Thursday, March 29, 2007

Finally an acquistion that makes sense!!!

After a truck load of acquistions that made analysts go 'huh?', Cisco has finally bought a company closer to its core competency,Networking!!! Cisco has announced its intentions to acquire SpansLogic, a provider of packet speed enhancing processors. The report quotes a senior executive of Cisco saying

It is imperative that the network be tightly integrated with very high speed processing capabilities eliminating bottlenecks,said Tom Edsall, Senior Vice President, Datacenter Business Unit (DCBU). With SpansLogic, Cisco will be able to improve overall traffic efficiency and throughput across the network.

Cisco had its own set of network processors which it was experimenting with a couple of years ago. Very curious to know whether they are still in the works or Cisco has given it up and decided to buy this company. Also, I am sure I read about the speculation regarding this acquistion atleast couple of months before. So it is safe to say, this has been on the cards for sometime now.

Networking folks, in case you were losing hope that Cisco was going to buy only Social Networking companies, this is a good enough reason to stick with Networks :)

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Sonus goes Wireless

Sonus has agreed to buy Zynetix Ltd, a wireless technology company for $ 13.2 billion. Sonus' core business has been to provide infrastructure to carry IP traffic over fixed line and now with this acquisition they will be adding wireless to their portfolio as well.

This is a good move for two reasons. Being just in the wired-line segment makes no sense since a whole lot of carriers around the world are aiming to carry the cellular voice traffic over IP and even the existing wired-line carriers are are looking towards the convergence of wireline and wireless networks. And to enable both these kinds of carriers, it would be mandatory for Sonus to start servicing the wireless operators as well.

From my understanding of Zynetix's technology, it sure is different from the commonly used (atleast talked about) dual-band mode i.e you can use the wireless network indoors and the mobile network elsewhere. But the main problem with this is that most of today's handsets don't support it. What I believe Zynetix's technology does is, it amplifies the cellular signal using the ip backbone. A different kind of base stations (picocells/femtocells) need to be used for this, but the advantage is that you can use your regular mobile device in such a network.

With convergence of networks being the 'In' thing these days thanks to IMS and NGN, this would be a great foundation for Sonus to launch its IMS suite. Didn't I tell you guys before? Sonus is pretty innovative yet under-rated!!!!

Funny Videos

I normally don’t use superlatives, but I strongly believe that Russell Peters is the funniest Indian (ok he is Canadian Indian). Go to Youtube and search for his videos and enjoy. Check out his outsourced videos because they are arguably the best stuff.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Is India going to have more Ld/ILD players?

Atleast that is what we can assume from the speech of Dayanidhi Maran, the current IT and Communications Minister. While inaugurating the BT's 21 CN service in Chennai he said

We need to have more National Long Distance and International Long Distance players. USA has more than 600 NLD and 350 ILD operators, Australia has 20, even Korea has double-digit operators. In India, we can count the number of ILD operators in a single hand.

This has been on the cards for sometime. VSNL has had a monopolistic control on this and this is slowly wading with the entry of few other entities. But if we take the Minister's statement literally, we can expect to see lot more of these LD/ILD players.

British Telecom in India

British Telecom has been very active the last few days in India and have come out with a whole lot of announcements ( This is to be expected considering some of BT's top brass were in India for the last one week).

One such important announcement was BT's intent to offer low powered GSM in India, which they hope shall decrease the cost of mobile calls inside an office.What is really interesting is that this is a very grey area where there are no specific laws that allow or disallow such a service. Andy Green, CEO of BT Global services remarked

Low-powered GSM is part of our 21st century network solution and we are ready to explore, if it is allowed, in India.
I guess BT is hoping that they can get the licenses to implement this just like they did in UK early last year.

Now low powered GSM, technology as such is pretty similar to the normal GSM. The only real challenge is when the user in an office travels outside the office network and session handoffs have to happen in a seamless manner. Low powered GSM works fine as far as it is intra-office but the session handoffs are still quite an issue. But it does make a lot of sense (atleast cost-wise) in large offices or airports etc (where most people remain in the "office" network)

It will be very interesting to see how the already existing operators ( Airtel,BSNL) react to this and would they follow the same route as well.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

BT launches 21 CN Capability in Chennai

I just got an invite to attend the launch of British Telecom's 21CN capability in my city, Chennai. Some of the top dogs are going to be present. It includes Andy Green, CEO, BT Global Services and the MD of BT India C.S.Rao. The invite says

The Chennai Node is part of BT's 21 Century Network. BT is dedicated to helping Indian customers capitalize on the power of convergence for global success through the digital-networked economy. With the latest technology and local and international expertise, BT can help your business grow in India and across the world.

It is going to be held at Taj Coromandel at 5.00P.M on the 23rd of this month. I still have not made up my mind as to attend this since I believe it is going to be more of a marketing exercise and I expect very less time (if not none) to be spent on BT's technology initiatives. Andy is going to be talking about BT's leadership position in Global Enterprise Services and DNE. That might tempt me. You can register for this event here.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Forum to push for Standards

This is atleast a week old news., but I just couldn't not comment on this information.


The TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) announced today that the world's largest telecom, cable and entertainment service providers will form a group within the organization to help drive the availability and uptake of standards for end-to-end management of converged services. This move is necessitated by growing complexity of offering content-based services that involve numerous players to collaborate in order to deliver a seamless customer experience.


The participant list is pretty impressive, boasting of big names like BT, Vodafone, AT&T.


The key agenda for this group of telecom operators is to identify the necessary set of key standards required, and then work within the TM Forum to accelerate their development, as well as their adoption by system and software suppliers. They will be using and supporting the Forum's Prosspero program to drive this uptake. Prosspero delivers a range of technical standards that aim to bring 'plug and play' capability to the software used by service providers to enable them to automate their business processes. These help service providers cut costs, increase flexibility, reduce time to market for deploying new services, and improve customer satisfaction responsive by standardising the way that service delivery, billing, and assurance systems from different suppliers interact.

Standards to enable faster service delivery? Isn't that one of IMS unfulfilled promises? Would this be the real first step in the IMS direction? I am a little bit cynical about this. I don't think the service providers are the right people to make this push. It needs to be the equipment/software providers who have to be actively involved in this. But on the other hand, it is these telecoms that drive the road map of the above said companies and if these Telecoms decide some things needs to be done, it SHALL be done.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

British Telecom : Thinking 'Out of the Box"

BT has released an "Out of the Box" VoIP platform that caters to the needs of ISPs outside of United Kingdom. The report goes on to elaborate

The BT IP Voice Managed Service is a fully redundant globally distributed IP network that simplifies the delivery of IP telephony services for providers outside the United Kingdom, the company said. Featuring an advanced multilayered security system, the service has session border controller functionality and VoIP firewall capacities. Call flow is monitored and expenses are controlled by a single Internet-based interface.
Sounds interesting and from the accolades it has been receiving, looks reliable as well.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Who will buy out Vonage?

Andy believes Vonage will be bought out soon and he thinks the likely suitors are Earthlink, Cisco and Vodafone.

I would never question Andy's judgement normally, but I disagree with him on two of his choices. First Vodafone; Yes, Vodafone is increasingly getting into VoIP and there has been news that they have been experimenting with Skype as their VoIP client. From a technology point of view and even to some extent business point of view, it makes a lot of sense for Vodafone to acquire Vonage. But they are currently in a big soup. They have acquired an Indian mobile operator Hutchinson recently for nearly 17 billion and sources say that the board of Vodafone has been very concerned with this acquisition. And even before this acquisition, there were concerns about M & A policies of Vodafone which in turn led to strict rules being laid by the Board of Directors. So, I really don't think Vodafone will go for an acquisition any time soon.

Cisco - What definitely is in favour of Cisco buying out Vonage, is the new philosophy of Cisco that preaches being more consumer-facing ( Human Networks et al). But trying to go the service provider route would mean changing their very essence of business. They would never want to antagonize the other telcos who are their major customers.

Earthlink - I agree with Andy on this pick. Lot of synergies between the two, and it would be a good match.

But I personally believe that another company is a serious contender. Verizon!!! I believe the whole Vonage-Verizon legal battle is just Verizon's way of getting Vonage under its fold. Sounds conspiratorial but plausible. It might not be too bad for either parties if this happens.

Having said these, funnier things have happened in the M&A world ( The latest being Cisco buying Tribe.net). Andy probably has information that I am not privy to and I could be totally wrong in my analysis. But hey, greater ones have got it wrong before!!!

Guest Blogging in Smith on VoIP

I have been a great fan of Garrett Smith’s blog“Smith on VoIP” for some time now. His writing is very intuitive and it was no surprise that he was named as one of The 50 Most Influential People in VoIP.

So it was a no brainer when Smith was looking for people to guest blog in his site, I jumped at that opportunity. I will be posting simultaneously here and on his blog from now onwards and my first post is already up there. Update * : I have three posts there now.

I hope to learn a lot from this experience and hopefully live up to the standard set by Smith.

Arizona Cardinals Acquire Cisco in Free Agency :)

Well, you need to follow football ( NFL) to know what I am talking about. If not, learn more about Free Agency here.

Though Arizona has been pretty mediocre in the league they have one of the most sophisticated stadiums. They have achieved that by installing Cisco’s Unified Communications system to build an immediately scalable, flexible, and cost-effective network.(Btw, Cisco is already financing the ‘Cisco Stadium’ for the Oakland A’s . Looks like Cisco has found a new vertical. Sports!!!)

The Arizona Cardinals stadium was ranked among the 10 most impressive sports structures by Business Week, the only building in the United States to earn that distinction. The six-level, 1.7 million square foot stadium includes wireless network access from every seat for fans allowing them to play fantasy football, order food and beverages, access the internet and much more.Other features include seamless voice, data, and video for facilitating Cardinal team-member communications and real-time, simultaneous training sessions from both the stadium and training facility.
Man, if only this had been available in Eagles’ and 49ers stadiums TO would have been able to communicate better with Donovan Mcnabb and Jeff Garcia

It’s a mouse, It’s a headphone, It’s Skype!!!!

BeyondTel has come out with an optical USB mouse that supports Skype. Tom has a review of this in his blog.

As Tom rightly points out, there is not a whole lot of use in this, other than just claiming geeky bragging rights. How many pcs/laptops come without speaker/microphone? None. Argument could be, that you don’t have to install Skype on the pc and could use it in PCs which don’t have Skype installed. But in that case I would rather have that USB drive ( don’t remember the company that made them) from which you can launch applications instead of loading it in your PC.

While we are at it, can I have my pen doing skype as well ?

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Microsoft products better than Cisco’s?

Wow, that is one statement I thought I would never say in my life. VoIP News reports that Microsoft’s Office Communicator is way better than Cisco IP phones.

Psytechnics, an independent testing firm, conducted tests to measure voice quality of Microsoft’s soft-phone(Office Communicator 2007 ) and it did much better than the Cisco’s 7961 series. The report says

The outcome surprised the testers, according to Benjamin Ellis, VP of marketing and product management at Psytechnics. “We were kind of blown away by the results,” he says. “To see that desktop software-based telephony outperformed an industry standard IP phone is actually quite a takeaway.”

This result is indeed mind boggling. I know why exactly Benjamin said what he said. In one of my previous ventures we had to develop a soft media server, and there was always cynicism that a software Media server could never do as well as a dsp based Media server ( say for example Convedia). The two cases are more or less similar from a RTP point of view. The main argument was that processing of RTP was faster through a DSP model.

Though I feel for Cisco ( how bad would they must be feeling to be beaten by Microsoft, that too on quality!!!), I feel vindicated that a software’s performance can more or less match a DSP based solution. Good job Microsoft ( I would have never thought that I would use ‘Good’ and ‘Microsoft’ in the same sentence )

Microsoft Goes Shopping

Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is all set to acquire TellMe Networks, a speech application company for neary $800 million.

TellMe networks is one of the major players in the web based voice technology domain and Om believes that this acquisition is to bolster Microsoft’s Window’s mobile phone solution and is a direct threat to Google search. And from the looks of it, Om is right on the money on this one. It is always the phone,stupid and that is where the final showdown is going to happen.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Fight for the Indian Mobile Consumer!!

There has been a whole lot of press releases from the Indian Mobile service providers today. Vodafone and Idea in separate press releases have committed an investment of atleast $ 2 billion in the next three years.

In response to this, the market leader Airtel has promised to invest atleast $8 billion in the next three years. And they are hoping to own atleast 25% of the market share. The estimated mobile customers by 2010 would be close to 500 million which would mean that Airtel hopes to retain alteast 125 million consumers. Whoosh!!! This is serious subscriber base, and I hope sure lot of companies (application/product oriented companies) would be willing to revenue share with Airtel just to get a tiny fraction of this subscriber base. Nothing gives yourproduct more fillip than saying, hey my product is servicing more than 100 million people. Talk about high performance applications!!!!

Tom, Do you really think we are that crazy?

Tom Keating has posted his take on American Idol and the weird voting patterns.

Commenting on how one of the contenders Sanjaya seems to be moving to the next round even though he is bad, Tom says

One last point about Sanjaya. I’m not sure Sanjaya’s nationality, but he looks Indian, so perhaps he is getting Indians, Pakistanis, and others of Southeast Asian descent to vote for him. I have another theory, as well. Indians are especially tech-savvy, (See: IT Outsourcing to India) so perhaps they beat me to the punch and have several Asterisk servers blasting calls to vote for Sanjaya. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.
I am Indian ,reasonably tech savvy and I sure know how to use an Asterisk server. But I wouldn’t in my wildest dream use that to get some pinhead to the next round ( Disclaimer* : I hate American Idol and hate Sanjaya for being a contestant). Now that Tom has given me an idea, I probably should use the Asterisk server to get this kid eliminated

Seriously though Tom, you really thought we were that crazy? Now if it was the Oscar awards and an Indian movie was selected for ‘Best Foreign Film’, that would be an entirely different matter….

Cisco finally goes Mobile.

This news is atleast a week old; Cisco has got upgrades which will enable users to avail of Cisco’s Unified Communication solutions on their mobile phones.

This was always on the cards when Cisco bought Orative ( used to develop software that extends many of the capabilities and features of IP PBXs, including presence awareness, to enterprise users’ cell phones.). The question always was how quickly could Cisco integrate this Orative Solution with their UC suite. Answer : Pretty fast!!!

The software upgrade would enable the mobile users to access all the Unified Communications features, including directory services. It will also enable presence information. I had pointed out in my earlier post that


It brings Business logic to your mobile phone in addition to the conventional PBX-Cellular integration. Now from what I understand on Iotum, isn’t this similar? I could be wrong and I hope that Alec Saunders(CEO,Iotum) can correct me if I am.

Alec did comment on that saying

”We’re targeting the individual mobile professional rather than the call center market. Some similar capabilities, but different use cases.”

Unified Communications is much more than just for call center market. Yes ,as of today it mostly targets the enterprises. Yes, mobile operators are not going to remove their existing MSCs and replace them with IP as a backbone (think IMS) tomorrow. But it will be done soon and Cisco will be a big player. The UC solution suite is a great platform for Value added Services (VAS) even in the current world and open interfaces like TAPI and JTAPI (which Cisco exposes) will enable easier application development ( again think IMS).

There are some other cool features as well in the new software.

Includes new features designed especially for mobile phones, such as automatically dialing into scheduled conference calls and automatically turning the cell phone’s ringer off when the owner’s calendar says he is in a meeting..

Looks like relevance to me. It is going to be interesting to see what is going to be Microsoft-Nortel’s response to this. Even more interesting would be Avaya’s response. Mind you, Avaya has similar mobile capability as well thanks to their acquisition of Traverse Networks late last year.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

DST Negotiated Safely!

Since we didn’t see any planes crashing nor any nuclear warheads accidentally launched, I believe the DST (Daylights Saving) change did not cause too many problems. George reports some cell phones botching up DST; other than that I have not heard aboit any DST related issues.

Incidentally, I had a tough time logging into Yahoo mail yesterday. The transaction timed out and I just couldn’t check my mails. Am curious to know whether this was a DST related issue. Did any of you have this problem?

Cisco Goes open source with OpenSER

Tom Keating reports that Cisco is using OpenSER for building a robust open source SIP Server.

If you are not familiar with OpenSER, it is an open source project which has delivered the fastest/most scalable SIP Server. Last time I tried it, it used to do 1500 cps ( including registration). What is surprising is Cisco going the open source way. I am actually not too surprised with Cisco dropping SCCP and going the SIP route. That is the natural progression for Cisco if it wants to lead the way in Unified Communication. But going open source is a huge step for Cisco. Tom Keating’s report says

Cisco is using OpenSER in Cisco Service Nodes for Linksys One. You can see OpenSER mentioned on this Cisco web page.

I am still not sure whether Cisco will put this in their Call Manager as well, because that would mean they might have to open source some of the call manager code as well because of GPL licensing); I don’t see that happening for some time.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Breaking News!!!!!!!! - Old Media bores me to Death

Let’s see. What are my different sources of information these days?
1) I subscribe to a national newspaper every day which prides itself on giving accurate information.
2) I get local news TV channels that provide day to day happenings in my city and near-abouts.
3) I get at-least four nation-wide private TV channels that cover the entire nation and some happenings in the world.
4) I get CNN/BBC to give me dosage of world happenings ( Though in the case of CNN, more US coverage).
5) Then there are the informational channels like Discovery/National Geography/History channels that try to give me some new information every day.
6) Oh not to forget the five sports channels that harp continuously about Cricket/Soccer ( Mind you ESPN is also included in this. Though, ESPN-India has separate programming than ESPN-World)
7)And finally, on-line news sources like Yahoo, google alerts that guide me cool sites, blogs that cater to my personal and professional needs, Youtube to watch crazy dudes do crazy things etc.

The above are my different sources of information any given day. Now I have tabulated how much time I used to spend in reading/watching the above, say three years ago, and my current usage now. The first value is the former and the second is the latter.

1) Newspaper - 10 minutes, 5 minutes.
2) Local TV channels - 10 minutes, 0 minutes.
3) Nation-wide channels - 15 minutes, 5 minutes.
4) International channels - 30 minutes, 5 minutes.
5) Informational channels - 15 minutes, 0 minutes.
6) Sports channels - 60 minutes, 60 minutes.
7) On-line - 20 minutes, 60 minutes.

Now it is very obvious that the old media ( sans the sports channels) don’t interest me any more. The truth is what the top five sources offer me is considerably less than what I get on-line. There is a good chance that once the games ( Cricket, NFL) are available on-line, I might never need a TV again.

It is easier to say that new media reaches you faster, hence this shift, but in my case the shift is more because the old media has not recognized what I (and I talk for atleast 20 million here) want. Corrupt politicians don’t interest me; Hurley-Nayar wedding does not interest me, a complete unknown person’s view of Iraq war does not interest me; a Warren Buffet wannabee’s stock tip does not interest me; you get the drift here,right? You remove the above and there goes 99% of old media’s news content.

Now you see why I am bored to death with these guys? I would like to know how much time you all spend to get information from the old media.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Vonage loses battle with Verizon!

US internet phone provider Vonage has been asked to pay $US58 million for infringing on three patents owned by Verizon Communications. I am not going into the details ( as to what these infringments were); you can read about those here.

The blogoshpere has been pretty active over this news with Jeff raising a more serious question as to whether innovation will be curbed. I think innovation will not be curbed per se, but it surely will take relatively a longer time for an innovative product to hit the market.

Paul of Gigaom has just stopped short of delivering an eulogy, though I still think there is some more fight left. It is such a shame that such a disruptive innovator has to go down the flames. But they have started a movement and that is what that matters. ( Does this sound like an eulogy?)

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Hutch Acquisition Challenged in Court

Vodafone’s acquisition of Hutch has been challenged in the courts by a local watchdog group. Their contention is that the new telecom entity would be having more than 89 per cent foreign shareholding against the 74 per cent cap on foreign direct investment in telecom sector.

There seems to be a block at every step in this deal. You got to wonder whether the Vodafone execs are already regretting this whole thing!!. Financially it was such a burden for Vodafone and and on top of it, all these legal hassles. I am sure it has crossed their minds as to whether all this was worth it? You also got to feel sorry for the Hutch employees as well. I have a couple of connections who work for Hutch and they were talking about a whole lot of uncertainty and insecurity among the employees and they were concerned that it might lead to poor service and hence loss of customers.

It would be best for all parties if there is a logical conclusion asap. We can only hope for that.

Top Ten : Most underrated VoIP Contributors

I have come up with a list of who/what I think are the most under-rated contributors/commentators in the VoIP domain (or related telecom domains). This list consists of individuals/companies/technologies who have done quite a bit yet are not given their due. This list is to herald these people.

10) Thomas F.Angelero: One of my favourite bloggers whose perspective on things never ceases to amaze me. Has been blogging for four years now and has pretty much possibly seen everything that VoIP can throw at a person.
9) Mitel : An active member of the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA), Mitel has never been given the recognition to its immense contribution in the field of VoIP be its phones or other solutions.
8 ) John Roese: You would think that a CTO of Nortel would be a more influential man. In-spite of his unique observations be it on hyper-connectivity or Communications Enabled Applications, he still does not get the same attention as other lesser individuals.
7) BEA : Come on, having the best SIP based application server in the world needs to count for something,doesn’t it?
6) Gartner Communication Blog : I am not talking about the traditional ever pervasive Gartner reports, but their Communications Innovations blog which probably is the only blog that gives a balanced view on happenings in both Europe and North America.
5) Huawei : Granted, they are not the most ethical company ( but then who is these days?), but that should not be held against them. Their thousands of installations across the globe (Traditional as well as Next Gen networks) needs to be seen in an entirely different light.
4) Mercator Capital Newsletter: Definitely a one stop place to get news on all the mergers and acquisitions happening around the globe. Has published some very intuitive articles, yet not quoted as extensively as it should.
3) Sonus: If not for Sonus and its passion for VoIP products/solutions, VoIP would have never been carrier-grade. This giant is seldom talked about and I had even posted about the exclusion of its name in VoIP News top 50 list. Give more credit to this Gorilla.
2) CTI : VoIP as we know today is alive and kicking only because of CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration). What was essentially thought of as providing screen pops to agents in call centers drove the concept of Voice over the data network which transformed into VoIP as we know it. CTI and Call Centers are never credited with this.

and finally the No.1 most under-rated contributor is

1) British Telecom : This would not be a surprise to regular readers of this blog. I have posted enough about BT’s contribution and the lack of recognition. BT remains the most under-rated contributor in my opinion.

Just like any other compiled top ten list, I can foresee disagreements on my above list as well. Who do you think should have been included/excluded? Let me know.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Are Carriers barriers to Advancements?

Nobody wants to lose power. Especially the carriers. At-least that is what Tim Wu, a professor at Columbus University thinks. In his interview with Brooke Gladstone (co-host of NPR’s On The Media radio show), Tim says that lot of things that can be done on a mobile phone are being stifled by the carriers for their own selfish reasons.

For example, something as trivial as maintaining call timer records on the phone are being squashed by these carriers. It is ironic that even as we keep talking more and more about intelligence on the phone ( or end devices for that matter) and building applications to do the same, on the other side efforts are made to stifle these.

I don’t buy into Chris Guttman McCabe’s ( an industry observer) argument that customers if they are forceful get what they want. That is not true. If that was the case, they would not have phones that are locked to a service provider. I can’t think of a single person who thinks that is a great idea, yet it is still in play.

I would accept Chris’ contention in a market like India. Here we can change service providers without any fears of contracts or penalties. In this kind of an environment, the customer drives the service provider, not in the US market ( atleast not now).

Monday, March 5, 2007

‘Sony Ericsson’ Nazi : No ringtones for you!!!!

Tom at TMCnet has posted about Sony Ericssons’ patent that rewards exercising and punishes sloth (Wow, they are now like the psycho in that movie Seven ???)

This patent sure tickled my funny bone. Just imagine Sony Ericsson saying ‘No Ring-tones for you’ just like the Soup Nazi guy in Seinfeld.

Can I talk to the same guy?

Visualize these scenarios.

1) You have called into a Call Center and have laboriously explained your problem to one agent.
2) The agent puts you on hold to find out further details.
3) The wait time gets annoyingly long. The agent is utterly clueless to handle your case and has put you in on hold. (If you are not aware of this, now would be a good time. Agents put you on hold for a long time so that you get bored and disconnect the call, and the next time you call in, it would go to another agent and it would be the latter’s headache from then onwards).
4) You hang up the phone and call in again ( Mind you, the problem you are having is something you want to resolve immediately).
5) You get another agent to whom you need to explain the whole thing all over again and the chances are you might face the same problem as specified from point 2 onwards.
6) Sometimes the phone call disconnects and you have to repeat yourself the next time.
7) You have asked for some information and the agent responds that you can call in the next day to the contact center to get the required information. The next day you call, you end up repeating the whole transaction to another agent.

How many of you have faced the problems mentioned above? I have faced them a million times. Haven’t you ever wondered, wouldn’t it be nice if I can somehow talk to the same guy I talked to the last time around? Atleast even if he is clueless,he knows my problem and I can coax him into putting me to his/her supervisor?

This would be a good feature to have in your contact center solution. A flag to remember who was the last agent you talked to (routing based on agent-id) would make life simpler for the customer calling into the contact center. This actually would be as simple as adding another column in your database, but it is surprising that lot of solutions DON’T maintain this in the customer-related tables. Maybe it it time they start doing that. They anyway use this information for administrative purposes ( Records are maintained as to who attended what call). So just use them for improving customer interaction as well. Simple thing, but not done. pretty weird,right?

Sunday, March 4, 2007

BBC-Youtube Deal


BBC and Youtube have struck up a deal which heralds the first crossing over from the dark side (old media) to the good side :)

BBC arguably is the most respected news broadcaster in the world and this deal is surely going to have a ripple effect across the board. I still remember when I was in the US ( for four years) I was starved of ‘real’ information (even CNN was mediocre and shamefully pro-government) and it got worse during the Iraq war. The school I went to ( University of South Florida at Tampa) had a local TV channel that broad-casted BBC News at night for one hour which turned out to be the only source of legitimate news source for a whole lot of people.

We used to go to BBC website looking for news videos and there were none (remember these were the pre ‘Youtube’ days). This deal is an awesome step in the right direction and no more will we be under the mercy of the local cable operator. ( While we are it a small request to nfl.com. Can you have live telecast the football games online? That would make my day )

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Cisco buys another company… yawn..

Still committed to Social Networking ( or in Cisco’s terms Human Networks), Cisco has gone ahead and bought the assets of lost and forgotten social networking company Tribe.net.

I still don’t buy this whole social networking thing, but hey who cares if Cisco has bought the idea. So is Myspace next?

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Is the Indian Government Stifling Entrepreneurship? : A followup

I happened to catch the Finance minister’s interview on TV yesterday where he was talking about the Fringe Benefit tax for ESOPs.

When the interviewer kept prodding as to why in the world would the Finance Ministry want to introduce just a devastating tax, FM replied that the policies were still in the works and a final draft will be be submitted detailing the intricacies. So I am going to give him the benefit of doubt and will wait till the final proposal is tabled.