I’ve been meaning for a while to write about the possible consequences of Microsoft’s entry into voice telephony. They’re clearly serious about it. Their standard strategy of “bundle with Windows and suck the life force out of adjacent markets” fits nicely with eliminating telcos from routine business voice traffic.
The reference design for a next-generation PC was unveiled last year at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). Codenamed the Athens project (Word document), it integrates three key related features:
Clearly this would enable a PC to turn itself on and answer a phone call if necessary. Always-on comes to the edge at last!
The obvious question is whether they can carry it off with Longhorn. The PC is a very costly device compared to a deskphone. Laptops, not fixed desktops, increasingly dominate the corporate landscape. We’d all need to move to Bluetooth headsets if we don’t want to keep on plugging microphones in all the time. Cell phones already lie in every handbag and swing from every beltclip. That means alternatives are already within arms reach. This market isn’t the traditional Microsoft hyena picking off a vulnerable young business wildebeest. (By the way, it’s worth clicking on that last link for a dose of irony.)
But let’s assume that this all comes to pass. Softphones are integrated into Windows. Consumers are gently shepherded towards the MSN phone service. Businesses deploy a Microsoft SIP/PSTN gateway. The Nortel usability abomination I have on my desk goes to the landfill. What happens next?
Well, this exposes the PSTN to a new risk that it may not survive. We’ve already seen scumware that installs itself on your PC and dials premium-rate numbers on your behalf. Fully automated remote fraud. (No jokes please about this being the standard way telcos issue phone bills.) But doing this via a hardware modem attached to a POTS line doesn’t scale well. Any user sat there will hear the clicks and chirps and gets suspicious.
So we move every Windows desktop to a standard softphone interface attached to a live PSTN bridge. Now you’ve done something to dramatically increase the scale of the risk. To the greatest extent possible the telcos have kept the PSTN closed. None of those SS7 signals are allowed to leak out to end users. All you get is a simple analog line with a very limited repertoire of messages and a trivial call-and-answer protocol. And of course some of the most famous moments in telco regulation have come from attempts by the network operators to control what can be attached to their networks. But you can still get a computer to initiate an outbound call. The telco control doesn’t extend to how calls are initiated.
If we’re not careful we’re eventually going to get a Windows desktop worm that does more than just forward your home-made porn to your colleagues and snitch on your Internet banking password. It’s going to make phone calls. Lots and lots of them. Silently. And along with hundreds of thousands of other zombie PCs, it will take the PSTN down with it. Five nines will revert to being an ice dancing championship score, not a network availability promise.
On top of this, remember those phones are attached to loud bells that wake people at night. We’re not talking packets being filtered quietly at your hosting service when being hit with a SYN flood here. Members of the public will start to wonder if this old-fashioned phone thing is such a great idea after all.
To prevent this you would have to ensure every outbound call was mediated by the operating system and authorized by a human. Automated outbound calling to arbitrary numbers would have to be verboten. Not likely to happen, I think.
The ultimate irony is that the Internet is criticized for its spam, fraud, denial of service and anonymous miscreance. But that just reflects humanity’s self-destructive streak. It can cope with a fair dose of abuse and remain operational. Once the Internet hosts are able to address the PSTN hosts, the PSTN doesn’t have the immune system to cope with the assault. It’s like measles arriving in the New World. It just wipes out civilizations because they can’t adapt fast enough. And you’ll be able to thank Microsoft for bearing the virulent strain that kills carrier-controlled telephony.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 02:14 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Just a friendly reminder that "PC PhoneHome" (and its sister product for Mac "MacPhoneHome")are Brigadoon Software trademarks for software that allow your to track a lost or stolen computer anywhere in the world.
U.S. law requires that we "police" the mark in order to maintain a trademark and to avoid the :likelihood of confusion." The use of "PC PhoneHome" in the title of this section may have that affect.
Terrance L. Kawles
President
Brigadoon Software, Inc.
You need a better lawyer, one who understands the actual criteria for trademark confusion. Get a life! Martin.
Posted by: at June 14, 2004 04:56 PM