I’m taking advantage of the quiet moment on the plane on my way to IT Expo in Miami to compose my thoughts – what will be happening at this year’s conference? You know, as someone who spent past 14 years building the IP Communication industry on all possible levels (at RADVISION, at IMTC and other consortiums), I’m both enjoying these quite moments (plane is almost last frontier of “quiet experience”) and dreading the potential loss of this last frontier – I think VoIP is closing on the aviation industry and soon there will be no escape from talking and chatting folks, even in the air…

Oh well, scary thoughts aside, what are my expectations of IT Expo? It is interesting to see how IT Expo grew into an assemblage of IP communication conferences – for the long time it goes way beyond SIP trunking and hosted telephony services (even though those can be still bread and butter of the IT Expo itself). There is very substantial number of conferences coming together under the umbrella of IT Expo – 4GWE (which stands for 4G Wireless Evolution), covering all aspects of 4G migration, and M2M (Machine to Machine communication – the name says it all), both developed from scratch by industry veteran and visionary Carl Ford, Cloud computing, HTML5 and more, plus a number of very good workshops and education programs.

I expect that video will be a topic of many discussions and presentations (finally!), spanning from traditional enterprise video conferencing, going to consumers, and then into Mobile and 4G. 4G wars (mild or not) are also inevitable – not so much LTE versus WiMax, may be, but definitely 4G versus Super WiFi. If you are also interested in Voice over LTE (VoLTE) – there will be a number of discussions just for you (this was not a prediction or expectation, just a fact).

Oh well, I will report back to you on the highlights (probably on my way back, utilizing one of my quiet moments), but for now, let me tell you where you can find me in case you also plan to be in Miami:

“When Does 4G Take Over Voice:  VoLTE Rollout” (4G-09)

WED 2/1, 1:30-2:15pm, ROOM #: A109

“The Case for Rich Communication Services: Maximizing Real Time Communications Revenue” (4G-11)

WED 2/1, 4:45-5:45pm, ROOM #: A109

“The Realities of Mobile Videoconferencing” (CC-08)

THU 2/2, 1:00-1:45pm, ROOM #: B211

Stop by and say “hi”, or may be even ask a difficult question – after all, conversation and a handshake are the best part of the conference, aren’t they?

As we about to enter 2012, the web is filled with summaries of 2011 and predictions for 2012:

FierceEnterpriseCommunications did a wonderful summary about all major 2011 events in the industry, while LightReading predicted about 2012 in markets such as Asia and Africa & Middle East and focused on general trends such as UC and consumer devices, among other things (1,2,3).

GigaOM writes about five big things in consumer electronics to watch for in 2012,CNN about the Top 10, and Pyramid Research about top Telecom trends.

Last but not least, some economic predictions from CNN.
Any interesting link about 2011/2012 you think is worth sharing? please use the comment system below.

Happy holidays everyone!

Back in May, I was arguing about the true meaning of Telepresence. An analyst named Rob Bamforth from Quocirca wrote an article saying that the true meaning of Telepresence isn’t big screens and costly systems – it’s the illusion of being there – and for that he argued that low-lantancy is enough. I for the other hand, thought that low-lantency is only a part of the picture, and that for total immersion one must need eyesight level cameras and all the technical mumbo-jumbo.

Room Systems – anything less isn’t ‘Telepresence’?

But putting aside the exact semantics regarding the *videoconferencing* term called Telepresence, let’s talk about the general concept of tele-presence:
Lets say for a second that I own a business that relays heavily on out-of-office workers – and from all I concern, those workers are just as available in terms of communications, as people that work inside the office – isn’t that telepresence? Isn’t that the notion of having those people ‘here with me’?

From a business, and practical point of view – that is telepresence.

Cisco’s Cius – good for remote workers, but not as widespread as an iPhone

A few years ago, achieving that goal was costly and sometimes impossible. It is mainly because of the work of vendors such as RADVISION and Vidyo that this situation has changed. Scalable Video Coding is the key behind recent developments in both low-cost HD video systems and mobile video conferencing. This relatively new technology allows for high quality video communication over the unmanaged connections, such as the Internet. If the codec couldn’t have the ability to adapt to unstable bandwidth it would be impossible to connect remote workers reliably to a conference call. But now with SVC and broadband – it’s possible. These days, EVERYONE has smartphones that are capable of video communication – so wouldn’t it just make sense to turn them into a small video-conferencing device?One of the first companies to introduce a mobile client for it’s video-conferencing platform was RADVISION. When they released the first version the mobile client, it only had the ability to manage the video conference, not to be a part of it as a video client – effectively making an iPad a neat remote control pad. Today both iPhones and iPads has cameras and the latest version of Scopia Mobile is a fully functioning one – at last, the ability to connect to a conference call when on the go.

RADVISION’s Scopia Mobile – high-quality videoconferencing for iDevices

Just like the desktop client, Scopia mobile support video-conference with multiple participants (up to 28) and data sharing via h.329 (which is super important for out-of-office workers). But what’s really special about it that it just work well. IMTC is using Scopia internally for meetings and webinars, and in the latest meeting, the VP marketing of IMTC – Kfir Pravda, had to call in while driving, from his iPhone, over a 3G connection. That was a conference call with multiple people around the world, Kfir himself was in Israel!

3G-enabled conference with an iPhone – Amazing!

The call just worked. This is in my view, amazing, knowing how difficult it is to get a decent video-call quality from a 2-way call in a non-commercial system such as Skype (at least here, in Israel). In terms of features, again – that’s a fully functioning Scopia – and on the iPad2 it supports full 720P video.

I think that mobile video clients will create a revolution in video-conferencing, the form-factor is there (tablets), the technology is there (H.264) and the out-of-office situation will probably grew larger and require businesses to adapt accordingly.
Maybe Rob was right and the true meaning of Telepresence is just mobile video-conferencing that actually works.

Here on the IMTC blog we plan to compare a few mobile solutions over the next months, Scopia included. So stay tuned.

• IMTC CTO Roundtable Presentations are now in our CTO Roundtable section at the blog.
  Videos from the event will be added soon, click here to check the CTO Roundtable section.
• IMTC President, Anatoli Lavine, has done an interview with Carl Ford from Crossfire Media at the ITEXPO show. In the interview Anatoli and Carl talk about the Video & SIP, VoLTE and Interoperability.

AT&T to acquire T-Mobile USA
AT&T announced its 39 Billion$ agreement with Deutsche Telekom, in which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA. AT&T will pay $25B in cash, and $14B in AT&T shares, this makes Deutsche Telekom the largest shareholder in AT&T with 8% of the company stocks. AT&T expect the deal to help deployment of its 4G LTE, with 95 percent of the U.S. population to be covered – an additional 46.5 million people beyond their current 4G deployment plans.

Who owns and uses AWS Spectrum?
WirelessMoves wrote a short post about the AWS spectrum in USA – 45mhz in the 1700mhz range for uplink, and 45mhz for downlink in the 2100mhz range – this range can be used LTE communications. T-Mobile is the only player with both licencing and suitable devices currently – is this the reason for the 95% expected AT&T LTE-coverage mentioned earlier?

UK regulator, Office of Communications, to offer 800mhz and 2.6ghz spectrum for LTE
OFCOM will make an auction for the 800mhz and 2.6ghz bands in second quarter 2012, expecting that operators will start using the spectrum in 2013.
UK is late in LTE deployment as LTE being tested in various European countries and already being used commercially in Germany, Austria, Finland, Denmark and Estonia.

Nortel to sell ‘Legacy’ IPv4 numbers to Microsoft for $7.5Millions
Nortel Networks will sell Microsoft 666,624 IP numbers, from its pool of ‘legacy’ numbers (IP addresses dating back to the early 90′s). In the last years the industry started shifting away from IPV4 to IPV6 in order to combat the problem with limited amount of available addresses in the IPv4 system. Nortel addresses are one of the last batches of avilable IPv4 space, which total in 4.3billion addresses.

IMTC CTO Roundtable
We began uploading our CTO Roundable content – All presentations are available via IMTC Slideshare account. Movies to be added soon – Stay tuned!

Cisco Umi Interoperability
Cisco announced that it’s Home Telepresence offering – Umi, will be interoperatable with ‘Umi-Connect‘ – A umi software client for Mac and PC and Cisco’s professional Telepresence systems.
This announcement puts Umi in a whole different perspective, as Umi can now be used for business purposes, i.e – home workers.
In addition, Cisco revelaed a new 720P only version, for a cheaper $399 price and lowered the monthly fee (for a yearly plan) to 9.95$ a month from 24.99$ a month.
Lack of interoperability and high ownership cost were major points of criticism when Cisco introduce Umi and it remains to be seen how this latest move will improve Umi acceptance in home and SOHO markets.

3G4G blog posted a short article about RCS (or in it’s latest form – RCS-e)
The article gives a good overview of what RCS is, and is a recommended read. Back in July 2010 we interviewed Jose M.Recio from Solaimes about RCS and it’s relevancy in the age of the smartphone – As it seems, it’s still is.

Panasonic Viera Blu-ray players to include Skype
Panasonic announced Skype support for it’s new blu-ray player line (2011). Video-Chat will be supported via the Freetalk Conference Camera, which will cost 99$ and be available starting this month.

Spectrume Reform Legistlation
US Senators Olympia Snowe and John Kerry recently introduced the Reforming Airwaves by Developing Incentives and Opportunistic Sharing (RADIOS) Act.  The proposed RADIOS Act aims to provide FCC and NTIA detailed information needed for smarter allocation of the Radio spectrum.

LTE sprint
Spirt is one of the few operators in USA that use CDMA for voice and data connectivity – Steve Elfman, Sprint’s president of network operations said that the company will make a decision regarding LTE in mid-year, however if Sprint does decide to use LTE it could be deployed by year-end 2013.

LG Revolution – A welcomed revolution
LG Revolution mobile phone to be the first mobile phone on Verizon to support VoLTE calls and LTE fast data transfer simultaneously -  A major milestone toward the adoption of VoLTE phones. Verizon plans to support VoLTE in summer 2012, AT&T VoLTE support will only arrive at 2013.

But why VoLTE is that important?

* All IP communication will make Unified Communication with mobile devices much easier, mobile software will be able to use voice-calls more easily.
* As suggested by Tsahi Levent-Levi, IMTC IMS Co-Chair - Video Calling!

Telepresence Interoperability,
Hit the news with Polycom’s announcement about TIP support. There are however respected industry-professionals who believe that TIP isn’t the end to all Telepresence problems – and it isn’t, it’s an on-going effort.
Jessica Scarpati from “searchunifiedcommunications.com” wrote an in-depth article about the need for multi-stream telepresence standard for fully inter-operable Telepresence systems.

VIdyo Cloud
Vidyo keeps pushing forward their Video Routers, enabling low-cost high quality HDVC over non-managed networks –  At mobile world congres Vidyo demonstrated its products over LTE connections and multiple mobile devices. The world (and Vidyo, I assume) now waits to see how successful the rumored iPad 2 with a front facing camera will turn up.

A few days ago, Polycom announced support for the Cisco/IMTC - Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) standard.
The Telepresence Interoperability Protocol was developed by Cisco to allow multi-screen interoperability between Telepresence systems from different vendors. The protocol was transferred to IMTC for on-going development and is offered in a royalty-free license.

The announcement was promoted in PR channels of both Polycom and Cisco, a rather unique sight:


David Benham, IMTC TIP Activity Group Co-Chair responded to the announcement, indicating the importance of the protocol to the industry:
“We are pleased to hear that Polycom is joining other companies in adopting the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP), the only open, multi-screen interoperability protocol available today.   In mid 2010, Cisco transferred ownership of TIP to IMTC so it can provide stewardship of the protocol, offer TIP royalty-free to anyone as well as manage the TIP open source project.   We look forward to Polycom implementing TIP, which helps improve overall market acceptance of Telepresence systems and services.”

TIP support will allow Polycom Telepresence equipment to participate in a HD video-conference with Cisco products. Polycom UC Intelligent Core MCU will support Cisco’s TIP from Q2 2011.
Polycom isn’t the first Company outside Cisco to support TIP – The protocol is licensed by many companies including Radvision, LifeSize (Logitech) and Tandberg (now a part of Cisco).

For more info about TIP, check our TIP Page.

Polycom announce support for TIP
Polycom Inc. announced future support for the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol:
IMTC TIP protocol was developed by Cisco to enable multiscreen interoperability with multi-vendor Telepresence systems. Polycom MCU – “UC Intelligent Core Platform” will support TIP from Q2 2011.
More about TIP in our special TIP Hub : http://blog.imtc.org/index.php/tip

Tip Webinar Recording
For those of you that missed the first Telepresence Interoperability Protocol Webinar, here is the full recording:

We thank David Benham from Cisco,  for the help with the editing and distribution.

Skype Easter-egg allows easy setup of multi-party calls
Skype hidden feature creates URL links for Multi-Party calls invitations – In order to create a URL link for a multi-party call, type “/” from the group chat window. The result will be a URL link directing to the call – for more details, check VoiceOnTheWeb Article.

Telstra CTO calls Femtocell ‘A Dumb Idea”
In Mobile World Congress 2011, Hugh Bradlaw talked about his views on Femtocells – “Femtocells — I usually classify these in the dumb-idea-of-the-week category.” He said that Femtocells are an ‘Admission of Defeat’ and that LTE isn’t the end of all capacity problems – QOS is.

Facebook on SIM?
While smartphones slowly becoming a norm for cellular phones, less capable devices are still the most common form – And while facebook have about 500million user-base, less than half of it has smartphones that enable web/application access to facebook.
Gemalto, the world largest SIM manafucture, announced the development of a SIM facebook client, that will support just about every type of sim-based mobile phone.
Interactions with Facebook (statuses, friend requests, etc.) will be sent as Class 2 SMS data. Read more about it at 3G4G Blog.

Register Here

IMTC has scheduled its first ever CTO Technology Session on March 8-9, 2011 at the AT&T Offices in Middletown, New Jersey. This is a forward looking session that will provide you will analyst information of the key technologies, markets and growth rates for UC, Video and Collaboration solutions. It is also intended, that the group will look at how all these technologies come together with a seamless, interoperable solution.

Historically IMTC has been at the center of communication industry technology changes as noted by our work with H.323, H.264, SIP Parity, IMS, T120, H.320 and PSS, 3G-324M, and other profiles for standard telephony protocols. Communications industry is changing rapidly, and IMTC is helping its members to embrace the change.

In addition to Keynote Speakers from AT&T, Cisco and Polycom, below is a list of confirmed speakers:

Confirmed Speakers:

• Ronald Gruia, Principal Analyst ~ Frost & Sullivan
• Phil Karcher, Principal Analyst ~ Forrester Research
• Ginger Arnold, Manager, LMAC IT Infrastructure & Operations ~ Liberty Mutual
• Russ Cary, Senior IT Manager ~ SAS Global Communications Services
• Phil Edholm, VP Technology Strategy & Innovation ~ Avaya
• Casey King, CTO ~ LifeSize  Communications

The IMTC is pleased to invite all IMTC member companies to this FREE event.  We’ll strive to provide you with information and answers to the following questions:

1. What is the current state of the communications industry?

2. What defines video communications today (Skype, Google, Apple, H.323 and SIP) and how it plays into Unified Communications?

3. How do these various video and unified communication solutions come together into a seamless cloud or enterprise implementation?

4. Where should your company spend its resources in order to solve our customers key pain points?

5. What are the key enterprise customer use cases?

6. Where do telepresence solutions fit?

7. What do I need to know about SVC? How does it impact the above?

8. What are the key dependencies impeding interoperability between equipment, network and cloud services?

9. What is the role of devices such as tablets and smart phones in the unified communication mix and specifically with video communications and how do they affect enterprise implementations?

Together with our member companies, the IMTC would like to build a roadmap of key industry technology initiatives to be addressed in order for the seamless communications cloud to work.

This IMTC event is closed to only IMTC member companies. You can send as many representatives from a member company as you like, however we encourage you to invite senior product management and CTO types of individuals.

Venue:

AT&T Offices
200 Laurel Avenue South
Middletown, New Jersey 07748

Closest Airport:

EWR (Newark)

Nearby Hotels:

http://www.research.att.com/evergreen/about_us/middletown_hotels.html

Register Here:
http://www.regonline.com/imtcctoroundtable