what do you think of jingle(gtalk)

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satphoneguy
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:54 pm

what do you think of jingle(gtalk)

Post by satphoneguy » Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:56 pm

I am interested in what other VOIP enthusiast think of the gtalk /jingle standard as an alternative to SIP. myself being a 'free communication enthusiast' the idea that an alternate platform that has no billing mechanisms and is not designed to interact with traditional phone companies could gain some momentum is very exciting. i see a possibility in jingle of developing a group of services that by there very nature would never involve any per minute charging. in particular the idea of this platform being loaded into cell phones is very interesting. will android be the platform the makes jingle take off?

for in the ideal world an enhanced gtalk would be able to talk to SIP users but would not be the platform choice for calling to the PSTN(of course there will be workarounds such as the existing gtalk2voip) i also see the major telecom operators feeling much more relaxed about voip being deployed on mobile handsets if it is not capable of call to or recieving calls from the PSTN. in other words it would be an alternative communication method not a toll bypass method.

what would make this even more exciting is if we saw a proliferation of wifi enabled handsets that act exactly like mobiles for this type of communications except that you never pay any per minute, daily, monthy annual charges of any kind.

would love to hear the thoughts of others on this topic.

spg

Aaron
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Post by Aaron » Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:38 am

Hi satphoneguy,

At Blueface we have been using GTalk as our IM app for almost the last 2 years. We used MSN Messenger for a few months but as soon as GTalk came out and I saw that they had SIP support on their roadmap we switched across. There is still no SIP support but they do still say it's coming...

http://code.google.com/apis/talk/open_c ... tions.html

As far as free communications go it's worth pointing out that there are no billing mechanisms in SIP either. I don't think XMPP (which is what GTalk use for voice calls) vs SIP will make any difference as far as free calls go. SIP to SIP calls are gernerally free in just the same way as GTalk to GTalk calls are.

The charging for calls has nothing to do with the protocol used but has everything to do with resources. The way the PSTN works is each telco pays other telcos for traffic that they want to terminate on the other's network. Telcos have to maintain their networks and make a profit so they have to get paid. What I believe will happen is that ultimately per minute charging for voice calls will go out the window and instead we'll all just be paying for a data connection. Voice will travel over the data connection and won't cost anything extra then would sending an email or browsing the web. I'm sure there will be different data products that will cost more based on a user pays model and rightly so. If you're a big user of video calls you should be paying a lot more than someone who only makes the occasional voice call or sends the odd email.

With regards to the WiFI handsets half the staff at Blueface (I'm not trying to get lots of plugs in on purpose) including myself have Nokia N95's. A few guys have both the GTalk and the SIP client running. GTalk gets used for IM's on the road and the SIP client for voice calls when a WiFi connection is available otherwise GSM.

To be honest I really don't think mobile telcos are that worried about VoIP. By now they've realised that charging €40 or €50 per month for data plans is better than astronomical charges for international calls which people are generally able to circumvent and that piss them off.

The real question is how the 2000+ VoIP operators are going to stay in business once critical mass is reached on VoIP user numbers and the need for PSTN termination starts to decline. That's still a decade or so away yet thankfully!

Regards,

Aaron

satphoneguy
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:54 pm

Post by satphoneguy » Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:40 am

Aaron said:

'there are no billing mechanisms in SIP either.'

true. but what is significant is that gtalk (and a few other jingle clients) has no dial pad and no way to register with a VSP. i consider this significant; if mostly in the initial impact it has on users. it speaks 'this is free communications' as opposed to speaking 'this is an alternative to your telephone.' i do not expect the telephone to go away anytime soon but i would like to see a second free voice mechanism that does not involve traditional networks. it is also nice to have something that does not get confused with phone line replacement services which i consider to have much more in common from a customer perspective to traditional phone company service than with alternative VOIP (such as direct SIP to SIP calling.)

'What I believe will happen is that ultimately per minute charging.......................If you're a big user of video calls you should be paying a lot more than someone who only makes the occasional voice call or sends the odd email.'

i agree but i think for customers to accept this model it is imperative that charging be based on bandwidth capacity and not total data transfered. the later is just to complicated to predict and creates the problem that in order to offer a reasonable price to the heaviest users you end up not collecting anything from the lighter users. the result stories of $10,000 iPhone bills. the bandwidth billing method also has its issues; the big one i see here in the US is that DSL/Cable modem service is sold at peak capacity transfer rates. the result you pay more per month and get much faster service in the middle of the night; but monday mornings when the network is congested everyone gets the same slow service. i would like to see guaranteed minimum bandwidth rates for each tariff.

'The real question is how the 2000+ VoIP operators are going to stay in business'

voice commodity trading is on numbered days. there is a bright future working with(or being) software developers, hardware engineers, troubleshooters, and consultants. your customers will be software house, hardware companies and enterprise customers with there own IP PBX's.

i think change could come quicker than 10 years. lets say google does evolve gtalk to SIP and than adds into the gmail interface the ability to register any ATA/IP phone and the ability to register any VSP for outbound calls plus basic PBX functionality and utilizes it already extensive IP backbone network to offer this free of charge. than yahoo, aol, and msn quickly follow the lead. as a customer tease they all offer free calls to 50 destination for the first year. this could take a lot of business from a lot of smaller companies. and no one new would dare enter. i certainly hope that companies like blueface would survive and believe that they can. companies like vonage however that have a reputation for horrendous customer service but are succeeding as a result of heavy marketing campaigns will have a really hard time keeping paying customers. particularly with the publicity a move by google would generate. as far as cell phone here in the US, i give 18 months max before all the players are selling unlimited voice. every major city already has a local operator that only sells unlimited packages that include nationwide calling. it makes no difference if calls are VOIP or circuit switched is all in the charges. europe is where i see peer to peer VOIP taking off on mobile handsets using something like gtalk or skype; it will be the way around cross network termination charges.

note: the part above about google adopting sip and allowing VSP registration is not necessarily what i expect; but if they(or one of the others mentioned) do it could have a huge impact on the industry. i believe that google likes offering free services and for that reason will not go into the business of interconnecting with the PSTN networks unless it were very limited(such as US/Canada only and they gave away all the calls free; a possibility when you consider that their grandcentral product allows you to make unlimited free calls in US/canada and they connect two legs on every call via webcallback.)

spg

Aaron
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Post by Aaron » Thu Dec 13, 2007 7:24 am

satphoneguy wrote:i agree but i think for customers to accept this model it is imperative that charging be based on bandwidth capacity and not total data transfered.
I'd agree with that wholeheartedly. I've been in the industry for a fair while and I still do not know what an ISP means when they quote 1Mbps/512Kbps.

- Is it the maximum physical bandwidth available from the ISP's gateway to my network?
- Is it the total bandwidth available at the ISP's gateway divided by the maximum number of users that can be connected to it?
- Is it the bandwidth of the physical transport medium?
- I could keep going.

I'm obviously being a pit pedantic but what's not pedantic is having to explain over and over to users of our VoIP service that even though they have purchased 1Mbps/512Kbps there is no guarantee that their VoIP call quality will be satisfactory because the bandwidth figures are at best a "guide".
satphoneguy wrote: i give 18 months max before all the players are selling unlimited voice. every major city already has a local operator that only sells unlimited packages that include nationwide calling. it makes no difference if calls are VOIP or circuit switched is all in the charges.
Personally I'd be all for free PSTN calls but them I'm not the owner of a PSTN network or at least not a very big one. When you talk about free calls though what you're talking about is changing the billing model and not really free calls. If you're paying for a data connection from your telco and I'm paying for a data connection from your telco then we are paying for a VoIP call.

I get your point though and per minute call charges are hopefully going the way of the dinosaur.

Regards,

Aaron

satphoneguy
Posts: 131
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:54 pm

data usage charging

Post by satphoneguy » Thu Dec 13, 2007 11:39 pm

here is an example of what happens when data is charged by usage:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7141935.stm

the operators need to come up with some reasonable plans for laptop data users. for everyone i know interested in web browsing on there mobile i know 50 who want reliable unlimited service on there laptop. than they want to cut the DSL/Cable out and go 100% wireless. these people are willing to pay a significant premium for this. the problem is with the FUP's. it has got to be 100% unlimited; absolutely no chance of any additional charges.

p.s i know that this has nothing to do with VOIP; but it relates to the conversation Aaron and i were having in this thread about data pricing.

Aaron
Site Admin
Posts: 4652
Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:13 am

Post by Aaron » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:01 am

I'm sure that's not the only case of enormous charges on mobile data plans. I suspect the user may have had an inkling of what was going on, it's not that easy to use a mobile as a modem, but decided to take a chance. It should never have been allowed to happen though.

I'm also in full agreement that data plans should be unlimited with ISPs taking measures on their users that abuse the network (I don't want to not be able to have a good VoIP call because all my neighbours teenage kids are on BitTorrent 24x7). The market will sort that out though. At the moment mobile data is new and expensive. Once the plans, costs and performance start approaching DSL type levels it will get very interesting. In Ireland fixed line connections have been dropping while mobile coverage is 104% (that's not a typo). If the mobile was also the internet connection they'd be even less people requiring a landline. It's probably going to need WiMax to kick in before mobile bandwdiths can match it with DSL though so a few years off yet.

Regards,

Aarib

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