June 08, 2005
Venting mobile frustration
Meanwhile … Germans test their phone arms
While several cities squabble over who will get to host some running, jumping and throwing event in 2012, Germany is this month holding a far more important sporting contest. Around 160 competitors, and the world's press, are expected to descend on Bielefeld on June 25 for Germany's first mobile phone lobbing competition. "People often get annoyed with their mobile phones and want to chuck them as far as they can," said event organizer Virpi Staar. "Now is their chance." There are differing opinions on the best models to use to get the further distance, but competition rules stipulate they must weigh between 200 and 400 grams. Winners of the German event will qualify for the world championships in Finland this August.
Posted by bobe at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
More on SIP and Skype and IMS
Comment from Edmond Osstyn, Alcatel:
We all agree that SIP is a peer to peer protocol and so that the nature of SIP based communications is fundamentally different from the more traditional communication services based on a master slave infrastructure or protocols. Noone denies that Skype is fundamentally different from a POTS type infrastructure but the same rule applies to all types of SIP or IMS based communication
The real issue is in other words not if Skype is different from traditional master slave services but if SIP (IMS) based services which are all master slave services should be considered as traiditional communications and thus to be regulated. The statement however becomes much vaguer once Skype claims that they use SIP only end to end and the players like BT in BT communicator use SIP in a different way. Let's be clear, it is possible to use SIP end to end but then you will not be able to escape your private address space unless your PC does address translation in the end point, the to PSTN and to PLMN or from PSTN/PLMN calls will not be possible which are the calls which generate the revenue for services like BT communicator. Equally well;things like QoS will not be enabled
So I can agree that there is a possibility to define some kind of SIP (notIMS) end to end service which does not rely on any network intelligence or functions. Such a service could then be considered distinct from services which are IMS based and which rely on SIP but in a networking context. So the real issue is not whether Skype is different from traditional services but whether it is different from IMS based SIP services and if so whether a sustainable business model is possible just based on end to end.
Posted by bobe at 04:44 AM | Comments (1)
June 05, 2005
Replies to Skype comments
The Skype story seems to be a press release. It was forwarded to me by a friend. It's an amusing send-up / wind-up (at least I think so). Not to be taken seriously although if you read the full text somebody did. I also think that the rapper go it right. There's an argument in the UK right now as to the right to use the colour Orange because it's the name of a mobile network operator.
Vanuatu (June 3) - Niklas Zennstrom, originator of the popular Skype peer-to-peer IP voice client, has gone public in response to new regulation from the US Federal Communications Commission giving voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers 120 days to make their services compatible with the E-911 emergency system. Hailed by wireline and wireless telecom providers, the FCC ruling weighs heavily on competing vendors of low-cost IP telephone service such as Vonage and Broadvoice, whose infrastructure, say some analysts, is neither readily, nor cost-effectively adaptible to support E-911. Analysts expect some shakeout in the currently red-hot VoIP space as deadlines pass, and non-complying providers find themselves targeted by FCC enforcement actions.
One popular VoIP provider, however, is taking the FCC ruling more in stride. Skype's peer-to-peer VoIP system, according to founder Niklas Zennstrom, is not a telephone service at all -- thus by rights should be exempt from FCC E-911 and other regulations. Unlike infrastructure used by conventional VoIP providers, which employs central call-direction servers to coordinate communications among endpoint devices, Skype communicates peer-to-peer between end-user clients. "This is not how normal telephone or VoIP systems work," Zennstrom says. "We initially defined ourselves as an adjunct to regular telephony -- an enhancement. But after further internal deliberation have decided to rebrand ourselves as something completely distinct from IP or conventional telephony: Skype is a peer-to-peer word-sharing software client."
Zennstrom continues: "Teenagers love to share spoken words with one another. Skype is client software, deployed by single individuals on their personal computers, which enables such sharing on a globally-scalable basis, entirely via p2p connections, and without central infrastructure. It is no more than superficially analogous to telephony, as this term is generally understood. This sharing of words enabled by Skype is private, in principle entirely legitimate, and per se breaking no existing laws or regulations of any modern, democratic nation-state. Needless to say, Skype wishes to clarify that while we developed and hold rights to the Skype client and underlying intellectual property, we are, and can be in no way responsible for the specifics of words shared when Skype clients interoperate under control of their users."
Rachel Glickman, an entertainment litigator retained by the FCC in the wake of the E-911 ruling, disagrees, describing Zennstrom's assertion as "disingenuous, debateable, disruptive and dangerous." Glickman, a recognized expert on copyright law, semantics and corporate intimidation, is best known for having successfully represented the heavy metal band, Metallica, in their high-profile 2003 case against users of KaZaA: "Metallica, RIAA, Sony and Twenty-Three Other Multinationals v. The Parents of Random, Hapless College Students, Nationwide," which proceeding, though settled for an undisclosed sum, is widely viewed as a landmark of intellectual property law, and perhaps the first example of a class-action lawsuit brought by corporate entities against a general population (precedent considered crucial in justifying, among other things, the present US-coalition-sponsored war in Iraq).
"They say people can use Skype for exchanging spoken words. They say this is prima facie legal, and in any case, can't be feasibly prosecuted or enjoined because Skype has no central infrastructure. But this completely ignores the reality, which is that kids around the world are using Skype, every day, to exchange millions upon millions of words that they don't own!"
"Everybody knows that kids copy everything they hear. This is a secret?" Glickman continues. "What parents, teachers, university administrators and others need to understand, however, is that when kids copy words they didn't invent, this is stealing. It hurts the legitimate creators of those words, in etymology, neologism, literature -- and it hurts their legitimate licensors in broadcast, publishing, and not least in telecommunications." Glickman says that use of Skype to exchange "appropriated" words (so-called 'dub words') is widespread in high schools and colleges, both nationwide and globally.
"When people use p2p to exchange and consume words in the public domain, and within respect of usage guidelines, that's okay. Somebody wants to quote Brian Lehrer or Leonard Lopate when talking to their friends on Skype, that's fine -- NPR even has a word for it: 'podQuoting.' But saying that kids are using Skype exclusively for podQuoting is incredibly disingenuous. PodQuoting only accounts for a minuscule fraction of Skype's global traffic, and the creators of Skype know it, and have covertly based aspects of their business plan on projections of this sort of non-legitimate use. So they are responsible."
Word-originators seem split on whether Skype actually threatens revenue. Some well-established wordsmiths, particularly those such as William Safire of the New York Times who earn significant income through speculative licensing of popular memes and neologisms, argue that the word-sharing service is causing them significant material losses. "When some kid reads my column on rap-influenced vocabulary and then turns around and starts saying "fashizzle my nizzle" to his friends, over Skype, that's money coming right out of my pocket," Safire says.
Rapper/actor Snoop Dawg disagrees. Dawg is widely acknowledged to have actually created "fashizzle" -- but when he attempted, sometime in 1995, to place it in the public domain, he discovered that rights to the word and all derivatives had already been asserted by Safire and associates.
"Man, you want to hear 'disingenuous?'" Mr. Dawg says. "Disingenuous is when people like Safire, and Verizon try to take words away, lock 'em up, and make regular people pay to use them. They call this 'intellectual property' -- like it's a right. But they don't know that words, like rights, come from God: In the beginning, was the word, am I right? Me, I feel grateful that God gave me the creativity to imagine "fashizzle," and I wanted the people to have it, and use it free of charge. If Skype helps the kids spread their words, then Skype's okay by me. Besides, the world moves on fast -- nobody cool says "fashizzle" any more. Word."
Still, Glickman argues, if she and the FCC can prove that Skype's business plan, as represented in projections to private equity funding and similar sources, is based largely on traffic-volume assumptions presupposing transgressive use, that may be enough to start the litigative ball rolling. But so far, Glickman says she has been unable to obtain a copy of Skype's business plan, and founder Zennstrom denies that one exists. "The only plan we have is to add features to the client, to increase ease of use, and to perhaps offer some ancillary services on a pay-as-you-go basis," Zennstrom says. "What happens with Skype is up to its users."
Glickman counters: "If that's how they want to play it, the FCC and its co-plaintiffs may have to steel themselves, take a sheet from Metallica's playbook, and go after individual abusers of Skype's software-mediated service. People need to understand that unauthorized word-sharing is a crime, that it has victims, and that its victims can, and will demand reparations. Free use of Skype clearly, in many cases, breaches the concomitant rights of approved carriers such as regional Bell operating companies, who have paid -- in some cases, substantial -- fees for the privilege of carrying words over wires and through the air, between their legitimate owners."
Posted by bobe at 02:40 AM | Comments (2)
June 03, 2005
Winding them up!
Skype's peer-to-peer VoIP system, according to founder Niklas Zennstrom, is not a telephone service at all -- thus by rights should be exempt from FCC E-911 and other regulations. Unlike infrastructure used by conventional VoIP providers, which employs central call-direction servers to coordinate communications among endpoint devices, Skype communicates peer-to-peer between end-user clients. "This is not how normal telephone or VoIP systems work," Zennstrom says. "We initially defined ourselves as an adjunct to regular telephony -- an enhancement. But after further internal deliberation have decided to rebrand ourselves as something completely distinct from IP or conventional telephony: Skype is a peer-to-peer word-sharing software client."
Posted by bobe at 02:13 PM | Comments (2)
More on IMS
I saw this on the MobileBroadband Forum; "How long is it going to be before we see IMS phones with SIP-based voice? My prediction: a very long time (10-15 years."
My reply: "My understanding is that around IMS systems are being trialed and we can expect to see value added services being marketed in 6-9 months. Companies like Sylantro, Broadsoft and Ubiquity have service portfolios that are marketed as hosted voice (aka IP Centex) and they are being 'ported' to IMS. In order to employ these services you need a SIP-compliant device and these are available and more are coming. You don't need a special IMS phone. If that had been the case then the whole thing would have been dead in the water."
That innocent comment lead to a flurry of interesting emails. People that one would regard as experts contradicted each other. Others linked IMS to 3G. IMS is seen as 3G's saviour but there is no direct link. Along the way I realized that while IMS is a big SIP server the way of working is both P2P (e.g. on-line gaming) and client-server (mobile email).
Betrand Chauvet drew attention to the fact that "NetCentrex is already rolling out 3G services, mainly centered around videocommunications (video service broker, video mail etc), and those services are shared between 3G H324M and Fixed broadband users (H.323 and SIP based). We haved such services as Video Service Brokers in production for France Telecom today." He also thinks that MS-SIP is still several years away but he's a big fan of video to mobiles.
I think this is a service looking for a way of selling all that expensive 3G bandwidth and then I recalled my 1998 experience when as an outsider, a writer, I presented to 600 mobile data experts and network operators. At that event BT ran an incredibly expensive video that involved a big screen PDA/phone that had a virtual assistant - you could tell it to change your flight for example - it also did video conferencing and ----- wait for this one, simultaneous language translation. They showed a video conference between a Japanese guy and a Brit. Amazing. At the end the guy went rowing on a lake, got a call and managed to drop the device into the water. A more symbolic ending that BT intended.
Posted by bobe at 03:52 AM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2005
Introduction and VON Europe
Introduction: I'm the European Editor of VON Magazine and I write a feature article for every issue. This is my first entry in my first blog so a quick take on VON Europe (Stockholm) is a logical place to start. The event was about 50% bigger this year, which indicates the way things are going, but the really big difference for me was the content. Now it's really happening, in both the enterprise and service provider space.
Jeff has expressed reservations about the way SIP is used in IMS, but if we put that aside it was good to see the progress that has been made. The vendors of hosted voice solutions are porting their portfolio to this platform, e.g. Broadsoft are working with Ericsson, and smaller players are getting into the act. Operax (operax.com)has developed bandwidth management software that give a guaranteed QoS and this is one of the pieces that need to be in place if IMS is going to succeed. I'll be covering IMS ecosystems in the July issue.
Posted by bobe at 08:40 AM | Comments (5)