The Engadget Interview: Michael Robertson, CEO of SIPphone
posted Sep 12th 2005 2:23PM
Let's start with a quick backgrounder on SIPphone.
SIPphone was started two years ago in San Diego. The goal was to bring Voice Over IP to the mass market. But more than VoIP, the goal was to emphasize SIP, which is an open standards signaling protocol. The goal was to push voice to be more like email and less like instant messaging. With email, you have an email address and you can email anyone in the world and they can email you back. Contrast that with IM, where if you're on MSN I can't instant-message you because you're on Yahoo or someone's on AOL.
At SIPphone we do several things. We run a directory, what people in IP land call a proxy server. This is the server that connects two people. We help SIP hardware manufacturers - these are routers, adapters, and even wi-fi SIPphones. When you buy one of those devices and you plug it in, it has to connect to a directory so it can connect calls and give you a dial phone, so we work with them to make those auto-configure.
And very recently we released software that uses our directory called Gizmo Project. That's in Mac, Windows, and we just added Linux last week.
Most people know me from MP3.com, a company I founded and took public and eventually sold for about $400 million. We
built the largest digital music company and we were profitable when we sold the company. People sort of forget now, but
when I started MP3.com, RealAudio had an 85 percent market share, and everybody said RealAudio was the future and
Microsoft had just come out with Windows Media, and other people said Microsoft would dominate. I was one of the few
voices that said, mp3 is the way to go. The media companies all hated it. We went to court to defend the first mp3
player. So I hope people think of me as someone who stands for open standards, open directory, and consumer-friendly
technology.
After MP3.com, I founded Lindows, a desktop Linux company now called Linspire. I stepped down as CEO earlier this year
to focus on SIPphone and MP3tunes, which is a digital music company just getting started.
What attracted you to SIPphone?
Well, I look at voice as being one of the last untapped frontiers available on the Internet. If you look at email,
search and instant messaging, those are largely claimed territories. I think voice is an unclaimed territory. That's
what compelled me to start SIPphone.
What do you make of today's announcement that eBay will purchase Skype?
eBay buying Skype is great to raise the awareness for VoIP, but both companies have closed directories and
APIs that only let people access data on the periphery. Both of their "open-platform" initiatives are highly
restrictive and do not promote the best experience for the user. The world does not want a closed commerce and
communication experience owned by eBay. The world wants a product that can call anyone, anywhere without paying a toll
to a gatekeeper. Only time will tell if eBay chooses to truly open Skype up to the world, but I'm not holding my
breath.
Tell us more about SIPphone. It's a Voice Over IP startup. How fast are you growing, and how do you differ
from Vonage, 8x8 and other VoIP offerings?
There are two camps in the VoIP world. There are the traditionalists, and there are the disrupters. The
traditionalists are fairly classical in their approach. They sell you traditional-looking, -feeling phone service with
the difference that the call goes over your own broadband connection and setup. In that camp you'd put Vonage and
Packet8 and AT&T's CallVantage. So maybe you'd save a few dollars over your traditional phone service, but for the
most part it operates the same way.
The disrupters are companies like Skype and SIPphone, and we believe that all calls are going to zero. Meaning that,
if I had a service where you'd have to pay for every email that you sent, and I was going to charge you more if the
person you were sending an email to lived farther away, you'd think I was crazy. But that's how we still think of phone
calls today, even though they're just bits of data traveling along the pipes.
At SIPphone we believe all calls are eventually going to zero, to we have to think of different ways to make money
around the voice experience vs. just charging per minute and charging more if they fall outside arbitrary city, state,
country lines. When calls become free, it doesn't mean you won't pay for the broadband connection or the wireless
connection, but the actual phone call itself is going to free. New companies in VoIP will have to think about new ways
of making money beyond charging per call.
Who are the major players in this space?
If I had to handicap, I'd say Skype No. 1. They can claim 50 million users, but the real number to look at is how many
users are online at any given time. That's between 2 and 3 million, so they have a good lead, but remember there are
600 million people on the Internet. I'd probably put Yahoo in the No. 2 spot — they just rolled out voice with their
instant messaging network. I think you have to watch Microsoft because of their distribution. You have Google, whose
first product is very rudimentary and basic but they'll get better and better. AOL may eventually get it right. And you
have Gizmo Project, of course.
In the next six months, you'll have some big leaders emerge. So if the smaller players aren't out there getting some
attention and building that installed base, I think it'll be too late to catch up.
What does a new SIPphone customer need to make this work?
One thing is to buy a piece of hardware that gives them a phone-like experience. If you go to sipphone.com, you'll see
a big list of devices, and they can plug in a regular phone and make calls to anyone on the SIPphone network for free.
If they want to call a traditional phone, they would buy a calling card experience. Then there's software they can
download over the Internet and make calls PC to PC totally free, and if they want to call traditional phones, they can
buy calling card minutes.
At SIPphone we believe strongly in an interconnected directory. We want to connect our phone directory with anyone and
everyone else in the world. Last week Google announced their Google Talk PC to PC calling software, and they announced
they would connect their network with our network, so anyone who's on Gizmo Project can talk with anyone on Google
Talk, and vice versa.
We have another program called GUPS, for Global Universal Phone System. We've linked our phone directory with
universities around the world: UCLA, UC San Diego, BYU, MIT. Today, on Gizmo Project, you can call any phone on the
university campus network for free. That's our goal, to interconnect and slowly erode that pstn [public switch
telephone network] and pull more free telephone numbers into the VoIP world.
How many customers does SIPphone have?
We have about 100,000 people who've purchased a hard phone — a router or an adapter, that lets you plug in a regular
phone. We have about 150,000 soft phone users — people who've downloaded software that connects to our network.
Is the Gizmo Project open
source?
It was written by developers at SIPphone, so it's not open source. We licensed some technology called GIPS that allows
you to deal with core network-quality environments. It's the same technology Skype uses.
Skype just turned 2 this week, and it has 50 million customers, so why would someone choose Gizmo Project
instead?
Two big reasons. One, Gizmo Project is open standards based. We'll interact with everyone in the world. With Skype,
you can connect only with others who use Skype, and that's not a world that I want. I don't want the world to go like
IM, where MSN and Yahoo have their little protected silo of users. I want a world where anyone can call anyone else.
Because they're proprietary, there's no WiFi Skype phone today. There's a WiFi SIPphone. So you're beginning to see the
world get behind SIP, much as they did with MP3. There wasn't just one company innovating. So people have to decide, do
you want a closed world or one that interoperates with everyone else?
Now, there are some feature differences between Skype and Gizmo Project. On the plus side for Skype, they have instant
messaging, and we won't be putting out our beta version for another week or two. What we do have is call record, which
is great for podcasting. We have unlimited conference calling, free voice mail, call mapping, sound blasts, which is
the ability to send sound. So there are a lot of features where we trump Skype. But there's something fundamental
behind the scenes that makes us different.
One of the things Skype does, which I think is petty sneaky, is to use your computer to route other people's telephone
calls. They could be using your processor and your bandwidth as a supernode to move other people's calls, and that's
something that we don't do. We have servers and data centers around the world that relay calls, and we never use your
computer for other than your own call. So I think this has made Skype fairly unpopular with enterprises that guard
their network resources, and some users have noticed real slowdowns because their computer moves calls for other
people. You can't turn it off, too.
Interesting. I have Skype and I wonder if that's why I sometimes have a sluggish connection.
If you open up your Windows task manager, you'll see the CPU taken really zoom up, and that could be because you're
routing other people's calls. It happens most often if you have a static IP address.
How does your network's voice quality compare with Skype?
We're both using the GIPS [Global IP Sound] technology — Google licenses it too — and it's a very sophisticated
technology that handles network jitter and sees how much bandwidth you're using and adjusts it if you're on dial-up,
for example. So the call quality is going to be comparable between the two.
The one advantage we may have is that you don't have a third party you're relying on to route your calls, like Skype
does. We've deployed routers and data centers around the world: Hong Kong, France, San Jose. So we might have a small
call quality advantage because we operate these supernodes. But honestly, the call quality will be pretty much the
same.
Can Gizmo be used with cell phones?
You can of course call cell phones, if you buy call-out minutes. We sell call-in and call-out. Call-in is when you get
a real telephone number that is assigned to your Gizmo Project, so wherever you are on the Internet, someone can call
and your computer will ring. We support U.S. and U.K. telephone numbers today.
Call-out is the ability to call regular phones like land linds or mobiles. We don't offer a PDA version today. We're
investigating it, we haven't started development yet.
On the interoperability question, on Gizmo today you can't call someone who has Skype. Is that primarily a
technology issue or a business issue?
It's a business issue in that Skype has refused to connect their network with anybody else's. If you go to
sipphone.com/numbers, you'll see a giant list of VoIP companies that we connect with today. Skype doesn't connect with
anyone, and because they're big they think they can get away with it.
There's no technical reason why you couldn't build a gateway, even though Skype doesn't use SIP, they use their own
proprietary thing. You'd have to build a translator or gateway, but there's no reason why it couldn't be done.
Tell me more about your business plans. How do you make money?
I think long-term you'll see sort of a Google model emerge around VoIP. Today on Google, ads come up and you click on
the ones that look interesting and they charge the advertiser a few pennies. Think about that same model for voice
calls. Say, on Gizmo Project, you'll say, I'm hungry for some pizza. I type in pizza and I'm immediately presented
with, do you want to order from Domino's, from Shakey's, from Papa John's? If I click Domino's and order from them,
perhaps they'll pay 35 or 50 cents or a dollar. We're not doing this today at Gizmo, but I think this is one of the
ways the revenue model around voice will emerge going forward.
OK, I won't make any pie-in-the-sky jokes. Who do you see as your typical customer?
Who talks on the phone? Ultimately, Voice Over IP touches the entire world, very similar to music. It's not just
13-year-old girls or 24-year-old men who like videogames. Everyone uses their telephone. Now, clearly there are early
adopters who like to embrace new technology before it moves to the wider demographic. But I will tell you a
story.
I went to one of the large carriers and I told them, you won't believe the explosion of PC to PC calling we're seeing
at SIPphone. He said, You know, geeks might talk to each other on PCs, but I don't see normal people using their PCs to
make calls. And I was struck by a very similar conversation I had about seven years ago with the record labels when I
said, You won't believe what's happening, people are listening to music on their computers. And I remember them saying,
well, we don't think the average person is going to listen to music on a computer. And you tried to explain to them,
well, look, you can do so much more with a computer — you can organize your music and make playlists and burn CDs. They
couldn't get it.
I think we're in the same era today where when you talk to the traditional phone guys about PC to PC calling, they're
really skeptical. They just don't understand the power you have when the call is going through your computer, to record
it and have a five-way conference call and have sound effects or send images along — this is really what's going to get
everyone excited about PC calling.
Tell me more about those features — Map It, record any call. What are some of those about?
Well, the feature that is most used by consumers is the call record feature. You hit a button and it will say, Now
recording the call, and it saves it to a WAV file. This is what a lot of people are doing to create quick and dirty
podcasts.
With the free conference call service, you can have multiple hosts call in and record a podcast. There's a great eye
candy piece called Map It, and it will show in Google Maps a location of who you're talking to. So if you're not sure
who you're talking to or if they are who they say they are, you can click that and find out.
I think the most fun feature is the Sound Blast. These are sort of like smilies are to instant messaging. We ship with
six or seven sounds, like cars crashing. But you can add any WAV file you'd like to your Gizmo Project. It might be
your favorite band or DJ or movie sound effects and play them in the middle of calls, and people go, how the heck are
you doing that?
You can do your own morning zoo radio show.
Exactly right. You can add the gong sound or gun shots or anything you'd like. That's another thing you're starting to
see on podcasts. Record your podcast, add six or seven sound effects, hit stop recording and you've made a show.
What final steps do you need to finish your podcast?
We save the call in a WAV format, and you typically want to convert that to mp3 and upload it to wherever you host
it.
Why not just save the call to MP3?
We haven't licensed MP3 for Gizmo Project yet.
You can also send files and images with Gizmo?
This is probably the No. 1 feature that people have asked for. Our instant messaging is based on Jabber, an open
protocol that allows us to interoperate with places like Google Talk. So you'll see us implement Jabber instant
messaging and file transfer in upcoming versions.
Can anyone in a WiFi cloud make free Internet voice calls to other SIPphone users?
Absolutely. And voice mail is another feature a lot of users like. Skype charges for it, but it's free on Gizmo
Project. If you're running Gizmo and you missed a call, it actually comes to your email as an audio attachment.
Just to make it clear, you can download the Gizmo Project application and use it free without needing an
accompanying SIPphone or other hardware.
Right. You just download Gizmo from gizmoproject.com and there's a quick sign-up project, without a need for credit
card or billing information, and you're making free calls. If you want the highest quality calls, you can buy a
10-dollar headset that will plug right into the mike jack on your desktop or your laptop and then you have a really
high-quality call.
My favorite device is an mVox. This is a small device, about the size of a deck of cards, that plugs into your USB
port. It is a speaker phone of extraordinarily high quality, and this removes the need from having to plug in a
headset, but the person you're talking to won't know you're on a speaker phone because of sophisticated echo
cancellation and things like that.
What are your personal calling habits? Have you stopped using traditional phones?
When I'm at my desk, I use Gizmo Project. I still use my mobile phone when I'm driving in the car. But I almost never
use my office line or home line anymore. We're working on ways that will combine even your mobile experience with Gizmo
Project. We can't really talk about that, but I think you'll see your mobile phone and your PC phone merge over
time.
What kinds of features or functionalities do you see emerging in the next few years?
Right now, phone numbers are tied to locations. You have your home phone, which rings your house. You have your office
phone, which rings your office. You have your cell phone. I think in the future you'll have one number that rings your
person. So JD's going to have a telephone number and JD's gonna be able to decide, do I want this to ring my PC and my
mobile, or my PC and my mobile and my office, or move the call around.
Consumers will have one number and they'll be able to take that call on their PC, on their mobile phone, on their home
phone, or move it around. So if I'm talking to you on my computer and I decide I need to get in my car to commute, I
can transfer that call to my mobile call. That's what's missing today from the calling world. Voice Over IP can let you
decide, is this person important and do I want to take this call on my PC or my mobile or my land line or
wherever.
Even further out, how do you see the landscape for voice communication and telephony changing? Is this going
to be ubiquitous and everywhere, spelling trouble for the traditional phone companies?
Yes, the traditional phone companies will clearly be in trouble. It's no secret that they're losing 20 to 30 percent
of their revenues every year. Vonage, the darling of the VoIP industry whose business does not make sense in any way,
they had to lower their rates 30 percent last year.
In five to 10 years from now, there's no question that all calls will be free. There won't be this notion that I'm
paying per minute or I'm paying more to call this guy than that guy. Calls will be included with your wireless service
or broadband pipe. Businesses like Vonage that are charging people $35 per month for their calling, those businesses
are dead.
What will that do to society if we're going to have an always-on, always-connected society where anybody can
call anyone else at any time. Will that explode the amount of communication taking place?
Absolutely. Already we're seeing today where people will open a voice call and leave it on as sort of a virtual
office. They'll leave an audio channel open between two friends or colleagues and they'll pick up conversations
whenever they'd like. 'Hey, Bob!' and Bob will go, 'What?' So the notion of picking up a phone call or hanging it up
kind of goes away, and you just decide where you want to connect it to. We're already seeing people make calls that
last 7 1/2 hours. They're not talking for 7 1/2 hours, they've likely got two speaker phones and they leave the
connection open for when they want to talk. It'll definitely bring people closer by having virtual voice connections
that just stay on 24 hours a day.
Anything else?
This field is so disruptive, because it's totally changing how people think about voice, and it's going to give people
so much power that they don't have today. And it's really exciting and fun to be in this space. It feels very much like
the early days of MP3.com.
J.D. Lasica's new book about the digital media revolution is
Darknet : Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation (Wiley & Sons).
I like what Robert has said so far about opening their network. I had considered Vonage and Skype before but I switched over to SIP compliant services like sipphone.com. Now I call my girl for free and we don't even use the computers at all. I helped many friends as well. Eat that Vonage. The return on investment (ROI) for my international calling is less than 6 months.
So Mike, if you're so into the 'open' thing, where's the source code for Gizmo? And why do you charge so much for the free software in your respositories?
Read the article. There are licensed codes in Gizmo and that is why it can't be open source. I am a Linux user myself and I have no problem with it as the software is available on the Linux platform. Embracing open source doesn't mean you have to abandon close source software entirely. It's the freedom of using the software without insane EULA or lockin that is also very important. Gizmo fits in that category.
Interesting interview. Since I'll soon be accross the pond I've been thinking about a VOIP solution to keep in touch with my peeps back home. Nice information to consider.
Thanks engadget!
Great article. The mvox usb speakerphone sounds interesting, i'd hate putting on headsets, and holding up a traditional phone seems odd next to the computer. Anyone use the mvox before? It's not too bad @ $40 if it really works..
aero: open standards is not open source, but it is a move toward open source that still allows a company more freedom with their business model.
btw, engadget folks, i'm always impressed with the quality of the interviews on this site. i wish interviews on the mainstream news networks were this indepth.
VERY interesting stuff.
Forget the TPCs. Forget only cellular. Forget Vonage. And forget Skype. Gizmo is the only way to go then. This is the future.
I'll definitely be trying this.
Hey, Michael! Be sure to develop a Pocket PC version of Gizmo - whatever you do. That would simply be a MUST have.
World first.
Move over VOIP- Telephone Sharing is here.
Could VOIP services soon prove to be obsolete?
PCs user can now call anywhere to anywhere planet wide for the cost of a local call or make free calls forever.
Intercom Pages is offering Internet users a means to share their Telephone lines with other users.
The technology works like file sharing but in this case shares broadband connections and plain old telephone lines allowing user to call anyone anywhere.
In the case example user 'Kylie in Melbourne Australia' can request 'Mal's PC' in LA, USA to dial a local telephone number and connect the telephone call back into the internet so Kylie in Melbourne can talk to her friends in the United States.
FREE CALLS. In many cases around the world Telco's offer free local calls and user who have this free call option can offer other users totally free calls in their area.
Business, community groups or budding entrepreneurs can establish their own Telecommunication networks for less than $US666 and users can engage in planet wide unlimited calls for less than $50 per year.
Gippsland IT in Australia are the inventors of this Patent Pending technology
and anticipate that their 'Telephone Sharing solution' will grow, expand and evolve. Furthermore the development is likely to place considerable economic pressures upon all current Voip providers and other sorts of voice trafficking services worldwide'.
Intercompages.com new version officially starts 30 September.
Patent Pending www.intercompages.com
Regional Planetary Partners required Contact Gippsland IT Australia
Australia 61 (03) 8610 1672
http://intercompages.com/telephone_sharing_is_here.htm
World first.
Move over VOIP- Telephone Sharing is here.
Could VOIP services soon prove to be obsolete?
PCs user can now call anywhere to anywhere planet wide for the cost of a local call or make free calls forever.
Intercom Pages is offering Internet users a means to share their Telephone lines with other users.
The technology works like file sharing but in this case shares broadband connections and plain old telephone lines allowing user to call anyone anywhere.
In the case example user 'Kylie in Melbourne Australia' can request 'Mal's PC' in LA, USA to dial a local telephone number and connect the telephone call back into the internet so Kylie in Melbourne can talk to her friends in the United States.
FREE CALLS. In many cases around the world Telco's offer free local calls and user who have this free call option can offer other users totally free calls in their area.
Business, community groups or budding entrepreneurs can establish their own Telecommunication networks for less than $US666 and users can engage in planet wide unlimited calls for less than $50 per year.
Gippsland IT in Australia are the inventors of this Patent Pending technology
and anticipate that their 'Telephone Sharing solution' will grow, expand and evolve. Furthermore the development is likely to place considerable economic pressures upon all current Voip providers and other sorts of voice trafficking services worldwide'.
Intercompages.com new version officially starts 30 September.
Patent Pending www.intercompages.com
Regional Planetary Partners required Contact Gippsland IT Australia
Australia 61 (03) 8610 1672
http://intercompages.com/telephone_sharing_is_here.htm
"I still use my mobile phone when Im driving in the car."
Yeah. I lost all respect for this guy (and thus, interest in the article) riiiiiight about here.
sounds pretty cool - good interview
too bad they decided to use a bunch of skype's icons though.
Just curious, is there any replacement to GIPS [Global IP Sound] technology?
If that is a barrier to getting these apps open sourced, then that is a direction that can be looked in.
Too bad SIPphone doesn't work and has essentially zero tech support. I forked over almost $200 for a D-Link DVG-1402S along with a year of virtual phone and a bunch of minutes. It never worked. At first, I could dial out, but no incoming call ever completed. Then it stopped allowing me to dial out except to other SIP numbers. I tried their one-man tech support (Chris Lawrence) for months to no avail. And, it almost goes without saying, after several months of no phone service and no support, I was unable even to get a response on how to get a refund. I finally gave up and bought Lingo instead, which, unlike SIPphone, simply worked right out of the box.
They are a small company.... so I have found that it might take a few days to get someone to help, but they got my system working after I had initial troubles getting it going. To be fair, we exchanged e-mails and phone calls for a couple days, as could only have my network down for testing in very limited times.
Their service does work. The on-line community is pretty good and growing quickly (ie: self-service support), and with some patience you can get direct help from them (at lease in my experience).
Good article as well. I started by using Skype, but after I found out there was no hardware for Skype... that kind of killed the deal. I still use it once in a while to chat with friends on Skype, but without hardware, it just didn't cut it to replace the family phone (who wants to run to their computer in the den to answer a call when there is a phone beside the bed?)
With Gizmo and SIPphone, I can choose from the many ATA devices that plug right into ethernet, and connect a normal phone. The computer can be off. Until you do a bit of reading up, its not initially clear what an advantage it is to be on SIP either.... but do a bit of research... it is a VERY good thing.
In response to the person who asked about the mVox device. I have the MV100 and it is a excellent device. I have not used it as a speaker phone extensively yet, but it seems to work well. I primarily use it with a headset (yes, it does have a headset jack), and figured it was a nice way to add a standard headset input to my computer. The speakerphone was kind of a bonus. Plus, it is really small and requires no drivers, so its easy to pack with my laptop for when I'm on the road.... or potentially use on someone else's computer while visiting.
-Steve
Very interesting overall, although the idea of ads triggered by content of phone calls is a horrible, horrible one. I don't see any way that could be done without being extremely intrusive -- most of the time I'm on skype it's for business, not for shopping on ebay, and if I went to VoIP for all calls, all the time, it would drive me insane to be forcefed ads all the time.
Also, I have more Vonage minutes than I can use at $16-17/month, taxes included. While of course I would prefer "free", that is a huge savings over Sprint (my local option), which for less service charges well over $60/month, not including taxes. Even counting the cost of broadband I come out ahead, and I get hi-speed internet too. Vonage's highest personal rate is about 25 bucks I think. So he's a bit off or out-of-date on that topic.
mVox isn't too hard to track down (http://www.mvox.com) but Michael's preferred "WiFi SIPphone" is anybody's guess. It would be *really* useful if engadget could include links for specific references like these.
Meanwhile -- what's a good Gizmo / SIPphone compatible portable battery-powered WiFi handset?