Egyptian government orders Skype mobile blocked

From a Reuters report:

The NTRA had tolerated mobile internet telephony until a drop in international call volumes over recent months pushed them to tell Egypt's operators to enforce the ban, Badawy said.

"We monitor what is happening on international voice calling and it has had an adverse effect on it," he said by phone.

Tarek responds to a Global Voices post:

It’s official now, the NTRA – the government – is the one responsible for this and not the mobile operators. However I have strong feelings that the operators are the one who pushed the NTRA to take such decision in the first place as Skype harms their – as well as Telecom Egypt’s – revenues.

tags: skype, banned, egypt, ntra, badawy, mobile, skypemobile

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Microsoft: Windows Live Messsenger: 325 million active users

Jeff Kunins, Senior Director, Social Networking (Windows Live) at Microsoft (and Tellme alumnus), blogged some Live Messenger facts and figures. Monthly user behavior:

• Status updates: 1 billion
• Profile picture updates: tens of millions monthly
• Emoticon packs: millions purchased monthly
• Web traffic from Messenger to Windows Live Profile, Home, and SkyDrive: 300 million unique

tags: microsoft, stats, statistics, trends, charts, messenger

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

The Skype Empire: Disintermediation Vehicle

A guest post by Todd Carothers, VP, Product Management at CounterPath Corporation.

When we started BridgePort Networks (acquired by my current employer CounterPath), we knew the fixed-line voice services was starting to undergo a decline and mobile services would grow rapidly (over 4.6B users today).  We also knew that pricing pressure would start to decrease margins for mobile operators.  What we really did not understand fully at the time was what Skype’s role would be in the dismantling of the Telecommunications value chain and ecosystem.  How could we?  Skype was just starting and the impact was marginally at first.  We did believe Skype would be a catalyst for Operators to take notice-but we were incorrect.   In fact many of the executive leadership of Fixed Line and Mobile Operators that I met with back in 2004 saw Skype as a “Gnat” buzzing around the Telecommunications sector.  They disregarded the threat at large.  Well, we all know that Skype become much more than that.  According the the latest figures from TeleGeography Research, Skype now represents approximately 12% of International Long Distance.

The article also points out that Skype-to-Skype calling has grown dramatically: 51% (2008) and 63% (2009).  Couple this with the steady growth of the concurrent number of Skype users online and it would seem that Skype is methodically and systematically eroding (Fixed Line) Operator revenues.  Check out this chart from Skype Journal on concurrent online users:

So what does this mean from a revenue perspective?  The Skype Journal also posted some incredible stats on the arbitrage impact:

The net impact is approximately $13B (yes with a big “B”) of revenue up in smoke in 2009 for Fixed Line Operators worldwide.  Given Skype’s momentum, it looks like that number will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Given that quantitative data above, let’s consider the qualitative + my speculation of the future impact of Skype:

First, it is clear that Skype had set its crosshairs on the ailing Fixed Line Operators first.  The numbers above prove this.  Skype will continue this route since the Fixed Line Operators really have no choice given that they are also being attacked by the Mobile Operators via Fixed Mobile Substitution (Source: SD&P Internal Analysis):

In addition note the only saving growth service for fixed operators is Broadband-a key enabler for Skype.  So the net-net is Skype will retain the upper hand against the fixed line operators.

Second, we are in the midst of Skype attacking the mobile operators.  Leveraging MobileVoIP, Skype is working across multiple mobile OSs and devices.  Even more Mobile Operators are opening up their networks to allow MobileVoIP applications to work over mobile data channels.  This is a big shift for Mobile Operators.  This puts ~80% (Voice) revenue at risk.  This week it is expected at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain it is expected that Verizon Wireless and Skype will announce a formal relationship to enable Skype over the Verizon Wireless network as well.  Look to FT/Orange, Vodafone and Telefónica to do the same.  This is good news for users, but fast forward 4-5 years and I see the Mobile Operators going through similar pains as the Fixed Line Operators: losing voice revenue to data pipe enabled VoIP apps.  This is one of the reasons I believe Mobile Operators are ditching the all-you-can-eat mobile data plans.

Third, look for Skype to move into the Enterprise in a big way.  There is Skype for Business today (i.e., Skype trunking service), but I envision a Skype PBX Client on the desktop removing the need for a premise based PBX.  This will help give Skype its leadership position across consumer and Enterprise.

Fourth, Skype as the total Communications Portal.  Skype will knit together their consumer and Enterprise offers to create a single network, single platform experience mashing up different communications users with multimedia and collaboration services.  Think about a Skype user context switching their personal and work personas. 

Since its inception Skype’s theme has been world domination (i.e., via steps outlined above).  Here is the good news for traditional Fixed Line and Mobile Operators:  CounterPath sells the products and technology to fight the Skype threat.  CounterPath’s FMC and Softphone products are flexible, feature rich and customizable to any Operator environment.

One thing is for sure, 2010 will be an exciting year for the Telecommunications sector!  Look forward to the battle.

tags: skype, Orange, Vodafone, Telefónica, MWC10

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Vivu plugs multiparty video into Skype for Windows

$10 a month gets you multiparty video conferencing, screen/application sharing, browser and phone access for your guests, and video broadcasting. Vivu's VuRoom for Skype plugs-in to your Windows and Mac Skype clients. VuRoom launches your session using the Skype client. Vivu notifies your invitees to your call through a Skype chat. They can launch into the room through their own copy of VuRoom or click on a link to the browser version. Your meeting uses Skype's encrypted, high quality audio channel.  Here's a flash demo, an offer for a 15 day trial account, and details on subscribing to VuRoom.

Vivu isn't the first company to offer multiparty video for Skype, but their timing is excellent. Hundreds of millions of Skype users now appreciate video calling, paving the way in customer appreciation and behavior. This plug-in helps Vivu extend its market reach to Skype's large user base and builds on the love and trust people have for the Skype brand.

Vivu's core business is hosting webcasts, some with ten thousand attendees, and virtual meeting rooms. It's a highly competitive space: Apple iChat, iVisit, MeBeam, Paltalk, PeerMe, SightSpeed, ooVoo, ekko, TokBox, Dimdim, and WebEx are prominent in supporting multiple parties in video chat as part of the meetings.

Skype could easily target this market segment as it turns to business markets. Will Skype compete with partners like Vivu for customer attention, as they have with one-to-one video calling software partners and with desktop sharing software partners?

tags: skype, vivu, vuroom, video, videochat, videoconference, videoconferencing, software, plug-in, iChat, iVisit, MeBeam, Paltalk, PeerMe, SightSpeed, ooVoo, ekko, TokBox, Dimdim, WebEx

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype gave away $12.9 billion in free international calls in 2009

One in nine cross-border minutes was a free Skype-to-Skype call last year. That's $12.9 billion in international calls Skype gave its users for free assuming Skype's customers would pay a world average market price of roughly $0.24 per minute.

Did Skype take those billions from telephone companies?

Just a little.

Telephone companies don't offer much in the way of differential pricing, charging more to people who'd pay more and less to people who'd pay less. So they leave a large underserved market.

Skype is happy to serve them.

Skype is also making the market bigger. When you make Skype-to-Skype calls, you don't worry about the cost of the call; just your time and your Internet connection. Skype voice calls can run for hours without anyone feeling anxious about using up minutes or the phone bill. So not only is Skype bringing underserved callers into the international calling market, Skype is encouraging them to speak longer and call more often.

Looking at the chart, people have been substituting Skype's free/cheap, simply priced, IM-style calling for expensive, unpredictable, and hard-to-dial PSTN calls. This bids down the market price of all calls. That's been going on for years; the average price is one fifth of what it was fifteen years' ago. It also slows the growth of PSTN calling as people switch to Skype.

The trend line shows Skype serving 75 billion minutes this year and 100 billion in 2011. That assumes Skype doesn't do anything new, like improving virality, usability, availability, presence, accessibility. You know: things that bring more people in and get them to call more people, more often, for more minutes.

tags: skype, competition, international, longdistance, pricing, chart, stats, statistics, trends

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Phil Wolff's 67 Reckless Predictions for 2010

In 2010...

1. A hot stranger will IM something inappropriate to you.
2. Skype's SilverLakeification will be complete, with a very short leash on strategy and operations at first.
3. Skype will serve 125 billion minutes of calls.
4. Second Life will serve 20 billion minutes of calls.
5. Oprah's television show will end as scheduled in 2011; lots of Skype calls in 2010 leading to the finale as former guests make cameo appearances, holding out for a spot on Oprah's last (highest-rated-ever) episode.
6. "The Tyra Banks Show" will end as scheduled in 2010. Nobody will Skype in.
7. UK police will allege terrorists use Skype (like everyone else). Parliament will demand the PM bring Skype under control.
8. Skype 5.x will offer multiparty video.
9. Skype 5.x will offer team features.
10. Someone will attend a family funeral via Skype video. And forget they are on camera.
11. Skype will release a "naked Skype" public beta. This Skype engine, no user interface, will be free/cheap. Hardware developers will like it; web developers won't.
12. Skypecasts will still be offline.
13. Facebook will add voice to chat.
14. Skype for Business will account for ten percent of Skype sales.
15. Nortel changes its name to Avaya. Or avice aversa.
16. The world economy will continue to suck. An American commercial real estate crisis will reinvigorate the Great Recession. Good news for Skype as more people work from home.
17. 24's eighth season will feature Cisco's new midrange video conferencing.
18. Skype won't offer a "Login with Skype" service.
19. Vampires still won't Skype.
20. Tencent will buy ICQ for its non-China userbase. Skype won't.
21. Google Talk will add multiparty video with On2 inside, and become a standard part of the Google office suite.
22. Skypers post thousands of videos of Skype calls on YouTube, thanks to recording software. Jeremy Hague's Vodburner outpaces Pamela as the bestselling Skype add in.
23. The US student loan crisis ($700 billion outstanding) strains consumer lending.
24. Skype starts a post-SIP standards discussion about communications protocols for the 21st century.
25. Avaya will make Skype for SIP the default setting for new switches they sell.
26. Skype manages to get a television commercial on the air.
27. China's troubled economy will boost Skype usage when families can't afford to travel home for the Lunar New Year.
28. A team will talk for 200 hours in an uninterrupted Skype-to-Skype call.
29. Wi-Fi phones will ship with Skype SILK inside.
30. Six former Skype employees will become CxOs.
31. Someone dies, unable to Skype for emergency help.
32. You'll be able to make iSkype voice calls on Verizon 3G before AT&T 3G.
33. 100 handsets will run on Google's Android.
34. Skype will release their homemade COTTON video codec, so they don't have to use the ones from Google's On2. Higher quality. Easy, free license. Independence.
35. Skype.com still won't let you log in with OpenID.
36. Windows Live Messenger gets a huge boost in new user signups from Bing, Office2010, Office Live, and Windows 7. Microsoft will rock in 2010.
37. LG ships a television with Skype inside.
38. Mobiletelco 3 ships its third generation Skypephone.
39. An angry entertainer tweets to a million followers her PC crashed and lost all her Skype history. So she's switching to...
40. Skype opens a mobile research lab in India.
41. Gizmo5 features migrate to Google's plumbing and Google Voice.
42. A Harvard Business Review case will feature a Skype-related issue.
43. A Fortune 500 company (not eBay) will provide Skype for Windows for their employees.
44. Volunteers phonebank using Skype on behalf of a national EU political candidate's campaign's.
45. A lobbyist slips a Skype-hostile measure into a US law on behalf of incumbent telcos before Skype can muster opposition.
46. The Skype store will sell a netbook with Skype preinstalled.
47. The BigTelco industry pressures Nokia, so it never preinstalls Skype on its Series 60 line for the US market.
48. Skype relaunches its software platform developer program mid-year.
49. Skype's unreasonable Broadcast Terms of Service keeps it off new dramatic television programs and out of movies all year.
50. A court will find Skype guilty in a class action suit related to collecting small sums of money from customers but not offering service or prompt refunds.
51. Skype will offer to buy Tokbox for its browser-based video.
52. Skype revenue per minute called will continue rising from $0.06 as Skype trunking starts to contribute.
53. Skype will top $900 million in revenue.
54. Skype will sell small businesses pricing plans making it easy to budget and buy.
55. An IETF working group publishes avatar portability protocols.
56. 23 million people will log in to Skype at the same time.
57. 180 million new Skype accounts, about 500k daily.
58. Someone Skypes from a Virgin Galactic space flight.
59. Skype loses juicy US government contracts over the TOM-Skype security compromises. You don't know when someone you're talking with is using a TOM-Skype client with monitoring software from Chinese security agencies. An audit will show Skype on 500K federal employee computers anyway.
60. Skype relaunches Skype for Android. Android Skypers have more dialtone per user than the iPhone or Skype Lite.
61. Zombies become the new Vampires.
62. Tom Green Show's corps of Skyping fans will continue to Skype into the show while he is on the road with his new Standup Comedy Tour.
63. Skype-like features become generic, included in every communications and collaboration product shown at Demo, TechCrunch50, Telephony Startup Camp and similar product launchpads.
64. BT/Ribbit adds video support to its platform for programmers.
65. Voicemail to email transcription becomes a standard feature in most markets for mobile and home phone service.
66. United Nations rescue and recovery teams standardize on Skype.
67. Skype sponsors a Festivus site for the public "airing of grievances" and videos of your "Feats of Strength."

Hudson Barton predicts a 2010 peak of 27,695,335 Skype users online, Total "real users" will be 67,596,505.

What are your predictions? Can you do better? Prior years' predictions: Phil Wolff's 26 incriminating 2009 Skype Predictions, Phil Wolff's 37 Sketchy 2008 Skype Predictions, Predictions? Wish List? What's In Store for 2008 (Jim Courtney).

tags: skype, future, predictions

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

More M&A: Should Skype buy ICQ from AOL?

What would Skype pay to add 42 million active users in 2010? The $300 million AOL seems to be asking for ICQ may be steep. According to AOL, 1.1 billion messages are sent and received in the five hours per day the average 13-29 year old ICQ user is connected. ICQ is bigger than Skype in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Israel.

On the other hand, Skype added 40.3 million new users in 2009q3. Ninety days of growth and an established community would be nice.

Maybe. You could lose half the ICQ users at first switch.

ICQ's proven centralized services were appealing when Skype was desperately seeking alternatives to Joltid's p2p technology. That compelling interest is over.

Techcrunch says South Africa's Naspers (JNB:NPN), a big investor in China's Tencent, expressed interest. Tencent's QQ was inspired by ICQ.

I'm sure AOL values ICQ based on its advertising revenue. Skype is unlikely to

It might be cheaper to hire the Israeli Mirabilis team directly.

tags: skype, aol, aim, icq, is, israel, mirabilis, tencent, naspers, china, russia

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Tencent QQ 2009q3: 1B accounts, .4B active, 75MM online

Ahead of Skype worldwide is Tencent (HK:0700), a diversified Chinese online empire with the QQ instant messaging service at its core. Building on free IM, QQ makes money with "Online Media, Wireless Internet Value-Added Services, Interactive Entertainment Service, Internet Value-added Service, E-commerce, and Online Advertising Service." Tencent had another record quarter.

QQ now has more than a billion (1057MM) user accounts. Active accounts in the last two weeks of the quarter are just shy of half that at 484.9MM. Peak concurrent users rose to 75.5MM. Twice as many accounts and nearly four times as much dialtone as Skype.

QQ's "Dialtone Density" (quarterly peak accounts online as a percent of the number of active accounts online) shows customers are spending more time connected with the QQ network.

Tencent explains their growth as "driven by the popularity of our SNS [Social Network Service] applications which enhanced user engagement and activity through cross-platform integration, as well as increased usage of our IM services through mobile devices."

Tencent has an adjacency strategy, adding businesses that complement their core QQ service and sharing common usernames.

So they have casual gaming, MMO games, FPS games, desktop games, enterprise IM, mobile, email, feedreader, security, media player, download manager, pinyin authoring, news and community portal, search, mobile games, mobile QQ, mobile music and ringtones, blogging, dating, facebooking, online fashion, live video, music sharing/streaming, ecommerce shopping and payment services. They all make money, either through premium services and virtual currency, or through a huge advertising network.

Tencent can deploy service after service because QQ runs on a massive centralized infrastructure. Skype will have to package core capabilities through APIs before they can speedily build new services and let partners build on the Skype network.

See also:

• Watch out, Skype. Tencent steps out from China. Skype Journal, September 2009.
• Tencent QQ continues growth, profitability. Skype Journal, August 2009.
• Tencent's QQ IM triples Skype's dialtone.  Skype Journal, March 2009.
• Tencent's QQ: 45 Million Simultaneous Online, Skype Journal, November 2008

tags: tencent, qq, qqim, performance, stats, dialtone, dialtone density, trends, charts

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Why all telecom companies should follow Free.Fr's example

Why all Telecom Marketing and Product management is wrong

View more presentations from Raindeer.

It's almost therapy for your phone company: be true to yourself. Find joy in simplifying your customer relationships so you can be marvelous at simply helping people talk. Rudolf van der Berg's talk at the Emerging Communications Conference in Amsterdam. Too bad Lee Dryburgh won't stream the high quality video he's paying to record.

tags: free.fr, telco2.0, ecomm

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Where's the value in Skype buying Gizmo5?

Michael Arrington broke a rumor that Skype is in talks to buy Michael Robertson's Gizmo5. I don't see much value.

You buy a small company for five things: cash flow, IP, brand, relationships, and people.

Does the firm produce cash flow? When you make half-a-penny a minute, you must sell a gazillion minutes. When you have intense competition, manage churn. When price-per-minute falls, find non-minute sources of revenue. When market prices fall, build volume for buying power over your termination suppliers. As of March 2009, "Gizmo5 serves more than six million consumer and business users" after six years. Skype adds that every 17 days. I don't know if Gizmo5 has been successful enough to create attractive cash flow. If Skype owned the business, could Skype quickly build profits?

Gizmo5's IP prime asset could be its SIP gateway. They've built on top of it a SIP-to-Skype (OpenSky) gateway, support for Google Talk, and Gizmo Voice, a Gizmo5/Google Voice mashup. If the code is good enough, it might be the base of an enterprise server product or a hosted service. If you trust Julian Cain's critical fact-checking comments in Mike's story, I doubt the code would survive due diligence. If the systems is rock solid, scalable, and easy to adapt, Skype might save two to six months development time by buying.

The brand is fine for VoIP geeks, is known to buyers of cheap/free calling. However Gizmo is far from a broad consumer brand. Test for yourself.

Gizmo5's business relationships are available to Skype with a phone call. No exclusive channels of distribution. No high value marketing partners. No namespaces bringing millions of new Gizmo users. 

Which leaves the team. I have no idea if they have real depth of SIP talent, well integrated as a team. But it wouldn't be hard for Skype to cherry pick the entire industry for the best SIP coders, architects, and production operations staff.

Out of all of these, is there enough value that Skype might buy the company?

Maybe.

Robertson is a pirate in the entrepreneurial sense: he's smart, flexible, opportunistic, and aggressive. He might add a healthy bloodthirst to Skype's buttoned-down corporate/geek culture.

How much should Skype pay for Gizmo5?

Nothing. Don't Bother.
$1 million
$5 million
$10 million
$20 million

Total: 0 votes Nothing. Don't Bother. $1 million $5 million $10 million $20 million Other

photo by J.D. Lasica.

tags: skype, gizmoproject, gizmo5, michaelrobertson

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

AT&T caved on Voice over Cell. 12 Attacks To Come?

AT&T loathes Skype. Skype costs them international calling money and changes consumer expectations in ways mobile carriers cannot respond. So AT&T forbid Apple to permit Skype voice calls over the wireless network. It worked for two years. Now that barrier is down, how else can they slow or stop Skype? To bring a humble Skype to the negotiation table? Three anticompetitive strategies:

The Parity Strategy: Get government to treat Skype like a fat incumbent landline phone company.

• e911. Emergency dialing is expensive, unreliable with softphones like Skype, and different in every country. Skype says it is not a phone company, so the US FCC should not require Skype to offer emergency dialing. The incumbents would love to saddle Skype with this requirement.
• Assistance to the Hearing Impaired. Require Skype to offer interpreters for the deaf.
• Skype and US, State and Local Phone Taxes. Lobby for Skype to collect federal, state and local value added taxes and fees. Blur the distinction between Skype and phone companies. Complicate Skype's prices and products.
• Metro/State/Provincial Regulation. Encourage non-Federal governments and agencies to entangle Skype in hearings, compliance procedures.
• Administrivia. Phone companies file detailed reports with state and federal regulators. In triplicate. Ask local agencies to swamp Skype with requests for information.

Attack Skype's Brand.

• Pollute Skype's Security Brand. Skype has a reputation for being very secure, relatively spam free, and a safe way to communicate. Invest in academic challenges to Skype security. Publicize every stalker, lawsuit and robocaller. Host "ethical hacker" contests and spread the results.
• The Weapon of Evildoers. "Criminals and terrorists use Skype." Host conferences for police and intelligence agencies on threats posed by Skype. Urge them to compel Skype to give up encryption. Force Skype to rebut law and order politicians.
• Reframe Net Neutrality. Net neutrality improves Skype user access to networks. Supporters of net neutrality use language like freedom and choice. Instead, blame Skype for slow pipes, limited coverage and congested bandwidth.
• Not Invented Here. "Buy American," don't give your hard earned money to that foreign phone empire. A little astroturf goes a long way.

Divide and Conquer.

• Sponsor Class Action Suits. Pit dissatisfied customers against Skype. Force Skype to invest in lawyers, not engineers.
• Start the Skype-Killer Adventure Fund. Confuse Skype's customers with a market full of Skype clones. Pay peanuts to attract entrepreneurial talent to your war on Skype.
• Raid Skype Talent. Half of Skype's employees are paid Eastern European wages. Aggressively recruit them, stalling Skype's projects.
• Repeat Worldwide. Share with telcos in every market a template for attacking Skype. Make Skype struggle in every country.

tags: skype, competition, att, at&t

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

illustration: LuMaxArt

Text of AT&T letter to FCC re VoIP over iPhone

Here you go: AT&T saying it had not previously consented to VoIP over its airwaves.

AT&T to FCC re: iPhone VoIP

 

October 6, 2009

Ruth Milkman, Chief Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW Washington DC 20554

Re: AT&T Response to Wireless Telecommunications Bureau Letter, DA 09-1737 (July 31, 2009); RM-11361; RM-11497

Dear Ms. Milkman:

On behalf of AT&T, I am writing to provide you with an update to AT&T’s August 21, 2009 response to the Bureau’s questions about the Apple iPhone. In our response, we explained that AT&T currently offers a variety of devices that enable VoIP applications to make use of our wireless network (including our 2G and 3G capabilities) and the devices’ Wi-Fi connectivity. We further explained that the iPhone currently supports VoIP applications that make use of the device’s Wi-Fi connectivity, but VoIP capabilities were not available on the iPhone for use on our wireless network. We also stated that we were taking a fresh look at the issue and would promptly notify the Commission of any such change in our policies. AT&T has completed its review of the matter and today we informed Apple that, effective immediately, AT&T consents to Apple enabling third-party VoIP applications for the iPhone that use our wireless network, including our 2G and 3G capabilities.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Robert W. Quinn, Jr.

cc: Chairman Julius Genachowski
Commissioner Michael J. Copps
Commissioner Robert M. McDowell
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn
Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker

tags: att, iphone, apple, competition, iskype, skype, fcc

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

3G iSkype! Thanks, AT&T. (About frakking time.)

Skype confirms AT&T will announce lifting of the ban on VoIP over the AT&T network, this week at CTIA San Diego. The week Skype launched Skype for iPhone, someone showed the app calling over 3G on unlocked iPhones. Soon we won't have to think about our connection before calling.

It only took an FCC investigation into anticompetitive practices.

I eagerly await details. When? App upgrade required? iPhone OS upgrade required?

(now if only I could get 3G signal where I want)

(now if only Skype wouldn't choke on my 1k+ contacts)

(now if only iPhone would let Skype work in the background)

(now if only iPhone wouldn't hang up Skype calls when I get an SMS)

tags: skype, fcc, att, usa, us, competition, iphone, apple

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Indian spies ask to block Skype; Skype denies sharing code with China, US governments

A Times of India report claims Skype shared its encryption with the U.S. and Chinese governments. A Skype spokesperson denies this:

"Reports that Skype has shared its code with the US, China and other governments are groundless.”

The story leads with the Indian Intelligence Bureau asking the Department of Telecommunications for permission to block Skype to deter terrorists. Skype says:

"Skype is aware of reports that certain Intelligence agencies in India have asked the government there to block the use of Skype.  While we do not have confirmation of these reports or any directive by the authorities to block Skype, we don’t believe any country or operator should impede consumers’ choice to use Skype or other Internet applications to improve their communications."

Skype won't say if Indian intelligence agencies have asked Skype for help with interception or tracking criminals, if Skype has helped them, or if Skype is talking with Indian officials about broader policy issues.

The Times says agile criminals are shifting from easy to intercept to harder to intercept technologies. Authority for Indian government interception lies in the definition of telephony. At the moment phones don't include "over the top" apps like Skype. Ability to intercept rests in domestic control over PSTN termination gateways and the theoretical ability to discover, reassemble, and decrypt Skype packets travelling within India.

"The Cabinet Committee on Security has accepted the recommendation in principle but has not set a date for initiating action" says the story.

There appear to be two forces at work.

One is a law enforcement and intelligence community drive to forbid the ability for citizens to keep secrets. In their values, good people don't have secrets and bad people's secrets should be exposed so government can protect the country. This is a generalization but their advocacy to politicians is consistent with that philosophy.

The other force is the telecom industry defending itself. Lobbying has a high return on investment and is more effective at protecting incumbents than changing business models or innovating aggressively. Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google's IM/VoIM teams have more designers/engineers innovating in this space than AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. So they lobby governments to raise barriers to entry (emergency calling, for example).

These two forces produce politicians in Russia lip syncing to Russian telecoms that Skype is unpatriotic, a threat to national security, a threat to the economy, a foreign intrusion. You get politicians in England, Italy, and Germany enlarging police surveillance powers proffering the critical need to bypass Skype encryption to undermine terrorists. Banning or constricting Skype adds to candidates' "law and order", "strong leader", and "national security" credibility, and pays off their obligations to the communications industry.

India is the world's second largest mobile market (after China, ahead of the USA), according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Trai has defended VoIP from barriers to entry to India's markets. More than 300 million Indians have phones. Customers of India's telephone and cable ISPs use home grown internet telephony at the rate of 130 million minutes for the year ending 31 March 2009. Skype served 25,500 million Skype-to-Skype minutes in 2009Q2.

Skype has no operations or personnel or portal partners in India.

See also:

• Spooks want govt to block Skype, Mohua Chatterjee, The Times of India
• Indian government pondering blocking Skype, Sean P. Aune, Tech.Blorge
• IB asks govt to block Skype, VoIP services, Dhirendra Singh, Jai Bihar
• Skype: People want total control over mobile phone apps, Matthew Lasar , Ars Technica
• Indian Intelligence asks government to block VoIP calls, siliconindia news bureau
• Indian govt plans to block all Internet telephony for security purposes, Mihir Patkar, Think Digit.
• IB calls for block of VoIP services citing security concerns, TeleGeography

tags: skype, intelligence, security, police, wiretap, intercept, encryption, decryption, india, voip, dot, ib

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
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Should Skype put Wave inside? Skype inside of Wave?

Skype could be a better Skype with Wave inside.

Should Skype clients be Wave containers? Perhaps. When will Wave become truly free of Google control? That depends on how many other software companies and enterprises start building and host Wave servers.

Would you like to see Wave inside Skype? Skype inside Waves? Federation of Skype names with Wave namespaces? Sharing of presence between the networks?

See also: Google Wave: Loosely coupling IM to everything and video: Ribbit Conference Gadget for Google Wave.

tags: skype, wave, google, googlewave

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Google Wave: Loosely coupling IM to everything

Skype soared when it wrapped IM around Internet voice calls. The familiar around the difficult.

IM brings profiles, contact lists, presence, people search, and messages. Google Wave lets you build those into any software.

Skype gained power by creating an IM namespace (the list of people who use Skype) that tightly coupled IM with more things to do (voice, video, file transfer, gameplay). Wave creates the same value but with loose coupling. Third parties have added voice conferencing, video conferencing, games. Third parties will be able to tie in their own namespaces (people@mycompany.com) and their own apps.

I fully expect to see Wave built into web sites, mobile apps, desktop clients, smart devices. Anything where you expect people (or things) to talk with people.

Loose coupling has its weaknesses. Incompatibility with extensions (we have to agree on which video plug-in to use in a conversation), no single point of contact to resolve problems, difficulty upgrading the entire network, and social issues like privacy and spam.

Wave supporters argue that the Wave protocol's weaknesses are strengths. That loose coupling provides for greater innovation in a marketplace of ideas (like software and music). That no single point of contact means no single point of failure, and no centralized control (like email).

It's still early, but now is when companies like Skype and Yahoo! and Microsoft and Cisco need to formulate something other than a wait-and-see strategy. Wave is as intensely viral and engaging as email. So you want to either jump on Wave's bandwagon or have your counter force strategy deployed before Wave hits tipping points and crosses the chasm from geek pioneers to the mainstream.

tags: skype, wave, google, googlewave

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Watch out, Skype. Tencent steps out from China.

Tencent's QQ all-time peak concurrent users is 75 million; four times Skype's. Live stats. By contrast, Skype dialtone reached 18 million concurrent users earlier this month.

QQIM is expanding from its Chinese base with its 990 million user accounts and 448 million monthly active IM users. IMQQ.com is QQ's new "global" portal for English speakers. At last report, China remains Skype's largest market.

Tencent just recruited Fons Tuinstra to moderate IMQQ's business section. He is one of the foremost Western journalists and social media experts living in China (blog, friendfeed, twitter, LinkedIn). Tuinstra operates the China Speakers Bureau, a thought leadership center for doing business in China.

Meanwhile, Tencent Holdings continues growth and profitability and a US$30.2 billion market capitalization (SEHK 700).

CORRECTION: Fons Tuinstra is not a Tencent employee.

tags: skype, chinaspeakersbureau, tencent, dialtone, statistics, qqim, imqq, china, fonstuinstra

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Deutsche Welle: "Has Skype declared war on cellphone providers?"

Deutsche Welle's Michael Altenhenne interviewed Skype's Sten Tamkivi (with remarks by Jean-Jacques Sahel) for a "Made In Germany" television news segment. Posted 2 September 2009, it takes the theme of Skype against big mobile phone companies like Deutsche Telekom.

While the positions are old news by now, the Skype Tallinn headquarters tour is fairly unique. Sten shows Skype's anechoic chamber and acoustic test dummy, the silver globe chandelier meeting room, the autobot racetrack, a huge logo-engraved table, expansive open-plan offices, and video conference rooms. I took a few dozen frame grabs from the video if you care to put names to faces.

tags: skype, dw, tallinn, ee, estonia, Deutsche Welle, DW-TV, economics, Vodafone, T-mobile

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Josh Silverman v. Verizon at Brookings

Guest post by Mark Poole, member of the Skype 5.X Discussion

Skype CEO Josh Silverman joined FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Free Press's Ben Scott and Verizon government affairs VP David Young for two hours at the Brookings Institute today. These are Mark Poole's notes from that panel.

This webcast spotlighted the issue of access. When the discussion turned to open access via the cell network, someone used the description dumb pipe. It's not the copper line, fiber optic line or the wireless signal flowing between cell towers that is dumb. The leadership of companies that provide these pipes is dumb.

"The exact expectations you have of your PC, you're going to have of your mobile phone." — Josh Silverman

The guy from Verizon really gave a glimpse into the thinking of wireless providers. He wanted on one hand to say they applaud openness to the Internet but then offer excuses why a program like Skype might not work over his network.

Rather than plan for a robust system that will handle demand today and five years from today and at the same time charge a fair price for use of their pipe, they want to try to compete with companies that offer web stores to sell applications. He described Verizon Widgets and the FiOS cable offering. He spoke of value add services Verizon can provide developers who sell through the Verizon store. Verizon's greed may be their undoing.

Silverman did a good job of diplomatically pushing Verizon to move to more open access. The potential problem with open access and Verizon along with other cell providers will be if they continue strong arm tactics when it comes to plans they offer. Charging ten to twenty bucks for monthly unlimited texting and forcing customers into high monthly minute plans, so they can get promotions like Friends and Family from Verizon, run contrary to where we should be today. It's all about access without regard what we do with that access. This is another example of dumb company leaders not dumb pipes.

Silverman presented the notion that open access for all will allow rapid innovation to continued. He pointed out how the cycle time for new technologies, disruptive technologies was getting shorter and shorter. He tried to stroke the ego of the cell providers by telling the Verizon rep that what they were doing by providing access was not really providing a dumb pipe but instead a complex job.

From my perspective the public interest won out completely. One of the other participants said the speech by the FCC chairman (.pdf) today was a paradigm shift. He looked back to two other shifts and differentiated today's by saying that the previous shifts were more about the rights and ultimate profits of a few instead of policies that favored an individual's rights and use of the Internet. Today's speech was clearly aimed at keeping access to the Internet open and with as few speed bumps as possible when it comes to high speed access.

See also:

• Skype CEO Lobbies for Skype on 3G, Om Malik
• FCC Backs Net Neutrality — And Then Some, Ryan Singel
• Genachowski's 'open Internet' guidelines offer few specifics for wireless, Mike Dano
• The new EU Telecoms laws must be finalized so as to protect Internet users' basic right to an open Internet, Jean-Jacques Sahe, Skype EU Government Relations
• FCC Chairman wants network neutrality, wired and wireless, Nate Anderson. "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski waded directly into the network neutrality fight today, launching a new proceeding designed to turn the FCC's existing "principles" into "rules"—and to add two more. The rules would apply equally to wired and wireless connections."
• Yup, the FCC supports Net Neutrality all right, Nicholas Deleon. (Great metaphors

Julius Genachowski speech at Brookings on Two New Rules

tags: skype, brookings, freepress, verizon, joshsilverman, events

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.