Alec Saunders SquawkBox

At last week’s ITEXPO a question was raised on one of Andy Abramson’s panels about the future of the PSTN.  Specifically, the question was whether VoIP will finally triumph over the PSTN, and it was asked in the context of both mobile and landline services.

My response was “that’s kind of a loopy question, as the core networks are already VoIP and have been for a long time.  The ‘PSTN’ is really the user interface by which the customer accesses the network.” Perhaps that’s an over-simplification of the problem, but despite the fact that last mile networks are not yet VoIP, it doesn’t really matter at this point as there are all kinds of ways to be “pure” VoIP if that matters to you – over the top services like Vonage or Skype running on broadband, WiFi, or even (on handsets that support these services) over 3G as Truphone allows on Nokia handsets.

There was a time when many of us, myself included, lamented the fact that the last mile network didn’t seem as if it would ever change out.  As always, however, technologists have delivered clever workarounds, and customer demand for ever higher “speeds and feeds” have led to the roll out of fiber and other digital to the home technologies. Moreover, the initial advantage of VoIP – price – seems to have been largely negated by incumbent carrier price cutting.

We have IP audio on the incumbents network today if we want it.  So the PSTN really is not much more than a legacy user interface for voice communications.  It’s the old command line of Unix, DOS, and VMS prior to the advent of the GUIs that eventually superseded those relics of computing’s ancient history.

What will be the “GUI” – the new user interface – for communications? Is it video?  A mixed mode audio/text/video user interface like Skype? Web based as Calliflower is for conferencing?  The consumer equivalent of telepresence?

A week ago I sat on a panel at ITEXPO and argued that video was over-rated.  Someone had to do it and, in my opinion, today’s video is over-rated.  Blurry and/or small video really doesn’t add a lot to a conversation. However, that may not always be the case.  Consider these two examples:

• Last fall I saw demo of Magor’s new Tele-Collaboration platform – a couple of 42” high definition monitors that double as desktop monitors and a telepresence system at much more affordable price points than the competing vision from Cisco. Watch the video at their site.  The Magor system is still much more than a standard desktop PC, but within a few years it will be affordable enough that any company will be able to deploy these on desktops throughout the organization.
• Along similar lines, at CES Skype and Panasonic announced a collaboration to bring 720P voice and video calls to television.  At ITEXPO last week, Skype CSO Christopher Dean enlarged upon this theme outlining Skype’s three screen strategy – Skype on computer, mobile, and television.  And, similar to Magor networks, Skype already uses video as a means to share applications on the desktop.

Both Magor and Skype are transmitting high quality voice, video and text across the internet, a feat that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.  Mobile remains an issue as most mobile networks today would be overwhelmed if they were required to become point to point video transmission services as well. That is changing, albeit slowly.

I wouldn’t care to predict the winner in this battle, save to say that with half a billion clients downloaded, Skype will be a player.  More to the point, as services that aren’t dependent on receivers held to the ear and e.164 telephone numbers for addressing become prevalent, the old telecom user interface will finally die a long overdue death – the final nail in the coffin to the PSTN.

The customer service fairy seems to have paid a visit to Rogers recently.  Yesterday, I called and inquired about roaming rates to the US for my trip next week.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that roaming data rates to the US have dropped from $6,000 per gigabyte, and that I could now buy a short term roaming plan for both voice and data.

The details?

$40 will get you 60 roaming minutes in the US, and $60 will get you 120. 

A $10 charge will allow you to roam data at $1 per megabyte. 

So what does that mean in practice?  Normal data usage for me is around 300M per month.  For my 5 days in San Francisco, if I use data normally, I would expect to pay $70.  I also bought the $60 voice plan, and will use that in conjunction with Truphone Anywhere to avoid long distance charges. 

At $130 it’s still expensive, but compared to the $474 I would have paid for the same service six months ago, it’s a steal.  Moreover, it’s much less complex than my previous solutions – local SIMs and unlocking SIM carriers.

And the best part?  No contracts.  The customer service rep set the entire plan to expire in 30 days.  It’s totally pay as you go.

Tomorrow, Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich will formally take the wraps off the Mobivox|PL CRM over Voice vision.  The company has commissioned analyst Jon Arnold to produce a white paper for them, but the explanation is frankly simpler than the marketing.

At the core, CRM over Voice is about the very simple idea that carriers should host users address books, and watch to see what they do with those address books.  Over time, as behaviour is tracked, a CRM over Voice application would automatically start to initiate up-sell behaviours with the customer.  For example (taken from the Mobivox white paper):

1. Educate: The first 30-60 days are a critical time in the lifecycle of new
   subscribers. If they are not meaningfully engaged by then, it will become
   costly to re-engage them later on. |PL allows the operator to communicate
   various education messages that are relevant to how long they have had the
   service, what services they are using, their language choice and more.
2. Promote: Word-of-mouth grows in importance for generating new leads with
   each passing year, and is perhaps the most cost-effective method of
   customer acquisition. Since Mobivox |PL knows the subscriber’s patterns -
   what they use, who they call, when, who is in the address book and more – it
   can pinpoint an offer and ask in real-time for a referral. Since the action of
   inviting a new user from a referral can be done right over the phone, this
   represents a very efficient use of CRM with established subscribers.
3. Convert: This is another example of using context to identify in real time a
   segment of subscribers who are good candidates for upselling. A prime
   example would be converting a subscriber from Prepaid to Post Paid. |PL
   would invoke a CRM dialog with subscribers who normally call in to add to
   their balance with a credit card. The subscriber would then be given the
   opportunity to opt for an automatic top-up plan, which is more convenient than worrying about running out of credit. Again, this all takes place in the context of making a phone call, and a voice-based CRM session results in converting the subscriber to a more valuable calling or service plan.

If this sounds like classic web marketing, it should.  Mobivox is simply taking the same techniques that successful web advertisers use and applying them to the phone.  Hallelujah.  You may recall, in 2006, a piece I wrote describing the “Integrated Conversation Web”.  Explicitly described in that piece was the idea that operators, with their rich stores of consumer behavioural information, were best positioned to create contextual selling opportunities.

Mobivox is at the vanguard of a change in the way that phone systems are used in sales and marketing.  Forget about clumsy telemarketers – you’re phone is going to know what you want and need and suggest it to you, and you’ll be happier for it.

Do you remember the 1992 movie “Sneakers” with the phrase “My voice is my password”? Voice “biometrics” has come a long way since those days and today our special guests, David Standig and Patrick Osborne of VoiceVerified.com, talked  about the current state of the industry and technology and also about what VoiceVerified brings to the picture. More info at:  http://www.voiceverified.com/

On the call: Dan York (host), David Standig (guest), Patrick Osborne (guest), David Brown, James Body, Sandro Gauci, William Volk, Ian Hood, Jonathan Jensen, Jeanette Fisher, Carolyn Smith, Moshe Maeir, Ed Smith, Arshad Merali, Warren Bent.

Show notes and links can be found at either:

http://apps.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/34614
http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/34614

Production note: Unfortunately, shortly before the show was to be recorded, there was a problem with the phone system at VoiceVerified’s office.  As a result, our guests had to join the call using a cell phone in speakerphone mode which resulted in audio  quality challenges.  We appreciate the effort they made to join the call and thank them for participating.

Full disclosure: VoiceVerified does have a business relationship with my (Dan York) employer, Voxeo, which I outlined in a blog post, but that had no bearing on my asking them to be on the show. I just think their technology is interesting and is something worth talking about.

 

 Squawk Box - July 10, 2008 - Voice biometrics and VoiceVerified.com [32:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Cubic Telecom's Pat Phelan asks Will iPhone become the junkyard for Facebook's failed voice applications?  Perhaps a better question might be simply for "failed voice applications". After all, Facebook is an environment where the expectation is free.  If the experience isn't sufficiently compelling that it can't be given away, then perhaps it needs a rethink.

Food for thought.