I have not been on vacation much in the past few years. In fact, I came across a spreadsheet ("Week with the Simpsons.xls") while cleaning up some files recently that was dated 7/30/99. Now I think we had another
vacation the following year, but basically that means that this week is
the first in 4 years. Yeah!
So I think I will do a little blogging renewal with the free time. I think we'll be saying goodbye to Google's Adsense. Maybe it works better with static pages, but between the ridiculous change to
Gooooooooogle in the header and the lack of context in the ads -- which leads to a click-through rate that is non-existent -- what's the point? I can use the screen space for something else.
Jeff Pulver has invited me to play with the latest beta of the Pulver Communicator, which is a simple idea that unifies IM (it will do AOL, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo) with Free World Dial-up VoiP. The client is far cleaner than the XTen Xlite soft-phone for FWD; it's a regular Windows app rather than a
graphic with poor useability hiding a bunch of complexity. The client is only available in Beta by invite and only for WinXP to this point. I'll let you know how that works out. Along those lines I'm thinking of posting my FWD and Windows IM ID's on-line. I notice that
I cannot answer, I'll get your voice mail by email and notification by SMS.
VoIP
The Cottage Blogger
Why I will not buy voice services from the cable guy.
In my neighbourhood power lines are above ground and the local cable operator shares many of the same poles with the utility and phone company. Every so often if you look up you see a rather ordinary, boxy-looking 120/208V transformer. By ordinary I mean it is not one -- or three -- of those robust "cans" that the utility uses for distribution to homes and businesses. If you have a set-up like this in your area, follow the output from the smaller transformers to see where they go. Invariably the power leads to the cable company's equipment.
On August 14, 2003 everyone around here who had cable internet access lost their service. So if they had VoIP via cable they would have lost that. I have DSL service on my telephone line. I did not lose basic phone service and, initially at least, I did not lose my broadband connection. You may wonder how that can be since my DSL connection relies on an AC powered router. I have a UPS. When the battery died the DSL went down at my end. The point is the service was still available for anyone who had the means to power their own equipment. That was not the case for cable users. Even if you had a 300 KW UPS with 8 hours of battery and a Caterpillar diesel gennie with 6 days of fuel, there would have been no raising of the cable connection until the local grid was fully powered by the utility.
This inherent weakness exists throughout the cable distribution system. It is a significant competitive disadvantage that has been exploited recently by a local phone company (Bell Canada) in advertising that has trumpeted the reliablity of the POTS network. I think these ads have been right on and the marketing message is unmistakeable. Even if download speeds are faster on your cable internet link, even if you can buy a set-top box and download on-demand movies, even if the cable guy wants to provide voice services; think about reliablity. The monolithic phone companies are starting to realize that they are in the vanguard of something "new" -- always-on technology that has existed for over a century. What a concept.
Framing the marketplace in this way makes it clear that talking up VoIP technology is irrelevant as a sales pitch strategy if you are dealing with power users or business customers. The only thing that matters are services. I like the "follow-me" service with e-mail and SMS messaging capabilities that I'm getting from my phone company now. It's not a VoIP technology but it could be; as a user I don't really care. It's a neat service that I like using.
VoIP is still a classic disruptive technology in the mode described by Christensen, but only if you run a telephone company that has not invested in broadband technologies for your customers. VoIP is a sustaining technology on a DSL broadband network running on POTS lines. A services revolution has started in telecomm; enabled by, but not dependent on, consumer VoIP availability.
What happens when the Category Killer Dies?
Well ain't this a shame.
(I fully expect this link will not be up for long so here's the text of it from the Primus Tech Support site:
"(2004/06/01 21:06:48) We are currently experiencing problems on on our VOIP service network-wide in Canada. As a result, affected customers will be unable to make or receive calls. We hope to have this problem resolved as soon as possible."
When your entire VoIP network crashes you prove a number of things:
1) You must have a single point of failure, which means that somebody in your organization doesn't get that whole "up-time and reliability" thing.
2) You should not be charging anything like the price you are charging for the service, given that you have demonstrated a lack of interest in investing in reliability (ie: re-read the first point).
3) You have power washed any good will or early adopter enthusiasm out of the product.
4) This does not yet seem to be a good business proposition for an investor or a prospective customer.
I have written elsewhere about some of the innate strengths and stealth moves that have been exhibited by big Telcos in the midst of this VoIP bubble. The full text of my comments from 04/08/04 follows here:
I recently tried the Primus version of
VOIP, but have since cancelled the service within the 60 day trial
period. TalkBroadband is not price competitive, is paired with average
long distance plans and has traditional voice mail (ie: it does not use
email or sms for notification and has no web interface). On top of
that, I could not get 2 numbers transferred from an exchange that is
advertised as being transferrable. What really convinced me to give up
on it however was a new service that Bell Canada is offering; Single
Number Reach (SNR, www.bell.ca/snr) They probably should call it 'VOIP
killer'. Priced at C$19.95/month with vmail, it is a virtual number
service with faxing, web interface, pager/email/sms notification and
find me/follow me features. That was what I was hoping VOIP could do
for me, now I've got it with my standard telephone and without the
annoying 10 second wait for a dial tone and the extra piece of bling on
my crowded desk. On top of that I ended up cancelling a couple of
standard lines that had been used for dedicated fax and switch
re-directing, saving about C$90/month.
VOIP, but have since cancelled the service within the 60 day trial
period. TalkBroadband is not price competitive, is paired with average
long distance plans and has traditional voice mail (ie: it does not use
email or sms for notification and has no web interface). On top of
that, I could not get 2 numbers transferred from an exchange that is
advertised as being transferrable. What really convinced me to give up
on it however was a new service that Bell Canada is offering; Single
Number Reach (SNR, www.bell.ca/snr) They probably should call it 'VOIP
killer'. Priced at C$19.95/month with vmail, it is a virtual number
service with faxing, web interface, pager/email/sms notification and
find me/follow me features. That was what I was hoping VOIP could do
for me, now I've got it with my standard telephone and without the
annoying 10 second wait for a dial tone and the extra piece of bling on
my crowded desk. On top of that I ended up cancelling a couple of
standard lines that had been used for dedicated fax and switch
re-directing, saving about C$90/month.
I'll pay you once but I won't pay twice.
Is it possible that the marginal cost of everything that can be conveyed by way of information technology is zero? This seems to be the leading characteristic of VoIP. It has been argued that there is no difference between serving web pages and pushing digitized voice through the IP pipe-line. That's true; they're just bits after all. The only thing that any of us seem to be willing to pay for now is bandwidth.
In the new model, the medium is the channel. In times past the medium had both physicality and content. A book can have something or nothing on its pages but it is still recognizable as a book in either case. When one buys a book one is not interested in it as a medium so long as one can discern what is on its pages. We are usually only interested in the message that the book carries, not the merits of its physical package. Traditionally, one could not separate the message of the book from its package however. Now we have technologies that can separate the two. What has been the response? No one wants to pay. On-line, for fee newspapers struggle. Music companies sue kids. E-book sales languish.
Let's posit this notion then. When content can be separated from delivery media, individuals will usually only pay for one of the two. This is the current dilemma of the phone companies. Now that conversation can be digitized and IP'ed, its worth is zero. Only the network carrying those bits has value. If I can 'FWD' or 'Skype' my friends and colleagues for 'free', why would I want to 'phone' them and pay?
It would seem that the best way to preserve a content revenue stream is to make sure that the content and delivery media do not get separated. Books are a good example. Sales are still pretty strong in the book trade, at least compared to the music business. (To digress, it could be shown that the music business is less a victim of downloading, than of its own incompetence.) Copying a book in printed form requires at least as many resources as the original, so it's usually cheaper to just buy the book. Only when publishers charge beyond the threshold of pain for the readership does copying become rampant. Think text books. But what happens when a book can be conveyed digitally? Do we want to pay? Have electronic books in any form been successful? Would you pay to read this blog? Not likely.
This merits greater consderation, so when I get some more time I'll try to expand on these thoughts by way of an article.
(c) copyright 2004,2005,2006,2007 by Bradford Gibson. Almost all rights reserved. Citation for journalistic, academic or weblog use is permitted with attribution.