Communications: HD Voice

Here are my notes from last week's HD communications Summit, i.e. my twitter stream condensed. I've followed that with a copy of the day's schedule just in case the original on-line version disappears. :)

Brough’s Twitter stream from the HD Communications Summit in NYC
September 15, 2009 – See http://tinyurl.com/nu843b

— Dan Berninger kicks off with a picture of Europe where Moldova is highlighted. See http://tinyurl.com/n3jst9 for Orange's PR.

— Jeff Pulver is talking about two friends in Paris who have HD voice on their triple play VoIP service and love it.

— Jeff passes a rumor that a US incumbent may launch HD on triple play in San Antonio. I wonder what he's heard. Nothing via GOOG.

—" Jeff promoting "HD Connect Now" a trade group that I know Dialogic has joined. http://hdconnectnow.org/

— Aside - Dialogic has published a white paper based on stuff I wrote last spring. http://tinyurl.com/qjsfda - needs Moldova update..

— Alan Percy of Audiocodes focuses on the problem of HD peering. It doesn't happen today! Is he volunteering to drive an effort?

— Alan Percy says VoIP peering at 2% of VoIP-to-VoIP traffic. I don't know where he got that data but it sounds plausible (or high).

—" Jan Linden of GIPS has the first audio samples of the day. Nothing new for me, but it's got me thinking about the audience today."

—" Jan Linden points out good HD also needs acoustic echo control, packet loss concealment & noise suppression - & device tweaks!"

— Mike Eastman of WYDEvoice announcing an all-software wideband audio conference bridge. http://bit.ly/1B8Y7

—" Robert Graves of ATSC Forum speaking. Are there lessons to learn from the HD TV industry? No surprise, he's a fan of Forums."

—" Robert Graves - indeed as ATSC Forum wraps up, he's available for hirer. :)"

— Robert Graves boasting about the efficiencies of HDTV spectrum usage. But no mention of the industry resisting TV white spaces!

—" Robert Graves makes it very clear the broadcasters want to hold onto their spectrum to add new services - mobile, handheld, etc."

— Brough's HDTV summary - very political because it required FCC approval. At least we don't have that to deal with.

— Robert Graves summary - increased quality essential; all-format decode (old & new) from day one; consistent government policies.

—" Nxt up: HD Innovation Panel. Robert Messer, ABP Tech; Tobias Kemper Nimbuzz; Alan Percy, Audiocodes; Ryan Heidari, Qualcomm."

—" Robert Graves says HDTV tipping point was getting critical mass of programming, but this due to satellite, then cable! Not ATSC!"

— Tobias Kemper - turning point will be when mobile subscriber can just press the green button and get HD w/o knowing it.

—" HD Innovation Panel is thrashing around transcoding; too many coders; extra latency - Good business for Dialogic, Audiocodes, etc."

—" Ryan Heidari, Qualcomm.comments that Bluetooth has adopted HD stds but low power, low computational capacity."

— Ryan Heidari also lists five codecs approved by Bluetooth community. Sounds like too many to me!

—" 2nd HD innovators panel: Ben Lillenthal Citrix; Jim Toga, Vivox; Tim Panton, PhoneFromHere; Richard Romagnino, Voiceage"

—" Tim Panton is focused on zero install PC-based HD voice interfaces for web, facebook, etc."

—" Jim Toga focused on applications, currently at Vivox which does HD voice for gamers and in Second Life."

—" Richard Romagnino takes us back down into the mud. Codec licensing patent pools. Maybe necessary, but ugh!"

— Tim Panton says opportunity for innovation is in 3D sound - but need speakers and other consumer I/O devices

— Jim Toga - the microphone is in the iPhone is digitized at 32 KHz sampling rate. It could support really excellent telephony.

— Jeff Rodman co-founder & CTO Polycomm also starts with audio demos but promises 10 reasons people want HD voice.

— Jeff Rodman #1 Understand yr overseas team. #2 understand yr young kids. #3 it's easier - don't have to ask for repeats.

— Jeff Rodman #4 save yr energy for dancing. #5 like being there.

—" Jeff Rodman #6 enhance emergency abilities. #7 It's ""cool"" (if your old) or ""sick"" (if your young)."

— Jeff Rodman #8 no incremental cost. #9 everybody's making it. #10 Yr competitor sounds good when speaking to yr customers.

—" Jeff Rodman - responding to Q:. ""Polycom HD Voice"" is copyright, but no copyright on ""HD Voice"""

—" Rick Krupka of Uniden is focused on cordless phones. Claims, despite mobiles, cordless phones are still a hot seller."

— Rick Krupka was head of DECT Forum and is also promoting DECT 6 phones.

—" Rick Krupka gives Uniden pitch, nothing about HD yet... turns out they are ""backing into"" HD - still pitching non-HD stuff."

—" Rick Krupka - ""Conversational gain"" compares the end-to-end volume of a phone call with two people speaking live at 1 meter apart."

—" Rick Krupka - his only tie to HD is the idea that HD needs something like ""conversational gain."" Why was he invited to speak?"

—"#hdcomm Dan Petrie, SipEz; Jeff Rodman, Polycom; Dave Beckemeyer Televolution; Joyce Kim, GIPS are now on a panel ""HD in Action"""

—#hdcomm Dan Petrie was at Pingtel years ago when they tried to push wideband audio. It was way too early. No traction until 2 yrs ago.

—#hdcomm Jeff Rodman on early Picturetel experience where they needed wideband audio to make video ok - back in the mid-1980s!

—"#hdcomm Joyce Kim suggests people don't understand HD voice well enough to pay extra for it. My point: not revenue, but mkt share!"

—"#hdcomm Jeff Rodman - Polycom biz is coming from enterprise. Also large businesses understand HD now, e.g. multisite HD conferences."

—"#hdcomm Dave Beckemeyer says Svc Providers 1st Q is ""how much will people pay"" and that won't work. People won't pay extra for HD voice."

— Q: in what namespace will we make our HD calls? The panel is stumped. My answer - mobile. Tim Panton says DNS .tel.

— Chris Fine VP Goldman Sachs shows graphs that suggest IT spending has past the trough.

— Chris Fine ranks CIO priorities: Risk Reduction; Revenue Increase; Cost Reduction; Productivity Increase; everything else...

—" Chris Fine lists 7 possible scenarios for HD voice adoption, but this is just an exhaustive list. What does he believe?"

—" Chris Fine - at Goldman Sach, HD voice is being delayed while two ""large"" vendors fight over standards and interfaces."

— Chris Fine is not hearing anything about HD voice from the large carriers.

— Chris Fine gets others at Goldman to notice HD by putting MS Communicator on their desktop and then calling them.

— Josh Bottum of Cisco talking HD voice ecosystems - expects upstart svc providers to start and become thorn in side of big guy.

—" Josh Bottum admits HD voice is low on Cisco's radar, but he expects it to be a check box and to be on >50% of their desksets soon."

— Josh Bottum says high end users are demanding HD so smaller businesses are getting HD by default. But EU different than US.

—" Mike Rude of DSPGroup makes cordless phone technology, e.g. they are in the Gigaset phones (and Uniden?)."

—" Mike Rude pushes DSPGroup. They have DECT+VoIP+Wi-Fi+ and app processor in 1 chip, for DECT phones etc. Have 70% of 4M HD devices."

—" Michael Stanford, WireEvolution; Mike Jablon, Time Warner; Tony Storella, snom; are on a panel entitled ""The HD value chain."""

—" Mike Storella of snom expects there is a lot of money to be made in HD voice - but in products and conf svcs, but not for operators"

— Tony Stankus of Gigaset gets a round of applause as they have given cordless phones to everyone at the conference.

— Mike Storella of snom complains his VARs need more education as they still don't sell HD.

—" Correction: Michael Stanford, WireEvolution; Mike Jablon, Time Warner; Tony Stankus, Gigaset; Mike Storella, snom;"

— Mike Jablon answers question about Skype - Time Warner doesn't see them as competition.

—" Mike Jablon (TimeWarner) sees reciprocal comp as an issue today, but one that will eventually go away. I sure hope he's right."

— Mike Jablon points out the cable MSOs have enough of a customer base but he estimates 3-5 yrs to make them all HD capable.

—" Candice Malmstrom, FreedomVoice; Kevin Groth, XConnect; Rodrigue Ullens, Voxbone; Dave Frankel, ZipDX; on a panel HD Interconnect."

—" Rod Ullens provides e.164 numbers in various countries, also in inum (a new non-geographic country code) registered with the ITU."

— David Frankel need to program every IP-PBX with routing for IP-accessible e.164 numbers. Big hassle - guarantees islands of VoIP.

—" David Frankel: Have to solve the directory lookup issue, for originating phone or phone system. The rest is simple."

—" David Frankel: who runs the directory? Some contenders: Intelepeer, XConnect, NetNumber, Neustar, e164.org, VPF, Verisign, others"

—" Kevin Groth, XConnect: One source of resistance is carriers unwilling to reuce their reciprocal compensation revenue. Wow!"

— Rod Ullens talks about inum (new international phone #s) and HD support. He's still in the very early stages...

— Alla Reznik of Verizon discusses a global HD deployment by a biz customer but only in their corporate HQ island. It's Verizon NJ!

— Alla Reznik claims HD needs FCC to drive adoption. VoIP regulation is mixed or regulated as PSTN voice. Should be treated as IP.

— Alla Reznik answers Q about enterprise wide HD - problems in some countries about access links; otherwise waiting for PBX upgrades.

— Alla Reznik sees early adoptor HD beginning to happen. Today and in 2010 it's still early adoptors (who are large enterprises).

—" Alla Reznik simplified mkt study says joint wire-wireless offer would be attractive, but she can't comment on any plans. (far off?)"

— Alla Reznik comes back to pushing FCC to treat VoIP as IP (not voice telephony) - presumably this gets them free of term. fees.

—" Thomas Lemaire, FT-Orange, different telco, different accent (French). But his slide deck doesn't work."

—" Thomas Lemaire has 7M VoIP subs, >680K with HD, on triple play. Note: BT also has > 500K HD subscribers. Mobile HD just launched."

— Thomas Lemaire also notes that T-Mobile Germany has announced they are launching HD service.

— Thomas Lemaire - pitch is emotional - be closer to the people you love. HD provides a better sense of intimacy.

—" Thomas Lemaire - Sagen, Thomson & Siemens are providers of CPE for HD VoIP services in France & Spain."

—" Lemaire - HD telephones have better acoustic performance, so even when calling a non-HD phone, the quality is a bit better."

—" Lemaire - fixed: France, Poland, Spain,; mobile UK, Belgium, France in 2010 plus of course its already in Moldova mobile."

— Lemaire - why not faster? Time and money - and it's a complex endeavor - much coordination...

— Lemaire frustrated that they don't have MAR-WB to G.722 adaptation (so mobiles can't talk to HD VoIP).

—" Lemaire - HD mobile initially only on 3G networks, partly for use of 3G core network, partly to induce adoption of 3G."

— Lemaire hopes AMR-WB becomes the norm. They are working on transcoding but won't be able to do it when service launches in 2010.

—" Lemaire says pressure in France is coming from CLECs, i.e. there HD program is driven by competitive threats."

— Up next: Julian Spitka of Skype (with a potential 480M registers users who might use HD)

— Julian Spitka is pushing Skype SILK coder as a royalty free codec that everyone should be using...- proposed to IETF.

— Missed reporting on my panel...

—" Next panel Doug Mohoney HDConnectNow; Rich Buchanan, Ooma; Anatoli Levine, RADVison & IMTC; Ben Arnold, Consumer Electronics Assoc."

— Ooma announces they will be launching HD voice.

— Ben Arnold makes analogy to HDTV adoption; need critical mass of device in hands of consumers (as HDTV needed content).

— Anatoli (& IMTC) is focused on HD voice and video and on pitching the IMTC. No $ in HD voice - it enables other applications.

— Rich Buchanan sees chip and product companies as benefiting from HD voice.

— Doug Mahney promotes Digium & Asterisk as beneficiaries of HD Voice either directly or indirectly.

— ooma has already provided G.722 but they use ILBC on constricted access links.

— Robert Graves from audience - HDTV: satellite went first; Cable noticed (in 2002) and broadcasters came last.

—" From audience: quality of DECT HD phones in France is so good, that even non-HD calls sound much better than normal."

—" Jake MacLeod, VP/CTO, Bechtel Comms. 31 yrs; built 110k cell sites; Jake is summarizing the conference - spkr by spkr?"

—" Jake MacLeod - I'd like to get his slides (the summary of the conference) but I don't need to hear it now, at least not this detail"

—" Jeff is planning to do an event in California next spring. He's also investigating a possible event in Europe, sooner."

Event Schedule

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

8:30 9:00	Registration / Networking
9:00 9:05	Welcome - Daniel Berninger, CEO, FWD and Executive Director, HDConnect
9:05 9:20	Jeff Pulver - CEO, pulver.com - "Accelerating the Conversion to HD"
	Step 1 - The HD Technology Roadmap
9:20 9:40	Alan Percy, Director Market Development, AudioCodes
9:40 10:00	Jan Linden, VP Engineering, Global IP Solutions
10:00 10:20	Mike Eastman, VP Sales, WYDEVoice
10:20 10:40	Case Study: Lessons Learned from SD to HDTV Robert Graves, Chairman, ATSC Forum
10:40 11:10	HD Innovations Panel - Part I: Moderator - Robert Messer, President, ABP Tech - Tobias Kemper, VP, Nimbuzz - Alan Percy, Director Business Development, AudioCodes - A. Ryan Heidari, Director Technical and Product Marketing, Qualcomm
11:10 11:40	HD Innovations Panel - Part II: Moderator - Ben Lillenthal, founder and CEO, VAPPS - Jim Toga, co-founder and VP Engineering, Vivox - Tim Panton, CEO, PhoneFromHere - Richard Romagnino, VP Business Development, VoiceAge
11:40 11:50	AM Break
	Step 2 - Triggering End User Demand
11:50 12:10	Jeff Rodman, co-founder, CTO Voice Division, Polycom
12:10 12:30	Rick Krupka, VP Business Communication Services, Uniden
12:30 1:00	HD in Action Panel: Moderator - Daniel Petrie, CEO, SIPEz - Joyce Kim, VP Marketing, Global IP Solutions - Jeff Rodman, co-founder, CTO Voice Division, Polycom - David Beckemeyer, CEO, Televolution
12:50 2:00	Lunch

2:00 2:20	Field Report: HD Voice in the Enterprise Chris Fine, VP, Goldman Sachs
	Step 3 - Toward a Fully Functioning HD Ecosystem
2:20 2:40	Josh Bottum, Director Business Development, Cisco
2:40 3:00	Mike Rude, VP Business Development, DSPGroup
3:00 3:30	The HD Value Chain Panel Moderator - Michael Stanford, WireEvolution - Michael Jablon, VP Digital Phone Strategy, Time Warner - Tony Stankus, PM Emerging Technologies,Gigaset Communications USA - Mike Storella, Director Business Development, snom
3:30 4:00	HD Carrier Interconnection Panel: Moderator - Candice Malmstrom, Dir of Marketing, FreedomVoice - Kevin Groth, VP North America, XConnect - Rodrigue Ullens, CEO, Voxbone - David Frankel, CEO, ZipDX
4:00 4:20	PM Break
	Step 4 - The Path to HD Mass Market Adoption
4:20 4:35	Alla Reznick, Dir Product Management, Global Advanced Services, Verizon
4:35 4:50	Thomas Lemaire, Director Business Development, FT-Orange
4:50 5:05	Julian Spittka, Product Manager and Sr. Engineer, Skype
5:05 5:35	Mobile HD VoIP Panel: Moderator - David Bluenstein, co-founder, The Hatchery - Brough Turner, Chief Strategy Officer, Dialogic - Diego Besprosvan, CTO, MailVision - Mahesh Makhijani, Director Technical Marketing, Qualcomm
5:35 6:05	Perspectives on HD Tipping Points Panel Moderator - Doug Mohney, Editor in Chief, HDConnectNow - Anatoli Levine, Dir Product Management, RADVISION and President, IMTC - Richard Buchanan, Chief Marketing Officer, Ooma - Ben Arnold, Sr Research Analyst, Consumer Electronics Association
6:05 6:30	Wrap-up - Jake MacLeod, VP and CTO, Bechtel Communications
6:30 7:30	Networking Reception

I'm at the HD Communications Summit in New York today. I will be posting real time to my Twitter account, so if you are interested in live coverage, follow me there.

I'll be speaking near the end of the day, on a panel called Mobile VoIP. My point is not that VoIP matters - VoIP is just a technology - but mobile is significant and will drive the tipping point for HD voice.

So far, high definition voice, i.e. wideband audio telecom, has been enabled by most IP-PBX vendors and some VoIP service providers. There are also wideband audio telephone sets available from many providers. But mostly these systems operate as standalone islands. When you call someone outside your island, the audio reverts to PSTN quality.

The problem is IT directors are making the adoption decisions and their budgets have just been cut. Even if the incremental cost of HD voice was zero, why would they sign up for more support hassles?

Once HD voice becomes possible on mobile, the adoption decision flips to individual consumers. They make the choice when they buy their next mobile phone. True, only one mobile operator has announced support for HD voice, and they are in Moldova. But Orange is promising to extend this to their networks in the UK and Belgium and then to all of Europe.

Five years from now, most 3G handsets in Europe will be HD voice enabled and there will be consensus that mobile HD was the tipping point for HD voice.

Note: The tag on Twitter and Technorati is: hdcomms