes and their conversion of using their cell phone as their primary phone. We thought being in the business of providing the accessories for the wireless conversion revolution would be a good move. Not knowing much about product engineering other than the features/functionality I wanted to see in such a product, I left all of the hard work to my uncle and his team of engineers. While I truly believed in the concept, seeing the product born and become real was a pretty cool reward. The Cellsocket ( http://www.cellsocket.com ) was first introduced at the 2001 CES show and is it's been a fun ride so far. Stay tuned. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spring 2002 VON: Time to book your hotel room If you are planning on attending Spring 2002 VON, now would be a great time to book your hotel room. I'm told that there are just a limited number of hotel rooms available, so if you are planning on attending, please visit: ( http://www.pkghlrss.com/events/6461/6461.html ) sometime soon. You can also take care of your hotel room for VON by contacting Par Avion in Los Angeles at +1.310.590.4702. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recap: 2002 IP Communication Industry Executive Summit This year our annual IP Communication Industry Executive Summit took place in Maui during February 5-7th. I'd like to personally thank everyone who participated on the roundtables and those who contributed during the sessions each day. The warm and fuzzy I got out of the event was that business was happening and that by bringing together a cross-section of industry executives, we all had the opportunity to meet, talk, challenge and strategize about the near-term and long term issues facing our industry. I was told that "if I only knew how good this was I would have started attending years ago." I take the blame for almost intentionally under marketing this event. To get an idea of the scope of this year's presentations, please visit: ( http://slides.pulver.com ) and download the presentations. The 2003 Executive Summit has already been planned and we will be returning to the Ritz-Carlton in Maui during the same week next year. I will be sending out invitations in September so if you would like to be invited, please let me know and I will place you on the invitation list. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The RIAA's attempt to join the Luddite Movement Last week the US Copyright Office published their proposal for Rates and Terms for Statutory License for "Eligible Nonsubscription Services" at ( http://www.loc.gov/copyright/carp/webcasting_rates.html ). The current proposal as it stands would drive most Indie Internet Radio stations to stop playing commercial music and would most likely result in seeing Internet Radio become a fad of the past. Working out the numbers and the scenarios, this would also represent a pretty significant burden on those commercial radio stations which chose to webcast their station on the Internet. This proposal could add $100,000+ a year to the cost of running an Internet radio station, at a time when most stations are already financially challenged and when their business models are already under pressure. If the proposal as stated becomes the law, pulverRadio will most likely need to go to a 24x7 Talk Radio format and the only music we end up playing will be the music of the RevUp Record artists. (Owning your own record label sometimes has it advantages.). We would also consider playing unsigned artists who waive their webcasting royalties. While I appreciate and respect the need to protect the copyright of the music, there has to be a better solution than to effectively penalize those who wish to be early adopters of streaming media technologies and those who invested in creating their own stand alone radio stations. When faced with being disrupted, some carriers may look to regulatory relief. When the music industry faces disruption they just like to sue and put in place penalties which are onerous. I'd like to see some level of compromise such that the fees paid are based on the revenue of the station involved, rather than the fierce fees the copyright office is trying to get put in place. While it might not be fair to suggest that if Hillary Rosen were an advocate on behalf of the farming industry that farmers would still be using horses and not tractors, it certainly feels that way when looking at the ways which the music industry collectively likes to try to avoid embracing new technologies whenever one may emerge which places challenges on the status quo. The same "hands off the Internet" policies that the US Gov't followed in the late 90's should be considered with relation to the way webcasters of today should be treated with regard to payments for webcasting royalties. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jeff's Question: Where do you do your thinking? For me, it seems I do most of my thinking for the day while I'm in the shower. Maybe I come up with an idea when I'm driving to work and on a rare occasion, maybe while I'm supposedly sleeping. I'd appreciate knowing where the readers of the Pulver Report do their best thinking. The reason I mention this is that while I spend the majority of my time either at the office or offsite at events, these commercial environments are not conducive for thinking and this just seems like an oxymoron to me. What am I missing? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reader feedback on January 2002 Kids on the Net Story >Our home jury is still out as to which game system is the best. >While I've chosen XBox, my kids still seem to favor their Gamecube >and the dust continues to grow on the Playstation 2, each product >seems to cater to a different strength. Personally I'm looking forward >to see how each gaming system takes advantage of multiplayer gaming >over IP networks. Greg Costikyan writes: XBox is far better positioned for online play, with built-in networking support and a hard-drive. The importance of the latter may not be immediately obvious, but every massively multiplayer game updates its software frequently to deal with hacker exploits as well as ad new stuff to the game--can't do that unless you have local storage on the client end. Hard drives are less important for "small group" online play (ala Quake or StarCraft), but still useful in terms of updating software to deal with bugs as well as hacker exploits. Also, note that online play almost doesn't exist in Japan, a legacy of the fact that the computer (as opposed to console) gaming market has been small there, as well as high Japanese local phone access charges. Consequently, the Japanese manufacturers have been slow to understand the importance of online play. That's changing quickly, now, largely because they've seen the success of wireless games on Japanese carriers--but neither GameCube nor PS II is particularly well designed to support online play. You really need to buy add-on peripherals--both connectivity and hard-drive--to make either a good online gaming box. A last note: One of the major draws for online play is inter-player communication. Traditionally, consoles lack keyboards, which enable text chat. Microsoft is planning to emphasize broadband connectivity for XBox (unlike Dreamcast, which uses a dialup modem)--and plans to implement VoIP communication for its online console titles (maybe not the first few, but it's part of their roadmap for the future). To my mind, that's key--to make online console play attractive, you EITHER need text OR voice communication, and given that console players generally don't like keyboards, VoIP is the way to go. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Carl's Corner: Layers upon layers In the musical 1776, John Adams sings "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?". While I felt I related to the musical just fine before last year, a CEO friend has said, "Its like everybody, left and forgot to tell me where to go." Telecom is traditionally a laggard in economic recovery. It requires people to have a reason to talk to each other. But the real issue is the market has expanded and taking to someone now can also mean communicating with them with various forms of rich media besides just the PSTN. In fact I know I am in more contact with people now then ever before due to Instant Messaging, e-mail as well my wireless phone...except for the office when I do use a landline. So when I think of the layers of copper, fiber, switches, hubs, routers, servers, and antennas connecting me to the world, I ask two simple questions. "Why should I care?" and "Is this the best I can do?" My question about caring is that the phone network is a mess. My cable operator comes to my house and smudges my clean walls, looks like a extra in one of Redford's prison movies and uses my house as a practice run for his staple gun. The phone guys can't think out of the box, due to all the rules and forms they have to fill out. If customer care is important, it sure does not reveal itself in my experience. Can anyone give me an analysis of taking five more minutes to understand the customer versus the multimillion dollar CRM system? So I believe I am ripe for the taking. So who can do better for me? I think it is a fully IP oriented company. A company that leaves the layers behind when it thinks of how to provide me services. Lambda switching (ooooooooooooh), QoS tagging (aaaaaaaaaaaaaah). Why do I care? I have yet to experience service delivery that was not full of problems. Most of the problems come from a very partitioned world. When the CEO of AT&T was promising the grand unifying theory, I was so there. Yes take my cable, land-line, wireless and make them work together. Don't make me do systems integration on your behalf (if i am the customer, just do it). While some of our friends are running to 3G, I am looking to 802.11x as the technology of choice. Because I believe it can bundle everything I want and start to give me the experience of a complete application. I also think, the Internet has been underhyped. It is the network of the future. Most service providers deliver the Internet but are still stuck in the layers. My ideal carrier or connection is straight IP. It could be that others are right, and as we get through SIPs growing pains, that I will start to use services that don't constantly require self-service. Personally, like SIP, I want to stay at the application layer and not dwell on other issues. Listening to the big pipe carriers, it sounds like we grow past most of the problems. We will see. If anyone wants to join me in my quest, (no pun intended) I will be happy to listen. Anyone? Comments? Please email: carl@pulver.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ New: Pulver Report Readers' Mailing List I just setup a new interactive mailing list for the readers of the Pulver Report. The purpose of this list is to provide community and a forum for discussion for the readers of the Pulver Report. To subscribe to the mailing list, visit: ( http://listserv.pulver.com/archives/pulver-rpt.html ) or via email: send email to listserv@listserv.pulver.com with the line "subscribe pulver-rpt" in your message body. No subject line is required. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Web Change Agents: Websites which make Living Easier Thinking about net based change agents which have had a positive effect on my family living in New York, below is the short list of websites which have had a positive effect on me and my family. I'm sure just about everyone has their own favorite list and I'd appreciate hearing from the Pulver Report readership about this. 1. Priceline priceline.com has become a great tool which is used just about all the time when we host visitors at pulver.com or when we go on the road for short trips and need a hotel room. It turns out that while our local Hilton and Marriott hotels have refused to give us discounted corporate rates because we were not willing to commit to at least 150 room nights a year. By visiting priceline.com we have always been able to help get a room for a business guest for less than half the cost of their published rates. 2. Google My kids have discovered Goggle and use it very effectively as their source for getting answers to their own "How", "What" "where" "why" questions as they pertain to the video games they play or the cartoon characters they like to draw. Where was Google when I had to write term papers for Social studies? 3. eBay My wife may be able to survive a few days off of email but when she gains net access, the first place she visits is eBay. While flea markets may have existed for centuries, having access to worldwide channels at an instant has helped create a marketplace like no other. Just about anything and everything can be found on eBay and is available...for a price. 4. Moviefone I'm now hooked at moviefone.com for their streaming videos of movie previews. But before that I was a frequent user on weekends when I tried to figure out what movie to see and where to see it. Being able to preorder the movie tickets is just an added bonus. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Connectivity 2002: Presenting leading Indepedent Internet Commentators Connectivity 2002 taking place May 21-23 at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston, MA is the first communications industry conference to break "convergence" montra from the last century. Connectivity 2002 arises from the observation that corporate backed Internet "gurus" and independent Internet "gurus" reside on opposite sides of a basic issue - who should control the Internet? Lead by our Program Chair Bob Frankston, Connectivity 2002 provides a forum for the people who think users should remain in control including: Jeff Pulver, David Reed, Dave Farber, Dave Burstein, Ken Rutkowski, Gordon Cook, David Isenberg, Kevin Werbach, Jenny Toomey, Ray Everett-Church, Erik Moeller, and Miles Fidelman. This event is starting to get the feeling of becoming the "Woodstock for Telecom" event. For more information, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/connectivity2002 ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Call for Speakers: VON Europe 2002 and VON Asia 2002 VON Europe 2002 ( http://pulver.com/europe2002 ) will be taking place June 10-13 in Helsinki. VON Asia 2002 ( http://pulver.com/asia2002 ) will be taking place July 22-24 in Hong Kong. We are currently looking for ideas for speakers and content to be discussed at these upcoming events. The deadline for VON Europe submissions is February 28th and for VON Asia is March 28th. Please visit: ( http://pulver.com/speak/submit.html ) to submit your speaking proposal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pulver.com 2002 Conference Calendar ( http://pulver.com/conference ) "Events for the IP Communications Industry" (tm) April 8-11 - Spring 2002 VON, Seattle, WA ( http://pulver.com/von ) April 8th - Spring 2002 VON Enterprise Forum, Seattle, WA ( http://pulver.com/von/vonentforum_vonspr02.html ) April 8-10 - Spring 2002 Location Based Services Summit, Seattle, WA ( http://pulver.com/lbs ) May 7-9 - Spring 2002 SIP Summit, Las Vegas, NV ( http://pulver.com/sip ) May 21-23 - Connectivity 2002 - Boston, MA ( http://pulver.com/connetivity2002 ) May 29-31 - EAT'M 2002, Las Vegas, NV ( http://www.eat-m.com ) June 10-13 - VON Europe 2002, Helsinki, Finland ( http://pulver.com/europe2002 ) June 12-13 - VON Europe Developers Conference 2002 Helsinki, Finland ( http://pulver.com/developers ) June 11-13 - Spring 2002 Presence and Instant Messaging Helsinki, Finland ( http://pulver.com/pim ) July 22-24 - VON Asia 2002, Hong Kong, CHINA ( http://pulver.com/asia2002 ) October 7-10 - Fall 2002 VON, Atlanta, GA October 8-9 - Fall 2002 VON Enterprise Forum, Atanta, GA October 9-11 - Fall 2002 VON Developers Conference, Atlanta, GA October 7-9 - Fall 2002 Location Based Services Summit, Atlanta, GA October 8-10 - Fall 2002 Presence and Instant Messaging, Atlanta, GA November 6-8 - VON Europe Summit 2002 (at N+I Paris), Paris, France November 19-21 - Fall 2002 SIP Summit #, Las Vegas, NV ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are aware of others who would like to receive the Pulver Report, please visit ( http://pulver.com/reports/subscribe.html ). To unsubscribe, please visit ( http://pulver.com/reports/unsubscribe.html ) Please send your comments and feedback regarding this issue of The Pulver Report to: jeff@pulver.com. Jeff Pulver Tel. +1.631.547.0800 The Pulver Report Fax. +1.631.396.3996 February 25, 2002 http://pulver.com/reports ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (c) 2002 pulver.com, Inc., All Rights Reserved ========================================================================