Dear Carriers :
It’s quite easy : they didn’t need you. Not good.
At last February’s Emerging Telephony Conference in San Francisco, I wrote a mashup to prove to myself and the audience that someone could write a compelling business application using voice that didn’t require large investment in equipment, a huge development staff, customer education or mass marketing. In short, I didn’t really need to work with a particular carrier. I think I succeeded, and I wasn’t alone - every other entrant proved it as well. The recent Skype mashups contestants prove it. I’m flying off to Las Vegas to announce the winners of the Thomas Howe Company’s mashup competition with our partners Amazon and Voxeo at the Sylantro Gobal User Summit. Our contestants proved it. They didn’t need to get close to a carrier to create a compelling voice application. In fact, not to rub it in your face… but not involving you was a good thing for all concerned.
Let me emphasize the totality of my statement. They didn’t use your new services standard IMS. They don’t use the application layer API : Parlay. They don’t use SS7. They don’t speak AIN. They don’t go to the same shows you do - they don’t read the same magazines. I bet they have never called you. They didn’t call Verizon - they didn’t call AT&T. They certainly used some Internet connectivity in the colocation center, but I absolutely guarantee they don’t know or care who provided the bits. I can guarantee that the services running on those bits are much more compelling, and have business cases that will knock your socks off. My dear carriers, this should get your attention, because I challenge you to list for me the last ten new voice services that were not only compelling, but made serious money. Did your entire list appear in the last twelve months? Didn’t think so.
I know there’s somebody reading that’s muttering about scalability. One word for ya : Google. Look’em up on Yahoo. These mashup guys use the same technology as Google. That technology scales. That technology is free, open and runs of commercial off-the-shelf hardware. If you’re an Amazon Web Services customer, you really don’t need the hardware, actually. You can rent theirs. But I digress.
There’s probably somebody else saying something about needing a carrier somewhere to carry the voice. And yes, we needed SOMEBODY when we didn’t want to solely depend on Skype, Gizmo or whatever. We’ll send them their two pennies for our two minutes, whoever they were. Didn’t really matter to us who it was, actually.
Please don’t get me wrong - I’m not picking on you. I’m here to help, and not by trying to sell you a box to solve your problems. Vendors do that. I’m not one of them; I’m just your local geek. I have a better answer for you than IMS. I’m talking about some real help. Consider me an ambassador - the emissary sent by the barbarians who are camped at your gate. Take a minute to count how many web scripting guys are out there. Our message is quite simple : if you would just simply provide some compelling APIs that we could use in our voice mashups, we just MIGHT start to need you. Or at least we’d use you. Really, we would.
What sorts of APIs? How about an API that I can use to get the location of a cell phone? What about one that will let me send a simple voice message to any phone? How about one that gives me click to dial? One that lets me setup a conference call? I could use those as I’m extending a business process for some fortune 500 company. It would be cool - and it would pay the bills. For both of us!
An example? Yesterday, I got a call from UPS making sure that I knew a package was to arrive on Monday that needed a signature. They used an outbound messaging API to send that message, and they traded a quarter to avoid an unnecessary truck role. Super valuable for UPS. Applications like that. APIs like that.
So, listen. You’re just not selling what I’m buying. I didn’t need you. They didn’t need you. Not good. How about we fix this?
Thanks.