Reporter's Notebook: The VON conference takes a look into the future of communication over IP and sees IP TV as a big opportunity.SAN JOSE, Calif.—The VON 2007 conference here offered up visions of the next big opportunities for next generation communication over IP, and IP TV led the list.
In the latest iteration of the VON show, Pulver Media Chairman Jeff Pulver shone the spotlight on IP TV with a new Video on the Net conference within the VON venue.
In the overall conference plenary, Pulver, founder of the VON show, announced the winners of a contest he started to spur creative videos extolling the virtues of watching IP TV. Pulver gave away $40,000 to three winners.
At the same time, he announced that he has filed a petition with the FCC asking it essentially to avoid regulating video on the Internet. "Do not apply legacy laws to new technologies. This is an opportunity for a regulatory body to embrace change and innovation," he intoned.
With an emphasis on "whats possible," Pulver invited venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom to provide a quick glimpse into what they believe is on the horizon.
On Khoslas short list are things such as mobile transport, as evidenced by his investment in iScoot; services over IP; user-generated advertising; and applications built on SMS messages. The latter, he said represents a "massive opportunity."
Skype for its part is now beta testing its new Skype Prime service that enables Skype users to do business with each other. "Its a new way for people to sell their expertise, answers and advice to other Skype users," said Zennstrom.
Skype also lets its users send money to each other, leveraging PayPal.
Although Zennstrom didnt touch on it, some industry observers at VON believe Skype is now looking to add new services aimed at enterprises.
Meanwhile on the show floor, a handful of vendors introduced new offerings aimed at advancing the current state of VOIP (voice over IP) and video confererencing.
Click here to read more about Ciscos IP TV vision.
Video conferencing infrastructure provider Codian at VON announced a new gateway that allows an enterprise to publish a single IP address for all IP video conferences. The new Codian IP GW 3500 Series gateway eliminates the requirement to set up new Internet users for a call prior to the start of the call.
The gateway works for both inbound and outbound conferences through corporate firewalls, without having to open up a port in the firewall.
It provides three levels of user access privileges and supports individual dial plans for each network port. It is available in three models and supports up to 20 video conferences or a total of 40 video and voice conferences.
Internet measurement service provider Keynote Systems for its part announced the beta program for its Voice Perspective 2.0 service for VOIP-enabled contact centers.
The on-demand VOIP testing and monitoring service is designed to test the quality of calls that traverse hybrid packet-switched IP and PSTN networks.
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