Posted on 19 July 2007. Tags: grand central, Jott, ooma, the thomas howe company
How long have you been saying that carrier based telephony is a race to the bottom? Well, you can stop saying it, as we’ve arrived. When you purchase an Ooma phone, you never need to pay for your minutes again. You might shell out four Bennys for the privilege, but that’s it. Yes, that’s it folks – no more paying by the minute ever again. We’ve pressed the bottom button on the ol’ telecom elevator, and the doors have opened. And what I love about this story is how complete the bottoming out is. Andy is always telling me to be as positive as I can in my posts, and when I criticize, to give an example of somebody who’s doing it right. A challenge here, my old friend – but I’ll try.
Technical : C. No, C-. I wonder if anyone told the investors that the Chinese could produce the exact same phone for fifty bucks, or that it simply isn’t that hard to write a peer-to-peer VoIP network. Of course, if Ooma makes any connection to the PSTN (such as DIDs), Ooma has to pay for that somehow, so they have an incremental cost for each customer, no matter how peerish they get. If they don’t, why would you make a bet on yet ANOTHER walled garden? Maybe the phone rocks, but so did PingTel’s. And you know how they turned out. Let’s face it, do you think any phone that attaches to a wall is that compelling? How much better would this be: don’t make a new phone. The old one works fine. Use the same old phone to do something valuable, like
Jott is doing.
Business : D From a business perspective, when do you think the investors will learn that business plans that start out with “Yes, we won’t make any money on the basic service, but we can monetize it later on by doing…” are like something that’s too good to be true? Right – it usually IS too good to be true. Ooma (minus five points for stupid Web 2.0 name) will rely on selling value added services to their subscribers to increase their profits from the phone sale. Value added services? Did anyone check to see the adoption rate for new services with cell phones? The most popular VAS available for phones are ring tones (you want that in your kitchen) and text messaging (does this thing have a keyboard?) How much better would this be: find something so valuable that I’d be willing to pay for it, like
GrandCentral. Give it a smart name, like GrandCentral. Get a real business plan, like GrandCentral.
Buzz : B. Well, compared to Ashton Kutcher’s acting career, this might be a real step up. He typically entertains me for an hour or so at most, but now I can watch Ooma blow through 20 million dollars, it will take months! Maybe even a few years! Nice. Best thing about the company is imagining my retirement with commercials from Ashton encouraging me to make phone calls. I met Demi in 1986 when she came to the restaurant I was working in, and let me tell you, she’s not just pretty – she’s 100 foot pretty. I might buy the damn phone if she signs the box.
Overall : I so wish I could short a private company. Anyone want to bet me?
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on 03 July 2007. Tags: google, grand central, the thomas howe company
The more I think about Google’s acquisition of Grand Central, the more I see it as a watershed moment in telephony. Unlike Yahoo!, AOL and nearly every other large telephony concern, Google now supports, at the same time, open Internet standards and connections to the PSTN. This is truly valuable, and unique, and should be celebrated.
From the start of telephony, every major carrier has protected its network behind a series of barriers: technical, legal and financial. Although some of the reasons for keeping their networks closed have some credence, such as security and reliability, it’s pretty clear that carriers hold the opinion that opening up their network does not benefit them. As time has gone on, and technology has matured, the closed nature of networks is less and less about technical concerns, and more and more about carrier fear and an inability to present compelling business cases to customers.
With the GrandCentral acquisition, this has now changed. Google now owns a company that is a legitimate PSTN service with strong integration into open VoIP standards, and did it in a very Voice 2.0 way. GrandCentral currently supports free and unfettered SIP connections to
Gizmo accounts, unlocking the entirety of the SIP architecture, benefits and approaches. And more so, GrandCentral has done this in a completely Web 2.0 manner, freeing itself from the chains of a technology play and firmly focusing on a valuable application that people will pay for.
Is this is the end of an era for closed telecom networks? Yes, I think it’s the beginning of the end.
Posted in Lead Stories
Posted on 21 June 2007. Tags: chopi, flat planet, grand central, iotum, iphone, skype, the thomas howe company
Chopi, the Thomas Howe Company designer, caught this link today of an iPhone UI simulator. Steve Jobs has announced that the API for the iPhone will be Safari (after bashing the browser as an interface just a few weeks earlier). As I wrote about earlier in the Jaduka post this morning, you can do some pretty neat things with phone/web integration, but my suspicion will be that the choice of Safari will be initially limiting.
How limiting? Well, now you can know. The iPhone UI simulator will show you exactly what you can do with the iPhone, on your OS X laptop. Funtionality includes :
- Test your iPhone-enabled Web 2.0 applications and compatible web sites.
- Open any website that works with Safari.
- Rotate to see websites in either portrait or landscape orientation
- Show or hide the location bar for a full-screen iPhone experience.
- Simulate the iPhone user agent, to test browser redirection scripts.
So, how does it look? I checked out some Telephony 2.0 sites to see how they fared….
Posted in Lead Stories
Posted on 07 June 2007. Tags: grand central, the thomas howe company, web 2.0
As regular readers may have figured out by now, I’m not a big fan of most carrier applications, as I am unconvinced of their long term value due to commoditization, and customer eduction and habituation issues. For me, it’s got to be really (really) good before I’ll fall in love with it. Iotum gets my nod, and now GrandCentral joins that illustrious crowd.
Grand Central is a one-number service done (nearly) perfectly. You can take your GrandCentral number and point it to all your numbers. It does automatic call screening, forwarding and voice spam handling. During a call, you can simply press 4, and the call is now recorded. Like any good iPBX or VoIP carrier play, you can see all your calls, contacts and messages online. I especially like the Web 2.0 look and feel of the site, although I wish they would go all the way with a Web 2.0 approach (more about that in a bit). It’s even adroit enough to put the call on hold for you as you switch from one phone to another. As a personal call solution, I have never seen better. Insanely great.
How does GrandCentral stack up?
- Technically, a definite A minus. I love how they have solved the problem of call handling, and takes a hard problem and makes it easy. Almost on the order of the iPhone UI design, from where I sit. I give them a minus because I think they should go whole hog and publish an API so I can mash it up. I can’t begin to tell you the good ideas I have for that one. Otherwise, perfect, perfect.
- Businesswise, a strong B+. Real value here, and well worth my investment of time to learn how to use (and it’s really easy to use.) I’m going to knock them for two points : they should start charging for this service… I would pay $20.00 a month for this. Come’on guys – make some money. Secondly, it is still a horizontal service, and replication of it isn’t rocket science, so sustainable competitive advantage from the features looks difficult. However, it’s easy for me to see how it might become entrenched in people’s work flows, and there’s many Web 2.0 data mining / social networking opportunities there too. They’ll do alright.
- Buzz, A+. Call me jaded, but this level of excitement over a telephone service doesn’t happen too often to me. Anyone who isn’t jazzed about this service isn’t paying attention.
Posted in Uncategorized
How long have you been saying that carrier based telephony is a race to the bottom? Well, you can stop saying it, as we’ve arrived. When you purchase an Ooma phone, you never need to pay for your minutes again. You might shell out four Bennys for the privilege, but that’s it. Yes, that’s it folks – no more paying by the minute ever again. We’ve pressed the bottom button on the ol’ telecom elevator, and the doors have opened. And what I love about this story is how complete the bottoming out is. Andy is always telling me to be as positive as I can in my posts, and when I criticize, to give an example of somebody who’s doing it right. A challenge here, my old friend – but I’ll try.
