Thoughts from eComm

It's coming to the end of another eComm here in SF.

I've been pretty saturated with the content from the presentations over the last three days, plus chatting to a broad range of people, some familiar friends and some newcomers.

It's difficult to pick out specific highlights, especially as some of the coolest stuff I've heard before. But some of the things that stick in the mind are:

• An endless procession of telecom web API platform providers, all of whom are talking about cool mashups, CEBP and assorted other voice apps. Ribbit, Jaduka (under new CEO-ship of Mr Mashup Thomas Howe), Adhearsion, IfByPhone, Voxeo, Metaswitch and others. All pretty cool, although they still seem to me to be very fixed-voice focused.
• iPhones everywhere. OK, there's huge uptake of them in the US, and they are very cool. But addressing the Apple market is still only a tiny slice of the world mobile phone user base.
• Surprisingly little about handset web runtimes & widgets
• A cool service called TokTok from DiTech Networks, which injects voice commentary as an extra overlay into live phone calls - allowing voice interruptions or whispers while you're on a live call ("Your football team just scored!") etc
• A supercool presentation from Ge Wang of Smule - the company that does the "lighter" app for iPhones. They do really clever things with the audio on the device, which also means they can do apps like the Ocarina flute, for which you blow into the handset microphone
• Rebelvox, which has an interesting "timeshifting" voice technology, which essentially acts as a hybrid between push-to-talk and voice messaging and telephony. This is essentially another form of "non-telephony" VoIPo3G.
• Lots of the usual rhetoric about net neutrality, lobbying on fibre and spectrum etc. It's always worth getting a reminder about how competition just doesn't work in US telecoms - and how much resentment the various carriers seem to be able to garner. Coming from the UK, with copper, cable, fibre, 5 3G operators and 20+ wholesale/unbundled local loop operators I still find it hard to get too exercised by this whole issue. Although I agree with Brough Turner that it would be nice to find a way to push 100Mbit/s to everyone.
• I still find it difficult to get excited - or even vaguely interested - by Twitter. Although I can't justify it yet as it's still growing, I'm enjoying using the term "legacy Twitter" just to annoy the more evangelical enthusiasts. (I also like terms like "legacy IMS" and "tyranny of the SIM card" - religious extremists usually have the least sense of humour about these sorts of things, so deserve to be wound-up occasionally). By next year's eComm, I expect to be able to say Legacy Twitter without the irony.
• A couple of speakers (including Alan Duric from Telio) have shown really cool fixed IP-screenphones for use at home. Someone else showed one from Verizon. I think that these sort of terminals (with integrated web services on a decent-sized screen, and useable videocomms) could well extend the life of the "landline" despite the usual "cutting the cord" rhetoric prevalent this side of the Pond.
• I've seen absolutely nothing new here to suggest that Android will be important, especially in 2009/2010. As before, I think it's foolish to write off Google, but I still can't see the appeal or relevance of the platform to anyone except a few developers excited by the prospect of open source.
• Some good commentary from Google's Washington counsel about net neutrality - "network netrality is about the outcome, not the path". Basically saying it doesn't need extra regulation -pointing out that most broadband providers currently don't mess about with access pipes.
• Fascinating presentation from Cullen Jennings from Cisco about the possibility of network operators limiting the numbers of TCP connections per user, as a sort of back-door way to do traffic and application management.
• The Calliflower platform from Iotum looked highly usable as way to do easy web-based teleconferencing and collaboration. I might actually try this out myself.
• Fonolo's "deep dialling" into IVR systems is still cool (as it was at least year's eComm)
• Interesting discussions & presentations about new approaches to spectrum management - especially extending beyond the "white space" paradigm to a better way of reclaiming and exploiting underused spectrum, even if it is currently licenced to someone. A lot of this seems to revolve around US issues in rural areas that are underserved by fixed broadband. As a native central Londoner I tend to switch off when people start talking about rural connectivity, but I recognise that the US has quite low population density so clearly this is an important topic here.
• Skype announced its free licencing of its wideband codec, which seemed well-received among people I spoke to
• Interesting presentation about "natural interfaces" from Microsoft, plus a great future-looking video, revolving heavily around e-paper, touchscreens, speech input etc.

Technophobes are useful indicators.....

We all know (or are) gadget-lovers and early adopters. They are the people with the coolest devices, playing around with new services and generally enjoying the whole experience of geekery. It's sometimes very tempting to extrapolate from these people to the rest of the market.


To be honest though, often these people are exceptions, not examples. It's sometimes more instructive to watch the behaviour of the laggards and late-adopters.


This post is about a single personal example, so obviously it's not appropriate to assume that it represents a cross-section of the entire marketplace. Nonetheless it's an interesting case study.


I have a friend of mine who is essentially a mobile Luddite. She still uses a three-year old RAZR, on prepay, almost entirely for SMS and the occasional phone call. Doesn't use the (very low res) camera. Hasn't been interested in content, Internet access and certainly not smartphones. Ignores most voicemails. Often is out of battery, call credit, or both. She has derided most phones with QWERTY keypads as being ugly.

She usually tells me off for spending too much time checking email or the Internet on my own phones at inappropriate times.


I sometimes use a question of hers at conferences, to shock attendees (usually themselves "enthusiasts") into realisation of how the real world thinks: "Is Orange better than Vodafone? They have a pretty pink phone & I'm tempted".


It's worth pointing out that from a PC point of view, she's technically savvy. She uses a Mac with software like Mathematica for calculating equations for fluid dynamics, Facebook, Myspace, iTunes and so on.

But until now, phones have been phones. SMS devices, with a secondary voice function.

So I was pretty staggered when she suddenly (a) declared a liking for iPhones, (b) declared a desire for mobile email, and (c) said how impressed she was by the ease of using Google Maps and getting directions on a handset (an iPhone, in particular).

To me, that's more of an indicator of the growing mainstream demand for, and adoption of, smarter devices and mobile applications than any number of enthusiasts.

It's also an indicator that handset vendors and operators seriously need to get their heads around better ways of dealing with prepay subscribers who don't want monthly subscriptions.

Nokia and Skype - the masters at game theory

Various mobile operators are allegedly "furious" that Nokia intends to put some form of Skype client on upcoming devices like the N97.

It's not immediately obvious to me whether it's a full two-way mobile VoIP service intended for use on HSPA, or whether it's an iSkoot-type circuit voice dial-around as seen on various of 3's phones (especially the INQ Skypephones and Facebook device).

Either way, it's clear that Nokia has hit something of a sore spot for the operators.

But although various operators seem to be waving sticks and threatening Nokia on this issue, I reckon it's all bluster.

Because if Nokia was *really* serious about VoIP as an important generator of revenue and traffic, it would have done it itself, not partnered with Skype. The possibility of adding voice into Ovi was something I wrote about over a year ago. An Ovi VoIP client could be perfectly integrated with the device, Nokia could even use SMSCs to create a good off-net SMS. I'd also bet that Nokia could create a really good multi-IMSI experience like Truphone's if it chose.

I reckon that the Finns are really, really good at poker.... or at least the more academic discipline of game theory.

The operators know that Nokia is large enough and skilled enough to "go nuclear" with VoIP if it really wanted. Apart from the devices, its relationship with NSN would help on interop testing and optimisation. And it's large enough to acquire a (struggling) operator with pre-existing roaming deals and number ranges.

I reckon we'll see a bit more grumbling about the Nokia/Skype thing - like we did with Ovi and its SIP VoIP capability and others. Nokia will probably add a "delete option" for the N97. But it will happen elsewhere, and Orange, O2 and co. will start to doubt the wisdom of their N97s being under-specced compared to the ones available elsewhere.

Of course, it's not a surprise that two of the most RCS-friendly operators are the ones with the biggest chip on their shoulders about this. What they don't realise is that Facebook integration on-handset is way more of a threat than Skype when it comes to "ownership". I reckon people would churn VoIP/IM provider (or multi-source) much more easily than social network. It's only the relatively small handful of paying SkypeOut users that's the real threat from a revenue standpoint.