A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore.

If they will block file-sharing apps, one can assume they will block anything they deem to be decremental to their revenue, including VoIP, video, etc.

It’s interesting that, so far, none of these studies have concluded that telephone companies are blocking their DSL broadband customers. Does that mean they aren’t doing it? Or are they just better at it, so that it isn’t as easy to detect? Or, are the journalists just afraid to rock that boat for some reason ($$$)?

Half the 21% of people that have never used email are coming from these other segments. I wonder which ones?

As can be seen in this chart, the largest segment is the 35-44 age group (22.5%). It would be interesting to compare the overall U.S. adult population above to a similar chart for the facebook population, or perhaps twitter. In practice, this could never be done because nobody has accurate data on the ages of facebook users (not even facebook themselves).

Those of us that are close to the latest technology trends tend to lose perspective. We assume the general population is like our friends, using twitter, AJAX, Python, or whatever the latest buzz is buzzing about. Research like this, showing 1 in 5 people don’t use email and don’t plan to, are good reality checks. My personal benchmark is PTA meetings (or the rough equivalent) - that’s where you can learn how deep a technology has reached into the mainstream. A PTA meeting will be populated with the larger age-group segments above (the big part of the bell curve) and with a wide spectrum of people (culture, education etc.) When you ask these people, most of them have never even heard of Twitter, DIGG, or whatever latest technology may be percolating among the tech-savvy - to say nothing of using it. Even something we think as general, like Skype, will be suprisingly unfamiliar at a PTA meeting.

The companies and products that get most the attention tend to be those appealing to the 18-34 segment, the proverbial “hot” age group. But cooler heads (those looking for revenue instead of hype) may want to take note that this “hot” 18-34 segment is much smaller than the 35-54 segment - and other research shows that the dollars of consumer spending are even more shifted to this older more mature segment.

Andy takes two bits of news from the past week: rumors (theories really) of the telcos putting together a Skype competitor and the WiMax consortium news, and suggests that an interesting resulting play could be video.

Instead of simply being another voice play to battle Skype or the mobile operators, the WiMax companies and the cable operators, and heck, even Ma Telco may all may find that they may be better off looking in another direction.

That direction is real-time video communications bundled up along with other IP related services like voice and text, all in one neat little package.

It’s an interesting idea. Like most ideas, it is being discarded out of hand by many. Oh well. A lot of trash talk.

Frankly, I’m not a fan of video as it has been attempted over the years (going back many many years). I’ve done a lot of research with video and all that research took me to a place I did not expect to go regarding video - in the end, I’ve come to believe that video as we have ever seen it used, such as in “talking heads” applications, conferencing, and such, has essentially zero utility. That doesn’t mean Andy is wrong. I could be way wrong and Andy doesn’t necessarily suggest just “talking heads” video anyway.

I will put out a couple of teasers about why “talking heads” video , while very flashy and appealing at first glance, in reality has a tough row to hoe:

1. real people are not attractive - we are not movie stars or models. people on TV are not normal. we are not used to seeing normal people on “TV” (in the form of real-time video).
2. we are not directors. we do not know how to properly produce video content, how to light it, frame it etc.
3. we use IM for a reason. sometimes we don’t want the intimacy of a phone call. it follows that we really don’t want the intimacy of video - this is particularly true for females (based on research data)
4. video technology makes people seem stupid when the audio is out of sync or when the video does not meet our TV-like expectations (again, see the research)

The list goes on. The funny thing about this is the research has been here for years. But despite all the available data, as well as the extremely low market acceptance of video, we continue to see vendors offer nothing but “bigger and better” “talking heads” solutions.

On the other hand, video is very interesting when used more as a sensor… but we will leave that for another day.

The “autonomous communications” platform has been a passion and work of love by our very intelligent pal for a few years now, and if for no reason beyond sheer friendship, I want to see this get its opportunity to be discovered. Aswath has a very solid idea EnThinnai, so while it is in its formative stages it’s goal of making communications between peers easier certainly is timely.

So there you go. Now, go do it - VOTE FOR ASWATH.

Perhaps Ooma brought it on themselves with their attitude and “Hollywood” style when rumors of their troubles surfaced last month and brought a satisfying chuckle to many bloggers and analysts. Now, with the news yesterday of Jangl’s woes and Om’s report today adding Talkplus to the list of struggling Voice 2.0 companies, we’re seeing another wave of “I told you so” from around the net.

Sometimes the net can be like a second grader, very hurtful, and not very thoughtful.

It’s easy to slam someone else’s ideas, efforts, blood, and sweat with none of your own on the line. Putting forward an idea is hard - it takes a kind of bravery most people don’t have - it will be peer reviewed, scrutinized to the N-th degree, because everything is out there in public these days and everybody is an “analyst” (at least in their own minds). Attempting to build a strategy and execute around that idea is even harder - a lot harder. Even fewer people ever try that. If you really think it’s that easy, why don’t you try it yourself once.

It doesn’t take a genius to come up with an “explanation” for the failure of a startup after the fact. Usually such explanations are inconsistent with the practical realities of the situation, if not inane. It is much harder to come up with what will work, as opposed to what won’t work - bloggers and other analysts provide us with an abundance of the latter and little to none of the former.

Startups fail - at an alarming rate. The likelihood of a startup failing is much greater than the chance that it will turn out to be “a hit” - this is the game of startups. Anybody starting a startup (or investing in one) knows these odds. Startups are fragile - it doesn’t take much of a bump in the road to end the journey. Venture investors are also finicky and somewhat flaky - they do not share the passion of the founders. And the VC’s pretty much hold all the cards of a venture-backed startup, so what they say pretty much goes.

All I ask is that before you wax triumphant about your incredible prescience with regard to some startup’s failings, bear in mind that no matter how ridiculous the idea may appear to you, there are human beings involved here and many factors that are not apparent to those outside the walls - and the founders and others involved have feelings and likely poured significant quantities of blood, sweat, and especially tears into their bold efforts to pursue a dream.

AT&T, in conjunction with some 10-15 incumbent telecom carriers — British Telecom, Deutsche Telecom and NTT among them — is plotting to launch a Skype competitor

…

Big shifts in the telecom landscape are forcing the carriers to think along these lines, Wahlman said

Om himself adds:

If voice is a losing business, why shouldn’t the carriers cannibalize it themselves, then sell other services, including video?

This is fun stuff to kick around (for a little while), but even if telcos are thinking about such a move, there is a big gap between thinking about and executing, especially when it comes to the world’s largest incumbent telecom carriers.

There is one thing that Om says which I disagree with: “Realistically speaking, there’s a slim chance of anyone catching up with Skype.” I think that is a very naive perspective. I’ve said it here many times: Skype is is not “sticky” - it has a very weak and tenuous hold on its customers. The recent efforts toward monthly and annual service plans are an attempt to improve this, but the Skype user-base remains a finicky bunch, with little or no loyalty. They can be moved without that much trouble - in fact, most of them are early adopters aleady concurrently using other services in addition to Skype. I think of Mosaic, Netsape, IE, and Firefox as perfect examples of how quickly an apparently “locked-in” user-base can completely forget the old “hot thing when the new “hot thing” comes along. While a collaboration of telcos are the least likely to do it, somebody can (and certainly will) steal Skype’s user-base, and, once it starts, it will probably happen much faster than anybody expects.

One thing that’s annoying about all these reports is they fail to note the fact that cell phone 911 is just as bad, if not worse. They also fail to take any responsibility for not speaking about the 911 issues BEFORE the tragedy. Where were the warnings and pubic service announcements about VoIP 911 BEFORE this incident? And where are the warnings NOW about cell phone 911, which is just as dangerous.

Look, I’m not trying to be alarmist here. Not everybody needs 911. But it is important to know what you have and make an informed decision about whether the 911 you’re getting (or not getting) is going to work for you. If you have kids, for my money, real landline 911 is the only way to go - it is well worth the $10-$20 per month - and trust me, I am not a shill for the telcos The same thing probably applies if you have an elderly person living in the household or anybody else that may have difficulty providing accurate information in an emergency.

But it’s not just VoIP you need to think about. Something a lot of people don’t realize is that their cell phone 911 may be useless in an emergency too. This is not reported on enough by the press or by public safety officials (I wonder why - $$$) I strongly encourage everyone to put the local direct-dial number for their police department into their cell phone. Calling that number is almost always going to provide faster response than dialing 911 on your cell phone. All the limitations you see various “exports” attributing to VoIP, apply equally to your cell phone. In fact, if your VoIP 911 info is up to date, and if your provider supports E-911, dialing 911 on your VoIP phone will be more effective than 911 on your cell phone. In some larger general emergencies, officials will actually SHUT OFF cell phones. They don’t want a terrorist to use them and they want the airwaves cleared. You may wait on hold for a long time with cell phone 911 (and they are not dispatching anything in that time). In all cases, your call will be put in a low priority queue due to the massive quantity of false alarms received by cell phone 911. Again, try the local police number before wasting your time with cell phone 911. The police can transfer you to ambulance or fire faster than 911 can in most cases and if they don’t answer right away, you haven’t lost much and you can still dial 911. In fact, if your phone has call waiting, you can dial the direct local police number while you’re waiting on hold for someone at 911 to answer - emergency services may be on the scene by the time anyone at 911 answers (not a joke - actually happened in my case).

…take a walk with me down memory lane: Yahoo! buys Dialpad. AOL announces VoIP rollout. eBay buys Skype. Google buys GrandCentral.

As Carolyn notes, all of these were supposed to change the world trigger some kid of major disruption.

And the industry-disrupting results were…?

I’m waiting.

A good friend recently told me that it’s time for someone to write the postmortem for VoIP 2.0 - I suggested he should do it - I’m not sure I have the stomach for it and nobody would want to hear my version of it anyway.

Does accepting SIP connections at your SIP proxy constitute an “API”? Does providing SIP termination services to the PSTN constitute an “API”?

AOL calls it their “Open Voice Program” but it’s really just a way to use your “AIM Call Out” account for placing calls to the PSTN using SIP. The rates are competitive for a retail service (e.g. 1.7 cents per minute to the US).

Is this an “API”? Hardly. It’s a SIP to PSTN termination service - there are hundreds of those out there already (albeit none with such a recognizable brand). As someone else said “Not only is it not a developer story, it’s not even a good SIP termination story.”

However, it is significant for SIP - we now have a household brand not referring just to “VoIP” but referring to “SIP” - the standards-based protocol for VoIP, something neither Skype nor Vonage has done. SIP means interoperability and that’s a good thing for users and the VoIP ecosystem at large. A brand as big as AOL providing awareness for SIP and promoting interoperability is terrific - nobody else is doing it.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, we tested it with PhoneGnome and it works fine (good call quality on test calls we made so far). It really is SIP and it really is interoperable. Simply go to your My PhoneGnome page and add a new ITSP under Features / Low Cost Internet Calling / Edit / [Add Internet Calling Service] / Manual SIP Settings and on that page use settings as shown below:

It’s important to note that we have never been able to do this so with Skype, even though the service has been out for four years or more - they could have offered this years ago. We have our GnomeLink for Skype Plug-in, but the AOL service is much easier to setup and use - we had the service working in just a few minutes, seamlessly from our home phone - no computer needed to make calls and no separate “bat phone”.

One downside of the AIM Call Out service is that the people you call get a weird AOL number as the caller ID (the same thing happens with SkypeOut). I have a support request in to AOL to ask if there is a way to have it deliver my phone number as the caller-ID so people will actually know it’s me calling (whether that means they are more, or less, likely to answer the phone is another matter).