ActiveVideo Networks (www.activevideo.com), the “global leader in cloud-based interactive television solutions” is proud to demo its latest and greatest apps here in LA.  Demos include “web-style” personal and [...]]]>

Los Angeles – In proof that marketing triumphs over common sense, the phrase “CloudTV” has been trademarked and is being hyped at The Cable Show 2010.

ActiveVideo Networks (www.activevideo.com), the “global leader in cloud-based interactive television solutions” is proud to demo its latest and greatest apps here in LA.  Demos include “web-style” personal and social television applications – shame Jeff Pulver wasn’t hanging out in LA this afternoon to give his take – iPhone remote navigation, some whistles for on-demand, and so forth.

*sigh*

ActiveVision products serve about 5 million customers.

Yes, I woke up cynical this morning. I’m in LA, right?

Since CableLabs is the non-profit R&D consortium for cable operators, it will be interesting to see what CableLabs and the bigger operators have to say about HD [...]]]>

This week, Jeff Pulver is in Denver for the CableLabs Summer Conference and will be speaking on a HD Voice panel for the invitation-only event on Tuesday.

Since CableLabs is the non-profit R&D consortium for cable operators, it will be interesting to see what CableLabs and the bigger operators have to say about HD voice.  CableLabs has set standards for HD voice via DECT 6.0 and the cable box, with end-to-end G.722 carrying phone calls.

Cablevision has already weighed in with a hosted business HD voice solution for its corporate customers while other companies — Comcast in particular — are holding their cards very tightly indeed.

You can find the piece at– http://hdconnectnow.org/?p=58

My Verizon landline died sometime yesterday. I placed a service call last night and was told the latest someone would show up would be July 13 – seven days from the [...]]]>

If you want to know one of the supporting reasons why Verizon continues to lose landlines, it boils down to one word: service.

My Verizon landline died sometime yesterday. I placed a service call last night and was told the latest someone would show up would be July 13 – seven days from the time I placed the call.

Seriously, WTF?

A test from the CO indicated that yes, indeedie, there was a problem, so a truck roll was scheduled. Iif a dispatcher could get someone out there earlier,  Verizon might be able to get someone out there; could I please provide two (2) other phone numbers to reach someone at the household.  So they have a “work” number (which, BTW, is a Cox phone line working fine) and a mobile number.

Other highlights of my call: “Did I check the dial tone access on the box outside?” No.  When did checking dial tone on the box outside become standard operating procedure?   “Work on the inside of the house is covered, you pay for maintenance…” Yes, we do,  but this apparently doesn’t get a truck roll out to me any sooner despite paying the extra $3 and change.

All this gives me flashbacks to when I moved about 3 years ago and tried to get service to my new house. It was almost literally a move across the street — no change in CO, no restart in billing, should have been a piece of cake.

Instead, it was a NIGHTMARE.

One phone number was supposed to be transferred over the weekend, but the house owners left their service on.   I called service, took time out of my day on a Friday, and was PROMISED that would be out that day.  10 AM rolled into noon, and I called Verizon again. “Someone will be out by 3 PM”… 3 PM rolled into 4, called again … “Someone will be out by 6 PM”… 6 PM came and went. “We can’t send someone out today, we’ll send someone out tomorrow.”

Saturday came and went, nobody showed up.

Monday rolls around, the dial tone from the previous owners ends and STILL no truck roll.  I call again, am told that because the previous owners didn’t have service turned off, they have rescheduled the truck roll — because they just CAN’T turn up service without a truck roll once the line is turned off — for two weeks later, thank you very much.

Since I live in a cell phone “dead zone” and have a small child, I am not f***ing pleased. I ask for a supervisor and tell her I had a live phone line in the house until yesterday, could she PLEASE try to do something in the switch?

And… 5 minutes later late on Monday I have one of two phone lines turned on. Lot of apologies about how Verizon was switching to a new dispatch/service system…. and that’s it.  No service credit, no paper…

Line number two came up after a truck roll about two weeks later.

A month or two after that, I called up Cox and moved line number two off Verizon.   The cable company gave me a TWO HOUR window when the tech would be out and it took them less than an hour to:

1) Find the right cable

2) Install the equipment on the side of the house

3) Switch the phone number out of Verizon’s CO over to their CO.

It would have been MUCH LESS than an hour, but the installer was training a new guy, so he was taking his time showing the rookie how to do things right, including nicely cutting the cable guys. In addition,  there was about 5-10 minutes on hold with the service center because it was lunch time.

Now, which would you prefer, a two hour service window, or a seven day service window? Cable may have gotten a bad rap for customer service in the past, but they’re kicking Verizon’s rear in my neighborhood today.

“One of the great promises of hosted voice is as the feature server is upgraded, [customers] don’t have to pay for an upgrade, said John Macario, Optimum Senior Vice [...]]]>

Optimum Lightpath’s HD voice offering is as much about being just another hosted application as it is about better quality voice calls, said company officials.

“One of the great promises of hosted voice is as the feature server is upgraded, [customers] don’t have to pay for an upgrade, said John Macario, Optimum Senior Vice President, Product Strategy and Management. “They’re getting it as a part of an ongoing relationship with us… we believe as new features are available, they should be made available, that is really what this is about.”

Last week, Optimum announced the first business HD voice service in North America.  The service is being delivered using BroadSoft’s (formerly GENBAND) M6 Communications Application Server and is designed to be an end-to-end, turn-key solution with a flat rate fee for bandwidth, minutes,  support, and customer phones and service.   Customers will get Cisco’s 7945 and 7965 IP phones and everything is designed for the G.722 codec from end-to-end.  For a typical-sized medium to large-sized business,  an all-inclusive service including phone and CPE, bandwidth, 24×7 monitoring and maintenance can work out to be $35 per seat per month.

Macario doesn’t expect HD voice to be for everyone. “Voice is not one size fits all, different companies have different needs,” he said. “We want to be able to offer them whatever solution is most appropriate.”  Optimum provides everything from TDM to SIP trunks and Cisco Call Manager in addition to hosted VoIP and a premise-based solution.

However, potential customers for Optimum’s HD voice are expected to mirror the company’s core market of medium to large businesses, including hospitals, educational institutions, municipal and county governments and financial service clients. “HD voice is applicable where there needs to be crisp, clear, well understood communications, a doctor talking to a nurse in the middle of a noisy conference room, two guys on talks to each other on the trading floor,” said Macario. “It’s not our view that HD voice is a killer app, but it is of benefit in those situations where crisp, clear, well understood communication is necessary.”

By taking an intra-company approach to the offering at this time, Optimum doesn’t have to worry about a critical mass of end-points, codecs, or other interoperability issues. That’s not to say that the company isn’t thinking about HD Communications calls between its own customers and ultimately the rest of the world. “We’ve thought about it, and we still have a little run time,” said Macario.  “We will wait and see where the demand is [for interconnecting and interoperability].”

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best [...]]]>

Optimum Lightpath, Cablevision’s business arm, has announced what it terms the “first” high-definition voice service for mid-sized to large businesses, with service available in June 2009 in the New York metropolitan area.

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best quality voice calls to and from anyone “within its business facilities.”  The service uses Cisco’s 7945 and 7965 IP phones and since those phones support the G.722 wideband codec, we have HD Communications.

Optimum is offering a turn-key end-to-end solution, probably the best way to roll out the service so it can assure QoS.  How many customers will bite on HD-quality for intra-facility calling will be interesting given Optimum’s footprint in the New York region.

From a historic perspective, Optimum/Cablevision has always been “pushing the envelope” when it has come to bringing in new technologies; the company was the first to roll out high speed 50 and 100 Mbps broadband service for businesses before DOCSIS 3.0 was formally locked down.

Interesting questions that come to mind are: 1) Will Optimum promote INTER-business HD calling among the customers who sign up for it? 2) Will this offering speed up the wheels at Verizon Business for a HD voice offering? (OK, probably not) 3) How will Optimum work on expanding/exchanging HD voice calling beyond its own footprint?

Given NYC’s business and international focus, if Optimum isn’t talking to France Telecom and BT about HD/G.722 interoperability now, it likely will be in the weeks to come. Optimum would be in the unique position to build the first HD “bridge” across the Atlantic between its HD island and those in operation/under construction in Europe.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone [...]]]>

If you don’t feel like plowing through all of the HD Communications Summit pieces, here’s a recap of what went on.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone call hasn’t changed since 1937 or so – unlike everything else in the modern world.

3)       Pulver plans an FCC petition this fall to upgrade PSTN to HD;  digital TV provides a case justification to move to a new technology.

4)       Frequency range for a PSTN call is 300-3000 Hz

5)       AudioCodes Google Search on “HD Voice/VoIP” – Past 10 years, 190,000 hits. Past 12 months, 82,000 hits, so the trend line is going up and to the right.

6)       Depending on who’s talking, HD audio would use a range between 100-7000 Hz. Diminishing returns after 7000 Hz delivery.

7)       The tighter PSTN clips consonants.

8)       FM radio sounds better than a PSTN call.

9)       HD Connect is the working name of the HD Communications trade association Pulver is starting because a) Polycomm has a trademark on HD Voice and b) AudioCodes has a trademark on HD VoIP

10)    Everyone wants a “HD Connect” logo to put on their boxes

11)    When HD voice (generic) happens [in North America], it will happen really really fast, predicts everyone.

12)    But right now, [North American] service providers are on the fence waiting to see who jumps first.

13)    Nobody can agree on a single HD codec, but most agree we need fewer codecs and there seems to be sufficient codecs out there

14)    More codecs = more part cost, more support costs, so the fewer, the better

15)    Ain’t no such thing as a “free” codec. Support costs and potential indemnification issues lurk.

16)    Wireless and wireline will likely use different codecs because the cellular carriers need to get the most out of their leased spectrum (i.e. spectral efficiency)

17)    Transcoding will be necessary to move between HD codecs; AudioCodes is happy.

18)    North American cable companies are getting ready for HD, but until the business case is clear (i.e. “Show me the money”), they aren’t in any rush.

19)    Cable may have a leg up by locking in DECT CAT-iq as a standard so service providers can provide an end-to-end experience without transcoding or other tweaking.

20)    The Europeans are ahead of us (again).  BT, France Telecom, T-Mobile are all deploying HD today in their respective territories.

21)    France Telecom expects to be able to exchange HD voice calls with other carriers by the end of the year.

22)    Enterprises are likely to be the earliest adopters of HD. They control their own infrastructure, are deploying VoIP, HD gets rolled out as “just another app” onto the existing infrastructure.

23)    Avaya has incorporated wideband codecs in all of its phones; Polycom is adding wideband codecs to all of its phones.

24)    HD is a “killer app” when it comes to talking to a non-native language speaker and you can’t understand his/her accent.  The broader range means you can understand what someone is saying rather than having to work at interpreting (i.e. filling in the blanks) as to what they are really saying.

25)    HD on cell phones is happening – in Europe.  France Telecom is (once again) leading the way with mobile HD.

26)    Truphone says it is working with HD in the lab and is ready to roll when the time is right.

27)    Qualcomm has done demos/field trials of HD on cellular.

28)    In the trials, Qualcomm used the Swiss-army-knife of IP telephony – Digium’s Asterisk – to transcode between its 4GV-WB codec and G.722.

29)    Qualcomm is still trying to fight the EVDO/LTE battle.

Earlier pieces on the HD Communications Summit

HD Communications Summit: Pulver announces HD marketing association, FCC petition, fall event

HD Communications Summit: Codec convergence, “HD” logo take center stage

HD Communications Summit: Cable bides its time

HD Communications Summit: Islands of HD, trending upward

HD Communications Summit: HD Cellular is happening

HD Communications Summit: Analysis – Will international needs bootstrap HD voice?

Presentations at the HD Communications Summit – pictures

HD Communications Summit – A PR/marketing view