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ANY OTHER UNAUTHORIZED RE-DISTRIBUTION IS A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this Issue: - Heard on the Net - People on the Move - Companies on the Move - Pulver Report PARTY: June 5th in Atlanta during Supercomm - Proposal for IPv6 DAY - Interim Approval for ENUM - NEW Name Proposals for the term "IP Centrex" - Recap: Connectivity 2002, May 21-23, Boston Harborside Hyatt - The need for a standard SIP User Interface - Symbol's Patent for Wireless (802.11) VoIP: How did it Happen? - Carl's Corner: Peering Around it. - VON Europe 2002: June 10-13 in Helsinki - pulverMusic: Building Bridges between the Music and Internet Industries - My Kids are CRAZY for CrazyBones - Call for Speakers: June 12th DEADLINE for Fall 2002 VON - pulver.com 2002 Conference Calendar ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ======================== Heard on the Net ======================== People on the Move: - Jonathan Taylor became CEO of Voxeo. - Joe Cyr left CIBC. - Jeffrey Key left Bear Sterns. - John Sternfield is leaving Piper Jaffray. - Bill Rich recently joined Aravox Technologies as CEO. - Ali Kafel left Telica and joined Advanced Fibre Communications as VP, Marketing. - Joe Moussa left Clarent to join Indigo Software as Director of Technical Support, North America. Companies on the Move: - Digiquant recently raised US$ 8 million in additional funding. - Woodside Networks recently raised US$ 4 million in additional funding from Nokia Venture Partners. - NUASIS recently raised US$ 23.5 Million in additional funding led by Mayfield and Dali Hook Partners - inter-touch Holdings Pty recently raised US$ 5.5 million in additional funding. - Siemens sold Unisphere to Juniper Networks in a transaction valued at US$ 750 million. - Comverse acquired Odigo in a deal valued at US$ 20 million. (Please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your position. Please refer to: "People on the Move" in the subject) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pulver Report Party: June 5th in Atlanta during Supercomm To our surprise, over 500 people responded with their party RSVP's. We are looking forward to seeing everyone at our party which is being held in celebration of the 6th year anniversary of the Pulver Report at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, GA on June 5th from 7:00 to 11:00 PM. Readers of The Pulver Report who are over 21 are invited to attend the party. Everyone who attends needs to RSVP in advance in order to be on our party list. Drinks and food will be provided. Our special musical guests, Hearding Cats, is a great cover band I met while in Seattle for Spring 2002 VON. For last minute RSVPs, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/pr-party/rsvp.html ). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Proposal for IPv6 Day While it might be both highly impractical and idealistic to think that we can empower a movement for what hopefully will be known as IPv6 day, for the sake of the future of the internet and for the future viability of IP Communications, the time has come to push for this to happen, and hopefully happen sometime in 2002. Collectivity we should pick a day, at some point in the near and foreseeable future and push everyone to reboot themselves and make it such that from that point forward, IPv6 will be supported on all networks which interact with the public Internet. Some of the issues we face as an industry in traversing NATs and Firewalls and security could be more easily solved when/if this day happens. I'm not sure an act of Congress will make this day happen any faster than getting the collective will of the people behind this action, but we should all be doing everything we can to make sure that IPv6 is supported on the public internet. Thoughts/comments/suggestions?: please email: jeff@pulver.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Interim Approval for ENUM The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) recently announced interim approval for a single domain for ENUM. This means that countries wishing to implement ENUN may now do so. This interim approval is made possible due to cooperation between ITU, IAB and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). As outlined in the ENUM specification document, RFC 2916, sub-domains from a single domain will be delegated after acceptance by the registries according to the existing assignment of country codes in the telephone address space. Information on how the ENUM registration requests will be processed can be found at ( http://www.ripe.net/enum/ ). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - New Name Proposals for the term "IP Centrex" During the past month, I've received a number of suggestions for a new Industry term to replace "IP Centrex", including one plea to keep the name as it is. A friend of mine at a RBOC sent me the following: "I have said the same thing time and time again. To me, IP Centrex is where they pull Centrex features off the Class 5 with GR303 and deliver them to the customer over IP. We've got some of that going on here but the real hanging fruit is, as you say, the new features that make VoIP better than centrex. I think the vendors are a bit guilty of using the term IP Centrex. If we have to relate it to legacy voice stuff I would rather call it IP PBX, or in our cases, Hosted IP PBX. A really cool new name is warranted however. Why don't you have a naming contest?" Hum...maybe we should run a naming contest. :-) The top three suggestions received to date are: - HEARS: "Hosted Enterprise Application and Revenue Services" - HIP: "Hosted IP PBX" - HIP Voice: "Hosted IP PBX Voice Services" If these names inspire you to come up with a new original term, please feel free to share it. If any of these terms hit home with you please let me know that too. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recap: Connectivity 2002, May 21-23, Boston Harborside Hyatt pulver.com hosted a remarkable group of tech and policy visionaries at Connectivity 2002 for three days of discussion about the future of the Internet. The unlikely group arrived in Boston to pool their ideas on no less an challenge than preserving the potential of the Internet as the greatest unifying force in the history of planet earth. The urgency arose from a growing drum beat of threats to innovative uses of the Internet paving a "Road to Serfdom" (http://www.pulver.com/connectivity2002). The first day focused on assessing the connectivity landscape with talks by Bob Frankston, David Reed, Ray Everett-Church, David Isenberg, Sue Ashdown, and Jeff Chester. The assessments were universally bleak with respect to efforts by those seeking to assert control over the Internet from governments seeking to fight terrorism to corporations seeking to preserve their status quo business models. The speakers balanced the bad news with some optimism about the resilience of the Internet and their prescriptions for preserving the Internet. Bob Frankston outlined his proposal for structural separation in telecom to decouple services and transport. The second day focused on building a plan of action. Kevin Werbach outlined an alternative model for telecom regulation that embraced rather fought the Internet architecture. David Weinberger divided the audience into six groups and put them to work devising an elevator pitch for a Senator. Bob DeRosa of American Fiber Systems outlined how they have assembled a business model around enabling Connectivity as a dark fiber vendor. Dave Burstein discussed the factors limiting the potential of DSL as an alternative to cable modems. The third day included presentations from a number of groups already working hard toward a fully connected future. Wendy Seltzer discussed the ChillingEffects project she founded at Harvard to help the people and organizations deal with the proliferation of copyright cease and desist letters. Chris Herot lead a panel that include Don Whiteside of Intel and Jock Gill who got the Whitehouse on the Internet back in 1994. Terry McGarty and Dan Berninger lead a discussion about the role of antitrust enforcement in recovering the balance of power between customers and suppliers. A number of event participants pitched labels for recurrent themes. Bob Frankston advocated that "Connectivity" should replace broadband everywhere it appears. Broadband arises as a solution to an artificial scarcity of connectivity in the local loop. Broadband has no stand alone value where as Connectivity captures the role of the Internet as a vehicle for connecting people. Bob Frankston also suggested "Regulatorium" as an label for the regulatory status quo. Although internally self consistent, the system represents a alternate universe disconnected from the real world. David Reed noted end-to-end transparency keeps options open when "we don't know" what applications the Internet might need to support. "We don't know" works great as answer to just about any question. As another first, the event received lived coverage on a number of web logs. A google search on "Connectivity 2002" will return links to a number of these blogs. Dave Burstein of DSLPrime recorded the conference and promised to make it available via the web soon. The future of the Internet remains uncertain post Connectivity 2002, but the participants appeared unified in their desire to maintain the Internet as a medium for connecting end users. Everyone loses if the Internet turns into centrally controlled content delivery system. If you have any questions or want to get included as pulver.com assembles additional forums on Connectivity, please contact Daniel Berninger - dan@pulver.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The need for a standard SIP User Interface An opportunity exists to get a real discussion going about how the SIP user experience can be made more intuitive. The SIP Industry should begin a discussion about creating a common user interface so that an end user's experience is more predictable and manageable. Unlike the common approach Microsoft and IBM agreed on for their operating systems, this is not as easy as it sounds as we have several different methods to interact with the user including Web pages and DTMF. I believe standardizing is very important because it is one more place where the PSTN signaling has been flawed by the need to support its own legacy. The PSTN switch vendors have been inconsistent with their user interface triggers as one vendor relies on a *, another a #. Sometimes it's the carriers limitations and other times it's the vendors, but the distinction doesn't really matter. If we can agree upon a standard model for end user interaction within the industry, then together we can really take advantage of accelerating adoption. Carl would say that we would minimize feature interaction troubles as well. I am not sure he is right, but I do know that user errors in interacting with one application after being familiar with another would be minimized. The important thing is that we focus on the problem and discover the opportunities to work for the common good. Henry Sinnreich leads the Working Group in the SIP Forum for this purpose, and he is looking to get a good birds of the feather (BOF) discussion going on at VON Europe 2002 about this issue. Carl has offered to moderate and to follow up with additional action items such as scheduling additional meetings as needed. So what is needed? First of all, the answer is your input, at the BOF and also in the discussion. Join the SIP UI mailing list at pulver.com to engage yourself with the rest of a concerned community and from there we will look to engage in the joy of rough consensus so that we can impact the standards. To subscribe to the mailing list, visit: ( http://listserv.pulver.com/archives/sipui.html ) or via email: send email to listserv@listserv.pulver.com with the line "subscribe sipui" in your message body. No subject line is required. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Symbol's Patent for Wireless (802.11) VoIP: How did it Happen? Recently I read the press release posted to: ( http://www.symbol.com/news/pressreleases/pr_wireless_patent.html ) where Symbol announced that it was awarded a patent for "telephonic communications for wireless digital devices using wireless local area networks (LANs)." According to their press release: "The Symbol patent, filed on Jan. 16, 1998, is the system that today adds telephonic capability to 802.11, 802.11b, and 802.11a wireless handsets and mobile computing devices. Such capability allows these devices to access voice messaging features, which are available in wired telephone sets connected to PBX systems. Prior to the invention, telephonic capability and PBX functions like caller-id, call forwarding, call transfer, and call waiting, were not possible on wireless LAN client devices. With the Symbol patent for telephonic communication utilizing a wireless LAN, mobile workers can enjoy enterprise telephony features in the same wireless device also being used to also perform data applications and within building locations where cellular coverage is either too costly to reach or not allowed." Hopefully the Symbol patent only applies to the specific proprietary solutions that Symbol has developed rather than a generic patent for delivering VoIP over wireless networks. Does this mean that people are no longer still free to build and develop 802.11x VoIP applications? I hope not. I would appreciate hearing from some of the Patent attorneys who read the Pulver Report as far as their opinion as to how far reaching the Symbol patent really is. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Carl's Corner: Peering Around it. A friend's comments on my recent "Steer the Peer" column. All forms of communication require some level of state machine and more so in case of real time communications. One can call these stateful servers with whatever fancy names - Softswitch, Feature Servers, Stateful SIP Servers, Gatekeepers, Presence Servers etc. etc. etc. - they all represent stateful communication servers which fulfill some of the basic functions such as : - Mobility & Portability management - Accounting or interface to an Accounting back office system - Debugging & problem resolution tools (Trap & Trace of sessions) - Provide point of mediation for interoperability between multiple domain networks - Meet Regulatory requirements such as wiretapping and emergency calls - Controlled Access to Network hosted Services - Provide transparent switch over of communication under disaster/failure scenarios (increases the complexity of statefulness) - Service aware QOS management - Service aware resilience (Transport network can not always provide this because it is not Service aware.) - Address Resolution & Global/Local Routing based on certain policy (In some cases, this could be stateless, but not always. For example, Presence management makes this stateful.) - Security Management (for example controlling NAT, firewalls in case of VoIP) - and many more.... However, it is not always the case that this stateful communication server is hosted by the public carrier (such as a Nextgen PSTN). Many initial deployments of advanced VoIP service may take place with in the domain of an enterprise network in which case these "stateful Communication Servers" will have to be deployed with in the enterprise network. On the other hand, when some public carriers such as Cable companies, wireless carriers or ISPs create VoIP islands to serve a community of subscribers, the deployment of stateful communication servers will be required in those carriers' networks. As many of these private and public VoIP islands are created, the intermediary carriers facilitating the interconnection of these VoIP islands will also require deployment of stateful communication servers in their part of the network to facilitate billing, routing and other mediation functions. Stateful Communication Servers are also required to connect these VoIP networks to non-VoIP networks such as PSTN. An advantage of SIP emerging as an end-to-end protocol is that it allows vendors to build communication server products that can serve to some extent both private enterprise markets and public carrier markets. However, there will always be some requirements unique to public carrier markets irrespective of the protocol. Protocol is only a small piece of the puzzle. The complexity of the stateful communication server is also proportional to the complexity of the underlying communication : - Larger the community of served subscribers (example employees v/s public), higher the complexity - Tighter the real time requirement (example email v/s voice) , higher the complexity - Higher the resource (such as bandwidth) requirement (example Voice v/s video), higher the complexity - Closer the network is to the end subscriber (access v/s core), higher the complexity - Services such as mobility and service portability will introduce additional layers of complexity - Larger the number of interconnecting domains, higher the complexity There are plenty of reasons why VoIP is a better technology to provide voice communication services, but simplicity is not necessarily one of them (There is always some inherent simplicity that comes free with the advance in underlying fundamental technologies. Faster processors, smaller footprints, better algorithms, new software technology etc. benefit all solutions including VoIP.). - And my reply. My point was that devices were coming into the market that isolated the need for state to an ingress/egress point. I believe that those of us from the circuit switched world still think like the network is a network. We are like SNA, network engineers. We can distribute the network as long as the slave represents its master. All to often I talk about the Network, but when I was a service provider "the" meant "mine". And we had all these people, making sure that "my" network was up and running. Now we no longer have people, and we no longer have a master domain model to work with. As I have stated earlier this is a function of competition, not our technology. Our friends at BCR (www.bcr.com ) associated VoIP with the death of the five 9's, but my experience to date is that we are but a small part. If you will recall, I have commented on billing disputes that are gigantic at the moment. These are all indications of a struggle to cope with a network that is becoming more and more distributed. These new back to back SIP UA solutions strike me as a place where something fuzzy can be applied to solve an end to end issue. I believe this is a better solution to interconnection than ISUP / INAP messages. If carriers / enterprises want to be stateful for the reasons suggested above that is fine. But I am convinced this edge point of interface is probably more useful, because it allows an analysis that I believe allows better isolation between networks. Now in truth, this may not be that valuable. Sprint and MCI have shown how their backbones are great internally. At our recent Developer Conferences, Sprint showed that interconnection with other networks is less than stellar. The real question is will companies deploy resources on interconnection problems, or will a shrug of the shoulders be all that is available. Some friends have suggested that Jeff push the industry for a Network to Network best practice for VoIP. In previous discussions with Ike Elliot, we came up with a gold standard. The gold standard translates into traversing the world at 150 MS (half the distance equates to 12,451 miles or 20,038 kilometers) with one packet loss per million with a large enough network to eliminate jitter (talk about better than five nines). So far as I can tell this isn't unreasonable to access of a facility based network. I would love to get feedback on what a Portal or a CASP would expect backbone wise. I am also open to discussions about PDD, ASR, etc. Can we get a standard in place? What do you think? Send your comments and flames to: carl@pulver.com. - I've got your Number.com Is there a market opportunity for a CLEC whose one asset is the ability to associate a point code to a customer's number? Specifically I am asking if it makes sense for a company to provide a database service for Local Number Portability (LNP). The rationale is as follows. Carriers don't like to work with potential competitors so CASPs and Portals that need telephone numbers stay away from being competitors to their customers by buying from other wholesale carriers. The problem is that if these wholesale carriers go the way of Northpoint and the DSL wholesalers, then we, the CASP, could find the numbers it deployed unavailable. By putting this LNP service in front of the process, an alternate service solution could be put in place. The one issue is making sure the LNP service is self sustaining. Venture Capitalists should feel free to send term sheets to jeff@pulver.com and/or carl@pulver.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VON Europe 2002: June 10-13 in Helsinki VON Europe 2002 ( http://pulver.com/europe2002 ) will be taking place in Helsinki June 10-13. For people involved in the European IP Communications Industry, VON Europe 2002 is the Pan-European event to attend. VON Europe 2002 will prove to be a great event for both business development and for meeting prospective new customers. We will be welcoming a community of service providers, enterprise customers and industry vendors. For a snapshot of the attending companies, please see: ( http://pulver.com/europe2002/whowillattend.html ) Our "final" conference schedule has been posted to: ( http://pulver.com/europe2002/schedule.html ). Registration for the conference is still open. To register, please visit: ( http://pulver.com/europe2002/register.html ). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pulverMusic: Building Bridges between the Music and Internet Industries During the past year I've worked on a number of musical adventures, from starting an Indie music label, RevUp Records ( http://www.revuprecords.com ), the re-launching of Indie focused pulverRadio ( http://www.pulverradio.com ) to co-producing EAT'M 2002 (www.eat-m.com), an event for unsigned artists and music industry executives. My year engaged in the music industry has confirmed many of my suspicions. If common ground can be found such that the people representing the technology and the people representing the labels can find things to agree on, it is my feeling that there is more to agree on than disagree about. But until the US Government gets involved and helps provide the needed bridge toward digital rights and a way for artists to be properly protected and compensated for their intellectual property in such a way which doesn't ban the use of these technologies, the duality of an on-going challenge and threat will continue to exist. When looking at companies/industries which have been disrupted by the Internet, it is hard to ignore the music industry. But different from Telecom, when music industry executives feel the disruption, they don't adopt, they just sue. And with a history rich in building barriers to enabling technologies, it is hard to get really excited dealing with the music industry equivalent of the pre-1996 monopolistic PTT. Looking at both the Telecom Industries and the Music Industries I see a lot of similarities between the Music industry of today and the Telecom Industry of 1996. One of the biggest visible gaps is in the lack of dependence and/or adoption of email and the web amongst "old school" music industry executives as the primary form of business communication. These people still rely on the telephone and fax as the way to do business (who would have known?). This became painfully obvious to us as we performed the back office functions of producing EAT'M. With a little luck, the next generation of music industry executives will help bring the rest of the industry forward in time. This in turn may start a music revolution and/or renaissance. Between now and 2008 a lot of decisions will need to be made in the US which will directly affect the business of music for the foreseeable future. Once the US Congress helps settle the digital rights issues and we know how music copyright and intellectual property rights will be dealt with, look for the music industry to fully embrace the internet. In other words, without the help of Congress, look for the music industry to continue to fight internet led innovations for the fear of lost revenue. Right now, we (anyone different), are the scapegoat for lost revenues and viewed as the enemy. What the RIAA and some music industry executives fail to publicly recognize is that the advent of the internet and digital music does not equate to the fall of the major music labels. The need for music companies to exist will continue even if some of the traditional sales channels are affected along the way. The world has gone digital. Digital radio is on our future. Other digital innovations will follow. The time now should be spent innovating for the future rather than replicating the practices of the past. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - My Kids are Crazy for CrazyBones As far as I can tell, the second graders of 2002 now have their own equivalent of the "The Pet Rock" in the form of tiny pieces of plastic commonly known as CrazyBones ( www.crazybones.com ). I still haven't figured out what the attraction of these pieces of plastic are, but my kids seems to spend hours arranging their CrazyBones, placing them in rows and then flicking them at each other in what seems to be a pretty primitive form of game playing as described in the official CrazyBones guide book. My kids were taken by the craze last month and it only took two more weeks for their elementary school to ban the trading of CrazyBones inside the school grounds. What I find interesting is the viral marketing methods employed by the manufacturer of CrazyBones since they were able to break the code and find the way to market their products to the kids living in the "Always On" generation. Their approach might be a model to follow for other companies which are also trying to market products to a similar age bracket. For now, I will just try to enjoy my sons' game. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Call for Speakers: June 12th deadline for Fall 2002 VON Fall 2002 VON Week ( http://pulver.com/von ) will be taking place October 7-10 in Atlanta. We are always looking for speakers to join us at our next VON conference. There are several places where you can identify your interest in speaking at Fall 2002 VON. - Propose your own Breakout session at Fall 2002 VON - Present at the PSTN/IP Gateway Workshop on October 7th - Present at VON Demo! on October 7th - Present at VON Enterprise Forum on October 7-8th - Nominate someone for a future Industry Perspective. The PSTN/IP Gateway Workshop is the only place where we encourage companies to pitch their products. VON Demo! is where I look for companies to showcase their cool products in person without the need or use of any slideware. The VON Enterprise Forum has expanded to a two-day event. At the VON Enterprise Forum we again will be taking a hard look at IP Communications in the Enterprise, both from the perspective of the vendors supporting the marketplace as well as from the eyes of the enterprise customers who have made the commitment to implement these technologies. I am looking forward to hearing the first hand accounts from Enterprise customers. Please visit: ( http://www.pulver.com/von/speaking.html ) to submit your speaking proposal(s). The deadline for speaking proposals is June 12th. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pulver.com 2002/2003 Conference Calendar ( http://pulver.com/conference ) "Events for the IP Communications Industry" (tm) June 10-13 - VON Europe 2002, Helsinki, Finland ( http://pulver.com/europe2002 ) October 7-10 - Fall 2002 VON Week ( http://pulver.com/von ) October 7-9 - Fall 2002 Location Based Services Summit, Atlanta, GA November 19-21 - Fall 2002 SIP Summit, Las Vegas, NV November 19-21 - Fall 2002 Presence and Instant Messaging, Las Vegas 2003 February 4-6 - 2003 IP Communications Industry Executive Summit, Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, Maui, HI Mar 31-Apr 1 - Spring 2003 VON, San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA September 8-11 - Fall 2003 VON, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are aware of others who would like to receive the Pulver Report, please visit ( http://pulver.com/reports/subscribe.html ). To unsubscribe, please visit ( http://pulver.com/reports/unsubscribe.html ) 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 May 29, 2002 http://pulver.com/reports ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (c) 2002 pulver.com, Inc., All Rights Reserved ========================================================================