VoIP

Pulver Says the Future is Purple

The guru of VoIP packed a massive ballroom as ISPCON attendees gathered to learn what VoIP would mean for them.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 11, 2004]

ISPCON was buzzing on November 4, 2004. In the newspaper bins in the hall, free copies of VON Magazine were available to all ISPCON attendees. And in a packed to the rafters conference hall, the guru of VoIP himself, Jeff Pulver spoke about the future of VoIP.

He was worried that "some in DC" wanted to regulate VoIP but those fears would later prove mostly misplaced when the FCC ruled on the issue. On November 9, 2004, the FCC issued its ruling. The FCC took over VoIP regulation. Pulver was ecstatic, noting on his blog, "Sure the FCC could have waited (and waited and waited) to adopt a comprehensive order addressing all of the economic and social issues confronting VoIP, but preempting the states from developing a hodge-podge of conflicting rules was an essential first step in giving us our marching orders to deploy innovative VoIP services and applications with the certainty that states will not be able to nickel and dime us or otherwise administer us out of business."

Other issues Pulver raised in his keynote, however, will not be solved so easily. Although he praised enthusiasm reminiscent of 1999, the final year of the dot com boom, he warned that problems could be in the cards. "Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to gain customers worth $25 per month," Pulver warned.

The future's so digital
Looking to the future, Pulver challenged innovators to use common sense. He also suggested that innovators learn from children. "I'm a dad. I have twin 10 year old sons who have been on the 'net since they were three years old. They influence how I look at products," he said.

Another key principle, he said to an appreciative nerdy audience, is the "Vulcan philosophy," which he described as: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one."

"It goes on to say, 'I am and will always be your friend,'" he noted, eliciting a chuckle from the audience.

Overall, Pulver was thrilled about the potential of VoIP. "Voice as an application is a paradigm shift. It's changed the meaning of the word 'talk' which now means IM, POTS, SMS, VoIP. . ."

Another key to the success of VoIP, Pulver claimed, is its low bandwidth requirements. "We don't need the massive bandwidth of Jim Crowe [CEO of Level 3] to deploy VoIP."

Other technological changes are also favoring VoIP, he said. "Thanks to Moore's Law, switch costs are way down (though this hurts hardware vendors). End to end IP voice is happening."

Even the open source movement, with Asterisk, is promoting VoIP. Pulver said that when he worked on the Wall Street trading floor, he had wanted to bring in open source, but that had been scoffed at—until Red Hat came in with a paradigm shift.

Innovate or perish
Nevertheless, Pulver warned that the current VoIP environment may be too easy. "VoIP must be more than a fashion statement! If that's all it is, there's a real risk of going out of fashion."

The problem, he said, is that there's a real lack of VoIP innovation. Most people see VoIP today as nothing more than cheap voice. That limits the opportunities for it, and is particularly harmful in discussion with state and federal regulators, who see VoIP as similar to voice and therefore want to regulate it.

As long as VoIP remains nothing more than cheap POTS in the eyes of customers and regulators, he warned, it will be a zero sum game that will be won by those with the deepest pockets, the RBOCs. At its best, Pulver said, it could be a "parasite within he ILECs, where the bellhead DNA still exists."

He called for more "purple apps" which he defined as anything that you can do on IP that you cannot do on TDM. For example, he suggested that Canadian telcos offer a local phone number to all expats.

He said his sons are always in touch, using voice or IM. Partly inspired by them, he has built the pulver.communicator which combines free voice and free IM multiuser chat as well as presence. In the long run, he hopes to end the phone numbering system completely. "The future is not about dialing. We should call people, not locations."

—End