THE PULVER REPORT: The December 21, 1999 Issue:

Heard on the Net

People on the Move:

During the past month, there continued to be a lot of job shifting within the VON Industry. Most of the people who reported a change of position asked me to wait until January, 2000 to announce their new positions. The next issue of The Pulver Report will include an updated list of people on the move.

Please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your position.
For up-to-date Industry news, please feel free to visit ( http://pulver.com/news ).
If you have news you would like to see posted, please email: editor@pulver.com.

pulver.com's 1999 VON Pioneer Awards
On December 13, 1999 at the Puck Building in New York City, I gave out the first ever set of VON Pioneer awards at a special Black-Tie party I hosted in celebration of pulver.com's 5th Anniversary. About 375 people attended the party, including FCC Chairman William Kennard. About 60% of the people flew in from around the United States. In addition, there were guests from: Canada, China, England, Israel, Norway and Sweden. Pictures from the party will be posted to ( http://pulver.com/party99 ) once they become available.

I founded pulver.com back in December, 1994 and while I wasn't thinking about it at the time, pulver.com was one of the first true "dot com" companies. The past five years feel like they flew by, although so much has changed in the Internet and Telecommunications industry along the way.

Back in 1994/95 when I first become involved in the emerging Internet Telephony industry, my interest and perspective was from somebody who was a Ham radio operator for 20 years. I was first licensed as a ham radio operator back in May, 1975 when I was 12. Those who knew me while I was growing up, know that over the years I grew up on the ham radio. There were many times when I would spend 40-60 hours a week on the radio, talking to people all over the world at just about any hour of the day or night. To me, one of the best things about meeting people on the ham radio is that as soon as the conversation starts, you are on a first name basis with the person you are talking to, whether they are an Ambassador, Teacher, Farmer, Student, US Senator or a 12 year old from Great Neck, NY.

It was on the ham radio that I learned to "do without asking why" and to be available to help out in case of an emergency. As a ham radio operator, I had the opportunity to take advantage of emerging technologies such as packet communication back in 1979 and two way satellite communication in the early 80's. Back in 1995 when I stumbled across CU-SeeMe and Internet Phone from Vocaltec, I felt that I had discovered the Ham Radio equivalent for the computer revolution. My interest in Internet Telephony had nothing to do with free or cheap phone calls. Instead, I saw it as a means to communicate in an environment where router outages replaced sun spots as the reasons for communication outages and where the Net represented an environment that was a sea full of emerging technologies and solutions waiting to be discovered and applied.

The VON Pioneer Awards recognized the efforts of some of those who played key roles in the birth of the Internet telephony industry during 1995 and 1996. Prior to handing out the awards, FCC Chairman Kennard addressed the crowd, embraced the Industry, and left a positive impression that will be remembered by all for quite some time.

The awards were given to: Elon Ganor for his work at VocalTec; Howard Jonas, founder of IDT and Net2Phone; Dan Berninger and Bruce Jacobs, co-founders of the VON Coalition; Jacob Davidson, who co-founded Delta Three, the first commercial NextGen Telco; Joe Rinde of AT&T for his contributions to the VON conferences; Dr. Robert Pepper of the FCC, for his early support of the growing Internet Telephony industry; Joe McMillen and Dennis Specht for their teamwork at Lucent, which was the first established telecommunications equipment vendor to develop and market a commercial PSTN/IP gateway; Jerry Chang, co-founder of Clarent; and Ofer Gneezy, co-founder of iBasis. VocalTec was also recognized for its Internet phone 2.5.1.

Report from the 3rd SIP Bake-off
On December 6-8, 1999, the 3rd SIP Bake-off took place bringing together 26 organizations to test for interoperability using SIP.

The Third SIP Bake-Off, sponsored by Ericsson, was the largest event to date to test for industry interoperability using SIP, with 31 teams from 26 companies and research organizations taking part. Participants tested interoperability of basic call setup and of more advanced features, including security, location and mobility features, call routing services and call center applications. Participants paired up in rounds, and in each round they attempted to execute a suite of tests to determine the level of interoperability.

The highlight of the event was a complex call scenario involving four clients and three servers, each from a different vendor. In this scenario, a caller initiating a call was immediately challenged to authenticate himself to a server. After successfully authenticating, the call was routed through three servers, causing three separate phones to ring at once. After one of the ringing phones was picked up, the proxies exchanged messages causing the other phones to stop ringing. At that point, the two parties were connected and were able to talk to each other and then disconnect.

Any problems that arose during the tests were discussed among the teams to determine whether they were caused by troubles with implementation or by an ambiguity in the specification.

All ambiguities were recorded so they could be clarified in the next version of the SIP specification. Organizations participating in the Third SIP Bake-Off included: 3Com Corporation, 8x8, Agilent Technologies Inc., BroadSoft, Catapult Communications, Cisco Systems, Columbia University, Delta, dynamicsoft, E*Club (Carnegie Mellon University), Ericsson Inc., Helsinki University of Technology, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Indigo, IPCell Technologies, MCI WorldCom, Mediatrix, Mitel Corp, Nortel Networks, Nuera Communications, OZ.COM, Pingtel Corp., Radcom Equipment, Inc., RaveTel, Telogy Networks, and Vovida Networks, Inc.

"This bake-off demonstrated that multi-vendor interoperability for real-world call scenarios is now a reality," said Jonathan Rosenberg, Chief Scientist at dynamicsoft and Co-Author of the SIP specification. "This further validates that SIP is ready for deployment." "It was a great experience to test our implementation with others from different companies and see that, after all....it works!!" said Inmaculada Espigares from Helsinki University of Technology. "We had never seen so many people so happy after hearing a telephone RING!"

Update from pulver.com
The Pulver Report was first launched in August, 1996 with an initial readership of 300 people. During the past year, the international readership of The Pulver Report has grown to over 39,000 readers. A special thanks to everybody who has helped spread the word about the Pulver Report and the resources available at pulver.com.

Readers of The Pulver Report are invited to visit http://streams.pulver.com and participate in our new web based discussion forums. Starting in mid-January, 2000, pulver.com will be hosting scheduled (and moderated) text-chat sessions. We are looking for guests for our text chats. If you would like to be a guest, please let me know and email guest@pulver.com.

Launching in January, 2000 is pulver.com Radio, Inc. ( http://pulverradio.com ). pulver.com Radio will be a 24/7 Internet Rock Radio station playing a mixture of Classic Rock and Alternative Music. In addition, look for 1-2 hours a week of "Internet Talk Radio" mixed into the programming with the "Voice on the Net" radio show.

For those of you not familiar with pulver.com, our "business" is providing Business-to-Business Business Development Services to Businesses involved in emerging Net Technology Sectors. This is evidenced by our proactive activities and the conferences which we run together with the Net-based resources we provide for those looking to do business in a specific space. In addition, we are sometimes able to help people with ideas for business ventures to get funded, and we help others who are looking for help to build out their management teams. We currently receive 5-10 new business plans a month and look forward to assisting more entrepreneurs during 2000.

pulver.com has grown during 1999 and we moved into our new 13,000 sq. ft. office space in Melville, NY. Our move allowed us to launch the Open Test Network ( http://pulver.com/testnetwork ). Special thanks to GTE for providing us the "A" links, to Nortel Networks for committing to provide the STP, and to Ericsson for providing their MD110 switch. Starting in February, 2000 the Open Test Network will qualify as a "real" Lab for IN/SS7/IP Testing and Development, in addition to its current use for promoting Interoperability in the IP Communications space. pulver.com will be the host of a couple of Back-Offs during 2000; companies who are members of the Open Test Network are welcome to contact us and schedule time at our office. As we continue to grow, we have an on-going need to hire staff. Our jobs openings are included with the other industry jobs posted at ( http://pulver.com/jobs )

At our recent 5th Anniversary party, I announced that starting in 2000, pulver.com will be offering the pulver.com VON Scholarship to high school seniors. Details regarding our scholarship program will be available at ( http://pulver.com/scholarship ).

1999 VON Industry Year End Closing Comments
During the past year, the VON Industry has seen tremendous growth and, as evidenced by several stellar IPO's, I'm confident that we will see even more growth next year.

One thing that I'm certain of is that 2000 will be a very exciting year to track.

One issue I'm looking at closely as this year comes to an end remains: "Interoperability"

"Interoperability by 2002?"

Back in December, 1997, I thought that "1998 should be the year that VoIP Standards are implemented, and we start to see the benefits of such standards within the industry." Little did I know how wrong I was. I suppose I was just a little optimistic in 1997.

About a year ago, I wrote the following: "If you ask me what Interoperability means to me, I define it as the act of taking out my New York bank ATM card from my wallet when I arrive in Berlin, Germany, putting it the ATM machine at the airport and getting local currency which is directly debited from my New York bank account and converted at an exchange rate equal to or better than any of the rates offered at the Currency Exchange Tellers at the airport. During the past year, I've been able to use my ATM card in just about every foreign city that I've traveled to."

I stand by what was my reference definition for Interoperability.

Using this definition, we are still not that close to true interoperability in the VON Industry. However, some progress has been made in the past twelve months, especially in the area of SIP. Then again, with the current state of Softswitchs and Call Agents, it seems that it may be a very long time before we see interoperability between Call Agents from competing companies.

While efforts are underway, and there have been positive signs of life in recent months like the demonstrations at the VON conferences, it seems that we are still not close enough to have ubiquitous "plug and play" interoperability with all Softswitches, Call Agents, Gateways and Gatekeepers anytime in 2000. However, I'm not exactly convinced that the lack of interoperability has affected (or will affect) the industry in a negative manner yet.

The choice for protocol "Standards" within the VON Industry continued to grow in 1999. With the ITU standing behind H.323/H.248 and the others supporting SIP, "classic" MGCP and MEGACO, 2000 will be an interesting year to hopefully watch these issues get closer to being solved. In 2000, continue to look to the IETF ( http://www.ietf.org ) as a possible source of protocols to integrate Telephony into the existing suite of Internet Services.

VON Trends
As the VON Industry continued to grow in 1999, it came as little surprise to see the rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions that took place together with the successful VON IPOs.

Strategic Relationships continued to drive the VON Industry in 1999. Look for the trend in Strategic Relationships to continue well into 2000.

Top Twelve 2000 VON Opportunities
The VON industry remains fertile ground for companies and people who can provide solutions. Of course the biggest opportunity is to be acquired or go IPO. The VCs and Industry titans have their wallets open and are looking for companies that can execute. Here are my picks on what are executable opportunities this year.
1. Presence Management and Instant Messaging
2. Softswitches / Call Agents
3. Innovative "Applications"
4. VON Directory Services
5. Development of "the" Lightweight, Protocol Agnostic Client
6. VON Management Tools with QoS capabilities
7. IP based PBXs, NextGen Callcenters and other Enterprise / ASP IP Appliances
8. Last Mile VON Technologies ( GSM/IP, Wireless IP, other)
9. Support of SIP, H.323 MGCP/MEGACO with Firewalls
10. SIP support in IP Telephony Billing Systems
11. NextGen IP based Switches
12. Understanding SS7 / IN Convergence Issues