I have been using Gizmo extensively for the past several months, and have been working with the just released 2.0 version for several weeks. We use Gizmo as our primary SIP client to dial into the Radio Handi group communication platform. I liked the 1.x versions a lot, as they were fairly idiot proof compared to other SIP softphones.

You’ve probably heard of the term astroturfing being used to describe fake grassroots campaigns that are designed to deceive the public about the extent of support a specific cause actually has. Well, I’m not sure who coined the related term “astrospammers”, but we seem to have this new twist on the phenomenon showing up in blogs discussing net neutrality issues. I first read about these kind of suspicious comments showing up on net neutrality-related blog postings over on IP Inferno, where Ted Shelton noted that after a recent post he wrote about net neutrality three random anonymous strangers went to the trouble of creating brand new blogger accounts in order to post pro-telco comments on the subject.

The Abstract Factory did some sleuthing on one of the new net neutrality commenters called “Net Chick”, and concludes that is likely this persona is a paid spammer supporting an astroturf-like campaign againsty net neutrality:

“Net Chick” is an astroturf comment spammer: an astro-spammer, if you will. Judging by the volume of spam (dozens of sites, rather than hundreds), the degree of comment differentiation, and the variety of comment systems to which the astro-spam was posted, I’m guessing that it’s a human being, rather than a computer program. For this quality of A.I., it’s probably cheaper to pay a human than to hire a computer scientist to write a program. This appears to be retail astro-spam, not wholesale astro-spam, although it’s likely that the same entity’s posting a lot more under other aliases.

The issue is bubbling up in the blogosphere and today there are posts on TechDirt and the Technology Liberation Front about these suspicious comments. I think Cynthia Brumfield accurately summarizes many of our feelings about the situation in her IP Democracy post titled Do Broadband Providers Employ Blog Comment Shills?:

I’m not sure what to make of this. It sure seems like organized blog commenting to me. But is this kind of coordinated commenting wrong?

The answer has to be no, if the coordination is simply like-minded individuals who get roused by the same posts, all know each other and are compulsive writers. On the other hand, if these are paid industry representatives, they have every moral obligation to state that fact when posting comments so that we all at least know which side their bread is buttered on.

It’s fine to hold the opinions that this tag-team obviously does and it’s fine to express those opinions in a coordinated fashion. What I find unseemly is the prospect that these commenters are paid by the cable and phone companies to make these comments and aren’t disclosing it.

Everyone’s been speculating about the rumored Apple iPhone, whether it exists and what it will be. This is my hunch as to what they are working on.

Try holding a Nano as if you were talking on a handset. It’s just about the perfect size and form factor to double as a nice phone, without any major modifications to the case, except maybe to add a dialpad for numeric dialing and texting. Other than that, it got everything that’s already needed.

The problem is that it will be difficult to cram all of the cellular electronics and extra battery into this case, so if they decide to make an all-in-one device, they’ll need to make the device bigger and clunkier, more like a Treo or Nokia phone, and less like an iPod. They’ll also need to deal with different mobile networks (different device product lines), and with the mobile operators. The handset business is pretty brutal, and while if anybody has a shot at breaking into it, it’s Apple, I am not sure that’s a business they really want to be in.

On the other hand, you could just add a Bluetooth/WiFi chipset to the device, pair it with whatever carrier issued phone you carry around. Use the iPod as a Bluetooth handset/headset. Use the phone as a fast wireless modem. Done. With one device you can then link to any network via a Bluetooth enabled phone, which most are. Apple would still need to work with carriers, to make sure they do not cripple the use of the Bluetooth modem interface, but this is a vastly simpler task for them than building, certifying and shipping their own phones via hundreds of different operators worldwide. With this approach they can make one device, and then publish a list of phones that it is known to work with.

Who knows what they are actually working on, but I hope that if there is an iPhone in the works, it’s something like this.

I’ve been traveling internationally for many years, and in the past year or so, have noticed a marked upward trend in hotel broadband internet service charges. It used to be that hotels gave the service away for free, or at most $10 per day as a way to differentiate themselves. On recent trips, I have been forced to cough up $20, sometimes $30 for Internet service.

It is a rip off, but relative to placing a call via the in room phone or mobile roaming charges, it’s not an obscene rip off. So I wonder if the hotels have already gotten the message that business travelers are starting to use VoIP to make roaming calls when possible, and are seeing this in their financial reports. If so, it might explain the increasing prices, as they try to recoup money that they are no longer making from their PBXs. I rarely, if ever, place a call through a hotel switchboard.

Anyway, I wonder if the loss of voice revenue is one of the things behind otherwise inexplicably high Internet charges (not that I expect hotels to give anything away as they are, as an industry, professional theives).

I’ve recently read two books that deal with the corner we’ve painted ourselves into in the United States, so far as spreading Internet access goes. Michael Bookey’s America at the Internet Crossroads lays out a strategy for going forward by treating the Internet as a public good, while Fred Goldstein’s The Great Telecom Meltdown fills in a technical, economic, and legal history that can bolster the arguments of those who want to be part of the policy debate.

Tim Berners-Lee, the one person most credited with inventing the Internet World Wide Web (thanks for the correction, Ali), continues to stand up for the principles espoused by the Net Neutrality crowd. In a BBC article published yesterday, Berners-Lee warns of a possible “dark period on the net” if U.S. network providers succeed in creating a tiered Internet.

“What’s very important from my point of view is that there is one web,” he said. “Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring.”

Berners-Lee has been speaking out for Net Neutrality for awhile now, but I find it very interesting that this latest article seems to be getting a lot of attention, to the point of even being linked to by the Drudge Report. The debate around Net Neutrality is clearly expanding and it will be interesting to watch as the issue continues to garner more mainstream attention.

I wrote about Inveneo back in March, the company that has created solar powered, Asterisk-based VoIP solutions for communities where there is little to no access to electricity and communications infrastructure. I think this is a great idea and that Inveneo is doing some very important and exciting work, so I was thrilled to see Time magazine pick up on the story with a very positive article about Inveneo’s efforts in the village of Nyarukamba in western Uganda. If you’d like to read about some very positive applications of wifi and VoIP, I suggest clicking through to the Time article.

I think it’s safe to say that the VoIP industry is collectively watching the stock market today with an eye on the widely anticipated Vonage IPO. There’s been a lot of analysis and opinion expressed on how this offering will fare in the blogosphere, and I’d especially reccomend recent posts by Jon Arnold, Mark Evans, and Om Malik for those looking for some insider takes on the situation.

I’ve been holding back on posting about the Vonage IPO, but I share many of the same concerns that have been expressed both in the VoIP and financial communities about the viability of Vonage’s business model and the extreme amounts they have needed to spend on marketing to get the user penetration they have achieved. But I’m also a Vonage customer, and a pretty happy one, as I have generally been impressed both with the voice quality of the service and the customer support. Though with the cost of voice traffic continuing to plummet, and players like Skype offering free outbound calling in the U.S. and Canada, and AOL offering free incoming PSTN phone numbers, it’s hard to imagine that Vonage will be able to succeed in the long run by focusing on price as the main driver to their service.

As I write this post, the Vonage share price appears to be dropping from the initial $17 it opened up at (trading under the symbol “VG”). It will be interesting to watch this one unfold during the coming days, some smart people like Mark Evans and Jon Arnold are predicting the stock will go up, but I will be surprised if the stock value ends up at market close today above the $17 mark.

Update: I wrote this post first thing this morning but some server problems kept it from going live then. As of later this morning the Vonage share price has contnued to drop, and is now hovering around $15 (at 11:00 am PDT ).

Update 2: Vonage closed today at $14.85, a 12.65% drop from the target price of $17.

We often hear that technological upgrades in the health care industry could prevent errors, save money, and bring health care to more people. But did you know there’s an organized international movement to make this happen? Last night I got to hear from a key leader in the movement.

Donald M. Berwick has been coordinating radical health care changes for fifteen years through his Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He was feted last night at a dinner by the Jewish Alliance for Law & Social Action, where it seemed like the entire leadership of the formidable Boston-area medical industry turned out to honor him: Harvard and Tufts medical schools, Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and many, many others.

O’Reilly author and fellow VoIP blogger Ted Wallingford will be a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation: Science Friday this Friday to discuss VoIP matters. The VoIP show is scheduled to air at 3 p.m. EST this Friday, 5/26. Listener calls will be taken and after Friday the show will be posted as a podcast on the Science Friday site. Ted is the author of VoIP Hacks and Switching to VoIP, as well as a bunch of good O’Reilly Network articles and blog posts. Ted is an insightful guy and always has an interesting take on the latest VoIP news and developments, I’m looking forward to hearing him on NPR.

Televolution’s PhoneGnome is both an innovative product and platform, and they have recently partnered with iotum to offer the iotum Relevance Engine service to their users. Televolution understands the difficulties that exist in getting new products and services launched in the current telco-dominated telecom industry and is a strong advocate for making it easier to bring innovations to market. We’re proud to publish this article by Mark Petrovic that presents a case-study showing how iotum took advantage of the PhoneGnome LiteSig API that uses XML-RPC to easily integrate their product into the PhoneGnome platform.

SightSpeed will release a beta version of its popular video conferencing software this week that will include support for true VoIP and PSTN calling. The SightSpeed 5.0 beta release is expected to be available this Wednesday, 5/24, and with the addition of a series of new telephony features SightSpeed can now offer users an all-in-one video and voice calling experience. The new version also includes a new selectable video codec for improved clarity and resolution. The official 5.0 release is planned to be finalized in July. From the press release:

SightSpeed 5.0’s new telephony features will include full PSTN In and Out calling features, as well as toll free 800 number support. This augments SightSpeed’s core communications services and delivers the most innovative video-centric community, content and commerce features available today.

SightSpeed 5.0 will also include a new and selectable PC To PC voice only calling mode (that works for both PCs and Macs), an enhanced Contact List Viewing feature that offers multiple display modes of show only Online Users, Online plus Offline Users, Online plus Offline plus Offnet users, all the above plus PSTN numbers.

Andy Abramson (who is involved in promoting SightSpeed) told me why he is especially enthused about this upgrade, “As much as I’m excited about the addition of real VoIP/PSTN calling, I’m also hot on the new “voice only” on net calling mode, the configurable contact list feature and the enhanced codecs for video that takes the best in class and makes it even better…” I was impressed with the previous version of SightSpeed that I demo’d, so I’m really looking forward to trying out the latest improved version of the service. I’ll report back here on my findings.

A few days ago, we opened Radio Handi up for public testing. This new service enables people to create communities about any subject or affinity group, and to communicate asynchronously (via email, sms, etc) and real-time (via conference calls). We’re already up and running in some 40 countries, with both PSTN and VoIP dial in. Neat stuff, and this kind of international reach have been impossible even a couple years ago. We’re currently peering with Gizmo and SIP Broker, and unofficially, we hear that people can reach us via Google Talk.

We’re inviting any VoIP provider to peer with us, simply map the shortcode HANDI (42634) or *HANDI to our public SIP URI (sip:main@radiohandi.com, more options such as spanish language prompts coming soon). We also support direct inward dialing to nnnnnn@radiohandi.com where nnnnnn is the group or channel number for a voice community. If you’d like to support direct inward dialing, we suggest the code *RHnnnnnn (*74nnnnnnn) where nnnnnn is a 6-16 digit number. Our tagline for the service is The Party Line for Planet Earth, and through VoIP peering, we can make this happen.

We’re also inviting VoIP providers to sponsor PSTN dial-ins in their countries, similar to what SIP Broker is doing. We’ll insert an audio ad into the greeting so that every caller on the dial in knows about your VoIP service. Both arrangements are models that other enhanced service providers can follow. The enhanced service provider gets free or subsidized PSTN access (for example for traffic report services), while the VoIP provider gets exposure to callers dialing in from fixed and mobile lines in their region.

In general, VoIP providers should copy what mobile operators are doing by using five digit SMS shortcodes for enhanced services, and apply this to enhanced voice services. It’s easy to map a shortcode to a SIP URI, and this is one way that VoIP providers can add value to their service offering beyond dirt cheap voice minutes.

Hot on the heels of Skype announcing free SkypeOut calling to the PSTN within the U.S. and Canada for the rest of the year, Cablevision has just slashed voice rates in a new and interesting way, by drastically reducing the cost of international voice minutes for their customers. Cablevision announced today a new calling plan that includes 500 minutes to anywhere in the world for a flat fee of $19.95 a month (with additional blocks of 500 minutes also being available for another $19.95). TechDirt applauds the plan and thinks Cablevision has a leading edge among the cable companies in capitalizing on IP communications:

Cablevision continues to demonstrate that they get the appeal of the triple play. While other broadband operators think of it as a way to raise prices and tack on charges, Cablevision realizes that the appeal to the consumer is in adding features and cutting prices.

Cablevision isn’t the only VoIP carrier to reduce international rates, Vonage and Skype have been doing this too, but with the surge in VoIP uptake the cable companies have been seeing recently, this is surely another blow to companies like Vonage that are trying to tie their value propostion mostly to the price of voice calls. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the cost of voice traffic is clearly approaching zip, zero, nada…

The efforts of SaveTheInternet.com to generate some catchy videos promoting the cause of net neutrality is beginning to pay off. IP Democracy pointed to the off-beat and hilarious Ask A Ninja Special Delivery 4 “Net Neutrality” from the AskANinja.com folks (”You got questions, Ninja got answers”). We’ve already seen some more traditional political style videos championing net neutrality, but the Ninja bit feels like it has the potential to see a huge viral spread around the net.

Telepocalypse pointed me to this fascinating rant on the meaning and usage of QoS in today’s IP communications, posted anonymously to the TelephonyDiscussion forum. Wow. I’m not sure what to say about the many points the veiled author makes on how and why QoS is the encumbent telcos attempt to co-opt the Internet, but if you have the interest (and time!) I’d reccomend clicking through to the article.

The IP packet technology driven services situation today is painfully obvious to the Telephony cartel. The Internet has hugely succeeded and IS our future in spite of the fact that no one in the telephony world, for decades, believed in its connectionless packet based protocols and technology. An open Internet giving each end user freedom to access the services he wants and the huge constantly expanding value delivered by the Internet have backed the telephony crowd into a corner and now they are desperately trying to CLOSE the Internet and turn it into something they can control! QoS is a lynch pin of that strategy.

Recent telephony cartel activities focused on rolling back time to the circuit world of yesterday (prior the popularity of Internet) are rooted in the 3G and IMS standards that are part of the general ITU, and now ETSI, reaction to inspect, control, inhibit and charge for all data traffic, and therefore “own” the Internet. The clear telephony cartel direction is to create a walled garden environment for application development and combine that with levying toll charges, via QoS, for end users to get outside the walled garden. This one two punch is expected to fend off future as well as existing Internet based threats such as Yahoo, Google, Skype and others.

Verizon is the latest carrier implicated in the NSA domestic call record scandal to deny participating in the secret government surveillance program. The initial report from USA Today last week stated that Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T were all complying with the unprecedented NSA requests for telephone records for domestic calls, but first BellSouth denied the reports that it was involved in the massive telephone data collection effort, and now Verizon is also claiming that it hasn’t handed over call records. From the Verizon statement:

One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls.

This is false.

The New York Times however points out that Verizon’s statement left open the possibility that MCI, which Verizon bought in January, was involved in turning over such records. The USA Today article claimed the NSA is attempting to create a database of virtually every call made in the U.S. and has amassed tens of millions of call records. The Times article today cites an anonymous government official who essentially confirms the USA Today report:

A senior government official, granted anonymity to speak for publication about the classified program, confirmed on Friday that the security agency had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. The official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of identifying regular contacts of “known bad guys.” The official would not discuss the details of the program, including the identity of companies involved.

Ken Camp points out today that a new top-level domain for telecom services has been unanimously approved by ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). The .tel domain contract was awarded to Telnic Limited, and Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi is obviously very bullish on the idea:

“The .Tel domain offers the first genuinely different use of domains since .com was first created. It will provide seamless integration of existing methods of communication with emerging technologies like Voice over IP (VoIP). This places the .Tel domain at the core of the next phase of Internet development,” said Khashayar Mahdavi, CEO of Telnic.

“The days of needing to remember several telephone numbers, numerous VoIP or instant message identities and other points of contact for our social and professional networks are over. By leveraging innovative DNS (Domain Name System) technology, the .Tel domain will allow anyone to publish and control, in real time, how they can be reached.”

Om has the lowdown on Qwest’s acquisition of OnFiber, which currently runs all-optical networks in 23 metropolitan areas. As Om notes, Level 3 has been on a real spending spree in that space, but it appears that Qwest wants a bigger piece of that fiber pie too.

On an unrelated Qwest note, I for one certainly appreciate that it seems that Qwest was the one carrier to show some backbone when the NSA came knocking asking for domestic calling data. I know that some recent studies have shown that a majority of Americans aren’t too bothered by this kind of government monitoring in the name of “fighting the war on terror”, but it’s my feeling that we have processes in place to authorize these kind of things, which one hopes would help maintain the needed checks and balances of granting these kind of new surveillance powers, and I appreciate that Qwest demanded that the NSA follow those procedures or it wouldn’t hand over any data.

You can now use your PhoneGnome box to connect with Skype callers via its new GnomeLink feature. PhoneGnome has been making some excellent moves recently, I’m very impressed with the integration they recently announced of iotum’s relevance engine software into their product, and adding a Skype connection can only make PhoneGnome an even more valuable proposition.

In what is sure to be a welcome move and help generate even wider penetration in North America, Skype has announced today that all SkypeOut calls within the U.S and Canada will be free for the rest of the year. View it as a sign that the competition is really heating up in the consumer VoIP realm - it will be interesting to see if some of Skype’s competitors follow suit. This news follows on the heels of last week’s release of a new beta version of Skype that adds even more features and functionality to Skype’s voice and video calling options, including: SMS; simplified dialing; payments in Skype; Outlook contact integration; call quality management; simplified registration; shared contact groups; and improved conference calling. No one can accuse Skype of sitting still in this competitive landscape.

Back when the first NSA/Bush scandal broke in January, I pointed out that the concentration of the telephone industry into a few players made it easier for the administration to carry off its illegal, undercover operation. The same reasoning applies to the current revelations over NSA tracking of American telephone habits, as well as the current debate over the two-tier Internet (contrasted with what opponents call “network neutrality”).

I’m excited to be able to post about the impending launch of Radio Handi, a new and ambitious project founded by O’Reilly author and ETel contributor Brian McConnell. At its core, Radio Handi is an Asterisk-based conference bridge and group messaging service that enables the creation of diverse “voice communities.”

This breakthrough service will enable people to create these voice communities about any subject, location or peer group, all for the cost of a local phone call. People can post messages and engage in live group conversations with people calling in from fixed, mobile and VoIP phones from all over the world. Billed as the “party line for Planet Earth,” Radio Handi will be accessible via a local call in over 30 countries at launch, and worldwide via Gizmo and SIP. The service also enables groups to communicate asynchronously, via group voice mail (kind of like a voice wiki), and in a few weeks via broadcast email and SMS.

Radio Handi will also allow people to listen to public conversations via a live MP3 stream, like Skypecasts except that you can listen in by using your favorite streaming media player. The basic service will be free of charge, and subscription plans will be offered for extras like local or international dial-in numbers.

One way to think of the kind of voice communities that Radio Handi enables is sort of like Yahoo Groups but with a voice conference component. People can use the Radio Handi service to communicate asynchronously, imagine a group voice mail system that anyone can append messages to or a voice list-serve.

People will be able to use Radio Handi to broadcast messages and set up live calls with friends or extended family. Clubs and and all kinds of groups will be able to use it to organize events and meetings and host online conversations and telecasts. I could see it being used by educators to host call-in classes or group practice sessions. Or by gamers who want to get together with fellow players in a voice sort of way. I predict it will quickly start being used to telecast live events like lectures, public meetings, and sporting events, as the Radio Handi service makes this extremely simple and inexpensive (read free!) to accomplish.

If you attended our Emerging Telephony conference earlier this year, you may have had already heard Radio Handi in action, as Brian was demonstrating the service by streaming some of the live ETel conference sessions and making them available via Radio Handi’s many local numbers. Radio Handi is currently still in private beta, but it will open up for a public beta any day now I’m told, and you can sign up to be included now on the Radio Handi site.

I’ve been playing around with the beta service and the interface is nice and clean and the features are impressive. Here’s a screenshot of a user’s page:

Radio Handi was built from the ground up around open standards telephony, VoIP, and instant messaging technology. Radio Handi’s parent company, Open Communications Systems, is a self-funded startup that just closed an angel round of financing this week. It’s pretty unusual for a new startup telecom service to be bootstrapped like this, and I know that Brian and the Radio Handi crew have been burning the midnight oil and working full-on to make this project a reality.

I’ve really enjoyed working with Brian over the years, and while he’s one of the most knowledgeable telecom people I know he’s also written for us on a variety of other interesting topics from hacking your way off the utility grid to using open source IT tools to help prepare for a pandemic. Whatever topic Brian tackles, his thoughts and opinions always seem insightful and enlightened and I expect that Radio Handi will be a big success.

Virtual sirens have gone off around the country, and the digital ramparts are swarming with thousands of new recruits protesting plans by the telephone industry to levy new fees on Internet sites. The industry wants to charge extra for preferential treatment, so that sites that stream audio and video have more chance of giving their users a pleasing experience. The debate has excited public fury way more than any issue I’ve seen during the fifteen years I’ve been following the telecom industry.

Telephone companies are trying to hold off government regulation by invoking the perennial American worship of innovation. But if there’s anything the industry hates more than government regulation, it’s government investment. Surely–say the CEOs, along with a battery of academic economists wielding standard financial models–government moves too slow and has too many vested interests to pick the right technologies. In a fast-moving culture of technology, innovation would be crushed.

And the industry pulls out the same mantra in attacking municipalities who invest in copper, fiber, and wireless networks. Government investment? Must be inimical to innovation.

But my analysis suggests just the opposite. Government investment in networks will promote innovation. It’s time to smash the idols. This article explains why.

Reuters is reporting that the Canadian communications provider Mitel has just filed with U.S. regulators for an initial public offering of common shares in the United States and Canada. Reuters reports the iniital filing did not disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or at what price, but Andy Abramson is reporting that the IPO will be for a $150 million dollar flotation. I’ve long been a fan of Mitel’s equipment and it seems that they very much “get” all the possibilities that IP communications offers. I expect they will do well with this public offering.

People are right to worry about SPIT. Once it becomes possible for people to make SIP calls from one network to another without a pre-existing peering relationship, it becomes possible for malicious users to start flooding those networks with automated calls.

There is, however, a simple solution that allows VoIP network providers to strike a reasonable compromise between openness (e.g. the ability for anybody to dial user@voipprovider.com, just as they might send an email via SMTP), and reasonable security measures to thwart automatic dialing.

One simple trick that providers can implement is to force callers to respond to a voice prompt like “To complete this call, dial 1 (random noise) 2 (random noise) 5 (random noise).” The goal is to exploit the limitations of automated speech recognition so that a bot cannot get past this IVR challenge question. The IVR will always play a slightly different sentence, so it’s not obvious where the spoken digits begin, and then will intermix the spoken digits with background noises that will confuse a computer. Same basic idea as prompting a user to transcribe distorted text.

Once the caller passes this voice captcha test, that user’s endpoint can be added to a white list so that subsequent calls can be processed automatically.

While this will not prevent robot dialers from hogging capacity on the IVR systems that answer these calls, it will be a good strategy to prevent these SPIT calls from getting through to live users or their voice mail boxes. This isn’t a cure-all in of itself, and should be used in combination with other techniques: such as building whitelists of VoIP networks that peer for each other, automatically identifying suspicious calling patterns to they can be blocked at the firewall, and so forth.

Daniel Berninger has an interesting guest editorial on Om Malik’s GigaOM site today about Net Neutrality, titled Why Even Bells Need Net Neutrality. While net neutrality advocates (which I consider myself one of) tend to paint the issue in very broad brush strokes and often try and boil the argument down to “no net neutrality law means the end of the internet as we know it”, there really are a lot of complex wrinkles to these issues, and Berninger illuminates some of them in this article:

The FCC’s decision to relieve AT&T and Verizon of net neutrality requirements in August 2005 definitively broke the chain of events the companies use to assert right-of-way privileges. The Bells claim privileges based on over 100 years of practice that may or may not coincide with the intent and limits of the original deals, but the resulting laws explicitly require a public purpose in exchange for the right-of-way concessions.

The obligations established on a state by state basis sometimes include build-out requirements or other compensation, but they all specify that access to state right-of-way at largely no cost or limit requires common carrier status (aka net neutrality.) The loss of common carrier status invalidates the contracts. The Bell companies have no access to state right-of-way for deployment of private, closed, non-neutral, non-common carrier network deployments.

…

The Bells want Congress to believe ignoring net neutrality requirements will incent investment in broadband networks, but their idea of return on investment means monopoly rents. The Bells only invest in more monoply which usually means buying each other. The track record shows steadily lower spending on networks to increase free cash flow for acquisitions. The $140 billion SBC spent acquiring Ameritech, PacBell, SNET, AT&T Wireless, and AT&T lifted the company’s market cap by only $40 billion. The fact that $100 billion disappeared might suggest the need for a different strategy, but the new AT&T seeks government approval to spend $67 billion to acquire BellSouth. SBC missed an opportunity as $140 billion happens to be about what it would cost to run fiber to every home in America.

I’ve been thinking more about SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony) today. I’ve written before that I didn’t see what the big deal is here, and most of the articles I’ve seen on it have seemed inaccurate and alarmist. But my thoughts on the topic are beginning to shift, and two things I noticed today are causing to me give more credence to the threat of SPIT.

First, I was catching up on some of my podcasting listening this morning, and caught the Blue Box interview with David Schwartz, CTO of Kayote Networks, in which he talked at length about his concerns around SPIT. While Schwartz admits we haven’t seen serious SPIT problems yet, he’s convinced it won’t be long before we do and has seen examples of the tools that can be used for this in action. Schwartz concludes that with the combination of free VoIP clients, free calling, and powerful spamming tools, it’s inevitable that the spammers and telemarketers will turn their attention to using Internet Telephony. He didn’t come off as overly alarmist and his points made a lot of sense.

Second, I noticed this post by Tom Evslin about receiving unwanted voice mail spam from Vonage promoting their upcoming IPO in his Vonage voice mail. Ken Camp succintly summarizes what’s so bad about this:

That SPIT would become a reality with a VoIP provider being the offender is a flagrant example of a vendor just not understanding how to treat customers.

I also have a Vonage account and although I received the same email offer that Tom speaks of, I haven’t received anything from them in my Vonage voice mail as he did, but I’m pretty sure I’d be just as annoyed as Tom is if I did. Unless your customers have specifically opted in to these kind of communications, I would strongly suggest that voice mail systems are not the place to communicate company offers and news.

Ken Camp has posted a new article on his excellent Realtime VoIP Community site titled Telephony, Regulation and VoIP. I find the issues around telecom regulation in this country fascinating and convoluted, and I don’t think there’s any question that this will be an important area to watch with regards to IP communications. Ken’s article doesn’t dig too deeply into any of the gory details, but is a great overview of the most important regulatory issues VoIP is facing in the U.S. today including Common Carrier, E-911, USF, CALEA and ENUM. I’d reccomend Ken’s article to anyone wanting to get a better understanding of the issues that will be at the forefront of the policy and regulatory discussions concerning VoIP in the next year.

To record voice samples for the WMM comparison in my last post, I set up Asterisk for recording. I wound up using two approaches to this: a star code (*8) to preface extensions that indicated the call should be recorded, and an interactive voice demonstration.

First, the star code: by prefacing a number in the 5000 block of extensions beginning with *8, Asterisk would record the audio from the call. The snippet of the dial plan is only four lines. It picks up the the phone, calls the Monitor application, and then dials the extension after stripping off the *8. Here’s what it looks like:

exten => _*85XXX,1,Answer
exten => _*85XXX,n,Monitor(wav,/tmp/monitor-${CALLERID(num)}-to-${EXTEN:2}-${TIMESTAMP},b)
exten => _*85XXX,n,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN:2})
exten => _*85XXX,n,Hangup

The audio from the phone call will be saved in two files, one for each direction (”-in” for the voice from the phone, and “-out” for audio from the remote extension). After making a call, I could go pick up the “-in” file, which is a recording of what the stream of voice data sounds like after reaching the PBX.

The second extension that I set up was a “demo extension” that also uses a recording to allow subjective assessment of voice quality. Upon calling in, Asterisk would answer the phone, tell the caller whether they were using encryption and/or prioritization, record a voice sample, and play it back, allowing a caller to hear what they had just said. Here’s the dial plan code for it:

exten => 5901,1,Answer
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/welcome-wmm-demo)
exten => 5901,n,NoOp(Caller number is ${CALLERID(num)})
exten => 5901,n,GotoIf($[ ${CALLERID(num)} = 5221 ]?500)
exten => 5901,n,GotoIf($[ ${CALLERID(num)} = 5231 ]?100)
exten => 5901,n,GotoIf($[ ${CALLERID(num)} = 5232 ]?200)
exten => 5901,n,GotoIf($[ ${CALLERID(num)} = 5233 ]?300)
exten => 5901,n,GotoIf($[ ${CALLERID(num)} = 5234 ]?400)
exten => 5901,n,NoOp(You should never get here!)

exten => 5901,50,Playback(wmm-demo/wmm-demo-record-prompt)
exten => 5901,n,Record(/tmp/wmmdemo-${CALLERID(num)}:wav)
exten => 5901,n,Wait(1)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(/tmp/wmmdemo-${CALLERID(num)})
exten => 5901,n,Hangup

exten => 5901,100,NoOp(Clear/NoWMM handler)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/nowmm-clear-greeting)
exten => 5901,n,Goto(50)

exten => 5901,200,NoOp(Clear/WMM handler)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/wmm-clear-greeting)
exten => 5901,n,Goto(50)

exten => 5901,300,NoOp(WPA2/NoWMM handler)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/wpa2-nowmm-greeting)
exten => 5901,n,Goto(50)

exten => 5901,400,NoOp(WPA2/WMM handler)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/wpa2-wmm-greeting)
exten => 5901,n,Goto(50)

exten => 5901,500,NoOp(Unex handler)
exten => 5901,n,Playback(wmm-demo/unex-greeting)
exten => 5901,n,Goto(50)

The only hard part to writing the demo extension (actually, anything interesting in the original Asterisk dial plan language) is that I had goto statements stamped out of me many years ago in my first serious computer science class. I’m sure that Mrs. Guerin would be pleased that I can’t write a goto statement without remembering the dire consequences for my grade, and that I’m considering switching to the Asterisk Expression Language.

Several rumors have been circulating that claim an esoteric prescience concerning Sun’s intentions toward Java and the free software community. Like shoots of hope that spring from the coldest ground, open source proponents were reported floating the idea that Sun might finally, this time, yes really, make Java open-source.

More credibly, CNET suggests that Sun will alter its licensing on its Java Runtime Environment so that Linux distributions can include it. Currently, a typical Linux user (unless he buys a packaged distribution that has gone through the trouble and expense of getting a JRE license, as Sun’s own Java Desktop System did) has to download and install a JRE himself, should he want Java for use in applets in his web browser or for other purposes. Clearly, it would much more convenient for users (and provide more certainty for developers) if Linux distributions could come with Java built in.

It’s no surprise that AOL is getting around to adding VoIP capabilities to it’s AIM instant messenger product, but I was impressed to read that they’ll offer a free public phone number for incoming calls and voice mail as part of the service. To be called AIM Phoneline, the new service is expected to be available by the end of this month, and the business model seems to be to give away the incoming phone number and voice mail for free, and then make their money on outbound calling ($14.95 a month for unlimited calls to all local and long-distance numbers and 30 foreign countries). It’s interesting times in the telecom world as we see both the cost of outbound minutes and now inbound phone numbers rapidly approaching zero.

Cynthia Brumfield on IP Democracy points out that while this seems like a good idea, AOL really needs to shore up its sinking IM ship:

The company is losing AIM customers at a rapid clip (13% over the past year) and AOL’s subscription service, a big driver of AIM, is also sinking. Which is too bad, because these IM voice experiments could pay off for online portals and service providers. The IM-VoIP efforts won’t necessarily pay off in the short-term but IM-based voice could be the thin wedge that cracks open more robust VoIP options.

Alec Saunders highlights one feature of the upcoming service that hasn’t received much attention in the blogosphere yet, but which I think could be extremely useful, assigning a “reputation score” to AIM callers:

AIM callers will get a reputation score. Users can click to tell the system if a caller is, say, an annoying telemarketer. That telemarketer will get a bad rep, which will show up whenever that caller dials. You can then choose to ignore the call.

Brian Jepson pointed me to this interesting article over on T3 claiming that Vonage is working on software that will turn a PSP or Nintendo DS into a VoIP phone.

A source close to top voice over IP (VoIP) provider Vonage has told T3 that the company is in the process of creating an interface that would allow users to convert the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS into internet-powered phones.

Both devices are compatible with VoIP, as they come with microphones and can connect to the internet via Wi-Fi. All they need the necessary interface and software - and that’s what Vonage is working on.

A month ago, I was staging the Interop Labs, with a particular personal focus on VoIP on 802.11. At that point, I promised to investigate what improvement Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) prioritization makes to voice quality. The Interop show floor is a terrible radio environment. From the Interop Labs booth, I can see between 40 and 70 access points. In this environment, WMM makes a huge difference.

We’re running the Interop Labs on Asterisk. To show off the difference in voice quality, I configured Asterisk to record the incoming voice stream from the 802.11 phone. You can listen to the results, and see what a difference WMM makes. Both recordings were made just after lunch (about 1:20 pm) on the second day of the show, which was one of the busiest times for us in the booth.

So, without further ado, here are the three recordings:

• Introductory remarks. Before the show opened, I recorded a 5-minute introduction to the technology and the challenges we hoped to investigate. This recording was made from a wired phone about ten minutes before the expo floor opened.
• Non-prioritized voice. This recording is a bit over one minute long, and was made between a phone and an access point that don’t support WMM. You can hear the effects of the heavy background traffic in the frequent dropouts.
• WMM-prioritized voice. In the final 2-minute long recording, the voice is prioritized with WMM between the Unex WP2 phone and Trapeze wireless infrastructure. (This is one of the first, if not the first, public interoperable WMM demonstration.) Although the conversation breaks up, it happens less frequently and the dropouts are far less severe.

One important note: I recorded these samples at the PBX, so there’s only one wireless hop in them. A call between two wireless phones would have double the opportunity for packet loss or delay, and the difference between prioritized an unprioritized traffic would be even more striking.

Steve Rubel pointed out the other day that USA Today is offering mobile RSS feeds for their content. Look at the last set of feeds on USA Today’s feed page. No, this isn’t some newfangled, trimmed down RSS format - it’s the same format that we all know and love (well, mostly love). These feeds simply point to the mobile-optimized version of the articles instead of the full version. This is great - just subscribe to these feeds in Bloglines or another feed reader with a mobile version and no more scrolling and scrolling (and sometimes more scrolling!) to find the content on a page and no huge image ads that make absolutely no sense to display on a mobile device.

Now this is a trend I hope continues.

I’m eager to point people to three new articles we’re publishing on ETel today by Brian McConnell on using information technology to help prepare for a possible pandemic. Besides plenty of good general advice for businesses, schools, and organizations on how to think about and prepare for such a crisis, one of the articles provides some very specific and actionable instructions on how an organization can cheaply set up a large-scale teleconferencing system using open source tools (asterisk and gizmo). The ability for companies do affordably do this on their own is relatively new, and I haven’t seen any other articles detailing it the way Brian does.

1. For SARS Press 1, for Bird Flu Press 2…
2. How to Implement Telecommuting in a Hurry
3. Building Your Own Teleconference System with Asterisk and Gizmo

Brian has been thinking about these issues for a long time, and it shows. The information he provides here could be critically important if the widely-feared avian flu pandemic ever materializes, but is also very practical for companies wanting to set up these kind of systems regardless of the motivation. We’ve tried hard not to be too alarmist about the topic, but since all the experts agree it’s not “if” but “when” we’ll see another flu pandemic, Brian points out its a good idea to do some thinking and planning about this possible scenario now.

The Washington Post published an article just today, Business Plan for a Pandemic?, noting that most firms haven’t prepared for the possibility of a global outbreak. Hopefully Brian’s articles will help in this regard. I think this is very important information that should get circulated as widely as possible. If you agree please help spread the word about these articles.

Nat Torkington, the co-chair of our upcoming Where 2.0 conference, just wrote an interesting post about Skyhook Wireless over on the O’Reilly Radar.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be featuring the people, technology, and companies that we’re having at Where 2.0. Today’s company is Skyhook Wireless, a company from Intel Research. Skyhook’s technology lets any device determine its position by triangulating wifi signals. You might have heard of Skyhook’s technology before, as part of the open source Intel research project Place Lab. Skyhook represents the venture-backed commercial extension of this technology.

At the heart of Skyhook is a database of wifi basestation locations and proprietary algorithms for determining your location based on the strengths of the wifi basestations you can see. Each station has various confidence factors associated with it, and the patents are around how to combine those confidence factors to figure out the best guess at your current location. Because it’s just algorithms and wifi, any wifi-enabled device can implement the algorithms, there’s no extra hardware, and it works indoors (but not, obviously, where there’s no wifi).

So Skyhook have built a location-sensing platform. But platforms are buggers to sell: you’re a step removed from actual consumer needs, and there’s a chicken-and-egg problem with applications (can you imagine trying to get seed funding for BASF? “We won’t make the products you use, we’ll make them better!” “What? This is 1865; get thee to the chem lab and make me something I can sell!”). So Skyhook have created Loki, a Firefox toolbar that uses the Skyhook platform to figure out your current location so you can have one-click local search, mapping, and location sharing…