Signal Quality

The Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee, a subcommmittee formed from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, rejected a net neutrality admendment in a bill that was designed to create a national Internet video franchise. Large telecommunications companies have been strongly lobbying against Congress creating any provisions for net neutrality, as the telecommunications companies feel they should have the right to have a multi-tiered network of services, offering their own services at maximum speed, and charging others service providers to travel over their networks.

With the way the Internet works, a company pays to be connected to the Internet, much the way a consumer does. The telecom proposals, however, would then charge additional money every time a consumer wanted to access the company’s servers — the servers they’re already paying to have connected to the Internet. This is a rather veiled attempt at punishing competitors who have no alternative for Internet connectivity to the consumer. It allows the already deregulated telecom and cable companies to create a wall from which the consumer has no real recourse but to use only the telecom or cable companies’ services, as any competitors would suffer from substandard service or be priced out of business.

What will happen is that more and more service providers such as Google, Microsoft, AOL, Vonage, and anyone with a new and innovative service, will move to another country where the ability to access consumers is not hampered by such stringently anticompetitive regulations. The US consumer will suffer, but as most US consumers don’t fully understand how the Internet works, and how the telecom and cable companies’ service offerings differ from their competitors’, there’s not liable to be a public outcry.

On the bright side, there are other net neutrality bills and amendments up in Congress this session, and there’s still the chance that one will survive, but with the massive lobbying power of the telecom companies and the cable companies, the chances are very slim.

CNN Money reported today that Streamcast Networks, the people who make the Morpheus peer-to-peer file-sharing application, is suing Skype, claiming that Skype uses their technology illegally. I was expecting this, to be honest, when Skype added file-sharing to their ever-so-popular VoIP application.

Skype’s software v2.0 took their sort of walkie-talkie-style IM/VoIP application and added other things like file-sharing, still using the Skype peer-to-peer communications protocol. I expected backlash from that, but I honestly expected it to come in the form of a lawsuit from the RIAA or the MPAA before Streamcast.

I’m eager to see how it plays out. This really underscores the way Skype works by utilising a peer-to-peer framework to pass voice calls, unlike a lot of other VoIP technology, which is direct client to client. This could be a reaction to Skype entering the file-sharing arena or it could be a prelude to Streamcast entering the VoIP arena.

Yahoo, trying to increase the appeal of their PC to PC phone service (which also does PC to regular PSTN phone calls) has added dialin numbers for $2.99 a month in 3 countries (US, UK, and France). Looking over their number selection, it’s pretty limited, with numbers in Paris being the only French numbers available if you’re not a resident of France. There are four or five UK area codes available, and a slew of US area codes (as there always are).

Of course, unlike many services, you’d need to use their Yahoo Messenger for one leg of the call, requiring you do don a headset and boot up the PC. It won’t do much to sway the majority of phone users, but they’re marketing their services toward young people, and it will likely gain more traction there.

The VON Coalition is a nice idea. I’ll start by saying that. The concept of the coalition is a good one — to push the agenda that the government shouldn’t attempt to apply traditional Telco regulations to VoIP companies, and should, whenever absolutely possible, shy away from applying any form of regulation toward VoIP — treating it as just another Internet service.

I agree with this concept wholly and completely, and not just because I run a VoIP company. Were I just the average consumer, I’d still agree with it. It doesn’t make sense to treat VoIP differently from, say, grabbing news off the ‘net, or posting in an online journal.  VoIP is just another method of communication using the Internet, and there shouldn’t be special rules applied to it just because it superficially resembles older technology.  If they made everyone get an Internet Driver’s License because someone likened the Internet to an Information Superhighway, you’d think they were mad.
People are adamantly up in arms whenever anyone mentions charging postage for e-mail, but still they try and apply old telephone regulations toward VoIP.

The VON Coalition should exist. It’s there to lobby on the Federal level to get something accomplished that only the giant Telcos have been able to accomplish before –  getting Congress to listen. That takes money, and lots of it.

I thought, well then, I’ll do my part. I’ll join the coalition and pay membership fees of some sort. Every dollar counts, right?

Not so. I clicked on the application to join, as there is nowhere on the site that says, “To donate to our cause, click here.”  I pan down to the yearly membership fees and oh my GOD!  ‘Small’ companies need only pay a yearly membership fee of $10,000USD. By the Coalition’s definition, a small company is one that makes annual sales of less than $500 million USD.  Medium companies, those making between $500 million and $1 billion USD have annual membership fees of $15,000, and large companies, those making $1 billion or more, have annual membership fees of $25,000.

What about the real small companies? Have they no say? Are we supposed to simply assume that the ideals of the companies making $500 million into the billions are to be the same as those of the smaller companies to whom $10,000 yearly dues might seem a trifle steep? It seems to me as though the VON Coalition, which purports to be protecting people against the lobbying power of the big Telcos are doing so without the representation of anyone but the companies that can likely take care of themselves in such a fight.  Nowhere is an ‘associate membership’ or, as I said, even a place to donate to the cause you may fully believe in. It seems unless you’re an industry giant, the VON Coalition doesn’t much care what you have to say.

I understand that lobbying at the Federal level is an incredibly expensive task, and takes quite a bit of money to accomplish, but why should this just be a Coalition about keeping the rich from losing their money, but not about fostering an open world of technology and communication on the Internet — about protecting the consumer and the businessmen alike?

I was reading an article by CBC news in Canada this morning that struck a rather prophetic chord. Vonage is protesting an additional fee that Shaw Communications has stated it will start charging any customers who use VoIP over one of the Shaw networks. The $10 additional fee for ‘quality of service’ would, Vonage states, amount to a tax on VoIP and would amost certainly pave the way for Shaw Communications to offer its own VoIP services to consumers at more attractive rates.

This is very similar to a hypothetical situation being argued about in the US Congress right now, with the fear that if some sort of net neutrality is not ensured, ISPs would begin to charge competitors to use their services, thereby effectively blocking out competition.  With lines in the US recently deregulated, allowing the big Telcos to charge whatever they want to ISPs who want to have direct access to the consumer, this would create a market in which the Telcos and Cable companies would be the only ISPs able to effectively compete in the market.

AT&Ts recent acquisition of Bellsouth leaves only 2 actual Telcos left in the US with direct access to consumers — AT&T and Verizon. Anyone else who wants to have access to the consumer at home must pay trillions of dollars to create an infrastructure (which, in many states, is not allowed), or has to pay whatever the Telcos want to charge in order to rent access to the lines already in place.

If you add, on top of that, additional charges to run services over those lines to ensure a ‘quality of service’ for the consumer, then it means that one way or another, the consumer is going to have to pay a lot more either to the Telcos or to the service providers, and the number of companies able to compete in such a hostile market will dwindle to almost nothing.

It shall be interesting to see which direction this argument goes in Canada, as it may affect the outcome of the US Congressional hearings.

There was a time not too long ago that SIP peering was going to revolutionise the industry. People would peer with one another and through such peering arrangements, customers would always have a choice, and there would always be interconnectivity, and life would be good.

What happened to this dream? As I look out at the SIP providers out there, fewer and fewer peer with other companies, and those that do only seem to peer when it’s immediately, monetarily advantageous.  There’s no peering for the sake of helping the consumer. It’s peering for the sake of helping the provider.  If there’s not enough of a measurable advantage to peering with a provider, it simply isn’t done.

While sites like SIPBroker.com have enormous numbers of providers, some of which are and some of which aren’t open providers, most other sites don’t even intentionally peer with SIPBroker, and only show up on the site because SIPBroker allows anyone to log in and create a proxy listing for his favourite provider.  Some of those listings work. Some don’t. Some are valid. Some are not.

Free World Dialup has this intricate peering system and this complex form to fill out in order to peer with them. We’ve filled their application out twice and received not even something as simple as a ’sorry, we’re not interested’ response. The same for SIPPhone’s peering application.  And many, many others.  The trick being, of course, that with our 400 customers and our currently limited PSTN connectivity, we don’t have anything to offer that they can leverage for marketing purposes.  When our premium services go online, we may then become more attractive, but chances are we’ll just get lost in the shuffle, requiring us to rely on our own more direct methods of peering, and masking the complexity of our actual peering relationships from the customer with some creative server hacks.
Will peering see a resurgence as more and more VoIP users become active over time, or will the increased VoIP customer base cause companies to follow a more closed scenario, relying on the tried and true telecom methods of making switching to another provider difficult to maintain a customer base? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Time Warner Cable is leading the US ISPs in VoIP subscribers, just behind Vonage (who isn’t an ISP). Apparently, Vonage now has 1.2 million subscribers, and Time Warner Cable has 1.1 million. This represents some massive growth.  By the end of 2005, VoIP usage in the US hit 4.5 million users, with Time Warner Cable and Vonage seeing just about half between the two of them.

Eventually, of course, the number of subscribers will dwindle, but it certainly makes the argument for the Telcos to be pushing their VoIP services harder.

Comcast has been pushing its Digital Voice service pretty heavily now, offering unlimted local and long distance for $39.95/month (plus a string of fees a mile long, including their own fee that’s neither a tax nor actually required for them to charge) + international long distance fees, etc, etc.  With pricing like that, it may not appeal to many people, but most of their customers are going to be pre-existing Comcast subscribers who just want to get away from their phone company and want to do a minimal amount of work researching alternatives.

It is clear, though, that VoIP is growing rapidly in the US, but not nearly as rapidly as it’s growing in Asia or some markets in Europe.  Part of this has to do with some of the regulations the US government is putting on VoIP companies that make it difficult to compete in a market already dominated by only a few giant telecoms and cable providers. A good portion of this, however, has to do with the fact that a majority of people still don’t know what VoIP is and don’t care.

Many companies are marketing VoIP products under different names, such as Comcast’s Digital Voice Home Phone Service, or AT&T’s CallVantage. Verizon’s Voicewing services simply calls itself Broadband Phone Service to compete with Vonage’s marketing penetration as the ‘Broadband Phone Company.’  The distinct absence of the word ‘VoIP’ and the sometimes misleading information makes consumers think they’re just getting a new phone service — like their old one but with better rates. Ask a Comcast Digital Voice subscriber if he wants to use VoIP, and he’s liable to tell you no, that he’s happy with his regular phone service. Time Warner Cable simply calls their service ‘Digital Phone’ with no reference to the technology that drives it anywhere to be found.
This has created a huge explosion in VoIP usage without the least understanding of the differences between VoIP and regular phone service. In fact, it’s this misunderstanding that’s fueling the VoIP expansion, with consumers more interested in cheap rates and a phone that works like a phone than in all the technological possibilities VoIP might have to offer.

The question is, will the bubble burst with the advent of something new or will it just flatten out, with every telecom and cable ISP offering VoIP and only VoIP to consumers, and there being little choice left in the market?

Currently, rates for VoIP services from the ISPs are roughly equivalent to the telco charges that people had been paying in the past, but with enhancements such as free (national) long distance or a dozen or so features included in the package. Will they go down, or will the competition become non-existent, leaving us with just a new expected price for phone service?

Late last night, with much of the team incommunicado, asleep, or moving into new living quarters, two of us launched the IdeaSIP site. http://www.ideasip.com

The service is 100% complete (for now), but the site is somewhat raw and will be added to as the week progresses to make it fully in production. I’m quite pleased with the ability to offer free calling to anyone with a broadband Internet connection (and some people with dialup). With the many people I know living in so many different places across the globe, it’s nice to be able to reach out and ring them without worrying about additional costs.

Give it a shot. Join the forum. Tell us what you think about it. What you like, what you hate, where you think we could improve. The IdeaSIP service is a service for its customers, so we’ll endeavor to make sure they get what they need.

ZDNet recently published an article which discusses how Windows has bumped Unix off the top spot for the most-used OS for servers in 2005. What they fail to mention is that their semantics are completely misleading. They state that Linux ranks third in the list, and that Unix ranks second in the list, with Windows being in the top spot, but what the writer apparently fails to understand is that Linux IS Unix.

This has been similarly misreported throughout, as the IDC report on which it’s based is inherently flawed in that it doesn’t recognise that Linux is actually a Unix variant.

Total Windows revenues were $17.7 billion, whereas total Unix (non-Linux) revenues were $17.5 billion. If you calculate actual revenues of all unix, though (including Linux), it comes to $24.2 billion — far outpacing server revenues from Windows machines.

The original IDC report can be found here.

Michael Powell (former chairman of the FCC, and son of Colin Powell) announced on Monday during a keynote speech for the Silicon Flatirons Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado that he feels Washington is more broken than ever because of brutal partisanship, and the inability of the FCC to leave well enough alone.
He said that numerous times, Congress can’t or doesn’t tackle a communications issue for one reason or another, so the big telecom and cable companies come to the FCC with their complaints, and the FCC is all too eager to start mandating regulations — further complicating often very simple and better left alone issues.

This sort of thing has certainly been hampering new technologies, as many of the FCC members don’t have any personal experience with the technologies about which they mandate. They rely solely on the advice from the loud voices of the big lobbyists (which have a purely vested interest in a particular outcome, as they represent the largest and most ingrained of the telecom, cable, and content companies) to guide them in their decision-making. This ends up killing or severely hampering technology offerings that in any way threaten the business of the big boys.
The FCC needs to know when not to fix things that aren’t actually broken, and to learn not to rely solely on the word of the richest companies for their information.