It's becoming clearer each day that YAGM and maybe E are the guys looking hard at innovating Voice communications while the Vonages, Packet8s and Broadvoices of the world all look to sell something the cable guys already have won the war with, selling PSTN replacement to millions of people who want a single bill.
Let me tell you what's sorta happening....but why I have to wonder why VoIP is at CES.....I mean, do any of these companies really know consumers yet? Are these products KIDMA (kid and grandma approved?) or are they just thinking that VoIP is so sexy that it will sell on its own. Well sorry Gracie, but VoIP which is very cool to early adopters and can change the world, needs more consumer savvy efforts to go from where they are...to the next level, maybe even rise to level 3.
Yahoo's Rock Star, and my bet to be a VP one day soon, Jeff Bonforte (who only has to wait for Brad Garlinghouse to get his long overdue Sr. V.P. stripe) was praising CallVantage to an AT&T exec who came up to him to chat. Clearly Yahoo, via their long standing SBC relationship (which in my mind is much deeper than their flings with Bell South and their dating game play with Verizon) must have meant that Brad's trips to NJ during the summer months were more fact finding for the SBC folks than simply for Yahoo to take the temperature at the AT&T Labs.
The concept of Yahoo fronting CallVantage has long been on my mind. It fits like a glove and would be the type of thing that one buys or finds at Target (better design, better price) versus the me too, me also sameness, and often more expensive name brands that one finds at Wal-Mart or K-Mart.
This could be good for Level3 too as they scoop up all kinds of traffic from the MSO's as they add customers and ramp, so while their merger/integration with WilTel begins this month, they could be a huge beneficiary of this in a weird sort of way. Level3 supplies a lot of bandwidth to Yahoo, so the IP traffic that's already there will stay there. Even with the AT&T Network in place, Yahoo becomes the metamediary like switchboard for calls that go over the IM network when a person makes a call from their computer. On the otherhand calls that would go over the traditional AT&T CallVantage routes will always stay on the AT&T network. Both carriers work with the MSO's so the game of handoff/peering becomes even easier with Yahoo in the middle. On a deeper level (i.e. mobile carrier world) this is downright scary, and in the world of fixed mobile convergence downright disruptive to the carriers with just a few missing pieces added in.
Then there's MSN. The folks at MSN seem to realize that the old Redmond way of approaching things is flawed so they're moving more towards a model of delivering what works in a consumer playground. Clearly they only want the consumer play via their overpriced termination deal with MCI. I clearly expect that as the Yahoo-MSN integration occurs that the prices will come down. With federated calling the on net and that stuff being free, why would anyone want to pay 2.5 times the price to MSN/MCI when Yahoo will likely offer things for less.
Then there's Skype. Once the darling of all of us, they have done more in the last four months to cause sheer wonderment. Today at the Netgear press conference I overheard numerous eBay execs being overjoyed at the turn out of press for the announcement, an announcement which was supposed to be a big secret but once again the Skype press team's promises of and requests for "no leaks" got torpedoed by the Netgear folks who somehow found an obscure press release wire called WebWire to leak it via. Fortunately the smart folks on Skype's PR team quickly called those of us who respected the embargo telling us it was okay to break the news.
All of that aside I had licensees of Skype telling me just how awkward things are these days, and that their remains a bunch of confusion internally, with the some of the London folks trying to make sure they have softlandings as some are beginning to fear for their jobs with eBay exerting more (and now sorely needed) controls. If it wasn't obvious that eBay is running Skype's efforts just realize that the Netgear announcement was done not in the NetGear booth, but at the eBay one in the LVCC's Central Hall. But while the gathering was large, it could have been larger if they had staged the event over at the Sands where the Consumer VoIP Summit was occurring at the same time. According to a well place Pulvermedia source, no one from Skype or ebay asked for space, as they would have gladly helped them out, as that's Jeff Pulver's teams style to always do things that help the VoIP industry.
The NetGear announcement is also much to do about not much, but in some ways points to a Balkanization of Skype users in some ways being the new flavor de jour. A WiFi phone that works with Skype is kinda neat, but the fact that it doesn't work with Skype Zones (i.e. Boingo, The Cloud) yet out of the box because the deals between NetGear and the service providers aren't done yet is bunk. Why allow it to be released to only work with open hotspots when with a little more engineering it could work on any hotspot that requires authentication. Skype obviously isn't looking at their existing partners from the get go, and instead is only a licensing tear, with some 200 licensees, but without a focus or respect for those in place. Boingo in the meantime realizing the concept of "no loyalty" being the color of 2006 has reportedly already sewn up deals with Kyocera for a SIP based phone that is both WiFi and 3G cellular ready. Could this be that Skype has peaked and now they need to find ways to create real revenue streams not simply steal minutes from the telcos?
Skype's 200 licensing deals in the short time they have been executed means quality control issues will likely surface, and while those deals may be long term wins, my guess is short term you find many of the first generation releases being auctioned off on eBay sooner than you know it.
Back to Level3, despite their whining over my wine expertise, they do seem to be on the right track. Their Consumer Market Research led by the always energetic, bubbly and downright too smart to be in Broomefield, Cynthia Carpenter continues to tell me that they have taken the right approach on how to get more voice minutes on the network.
Level3's efforts to educate the MSOs and the VoIP players (AOL, Packet8, etc.) will go a long way to helping really shape how the VoIP players market, and sorry to burst some bubbles, but Price isn't the driver or the winning play. Smart VoIP operators should bask in the smile of Cynthia and hear what she has to say. She's and her team nailed what it will take to really drive new adoptions and encourage conversions. With ex Bell South exec Charles Myers giving Cynthia the room to work, he's showing leadership on the voice side that used to be criticized when Ike Elliot was running the show (even though Ike wasn't the problem).
Oh, and then there are the loud whispers from industry execs who are more and more wondering if Vonage missed the boat, I'm sorry, exit. It almost seems that everyone is now rooting against them, not for them.
If AOL is here, they're being silent. My guess is they are in the "let's figure it out mode" on their killer platform based VoIP play, Total Talk. Google continues to be the looming threat, but more from the WiFi side of the house than broadband. That puts them right up against Earthlink that wants to be your wireless provider wherever they can score the rights.
More I hope tomorrow...