Alec Saunders SquawkBox

UK blogger, and entrepreneur Chris Gare has written a fabulous in-depth review of Talk-Now.  If you want to know what Talk-Now is about and how it works, this piece explains it all including Chris' view of why presence and the Voice 2.0 concepts are important.

He's got an interesting bio online too…

Yesterday WebDialogs announced the spring beta of Unyte Meeting '07.  They're looking for testers now.

WebDialogs is seeking users to participate in the beta test, which will run through April 25, 2007. As a registered user, participants can sample Unyte Meeting’s unified voice, video and Web conferencing capabilities without charge for up to 1,500 minutes or until April 25—whichever comes first. To sign up, visit http://www.webdialogs.com/umbeta/.

It's a good product. So good, in fact, that we just dumped our subscription to Microsoft LiveMeeting. Unyte has similar, and in some cases better, functionality, for a lot less money.

Are you a Google user and a BlackBerry user?  You may want to check out Jim Courtney's review of the Google suite on BlackBerry.  Maps, Talk, Gmail, News and Blogger mobile.  Now you can take your Google with you everywhere!

In flight communications is a hot topic today on TechMeme.  Two separate stories — the Wall Street Journal's WiFi in the Sky (related stories), and InfoWorld's FCC says no to mobile calls on airplanes (related stories) have kicked off a torrent of commentary. 

It's likely that in-cabin WiFi will be available from US carriers by early next year.  And while the FCC has ended hearings on cellular conversations while airborne for now, it appears inevitable in the future.  A spectrum license has alread been sold to AirCell Inc. to provide the service.  And in the meantime, AirCell is also the provider of in-cabin WiFi.

What makes the service particularly attractive to airlines is that they will share revenue with AirCell. The service will cost about the same as existing WiFi offerings. Mr. Blumenstein says it will charge no more than $10 a day to passengers. It will also offer discounted options for customers and tie into existing service programs like T-Mobile, iPass and Boingo.

The pricing seems fair, and an agreement between AirCell and the airport WiFi service providers would be killer for travellers. The icing on the cake, of course, would be power at every seat in the cabin. 

And what of VoIP? 

AirCell will block voice calls over the Internet with services like Skype — except for pilots, flight attendants and air marshals, who will be allowed to talk to people on the ground for scheduling, safety and security issues.

Right… until those savvy fliers recognize that all they need to do is encapsulate that VoIP conversation in a VPN tunnel.

Update: Russell Shaw notes that since flight attendants and pilots will be able to make VoIP calls, it's probably just a matter of time until the airlines have to give in to passengers doing it too.

VoEX is an interesting company making some pretty neat moves in the VoIP market.  For instance, at the VON show a couple of weeks ago they announced that their SuperRegistry product (a carrier grade enum database) now reaches 250 million North American users.  They've eliminated the need for tandem routing between VoEX customers.  A day later they announced three new interconnection hubs, located in three of the major "meetme hotels" that will allow them to interconnect their network with some of the largest global PTT players.  And not wanting to leave wireless carriers out, a week after that they announced their Wireless Peering Grid at CTIA in Florida.

Friday of last week I managed to catch VoEX execs Cyril Matthews and Charles Studt on the telephone for a few minutes as they were leaving CTIA.  I learned that VoEX is actually three business — an IP trunking business, their SuperRegistry, and an applications business.  Historically, has evolved from trunking to applications as the market has evolved.   What this means is that they can:

• carry VoIP traffic, just about anywhere.  Last year they did a respectable two billion minutes of traffic, and according to Cyril, this years numbers are going to be even more impressive.
• peer networks and endpoints, and route around intermediate networks by connecting those endpoints directly.  That's what the SuperRegistry enables.  Moreover, they will peer directly with businesses, and not just carrier to carrier.
• deliver applications which take advantage of this network.  They have a suite of the types of applications you might expect today available, and as Cyril explained, they expect to grow that suite.

As the company has evolved, they have been taking explicit steps to build new revenue sources around applications and peering, rather than voice minutes.  Voice minutes are growing, but margins are falling for them, just as they are for everyone else.  So, they will become an applications-centric carrier, leveraging the network they've built to provide access to those applications.

It's a model that we've been predicting, at iotum, since 2003.  Several companies have attempted this and failed.  However, VoEX has two things in its favor at this point in time — the market is more mature, and they have a solid foundation in those traditional businesses from which to build.  Timing and a solid financial base might just make the difference.

Ironically, the incumbents fear cannibilization of their voice minutes business which prevents them from building an applications business. VoEX, on the other hand, is the cannibal eating into the incumbents business, and they’re using that business to fund the creation of the very applications business the incumbents need so badly.