Aswath Weblog

Flat rate vs. Metered and Net Neutrality

At a high level, consumers are at ease when services are offered at a flat rate. Flat rate allows consumers to budget expenses. They do not have to constantly monitor usage lest they are faced with a large bill at the end of the month. Service providers can also benefit as well. There are no billing disputes and the related cost to resolve the dispute. Historically some industries have offered flat rate pricing and been financially viable. At the same time many other services continue to charge their customers based on usage.So it is worthwhile to try to categorize which services are amenable for flat rate pricing and which ones should be metered. With this characterization at hand I will argue that it is preferable that internet access be metered. I will further suggest that consumers will be in a stronger position to demand Net Neutrality.

I wrote an earlier version of this post as part of private discussion with JP Rangaswami.

On a Golden Mean between Streams and email

This is cross-posted from EnThinnai Blog.

Background:
During the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference that took place in Boston, there was a panel called Microsharing: It is All About the Tools. It is Not About the Tools. It was moderated by Marcia Conner. Stowe Boyd felt that the panel "demonstrated that there is widespread disagreement, confusion and even antipathy about streams in business." So he wrote blog post enumerating the characteristics of Streams, which is an abstracted service concept of Twitter and also highlighted the differences between Streams and email.In this post I argue that indeed business would benefit from the service concepts of both Streams and email and I propose a service concept that integrates them.

Let Thousand Virtual Number Providers Bloom

I am sure you would have heard by now that Google Voice announced today that they are "excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required." Apparently even under open enrollment, they will continue to offer all the services for free: one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email (with transcriptions?), free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada. Of course there are similar consumer service offerings; but as far as I know none of them are free. So it will be an interesting exercise to explore how would they be able to offer the service for free under open enrollment.

Presence: Better You Pull, For I ain't Pushing it

I posted the following at EnThinnai blog. Please post your comments there.

To data almost all Presence serving system push a user's Presence status to others. It is widely considered to be an efficient mechanism rather than individuals periodically polling the Presence status of all of their friends.But this is based an a oversimplified analysis that does not take into consideration accepted social etiquette and potential security and privacy issues. It is better that buddies pull the Presence information of a user directly from that user's Presence server. To further enhance the user experience, Presence server must allow for buddies to subscribe for changes in a user's Presence status with the approval of that user.

Measuring EnThinnai against “facebook Manifesto”

I posted the following at EnThinnai blog. Please post your comments there.

Over a series of posts in his blog Confused of Calcutta, JP Rangaswami presents his thoughts on how corporate IT department should get inspiration from Facebook to develop and deploy software infrastructure that emerging workforce will demand. I call the collection of posts “facebook Manifesto” (the case of the letters being used advisedly). The purpose of this post is to compare EnThinnai against this Manifesto. Admittedly, EnThinnai has some gaps to fill. In some cases, we have taken some of the ideas a step farther and in a few cases there are fundamental breaches. This posts catalogues them in an attempt to develop a road-map for our future development plans.

HD Voice is Simpler to realize

Last month Daniel Berninger wrote a guest column expressing the benefits of using high definition codec for voice communication. In that post, Dan argues that widespread use of compatible codecs is critical. Inexplicably I had missed it when it appeared and a tweet brought it to my attention. For a long time, I have argued in these pages that we should be using wideband codecs and more specifically, I have been a proponent of Speex. But I differ with Dan in some respects and this post captures some of my thoughts.

Can Verizon Go All VoIP?

Andy points to a story and quotes Chief Marketing Officer John Stratton as saying that Verizon “plans to do away with traditional phone lines within seven years as it moves to carry all calls over the Internet.” According to the published story Verizon will offer phone service to its FiOS customers using VoIP technology. He is further quoted as saying that VoIP will help “Verizon offer a greater range of services”. What he and many others in the industry have overlooked is that there is no need for service providers in VoIP world.

Know Thy VoIP before Taking Pulse

The last week or so, there have been flurry of blog posts taking issue on either side of the question “VoIP: Dead or Alive?”. It might have been started by Jonathan Christensen of Skype provocatively declaring that VoIP to be dead. Subsequently most of the leading VoIP bloggers have shared their opinions. Those arguing VoIP to be alive and vibrant point to active voice services that use IP in some form or other; those who think otherwise point to many failed companies or seem to suggest that the only important aspect of VoIP is the transport mechanism and that voice transported on the Internet and hence VoIP is passé. Jeff Pulver, the pope of VoIP (actually I consider him to be a vishwamitra; but I am afraid only a few will get that) is mutedly points out that VoIP is more than transport technology. If it comes to that one can argue that TDM to be a “subnetwork” that comprises the concatenated network that is Internet and declare everything is VoIP. So what is VoIP for me?

Now You can be Youe Own Phone Company

A couple of months back Brough Turner penned a column in TMC arguing that SIP has failed to live upto its expectation that “SIP, as a peer-to-peer protocol, would redefine the very nature of telecommunications. No longer would telephony depend upon a central agency — the “phone company.” It was expected that “individuals would directly connect with other individuals.” He goes on to list how SIP has failed to revolutionize the PBX industry and with IMS, it has co-pted by service provider industry. He grants that Skype offers “he most interesting telephony service enhancement after mobility […] with its seamless integration of presence, instant messaging, wideband audio and video” (even though it is based on proprietary protocols). The purpose of this note is to introduce EnThinnai as a solution that meets most of the service objectives put forward by Brough.

Why did I Decline to Join Freedom2Connect Facebook Group?

Earlier in the afternoon I received an invitation from a good friend of mine, Carl Ford, to join a Facebook group called “Freedom2Connect”. In his invitation, Carl asked to “Come help protect VoIP from retroactive regulatory models”. I declined to join the group. Facebook did not give me an opportunity to explain why I declined. (Irony, isn’t it? No freedom to connect.) This note is a public explanation.