Paul Kapustka's Blog

Dave Axam

Dave Axam, BT Retail's GM for future voice services, gave a very entertaining and thought-provoking keynote during Tuedsay's sessions here at the Venetian Hotel. And while the 1 million user mark shows the company is successfully signing up VoIP users, Axam said what's more important is BT's tight embrace of the idea of voice as an untethered application, and not something tied tightly to a single service.

"Is VoIP going to kill us? No," Axam asserted. "Instead, why not have voice be an application that can be tied to other services? For us, VoIP is a springboard for innovation."

Joining the chorus of previous presenters here, Axam noted that making VoIP work well takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes. A master of the soundbite, Axam said that SIP is "like English... it's supposed to be the same language, but if you [listen to] the English, the Aussies, the Americans..." (the laughing of the VoIP-heads in the crowd made it unnecessary for Axam to finish the line); his point was that BT has spent lots and lots of time testing and ensuring the interoperability of CPE and handsets for VoIP.

Another interesting bit of real-world experience led to BT's latest CPE deliverable, a combo ATA/Wi-Fi router with a built-in cordless phone. Axam said that customer feedback showed that end-users often couldn't find the phone jacks on previous ATAs, and that training customer service reps to offer such help was a dubious exercise... "so we just put a handset on the front of the box."

Axam also said that VoIP is no longer a quality laggard. In fact, the company has trademarked the term "high definition sound" because "these days VoIP can give you a better [sound] experience" than traditional TDM phones, Axam said.

(Watch for more from Dave when I post the second day's video report from the Sylantro event, later Wednesday or early Thursday.)