Third Quarter 2006

     Just when we thought we had today’s technology framework figured out, here comes the Web 2.0 crowd to make things complicated. According to Wikipedia, which, itself, is an example of Web 2.0, says Web 2.0 is characterized by applications that use the Web as a platform. Web 2.0 is an “architecture of participation” that innovates through the “assembly of systems and sites.” Web 2.0 is ad hoc and dynamic; stasis is anathema. The hallmark of Web 2.0 is collaboration, but not just any collaboration…facile collaboration.

     And if you have your finger on the pulse of telecommunications, you might feel it quickening. The ITU standards framework is being ignored by Web 2.0, even when it provides a telephony function. Do you find that where the ITU use to be your standards focus, it has now shifted to the IETF and the W3C. And although the 3GPP had some decidedly un-Web 2.0 organizers, its IMS specification could acquire many Web 2.0 attributes, depending on how deeply the incumbents get their hooks into it. Speaking of incumbents, all this must be at least a little scary to them. An open collaborative framework is just not in their DNA, and, predictably, they’re responding with a conservative rear-guard action.

     So don’t be too surprised if you read the following news release in a few years:

Dateline: Mountain View, CA November 17, 2011 – Google, Inc. announced today that it has reached agreement with AT&T to acquire all of the outstanding stock of the telecom operator. The all-cash transaction requires the approval of the shareholders of AT&T, but it is widely assumed that the offer will be enthusiastically accepted since the teleco’s fortunes have been sinking as the Web 2.0 phenomenon has swamped the sluggish telco sector.

     Far fetched? I don’t think so. AT&T’s strategy is to stifle competition and invest in IP TV to counter the cable operators. But, according to Google:

     Google's mission is to make the world's information universally accessible and useful. Google Talk, which enables users to instantly communicate with friends, family, and colleagues via voice calls and instant messaging, reflects our belief that communications should be accessible and useful as well. We're committed to open communications standards, and want to offer Google Talk users and users of other service providers alike the flexibility to choose which clients, service providers, and platforms they use for their communication needs.

This reads as if it’s a Web 2.0 manifesto.

     So where and how will the Web 2.0 phenomenon affect telephony? That’s anyone’s guess, but you can see some of it happening today at AOL, Google, Skype, and Yahoo! They have shown an utter disregard for telephony tradition. For example, Google Talk uses XMPP for signaling, and it’s all open.

     And speaking of signaling, telephone numbers (actually session addressing) remains one of the major issues, problems, or opportunities in telecom, depending on your point of view. Along with Net Neutrality, it is one of the critical battles being waged in the quest for a competitive communications market. Session addressing separates universes: the traditional telecom universe (10-digit numbers), the Skype universe (your Skype ID), the Google universe (your G-Mail account), and AOL (your AOL account), and so on (Yahoo!, MSN, etc.).

     Since only legal “telephone companies” can get a block of telephone numbers to assign to subscribers in North America, Skype, Google, and AOL chose to develop their own session-addressing schemes. So, except for Google, which uses XMPP, a protocol that supports presence and addressing-server federation, each of these services appear to be an addressing island, holding in check the value of each network. And each network developer will jealously guard their control of addressing on their network…at least initially. One recalls when AOL came out with IM, and offered it as an AOL exclusive. Then Microsoft did the same thing. But it didn’t take the two giants long to figure out that Metcalf’s law (The value of a network geometrically related to the number of connections.) applied to them as well, and they federated their addressing. So they will probably follow suit. However, among the Internet companies, a further complication for voice peering will be media-stream compatibility, since they use different codecs, and none of them directly support data or fax.

     Ten-digit telephone numbers that are within the North American numbering plan are administered by NeuStar, Inc, which was appointed by the FCC to administer the plan as the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA). Assignments are made based on the central office designated by the carrier, a system hopelessly antiquated for the Internet age, since before not too long there will be no central offices. The carriers have an interest is keeping this system in place for as long as they can, since it allows them to exert some degree of market control (We own the numbers). Actually, with number portability, you own the number, but today, it can only be transferred between telcos on your behalf.

     However, there is an emerging international addressing standard, ENUM, which is modeled on the Internet’s Domain Naming System (DNS). ENUM maps 10-digit telephone numbers to Internet address resources via an ENUM server. The ENUM server provides the requesting client (for example, a SIP proxy) with the stored information, such as the subscriber’s VoIP SIP address, e-mail address, or other resources, such as secondary addresses to services to which the number’s owner has subscribed. The network operated by Telecom Austria (which uses Commetrex’ BladeWare for fax services), has had ENUM in commercial operation since December 2004.

     The extensible nature of the information (Internet resources) provided by ENUM servers can effectively decouple the telephone number from the subscriber’s local-access service provider, as well as the location of value-adding services, from the provision of transport. Don’t expect US-based carriers to warmly embrace ENUM, since it makes service invocation seamless and removes control of 10-digit numbers from the local telco.

     All the US Congress needs to do to insure that market forces will continue to support innovation and the boost it provides to America’s economic competitiveness is to ensure Net Neutrality and an open, national ENUM system similar to the one in Austria.