The widespread acceptance of mobile phone technology is rapidly obsoleting the once common payphone, on U.S. street corners at least. Even though I live in a location where I can’t receive a cell phone signal, the disappearance of public pay phones is one of the reasons I own a cell phone — it’s not nearly as easy as it once was to find a public phone to use in this country. There’s definitely a certain amount of charm to some of the more creative pay phones and enclosures, and there is a small niche group of collectors who are always on the hunt for them.

Those folks will appreciate the interesting payphone site that BoingBoing pointed to yesterday, the payphone project. The site features “stories, pictures, phone numbers and news from payphones and public telephony.” Don’t miss the gallery of photos of payphones from around the world, there’s some real good ones there.

Susan Crawford has just posted a very scary analysis of the DOJ’s proposed draft amendment to CALEA, highlighting 5 major problems she sees with it and asking that we all start paying closer attention to this legislation and take appropriate action.

We’ve been talking about how the new backdoor access and reporting requirements for VoIP services are sure to stifle innovation for awhile around here (that was the theme of Brad Templeton’s talk at this year’s Emerging Telephony conference in January), but Susan points out some other very big red flags to this legislation.

For instance, I had no idea that the proposed language would force all online services to have a point of presence in the U.S. As Susan points out this has very serious implications:

This is a very big deal. This means that any entity that allows people here in the U.S. to communicate has to have servers here. Remember ICQ? They started in Israel. They didn’t have servers here. This means that no startup in any other country can help us communicate without being subject to the design desires of U.S. law enforcement. What?

This point of presence requirement is now found in China — they, too, want to make it easy for law enforcement to listen in and then arrest people.

It’s a gripping read. Please take the time to at least inform yourself about the possible ramifications of what’s being considered in this new, but definitely not improved, CALEA act. The EFF has posted a PDF of the proposed language.

Alec has yet another insightful post on what it takes to foster a successful developer community around a product or service, and why companies should want that. I think this paragraph really sums it up nicely:

The fundamental premise behind an ecosystem strategy is that innovations by others make your own innovations more valuable. As the vendor, your goal is to position yourself as the platform of choice for launching new and innovative applications in your market. You want lots of developers supporting your product. Doing so allows you to position your company and product as a platform for innovation, especially amongst the highly influential (and notoriously early adopter) developer community.

But that’s not all to his recent post, Alec also really spells out the specific benefits you can expect from a successful platform play and examines the most common questions around this topic. As usual, I couldn’t agree more with Alec.

Jim Van Meggelen is featured on the latest entry in Jon Arnold’s Canadian Thought Leaders podcast series, speaking about open source telecommunications. Jim is the coauthor of our excellent Asterisk book, Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, one of the founders of the thriving Toronto Asterisk Users Group, and really an expert in this field.

Jim feels that it is time for the PBX to evolve into something more than it has been in the past, and that open source is going to help make that happen. Certainly the widespread success that Asterisk is seeing today and the innovative applications that people are beginning to build with it is one indication that Jim is right on the money.

One point that Jim makes in this podcast that I really agree with is that it’s not necessarily the cost or licensing differences that open source systems offer that is driving this revolution, but more that fact that these new open platforms are much more conducive to supporting a healthy and innovative developer community than the proprietary walled-garden models we’ve traditionally seen in telecommunications. We’re now beginning to see some of the fruits of a more “developer-driven” ecosystem.

Jim and Jon also discuss how telecom hardware is rapidly becoming commoditized and one of the shifts that is happening now is that it’s really becoming “all about the software,” and they also touch on some of the innovative new products and services that are emerging today, like ioutum.

Jon has been posting some very interesting podcasts over on PulverMedia, I recommend checking them out.

Tim O’Reilly has just written an intriguing post over on the O’Reilly Radar about the metaphor of dial tone in the Web publishing space.

Tim relays how a recent conversation he had with O’Reilly’s new head of online publishing about building our web publishing tools around the model of delivering dial tone got him thinking about this metaphor in terms of other technology, like what we’ve been calling Web 2.0. As Tim points out, the original concept of dial tone was essentially to do away with the need for an army of telephone exchange operators to connect calls.

The principle of dial tone is to create a situation where users can do something for themselves that once required the intervention of an operator.

This applies nicely to one aspect of Web 2.0 that Tim has written about before in The Architecture of Participation, namely the power of harnessing user-created data. Or as Tim notes, this could also be described as the “design of systems that leverage customer self-service.”

Once you frame the problem in this way, you understand that one of the challenges for IT departments and companies used to the IT mindset is to get the operators out of the way, and to build new processes that let users do the work for themselves. You also can ask yourself, where is dial tone going next?

I’ll stop paraphrasing and quoting Tim’s post now, but I highly recommend clicking over to Radar and giving it a read - as usual, there’s lots of good food for thought there.

Google announced today that the GoogleTalk client just got some new features, including voicemail, file transfer and photo sharing, and an IM presence feature that will display the music you’re currently listening to. Ted Wallingford, who is not “nearly as impressed with GoogleTalk’s new features as its developers seem to be,” rightly points out that these are all features Mac users have had with iChat for quite some time. (It’s great to have Ted back and showing up in my RSS feed again - don’t miss him over on his new online digs, Signal to Noise).

GoogleTalk has received some bashing in the press recently for its extremely low usage numbers, and I’d have to agree with Ted (and Mark Evans and Ben Metcalfe and others) that these additions are nothing to get too excited about. Especially as I can’t even try it out since there still isn’t a Mac version. But TechCrunch does point out one interesting GoogleTalk development buried in the CNET article about this latest upgrade: that Google and AOL will soon have their IM systems talking to each other. With AIM’s massive IM penetration, this can only mean good things for GoogleTalk.

ZyXel was kind enough to send me one of their new WiFi phones - the ZyXel P-2000W version 2. I have to say that I’m impressed with the ZyXel. It’s a sleek and simple design that fits comfortably in your hand and could easily slide in your pocket. It has volume buttons on the side and a headset plug. The phone can connect to 802.11b and 802.11g networks and can register with any SIP broadband voice provider, including an Asterisk server. It connects to its power cord via a mini-USB connection. A quick Froogle search indicates that the going rate for this model is around $148.

It had no problem getting a wireless signal and configuring itself on the network using DHCP. I have an open network at home, but the phone menus imply that there would be little problem connecting using WEP encryption on a secure wireless network. I’ll be honest - I was expecting the signal range to be pretty short. I was pleasantly surprised - I even walked a good distance through the woods near my home while on a call and noticed very little signal loss. Battery life was comparable to the specifications they advertise, although it seems like all phones in this space are right on the edge of usability.

There is a simple address book on the phone for frequently dialed numbers. It allows you to add numbers from the caller id history as well as add your own. It also does an address book lookup when you receive an incoming call and displays the name you assigned to the user - a feature you’d expect from a modern phone. There is no way to sync your phone address book with, say, the address book on your computer. You can customize the ringtone for the phone and set it to vibrate, etc, but you can’t assign specific ringtones to specific users in your address book.

The only other suggestion I have for ZyXel is to make the display a little easier to read - it’s difficult to make out at even the slightest angle. Also, when you’re on a call there’s no timer or anything to speak of on the display. In fact, there’s nothing obvious to indicate that you’re even on a call. Overall, I was impressed with the phone - this is a new space and I expect we’ll see rapid changes in the WiFi phone market.

Robert Cooper responded to O’Reilly editor Chris Adamson’s mini-rant about the problems he was experiencing trying to use Google Maps Mobile on his cell phone and makes a connection to the crippled phones U.S. carriers provide and the current net neutrality debate. I think Robert makes a good point that if we’re not careful we could see more walled gardens and crippling technology along the lines of what the cell phone industry is famous for.

If you buy a V300 or RAZR or whatever from any major carrier, it comes crippled. They only want you to use ringtones, wallpaper and -god forbid- applications that they sell you. Lots of phones in the carrier specific versions are crippled beyond belief. I don’t think the fault is J2ME’s so much as the way we use cell phone networks.

I hate to bring the whole political aspect into this, but this is directly on point with the network neutrality debate and the Trusted Computing/Paladium issue: the hardware and the network should be there for what you want to use them for, not some highly managed, highly structured regime. One of the reasons I, personally, consider the NetNeutral intitiative important is I don’t want my Cable Modem service to end up looking like the cell phone networks.

I received, and started using, the Novatell V640 Express Card/34 with my Verizon EVDO account a few nights ago. The following are my initial thoughts.

First, the good news:
1. For Mac users the updated VZAccess software is a Universal Binary. The Novatell V640 is the first dedicated mobile EVDO solution I’ve found that’s compatible with OS X on my Apple MacBookPro.

NOTE: It is not necessary to install the VZAcess software to use this card, Mac OS X ships with built in support!
This was Updated on 10/25/06

2. Speed wise I have witnessed some great rates: 1254 kbps down; 116 kbps up. On my first SF to Silicon Valley commute I was able to maintain connectivity the entire way (on I-280 no less!) I did notice brief losses of connectivity.

Now, the bad news:
1. Verizon’s VZAccess Manager software (3.0.1 build 1463) isn’t compatible with the Cisco VPN software 4.9.00 (0050) I need to use to access the corporate network. (I was able to successfully ssh to a proxy box and forward specific ports but that’s an additional pain.) Note: the previous Kyocera PCMCIA card I was using worked fine with VPN so I assume that this is a software issue. I’ve contacted Verizon to let them know about the issue. Considering many business users are EVDO subscribers I consider this a **major** problem

NOTE: Cisco is now shipping VPN Client 4.9.01 (0030) which works with this card. As mentioned below in one of the comments it might still be necessary to go to the terminal and (a) unload and then (b) load the drivers but I can confirm the software does in fact work when connected via EVDO. Here’s how to load and unload the drivers:

UNLOAD:
sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/CiscoVPN.kext

LOAD:
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/CiscoVPN.kext
This was Updated on 10/25/06

2. When restarting the computer with the card inserted I get an annoying message “Starting up your computer with your Expresscard installed has prevented VZAccess from recognizing the device. Please eject and re-insert the Expresscard.” This is just silly, how can the software detect the card to display this message but not actually detect the card!

3. Other minor details, the VZAccess s/w has a couple of strange interactions and some trivial button actions don’t work.

Quick Tests:
I was able to make/receive VoIP calls using Gizmo, Skype and Yahoo Messenger so none of my desired ports appear to be blocked (yet).

Overall feedback:
Based on my limited experience testing connectivity and coverage this is a decent MacBookPro EVDO offering but I would definitely expect Verizon to quickly work with Smith Micro to revise the software that’s available so that it doesn’t feel so wanky.

It looks like TellMe is trying to re-brand itself as a Product company with various Voice Search driven offerings geared towards: Business, Information, and People.

MSFT announced recently that they’ll be a year late (sound familiar) shipping their Speech server and now plans to roll it out with Exchange sometime in 2007!

Many are expecting to see the Voice search space start to heat up and I anticipate some partnerships.

This brings up an interesting opportunity for TellMe and MSFT to buy some time working together to form a Voice search partnership.

My guess: expect some sort of trial run 800-CALL-MSN Yellow Page services coming soon (powered by TellMe.)

Digium, the company behind the popular Asterisk open source PBX, has just taken $13.8 million in Series A funding from Matrix Partners. As usual, Om has all the details as well as a nice little interview with Mark Spencer, Digium’s founder and the creator of Asterisk. Mark claims he’s a “lazy programmer” and that’s why he’s kept Asterisk so simple. (I know people who would disagree with both parts of that statement.) Preston Gralla thinks this “should be the final nail in the coffin of old-style PBXs” and I have to agree.

Asterisk runs on cheap hardware, and is infinitely customizable. Given all that, why would anyone buy an old-style PBX, or not replace their existing PBX with Asterisk?

In fact, at O’Reilly we’ve done exactly that and have recently replaced the PBX at our Sebastopol, California headquarters with Asterisk. Stay tuned for more information about that in the coming weeks here on ETel. We’re big fans of Asterisk at O’Reilly - we’ve published lots of Asterisk articles and everyone’s favorite Asterisk book (Asterisk: The Future of Telephony), we’ve had Mark and other Asterisk-related speakers at several of our conferences, and now we’re using Asterisk as our main communications platform.

The press release announcing the VC funding states:

With the anticipated growth of IP-based communications and the continued acceptance of open source, Digium has a unique opportunity to become a dominant player in the telecommunications market.

That seems pretty obvious from where I’m sitting, and I have no doubt that Digium will have great success and be an even bigger open source success story in the future than it is today.

It’s been a big news day for Skype, but probably even a bigger one for iSkoot. Skype’s prominent placement in the Sony Mylo announcement has the VoIP blogosphere buzzing, and now comes the news that Skype and iSkoot have come to an agreement to co-market the iSkoot Mobile Solution, a service that allows you to use Skype on your regular cell phone. There’s a handful of companies trying to bring Skype to the cellular world (EQO, IPdrum, Soonr, Epyx), but getting Skype’s backing will surely be a big boost for iSkoot. I haven’t tried the service as it doesn’t work yet on my model of cell phone, but it sounds like the iSkoot service has other advantages over some of the competition like not requiring two handsets or any computer as part of its scheme to bring Skype calling to your cell phone.

It’s been a long time since Sony had a hit with a new product, but the soon-to-be-released Mylo personal communicator looks to me like it could be a homerun. The sleek new device is smaller than a PSP with a 2.4 inch LCD screen and comes with 1 GB of flash memory, a slide out keyboard, and is wi-fi compatible. Short for “My life online”, the Mylo will ship with Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger pre-installed, as well as a web browser and the JiWire’s hotspot directory. As Michael Arrington says, “This could be the wifi device for Skype that we’ve all been waiting for.” At least those of us with $350 to spend on a new gadget. While the Mylo doesn’t appear to have a built-in cell-phone, it does have both a speaker and microphone as well as a headset jack to use with Skype voice calling. And of course it plays music and displays photos and videos too.

Ubiquity’s Gary Gray was interviewed by Greg Galitzine recently over on TMC.net and he talks a bit about their newly-launched developer network (UDN).

A large part of the UDN initiative is focused around the identification of developers to bring into the program, and the maturing of their skills on the Ubiquity SIP A/S platform. In line with this strategy, the UDN Web site provides a tremendous resource to developers to become productive in developing new applications. Developers gain access to free software downloads, including Ubiquity’s SIP A/S platform, developer tools, tutorials, white papers, developer forums and blogs — everything they need to become productive with Ubiquity.

If you’re a SIP developer I suggest you check out what Ubiquity is doing. They understand that promoting a healthy developer ecosystem is good for everyone involved, and you’ll find a lot of resources and available help if you’re interested in developing applications for Ubiquity’s SIP application server.

Dan York is at the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas and shares the news that a suite of VoIP security tools has just been released by David Endler and Mark Collier, authors of Hacking Exposed VoIP: Voice Over IP Security Secrets & Solutions. The existence and release of these kind of tools often causes many in the affected community to get all up in arms and make dire and drastic predictions about the potential fall-out from nefarious uses of such programs, but I’m in agreement with Preston Gralla that this is really actually a good thing. Releasing tools like this will place the security issues out in the open and help level the playing field, which can only be good for the industry in the long run. I believe it’s far better for these tools and the vulnerabilities they highlight to be known and addressed then to be hidden away under the sole control of someone who may have illicit intentions.

In the ongoing quest for better battery and charging technology, Japan’s NTT DoCoMo has partnered with AquaFairy to develop a micro fuel cell charger for its 3G handsets. Just add water and the fuel cell charger can reportedly charge a phone in the same amount of time as an AC-based charger. I caught this interesting development on PhoneScoop, which also notes that last year NTT DoCoMo was touting a methanol-based fuel cell charger. This one seems like a big step forward as besides only needing water as the catalyst, the new charger is smaller and more powerful than the methanol device. At this time these fuel cell chargers can only supply “several charges” so these are essentially disposable emergency chargers, but one would hope the advances in technology will lead to future enhancements and more permanent charging devices.

Many of us in the VoIP blogosphere pointed to and agreed with the recent Business Week essay The Phone Companies Still Don’t Get It , but Ken Camp went a step further and recently posted his own analysis of why innovation is broken in the telco world, from the perspective of someone who worked in the telco universe for almost two decades and it’s definitely worth a read.

Ken rightly traces the roots of the problem back to the days of divestiture:

But the truth, the roots of the death of telco innovation go deeper. In 1984 AT&T went through divestiture. On the surface, divestiture was a split of the local and long distance businesses, but there were other factors, other events all going on around the same time. The customer premise equipment business was ripped away from the Bell system (and the independent telcos) and given to the customer. In those days, we didn’t buy phones at the local electronics shop. We didn’t buy routers for premise connections. A CSU/DSU to terminate a circuit was the property of the telco back then. A shift began.

ZDNet’s Russell Shaw attended OSCON last week and has posted a nice write-up on the Asterisk session led by Brian Capouch, with pretty pictures too. Brian is one of the shining lights in the Asterisk community and a real inspiration, and I’m sorry to have missed it. This is the first year I didn’t make it to OSCON in quite some time, but I hear reports that the premier open source conference was bigger and better than ever. If like me you couldn’t attend, Daniel Steinberg has been producing some excellent podcasts from the show and there’s a ton of great coverage of the event on the O’Reilly OSCON Convention News page.