Call the Cloud

I was going to do an industry retrospective on 2008 along with predictions for 2009, but then I looked around at some other bloggers and saw that some really great pieces had already been written. So rather than do my own, let me point you to some great posts:

Jon Arnold wrote VoIP in 2008 - “I’m Not Dead”

Traditional landline VoIP was a good place to start, but in 2009, VoIP will be more about voice services than telephony…  more about voice-based or voice-enabled applications that make the voice experience more interesting. In some cases it will be about making calls less expensive, but for the most part it will be about doing new things or old things in new ways.

He goes on to list 10 innovative start-ups and I’m pleased to say that Fonolo was included (actually top of the list, but I’m not going to read anything into that.)

Andy Abramson posted some commentary on Jon’s post here.

Garrett Smith has been putting up an excellent series of posts, asking a standard set of questions to interesting people in the industry. So far, he has posted answers from Nick Galea (3CX), Rafael Fonseca (Cedar Point Communications), Steve Wong (Clearsight Networks), David Schenkel (Objectworld), Dan Hoffman (M5), Peter Diedrich (Mobivox), Mike Oeth (Junction Networks), Irv Shapiro (IfByPhone), Ari Rabban (Phone.com), Alec Saunders (Iotum) and Andy Abramson (Comunicano). I’ve just submitted my answers, so hopefully I’m not too late to be included. You can see the whole series here. [CORRECTION: You can read my interview here.]

Springwise posted “This year’s top 10 telecom & mobile ideas” and I was pleasantly surprised that Fonolo was included. (We’re listed as number 1, but once again I’m not going to read anything into that.)

Finally, Robert Poe wrote an excellent piece titled “The Top 25 VoIP Innovations of 2008“. I’ll take an excerpt from that post as the closing note for my closing post of the year:

The VoIP industry, like most others, felt the impact of the 2008 economic crisis. Promising startups laid off employees. Some even shut down. But VoIP companies had an advantage many others didn’t: their capacity for intense innovation. That ability let them provide products and services that could help struggling businesses of all sorts, and even individuals, save money and work in new and better ways… It’s no surprise, then, that the level of VoIP innovation remained as high this year as in 2007.

I expect no less from 2009! Happy new year everyone!

Disclaimer: Andy and Jon are advisors to Fonolo.

Yesterday, we announced that Fonolo is now in open beta testing. This is a big milestone for the company. It was met with great applause from the press, and great enthusiasm from the general public.

Here’s the press release:
Fonolo Gives Consumers Relief from Phone-Menu Frustration for More Than 300 North American Companies

The significance

One of the key challenges for any web service (whether it’s Google or Facebook or CNN) is its ability to "scale". That is, does it work as well when a million people use it, as it does when ten people use it? Today, we are sufficiently confident in the infrastructure we’ve built to give up that control and open our doors to the public. By announcing free, unlimited calling, we’ve said "Yes, Fonolo can handle full scale calling".

But Fonolo actually has two scaling challenges. The first is handling large call volume, as described above. The second is being able to scale up our database of companies. The foundation of Fonolo is our "spidering" that maps out the phone menus. It goes without saying that Fonolo is not going useful to you if the company you want to call is not in our index. By announcing that over 300 companies are available on Fonolo, we’ve said "Yes, our database is big enough to be useful to the general public."

The response

CNet:
"[Fonolo] lets you browse company phone trees and dial straight to that section, skipping having to sit through tedious voice menus or remember specific buttons to press. Better yet, it does it all without you having to actually dial the number on your phone."
Fonolo’s easy deep dial service opens up

Skype Journal:
"we all love to navigate our way through those pesky…  phone trees that go through menu after menu to connect you directly to an appropriate destination service or person. NOT!"
Fonolo Takes Its "Deep Dialing" Into Full Public Beta

Lifehacker Blog:
"Pick a company, browse their phone directory tree by title and automated dialog, choose where you want to jump in, and Fonolo calls you with a direct connection there… auto-dial jujitsu."
Fonolo Cuts Through Corporate Voicemail Trees

Crunchies
Oh, and one last thing: Please vote for Fonolo in the Crunchie awards. It’s dead simple. There’s no form to fill out. Just click here and then click "Nominate". Today’s the last day for votes, so please do it before midnight.

Martin Geddes, Chief Analyst of STL Partners,  is one of the most respected analysts in telecom. STL’s annual “Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm” is a must-attend event for the world’s top telecom execs in the world. This year, I was honored to have Martin feature Fonolo in his keynote speech, which is summarized in this post: Voice telephony: death or glory?

An excerpt:

“[Martin’s] thesis is a simple one: telcos have consistently abandoned their core product, and are ignoring new business models, whilst pursuing a fools’ gold in media content. The old model — charging users for software services that have no marginal cost or barriers to entry — is dying. To illustrate future business models he gave three examples of how money could be made in future…

The first of these was… Fonolo [which] exquisitely demonstrates that the value is in integration of telephony and the Web, as well as moving from the call itself to the set-up of the interaction.

… [but] who benefits more: the consumer, or the call centre? We think that it’s the latter, and the consumer is the price-sensitive side. The call centre wants the maximum rate of self-care, high customer satisfaction, and the web site offers the ability to do all kinds of enhanced multi-modal interactions that a 0-9*# keypad can’t do well… Therefore in our two-sided market world, we’d get telcos to distribute and promote this tool (on their fixed, mobile and on-device portals). They would then sell these enhanced capabilities to call centres.”

As part of the presentation, Martin showed a short video I made for him that discusses how Fonolo can work with carriers:

First the big news - Yes, we have an iPhone app!

The Fonolo iPhone application lets you search our database of companies, navigate their phone menus and deep dial, all from your iPhone. (Deep dialing means you skip the phone menu and connect directly to the point you want.)

To make the call, you just tap the spot on the menu that you want. Fonolo then makes the call to the company, navigates to their menu, and calls you back.  When you answer, Fonolo connects your call to the company.

Good things about Fonolo-on-iPhone:

1) It feels natural: The navigation is “iPhone style”. That is, you navigate a phone menu the same way you navigate your music library artist-to-album-to-song. I believe you’ll find yourself thinking “Of course this is how phone menus should work on my iPhone”.

2) One less step: Unlike Fonolo-on-the-web, we don’t need to prompt you for a phone number since we know you are on your iPhone.

3) Smooth integration with the calling process: When the call you’ve requested comes in, the iPhone switches to “phone mode” letting you talk and use the keypad normally. When you end the call, iPhone takes you back to the Fonolo app where you left off.

Bad things about Fonolo-on-iPhone:

1) It’s not on App Store yet.

Sadly, we are in the same boat as many other iPhone developers in being at the mercy of Apple’s review process. There’s already been lots of complaining about that process, but I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon because I think there’s merit in their approach. The trade-off for a slow review process is that approved applications will be “well behaved”. That in turn leads to confidence among users that it is safe to experiment with different applications and that, in my opinion, is worth the price we’re paying as developers. I have my fingers crossed that we will be on the App Store quickly.

Winning at Mobilize
We were very lucky to unveil our application at the Mobilize conference, put on for the first time by the talented folks at GigaOm. I hope Mobilize becomes a regular event because I found it to be an excellent show: Top notch speakers and panels; A very savvy crowd which was a good mix of start-ups, big industry and VC; plus a beautiful venue (UCSF’s Mission Bay Center).

My favorite part of the show was the Launchpad event in which we participated and ultimately won. Here’s the video which includes a demonstration of Fonolo on the iPhone:

The judges for the event:

• Ryan Block, Editor, GDGT.com
• Tim Chang, Principal, Norwest Venture Partners
• Nagraj Kashyap, Sr. Director, Qualcomm Ventures
• James Kendrick, jkOnTheRun

After the presentation, judges get a minute to make comments à la American Idle. I can’t really remember that part, because it was all a blur, but according to GigaOm’s coverage:

Kashyap said: “I love the app, this is the first thing I’m going to do when I get home.”  and Block said: “I want to give that guy a hug.”

Wow! Thanks.

Some additional coverage

TechCrunch: Fonolo Joins The Growing Arsenal Against Phone Tree Hell
Top iPhone News: Fonolo for iPhone makes navigating phone menus a snap
iPhone Buzz: Fonolo for iPhone makes navigating phone menus a snap
Mobile Syrup: Fonolo wins Judges’ Prize at Mobilize 2008
Jon Arnold: Fonolo - Top Pick by Judges at Mobilize

I am attending the Clue Con Telephony Developer Conference in Chicago today and tomorrow. This is a great show for getting into the technical nitty-gritty of emerging telephony technology. Tomorrow, I will be giving a presentation here on 3 exciting new developments with Fonolo …

1) An API

It has always been on our roadmap to release an API (application programming interface) for Fonolo. We decided to accelerate its release in order to capitalize on the excitement and interest that Fonolo has generated in the community, in particular with carriers and mobile developers.

Today’s release is focused on Deep Dialing. It exposes functionality that lets you
•    Search Fonolo’s directory of companies;
•    Display the full text of the phone menu for a selected company;
•    Initiate a Deep Dial process to any node in the phone menu;

(If you’re wondering what Deep Dialing is, read this.)

2) A developer program

To go along with the API, we announced a developer program. Because the API allows you to place phone calls, we have to put some safeguards around its use. So we set up a form at developer.fonolo.com that lets you request a developer account. Each account has a unique key that will help us track usage.

3) SIP support

We now allow you to route calls to any SIP address, as well as any North American PSTN number. At the moment, SIP routing is only available through the API, not the web interface.

The API does not include access to any account-based info such as call history, call recordings, personal bookmarks or call notes. That’s coming in a later release. (For technically minded, the API is based on JSON-RPC requests over HTTPS.)

You can read the full press release here.