Category Archives: Telephony

Old assumptions about how telephones used to work dictate how you use them today. Why?

What in the world is a “phone”?

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Posted by Mary Panttaja on April 22, 2009 – 10:54 am
Filed under Future Communications, Telephony

First there is the telephone, which is something that sits on a table or desk. Then there is the mobile phone (cell phone), which is something you can carry around with you. They both allow you to make “calls”. So what is the “phone” part? It is a device that has connectivity to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) and, when it makes a connection to another device, enables you to talk to that device live. (Now the device might be another phone, or it might be the voice mail system, or an answering machine.) There are some other twiddly-bits to a phone, but that is the basic idea. VoIP systems can bypass the PSTN sometimes when they run on the internet only, but otherwise work pretty much like phones. (VoIP does create streams of packets, but does it in such a way as to create a virtual circuit and connect you live to your destination (in order to be just like a phone.))

We have historically delivered this functionality with specialized devices that are dedicated to this task. Even modern smart phones, which do a lot of other things like take pictures and run web applications, have a special part of the device that is still just a phone with  historic phone behaviors (create a circuit to another device and allow a live call to take place.) We’ve added on more stuff, but left the phone function just as it has always been.

Of course, we know that what we really want is to talk to someone and have our speech delivered to that someone. Sometimes we’d like it to be live so we can talk together; and sometimes we don’t care about live. And now we have a device called a computer which, low and behold, can capture voice and deliver to others. It also has great advantages in that you can actually write applications which enable us to process the voice in other ways—not just live delivery which is all the phones do.

So why do we need phones? We don’t; or, more correctly, we won’t. We won’t need a specialized device. Basically, phones are an historic artifact from the days when we didn’t have computers. And they won’t go away immediately because they have an enormous infrastructure (think companies and network and hardware) that has yet to be re-purposed—that infrastructure can only manage a phone just the way it is currently conceived.

But it is all changing. The evolution is coming from both directions. Mobile phones are getting to be computers. And computers are getting to be so small and mobile that they are indistinguishable from phones. And networks are becoming more and more general purpose pipes to move our data and our voices.

So, without an enormous bout of innovation, what we think of as a phone is going to be obsolete. Not tomorrow, and not next year, but eventually. Eventually we will use computers of all sizes (like telephones and mobile phones today) and of varying degrees of mobility. They will come from what we think of now as phone manufacturers, but will also come from traditional and newly modeled computer manufacturers.

The really good news is that we’ll finally get some more sophisticated applications that will serve us better by saving wasted time, doing things when and how we want, and connecting us seamlessly to anyone in the world.

But it will no longer be a phone.

PS. You may think of your iPhone or your Blackberry as a general purpose device. But really they both embody two devices. One is the regular old phone system; and one is a multi-purpose computer. And so far, the power of the computer has not been unleashed for the “phone call” usage. Now you have a device that is a phone and a computer, but eventually you’ll be able to lose the “phone”.

Taking Stuff Apart…

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Posted by Mary Panttaja on March 2, 2009 – 8:09 am
Filed under Telephony, Transforming Radios

I was reading part of Moshe Yudkowsky’s book “The Pebble and the Avalanche” in which he discusses the revolutionary potential of “taking things apart” or disaggregation. He talks a lot about the breakup of the AT&T monolith; and about how internet telephony disassociates the network transport from the actual voice application. This last break up is something we really focus on in our work.

Whenever you are creating something new out of something that exists—there is the issue of how it can be manipulated. How can it be taken apart? Where are the seams? Some of them are amazingly, intransigently invisible—30 years ago who would have thought that you could have a telephone call without a telephone company?

Constantly driving deep into a system over time, allows you to find “disassembly” edges that are not obvious. In communications, the industry has come to recognize a few key elements which were seemingly whole but are clearly not. We are aided by a primary creative force in our communication age, which is shifting communications from  old analog structures into computationally manageable components. This helps us envision elements that come apart:

  • The transport for voice and how the voice is experienced by the user are surprisingly not the same thing. Whether telephone, VoIP or radio, the user experience of the voice application need no longer be dictated by the reality of radio waves or sound transport. Most of our applications don’t actually do much if anything with this fact, but we could.
  • The liveness assumptions of the act speaking in person to another need not always be reflected in a digitally mediated conversation. And we do a little of that with voice, but with a system, voicemail, that still assumes the speaker much be in a live connection with the system.
  • Speakers (initiators) and listeners (receivers) need not pay attention at the same time. We use this fact in text (such as email) but not very effectively with voice.
  • The device and the message type need not be tied together: I do live voice with this device; I only can get or leave voice messages with a phone.  We can pick up our email from anywhere because it lives in the cloud; what if voice were the same. Why can’t I get (or make) my communications anywhere on any device, whether they are live or messaged, but still be able to also get them everywhere?
  • Why are message media (text, live voice, messaged voice, video) tied to different applications? In a purely digital world, it’s all data. Why not precisely the same mechanisms?  And how would that simplify the user experience?
  • In the tactical world, the pervasive tie to “liveness” originated by the nature of radio frequency technology has created protocols dependent on “live or nothing”; what if that was a choice that you didn’t have to make? What if you can have live and, if live is not possible, something much better than nothing?

The second (and third and fourth) step in creating new things by disassembling old things is figuring what to put back together and how. At this week’s eComm Conference, this will be a major source of discussion. As the telecommunications markets, platforms, and applications dissagregate, what shall we all make of it?

Tactical Communications, Part 1

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Posted by Mary Panttaja on February 23, 2009 – 10:23 am
Filed under Human Efficiency, Telephony

One focus at RebelVox is tactical communications. And by that, we usually mean communications in support of tactical operations for public safety or defense. But we also work in the consumer space, and, in thinking through some of the scenarios, we have noticed that a tactical mode of communication can be required in any market. While we tend to think of consumer telephony as family conversations, “calling mom”, chatting with friends, the truth is that we need telecommunications for all kinds of daily tactical challenges.

One meaning of tactical is: “of or relating to small-scale actions serving a larger purpose.” And a tactical communication is some part of a larger task that one is trying to accomplish. And in every day life, we have such larger purposes: we need to coordinate a future social event with ten friends; we need to meet up in the city with 4 people all using various forms of mass transit; a flat tire requires us to reschedule all of this afternoon’s appointments.

A tactical voice communication has a few requirements:

  • It has to go through to the right person (or maybe many persons).
  • It may or may not need to be live, but it has to go as efficiently and quickly as possible.
  • There is likely some response, coordination, or other information exchange required.
  • It would be great if the recipient (or many recipients) could get back to me simply.
  • It would be great if we didn’t do the irritating “pass you in the dark” voice mail exchange–again, imagine with many recipients.
  • In the group situation, it would also be helpful it everyone saw everything automatically—like “reply all” for email.
  • If you missed part of a conversation, you can always retrieve it and catch up on what’s going on.
  • You never miss anything.

When was the last time you tried to plan a large party by making phone calls to everyone? No, you would use email, of course. But what if you wanted to do it while you are driving to LA? Sometimes voice is best.

So a good voice solution for these things would include:

  • Live conversation if I and and any of my targets desires,
  • Any live conversations are maintained for any non-live participants,
  • Instant voice messages otherwise—to one or any number of participants,
  • Responding is as simple as choosing and talking (or typing),
  • All live talk and messages threaded into a conversation that keeps our context,
  • Interleaved voice or text in the same conversation so everyone can use what’s most convenient at the moment,
  • Ability to replay, retrieve, play faster, and if folks are talking live, catch up with the conversation and move into live with them,
  • All seamlessly persistent in one system with one point of rendezvous.

Turns out that this kind of “tactical” solution is important in all markets. It makes it easier to see that a more sophisticated voice application could be really handy, and not just to the fireman and sheriff, but to all of us every day.

Communications…the Revolution is Upon Us: eComm in March

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Posted by Mary Panttaja on February 2, 2009 – 1:21 pm
Filed under Future Communications, Telephony

As a traditionally software-oriented professional, it has been enlightening to realize over the past two years that telecom is now in my bailiwick. Every evolution of our software platforms and network infrastructure has been moving towards a world in which “everything” turns out to be software; but the field of telecommunications has been slower than most to feel the shift. (For interesting commentary on this, see Andreas Constantinou’s post on NaaS.)

Why? Many reasons, but most of it has to do with inertia. Any industry that has an enormous investment in infrastructure and massive existing markets will be slow to move. One finds oneself so embedded with the philosophy of simply finding a slightly better way to monetize market investments, that bold new thinking is too far outside the box to contemplate. In addition, all of our cultural assumptions concerning voice communications are pretty unyielding.

In this regard, software folks have a bit of an advantage. We are used our world being toppled into pieces with new paradigms on a regular basis. So, not only are software folks ready for the annual upset apple cart, we assume that we can “do anything with software”; and so we find some freedom to look at problems in radically different ways.

eComm 2009 in March will provide a wonderful forum where established telecom players and wildly varied “other players” will take a stab at envisioning the future of communications. They call it the “post-telecom” era bringing “cataclysmic change”, and, for sure, it is upon us. While it will take many years for the transitions we envision to play out, the game has changed. As we understand that what one does with communications (the application)  is separate from the ability to connect (the network), the power of the “application” will erode the historical control enforced by  network constraints (physical, social, and corporate).

This year’s eComm Conference has an amazing array of contributors to that future world, which is why we are excited to be a sponsor. We hope to share what we are doing, but also explore with the community there many new visions of the future.

Why Isn’t Voicemail More Like Email?

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Posted by Jim Panttaja on December 21, 2008 – 10:18 am
Filed under Human Efficiency, Telephony

On a recent weekend, we took a small road trip, and spent a couple of days in the Sierra Nevada mountains where there was cell coverage only in the small community of Graeagle, California. We drove through town periodically on our way from here to there (forest, desert, historic trains, and rivers to visit). We passed through town several times each day.

With push email on my iPhone every time we drove through town my phone automatically collected any incoming email, and if I paused to reply, sent out the reply only having to make sure that the message got to the network—the network would take care of getting it to its target. Everything worked as designed. Later, if I didn’t respond immediately, I could review the email messages, and craft replies as appropriate, even though I was offline.

What was annoying was the way my voice messages were handled. My iPhone has visual voicemail (which is great as an incremental improvement), so voicemail messages also came in as I went through Graeagle. I could listen to them, but I couldn’t respond, unless I parked and sat still in Graeagle holding on to the narrow band of live coverage. With email I can craft a response without network to go out when network is good—not so with voice.

On one pass through town, Mary and I both collected a couple of voice messages, one concerning a possible immediate problem at our home. We ended up parked on a corner by a country store where the local “visitor information” resided, after hours of course—no coffee available—trying to call people. In one case, we kept getting a busy signal (weren’t even so lucky as to get dumped into voice mail), and finally gave up and sent email.

Wouldn’t it be nice if voice calls could work more like email (for messaging) – and still let me talk live when that is possible?

-Jim

The Phone Company in your Pocket

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Posted by Matt Ranney on December 18, 2008 – 10:41 am
Filed under Future Communications, Telephony

I still have a really old mobile phone.  I’ve had it for 4 years now, which makes it the oldest mobile phone in our office.  If I had a newer phone, I might enjoy a faster processor, a more clever touchscreen display, as well as “apps”, which when combined could provide me hours of entertainment while riding public transportation or waiting in line.  The thing is, none of these new capabilities change the way the telephone part of my mobile phone works.  As soon as they do, I’ll have to upgrade.

I think there are two reasons why the telephone part of our mobile phones is just like an olde fashioned telephone except with caller ID and no wires.  The first is that we buy telephone service from a telephone company who sells access to their telephone network through telephone calls.  These telephone calls give us the amazing ability to talk over great distances as if were were sitting in the same room.  We humans have conquered space.

Telephone calls make up the service that the “phone company” provides, and they pretty much work the same as they have always worked since the telephone was invented.  Sure, now things are mobile, but other than that, phone calls are the same.  The phone calling bits of a phone have been condensed into ever smaller bits of hardware, so all this fancy new software does is give you something else you can do with the device when you aren’t making phone calls.

The second reason the telephone application hasn’t changed much is these things called telephone numbers.  When you buy telephone service, you get a telephone number so that telemarketers can interrupt you and your friends can send you text messages.  This telephone number is tied to your telephone service, but thanks to the way the Internet works, it doesn’t have to be.  Similarly, many people use an email service with an email address provided by someone other than their Internet service provider.  You can send and receive email no matter how you connect to the Internet, but your phone number is tied to your phone company.

Now that we have faster Internet and these ever more awesome mobile devices, must we still live with the limitations of phone calls and phone numbers?  Modern smart phones have all of the computing power that desktop computers had about 10 years ago.  Many smart phones have enough CPU on board to themselves be a VoIP PBX for a small office.  I don’t think I’ll buy a new mobile phone for that reason, but it is interesting to think about what these new devices make possible with voice if we move beyond traditional phone calls and phone numbers.