ManyMedia

The FCC recently posted a Notice of Inquiry, FCC-09-51. The purpose of this NOI is stated in the Introduction, which begins:

This Notice of Inquiry seeks comment to inform the development of a national broadband plan for our country. Its focus is to enable the build-out and utilization of high-speed broadband infrastructure. But “infrastructure” barely hints at the importance of what we are undertaking. High-speed ubiquitous broadband can help to restore America’s economic well-being and open the doors of opportunity for more Americans, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of their lives. It is technology that intersects with just about every great challenge facing our nation.

I signed and support this Comment in response to the NOI. The comment points out that (1) the term “broadband” is not the same as the Internet, (2) broadband’s true value is that it gives access to the Internet, and therefore (3) when designing a National broadband policy, we should make sure that it supports the value of the Internet.

Network, Policy broadband, Comment, definitions, infrastructure, Internet, national broadband plan, Net Neutrality, Network, NOI, Policy

Has Divestiture Worked?
A 25th Anniversary Assessment of the Breakup of AT&T

WHEN:	TOMORROW! FRIDAY, MARCH 6th, 2009 TIME: 6PM-9PM
LOCATION:	New York University, Warren Weaver Hall 251 Mercer St. Room 109 (Note: enter via W. 4th St. due to construction), New York, NY 10012
PRICE:	ADMISSION IS FREE.

This looks like a fascinating–albeit short–event. Three panel discussions and a great lineup of speakers on the agenda. If you’re in New York, I highly recommend going.

UPDATE: If you’re not in New York, here’s the link to the stream! (Excellent, thanks!)

Events, Network, Policy, Scenarios ATT, controlling network, divestiture, Network, telecom

Moderator Gary Kim will introduce speakers Frank Fawzi, Jeff Lattomus, and Peter Pattullo, for this session on Telecom 2.0.

Gary Kim (no PowerPoints!), encourages questions from the audience.

Peter Pattulo: clean build of his company, focus on hosted applications (unheard of 11 years ago), reinvented telecom company–now on 8th revision of software. All capabilities brought as close to problem as possible, developer APIs not really part of their profit model; more about removing friction.

Frank Fawzi: Amazed with everything 2.0, ecosystems, et al. From Pete’s description, he hears that we all want to make money, create a way to monetize your services and intellectual property. Telecom 2.0 is the next migration; starts to feel like early days of bringing solutions to market that customers are valuing and deploying. Marriage of Internet and traditional telecom: we attacked to make that happen. Carrier 7+ billion minutes, wholesaler with distinction: TDM or SIP, or API layer with widgets and applets that deal with diff biz environments (order fulfillment, upselling, collaboration and conferencing, emergency notification, insertion of voice and telecom functionality w/in web sequence. Is broker between “customer owner” carriers, and communities of software users, bridging gap between those silos.

Jeff Lattomus: We (in this room) are the dedicated ones. (Applause) Sales for western US and PacRim, bottom line is we’re all here to make money. Metaswitch is manufacturer of class 4 -5 app driven manufacturer. How to drive new revenue? Telecom 2.0 is all the new ways of serving customers with new apps (like Google) to make point and click easy access to new services? How to develop?

Open standards, developing gadgets for customers to try. We need to drive innovation.

Gary: Telecom 1.0 is telecom as we’ve known it over last decade: voice driven revenue service. Revenue models now changing, direction unknown. How are you making your money: carriers and supporters, apps, etc. If voice is application, can I drive revenue to me and build company around that? New people coming into market, wedge into existing value chain. Some conversation is from telecom people, others making telecom providers irrelevant. How does Telecom 2.0 work for you?

Frank: built our biz around partners (carriers and large users), continue to evolve new services and not commoditization. Challenge is to make voice so critical where end user is willing to pay for that value. As we expand reach, working with other carriers, this becomes a pressure to derive diff value props from their products, voice enabled.

Jeff: in marketplace it’s a buzzword, is a true application space, but is like IMS (gotta have it). Need to take a pragmatic approach: what do our customers actually need, evolution to get there. Build apps today for pragmatic revenue generating services. Kids will drive technology in next 15 years. Some things are true apps, making them a reality in industry has to be things you guys want to buy.

Frank: just signed long term agreement with Microsoft, leveraging cloud computing and carriers. Space starting to move down to apps with voice enablement. Expanding functionality. Hosted model, SAAS or communications as a service, trial apps for revenue, move on with minimal investment.

Peter: Going from 1.0 to 2.0 is about reducing friction. Not just download, is giving power to guys in enterprise to solve their problems. Adding voice to some business process, new tool sets to solve problems. Microsoft (excel): gave tools to build own spreadsheets. Telecom 2.0 is pushing ability to the edge, to connect.

Gary: is up to vendors to develop tools. How good is each of us to value and understand real business problems? More than just usage–need to be business process facilitators?

Peter: we may never know our customers well enough. There’s real pain out there. Example of delivery service going to sites where they couldn’t deliver. From our perspective, not that there is pain, it’s that we need tools for customers to use. [wait, first you need to understand problem before you can deliver appropriate tools. -jc]

Jeff: Open standards is one driver: develop some apps to get customers started (moving from legacy environment), and allow and support customer development. Work closely to understand customer base.

Gary: some think Telecom 2.0 is for enterprises, but some real pain is felt by smaller businesses. Communications tools: increase transparency to see processes. Should be able to automate certain processes that are not transparent now (e.g., healthcare appointments).

Peter: lot of niche apps that only work in limited ways, as opposed to generic apps that won’t fit as well. Opportunity cost vs expenses.

Frank: moving from time of “minute is a minute” to long tail, move up to set of apps that can be standardized and customized for specific needs. What we can do is provide well defined widgets and apps to build and customize application resources.

Jeff: key theme is automation to put processes in customers’ hands, so they can use for their customers, or what’s most useful to them. Make it mobile. Make it something worth paying for.

Peter: almost like we’re coming out of stone age: number of opportunities is endless.

Gary: most opportunities aren’t big, they’re lots of small that add up. Need to be better at communicating to end users to empower them. Take each of the functions, convince people to use them to solve problems, turn functionality into a widget that they can use to drive traffic.

Jeff: what is next gen product line? Creativity of software. Roomfuls of equipment, but power is in software. Softswitch = software.

Gary: assets are not being deployed to 100% capacity. Some amount of biz logic in work thru old time processes.

Question: iPhone not just communication device, is an info and commerce device. (?)

Frank: is about evolution, not revolution. things that we can do today is voice mashups, things without a huge amount of IT, from the cloud. New edge of the network is not a box, it’s apps and processes. Lot of apps, not a lot of use. Simplify to our level. Push out media, voice mashups, etc. Voice is no longer a commodity minute, now is a value prop.

Peter: we separated apps for control from network. Softswitches, don’t have to completely rewrite software due to new technology.

Question: are we over-complicating things? Everyone wants to communicate, how do we simplify?

Peter: we gotta simplify. Drop dead simple.

Q: so are we over-complicating?

Peter: making voice as app and making voice as central, yes in some ways we are.

Lunch and awards ceremonies!

Events, Network changes, mashups, Network, PTC09, switches, technology

What happens when the infrastructure of the net becomes oligopoly-controlled? Services become limited, prices go up. I’m hardly the first to point this out.

Larry Lessig wrote in his book The Future of Ideas about the possibility that given a few subtle changes to the Internet’s infrastructure it would be relatively easy for the cable companies or another small handful of telcos or other large businesses to take control of the Net, turning it into the kind of closed systems TV or the old telephone networks used to be. This dire prediction may be upon us.

Comcast has been progressively turning on functions to block VPN traffic for the last four or five months. If you fight through the Comcast site to find the terms of service you discover that’s only the beginning. Under their rules prohibiting you from using your Internet connection for ‘any business purpose’ you are arguably in violation if you so much as buy a book from Amazon.com.

Network blocking, business, cable, closed network, Comcast, DSL, infrastructure, Net Neutrality, Network, oligopoly, prohibitions, telecom, VPN