What is the next big thing? Are we on the right track? This is one of the subjects that keeps coming up in almost every marketing meeting lately.  
This is a really tough question to answer especially when you are in front of investors. They usually ask this question and you have to justify your answer, no matter what it is.
I used to have a supervisor in the grad school that kept saying: "The only way to predict the future is to build it." and I cannot agree more. However, people's perception is another key factor. If a good number of people believe that a particular product is going to big, then that product would have a higher chance of success. The reason is simple: If I think this product is going to be a hit and everybody is going to use it, I would most probably respect my own opinion and volunteer to use it myself. If a good number of people think the same way about this product, they, too, would use it which means the product would already have many users, i.e. it is successful.
So, we have tried to find out what is going to be the next big thing in people's eyes We started from a very high level question: What is the next step in phone services? We asked from Facebook users in the US. Take a look at what we have gotten so far:

As you can see most people think the next step in phone services would be providing Free Basic Phone Service. This doesn't mean that provider is not making money out of that service, it only means that the costs should be absorbed by somebody other than consumers. For example, one can decide to transfer costs to the business owners who want to play their ads during the phone calls (Google Voice model?!). This shows that users' first priority is to reduce costs of phone services which require a shift in the business model which may also require a change in the technologies that are being used.
There are however some gaps in our assessment/theory. For example, people may not know what is coming up. If a new exciting product is so unexpected that not that many people could have thought about it, that may also become successful. Who would have thought that publishing private messages publicly on the Internet (Facebook Wall) would become this successful. I bet when this had been brought up for the first time, even internally in Facebook, it wasn't something that many people would support as one of the main functionalities of Facebook. Those people would have not liked it because they had not expected such a service and they had not thought about what it could do and how it could be used. 
The same thing could have happened in our poll. Social Phone Services is not only a new category of services but it is also a new business model which could simply provide consumers with free basic phone service which in a way includes the 4th options. TELTUB is the first source on the Internet that has defined social phone services just recently so it is fair to assume that not that many people know what the term means. However, interestingly enough, 12% of people still voted for this option in our poll and we can justify it only by assuming that people used their imagination to guess what social phone services could be and they liked what they saw!

Labels: free phone, Marketing, Social phone services

What is the next big thing in the telephony world?

Many of my friends, specially those whom I've not gone to school with, think that the new world is getting too geeky. They believe that you have to spend a hack of a time to learn how to use the new technologies efficiently and effectively and that technically makes you a geek in that area.
I have to agree with them. People have different interests and cannot spend 5 - 10 hours on something that they don't like spending time on (like their phone or their computer) just to learn how it works efficiently. They may be able to divide their internet/phone bill by half if they spend this much time but they are just not interested in that stuff and don't want to spend 10 hours on a 'boring' subject.
People have to spend a lot of time, which they usually don't have, to keep up with new changes. That is probably because we are moving too fast in the technology world and one cannot possibly know everything about all the new technologies. This means missing possible opportunities which is just natural.
Companies who are coming up with new services and/or products have to make sure that they minimize the time that is required for their users to understand their product well. In other words, the products should be very simple to understand and use. Even if a product has a lot of great features, can reduce costs [and clean your room without you waking up :)] but you have to spend 5-6 hours to understand it, the product is next to useless for general users. That product will only be used by the geeks of that particular subject who are interested to spend that much time in that area. This means the product cannot become mainstream.
Here is the challenge though: It is not always easy or even possible to make everything simple to grasp. For example, I described how anybody can have a next-to-free phone line here and here but realistically speaking how many people would actually go through all the hassle just for $20-$30 per month? Many people may choose to pay that money but don't bother reading about the stuff that they don't care about. This is perfectly normal. It's like me in the fashion industry. If I know Macy's has a sales on the Boss line and they sell it for 25% less than the retail price, I most probably won't bother going there because I prefer to spend the retail price but don't go through the hassle of standing in lines and busy stores. My clothing example is not a common issue because the number of people who are actually willing to go through the hassle of shopping in a busy store is way more than the number of people who are willing to spend 5-10 hours to learn a technological subject to save $250 per year. This is understandable(not necessarily desirable) because technology is usually considered a boring subject to a good number of people specially when it comes to completing a puzzle using different high-tech products.
Here is the million dollar question: How would a company present their services in a way that users can understand in a blink of an eye and get it to work in 10-30 seconds? This is something that not every company is doing a good job at. Even big guys like Google, Microsoft and even TV makers are coming up with products that general users cannot understand how they work. They may say "sure, it's cool but I don't have time for this!" which basically means: Booooriinngggg... (Just look at Google Wave. I have no idea how they even explained it to themselves let alone other people).
The same is happening in the phone service business. Most of the phone services are boring and require people to spend a lot of time understanding them. Don't get me wrong, users will benefit from that time that they spent on learning the product (either by saving money or having a more effective service) but when they add the "hassle factor" to this equation, it's just not worth it.
The phone services should become easy and fun to use: For example: 

1- Get a free basic phone service; Users click on it and there; they have it.
2- Add a voicemail with web interface; Click, Done!
3- Add your friend to your call; Just drag and drop your friend to your current call.

Getting a phone number should be as easy as signing up for a new email address and adding features to it should be as easy as a mouse click! Features should be easy to use (I am still not comfortable with three way callings let alone more complicated services). The whole thing should (and will) change. There is no point in waiting to talk to "customer support or sales" just to get a phone number! This is so 2009!

Labels: Google Wave, Marketing, Social phone services

Think new phone technologies are too geeky? And you are right.

So, this is a how-to guide for the people in the USA/Canada and possibly all around the globe to use their cell phone minutes optimally and reduce their cellphone charges. We are talking about the basic connectivity at this point and not addressing services like VoiceMail.
Let's get right to it:
Browse the following list, find your current cell phone plan and read our solution to exploit your plan to its fullest:

1. MyFave, MyCircle, etc: Basically any plan that allows you to make and receive unlimited calls to/from a certain number of contacts (called favorite contacts/numbers). These plans also include a certain number of minutes to make and receive calls to/from the numbers that are not in you Favorite list.

Pros:

• This type of plans are really good for the people who 'usually' call certain people and receive the majority of their daily calls from them. You can talk to you girlfriend/boyfriend as much as you want for a flat monthly rate.

Cons:

• You will run out of minutes fast if you call any other number (have you ever used your phone to make a call to a company's customer service? They put you on hold for hours and you can watch your beloved minutes wasting away; one after another!

Solution


There are services, like Google voice, that can help you turn your plan into an unlimited plan. You can setup these services in a way that all of your incoming look like being originated from a number that you already added into your "favorite numbers list" and therefore your incoming call minutes is unlimited. For the outgoing calls, you would have to call the same favorite number and then punch in the phone number that you want to call(two stage dialing).

Pros:

• You will have an unlimited cell phone plan for an affordable cost.

Cons:

• You will loose your caller-ID feature for all of your incoming calls. All of your calls will be coming from the same number regardless of who is calling you.


• Your cell number will be changed and you will have to give your friends a new number to call you.


• You cannot use your cellphone's phonebook to make calls.


• It is a hassle to make outgoing calls in two stages.


• Not a click-go setup




2. Unlimited incoming call plans: These plans allow you to receive unlimited incoming calls from any phone number. However, your outgoing minutes are limited.

Pros:

• Great for the people who usually receive calls as oppose to making calls
  

Cons:

• Expensive in case you exceed your outgoing minutes.

Solution


Use Call-Back Services like Vbuzzer, ComWave, etc. Here is how it works:

1. You call a certain number provided by your Call-Back service provider.


2. Your provider disconnects the call before it is answered(so, you are not getting charged for making that outgoing call)


3. Your provider will call you back and when you answer, you will be asked to punch in the number that you want to call.


4. Your call will be connected.

Basically, the Call-Back service turns your outgoing calls into incoming calls.

Pros:

• You get an unlimited voice plan

Cons:

• Making outgoing calls in two stage is a hassle.


• The Call-Back service is not that cheap!


• You cannot use your cell phone's phonebook to make calls.




3. Plans with limited incoming/outgoing minutes and unlimited data: This type of plan is usually not a pre-packaged product. You have to bundle you limited voice plan with an unlimited data plan to get such a plan.
   

Pros:

• You can browse the internet as much as you want.

Cons:

• You can only talk for the minutes included in your plan and have to pay extra for the extra minutes.

Solution


Since you have an unlimited data plan, we are going to assume that you have a smart phone otherwise why would pay for the data plan on a phone that does not support convenient web browsing? Let's assume you have an iPhone, Android phone or any other smart phone with the ability to install applications (BlackBerry is excluded). The solution is to use VoIP on your data plan. Depending on your device and your provider you could find a VoIP application that you can be installed on your device and use your data plan to make and receive calls. In the US, AT&T just started offering such a plan. They also allow their users to use VoIP on their network. In fact, you can get an unlimited data plan only with no voice plan!

Pros:

• You get to make and receive unlimited calls on your cellphone.

Cons:

• The calls that you make with your VoIP application will be originated from a different phone number than your original cellphone number. Technically, you'd have two different numbers. If you happen to get a data-only plan, this wouldn't be an issue because you wouldn't have any other number other than your VoIP number.


• If your friends call your original cellphone number (and not your VoIP number) you still get charged.


• VoIP call quality is not as good as a regular cellphone call quality.


• The setup is not a click-go.






4. Limited outgoing/incoming plans and no/limited data plan.
   Pros:
   
   • Affordable.
   
   Cons:
   
   • You cannot really do much
   
   Solution
   
   
   This is the hardest category to address. There are some tips and potentially services that you can get to manage your minutes wisely(and we will talk about them in future). However, none of them would turn your limited plan into an unlimited one. However, there is a way to 'somehow' enhance your service if you have a WiFi enabled cellphone (iPhone, Android based devices, etc). There are many WiFi providers in the US/Canada (AT&T, Boingo, Bell, etc) that provide you with WiFi access at their hotspots for an affordable monthly fee. There are also free hotspots that you can find in coffee shops, hotels, shopping malls and more importantly StarBucks! I know the last one is also a coffee shop, technically, but I think there are enough of them in the world that can constitute a distinguished entity.
   Using your Wifi service, you can benefit from a VoIP software and make/receive unlimited calls whenever you are at a hotspot.
   Pros:
   

   • You get unlimited incoming and outgoing plan.
   
   
   • You can avoid roaming fees as well if you find a free hotspot (that's why I named Starbucks because they have stores all over the world; I often use this method when I am traveling).
     

   
   Cons:
   

   • Besides all the cons of the previously discussed plan (the limited voice with unlimited data), you are also restricted to make and receive calls only at hotspots (if you want to avoid using your minutes)
     
   
   

There are also other services that enable you to seamlessly transfer your calls to a landline if you have access to one (for example at work) and save your cell phone minutes. We will talk about such services in a separate post.

Labels: cell phone plans, tips

How can you turn your limited cell phone plan into an unlimited one?

Social networking has been around since late 1800s. However, the term became popular only after the successful launch of Facebook. Facebook, and other similar services, have changed the way we interact and do business. Let's look at some numbers (dated Jan/15/2010):

• Social media spending is expected to increase from $716M in 2008 to $3.1B in 2014
• 86% of marketers plan to increase their social marketing budget in 2010
• Pepsi dropped its Super Bowl ad this year but they are investing in a $20M social media campaign
• Best Buy has 2500 employees on Twitter to help its customers
• 99% of retailers plan to have a Facebook page by 2011
• 83% of CMOs are tracking their number of fans in social media
• 68% of small businesses plan to increase their social media marketing in the next year
• 46% of Facebook users say that they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook

Social media platforms are attracting more visitors because people like to find other link-minded people to connect with. Consequently, businesses that are consistently looking for new ways to connect with their customers find these media a phenomenal place which deserves more investment and attention.
It is apparent that social media are emerging as the communication platform for businesses and consumers. It is getting more difficult nowadays to dismiss the impact of social media in our life. If you have any teenagers around, just see how much time they spend on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace. They use these platforms to communicate with their friends and get involved in the communities that they like. 'Facebook me' and 'Twitter me' are heard more and more everyday.
Social media, in their current form, have replaced the traditional online interactions. You don't just email your friends anymore to ask if their company is hiring. Instead, you can look for a job on LinkedIn, find out if any of your friends know anybody in the hiring company and then ask for an introduction. Your network is much bigger now and you can do much more than what you used to do with an email. Social media is the next generation of online interactions.
Now, let's look at phone services as another form of communication. People have been making phone calls for more than 100 years now. Granted, we have seen many devices and improvements in quality and services but the basic idea remains the same: Pick up your phone and call your friend. That's all! There is nothing social-media-like about your phone services. It's like the traditional email with two differences:

1. You speak instead of writing
2. It's in realtime; in a sense it's similar to Instant Messaging (IM)

Considering the evolutionary road from the traditional email/IM to online social media, what would phone services look like if they take the same path? The answer is what we call: Social Phone Services
For example, let's say you are talking to one of your friends on your phone (cell, home, work, etc). In the middle of your conversation you feel that what you just talked about, or are talking about, might be interesting to a group of your friends. Social phone services could enable you to let your friends know about the call you are on and allow them to join your call without you having to put your ongoing conversation on-hold. You may want to allow them to comment on your call or share your call with their friends. Obviously, we don't want to share every single conversation that we have; just like the way we don't want to write every single message on our friends' wall.
Social phone services can also come to rescue the phone companies who are threatened by services like Google Voice (only if they stop charging an arm and a leg for the basic service and start thinking about how they can add value to their customers' life). The basic phone connectivity will shortly become a commodity and phone companies will not benefit from it. However, social phone services will create new opportunities and phone companies can consider business models like the ones adopted by Facebook or other social networking sites.

Labels: Social phone services

What are social phone services and how can we benefit from them?

I can't function without my daily cup of latte. There are a number of StarBucks stores that I go to everyday depending on where I am (Toronto, San Francisco or Boston). I guess that I spend quite a bit of time in Starbucks(I actually think that they should adopt the semi-virtual office business model for their loyal customers but that's another story).
The story is about a young man who is working in one of these locations, actually right on Yonge st. and Finch st. in Toronto. He is quite a guy.
Whenever I see him, he welcomes me and asks how I am. He usually asks general questions about my work and life and tries to communicate. He does it with every single customer in the store. The other day, somebody was paying him a compliment saying that he makes nice comments and shows interests in his clients. Needless to say, he seems very sincere and shows genuine interests.
The result? Well, everybody likes to buy their coffee from him. I have actually seen people in the line that allow other people to move in front of them, just because this guy was busy and could not serve them at that moment. All of the staff give you the exact same coffee so it is not about the coffee. It's about the connection that this guy makes with the customers. This guy created a personal brand on top the Starbucks'. It seems like the coffee that you get from this guy is much better from the regular coffee. It is more valuable! Technically speaking, people are willing to pay more, maybe not money wise but definitely time wise, for his coffee.
We, at TELTUB, are also in the process of building our brand. It is very vital for us, and for every other business out there, to be known as a valued member of the community as oppose to be known as a jerk. The truth is it's not all about what we want to be known as, it's about who we really are. Take this example:
I spend a lot of time every day to go through the tech and business daily news. I read blogs and I comment on them if I can actually add value to the conversation. I also submit what interests me to social networking websites in the hope that somebody, who thinks like us, finds them interesting. True, it's a part of my daily job but would I be able to do it consistently if I didn't like it?
We have been lucky and we have a team of people who share many common values. We like new and interesting technologies and we share the passion of making life more enjoyable for everybody. We want our brand to represent our shared values: innovation, coolness, connecting with like-minded people and making things possible without over complicating them.
Look at some big names like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AOL, AT&T, Verizon, IBM and other giants. Each of these names will remind you of something. That's their brand and not necessarily what they claim it to be. They are successful if what they claim their brand to be is what people actually think of them.
We know who we are and what we like to do but the question is "how do we communicate this to other people?" Just saying who we are is not going to work (I know this much) but what will?

How a guy, who is working in Starbucks, created his own brand

I know many people, including myself, that say they just want their phone to be a phone and nothing more. They just want to make and receive phone calls. Wouldn't it be nice though to have this for free?
Let's be clear: To this date, which is Jan 17th 2010, you need to have some technical knowledge and some spare time to be able to have a free phone using the available services from different companies. We, at TELTUB, are sure that this will change either by us or somebody else and we will let you know once this happens. You can register for our free phone alert and we will let you know once a simple and easy-to-use free phone service is out there in the market that can replace your current phone.

Your email address:

Although it might be challenging for normal users to follow some geeky steps, we have a number of solutions for the people who have some technical knowledge and can find their way around complicated settings: (These solutions are intended for US users but you might be able to use them in other countries if you try)

• If you know what Asterisk is and are not scared to work with it, this solution is for you. You also need to have a free Google Voice account. Google Voice is by invitation only for now but if you know somebody who already has an account, you can ask him/her to send you an invitation. Up until a while ago, you could sign up for a SIP account with Gizmo5 and register that as a phone under your Google Voice account. However, Gizmo5 has suspended new user signup and Google Voice does not work with any other SIP providers.
  You should find a free SIP provider that gives you real US phone numbers. These are called DiD numbers and you can use them to receive phone calls. DiD providers forward the incoming calls to a SIP address that you provide which in this case would be your own Asterisk box. IPKall is a company that gives you free US DiDs but you can find other providers if you look for them on your favorite search engine (Aren't we all talking about Google when we say this?)
  I am assuming that you have an Asterisk box setup at home and you know how to handle static/dynamic IP addresses (using DynDNS). Once this is done, you can simply follow this instruction and get your free home phone line setup.
  


• If you don't have an Asterisk box but don't mind working with third party telephony providers with complex scripting capabilities, you could use this tutorial and setup your system. You would still need an IPKall account and a VOIP adapter.


• There are solutions similar to the video that is posted bellow which do not give you free phone but can decrease your costs. The reason is that these solutions actually need you to have a real phone line, like your cell phone, home phone, etc. You'd still need to pay for a phone line (maybe an affordable one) and therefore your phone will NOT be completely free.
  

There are a couple of other solutions which are far more complicated and provide lesser flexibility. Because of this very same reason they are out of the scope for this article.
These solutions are rather complicated and users might have difficulties to follow the required instructions. For those of us who are not tech savvy and looking to have a free phone service right out of the box, I suggest you register your email address and we will let you know once a simple free phone service becomes available. I assure you that this won't take too long ;)

Labels: Asterisk, Google voice, SIP

How can you have a free phone line?

Many people correspond cloud computing to some sort of virtualization technology. I remember talking to a VC in a conference about our telephony cloud and the guy asked me what virtualization technology are we using? VMware or Xen? It was difficult to answer because we do use virtualization techniques but not where he was expecting. According to Wiki, and many other resources, cloud computing is:

Internet ("cloud") based development and use of computer technology ("computing"). Conceptually it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. Technically it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.

This can be achieved by virtualization technologies or any other tools that enable users to leverage the resources in the cloud. Cloud resources can be as low level as CPU power or RAM or as high level as user data storage or even web services. Amazon EC2 is an example of low level resources. Amazon is using virtualization technologies to offer this service.

Cloud resources can also be certain services. For example, SideKick stores your phone contacts somewhere in the cloud so that if you change/lose your phone you will still have your contacts. Instead of maintaining the data yourself, cloud resources are doing that for you. This is an example of cloud computing that does not involve any virtualization technology. Technically speaking this is nothing other than a database (I am oversimplifying). Watch the following video. These people are all working in this industry, in one way or another:


Facebook in its current shape supports third party applications to run on its platform (website). It, however, stores users' information on its own servers and allow third party apps to access the data via API calls provided the user permits them to do so. Facebook is acting as a cloud resource for the third party applications. Facebook is acting as the data collector, storage facility and interface. Third party applications do not need to handle data handling themselves. Facebook is doing it for them and they can access the data anytime they want using the APIs.

Having said that the third party applications run in their own environment. They are hosted on web servers that are different from Facebook's. There are companies that provide hosting service for Facebook applications. These companies are not any different from any other web hosting provider! They may use dedicated servers for each client (the client being the third party application developer) OR use virtualization technologies to provide virtual hosts. I am not sure if Facebook was initially designed as a cloud computing environment but it is definitely acting as one today. Facebook itself does not 'have to' use virtualization technologies to provide its main services (data gathering, storage and interface).

When talking about Facebook, many of the developers know that they can technically write their code in any language. They just have to be able to understand Facebook's communication protocols to be table to talk to it. Though they can host their application on any web server. A web application is a well known concept and there are many developers who know how to develop such applications. It is therefore easy to use cloud resources that Facebook offers. You only have to know how to write a web application. That's all!

A telephony application, on the other hand, is not that straight forward to write. Telephony servers are not as standardized as web servers. They all use different interfaces with different architectures and knowing one would not necessarily means knowing another one. Even if you know a certain platform, it wouldn't mean that you can actually implement your idea because the telephony platforms are usually very limited and difficult to work with.

TELTUB is built as a cloud resources for IT and telephony. We not only maintain users' information but we also added telephony resources to our cloud. For example, when you develop an application for our platform you not only have access to users information but you can control the flow of the calls made and received by the users. TELTUB not only provides cloud resources, as described, but it also offers an easy to use interface to deploy the cloud resources.

One of the design objectives of TELTUB has been to build an IT integrated telephony platform that allows developers to host their own applications and to enable them to write their code in an easy to use, already familiar interface. We don't want developers to learn a new interface. Application flow in a TELTUB application is designed to be intuitive to all developers and not just the ones who know telephony services. Writing the code should be as easy as:

"if the user receives a call, verify if the caller is a Facebook friend of the user who is receiving the call. If so, play this joke and forward the call to this number and if not, forward the call to this number."

The developer should not worry about how this is handled in the background. S/he should only think about what is interesting/useful to have. You can control the flow of the calls in realtime, you can make changes to the call on the fly, you can communicate with other platforms (Google, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, Twitter, etc) and you can access users' information (given that they permit you to do so).

Still not excited enough? Add mobile platforms, e.g. Android and iPhone, to this picture.

Cloud computing