Doug on IP Comm » Jeff Pulver

The Vegas EVO Experiment

Doug Mohney — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:32:40 +0000

I’m headed out to Las Vegas for DEFCON 18. To get the whole Jeff Pulver “Living in the State of Now” experience, I’ve got my Sprint HTC EVO fired up, GPS radio “on” and logged into FourSquare.

Once I hit the ground, I’ll fire up the WiMAX 4G phone in the EVO. As I run around Vegas, I’ll try to remember to “check in” on FourSquare and look at 4G signal strength and performance.

Las Vegas should be a good 4G city; it’s officially turned-up, dry and flat, lots of clear sight lines and should have good coverage because of all the WiMAX demos run in town over the past couple of years.

HD Communications – Jeff Pulver's woodside chat

Doug Mohney — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:44:15 +0000

Jeff Pulver goes into his back yard to discuss the promise and potential of HD Communications in a 3 minute, 48 second YouTube video.

The video arrives as Pulver and partner Dan Berninger have finalized plans for the September 15, 2009 HD Communications event in New York City.

A busy morning following Jeff Pulver

Doug Mohney — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:39:23 +0000

The day started at 8 AM at the Old Ebbett Grill, the first of Jeff Pulver’s stops for his whirlwind tour of Washington D.C. as he promotes HD voice.

About 24 to 26 people showed up for breakfast, a combination of people who wanted to learn more about HD voice and those who wanted to *ahem* talk about Jeff’s other passion these days, the #140 Character conferences.

From there, Jeff dashed across town to the Embassy of Ireland and a discussion with an official there about the goodness of HD and efforts to get a HD hotline started between the United States and another countries. The official is part of a telecom working group of Embassy Row attaches and he is curious as to where his peers and their countries stand.

Another cab ride and a brownbag lunch HD voice discussion sponsored by Mintz Levin at 701 Pennsylvania Avenue. Jeff believes that HD voice will be able to bring back value and revenue to the telephone companies — value that was lost and squeezed out when vanilla VoIP came along.

Random data point: Nearly all of the 18 lawyers and policy wonks here — including the gray-haired ones — are on Twitter and Facebook.

After lunch, it’s off to meetings at PBS, Gannett, and a dinner of some sort.

HD Communications – Jeff Pulver goes to Washington

Doug Mohney — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:09:12 +0000

Tech and social media pundit Jeff Pulver is penciled in to make a trip to Washington D.C. on Tuesday, July 14, to promote the cause of HD Communications.

An agenda for the trip to the nation’s capital is still being finalized, but Pulver is expected to host a social media breakfast centered around HD Communications and a lunchtime briefing with telecommunications lawyers.

Pulver is no stranger to D.C., having hosted numerous events in the city and filed the so-called “Pulver Petition” at the Federal Communications Commission to gain regulatory relief for IP communications services from traditional telephony regulation.

Registration for the social media breakfast is being handled by Daniel Berninger (dan.berninger@gmail.com).

If Blair Levin is at the FCC, what might this mean for HD Communications?

Doug Mohney — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:23:16 +0000

Last week, Blair Levin officially returned to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “help coordinate its development of a national broadband plan,” saith acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps. But let’s be honest, Blair probably already had a reserved parking space over there given his involvement in the Obama transition team on tech policy, working hand-in-hand with FCC Chairman-in-waiting Julius Genachowski. What might this mean — if anything — for HD Communications and Jeff Pulver’s plan to submit a petition this fall for upgrading phone call voice quality in the United States?

Levin is no stranger to the FCC. He was chief of staff for former FCC chairman Reed Hundt between 1993 and 1997 and got the nickname the “the sixth chairman” during the days of rewriting and implementing telecom policy.

More recently, Levin was one of the two strongest names for a potential nominee as FCC Chairman and the favorite of the telecom policy wonk set. My personal opinion is that Genachowski probably is a better basketball player — Levin being partial to baseball — and got the nod to be nominated for chairman.

Even after Genachowski became the leaked/obvious favorite as Obama’s FCC Chairman, Levin kept on popping up in public places talking about national broadband policy.

In January, Levin appeared at the “”State of the Net” Conference event organized by the advisory committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus to spell out how broadband involvement would play out in the economic stimulus package and how broadband stimulus would work moving forward. He explained that what would happen in the an economy recovery package was something that was designed to be timely, targeted and temporary to create jobs, using existing bureaucratic mechanisms to distribute funding. More innovative programs would have to wait.

Since Levin is now point man for the development of a national broadband plan, it is likely we will see some “innovation” on the table as he builds a comprehensive national broadband policy — and I suspect, despite the worrying over at GigaOm, intelligent people have been working on the problem before announcement have been made.

Does innovation mean raising the bar for phone call quality beyond 1937-era technology?

It is an interesting question. Levin is a free market guy at heart, but I suspect he’d also like to raise the bar if it falls into line with delivering faster broadband to more underserved and unserved communities.

Pulver plans four for fall (HD Communications events)

Doug Mohney — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:18:05 +0000

Jeff Pulver is not planning just one follow-on HD Communications event this fall, but four of them, adding stops in Europe, Israel and potentially Australia.

A two day event in New York city is currently penciled in for September 15 and 16, but Pulver feels that he needs to be where “HD is happening” and is looking at a UK event in October as well as an Asia-Pacific event later in September. Europe is already deploying wideband HD in wireless and wireline environments with France Telecom leading the way. Telstra is reportedly deploying HD-quality services for its Down Under customers.

For Israel, an early September event will be the “reboot” of the communications industry for that nation.

One missing of the HD Communications puzzle – A standards framework

Doug Mohney — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:38:52 +0000

One of the missing pieces out of the HD Communications puzzle is standards — yes, plural. There are plenty of codec standards, mind you, but what defines an HD phone call, really? The telecommunications industry may have to borrow from a page from the TV world at some point down the road.

The lowest common denominator (LCD) for wideband codecs seems to be the almost archaic G.722 — but longevity and a little tweaking over the past couple of years isn’t a bad thing, mind you. Manufacturers have embraced and incorporated the codec into their hardware and it has become a part of the DECT CAT-iq cordless home phone effort — and DECT CAT-iq is the HD/cordless standard for the cable industry.

Companies onboard with G.722 in handsets include VTECH, Siemens Gigaset, ooma in the consumer world and Avaya, Cisco, Polycom, and snom in the business arena.

Going into the wireless world, the standard with the most traction is AMR-WB, also known as G.722.2. Spectral efficiency is the name of the game, so there’s a different manipulation of the media stream to conserve bandwidth and this segways into transcoding.

Can you do better than the two existing LCDs? A number of parties believe they can for various reasons, including bandwidth efficiency, CPU optimization/trade-offs, and the like. Skype’s SILK codec is probably the best/most publicized effort for Yet-A-Better (YAB) wideband codec for speech applications.

What if you want to go beyond the LCD and get the very best experience, period? There’s no definition yet for that in the HD phone call world which puts us slipping towards the Digital TV world to borrow some concepts. Under this to-be-defined-framework (Hello? HD Connect? Hello?), a PSTN call would be “standard definition” and the baseline service when HD wasn’t available. The next step up would be in the G.722 and AMR-WB frameworks — the equal of the 720p in the wireless and wireline worlds.

Finally, at the top of the heap would be a 1080i/1080p standard, for the very very very best in sound quality. Is this something akin to CD quality? Or do you go higher and provoke a fight with audiophiles and embrace DVD Audio or something equally challenging?

Be interesting to see what Jeff Pulver thinks about this framework.

Summary: 29 things I learned at the HD Communications Summit

Doug Mohney — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:57:27 +0000

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

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

Doug Mohney — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:51:53 +0000

There’s a very good case to be made that international communications needs will pull HD into both the consumer and enterprise worlds.

On the consumer side of the VoIP world, European carriers are leading the way with HD voice deployment. BT, FT, Telecom Italia and T-Mobile are all deploying HD voice in their networks and should be able to exchange HD voice calls amongst themselves by the end of this year. And HD voice is being held out as a better way for communication when multiple languages are involved; the PSTN’s limitation of 300 to 3000 Hz ends up clipping out information listeners need to more thoroughly process voice, so if you speak English and listen to someone on a PSTN-grade (or worse, thanks to VoIP compression schemes and low-cost minutes…) connection who isn’t not a native speaker of English, there’s a lot of overhead on both sides to “fill in the blanks.”

For businesses, the case justification is relatively simple: Voice communication becomes much easier with the additional information delivered by HD to listeners on either side. When non-native speakers with accents become involved, the consonant clipping of a PSTN connection– magnified by VoIP compression and/or agitated by mobile connections in some cases – makes listening and understanding much more of a challenge. A better quality connection means more efficient communications with less strain to all involved, so more work gets done and/or gets done faster.

Multinational businesses already on the VoIP/IP telephony bandwagon can roll out HD VoIP in a relatively seamless fashion, as HD becomes “just another app” on top of the existing infrastructure. Since G.722 seems to be emerging as the de facto standard for business wideband, businesses arranging federation/peering-style relationships can talk to each other in HD and everybody is happy. Look for the SIP trunking community to figure out a way to leverage this with an HD peering service or some other mechanism. I’d also look for someone like Verizon Business to try to figure out a way to leverage HD voice within the enterprise community, but they’ll likely be slower to the market because they’re just more conservative.

North American carriers – be they MSOs or telcos – are currently all sitting at the top of the hill and biding their time, waiting for the pebble to start an avalanche of HD deployments. Will HD calling prove to be the pebble — a quality service that North American customers desire to talk to their overseas relatives in Europe today and Asia tomorrow? Will T-Mobile unilaterally try to roll out HD cellular service in the U.S. next year both as a differentor and to keep a consistent set of service offerings across markets?

HD voice pundits such as Jeff Pulver and Daniel Berninger would argue that HD voice provides a premium “purple minutes” service allowing service providers to charge more, breaking them out of the current downward spiral of yet-still-lower cost minutes. To be frank, there are not a lot of other fresh ideas floating around in the phone industry today, so HD might end up being a natural migration path for an industry seeking ways to bring up ARPU any way it can.

International HD voice minutes might be a no-brainer to more revenue – assuming someone in North America tosses the first pebble.

HD Communications Summit: Islands of HD, trending upward

Doug Mohney — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:57:49 +0000

Unlike the start of VoIP and VON oh-so-long-ago (circa 1997), HD voice is much further down the technology path in terms of technology and deployment. Islands of HD usage are appearing at major corporations, while BT, France Telecom (FT), and T-Mobile are all deploying HD within their territories in Europe. FT expects to be able to pass HD calls to other carriers at an appropriate QoS by the end of the year.

Kicking off the HD Summit, AudioCodes cited a quick Google search as an indicator of people showing more interest in HD. In the previous 10 years, there had been 190,000 hits on HD Voice/VoIP. Over the last 12 months, there were 82,000 hits, so from a search engine perspective, the trend line is definitely going up and to the right.

Avaya, Gigaset Communications USA, Polycom, and Snom all cited their respective hardware as being HD ready. Avaya said it had wideband codecs built into all of its handsets, but they didn’t brag about the fact to corporate customers. Polycom CTO Jeff Rodman said the company was moving “everything” to HD and VoIP networks could carry wideband traffic just as easily as narrowband, with business IP telephony rapidly expanding.

Enterprises are likely to be among the earliest adopters of HD, especially if they have moved to VoIP and have distributed locations. Turning on HD is a relatively straightforward process since the IT staff already maintains the infrastructure from end-to-end and can set a standard HD codec for the corporation.

HD voice received a big endorsement from a number of presenters when it comes to international calling. Alan Percey, AudioCodes’s Director of Business Development, admitted he “didn’t get it” on the value of HD until the company had implemented it and he started to be able to focus more on what was actually being said rather than trying to interpret what was coming out of the phone because some participants did not speak English as their native language; consonant clipping that occurs at 3000Hz with PSTN service interferes with trying to understand and comprehend non-native speakers of other languages.

Turning to the consumer market, France Telecom reported it has over 400,000 HD VoIP handsets deployed among its 6 million VoIP users in its native territory and its studies indicate up to 50 percent of VoIP users would switch to HD for better voice quality. FT, BT and Telecom Italia have all built “big islands” of HD and FT expects to be able to exchange HD VoIP calls with other European carriers by the end of the year.