WiFI VoIP Phone from Jeff Pulver
The VON conference just finished, so there should be lots of little interesting VoIP tidbits like this one trickling in. Forbes.com talks a bit about the Pulver/Free World Dialup phone that uses WiFi:
The wireless phone costs $250 and only works when you're in a Wi-Fi hotspot, which means it's even less reliable than your present mobile phone--which you're already constantly cursing at as it goes in and out of coverage. Sure, if you have a Wi-Fi network in your home and you're a FWD user, you can make free calls from home. Also, you can whip out your Wi-Fi phone and makes calls in a cafe that has Wi-Fi coverage--a move that is sure to impress the ladies, at least if they're ladies who think it's cool to carry multiple phones and PDAs on your belt. "OK, it's aimed at geeks and early adopters, people who want to play," Pulver concedes.
Wonder of wonders, Nortel actually gets quoted in the article. More specifically, Al Safarikas.
I'm not too impressed:
"This 'free' stuff isn't really free, first of all. And you're talking about hobbyists making person-to-person calls over the Internet. It's not a big deal," he says.
Yes, for Nortel, a couple of people making free calls is no big deal. And yes, deploying it in enterprises where they eliminate all their toll calls makes for a great business case.
But I worry for Nortel's customers. These kind of quotes again make me think that there are very few people at Nortel that are actively looking ahead, thinking of what the consequences of these things are. Enterprises are a drop in the bucket compared to mass-market applications. Yesterday the Internet was just "hobbyists"...what will today's VoIP hobbyists turn into?
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Worry-wart
Why is it you're worried again? Because Nortel doesn't understand this? We're not actively "looking ahead"? I disagree wholeheartedly. We actually do have products that provide these solutions today, but it's not Nortel's duty to roll them out. We're not a service provider. The big issue today is that the local and long distance solutions area of service providers just isn't the place where they're necessarily that eager to innovate and invest in today. Nortel has had some success with service providers. But it's going to take a concerted investment by these companies throughout the world to make these investments.
Now, I know this message and the comments about Nortel were likely a bit of a troll to get my back up... but I _do_ think Nortel understands this area quite well. It's just that with loss of local ines, lower long distance prices, the average joe's reluctance to move to IP communications and the overall competition in the voice/multimedia services area it's going to take a while to make the transition. But, when it does get made, Nortel is likely one of the best positioned infrastructure and software providers.
Not meant to be a troll
But I figured I'd get a good response from you, and maybe Trevor.
So it's your execs/market messages that need work? You've already said lots more in this one comment rather than Safarikas' rather dismissive tone. Of course, he may have been quoted out of context or had more things to say at length...but that's not what got printed.
Cisco seems to always be coming up with crazy schemes for different services, many of which fall by the wayside, but they get people to buy in. Nortel seems to be like the shy kid in the corner: he's got a box filled with really neat tools and toys, but he's too shy to invite people over to his house to see them.
So: talk about your tools and capabilities, but show some applications! Proof of concept stuff, partner up with some innovative people like universities or whatever and get stuff developed!
I'm trying...
... to get a MCS client installed on my PC... You'll have to take a look when I get it. I know that Trevor was part of a beta last year, but they're just about to release the next version of stuff and so I'm not sure if he's had a chance to play with the latest stuff.