Voice over IP

Instant Messaging: Future ISP Opportunity?

It's still early days for IP-based telephony, but visionaries are already looking far ahead—to a time when the Web, VoIP, and the PSTN merge into a single communications system.

by Gerry Blackwell
[November 17, 1999]

When VoIP guru Jeff Pulver says ISPs should keep their eyes open for what he calls the Instant Messaging "revolution," it might be a good idea to listen up. The guy has his finger on the pulse.

Pulver—a consultant, publisher of two VoIP-related newsletters and a hot Web site, and producer of half-a-dozen conference/trade shows on IP voice and video—has been jumping up and down and gesticulating wildly about instant messaging for some time now.

We caught up with him recently in a phone interview from his home in New York. It was the day after he'd closed Instant Messaging '99 in Las Vegas, the first conference of its kind for IM cognoscenti.

Building on the buddy list
"What I wanted to do [at the conference] is show the industry what real opportunities there are if they extend instant messaging and presence management just a little bit further," Pulver said.

Instant messaging, of course, is the hottest Internet-based communications phenomenon. It's based on the fact that the Net knows when and where individual surfers are connected.

AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others distribute free client software that allows surfers to instantly see when friends, family or fellow members of an interest group using the same, or a compatible, IM client come online.

Users can send each other instant messages when they're online or enter into private chat sessions. They can also do "presence management"—indicate in a user profile when they're accepting messages, if they've stepped away, or they're on vacation.

Prosperity through presence management
But Pulver and others are looking well beyond today's Internet-centric, predominantly text chat-oriented instant messaging. And it's the presence management part of today's technology that Pulver believes has most potential for revolutionizing the way we communicate.

The opportunities will be greatest, he adds, when people are connected to the Net with high-speed always-on cable, DSL or wireless links.

Instant messaging will make a real difference, Pulver says, when that presence management information can be "exported" to voice service providers over some kind of universal and public signaling network—to local exchange carriers, as well as IP telephony and wireless service providers.

Now an individual could set up a profile that tells these service providers how and when—or whether—to connect calls. If it's during the day, connect to this number, if I'm on the Net using a dial-up connection, put it through as an IP voice call, at night put it through to this number. And so on.

In the instant messaging world of the near future, IP voice will be commonplace —and whether a call is IP or PSTN will be largely transparent to the call receiver.

Answering-machine obsolescence
"What I'm looking at here is finally eliminating phone tag," Pulver says. "Leaving a message is very nice if you don't want to talk to a person. But in my vision of where instant messanging goes, you end up talking to a person more than to machines."

Some people, of course, will be aghast at the idea of not being able to hide behind voice mail anymore. But Pulver has a point. And besides, the individual would control how and when people can reach him.

In fact, in this world, people who constantly find themselves having to leave a message may be receiving a message—i.e. I don't think you're important enough for me to take this call personally.

Eye on the future
"Service providers who look at this now will be competitively advantaged," Pulver says flatly in typical Pulver-speak.

The biggest winners, and the group that predominated at Instant Messaging '99, will be local exchange carriers and other traditional PSTN players. They benefit from increased call completion, which translates into increased revenues.

Pulver compares the impact of instant messaging and presence management to the emergence in the 70s of answering machines, which had the same effect of increasing call completion.

"But the impact of instant messaging will be even more dramatic," he says.

The ISP connection
There is also a very strong role for ISPs, Pulver insists. He believes a universal IP-based signaling system will be used to distribute user profile information. ISPs could operate servers in this public IM network.

They could also do profile management for users, and provide resources to track users. And instant messaging-related services will be a key part of Web hosting services in the future.

Pulver compares the evolution of instant messaging to that of e-mail—where ISPs also play a pivotal role.

Like instant messaging today, e-mail started off as a proprietary activity, with no ability to communicate outside your own domain—Compuserve, for example, or a company network.

But the first steps are already being taken.

The run-up has started
On a purely ad hoc basis, Microsoft found ways to interconnect its MSN Messenger clients with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) clients—although the inteconnection was subsequently shut down by AOL.

And standards bodies have begun to work on the IP-based signaling protocol for instant messaging that Pulver is predicting will eventually drive the market.

So what should ISPs be doing to prepare for this brave new world of always-on, always-reachable instant messaging?

"Keep your eyes wide open," Pulver says. "It's important at least not to be blind-sided when critical mass for instant messaging occurs."

In the meantime, you could join the Instant Messaging Forum, the industry discussion group Pulver announced at Instant Messaging '99. (Keep an eye on www.pulver.com early in December for an announcement of the launch of a forum Web site.) Most of the charter members are carriers, but ISPs are welcome, he says. And membership is free.

—End