VoIP Commentary

There is quite the discussion arising over Andy Abramson’s comments on a Ribbit Vs Lypp API comparison post that was authored by Erik Lagerway, Lypp’s CEO and Founder.

Let me preface my thoughts by saying that Erik is a highly talented, extremely gifted programmer and telephony entrepreneur who I respect (I have a feeling his post was not written to attack Ribbit in any manner and that his comparison may have been taken out of context). I am not a highly technical programmer. I understand the technology and the underlaying methods by which each service works, but I couldn’t exactly take either of their API’s and do much of anything with them, so I am taking each at face value.

In reading more and more about each service, I am of the belief that while they are similar, they are very much different. Different enough, that I feel comparing the two is not an apples to apples affair, but an exercise in the specifics of each company’s underlying technology and what each of them does well. As friend and fellow blogger, Moshe Maeir states,

“Both companies should be applauded for developing Voice 2.0 platforms. But they are different. Ribbit is a high profile VC funded company, while Lypp seems to be low profile and self funded (correct me if I am wrong). Ribbit bills itself as revolutionary while Lypp just gets the job done. You might compare the two to a flashy sports car and a Chevy pickup. If you are a handyman you may go for a night on the town with the sports car, but you still will drive your Chevy for your day job”

In furthering this, Lypp appears to be a solution for mobile professionals that aggregates AIM / AOL, Google Talk / Jabber, iChat MSN and Yahoo! Messenger contacts and allows for group or conference calling via your cellular handset. It also does not leverage the IP network, in favor of the wireless network and or PSTN.

Erik explains here,

“At Gaboogie we steered away from the softphone or using any VoIP at the edge of the network in our initial plans. We made that decision early on because we believe VoIP at the edge is still not ready for prime time. If you don’t believe you obviously have not tried a best efforts VoIP service in Canada. I have not found a single best efforts offering that does not drops calls, drop packets and well… just generally suck. “

On the other hand, Ribbit is billed as a web-based phone that is also accessible via your mobile phone built upon the Adobe Flex platform. It’s calls, however, are routed over the wireless data network or IP network, making it a VoIP service. In addition to just sending and receiving calls, Ribbit is packed full of interesting features such as the ability to see a social network like profile of the person calling you and voice mail eavesdropping with barrage.

The way I see it, these are two different technologies, with two different target markets and two totally different business models. Honestly, the only thing I see that is similar between the two is that they are both pushing the envelope of what is possible with Voice 2.0 services and doing a darn good job at it to boot!

Why do service providers and the industry at large insist on calling a phone line delivered over an IP network a “SIP Trunk”?

Customers do not want SIP trunks, they want business phone lines delivered via IP.

It is funny that no one outside of the industry knows what the heck a SIP trunk is, yet every company that provides IP based business phone lines continues to use this nomenclature.

Need proof?

Take a look at the Google search queries for SIP Trunking for last month.

As per my favorite keyword research tool, about 300. I venture to bet more than half those queries come from people who sell SIP trunks.

Now, if you take a look at the Google search queries for say business phone service or business VoIP, you will find that there is more than 10 times the amount of search queries.

Businesses do not know what a SIP trunk is and honestly they really do not care. They are not looking for SIP trunks.
What they are looking for is reliability, quality and low cost telephone service. The transport mechanism is secondary.

So service providers, save your marketing dollars and come up with a new way to market business phone lines over an IP network because again customers do not know what SIP trnks are and certainly aren’t looking for them.

I know that Buffalo is not exactly the epic center for technology, but while walking through the Atlanta airport yesterday, I saw something that I had never seen before: an iPod vending machine.

Is this something new or are they common place elsewhere and we really are a “technological backwoods” in Buffalo?

Russell Shaw asked, in a post tonight, why has Vonage stopped selling WiFi Phones.

Russell, I have the answer:

They suck.

It is not really the WiFi phone, or the manufacturers behind them, it is the mere fact that the increased number of “moving pieces” creates a customer service and quality of service nightmare for Vonage. As a someone who has used a half dozen or so WiFi phones, I can tell you that in many cases the user experience is less than optimal and while I chalk this up to a poor connection, many a end user, who is probably less informed about the technology would blame Vonage.

More so, I bet to venture that more than 95% of the people who purchase a WiFi phones expect them to work like a cellular phone. And because of this, the end user would likely place a support call to Vonage, and over time I imagine that Vonage was receiving more customer service calls about the WiFi phone than any other device they offered.

From that, I imagine the decision to yank the WiFi phone was nothing more than a move to improve the customer experience and minimize the cost associated with an increased number of customer support calls. Hopefully one day WiFi phone technology will progress to the point where it works well enough for the mass market consumer, but unfortunately I don’t see that day coming very soon.

Well, maybe it is not completely dead, but it is dying.

For decades, the phone call has been the ideal way to keep in touch with family, friends and business associates. It was ideal because it was the easiest, fastest, most efficient way to communicate. With the advent of the Internet, email, IM and now SMS/MMS, the phone call is no longer the easiest, fastest or most efficient way to communicate. The phone call is dying because today’s youth no longer value the ideal that the phone call holds. That is the recipient of the call no longer thinks, “Wow, that was mighty nice of them to pick-up phone and call.”

I am fortunate in that I have friends, family members and business associates from a broad range of ages, backgrounds and who have a diverse communication preferences. Every week, I communicate with 75 year olds and 15 year olds a like. I believe there is a succinct dividing line between those who still value the phone call, those who still prefer to make a phone call and those who do not see the value in a phone call and would prefer to keep all of their communications electronic and textual. I believe that this “dividing line” is those who are currently the age of 26.
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I do not really get a lot of sleep.

Most nights, I am lucky if I get six hours. So, imagine the cob webs I have this morning after being awoken this morning at about 4:30am (two hours after I feel asleep) to 75 mph winds and hail ripping through. Honestly, I thought my roof was a goner (actually only lost a few shingles). But this isn’t a sympathy post for me; it is another reminder of why VoIP is still not a pure-play solution for residential users.

You see with these winds and hail (yes, just yesterday it was sunny and 65 degrees out…go figure), knocked the power out for over 45,000, myself included in the area.

No power. No internet. No internet, no VoIP.

Lucky for me, I have a land line and a cellphone, but it is mornings like this that remind me that for residential users and businesses alike, VoIP is still not a reliable stand-alone solution.