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ANY OTHER UNAUTHORIZED RE-DISTRIBUTION IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this Issue: - Heard on the Net - IP Telephony Jobs - 2003: The Year of Consumer Communications - NTIA Meeting in WDC on Feb 12th - The Free World Dialup Challenge - Spring 2003 VON: Early Bird Discount ends February 14th - My favorite Gadget - the IVL TVStar - Call for Speakers: VON Europe 2003 - Supernova 2002 Recap - Kids on the Net: Winter 2003 Update - pulver.com 2003 Conference Calendar ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Heard on the Net 2002 was the year of survival for many, including those inside of the IP Communications Industry. During the first couple of weeks of 2003 it seems that the buzz is back in VoIP and that 2003 in fact will be the year of Consumer Communications. Things are already looking up, and I'm feeling positive going into this year. This also looks like the year when the Venture Community will be once again looking at the IP Communications space and consider investing again. The NTIA will be holding a public meeting about VoIP on February 12th in Washington DC that is open to the public and information about the meeting is included below. If you have a chance to attend, please make an effort. Similar to the NTIA VoIP workshop back in September, 1998, I believe this meeting will help give the VoIP industry in the US more visability and it will be interesting to watch and listen to how some of the better known telecom lobbyists approach the meeting. I've heard that the Department of Commerce recently deployed VoIP so I hope we will be in friendly territory. :-) - Companies on the Move: NextVerse Networks and ECI Telecom's NGT subsidiary recently merged, creating Veraz Networks. Veraz Networks received US$ 30 million in recent funding. Nokia Venture Partners recently invested US$ 4 million in Network Inference. Intel recently invested in TeleSym. - People on the Move: Graham Seabrook recently left Ridgeway Systems & Software. Chuck Grandgent has recently left Octave Communications. Brian Allain recently joined Ranch Networks as President. Andre Moskal recently left SS8 Networks and joined Blueslice Networks as CTO. Alan Waldrip recently joined Global IP Sound as the Vice President of Sales, Eastern Region. Ron Bleakney recently joined Brooktrout as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. Paul Bernard recently joined Pelago as Vice President of Finance and Operations. Thomas White recently left Cox Communications and joined Comcast as Vice President - Voice Services Marketing. 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 your companies have job openings during 2003, please consider posting them with pulver.com. please email: jobs@pulver.com for job posting information. Recent job postings (as of January 15, 2003): - Sr. Sales Engineer - SS8 Networks - SIP Developer - pulver.com - Software Project Manager - pulver.com If you are interested in pursuing this position, please visit ( http://pulver.com/jobs ) for full details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2003: The Year of Consumer Communications From the middle of December 2002 thru the beginning of the year, I started to notice the consumer and business press seemed to start caring a lot more about VoIP than just about any other time then perhaps back in 1995 when VocalTec introduced the Internet Phone. These days, the stories are about Voice over Broadband, rather than PC to PC telephony, and while members of our community have discussed the vision of what is doable and what is possible at the VON conferences over the years, it's nice to see that some people have finally started to take notice about our collective efforts. For those of you who didn't read the story in last Monday's New York Times, "Phone Calling Over Internet Is Attracting More Interest" (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/technology/06VOIC.html ) please take a look. Just about all of the companies referenced will be at Spring VON and I thought the story provided good coverage of the entire VoIP industry. There have also been related essays such as Clay Shirky's "Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry" see: ( http://shirky.com/writings/zapmail.html ) which reiterated one of my points from my Spring 2001 VON Industry Perspective back in Phoenix. I also enjoyed reading Bob Frankston's "VoIP is a simple idea and simply works" see: (http://www.satn.org/archive/2003_01_05_archive.html#90150387) as well as the "SIP is HIP" story recently published on Light Reading. (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=26627). I just think it is refreshing to see the renewed interest that our community is starting to get. While 2002 was the year of survival, it was also the year that the seeds were planted for the communications renaissance which is slowly unfolding. Just for the record, I never did say that any year would be the year of SIP. Looking at my notes, and after reviewing past issues of The Pulver Report, my recounting of the recent history of the VoIP Industry is that when it comes to naming the "year of:" the following is how I have reported it since 1996: 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 the Softswitch 2001 - year VoIP became part of the establishment 2002 - year of Survival 2003 - year of Consumer Communications Once might argue that 2003 should be called the year VoIP happened in the Enterprise. And I'm sure there are lots of other things that are also happening in parallel that also can warrant the attention. SIP is happening. H.323 is happening. MGCP and other IP protocols are also happening. This industry survivals and grows because "in the end the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one." (stolen from Star Trek but it felt right.) It has been an interesting ride watching how the IP Telephony disrupted traditional telecom and how it now is morphing into the enterprise and into our homes. I welcome the attention that our industry rightfully is getting and look forward to watching 2003 be the year for the renaissance for the industry. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NTIA Meeting in WDC on Feb 12th The NTIA will be hosting a meeting about VoIP on February 12th in Washington, DC. I've been invited to be on one of the panels and it looks like it will be a very good event. NITA MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT ( http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/2003/voip01092003.htm ) Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Roundtable Wednesday, February 12, 2003, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. U.S. Department of Commerce 1401 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Room 4830 Washington, D.C. (Entrance on 14th Street between Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues, NW) The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will host an afternoon roundtable on Wednesday, February 12th to discuss Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the convergence of the Internet and the public switched telephone network. The roundtable will include an overview of VoIP technology, including a brief demonstration of the Commerce Department's new VoIP telephone system. The overview will be followed by two panels of leading experts addressing the VoIP marketplace and the policy and regulatory implications of VoIP. The discussions will be moderated by Nancy J. Victory, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, and by the NTIA staff. The roundtable will be webcast over the Internet. Additional information about the roundtable and the webcast is available on the NTIA home page at: www.ntia.doc.gov. The roundtable will be open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis and space is limited. To facilitate entry to the Department of Commerce building, please have photo identification available and/or a U.S. Government building pass, if applicable, and plan to arrive at least one half hour ahead of the session. The roundtable is physically accessible to people with disabilities. Any member of the public wishing to attend and requiring special services, such as sign language interpretation or other ancillary aids should contact Jennifer Guy at 202-482-5836 or at jguy@ntia.doc.gov. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Free World Dialup Challenge Since the quiet launch of Free World Dialup (FWD) back in November, the FWD User Community has grown to about 5,500 as of January 14th. What didn't hit me until after launching Free World Dialup was how great international Internet Telephony over broadband can sound in 2003. While I would like to say its "CD Quality" it is at least "FM Stereo Quality." During the past seven years I can appreciate that many people don't associate VoIP with great quality and have even less expectations for a free service that runs over the public internet. All I can say is that if you still think that Internet Telephony "sucks", you haven't tried Free World Dialup using broadband in 2003. Today FWD supports a variety of SIP clients, including: Windows Messenger (4.6/4.7), SJphone, Cisco 7960, Cisco ATA-186 and a growing list of other popular clients. When you have a chance, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/fwd ) and sign up for an FWD account. If you need any help getting started with FWD, you can feel free to email me or look for me on-line. My .NET accountID is: jeff@pulver.com so feel free to add me to your buddy list and I'd be happy to help/chat when possible. Help is also available from the FWD Community. You can view the archives of the FWD Mailing List at: ( http://listserv.pulver.com/archives/fwd.html ) then decide to subscribe if you would like to. As a free service, besides getting a free FWD number, depending upon your endpoint, you also get free CallerID and free Call waiting. There is also a community conference bridge and we are exploring the idea of offering free voice mail. I'm currently looking for friends in the industry to donate a SIP based service creation environment to our NOC so that the FWD community can start to experiment with the creation of what may help define what the "cool new services" for IP Communications really are. "The Free World Dialup Challenge" for the readers of the Pulver Report is to give Free World Dialup a try and give Internet Telephony a second chance...and let me know about your experiences. 2003 will be the year that Consumer Communications starts to shine and I appreciate your help in helping to make this happen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spring 2003 VON: Early Bird Discount ends February 14th Spring 2003 VON ( http://www.von.com ) will be taking place March 31 to April 3rd at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA. In the past few weeks I've seen a renewed sense of interest from quite a few people and going into 2003 I've been waiting for the first opportunity to reach out to our community and start spreading the word about Spring 2003 VON. I'm a strong believer that the communications Industry Renaissance is already underway and those who will be contributing to it will be at Spring 2003 VON. In fact, Spring 2003 VON is the event to attend if you are involved in the VoIP industry. Something new that we have implemented at Spring 2003 VON is to introduce a special "Exhibits Only" pricing of US$ 120 (good until Feb 14th) for everyone who would like to visit the exhibit hall and network with us on April 2nd and 3rd. The Spring 2003 VON schedule has been finalized and it is posted to: ( http://pulver.com/von/schedule.html ). The schedule was put together based on the feedback and suggestions of the people who were at Fall 2002 VON together by our observations as to general trends inside of the IP Communications marketplace. Our general session will be about "Business Models for the Next Network" moderated by David Isenberg and Dr. Robert Pepper will be back hosting a FCC "Town Hall" meeting. Please visit the website to review our current sessions and the list of the scheduled Industry Perspectives. To register for Spring 2003 VON, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/von/register.html ). Please register by February 14th if you would like to take advantage of our "Early Bird" pricing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- My favorite Gadget - the IVL TVStar Forget about all those other gifts - if you know anybody who has kids or for that matter anyone who loves to sing, get them the "IVL TVStar". It costs US$ 69.95 and the details are at: ( http://holmes.karaoke.com/itemdetail.lasso?id.item=TVSTAR ). In fact, during my family Thanksgiving dinner and during that day, I wasn't able to take away the microphone from any of the kids after a giving them a quick demo. I also had trouble getting the microphone from my brother-in-law (Farrell) once he saw it as well. This gadget has entertained my family for the past couple of months and I'm exploring the idea of giving it to all our speakers at Spring 2003 as a special speaker's gift. It is one amazing product! What is super cool is that it has a "perfect pitch" technology so that even if you can't sing, when you use the TVStar, you actually sound good. Heck, even I sounded ok. ;-) It comes with two plugs - one which you use with a USB port to download additional song from their website. (it comes loaded with 50 starter songs) and the other plug is the A/V plug which connects to a TV/Stereo. I ordered this product a few days after reading a Yahoo! news story about it. I bought the product in disbelief and now, well I'm a believer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Speakers - VON Europe 2003 We have just started working on the schedule and sessions for VON Europe 2003 which will be taking place June 9-12 in London. Please feel free to email: