VoIP Watch

Skype: Get Your Payment Act Together

Image via CrunchBase

Note to the Tony Bates-if you have customers, bill them as Skype, not an unknown, back office company. It's called Branding 101.  You see, it's been a few years since Skype started to charge for services, so one would think that in an era of global transactions that they would get their payment act together, especially since they are now owned by Microsoft, but treated as an off-shore owned entity.

In the past they and many of the leading USA banks have had the same problem I've seen with other off-shore merchants-they fall into the high risk of fraud, so the credit card companies and banks take a careful look at their transactions. Now that Skype accepts the American Express card, a sign that more businesses are using Skype, one has to educte their credit card companies about them. At one point Skype and CapitalOne had issues, then Barclays, all in how they presented their data to to them.

Enter WorldPay, a European processor of credit card transactions. Today, the account security group of American Express flagged some renewals on various Skype accounts we use in my agency. Of course, Skype is who I do business with, but instead of Skype being the "merchant" presented to American Express, the name provided was WorldPay, a company that has only transacted business with me four times in the past few years, and those were for purchases in the UK.

It took a while with the very helpful AMEX rep, Ahmed, who basically said "oh, yes, we often see WorldPay flagged and it ends up being Skype."

8x8's Bryan Martin Discusses the Second Coming of the Tech Boom

8x8's CEO Bryan Martin was featured in an NBC TV news feature in the Bay Area about the second coming of the technology boom in Silicon Valley as the Nasdaq, where many tech companies list their stock reached a twelve year high. Watch the video.

My take--we're seeing a new renaissance of sorts in technology. Quickly we have moved away from a hardware based economy to one of apps and services. Devices, though being replaced faster and faster, are also more relevant longer because of it. A two year old Android or iOS device is still usable and able to present data taken from the cloud and presented, while the server in the cloud gets updated every so many months with faster chips, better code and is connected to a faster, lower loss network.

-- Andy Abramson

VoIP Companies Are Growing In San Diego

The San Diego area is known largely for bio-tech and mobile leadership, largely due to Qualcomm and its dominance on the local technology scene. But quietly, the region is becoming home to some of the more rapidly growing VoIP companies on both an infrastructure level. 

Whose here? Well for starters here's three---Sansay, Phone.com and Telcentris. 

Sansay, led by long time friend Andy Voss who co-founded Nuera Communications in 1995, continues to be a force in the Session Border Control sector. The little heralded technology, is an integral aspect of the telecom technology eco-system, making it pretty much a necessity for ITSPs and mobile operators to deliver high quality calling and services, including the ever increasing demand for real time video and WebRTC.

While the industry goes ga-ga over Broadsoft and its softswitch technology, without companies like Sansay and Acme Packet producing technology that insures the maximization of performance and profitability for IP communications companies to route, peer and secure telcos services, much of what makes VoIP able to be better than the PSTN wouldn't happen. With Oracle's recent acquisition of Acme Packet the likely need for SBCs will only increase down to the enterprise level on a regular basis is my guess.

Phone.com, with headquarters in Newark, NJ, recently outgrew their tech side office space in Poway, CA so they moved next door into bigger quarters, as the San Diego Business Journal noted, along with SoCalTech. The growth, and recent funding led by ff Venture Capital and the Edison Innovation Venture Capital Growth Fund shows that investment in IP based communications continues.

Telcentris, best known for their unified/social/OTT offering VoxOx also has recently been growing. They raised another $5,000,000 and made some strategic hires of late adding PR and Marketing exec Joe Lawrence from the CDG and Tristan Barnum, best known for being a co-founder at Switchvox, which is now part of Digium and befoe that working with long-time friend Michael Robertson at MP3.com.

-- Andy Abramson

OnSip Debuts Busy Lamp Field

One of the neat things about IP based calling companies is the fact that most are founded by innovators at heart. That's why today when I watched the video OnSip Busy Lamp Field note from CEO Mike Oeth, I just had to share it.

What the busy lamp field means is users can now see when someone is on the phone-whereever on the network they are. Sweet.

--Andy Abramson

WhatApp Rumors with Google and What May Happen

I love WhatsApp. I use it daily, especially to stay in touch with friends in Europe and elsewhere to avoid the costs of SMS. Sure, I can use GoogleVoice, but if those across the water don't have a US based GoogleVoice number it means an international SMS. Whatsapp helps me avoid that.

Recently rumors of a Google possibly making a purchase of Whatsapp made the rounds. And maybe there was some truth to it. Companies like Google always talk to smaller businesses about partnership or acquisition. Sometimes the negotitiations move along to a point where price is on the table, but often what Google and others like them are doing is looking under the hood to see if what's there fits into their long term strategy.

Candidly, the best buyer right now in Silicon Valley is Yahoo for WhatsApp, not the also rumored Facebook. The reason is simply this. Yahoo has basically moved in the direction of the mobile web, while Google is all about the browsable web.  The fit between Yahoo and Whatsapp is likely better, as the Whatsapp team could likely be longer term players inside a new Yahoo and shape direction, while at Google it's all about Tim, Larry and Sergey and always will be for a long time. But at Yahoo, the opportunity has become more of a greenfield play.

But while all this is going on, and it goes on all the time, the best thing for WhatsApp to be doing is to keep driving user growth and to keep signing up mobile operators because in the end, those two metrics along with user retention and usage stats will be how the company is ultimately valued by whichever buyer pays the price.

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AT&T Taps Boingo For Global Wi-Fi Roaming

First AT&T cut a data GSM deal with Jasper Wireless. Last week AT&T's Kris Rinne talked about AT&T shouldn't be called a dumb pipe and discussed how the new Ma Bell will do more to lower rates internationally. Today, AT&T tapped Boingo to start to put a dent in coverage holes and give their customers access globally with Wi-FI. As the Verge points out this follows a deal with The Cloud in the UK.

But while Boingo (a former client up to their IPO date) has hundred's of thousands of accessible access points worldwide, the way the press release was phrased leads me to believe that the access is limited to only the actual Boingo owned and operated hotspots, most of which are in major airports and large commercial building or sports facilities.

The key phrase is "managed and operated by Boingo's subsidiary, Concourse Communications Group." Those are not all of the access points in the Boingo worldwide network, but are indeed the ones that Boingo can do things like guarantee a level of service and insure that access really works. 

In a lot of ways this is good for Boingo, and their partners. Too often some providers of Wi-Fi hotspots lag in keeping up with all the new standards or implement odd ball authentication schemes that make it difficult for early adopters, or Mac users, to connect. Having experienced this roaming issue first hand as a multi-account Boingo subscriber, I have also expeirenced how effortlessly all my apps work when I connect at a Boingo operated airport vs. a roaming partners' network. VoIP, Video, collaboration and cloud services sometimes work at partner locations. At Boingo locations, everything works. 

And for AT&T and their customers, the gold standard approach dictates that everything has to work, or the cost to support it outweighs the value offered.

-- Andy Abramson

Say Goodbye to DSL, Hello to LTE

It's no surprise that DSL installations are on going the way of the dinosaur from the USA's larger telcos as that news is over a year old. But the reason is LTE is cheaper for the operators to install, and there are no wires to maintain. Today's formal launch of HomeFusion by Verizon Wireless, while pricier than the wired DSL lines means higher speeds, data caps and possibly some restrictions on what services you can access.

I say possibly some restrictions because my experiments with Verizon Wireless' LTE modems have yielded mixed results when I use over the top VoIP and Video services, as well as some challenges with IP based conferencing services because of how Verizon passes traffic or doesn't. They seem to double NAT which causes some IP communications providers fits, especially SIP traffic, and my attempts to get answers on this or organize calls between service providers and Verizon's engineering team have yielded no success, all the way up through their very polite Executive Response team.

But the good news is for those who have been speed challenged by wire, the new HomeFusion means higher speeds, higher bills and less time to download. Overall this is a win for those who are not as much in need of an always on, all IP based lifestyle of business.

-- Andy Abramson

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(g1a2d0047c1) (Photo credit: watchingfrogsboil)

What started out as an April Fools' Day story in the Financial Time's Alphaville on Monday has jumped to the rest of the media world and impacted the stock markets around the world. And, honestly, I don't know if it's true. UPDATE-LOOKS LIKE I WAS RIGHT. Verizon has said it's not.

The "what" is the reported teaming up of AT&T and Verizon to take over Vodafone, give Verizon 100 percent ownership in Verizon Wireless, and AT&T Vodafone's assets the world over. Truth is stranger than fiction so anything is possible but......

Forget the fact that its an end around the breakup of the Bell System as it's international, not domestic so the ruling doesn't apply, it sure is interesting. But to get a sobriety check I asked ArentFox telecom legal begal Ross Buntrock for his thoughts:

"The rumored Verizon/AT&T/Vodafone transaction promises to do for American wireless competition what Ed Whitacre did for landline competition in the late 1990’s and 2000’s:  completely eliminate any hope or possibility of it.  And as the FCC has noted in prior reports, the wireless industry in the US is not robustly competitive today."

While always on the mark, Aswath Rao had this to say to me on Twitter:

"The hint lies in the confluence of three claimed "facts": AT&T and VZ have each < $5B cash on hand, & the acq price is $245B"

Do you think all the media jumping on the story have been fooled?

-- Andy Abramson

 

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Oracle In Telco-Look At FreeSwitch

With the purchase of Tekelec and Acme Packet one has to be wondering if market leading Broadsoft is next on Oracle's buying spree. While it's a possibility, I think the game plan is more of a surround strategy, than buy the company that would immediately grant SAP a licence to start working with every other telco and switch manufacturer on the planet. Basically, Broadsoft has so many customers that would feel Oracle's moves are too competitive in the long run they would begin to look at options. Oracle isn't buying up pieces to not make more money. What Mark Hurd is doing though is taking the parts that HP would have had if they continued on the path of being big in telecom and establishing the foundation to sell more appliances that are tied to the Oracle cloud.

Instead I would start to look heavily at the open source offering from Freeswitch the same way that Oracle now looks at Java. As an eco-system enabler. If Oracle gets behind Freeswitch then Broadsoft has to really start to start to look at other M&A options. Freeswitch according to many devs and CTO's I speak with is far more flexible and provides options that avoid the walled garden, royalty laden approach of Broadsoft. 

-- Andy Abramson 

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WhatsApp @ Skype -Changes That's What

A good friend in the telecom world, Kerry Ritz, who is the ex head of Vonage UK and before that was with 3 in London tipped me off to a move at Microsoft-Skype that is sure to cause raise some eyebrows over at WhatsApp in Mountain View and with their VCs I bet. If I was WhatsApp I would become even more agressive and start to look for more carrier and operator deals before Skyprosoft gets serious with their operator partners whom they are already deeply courting on all levels to sell services and solution. (By the way, if you're not using WhatsApp and you text across borders or send photos your missing out. I couldn't travel and stay in touch without it and iMessage as easily as I do.I just wish Whatsapp worked on tablets and had multi-device sync like iMessage.)

Ritz tipped me of about Ran Mokady, a veteran mobile exec who is credited by many as being the father of the mobile browser. Think of Mokady as the Marc Andressen of mobile. In March Mokady was made Senior Director of Program Management, Messaging and Async at Skype. Now at first blush the title has to be considered a mouthful, but given Ran's background, time served inside and around Microsoft, his work with Apple and vision, plus the ownership by Skype of GroupMe (a company that took part in one of Larry Lisser's Startup Camps at ITExpo a few years back) WhatsApp has to be looking over their shoulders.

Let's think about market rationale and opportunity. Skype is globally used and has massive penetration and market share with app usage on mobile devices climbing. Currently Skype's SMS is one way and basically useless compared to WhatsApp. On the otherhand iMessage and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) have enourmous user bases which like Skype are OTT (over the top) service. In a note to me Kerry pointed out the Lync installed user base, which I feel becomes Skype accessible very soon. Add in the demise of Microsoft Messenger and one has to know that like everything Microsoft does, they tossed a pebble in one direction while preparing to roll a big boulder down the hill.

Take all the pieces-Skype, Lync and GroupMe, put together a service focused approach, store it in the cloud, and you have one more take money away from the carrier service. Also, with Microsoft adding federation to Lync and Skype (think what Xconnect has done with cable operators voice and video traffic) with messaging it totally goes after the markets held by not only the mobile operators, but also brings in an alternative to things like Twitter and email itself.  Gone are the 160/140 character limits because the messaging is inside Skype. Want to go from chat to call to video to screen share...those are why the ASYNC in the title is the key....

-- Andy Abramson 

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