Communications

SIP revolution, massively delayed — but there's hope

The SIP Center asked for an article which I finally wrote the weekend before last.  My article was actually rather negative, but they published it anyway.  Now I'm feeling a little guilty as there is an optimistic note I could have used as my conclusion.  So let me try again...

First let me summarize my problem.  When SIP emerged in 1996, it's support for direct connections from one user to another was extremely compelling.  This was the VoIP protocol which would lead to a complete revolution in communications.  Yes, you might refer to a directory service, but you wouldn't need an operator to make a phone call.  You could do it yourself, directly.  Unfortunately, that revolution never happened.

So far, no revolution

The biggest change in telecommunications in the past 12 years has been the global deployment of three billion mobile phones, all based on conventional circuit-switching and Intelligent Network technology — nothing to do with SIP. And arguably, the most interesting telephony service enhancement, after mobility, came from Skype with its seamless integration of presence, instant messaging, wideband audio and video. But Skype is based on proprietary protocols, not SIP. Finally, VoIP technology has helped drive down the cost of international calling, but using MGCP, H.248 &/or H.323 protocols much more than SIP, at least so far.

SIP has been adopted by PBX manufacturers in recent years, but this doesn’t seem to have changed business practices at all. The IT department still buys the PBX and the telephone sets from a single vendor and then contracts with a service provider to handle calls outside the enterprise.

And then there's IMS

SIP has been adopted for use in the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), but this completely warps the original SIP vision.  IMS is a centralized system — a next generation network for mobile and fixed operators.  It's the complete opposite of the original vision for SIP.

Why have things gone so far astray?

SIP assumed an end-to-end Internet

SIP assumes it's possible to make end-to-end connections over the Internet and therefore a SIP session can know about and use globally valid IP addresses.  That was a naive assumption, even in 1996-1999 when SIP was being defined.  The real Internet contains firewalls, network address translators (NATs) and other "middle boxes."  They are not going away, it's only getting worse over time.  Today, applications must be aware of and able to work around middle boxes and other network problems. 

Many middlebox issues can be overcome with the help of client software and central servers implementing Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), a recently completed IETF proposed standard that in turn relies on STUN, TURN and/or RSIP.  A continuing obstacle for direct user-to-user connections is the need for central servers for STUN, etc..

So it there no chance for the original SIP vision of direct user-to-user communication?

P2PSIP — a reason for optimism

Actually, there is some reason for optimism.  The advent and widespread adoption of Skype showed what was possible and suggested how one might distribute central services among peers, potentially avoiding the need for an explicit service provider.  The past few years have seen rising interest in peer-to-peer SIP which has resulted in an IETF working group under the name p2psip.  Their goal is "to leverage the distributed nature of P2P to allow for distributed resource discovery in a SIP network, eliminating (or at least reducing) the need for centralized servers."

Assuming this is completed (during 2008 & 2009), we'll have the elements with which one could make a SIP-based open peer-to-peer communications system.  It will be interesting to see actual software implementing the ideas of the p2psip group.  We may yet see a revolution!

The Perfect Phone

Lee Dryburgh initiated a great thread in the Emerging Communications public group entitled What would your perfect phone be? There are 14 messages there at this moment with a lot of good ideas, but my first thought was the term "phone" is too limiting.  Indeed, some of the correspondents' ideas also go far beyond the idea of a telephone.  Here's what I want and fully expect to see, eventually.

The Basics

It's a mobile computing device that, as a platform, is at least as open as today's computers. 

It has unconstrained or "open" mobile connectivity to what today is called the Internet, i.e. it's able to exchange arbitrary information with any other device that's willing to participate.

I like Phil Wolfe's description of the included sensors:

Sensor overload. Movement, location, biometric, barometric, full radio frequency detection including notice when I'm being RFID scanned, Affymetrix-style food safety tests. The more my phone is aware of my condition and my environment, the smarter the apps that follow.

and style.

Wearable. Fashion, baby! I should have more phones than shoes, all doing the same things but with looks and form factors that fit my mood, my social set, my wardrobe, my activity. Form factors I want: pocket watch with fob, lapel pin, ear ring, tattoo, shoe lace, scarf, tie clasp, cuff links, mood ring, brass knuckles.

Identity and Security

This device will be my wallet and keys, so I need an easy way to guarantee it's only available to me.

Coordinating Communications

It's a computer so it can run my communications applications.  But the most important application is not telephony as we've understood it over the past 120 years.  Top priority is managing information about availability and current circumstances -- mine and that of people I want to interact with.  I want more than what's commonly called "rich presence."  I want location, current activities, health, and anything and everything that can be determined from a plethora of available sensors.

Then I want total control over who can follow my circumstances, who they think I am (multiple identities!) and what they see as my current circumstances.  Like Phil Wolfe, I may want to be able to lie about my current circumstances, at least to some people.  As Phil puts it:

When I'm out picking up porn instead of groceries, attending a dissident political meeting, climbing a wall during a combat mission, investigating a crime family, or meeting with my divorce lawyer, very very few people need to know. In fact, I want my phone to have selective memory and occasional amnesia.

Availability and current circumstances are critical to coordinating communications.  This is an issue that traditional telephony has never addressed, but with the advent of instant messaging, texting and Skype, most of my voice calls are preceded by a quick text exchange.  In many cases the text exchange obviates the need for a voice call.

Is there an overlap with social networking?  Absolutely.  Has anyone cracked the code yet?  Hardly. However we are beginning to see attempts to aggregate and filter our profiles, friends and communications across multiple social networking services.  There's a big need, a lot of activity and thus strong reason to expect big progress.

Communicating

Of course I want all options;  text, voice, video, 3D holographic virtual presence.  More importantly, I want the ability to select live two-way communications, broadcasting and asynchronous messaging, some of which may be near real time.  For example, there are occasions when voice is best but a live call is not needed or not practical.  That's why Voice SMS service is so popular (where it's available).

I also want to be able to archive (or not) all communication.  Think "life streaming."

The Digital Life

Finally, I expect my device to facilitate life logging and a digital life as proposed by Gordon Bell and Jim Gremmel.

When?

Obviously we're talking decades for some of this, but most people will have portable webcam capabilities within a few years and hard drive storage has pulled ahead of most people's ability to create or copy content.  Gordon Bell's full vision may be a few years off, but lifeblogging is real today.

What's the monthly cost?

Today we pay for telephone service.  In the future, I'm likely to pay for open mobile Internet connectivity, i.e. a mobile dumb pipe, but only as a fall back to open shared wireless connectivity built from the bottom up via user-to-user wireless connectivity.

I may also choose to pay people to provide other parts of this functionality as services, but everything I've described is based on devices and software which I will be able to own.

 

Emerging Communications Conference 2008

I'll in California quite a bit in March and April, but the highlight is my first week, when I'll be speaking at a new conference, eComm 2008, March 12-14.  While the conference in new, the community is established and fascinating.  eComm 2008 being put together by Lee Dryburgh, who was on the program committee for O'Reilly's eTel conferences.  When O'Reilly cancelled eTel 2008, Lee took the initiative to keep that incredible community alive.  He was soon joined by many others.

Click through the logo at the left for conference info.  Right now there's a board of advisors, an incredible list of speakers with more on the way, a wiki and a Facebook group with 170 friends!

The first thing I look for in a conference is interesting people, then new ideas.  eComm promises an abundance of each.  The focus is next generation personal communications and the schedule is set up for rapid fire delivery inlcuding many 5 minute and 15 minute sessions.  As far as new ideas goes, this will be a fire hose!

*** Correction: 12/21 ***

The conference is being held in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.  This easily beats the typical conference facility, but it means there are only 300 paid admissions available.  Registration has opened, here.  If you register before the end of 2007, the $1495 registration fee is marked down to $1195.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Who will unify my communications?

2 email accts/ 7 email aliases/ 4 IM accts/ SMS/ this blog/ Bloglines (238 feeds)/ BlogRovR (480 feeds)/ LinkedIn/ Facebook/ Myspace/ Twitter/ 23 other "social" networks/ 3 PSTN accts/ 2 mobile accts/ Skype/ FWD/ ... 

...accessed via 3 different PCs and 2 different mobile handsets, at least on most days.

These are not just information flows — most have associated directories of friends, business associates and other acquaintances.

One year ago I wrote:

...  I already run four instant messaging clients on my laptop.  A single client would be nice, but it's not that important.  Once we finally learn how availability should work from an existing player like Skype or from an entirely new overlay network (as Skype was a few years ago), then we can worry about consolidation.

Now I'm not so sure. 

Who will aggregate this flood for me, in some convenient and semantically meaningful way?

Where is the tool that lets me organize my diverse connections?

There's an opportunity here for a new class of solutions...

Mobile application innovation in EU

The second session at Connect 2007 in Madrid is Application Innovation with John Orlando, NMS CMO moderating and panelists:

• Gianluca Ferranti, Director of Marketing, Reitek S.p.A.
• David Springall, CTO, Yospace
• Colm Healy, CEO, XIAM
• Anssi Tauriainen, CEO, Aito Technologies

This panel is slide presentations and covers material that's interesting, but mostly already familiar to me.  So my comments will be brief...  (sorry).

Gianluca's focused on video infotainment which appears to be taking off in Italy.  While he's active in some really cool stuff, today's talk covered market statistics and more conventional applications.

Yospace has their "SeeMeTV" service running on 12 operators now, but David comments that it's been a struggle compared to launching a service on the Internet.  If you're not familiar with SeeMeTV, it's a service that allows subscribers to upload cameraphone videos via MMS.  Others can browse content that people have uploaded.  It costs 30 pence or more to download a clip.  The original contributor gets money everytime someone watches their clip.  The revenue share is 10%.  The SeeMeTV service bridges 12 operators, so contributors get cash back from users across multiple operators.  Paybacks to contributors are via PayPal, not the operator.  All-in-all, it's a mobile service which could be run over-the-top but, based on David's comments, they only work through operators because operator endorsed (on-deck) is the only viable approach today.  Even so, they don't get customer demographics from the operators, just billing and an on deck position.

Colm from Xiam is focused on mobile advertising.  Xiam's edge is in automated analysis of subscriber demographics so it's possible to target content to users when the price points is 30 cents or 1-2 Euros.  On the Internet, Amazon can show dozens of potential offers, but on the mobile phone there is only space and time to make a very few offers.  Currently they get 3X click through by targeted offers on mobile phones at Orange UK.

Anssi is founder and CEO at Aito is focused on providing customer analytics to mobile operators.  Their software mines the operator's data to figure out the services individual customers use and the constraints and problems they encounter.  The goal is to figure out specific problems that need to be fixed, both technical issues and communication issues.

Interesting, but running over slightly which killed the Q&A which would have been the best part.

...

Connect 2007 Madrid opens with panel on the mobile industry

The session was entirely Q&A (no slides) which resulted in a great discussion – broad ranging and much better than talking heads reading slides!  Luca has already written up his reactions.

I'm writing this after the fact as, at the last minute, I was tagged to participate, filling in for Vincenz Wagner of Jamba who's arrival has been delayed.  The opening session at Connect 2007 in Madrid was entitled "Industry Overview" with Joel Hughes, VP & GM of our Mobile Applications business moderating.  In the end the panelists were:

• Philip Kelley, Director, Mobile TV Standardization, Alcatel-Lucent
• Kari Lahtinen, Business Development Manager, Elisa Corporation
• Peter Karney, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, NEC
• Brough Turner, i.e. yours truly :-)

Since I was participating, I have only a few interesting items (at least interesting to me) that I noted during this discussion:

Philip commented that the predominate use of 3G is to connect PCs to the Internet, i.e. dumb pipe mobile Internet access.  Philip also mentioned Triple Play, which seems old hat to me, as innovative in (parts of) Europe.  I argued that this was marketing innovation (bundling), not really a new service.  We agreed the innovation was in cost and convenience of the services.

Several panelists seem to think that innovation would come by porting Internet applications to the mobile space.  I argued that was currently true, but only because the Internet was open and mobile was still closed.  There are many characteristics of mobile (like mobility and intimacy) that will foster new applications but we don't yet have the open environment that allows zillions of developers to experiment.

At one point, I made a derogatory comment about most VoIP being just digital POTS.  The ensuing discussion brought out the parallel between Skype (which combines voice and IM) with what's happened in mobile telephony, i.e. the combination of voice and SMS to achieve the same objectives.  Either way, people want to determine the actual availability of the person they are about to call and people need a way to communicate when they can't talk.

Off to Madrid for Connect 2007 Europe

The third and final Connect conference of 2007 is taking place in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday, November 7th and 8th and I'll be there.  My blog comments on earlier conferences are here (& 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Day One has a heavy focus on mobile industry issues and mobile applications. And, it's conducted as panel discussions with few or no slides.  Perhaps this only works because there are good speakers, chosen to promote controversy and discussion, but it really works!  In both 2006 and so far in 2007, the nature of the discussion has been much, much better than at a typical industry show.  The session descriptions for November 7th are here and the speaker bios are here.  If you can be in Madrid on Wednesday, you should attend.

Day Two is a more traditional developers conference focusing on NMS technology and products that are used to create many of the applications discussed by the Day One executives.  Check out the Day Two program.

Belated Notes from VON

I'm an articles guy not a news blogger, so I didn't even try to compete with the numerous people blogging last week's VON conference.  In any event, I was double booked much of the time. The best part of VON is the people I meet and the one-on-one discussions but let me mention a few impressions of note:

• Social networking was everywhere, and not just because of Jeff's interest and/or the focus on Facebook in his kickoff speech.  Every combination and permutation is being tried, especially through Facebook applications.  I can't point to one application that's going to revolutionize IP communications in the sense Skype did, but I'm still hopeful.  At least these apps are a step forward from the digital POTS VoIP services like Vonage, AT&T CallVantage and the various cable VoIP offers.

• The convergence of Mobile and VoIP continues to be via work-around.  We're still a few years from true over-the-top IP communications on mobile, as today there's not enough upstream bandwidth, latencies for IP data are really something and, of course, there are mobile operator restrictions on VoIP over their networks.  Of course mobile voice telephony is still so expensive, especially internationally, that workarounds will abound.  But true mobile IP communications will be delayed a bit more...

One interesting tidbit:  I finally got to hear from ooma and get the answers to two questions that had plagued me about their distributed termination approach.  Distributed termination means calls, carried long distances by VoIP, can terminate in a remote city using another subscriber's local line.  My issues:

1. How do you handle the caller ID which will point to the local subscriber's line, not the original caller's line?  Answer:  they suppress CallerID, i.e. there is no caller ID.  That's not great, as I know my wife won't answer such a call.
2. What about people listening in on calls that are terminated through their local service?  Answer: the ooma equipment senses extensions going off hook and avoids routing calls through subscribers whose lines have a history of people listening in.  Well, that's certainly a partial answer.  It's easy to detect extensions going off hook as an extension telephone puts an additional load on the line.  But there are plenty of high impedance listening devices that don't load the line and can't be detected in any easy fashion.  Again, it's an answer, but not a great one...

The conference itself felt a little smaller than last year in Boston or last spring in San Jose, but booth traffic appeared to be good.  Also, there were more sessions and more tracks and more experimentation, as PulverMedia is obviously trying to reinvent itself and the show.  I have some specific suggestions which I will offer to Carl Ford, but it may be another week or two before I get a free moment to write them out.

Here's a photo of the show floor on Tuesday at lunch time.

VONCamp Unconference in Boston

About 12 hours ago I had a long IM chat with Carl Ford about the Innovator's track at the VON conference.  The Innovator's track is already very interesting, but Carl is going one better and running an unconference based on the ideas of FooCamp and Barcamp.  Carl's is the VONCamp Unconference. 

FooCamp is an invitation only event.  BarCamp is open to anyone.  VONCamp is open to anyone who is attending VON.  Otherwise, the formats are similar.

The first order of the day is to determine the order of the day.  Tom Howe will lead this, but it's a free form way for the attendees to develop the agenda.  As Carl puts it:

The Innovators Forum is a series of sessions that show case companies in our more traditional format.  However dialogue in these sessions is encouraged.  The VONCamp Unconference is harder to describe,  because it gives people a chance to self identify as a speaker.  At the present time there are 12 speaking slots. If you've got something you want to discuss that's outside the formal program, VONCamp Unconference is the place to do it. We also have a SpeedDating session.   

Here are the rules:

1. There are no rules. 
2. Everyone is equal. Everyone is a rockstar.
3. Give back to the conference by participating actively. "Active participation" might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways.  While everyone is encouraged to lead a session, there are only twelve slots available.
4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. Hopefully you will walk the show floor!

Alec Saunders and Tom Howe have already signed up.  If you'll be at Fall VON in Boston, you can sign up on the wiki here.

This should be very interesting!  Thank you Carl. Hope to see you there.

IMS is about transport, not services

OK, that title is designed to grab your attention, but it's also the reasonable takeaway of people in the audience at the last session yesterday, i.e. day one at Connect 2007 in Boston.

The session was entitled "Increasing Service Velocity" and the session description focused on IMS and service delivery platforms.  I wasn't involved in setting up the session or signing up the speakers, but a few weeks ago I was recruited to moderate the session.  The panelists from left to right were:

• Kjell M. Johansson, Director of Solutions Management, Multimedia, Market Unit North America, Ericsson
• Susan Norris, Communications Industry Advisor, Norport Technology Management Consulting (but note that Susan spent many years at operators, most recently at Sprint, and was the most articulate about the operator point of view).
• Douglas Tucker, CTO NA, Ubiquity Software Corporation
• Jouni Welander, Head of New Solutions US, Nokia Siemens Networks

So there's a slight problem.  Everyone here is smart and knowledgeable, but everyone (with the possible exception of Susan) is involved in creating or selling IMS or IMS products.  Panel discussions are always better if you have divergent points of view, i.e. controversy on stage!  Since I was moderating, I obviously couldn't blog it live or even take notes.  Luckily, George Kontopidis did take notes (and the picture above), so that helps me reconstruct events.  George's complete notes are here: Brough1.jpg, Brough2.jpg and Brough3.jpg.

Some of the specific comments on service deployment platforms (SDPs), their relationship to the rest of IMS and to deployment of actual applications included:

Kjell - SDPs are essential to the development of actual services, but the problem here is too many standards in what's exposed to the developer.  Kjell alluded to pressures from operators that may result in the major equipment vendors converging their service creation environments, but he couldn't give specifics or a date (beyond soon, within the next year).

Susan said operators think of IMS as the solution for new services.  They are generally very conservative (particularly on the operations side) and wouldn't dream of opening up their networks for something like web services.

Doug offered that IMS and higher level development environments, including web services, are not conflicting.  IMS is the platform, but it's standardization stopped below the application layer.  IMS needs web services and/or other development layers to actually realize new services.

And it was Jouni who offered "IMS is not about killer apps, it's about a killer environment" i.e. IMS is the platform but it needs (the non-standard) SDP layer above to support service creation.

On the subject of what is actually real, there was some consistency.  Kjell and Jouni both said there were a few commercial deployments for specific applications like video sharing.  Susan said she couldn't identify any IMS deployments with full service, but knew of several with partial services, i.e. IMS lite.  And Doug commented that he knew of pieces of IMS deployed in many operators, but nothing that's pretty or matches the IMS vision as yet.  On the other hand, everyone on the panel was confident that things would continue to improve.  There were joking remarks that 2008 would be the year of IMS.  In response to the question of when I would be able to hand off a video sharing session across operators, there was some agreement that the GSMA was working on this, so it might be solved in the next 1-2 years (although it could take longer to propagate to AT&T !).

There's a lot more in George's notes...

Dean Bubley did the best job shaking up the panelists (via questions from the audience).

And the sense I was left with (as were several members of the audience with whom I talked later) is roughly as summarized in my title above.  IMS is plumbing that helps operators manage their networks and is a great platform to support a variety of new services, but it will take higher layers (not part of the standards) to actually facilitate new applications,  In addition, there are many, many other issues to resolve, both technical (like integration with billing systems and other operator IT infrastructure, simplification of handset diversity issues, and so on) and business model related, i.e the extent to which will operators open up to new applications.

In any event, an interesting session!