Topic: Telephony
David Recordon, Open Platforms Tech Lead for Six Apart, pitches the telephony community on grassroots efforts as a means for the development of open standards. Grassroots community groups can serve as the catalyst for addressing challenges that corporate groups have chosen to ignore, and begin to bridge gaps between existing web technologies and mobile service providers.
At the Emerging Communications Conference 2008, Jonathan Christensen, General Manager of audio and video at Skype, speaks about the development of IP communications over the past 10 years, giving a brief history of VoIP. He talks about its evolution from being a technology for geeks only, to a mainstream application, and concludes the talk by discussing the threats and opportunities for the IP communications industry.
Despite the increased visibility that the Web provides, many small businesses would rather receive a phone call from a customer than a page view or an email address. Irv Shapiro of IfByPhone demonstrates powerful, easy to create telephone services that take advantage of the ubiquity of telephones.
During past few years we have witnessed a drastic reduction in competition for network services in the US. David Isenberg, author of the essay "The Rise of the Stupid Network", a paper that shook the telecom world in 1997 and continues to have an impact today, puts the blame squarely on decisions made in Washington DC. This short but pointed talk discusses how this trend is likely to stifle future innovation if it isn't stopped, and what can be done about it.
Phil and Scott discuss the recent Telecosm 2008 conference, where attendees debated, discussed, decoded and deciphered the digital and communications technologies and policies vital to the build-out of the global Internet infrastructure. They also talk about a number of other topics, including Google's Android project and PlateSpin, a company that specializes in server consolidation and disaster recovery.
Phil, Ben, and Scott are joined by Tyler Whitaker to discuss some of their current projects and activities. They first talk about alternate uses of mobile phones and how cellphone usage in other countries is quite similar to the United States. Scott then talks about the status of his work with Asterisk, an open source PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit.
In contrast to the simplicity and ubiquity of the Web, developing telephony applications is complicated. RJ Auburn of Voxeo tells how their network interconnection stack will make it easier for developers to create new and creative telecommunications applications and gives a demo of how simple it is.
Just as Moore's law turned personal computers from a curiosity to a powerful tool over the last 20 years, it is now turning cellular phones into mini computers with many of the same capabilities. Indeed, next year, more smart phones will be sold than personal computers. Smart phones are a huge, attractive platform for application developers, but how are you supposed to develop software for them? Alex Russel, creator of the Dojo web toolkit, shares his thoughts from the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference.
"Practice safe VoIP," is Dan York's appeal to the new entrants in the digital telephony landscape. In a spicy, fictional anecdote, CISSP's Director of Emerging Communication Technology cleverly reveals the possible security vulnerabilities VoIP networks are amenable to. Like all happy tales, in the end, the bad guys lose; VoIP security tools are to the rescue. But in real life, Dan warns, the potential threats are only increasing.
At British Telecom, VoIP technology and the Internet are seen to provide some exciting opportunities to grow new business models. Jerry Thompson, Chief of Applications at British Telecom, talks about BT's transition from being a traditional voice-based telecommunications enterprise to a VoIP-based service provider.
