Interoperability is often good – but should not be mandated

Note: this post was first published via my LinkedIn Newsletter. Please subscribe (here) & also join the comment & discussion thread on LI

Context: I'm going to be spending more time on telecom/tech policy & geopolitics over the next few months, spanning UK, US, Europe & Global issues. I'll be sharing opinions & analysis on the politics of 5G & Wi-Fi, spectrum, broadband plans, supply-chain diversity & competition.

Recently, I've seen more calls for governments to demand mandatory interoperability between technology systems (or between vendors) as a regulatory tool. I think this would be a mistake - although incentivising interop can sometimes be a good move for various reasons. This is a fairly long post to explain my thinking, with particular reference to Open RAN and messaging.

Background & history

The telecoms industry has thrived on interoperability. Phone calls work from anywhere to anywhere, while handsets and other devices are tested & certified for proper functioning on standardised networks. Famously, interoperability between different “islands” of SMS led to the creation of a huge market for mobile data services, although that didn't happen overnight in many countries.

Much the same is true in the IT world as well, with everything from email standards to USB connections and Wi-Fi certification proving the point. The web and open APIs make it easier for cloud applications to work together harmoniously.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/rings-wooden-rings-intertwined-100181/

 But not everything valuable is interoperable. It isn't the only approach. Proprietary and vertically-integrated solutions remain important too.

Many social media and communications applications have very limited touch-points with each other. The largest 4G/5G equipment companies don’t allow operator customers to mix-and-match components in their radio systems. Many IT systems remain closed, without public APIs. Consumers can’t choose to subscribe to network connectivity from MNO A, but telephony & SMS from ISP B, and exclusive content belonging to cable company C.

This isn't just a telecom or IT thing. It’s difficult to get different industrial automation systems to work together. An airline can’t buy an airframe from Boeing, but insist that it has avionics from Airbus. The same is true for cars' sub-systems and software.

Tight coupling or vertical integration between different subsystems can enable better overall efficiency, or more fluid consumer experience - but at the cost of creating "islands". Sometimes that's a problem, but sometimes it's actually an advantage.

Well-known examples of interoperability in a narrow market subset can obscure broader use of proprietary systems in a wider domain. Most voice-related applications, beyond traditional "phone calls", do not interoperate by default. You could probably connect a podcast platform to a karaoke app, home voice assistant and a critical-communications push-to-talk system.... but why would you? (This is one reason why I always take care to never treat "voice" and "telephony" synonymously).

Hybrid, competitive markets are optimal

So there is value in interoperable systems, and also in proprietary alternatives and niches. Some sectors gravitate towards openness, such as federation between different email systems. Others may create de-facto proprietary appoaches - which might risk harmful monopolies, or which may be transferred to become open standards (for instance, Adobe's PDF document format).

And even if something is based on theoretically interoperable underpinnings, it might still not interoperate in practice. Most enterprise Private 4G and 5G networks are not connected to public mobile networks, even though they use the same standards.

Interoperability can be both a positive and negative for security. Open and published interfaces can be scrutinised for vulnerabilities, and third-parties can test anything that can be attached to something else. Yet closed systems have fewer entry points – the “attack surface” may be smaller. Having a private technology for a specific purpose – from a military communications infrastructure to a multiplayer gaming network – may make commercial or strategic sense.

In many all areas of technology, we see a natural pendulum swing between openness and proprietary. From open flexibility to closed-system optimisation, and back again. Often there are multiple layers of technology, where the pendulum swings with a different cadence for each. Software-isation of many hardware products means a given system might employ multiple layers at the same time.

 Consider this (incomplete and sometimes overlapping) set of scenarios for interoperability:

• Between products: A device needs to be able to connect to a network, using the right radio frequencies and protocols. Or an electrical plug needs to fit into a standardised socket.
• Within products or solutions (between components): A product or service can be considered to be just a collection of sub-systems. A computer might be able to support different suppliers’ memory chips or disks, using the same sockets. A browser could support multiple ad-blockers. A telco’s virtualised network could support different vendors for certain functions.
• Application-to-application / service-to-service: An application can link to, integrate or federate with another - for instance a reader could share this article on their Twitter feed, or mobile user can roam onto another network, or a bank can share data access with an accounting tool.
• Data portability: Data formats can be common from one system to another, so users can own and move their "state" data and history. This could range from a porting a phone number, to moving uploaded photos from one social platform to another.

There’s also a large and diverse industry dedicated to gluing together things which are not directly interoperable – and acting as important boundaries to enforce security, charging or other functions. Session Border Controllers link different voice systems, with transcoders to translate between different codecs. Gateways link Wi-Fi or Bluetooth IoT devices to fixed or wireless broadband backhaul. Connectors enable different software platforms to work together. Mapping functions will eventually allow 5G network slicing to work across core, transport and radio domains, abstracting the complexities at the boundaries.

Added to this is the entire sphere of systems integration – the practice of connecting disparate systems and components together, to create solutions. While interoperability helps SIs in some ways, it also commoditises some of their business.

Coexistence vs. interoperation

Yet another option for non-interoperable systems is rules for how they can coexist, without damaging each other’s operation. This is seen in unlicensed or shared wireless spectrum bands, to avoid “tragedies of the commons” where interference would jam all the disparate systems. Even licensed bands can be "technology neutral".

Analogous approaches enable the safe coexistence of different types of road users on the same highway - or in the voice/video arena, technologies such as WebRTC which embed "codec negotiation" procedures into the standards.

Arguably, improving software techniques, automation, containerisation and AI will make such interworking and coexistence approaches even easier in future. Such kludginess might not please engineering purists who value “elegance”, but that’s not the way the world works – and certainly shouldn’t be how it’s regulated.

In a healthy and competitive market, customers should be able to choose between open and closed options, understanding the various trade-offs involved, yet be protected from abusive anti-competitive power.

A great example of consumer gains and "generativity" in innovation is that of the Internet itself, which works alongside walled-garden, telco or private-network alternatives to access content and applications.

Customers can have the best of both worlds - accelerated, because of the competitive tensions involved. The only risk is that of monopolies or oligopolies, which requires oversight.

Where does government & regulatory policy fit in this?

This highlights an important and central point: the role of government, and its attitude to technology standards, interoperability and openness. This topic is exemplified by various recent initiatives, ranging from enthusiasm around Open RAN for 5G in the US, UK and elsewhere, to the EU’s growing attempts to force Internet platform businesses to interoperate and enable portability of data or content, as part of its Digital Services Act.

My view is that governments should, in general, let technology markets, vendors and suppliers make their own choices.

It is reasonable that governments often want to frame regulation in ways to protect citizens from monopolists, or risks of harm such as cybersecurity. In general, competition rules are developed across industries, without specific rules about products, unless there is unfair vertical integration and cross-subsidy.

Governments can certainly choose to adopt or even incentivise interoperability for various reasons – but they should not enshrine it in laws as mandatory. If you're a believer in interventionist policies, then incentivising market changes that favour national champions, foster inward investment and increase opportunities can make sense - although others will clearly differ.

(Personally, I think major tranches of intervention and state-aid should only apply to game-changers with huge investment needs - so perhaps for carbon capture technology, or hydrogen-powered aviation).

Open RAN may be incentivised, not mandated

A particular area of focus by many in telecoms is around open radio networks. The O-RAN Alliance and the TIP OpenRan project are at the forefront, with many genuinely impressive innovations and evolutions occurring. Rakuten's deployment is proving to be a beacon - at least for greenfield networks - while others such as Vodafone are using this architectural philosophy for rural coverage improvements.

Governments are increasingly involved as well - seeing a possible way to meet voters' desires for better/cheaper coverage, while also offsetting perceived risks from concentrations of power in a few large integrated vendors. This latter issue has been pushed further into the limelight by Huawei's fall from favour in a number of countries, which then see a challenge from a smaller number of alternative providers - Nokia, Ericsson and in some cases Samsung and NEC or niche providers.

This combination of factors then gets further conflated with industrial policy goals. For instance, if a country is good at creating software but not manufacturing radios, then Open RAN is an opportunity, that might merit some form of R&D stimulus, government-funded testbeds and so on.

So I can see some arguments for incentives - but I would be very wary of a step to enshrine any specific interop requirements into law (or rules for licenses), or for large-scale subsidies or plans for government-run national infrastructure. The world has largely moved to "tech neutral" approaches in areas such as spectrum awards. In the past, governments would mandate certain technologies for certain bands - but that is now generally frowned upon.

No, message apps should not interoperate

Another classic example of undesirable "forced interoperability" is in messaging applications. I've often heard many in the telecoms industry assert that it would be much better if WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, Snap - and of course the mobile industry's own useless RCS standard - could interconnect. Recently, some government and lobbying groups have suggested much the same, especially in Brussels.

Yet this would instantly hobble the best and most unique features of each - how would ephemeral (disappearing) messages work on systems that keep them stored perpetually? How would an encrypted platform interoperate with a non-encrypted platform? How could an invite/accept contact system interwork with a permissive any-to-any platform? How would a phone-number identity system work with a screen-name one?

... and that's before the real unintended consequences kick in, when people realise that their LinkedIn messages now interoperate with Tinder, corporate Slack and telemedicine messaging functions.

That doesn't mean there's never a reason to interoperate between message systems. In particular, if there's an acquisition it can be useful and imporant - imagine if Zoom and Slack merged, for instance. Or a gaming platform's messaging might want users to send invitations on social media. I could see some circumstances (for business) where it might be helpful linking Twitter and LinkedIn - but also others where it would be a disaster (I'm looking at you, Sales Navigator spamming tools).

So again - interoperability should be an option. Not a default. And in this case, I see zero reasons for governments to incentivise.

Conclusion

Interoperability between technology solutions or sub-systems should be possible - but it should not be assumed as a default, nor legislated in areas with high levels of innovation. It risks creating lowest-common denominators which do not align with users' needs or behaviours. Vertical integration often brings benefits, and as long as the upsides and downsides are transparent, users can make informed trade-offs and choices.

Lock-in effects can occur in both interoperable and proprietary systems. I'll be writing more about the concept of path dependence in future.

Regulating or mandating interoperability risks various harms - not just a reduction in innovation and differentiation, but also unexpected and unintended consequences. Many cite the European standardisation of GSM 2G/3G mobile networks as a triumph - yet the US, Korea, Japan, China and others allowed a mix of GSM, CDMA and local oddities such as iDen, WiBro and PHS. No prizes for guessing which parts of the world now lead in 5G, although correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation here.

There's also a big risk from setting precedents that could lead to unintended consequences. Perhaps car manufacturers would be next in line to be forced to have open interfaces for all the electronic systems, impacting many automakers' potential revenues. Politicians need to think more broadly. As a general rule, if someone uses the obsolete term "digital" in the context of interop, they're not thinking much at all.

I've written before about the possible risks to telcos from the very "platform neutrality" concept that many have campaigned for. Do they imagine regulators wouldn't notice that many have their own ambitions to be platform providers too?

In my view, an ideal market is made up of a competitive mix of interoperable and proprietary options. As long as abuses are policed effectively, customers should be able to make their own trade-offs - and their own mistakes.

As always - please comment and discuss this. I'll participate in the discussions as far as possible. If you've found this thought-provoking, please like and share on LinkedIn, Twitter and beyond. And get in touch if I can help you with internal advisory work, or external communications or speaking / keynote needs.

Note: this post was first published via my LinkedIn Newsletter. Please subscribe (here) & also join the comment & discussion thread on LI

#5G #openran #regulation #telecom #mobile #interoperability #competition #messaging #voice #innovation

Thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn's "Digital Democracy Manifesto" launch

(Disclosure / intro for any politics-type people who don't usually read my stuff: I'm a technology & telecoms analyst & consultant. Much of what I do involves forecasting realities of new tech innovations & deployments, part to how the tech industry commercialises its products/services and part to policy and regulation of the Internet & telcos. 

While I'm "neutral" on tech futures aside from wanting to see the "next big cool thing" as fast as realistically possible, I'm not always neutral on policy; for example, I support Net Neutrality as a broad principle. I'm also not a Labour party supporter, and I'm definitely skeptical of Corbyn's ideology, policies and general competence).

This morning I attended the launch of the "Digital Democracy Manifesto" (link) by Jeremy Corbyn, current leader of the UK Labour Party, and associated team members / advisors including Eva Pascoe, a longstanding member of the UK's web establishment (see link here). Although in theory this event was part of the current Labour Party leadership campaign, given the high probability that Corbyn will remain leader it also gives an indication of future direction - and probably forms the basis of the technology bit of the Labour manifesto for the next UK General Election, which will likely be in 2020.

Amusingly, the event was held at a venue called Newspeak House (a "hub for political technologists") the name of which derives from George Orwell's 1984. I'm sure for general tech-inspired activism that has resonance - but perhaps less than ideal for a Corbyn speech given Wikipedia's note that "any form of thought alternative to the party's construct is classified as 'thoughtcrime'". 

I'm definitely guilty of "thoughtcrime" in this post.... starting by highlighting Corbyn's first name-drop of a tech company as fond memories of Amstrad, purveyor of 1980s/90s PCs. Amstrad stands for Alan M Sugar Trading. Mr Sugar's views on Mr Corbyn are somewhat less than reciprocally positive (link). Corbyn's second reference was to Skype - amusing given Pascoe's later rant about Microsoft during the event. I should also point out that the seating space in the venue was limited & some attendees had to stand - something of an irony given recent concerns about train capacity and seat availability.

 

There are 8 areas in the manifesto, which were covered in greater or lesser detail in the event, and which fit to varying degrees with my own coverage. I'm not going to talk about the "open knowledge library" of learning materials, and given that the "people's charter of digital liberties" will be driven by public consultation it's mostly too vague at this point anyway. I'm generally pro-privacy so this sounds a good idea in principle.

The main section I have thoughts on is the first, the "Universal Service Network". This goes considerably beyond current UK policies on broadband, and included a pledge for £25bn state investment in a "public sector backbone" to help deliver high speed broadband and mobile connectivity, everywhere in the UK from inner cities to remote Scottish islands. Not only that, but the manifesto commits Labour to ensuring that access is available "at the same low price without any data transfer cap". 

The relevant part of the speech itself was mostly about "equality" of network coverage. But implied in that statement is not just coverage, but also price controls and - essentially - infinite capacity. Leaving aside the competitive niceties of forcing identical pricing from multiple providers, the "no caps" promise is essentially unattainable, especially coupled to another seeming promise for (hard-ish) Net Neutrality. A reference to South Korea and its enviable broadband infrastructure was fair, but didn't attempt to explain why it is different to the UK (eg urban population density and less planning constraints).

I asked a question about whether Corbyn would be willing to relax planning regulations for cell towers, or rights-of-way for fibre installation, in order to fulfill this desire for ubiquity and unlimited capacity. He didn't answer personally, instead allowing Pascoe to address it. She didn't mention the cell-site problem and instead claimed that FTTH was mostly an unattainable goal (don't tell the Koreans) and that Google was developing wireless technology that could help fix things. 

However, FTTH everywhere (although a popular political topic) wasn't really my point. It was more about being able to put cell-sites everywhere (with fibre backhaul, including to small-cell locations) which is a huge practical constraint and cost for mobile operators, and the ability to put fibre elsewhere for trunk connections - and perhaps financial incentives for doing so.

Someone else asked about ownership, and the relationship with telco networks. Corbyn's answer was vague, but certainly didn't discount the possibility of wanting to re-nationise parts of the infrastructure. Given his recent spat with Richard Branson about trains, I wonder if Virgin Media is in his sights too.

Nobody mentioned spectrum, at any point. Or how the new promises compare to existing UK government efforts to push mobile coverage. Or the questionable "success" of other national broadband infrastructure projects (eg Australia's NBN) or the practical limits of "local access cooperatives", especially when it comes to cellular networks.

Overall, I thought that the network part of the manifesto was pretty weak. Yes, rural areas need better networks, as do train lines. But it's hardly as if this hasn't been a focus in the past. But Labour's team doesn't - at first sight - seem to understand that both coverage and capacity incur costs. It is also unclear in explaining how planning rules and competition might fit with any government assistance. The role of state- or metropolitan-owned networks was not detailed, and the costing sounds ambitious/unrealistic when one considers the need for both remote regions and (presumably) in-building networks, plus vast increments to existing network capacities to satisfy a "no caps" pledge. Also, ongoing operations of any network would raise the cost & future commitment to expenditure much further. I suspect throwing fibre under the bus, in the hope of some future wireless tech alternative would have pleased the 5G lobby, had it actually been mentioned instead of some unspecific wireless innovation by Google. I'm assuming they don't expect Loon balloons over the Highlands any time soon.

The other area I asked a question about was open-source. Although social-media and press comment ahead of the event suggested that Corbyn would insist all "publicly funded" software and hardware be open-source, this was considerably toned down at the event. The outcome was that a future Labour government would have a "bias" towards open-source "where possible", and that government contributors to O-S projects would be be rewarded. 

I inquired how all this would fit with the ubiquity of proprietary software in things the government bought (say software in ambulance engines, x-ray machines... or political parties' campaign-management systems). I also noted the government supports/funds proprietary software through R&D programmes, support for the games industry, encouragement of IoT and so forth. The "where possible it should be open-source" seems like generic IT "activism" rather than analysis.

My takeout was that (like the network bit) none of this has been thought through properly. There seemed to be a general dislike of big (mostly US) software companies like Microsoft, but little awareness of how pervasive software is elsewhere. I'll be interested to see if all the software running the promised "public backbone" network is proposed as open-source too.

Perhaps Corbyn's first move should be to guarantee that all of the Labour Party's own software & hardware moves to open-source first. Judging by proprietary software experience required on its current open jobs (link) & previous ones (link) it's got a long way to go.

By contrast to applauding free software (especially when implemented by government), the manifesto very much wants people to pay for music and other creative output. There were promises to re-write copyright law to ensure that cash flows to the right people in the entertainment space. I got the sense that nobody had really recognised the ever-blurring boundaries between software, hardware, cloud, content, networks and the implied inconsistencies in the various manifesto pledges arising from this.


Other elements of the "digital democracy" pledges were:

- Platform Cooperatives, for which read "nationalised versions of Uber & Airbnb & TaskRabbit", plus pledges that anyone earning "most or some" money from "digital platforms" should be able to unionise and have an employment contract". (It was unclear whether the robots & AIs which would inevitably take larger roles would have the same rights as humans).
- Digital Citizen Passport, for which read "ID cards by the back door, but voluntary opt-in only and with lots of controls for privacy & who gets access to what data, honest!". It's unclear how this fits with the existing Gov.UK Verify project too.
- Community Media Freedom, which is a hotchpotch of things aimed mostly at the media industry, including education programmes for "analysing and making media". I look foward to diplomas in advanced trolling, speaking slots on RT & Iranian news TV, and YouTube/SnapChat editing. More bizarrely, this section also says "Ofcom will protect network neutrality from discrimination between data streams and manipulation of software algorithms for private gain". If generalised, the latter half of that sentence pretty much kills most of the businesses on the planet, given that software algorithms are in everything. (And yes, I know that Neutrality in its strictest sense doesn't necessarily "work", but various principles are realistic to implement, as BEREC has shown today - link)
- Massive Multi-Person Online Deliberation - this is actually potentially cool, with more participation from people in politics via web/apps/whatever to help design legislation. However there are lots of forums for this already (notably Twitter and Facebook) and the key problems are around partisan groupings and abuse/trolling. I'm not too sure about the Orwellian overtones of the this newspeak though: "The National Education Service will enlighten the British electorate with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills of digital citizenship". I'd rather get my practical skills about being a citizen from someone other than the people who want me to vote for them, thanks.

Overall, it was mostly standard "digital engagement & inclusion" waffle you'd expect from politicians - some of which makes sense but is largely happening anyway - plus lots of incoherent digs at private businesses "we hate Microsoft - except for Skype" and "we hate Google - unless it does wireless networks" and "we hate Uber - so we'll do it ourselves". 

There was very little on "proper technology" and little awareness of the realities of networks, software development, IoT, Internet architecture or existing initiatives.The pledges for uncapped and ubiquitous broadband look utterly unrealistic - even with a one-off investment of £25bn.

What was also missing from the event was the presence of anyone else in Labour who actually acts as a shadow minister for telecoms, IT and the so-called "digital" economy. Corbyn uses social media but clearly isn't a technologist himself - so is reliant on the people around him to fill in the details, which is OK in principle. But the other speakers at the event: Pascoe, an associate with a dubious history (link), and someone who runs campaigning for Labour's Momentum supporters' fan-club weren't exactly deep techies either, especially on networking issues. It's all very well addressing the "social" side of the Internet - employment by Uber, musicians' rights and "massive on-line deliberation" but unless it's underpinned with proper understanding of how networks and software and hardware and IoT work, it's just fluff.

WebRTC & Academia / Education

Earlier in December I went to the inaugural meeting of the WebRTC "task force" of the TERENA European academic networking consortium. It's looking to exploit the technology for various research and education use-cases, especially videoconferencing between sites or organisations:

"WebRTC may finally offer a path towards a large-scale, low-cost and easy to use real time communication infrastructure for group conversations across institutional boundaries"

(A quick tour of various over-contrived acronymical names: TERENA is currently being renamed GEANT as it combines with another EU programme, DANTE. Historically DANTE deployed the networks & TERENA worked on "developing, evaluating, testing, integrating and promoting new networking, middleware and application technologies". What do any of these stand for? Don't even ask.....).

It turns out that the research/education community is already a major user of videoconferencing, because it has widely-distributed teams that need to collaborate, constrained travel budgets - and, importantly, it has ample bandwidth through the academic network infrastructure and a good supply of smart, technically-savvy people who can work around clunky UIs or tools. In addition, the links with higher education and medicine bring in various other use-cases like distance learning, interactive webinars and tele- diagnostics.

Plus also, in Europe at least, there are often various requirements for cooperation among multiple international organisations, in order to get research funding for big projects. Given that many don't have budget to fly people to meetings all the time, online collaboration is a priority. Similar issues also occur at national levels, especially in larger countries where it's troublesome to bring teams together physically.

There's a lot of use of "legacy" H323, as well as pockets of Adobe Connect, Microsoft Lync and various other platforms. Particle physics research institution CERN switched from a proprietary platform to Vidyo last year, for one of the world's largest video networks.

However, while room-based video is quite widely used today in universities and other reseach sites, it is seen as expensive in terms of both products/licences and ongoing opex from support staff and software maintenance. As such, its use is often rationed. Conversely, desktop conferencing is hampered by islands of poorly-interoperating UC systems selected by each location independently. There has been very little use of app-embedded video or voice communications.

Enter WebRTC, with a goal of extending both reach and depth of video communications for TERENA/GEANT, by lowering costs and extending to browsers across Europe - and beyond, for some larger projects. In addition, some countries' national research/education networks are looking independently at WebRTC for their own local requirements, which (depending on the structure of education administration & technology provision) may also span higher education and schools.

At this point, it is worth noting that GEANT serves over 10,000 locations and (in theory) up to 50 million people, plus interconnects with other research networks elsewhere in the world - for example, an Australian academic network representative was present at the event. Put together, the global academic networking community is equivalent to a Tier-1 telco in terms of reach, but with some important differences:

• It is mostly publicly-funded, with all the value-for-money considerations that implies
• Each individual body acts as an enterprise, but with certain communications capabilities and services provided by central national / international organisations
• It is mostly fixed-oriented using PCs, rather than mobile (today, at least). Interestingly, a lot of devices use Linux or FreeBSD compared to the market as a whole, which means some applications may not be supported
• There tends to be much greater acceptance of open-source and experimental technologies in production environments - not least because the experiments may be part of the organisations' own raison d'etre.
• Although groups like TERENA refer to "services" they are generally not rated and billed in telco-type fashion, although some network authorities view their members more like "customers".
• Security and privacy is a major concern, but more in an enterprise-style fashion rather than a telco-type approach with SIMs etc.
• There are significant groups of people able to work on new projects - eg open-source - that are usable both internally as well as general web-community projects
• There are no serious competitive concerns - indeed, commercial organisations often work with academia in areas of "technology transfer" or joint projects funded by government research grants
• There is little willingness to do "forklift upgrades" - there will usually need to be interoperability with existing equipment, using gateways etc.

There are already a number of early examples and pilots around WebRTC. The French network RENATER (which hosted the meeting) is enthusastic, while the Norwegian UNINETT organisation turned out in force - and had some of the most advanced ideas about extending WebRTC to the broader education and app-embedded sphere.

The latter is an important consideration - as well as doing existing comms use-cases more cheaply/conveniently, my view is that WebRTC has much broader scope if used in a platform-type approach, with a view to new and unexplored application scenarios.

That said, some representives from certain national networking organisations seemed more sanguine and less enthusiastic - concerned by the lack of standardisation , browser support and interoperability questions. Some of this negativity surprised me a bit, reminding me of conservative, legacy-telco managers unwilling to embrace disruptive technologies until they have already been themselves disrupted. Given that most initial use-cases of WebRTC will start as secondary (eg guest access) and it will likely evolve quickly, this recalcitrance seems ill-advised.

(This perhaps reflect an element in the telco-academic world I've noticed before: although it leads in many areas of basic science and networking, when it comes to the telecoms industry and applications, much of the understanding is via the blurry rearview-mirrors of IMS, 3GPP and other legacy standards processes, rather than the Web. There's an awful lot of nonsense spouted by academics about Net Neutrality as well, albeit mostly from the economics groups who seem to like concepts like two-sided markets despite their inapplicability to broadband).

A couple of products and platforms already seem to be increasingly popular - Jitsi had both a presentation and was mentioned as already used by various groups. Janus is an open-source WebRTC gateway project discussed, while Ericsson Labs attended to talk about its OpenWebRTC stack and newly-opened Bowser browser.

Overall, I think that academia (rather than basic school-level education) is perhaps going to be in the vanguard of WebRTC vertical markets during 2015, along with healthcare and finance. However, it may prove rather harder for commercial vendors and platform providers to access - although there will definitely be some opportunities within some institutions, and also the potential to be exposed early to in-house developments and projects which could well be "transferred" to the broader market. I'm hoping to keep in contact with the GEANT, Uninett, RENATER and other academic WebRTC initiatives during the next year.