Irwin Lazar's "Real-Time" Blog

MPLScon 2005 - Early Bird Registration Now Open

As you may know, in addition to my VoIP related duties, since 2000 I've been the conference director for MPLScon, the annual event covering MPLS related technologies and topics from an end-user, vendor, and service provider perspective.

This year's MPLScon will take place on May 16-19, 2005 at the Marriott Financial Center in Manhattan.  We've really put a lot of work into this years program, which for the first time will feature a day of split enterprise and service provider focused tracks.

Our opening keynote address will be given by Scott Bradner, one of the true luminaries in the IT industry.  This year's program includes a wide variety of vendor presentations, case studies, and standards discussions, as well as numerous sessions focused specifically on the end users of MPLS-based services.  Our Tuesday evening "Beer & Pizza Shootout" will focus on the challenges of implementing multi-vendor MPLS-VPN services.

Please join us in NYC for three days of education and interaction. For more info, including the complete conference program, please visit http://www.mplscon.com/
 

Art Rosenberg: The Unified View

Here's a pointer to Art Rosenberg's latest Unified View newsletter: "Hot Conference Feedback on Enterprise IP Telephony/Messaging Migrations"

In this issue Art takes a look at the trends in the convergence of multi-modal communications with VoIP, and how those trends were exemplified by the recent VoiceCon event as well as The Open Group's Messaging Forum where Art chaired a day-long session on enterprise communications convergence. 

VoiceCon: SIP Status and Prospects

Attached is a slightly updated copy of my presentation from VoiceCon earlier this month entitled "SIP Status and Prospects." 

Thank you to Rohan Mahy for some valuable input.

Download SIP-Ilazar.ppt.pdf

Edholm: “VoIP is a technology that doesn’t change the world.”

From TMCnet comes a story about Nortel's Phil Edholm and his remarks about the future of communications at last week's Internet Telephony Expo in Miami.

I think Phil is dead-on when he says that VoIP won't change the world, the applications it enables will.  Too often we get stuck promoting a technology as the be-all end-all rather than the benefits it brings.

For example, most people couldn't give a darn about IP, but they do like the idea of being able to use their computer to communicate and retrieve information.  In that case it's not IP that changed the world, but applications such as web browsing, chat, and voice that it enables.

I've had the pleasure of speaking with Phil at the last two VoiceCons where he was a participant in the "Great Debate" versus Cisco, as well as at last year's Nortel Analyst's conference.  As one of the original members of the 802.3 committee that developed Ethernet, he is without a doubt one of the industry's true visionaries.

Treo 650: More popular than Elvis?

Having used a Treo 600 since around November of 2003, I've been extremely excited about the new 650.  My excitement leve went up after one of my co-workers got his a few weeks ago and I had a chance to give it a spin.

However, since my AT&T contract doesn't end until December I've been holding off from getting one, since I didn't want to pay full price for a new phone, and I didn't want to deal with early termination fees to switch providers.  That changed when I visited a Cingular store over the weekend and found out that there was an "amnesty" program for current AT&T wireless customers to switch to Cingular, allowing cancellation of current AT&T wireless plans with no early termination fee (the only fee is an $18 activation fee)

Unfortunately wanting a Treo 650 and actually being able to buy one are two very different things.  There isn't a single Treo 650 to be found in any of the Northern Virginia stores (I called about a half dozen or so).  Cingular even removed the 650 from their web site ordering system.  However when I called them Friday night they assured me that they had them in stock and I would get one in 2-4 days.  But when the e-mail copy of my invoice arrived, it showed the device as being backordered.   Chatter on Treo Central message boards indicated that folks were waiting for weeks to get theirs.  But low and behold this morning I awoke to find an e-mail from Cingular notifying me that the device had indeed shipped this morning via FedEx.

Even though Cingular now owns AT&T, they seem to still be operating as separate companies.  For example, the AT&T wireless phone I currently have will not accept a Cingular SIM, so switching to a Cingular rate plan means that you have to get a new phone.  It seems that Cingular is moving very slowly to integrate current AT&T wireless users into being Cingular customers.  One has to wonder if the anticipated cost savings from the merger are being lost in the extended transition plans.  Indeed for much of the last year the only indication of the merger I've seen is that my phone often said "cingular" as the network it was on, rather than AT&T.  Cingular will have to address the phone incompatability issue to encourage users of high-end phones to transition to its system, perhaps through a trade-in program (which will likely happen after I've already received my new phone).

Teleo: Skype on steriods?

Teleo has been making quite a buzz in recent days.   In effect, Teleo is a lot like Skype, but it offers greater features and functionality that should make it very attractive for business users. 

Like Skype, Teleo offers a PC-based softphone, free calls to any other Teleo user as well as low-cost calls out to the PSTN.  However Teleo offfers much more, including the ability to have a traditional phone number that will allow you to receive calls on your PC from any phone, integration with Microsoft Outlook/Internet Explorer to allow dialing from your phone book or from a web page.   

Teleo's feature list is sparse.  They currently offer conferencing capabilities as well as call forwarding so that you can set calls to ring your cell phone for example when your PC isn't turned on.

In addition, Teleo will soon offer the ability to plug a traditional analog phone into your PC if you'd rather use a plain old phone instead of a headset.  Teleo also plans to support voice mail via forwarding of messages to your in-box as .wav file attachments.

Teleo is still in beta, and most unfortunately it is still only available for Windows XP/2000 (which means we Mac users can't try it out yet).  But it is very promising, and it will represent a serious threat to both Skype as well as IP Centrex services.  If Teleo can execute on their plans, they will be perhaps the ideal phone service for the mobile or home worker.

For more see:

• Unbound Spiral: Teleo Tallyho
• Newsweek: Steven Levy - "Ma Bell's Kids Will Live On The Net"
• Rich Tehrani: Teleo VoIP Splash
• On-Going Teleo Testing (Kerry Garrison's Webblog)

More on Peerio

Peerio is generating a bit of a buzz in the VoIP blogging community, unfortunately it is mostly negative. See:

• James Seng: WTF is Popular Telephony?, and
• Richard Stastny: Another Vapor from Popular Telephony Vaporware 

I signed up last night for a GNUP number without a problem and downloaded the Macintosh version of PTinspector. It installed fine, but gave me all sorts of errors when I tried to run it. I'll follow up with their support e-mail address and see if I can get them resolved. They really ought to consider having either an open mailing list or BBS system like Skype has for support/discussion for their product.

More buzz around open source IP-PBXs

From Voxilla comes an article about SIPfoundry's recent release of an open-source SIP-based IP-PBX called "sipX. This creates yet another entry into the open-source IP-PBX market, joining Digium's "Asterisk" and Pingtel's "SIPxchange".

I'll be working on a report on Open Source IP-PBXs in a few months, it certainly is an interesting area to watch.

More on P2P

As I mentioned in a previous post on Peerio, their distributed, server-less approach to VoIP has the potential to drastically change the way voice services are delivering and managed both publicly and within the enterprise.

Tom Keating has more on the P2P session yesterday at Internet Telephony Expo in Miami (which I wish I was still at as I look at the snow coming down outside my window this morning).

Time Warner Telecom Launches VoIP Service for PBXs

Via InformationWeek comes news of Time Warner Telecom's launch of a suite of new VoIP services for its managed Ethernet customers.  Accorind to the press release:

The first phase of VoIP-based products offered under TW Telecom ONE SOLUTION, provides solutions for PBX customers.  These products include:  TW Telecom ONE CONNECT, a VoIP trunking solution; TW Telecom ONE REACH, an IP FX virtual numbering service; and TW Telecom ONE FORUM, a conferencing solution.

TW's solution reflects a trend I predicted in my report on public IP telephony services  last year that WAN service providers would seek to leverage their relationships with enterprise customers to deliver value added VoIP services.  I think what's most interesting in this announcement is that they aren't offering IP Centrex services (at least not yet).  Instead they've chosen to focus on high-value services that are easy to integrate into existing customer environments.