Myth, reality collide at VON

One of the most difficult parts about being a trade reporter is separating the fluff of public relations announcements from the real technology advancements that carriers are interested in. It becomes even more difficult in a market segment that is growing so fast that just keeping track of all the players is almost a full-time job.

Earlier this month at the Voice on the Net show, that reality hit fluff square in the jaw as about 2000 attendees converged on Las Vegas for what may in a few years be considered a turning point in the industry. For the first time since analyst Jeff Pulver began the event in 1996, more carriers showed up than vendors. That by itself is an accomplishment for an industry that just two years ago was saddled with a "hobbyist" label.

More important was that for the first time most vendors were showing off real applications beyond cheap long-distance.

The concept of IP eventually becoming the dominant form of transmission for voice communication is appealing to a number of vendors-namely the big networking companies-because of its ability to cut costs compared with traditional circuit-switched voice networks. And in fact, IP voice replacement may happen for no other reason than its cost factors are such an advantage to carriers. However, even the most ardent proponents of IP voice realize that the technology's greatest promise is in delivering converged/integrated (pick your favorite term) applications.

Pulver, who has built his company into a chief spokesmodel/advocate role, continued pushing the point that VON must reach to new applications but offered few specific examples. More telling was a recent report from Piper Jaffrey analyst Ted Jackson claiming the IP voice market would reach $6 billion by 2003. Claiming that much of the development is "going on under the covers," Jackson nonetheless thinks much of that money will come from unique applications that incorporate IP voice.

In the light of day on the show floor, vendors were falling over themselves in various attempts to come up with that killer app.

Among the most promising is universal messaging. By combining budding IP networks, existing servers and some innovative client software, vendors are well on their way to giving nascent IP carriers a unique service that wireless operators have talked about for years.

Start-ups like Iperia, which already has an important alliance with Cisco Systems, are staking much of their early success on high-end consumers' desires to unify diverse e-mail and voice mailboxes. Expect to see many more of the big networking and traditional telecom vendors roll out similar platforms in the coming weeks.

Farther down the road, with the help of companies like Qwes.net (no relation to Qwest the carrier), carriers will be able to take advantage of the multiple levels of quality of service offered by IP to dream up just about any service their hearts desire.

Before anyone gets carried away in blue sky dreaming, though, it's instructive to look at recent carrier experiences with one of the most basic IP voice-oriented services-Internet call waiting.

Bell Atlantic, Bell Canada and U S West all are either in trials or the early stages of deploying Internet call waiting. The service, aimed at the single-line residential market, notifies Internet users of an incoming call with a pop-up screen on their PCs. Users can then send the call to voice mail or reroute the call to another phone number. Next generation services let users take the call over a multimedia PC while on the Internet.

In trials and deployments, though, telcos are finding that while the idea of Internet call waiting sounds appealing, the operations end is no small trick.

Bell Canada, for example, has sold the service to about 25,000 users, far below its internal projections. According to one product manager, the company spendsmore time on the phone helping customers with their internal PC problems than with the service.

Bell Atlantic, which just last week publicly announced its service, and U S West are taking careful steps toward Internet call waiting for the exact same reason.

At the end of the road, there's little doubt that IP will offer many consumers services that currently are only Silicon Valley dreams. It's just that getting there wasn't supposed to be this painful.