Paul Kapustka's Blog

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July 29, 2006

VoIP over Wi-Fi? Don't forget lobbyists and regulators

Nice to see that the IP communications industry is becoming more mainstream by the day, with the New York Times article about the promise of VoIP over Wi-Fi. I say promise because the article glosses over the potential snags and long leaps of faith that will be needed to reach seamless-switching nirvana. But that's what we have people like Om for, right? To call B.S. and remind us that blogs are still the more-informed edge of the news?

Tom Evslin noticed the story and checked in from a different angle, noting that in the long run the combination of Moore's Law and aggressive competition means that the days of cellular "minutes" plans are... heh... numbered.

My own addition to the analysis pig-pile: Don't be surprised if Wi-Fi access comes under a lot more scrutiny from the FCC and Congress, courtesy of the big telco and cable lobbying firms. Why? Bet you a buck or more that all of a sudden those fine-print terms of service for broadband access will get a lot stickier, especially for folks who generously want to give their bandwidth away.

My early prediction is that the telcolobby or some astroturf group will come up with a study showing that free Wi-Fi is an abomination of some sort and should be regulated. Or stopped. Point is, the Verizons and AT&Ts will not silently stand by and watch their cellular profits go down the drain. After watching what has happened lately in the regulatory world to VoIP, is there any question that VoIP over Wi-Fi is next in the crosshairs?

For more fun goings-on in this world there is Andy's insider take, always the salsa on the burrito for my VoIP reading meal.

Posted by paul at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2006

Is Congress getting serious about disaster communications? Maybe

Setting itself up as the prime nominee for the "day late and a dollar short" award, the House of Representatives Tuesday made a bold move and approved legislation designed to set national standards for emergency communications -- but left out the part about who should foot the bill. At the very least, the House has admitted there's a problem. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, better late than never is as positive as we can be.

As I and others have written before, the fact that first-responder communications are still in such a state of disarray should have cost more people than heckuva job Mikey their government employment. Why are we not asking, on a daily basis, when the Bush administration and its Dept. of [questionable] Homeland Security exactly expect to start making repairs? After the next hurricane?

Our own Jeff Pulver, along with Tom Evslin, continue to press forward with real action, including their plan to compel service providers to implement new technologies to keep people connected even when central offices are underwater. Jeff also blogged recently about another disaster-prepardness effort, and how Internet types and amateur radio ("hams," typically the most-prepared group in emergencies) operators might work together.

Meanwhile, at the FCC disaster things seem to be following the Bush administration and Congress' leisurely pace. After proclaiming last Fall that he would create a Bureau of Homeland Security, chairman Kevin Martin hasn't actually accomplished that goal yet.

Separately, the FCC's blue-ribbon panel on Katrina's impacts just issued its list of recommendations, which includes a curious suggestion that all communications workers who participate in recovery operations be "credentialed" under the auspices of NSTAC (National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee). Is this a good or bad thing? Does credentialing mean that ad hoc support groups won't be allowed into disaster areas? Time for some summer reading, folks, to figure this all out before the next storm hits.

Comments on the Katrina panel recommendations are due by Aug. 7, so please read the report and don't be left without having your voice heard.

Clearly, we agree with Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., who had this to say during Tuesday's debate on the bill:

Yet many in Congress sit, after 9/11, after Hurricane Katrina, wondering why no real progress has been made. That changes today. The bottom line is this: (the legislation) will improve the capability of first responders to communicate during times of emergency.

Bully for Pacrell, but let's see the follow-through in the Senate and some equal effort from the FCC. Just so we're not all left in the dark again for lack of trying.

Posted by paul at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2006

The WEEK IN VON -- JULY 24

The Week in VON, July 24

Summer partnerships: Microsoft/Nortel, MetroFi and AT&T

Story links:

MetroFi Teams With AT&T for Muni WiFi (GigaOM)

Microsoft, Nortel do the VoIP dance (Computerworld)

Posted by paul at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2006

Palo Alto thinking about fiber to the home?

Need to follow up on this one, but according to a post on the Backfence Bay Area site, Palo Alto is putting out an RFP for a fiber-to-the-home network that would be owned by the city.

Since PA is the default epicenter of Silicon Valley, it would carry more impact (at least from a PR perspective) than publicly owned networks being built somewhere, say, in Utah, where they can be conveniently ignored if you are opposed to such ideas.

Posted by paul at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)

Taking back the Net -- More from Bob Frankston

A few well-done essays about why the FCC is as useful to the Internet as a bicycle to a fish, from Bob Frankston. Start here, and follow the top two links.

And then you may understand the madness of anyone on the outside of this mess trying to describe it in terms that make sense to average folk.

Posted by paul at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)

MetroFi and AT&T: A pyrrhic partnership?

Reading Om's news of a potential partnership between MetroFi and AT&T, I'm not sure I agree with his assessment that "it puts a serious cramp in the [muni Wi-Fi] plans of others, namely Earthlink," simply because I think you have to doubt AT&T's seriousness in this area. This could be one partner who stands to win more by the partnership failing, than succeeding.

Clearly we will know more if and when the details come out, but I'm not sure exactly what AT&T would bring to a muni Wi-Fi partnership, other than maybe not opposing such deployments, as the company has done in the past through various means.

Also not sure what Om means by calling MetroFi a "laggard" in this space -- seems to me they have a pretty good record so far for a starup. You just hope that the "partnership" news doesn't turn out to be a pyrrhic relationship for MetroFi, bogging down its progress while it waits for a the slow steps of AT&T to keep pace.

Posted by paul at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2006

Asterisk -- the dark horse in Microsoft-Cisco phone tilt

While most coverage of yesterday's Microsoft/Nortel VoIP-plus alliance included the cursory "analysis" of Redmond now being in pitched battle with Cisco, I haven't yet seen one report that mentions the telecom dark horse -- open-source PBXer Asterisk -- as even being in the race. At the very least, Asterisk deserves a seat at the table.

Maybe it was too easy for most observers to paint the battle as one between two behemoths, with one (Cisco) selling IP phones like crazy and the other (Microsoft/Nortel) bringing the desktop software leader together with a wounded but still market-leading provider of telephony gear.

And sure, there's meat to carve at that food fight. But might it not be similar to those who thought IBM and DEC (and maybe Microsoft!) might divvy up all the server-software spoils, while ignoring the march of the penguins? While I'm not privy to any solid market stats, the background buzz I keep hearing about Asterisk at events, talking to sources, etc., many who are "just putting in an Asterisk box," reminds me of the early days of NetWare -- and remembering that "cheap, open, easy and it works" are often pretty good selling points.

While I'm not quite as pessimistic about Microsoft/Nortel as Russell Shaw -- remember, M'soft has quite a VoIP market already with its XBox live service -- I do think there's much more to this story than which big beast will carve up the prize. Watch out for those penguins. They can be sneaky.

[Full disclosure: Though Digium/Asterisk is often a big exhibitor and sponsor of VON events, I have no financial relationship with the company and do not participate in any VON show marketing deals.]

Posted by paul at 01:45 PM | Comments (1)

July 18, 2006

The big kids (like NBC) join the videoblog crowd

As noted by Jeff Pulver in our videoblog last week, the big incumbents in television are part of the disruptive force bringing TV to the Net. Case in point is a new videoblog from NBC chief anchor Brian Williams, with just-good-enough quality that gives the peacock network instant vlogging street cred.

The NBC videoblog, called The Early Nightly, just started this week, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which will probably become a must-read for the Internet TV crowd going forward. In the segment up now, Williams has a camera follow him down the hallway as he shows off the NBC Tel Aviv bureau, and his body armor. Bonus vlogging points to the NBC employees who don't even bother to move to the side as Williams and the cameraholder come past.

While the "edginess" of these clips is likely scripted, the lack of "professional" broadcast quality in the clip shows that NBC, like CNN before it, is more than willing to put stuff up quickly without too much polishing, meaning perhaps that we will get more substance and less flash. It will be interesting to see if Williams uses the vlog to provide background or his opinions on the news as it unfolds, something the format is well suited for.

Lured in by the videoblog, I found myself watching a few of the related clips, including the well-produced, three-minute segment that fully explained what Hezbollah is, and why the various players in the world's newest battle are up in arms. Great stuff, and I didn't have to wait through NBC's prime-time agenda to get it.

Gee, information on demand, when I want it, in a quick, easy-to-digest format. Done by professionals, who aren't afraid to not look their best anymore because they are confident in the material, not the makeup. Anyone want to bet that this is where videoblogging will really succeed, at least for most of the audience?

BONUS online video link: Dave Winer sees a revolution starting with John Edwards' embrace of BitTorrent. Still think we need AT&T's quality of service to get interesting Internet video?

Posted by paul at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2006

Juniper: YouTube driving need for more edge routing horsepower

They're not officially related, but it's easy to draw a dotted line between today's announcement of a new edge router from Juniper Networks and YouTube's claim of serving 100 million videos a day, with one (YouTube popularity) driving the need for the other (bigger routers in the network edge).

For the Juniper nitty-gritty on gearhead details like line-cards, capacity, etc., look here. What caught my attention most during my briefing call with Juniper last week was the inclusion in the presentation slides of the idea of large enterprises as potential customers for the ~$100,000-plus M120 router.

With more companies and consumers consuming more video, there's going to be a need for more capacity and control closer to the end user, said Juniper product marketing manager Alan Sardella, who sees Net traffic growing rapidly.

"It [the traffic growth] is partially a function of video, with the ascent of YouTube," Sardella said. "There's already a lot [of video] starting to stream across [the Net]. There's a general increase in traffic that is felt a lot more deeply in the core."

Whether or not regional telcos, the big players or even large enterprises will need Juniper's M120 anytime soon is something we'll be able to watch once the box becomes generally available in October. One of its features, according to Juniper, is the ability to extend QoS to Ethernet, making it "more like Frame Relay or ATM," according to Sardella. Does that mean that Juniper foresees a future with more SLAs, perhaps SLA to the home?

"SLAs are more or less guaranteed to happen on a larger scale," Sardella predicted. "One size fits all [bandwidth services]are not going to fit for much longer."

Posted by paul at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2006

THE WEEK IN VIDEO ON THE NET -- July 13

The Week in Video On the Net, July 13

Amanda Congdon, Revver, Ted Stevens, Video on the Net show, Jeff Pulver.

Posted by paul at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2006

Online poker ban? Don't bet on it

Fresh from the more-Republican-pandering-for-votes-with-meaningless-legislation dept.: The House votes to ban online gambling! Hooray! Maybe next they'll vote to ban spam, and viruses too! With about the same effectiveness, we might note.

Probably the most effective thing the House vote did was win a bunch of headlines, courtesy of the 24x7 news media monster that simply doesn't have time to analyze such efforts for the froth they are. It's easy to be a bloviator like Bob Goodlatte and proclaim that "Internet gambling is a serious problem that must be stopped," but how exactly does that jibe with politicians' willingness to be duped by gaming interests in meatspace? Oh, right, not a serious problem because after all those tribes are campaign contributors.

Hypocrisy smackdown score: 1.0 for Rep. Bob and his pals, who should stick to more relevant issues like flag-burning.

Two questions need to be asked: Are any voters fooled by such frothery? And does anyone in the House really think they could make such a ban work?

And maybe a third question: Isn't there more important work for our elected officials to be concerned with? Maybe we will find some answers from voters who are tired of such pandering come this November.

Posted by paul at 09:53 AM | Comments (2)

July 11, 2006

USF -- The new telcom battleground

With network neutrality now safely a mainstream topic, it's time to look to what will be an even messier battlefield: the specter of reworking the Universal Service Fund, a billions-large taxing infrastructure that now appears to be the big telcos' latest weapon against innovators, especially Voice over IP providers.

Our own Jeff Pulver has been sounding the alarm for the VoIP industry on the FCC's latest how-can-we-please-you-AT&T move, an "interim" order that uses the idea of USF payments as a club to VoIP business plans. The quick take is that the 150-page-plus order will undo most of the "light touch" regulatory stance toward VoIP, replacing it with legacy telecom taxation burdens for the sole reason of covering an expected coming shortfall in the USF budget.

While Jeff (with the assistance of Pulver.com wartime consigliere Jonathan Askin, our man in D.C.) has detailed the main outrageous points of the pending order here, don't just take his word for it. The telco analysts at Stifel, Nicolaus (which include former FCC chief of staff Blair Levin) recapped the order in a recent research note by calling the interim rules "more problematic for VoIP providers than advertised, complicating their ability to avoid regulatory traffic assumptions that providers believe will inflate their payments."

(That's "more problematic" as in the way your car-repair payments become "more problematic" when the garage owner tells you "the problem isn't just a loose screw, it's something somewhere in the transmission." For VoIP providers, the potential bill just got a lot bigger.)

Great -- let's cut off innovation by saddling it with fees that perpetuate the old monopoly models of business. Dan Berninger, in a guest post on Jeff's blog, argues against the recent order and USF in general at length here. Worth a read to get your bearings.

What's especially interesting about the latest order is that it seems (according to Jeff Pulver's reading) to eliminate some of the protection of VoIP from state-by-state regulation that many thought was already decided in VoIP's favor with the Nov. 2004 Vonage order.

After that order came out, an industry source noted that current FCC chairman (then just a commissioner) was the only commissioner not to release a statement (scroll down to Nov. 12) about the Vonage order. Perhaps because he knew he'd try to change it in the future, so he didn't want any words to use against him? Lawyers and conspiracy theorists, start your billable hours.

Posted by paul at 10:14 PM | Comments (1)

July 10, 2006

Is the Moto/Intel Clearwire investment good for WiMAX?

Playing catch-up here a bit, but wondering whether last week's Intel/Moto investment in Clearwire -- a stunning $900 million private placement -- is good news or bad news for WiMAX, given that Clearwire pulled a planned IPO to take the private dough.

Since Clearwire is still privately held, there has been scant information about the company's success (or lack thereof) so far in selling its pre-WiMAX services. And completely ignored in all stories about the investment is the company's previously murky attitude about independent services like VoIP or video downloads, which we've covered several times.

Now, it's clearly smart to take $900 million whenver it's offered, but it's also coming from two players who have a very vested interest in seeing WiMAX succeed -- especially Intel, which needs another win along the lines of Wi-Fi to give its chips an edge over AMD's.

The question then is whether WiMAX (especially Clearwire's pre-standard version) itself is attractive, or whether Intel can't afford a Vonage-like IPO flop that could chill further WiMAX investment. Wondering if those who think WiMAX will be the so-called third pipe think this is good or bad news? Please feel free to weigh in below in the comments.

Posted by paul at 10:23 AM | Comments (1)

July 07, 2006

Pulver TV to Amanda: Videoblog here, no waiting!

Jason Calcanis' offer to build Amanda Congdon a TV studio is a nice gesture, but here at Pulver TV we say, "why wait?" In the video blog below, Pulver TV founder Jeff Pulver (who is a big Rocketboom fan) has a studio ready and waiting for Amanda's hosting talents.

In case you didn't catch the info at the end of the video, Amanda, please contact us at (631) 961-8951, or at jeff@pulver.com. Operators are standing by!

Posted by paul at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 06, 2006

Rocketboom's real-life soap opera

Fans of the popular videoblog Rocketboom got treated to an amazing real-life soap opera Wednesday, when the messy details of a breakup between lead partners Andrew Baron and host Amanda Congdon emerged in he said-she said fashion online.

The latest (and perhaps most complete) missive can be found on Amanda's personal blog here (thanks to Rocketboom groupie Jeff Pulver for the reporting links), as well as other online entries in the saga (including Jason Calcanis' please be mine public bid for Amanda's affections).

All this happened as I was still brain-fermenting a blog about how and why Rocketboom seemed to work so well. After meeting and watching the Rocketboomers in action at the recent Vloggercon conference, I was convinced that they had more than one edge on any competition, for several reasons. One was the fact that both Baron and Congdon clearly understood the Internet culture, shown in no small part by their non-rock-star appearance at the grassroots Vloggercon event (no entourage or posing; the Boomers even sat in the audience for multiple sessions, even though every other vlogger there wanted their "exclusive" Rocketboom interview session).

But the bigger bonus for Rocketboom was Congdon's delivery style, which wasn't mainly about her attractive looks (which don't hurt) but rather the fact that she clearly is an accomplished actor, who knows how to deliver a line, how to enunciate, pause, and convey emotions beyond the writing. That's the talent range that the many me-too web efforts now emerging (which are quick to copy the tight t-shirt look) aren't able to duplicate.

The easy prediction is that Congdon will quickly land another gig, since her style is easily adaptable. Baron, however, may be hard-pressed to duplicate Rocketboom's easy charm with a replacement host. If he really is the genius that Congdon lauds him as, we'll find out quickly. Online, in real time.

Posted by paul at 06:35 AM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2006

All your Internets are belong to us... or something

Thanks to the wonder of the Internets (and recordable webcasts), the rest of the world is just awakening to the entertaining ramblings of our lovable Sen. Ted Stevens, whose titterings we've loved for some time now. If you're concerned about the future of the Internet, read these transcripts or listen to Stevens' rants from last week's markup... and understand why Ed Whitacre laughs himself to sleep at nights.

But rather than just shake our collective heads at Stevens' ignorance, we should instead endeavor to make smarter voices heard now, as our own Jeff Pulver rightly notes in his call-to-action blog entry today.

Smackdown score for Sen. Stevens and his laughable attempt to understand something other than drilling for oil or expensive bridges: 0.15 for technical merit, 8.0 for entertainment.

(Thanks to Wired.com, David Weinberger and Public Knowledge for the pointers.)

Posted by paul at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)