Will SIP Win

1
Will SIP Win?

• Brad Templeton
• Chairman of the Board
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• brad_at_eff.org
• http//www.templetons.com/brad/

2
Why the PSTN over IP (PoIP?)

• Toll bypass was never the answer
• PoIP pleases grandpa, but is grandpa looking for
  a cheaper version of his phone service with
  quality problems?
• Or is it just a temporary plan for Vonage and the
  rest?
• Emulating Class 5 IN services not enough

3
Think beyond the phone call

• Teens using phone call, even E-mail less and less
• Busy signals, voice mail?
• Im going to transfer you, give me your number
  in case I lose you. Arno Penzias
• Presence should stop a call from happening before
  it can fail

4
What matters is the user interface, not the
infrastructure

• Billions spent on infrastructure, billions lost
• Users dont care how voice gets from A to B
• Users care about the experience
• Users hate the telephone.
• Its a leash
• It interrupts you
• They dont know how to use fancy features
• They dont want to be more reachable

5
PoIP is vulnerable to spam

• A program can ring a million SIP phones
• No way to screen based on content
• Will we give up the open phone network?
• Will we have to screen all our calls
• Not if voice is part of other applications that
  dont even understand the concept of the robot
  caller. The robot caller is part of the old
  metaphor.

6
Can Skype kill SIP?

• A PC application from the get-go
• Did all the major things right
• Easy install
• NAT penetration
• High bandwidth codecs
• Encryption, Conferencing
• P2P scalable architecture
• Just works
• Ignored open standards!

7
Why didnt SIP do these things?

• Almost all already in specs, except P2P
• People were slow to deploy, and may never deploy
• Skype claims 600,000 online
• How many people can you call directly with SIP?
• 5000 on FWD, some companies. 150K on Vonage,
  Packet8 almost.

8
How could open standards lose?

• Quagmire IETF process
• Trying to do too much
• Too much focus on PSTN PBX made it evolutionary
  rather than disruptive
• Not enough focus on the real problems users want
  solved
• Not gaining the interoperation that is the whole
  point of open standards

9
SIP Interoperation a hoax

• Does it work over an internet with latency,
  packet loss for signals as well as RTP?
• You cant predict what an endpoint will do, or if
  it does old RFC, new RFC or not all of either.
• These compelling apps need widespread
  interoperability or they will remain proprietary
  and vertical.

10
Sip had better watch out

• Users dont always realize the long-term benefits
  of open standards
• SIP vendors should start putting in high
  bandwidth codecs, like ILBC and Speex now.
• Every VoIP call should be better than PSTN, not
  the same
• Presence, IM, collaboration with every call, not
  just some
• Encrypt and solve the NAT problem