There seems to be considerable public demand, so I’ll explain why no amount of technology is going to make an open voice network appear.
I’ve written about open vs. closed networks before a bit. We don’t have a comprehensive theory of why networks become open or closed, but there are plenty of pointers. Here’s a few more.
Users don’t care about technology, they care about solutions to problems they have. For a solution to a “networked” problem like communicating with other people, they need to co-ordinate on standard formats and semantics for those communications. A whole bunch of things go together to make up the solution. The standard can be created by offering a solution far superior to anything existing, creating “user pull” (e.g. Skype); can be imposed externally by people with existing market power or distribution (e.g. MMS); can be imposed by government fiat (e.g. 911 service rules); or can emerge from knowing co-ordination by end users or institutions (email, maybe?).
I don’t see any mechanism for adoption or distribution for new open authentication mechanisms. Thus there will persist a “termination fee” for selected premium customers to get on-net. Just because there could be such a thing and it might appear desirable doesn’t mean it will happen. Technical standards need not become operational ones. It would also be good if we all drove on the same side of the road. Won’t happen, there’s no route from “here” to “there” which overcomes the transition costs.
Next, the problem isn’t authentication. It’s assurance that the inbound request for attention is likely to be valid and valuable. Authentication is one part of achieving this. With email we post-process the message based on its content and make a pretty accurate guess as to whether it is spam based on learned context of our message patterns and keywords. An open network is sustainable. With trackbacks between blogs we use approval mechanisms which appear to be making trackback spam uneconomic. An open network is sustainable. I request web pages — they don’t get pushed at me. An open network is sustainable.
With telephony, you need to solve the problem before the phone rings. You effectively need a vouching authority for identity AND a policing authority for abuse. Someone might be exactly who they say they are, but still be a fraud or nuisance. An unregulated open network is not sustainable. Someone has to pay for the police.
With the PSTN we have public laws about making nuisance or abusive calls, and you can go to jail. The circuit-switched nature of the medium means that there is a high risk of the call being traced back to a specific device or user. Most users have provided personal details up-front to be credit checked, or the phone company knows the physical place the wire leads to. Mobile devices have a SIM card or equivalent which provides strong identity and can be linked back to previous calls and social relationships, if not always the user. The cops know who to interview. The prospect of being hit with high charges makes people guard access to the phones for which they are liable. The cost of international calls also provided a barrier to “governance arbitrage” — although this is going away, as telemarketers are discovering.
In short, the system has both identity collateral built in and governance mechanisms. When you pay for a phone calling plan, you aren’t just buying “minutes” but are also paying for all the other things which together go to make up the complete solution to your communications problem. Features only propagate as part of the communications systems in which they are embedded. They do not spread independently.
Other private networks have private means of governance and policing. eBay has explicit reputation scores. Banks use credit rating systems and private database suppliers. Skype engages in an arms race with potential fraudsters creating “bad” nodes which would overcome the built-in limitations of the UI. (Possibly this a losing battle, who knows. It’s not obvious that Skype will avoid the ultimate fate of Usenet as a cyber trash-can.)
Who will have any incentive to create and manage the reputation scheme? How will it be linked to real-world identity? Getting someone to look at some physical identity documents and then checking that you look like your photo costs real money.
Some day, I’m expecting buddy requests to become a point of spam entry, and Skype will also one day make money by enabling me to only accept requests from people with a credit card on file and positive Skype balance. You’re going to have to put something at stake (identity collateral is key, folks) and Skype will take a cut.
So apart from there being no user demand, no distribution mechanism, and no complete solution, an open ID system is an extremely good idea.
PS - Don’t get too worked up about it. I tried to build a user-centric identity system at Sprint and failed. I’ve reached the acceptance phase on the matter.
PPS - PhoneGnome is the only proton torpedo capable of penetrating the identity thermal exhaust ports.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 07:44 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/830.
In the GNOME world, telepathy is joining together IM and telephony, meaning anyone on your friends list can call you. Most of the time that's all you care about receiving calls from, so that's fine - see Google Talk (based on XMPP). OpenID might be another solution, although it's more geared towards websites so perhaps not.
Posted by: at December 17, 2006 10:46 AMThe internet serendipitiously gives me the following post: http://kveton.com/blog/2006/12/14/openid-voip-good/
Posted by: at December 17, 2006 11:50 AM