The Pulver Report: November 6, 2000
In this Issue:
Heard on the Net
(Please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your
position. Please put: "People on the Move" in the subject of
the email.)
2001 - The year VON becomes the Establishment
During the past few years we have seen the evolution of the VON Industry.
Just to recap our recent history:
1995 - Year of the Hobbyist
1996 - Year of the Client
1997 - Year of the Gateway
1998 - Year of the Gatekeeper
1999 - Year of the Application
2000 - Year of Transition
Looking back at this past year I still feel comfortable with my
November 1999 pronouncement that 2000 would be the "Year of Transition".
While 2000 has also been the year "SIP Happened" and the year Softswitch
technologies became a commodity, looking around the industry, this year
has been a transitional year for many people as the level of churn
observed in the space is the highest it has been to date.
Looking at the current state of the industry and the promise it
represents, it is my belief that 2001 will be known as the year
"VON becomes the Establishment". As this happens, look for
international PTTs which have been slow to adopt an IP strategy
to start to show their true colors and possibly put in place polices
designed to impede the growth of the industry. Another sign will be
the actions of the established telecom equipment companies which
have been disrupted by VON technologies and have failed to establish
a market niche for themselves and their products. Look for more companies
(both service providers and equipment vendors) to continue to break
themselves up in an attempt to be more profitable and competitive
in their respective markets.
On a positive note, for the first time in the history of
telecommunications, the opportunities truly exists for the same
protocol (IP) to run end-to-end between the equipment at the
customer's home, the service provider's office and the equipment
installed at the office premises of the called party. Another
good sign for our future is that 4G wireless is depending on
VON technologies.
As an industry, the time has come to come forward with the
applications which clearly establish the fact that with IP based
solutions it is possible to do things which were never before
practical and/or possible. Anybody in the industry who has developed
a "Cool App" is invited to enter the Cool Apps 2001 Contest at
( http://pulver.com/contest ).
While things are finally happening as promised in the industry, 2001
will also be an exceptionally challenging year for some to survive.
There have been only a few successful IPOs from the VON class of 2000.
Our friends with capital from the VCs communities from Sand Hill Road,
Boston and Wall Street have become more selective on the startups they
fund and the deals which they are entering into. There will be a
noticeable increase in the consolidation within the industry which
will generate a windfall for those involved with Mergers and
Acquisitions work within our space. And, sorry to say, some of
our friends whose path to profitability was too long, will be
leaving the business in 2001.
2001 has the potential to be the breakout year for VON in the
Enterprise.
During 2001, you can expect the "year of transition" to continue
mostly due to the bad projections that some people made 2 and 3 years
ago when they went to their company to fund a project with the
promise of "significant" revenue by the end of 2000. Some have made
their quota. Many have not. Those who are not able to deliver will
find themselves without a budget or job.
During 2001 look for some of the "killer apps" to appear inside
the presence and instant messaging industry. Those who are able
to build bridges between various components of the IP
Communications industry will be best positioned to succeed.
SIP will have a major role in driving application development
outside of our industry and into the hands of anybody and
everybody who wants to write telecom applications which run
over the net.
As the months move forward, look for more people to be changing
jobs, giving up on startups (and their options) and going back
back to the non-startups. Some people will leave the industry.
2000 has given us a protocol détente. Look for 2001 to be the year
that the industry is able to deliver services which take advantage
of a stable multi-protocol future.
ITU Rallies the Old Guard
This past week, the ITU staff began circulating a draft Report
for the Policy Forum that it will hold March 7-9, 2001 in Geneva.
(The text is supposed to be posted on the ITU's website at
http://www.itu.int/iptel , but as of today it is still only
available by email.)
The draft Report shows that the ITU just doesn't get it.
It continues to think that convergence means that the old
regulations should be imposed on new technologies, without
any serious thought given to whether there is any legitimate
need for such regulations. From here, it looks like the only
purpose these regulations would serve is to protect big incumbent
telecom carriers that are afraid of competition and afraid
about stranded investment in their circuit-switched networks.
The Report focuses on concern about VoIP being used to bypass
international accounting rate regimes that are based on the
national monopolies that have been typical of the PSTN world.
For years now, these regimes have hurt consumers and business
development, while unregulated data networks have been home to
tremendous growth and innovation. Sometimes, these accounting
rate regimes masquerade as promoting universal service, but all
they really do is protect incumbents. If governments want to
promote universal service, they should promote competition and
infrastructure development, particularly of IP-based networks,
something VoIP does in spades. These networks don't need
old-fashioned telecom regulation, thank you very much.
What can we do to keep the ITU from rallying the Old Guard to
regulate VoIP and the Internet? We need to stand up and oppose it.
Contact your government representatives, your ISP, your VoIP
provider, or anyone else that should be interested in this issue
and tell them to oppose the ITU's pro-regulatory efforts.
Copy me if you'd like (jeff@pulver.com). If your company has a
stake in this, it should send a representative to the Policy Forum
in March. The VON Coalition (www.von.org) also will be working
on this issue on behalf of the VoIP industry. The Coalition's
counsel can be contacted at bruce.jacobs@shawpittman.com.
Watch out for the ITU/IETF ENUM Alliance
When I learned that the ITU and IETF conspired together with
respect to ENUM and "e164.arpa", I decided to include my name in a
proposal to ICANN for the ".tel" Top Level Domain ("TLD").
I believe the best interests of the IP Communications Industry
will be served if a competitive alternative to "e164.arpa" exists.
I appreciate the fact the ITU has every right to push for the
"e164.arpa" implementation of ENUM services. The "e164.arpa"
implementation clearly delegates control over ENUM services to 240+
national PSTN regulatory entities. Each country is being given the
power to define if, how and when ENUM services will be deployed
within their given country-code under the "e164.arpa" model.
The "e164.arpa" model of delegating control to the existing PSTN
regulatory structure is clearly in the best interests of incumbent
PTT's and the ITU. This said, I don't believe it is clearly in the
best interests of the entire emerging IP Communications industry.
Delegation of control of ENUM services to 240+ national PSTN
regulatory entities under "e164.arpa" in fact may slow down the
deployment of IP Communications services on a global basis.
The emerging IP Communications industry and the IETF will both
benefit from a competitive alternative to the "e164.arpa" implementation
of the
ENUM standard. The emerging industry needs effective competition in this space.
In order to create competition, validation of an alternative TLD is required.
ICANN is the only authority with the power to create effective competition.
The Presence and Availability Management (PAM) Forum has been Formed
The Presence and Availability Management (PAM) Forum has been
established as an independent organization and is ready to
accept industry members. The PAM Forum's mission is to develop and
promote, as an ad-hoc industry standard, a presence and availability
interface specification that will enable software vendors and
service providers to bring personalized, interoperable communications
services to market.
Companies sending completed applications by November 10, 2000 will
be part of the official launch in November, and will help
drive the organizational efforts and direction of the new Forum.
pulver.com is hosting a PAM Forum Overview as part of the
Fall 2000 Presence and Instant Messaging Conference in Santa Clara, CA
on November 28th from 2:15-3:20 PM. This session will be open to
members and nonmembers. After that session, pulver.com will sponsor
a member meeting from 3:30-6:00 PM in the Santa Clara Marriott.
During this members only meeting, we will be doing a lot of
organizational and strategic work for the new Forum.
For more information, please contact Mona Johnson,
email: mona@tech-marketing.com.
My favorite instant messaging client...PINE
While some companies are pushing to get people to use one instant
messaging client over another, I'm willing to come forward and state
that my favorite instant messaging client in my "always on" world
is PINE.
Call me old-fashioned if you want to, but since 1994, the combination of
opening a telnet session and running PINE has served me well.
While readers of The Pulver Report who have grown up in a GUI world
may have a hard time appreciating this, I'm still a big fan of lightweight
ASCII text based environments and simple text based navigation
menus. Heck, I still update the web content of pulver.com using VI.
Developers who have been contaminated with GUIs will have a hard
time visualizing and delivering the lightweight, text based applications
which will be driving adoption of the emerging wireless internet.
Being text based and ubiquitous does mean that I do have a hard time
viewing attachments; then again I'm not able to read any attachments
(yet) with my RIM 950 pager. These days using email, people can send/receive
messages with just about anyone transparently, using any IETF compliant
email client, without regard to any interoperability issues, as compared
to the IM industry where we are all waiting for the adoption of IETF
standards across all IM platforms, which will result in the ability to
send instant messages transparently across all IM clients and service
providers.
By not being dependent on any specific email application, for myself,
accessing email is an ubiquitous experience where I'm able to
check email from any computer in the world that is connected to the net
which is a good thing for an email obsessed person like myself. Receiving an
average of 300+ emails a day can do this to anyone. While my daily
emails contain at least 10% Spam, I end up keeping and archiving about
125 emails a day on average. My email obsession shows itself whenever
I end up checking the logs of my SMTP server to make sure that it is up an
running during periods of time on the weekend when an hour goes by and
I didn't receive any mail.
Being ubiquitous also means that my email is not downloaded to
any specific desktop which gives the added pleasure of not being
effected in the event of computer hardware crash. While friends
at times have lost their personal profiles and email histories, a
server based solution like PINE seems to have its advantages from
time-to-time.
When I'm on-line I sometimes don't want to let my presence be known
so I intentionally don't run one or more of the instant messaging
products on my PC but I rather choose to let my presence be known
by those who receive my emails.
By running PINE inside of a telnet session, when I'm on-line,
whenever somebody emails me, I instantly get notified of the
incoming mail since my inbox is constantly being polled.
(MSN's new Instant Messaging client does a good job of using IM to
notify when new mail is received in your Hotmail account).
During the time of day when I'm on-line from home
(usually 7 am - 9am EST and 9 - 11 pm EST on weekdays and almost all
day on the weekends) people find that I'm pretty fast responding to
email. While the best time to catch me on email is on the weekend,
I find this isn't the case for the majority of people who if they
are "9 to 5ers" during the work day, they carry the same work ethic
over to their email.
For me, email continues to be the number one killer application on
the net and the number one application for IP based communications.
Back in the days when I was a very active Ham Radio operator, I used
to enjoy "following the sun" and communicating with people around
the
world as they woke up, came on-the-air and signals were heard on ten
meters. On the internet, router outages have replaced sunspot cycles
and my PC has replaced my transceiver. But when I'm online there are
many times I find when I'm up late at night (or early in the morning),
I'm able to engage in quasi real-time chats with people in diffrent
time zones using email. I am also able to socialize with people in a
matter that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't being instantly notified
that an email was received.
Look for new versions of the popular email programs to include
complete integrated instant messaging features. One of the big
advantages of instant messaging is the ability to communicate
directly end-to-end. When these new email programs become available,
they will provide an alternative user interface that is designed for
lots of quick, short messages. Maybe the answer I'm looking for is
for software developers to just build a better user interface
for e-mail that's designed to handle message threads better.
Until Instant Messaging is an ubiquitous experience, look for your
email client to continue to be your portal to instant messaging on
the net.
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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
November 6, 2000 http://pulver.com/reports