Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Jeff P.'s Reflections on FCC VoIP Forum - December 8, 2003 Issue

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 11:30:58 -0500

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  Reflections on FCC VoIP Forum

The FCC VoIP Forum took place on December 1st and I've spent the past
week reflecting back on just how cool being part of their ground
breaking forum really was. Having the event covered live on C-SPAN in
addition to being webcast by the FCC just added to the excitement. If you
didn't catch the event live, you can still view it by visiting:
<http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/publicforums.html>

When I was invited, I was told that the purpose of the first panel was:
  "...to address technical and market issues surrounding VoIP service.
  Panelists will be asked to describe the technology and capabilities of
  VoIP, and how VoIP can be used to offer end users lower-cost, innovative
  services with capabilities previously unavailable in voice
  communications. Panelists will address how the FCC might distinguish
  among the numerous services employing VoIP, and whether it could feasibly
  distinguish between VoIP and other IP-enabled applications facilitating
  communication ranging from e-mail to instant messaging to
  videoconferencing to interactive on-line gaming."

The real kicker was that I had to keep my comments to only six minutes
and that I had to submit my PowerPoint presentation a week in advance of
the actual planned testimony, the Monday before Thanksgiving. In the
end, well over 100 hours were spent working on word selection and
messaging that was included in my testimony. Special thanks goes to both
Carl Ford and Bruce Jacobs for their tremendous contributions to my
testimony. It was also thanks to both of them that I was able to reference
the agreement reached between the VON Coalition and NENA.

When the event commenced, I started to edit my proposed testimony to
reflect the words said by the chairman and again by Kevin Werbach in his
testimony. I realized only afterwards how fast I spoke my opening
testimony but I wanted to make sure that I got all of the key points
across before hitting the six minute barrier. In the end I think I was
one of the only speakers who actually honored the six minute rule.

>From the vantage point of a participant, it was a great experience all
the way around, starting with the moment I entered the room to see that
all of the FCC commissioners and FCC chairman where on the other side of
the table from where the speakers were and that we were all on a level
playing field, rather than having to literally look up to them in their
regular seats, which I'm told is pretty standard.

Looking around the room it felt as if we were on a Hollywood set but once
we went live, a silence hit the room and one could feel the energy in
the room. The fact that the main room was standing room only and that
their overflow rooms were overflowing was just one more indicator of
the interest shown in what was happening.

Once things got started, I quickly realized that I was on the same page as
the Chairman and I adjusted some of the words that I spoke to reflect
this. One statement that didn't make my last-minute edits was a concept
Carl was strong about that "IP Communications has no bottlenecks."  This
statement was about the goal of many to assure that transparent transport
would always be part of the Internet. The ironic part of this statement
is that if you caught the Reuters coverage of the event, it was one of the
quotes attributed to me. This attribution happened because I blogged my
proposed comments the night before the VoIP Forum and this became a source
for the news story.

The FCC VoIP Forum was well covered by the business media and a
Google on the subject: FCC VoIP Forum reveals many pages of written news
coverage.

It was an honor to be part of these activities last week and I look
forward to be an active participant in future activities which will help
shape the United States' IP Communications policy.

The FCC's VoIP Forum is also very  interested to hear your ideas and
concerns. Just visit: <http://www.fcc.gov/voip> and send them your
presentations and text of up to 1,000 words. Your submissions will become
part of the FCC VoIP Forum's record and will be made available to the
public on the FCC's website. Submissions can be received until Monday,
December 15, 2003.

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   Jeff's Testimony at the FCC VoIP Hearing: December 1, 2003

The following were my planned remarks for FCC VoIP Forum which took place
on December 1st. My actual comments varied a little.

  ----
Jeff Pulver Testimony @ The FCC VoIP Forum:

"Good morning. Thank you for inviting me.

I want to start by saying that I do not have a telecom background. But as
Paul Simon wrote, .my lack of education has not hurt me none.. Thanks to
IP Communications, my limits are only my imagination.

My involvement in the emerging IP Communications Industry started in '95.
In the Seventies, as a ham radio operator, I spent some time running phone
patches for military personnel overseas. In '95, I started experimenting
at night with the same kind of phone patch, this time using the Internet
instead of amateur radio. I called it "Free World Dialup." Coming from my
ham radio background, I just wanted to use technology to talk to people
around the world and help others do the same. That's one reason I don't
use the term "Internet Telephony" since I think it limits people's
perception. I like to talk about "IP Communications," since VoIP is and
can be so much more than just plain old telephone service.

A little more than a year ago, I took another look at where voice over
broadband was going and decided to launch FWD once again, this time as a
peer-to-peer network over broadband. Today, we have over 80,000 users
worldwide, whom we serve with just a few Linux servers in New York. Our
users connect using a variety of products including: PDAs, PCs, IP Phones
and devices that enable the use of analog phones. The form factor of a
phone is not a good basis for regulation. IP Communications has evolved
past the distinctions made in the Stevens Report.

More than half of the members of Free World Dialup are from outside the
US. Their physical location is unimportant, because the voice part of the
call goes between the end points. On the Internet, distance doesn't matter
and the source and destination of a call is not fixed. Our service runs
more like a domain registry than a phone network. Our network is home to a
very imaginative community who is using it in a variety of ways,
including the use of a directory with status information about when people
are available to communicate. This status information, known as presence,
can appear on web pages, e-mails, and other visual displays to track
friends and help complete calls.

One place we use presence is our welcome line, which is associated with
many volunteers. If you dial .55555. on Free World Dialup, the phone
number rings in potentially 25 cities/locations around the world and is
answered by whomever answers first. I can imagine an emergency service
that listed medical experts like our welcome line does and offers the
ability to have medical experts on worldwide call.

Some community members provide value to FWD by offering free connectivity
to the public phone network. FWD Community members can also engage in
their own independent service creation. This ability is much different
than the traditional way of deploying new services on the public phone
network.

With IP Communications, applications and services are separate from
transport. I would like to point out, that nothing is stopping the ILECs
and Cable companies from also offering their own hosted voice over
broadband services. In the future, you can expect competition to come from
broadband service providers outside the US.

We are migrating voice away from a service dependent on service providers;
we are coming to a time when voice will work like e-mail. Many people get
e-mail from service providers, but many also provide their own email
service as either enterprises or end users. More importantly, they can
access their email from anywhere and we should expect the same for voice.

In contrast, most of this would not be possible using today's
circuit-switched technology. IP Communications is happening everywhere as
shown by the use of IP Phones with General Tommy Franks during the war in
Iraq. In fact, IP Communications is being used today in Government, the
Military, Education, by Consumers, and just about every business sector.
And IP Communications is not just about Voice, as is evidenced by the
deployment of Instant Messaging with Internet Cameras. Free World Dialup,
and .messenger services. from AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! enable people to
communicate via text, voice and video with several people at the same
time. Even internet gaming technology like X-box Live! has the ability to
communicate between gamers and further blurs the line.

These days it is commonplace to take advantage of 3rd party call controls
on web pages to setup conference calls and engage in collaborative
conferences, which take advantage of sharing PowerPoint applications,
voice and video.

Attention has been paid to the social policy issues raised by VoIP. These
are solvable in the sense that applications can be developed to provide
disability access and access to emergency services and law enforcement.
Producing the IP Communication Industry's Trade show, VON, I can tell you
that we have continually focused on the requirements to support PSTN
solutions, but until recently, the PSTN community has not been focused on
VoIP.

I believe that we have sufficient attention now, to enable voluntary
standards to be developed. The VON Coalition has just worked out an
agreement with NENA that provides a short-term and long-term approach to
providing 9-1-1 access to users of IP communications. I encourage you to
give these voluntary approaches time to work. What you shouldn't do is
just dump legacy regulation on what is a fundamentally different
technology. This is NOT traditional telecommunications. IP Communications
has no bottlenecks. And keep in mind the potential of IP Communications to
exceed what today's telephony provides. For instance, one major reason the
Dept. of Commerce deployed VoIP for its internal voice system is its
ability to provide "reverse 9-1-1", alerting employees when there.s an
emergency.

I also encourage you not to assume that VoIP is going to take over the
world of communications tomorrow. The reality of the marketplace is not
being reflected in the press.

VoIP penetration is totally dependent on broadband adoption and the
consumer' comfort with the environment. And challenges still exist.

My hope is that you leave room for IP Communications to continue to
innovate and experiment. If there is regulation, it should be smart
regulation that takes into account interconnection between Internet -
based phone carriers and has phone-to- phone calls that never touch the
PSTN. It is fine to consider IP Communications when looking at the
requirements for the public good; I think the focus should be on how to
enable a broadband "always-on" public network that gently migrates people
from the PSTN.

In closing, if you do not believe in the innovation possible with IP
Communications, you can surely destroy it by forcing regulation. If you
want to see a duck, then all your .flowers are red, you will miss the
opportunity to see all the colors in the flower..

Thank you for your time. Thank you for the future."

<http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/archives/000276.html>

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