I was here in Stockholm 4 years ago for VoN Europe 2000, and I have to say it was fairly weak. This year, the attendance is huge, and even better, I am really impressed with the quality of thinking & the presentations from the [mainly European] speakers. Europe gets VoIP in a big way, and there is a lot happening. In comparison to the US, there’s more a focus here on IM + Voice, and on simple end user applications. It’s like they are leapfrogging the SIP-based PSTN replacement stuff – not that those entities don’t exist, just doesn’t seem to be what people are talking about.
I would also say that everyone mentioned Skype, at least in reference, and in some cases up to 7 slides on the topic. Everyone is defining themselves as how they are positioned re: the huge success that Skype is experiencing. A revolutionary disruptive force is at work, and it is the topic on everyone’s mind as they work to understand what it means for them and how to adapt.
Here some notes from some keynotes & industry perspectives:
- Jeff had a great leadoff talk, and started with talking about some fun on his SAS flight, using wifi plus broadband and deciding to download Skype and have a call at 35,000 feet. He also talked about how for the first time in history technology is really defining a generation gap. The IM generation, today’s teenagers and early 20 somethings, use IM and text messaging to keep contact with friends and peer groups in spite of geographic distance. What this generation will need as future communication tools looks very different from how the older generation, us, thinks about the world. I watch this issue myself, and I think this comment is very accurate and insightful.
- Alain Van Gaever, from some indecipherable regulatory part of the EU Commission, gave an excellent overview of how regulation is developed in the EU, and what the current situation is with VoIP. He characterized the current landscape as a light regulatory touch. I took some detailed notes, and I might post a future essay on this topic.
- Ericsson had a great slide set, with a really cool graphic about broadband penetration by access technology, circa 1999, today, and projected for 2009. Their stats are 157M broadband users today, growing to 500M in 2009. If this is published later, I will try to link it.
- Niklas spoke about Skype, notes below in a separate entry.
- Just before lunch, we heard from James Enck who writes the EuroTelcoBlog. It was great, perhaps one of the best presentations I have heard at one of these conferences. James is a securities analyst who is disrupting his own business by writing his best insights, blog form. He called it “open source analysis”. He gave so much data, so quickly, that I couldn’t possibly keep up. I’m hoping Pulver.com posts it. He had a fair bit on Skype, including projected usage by country, and an estimate that at any given time 4% of the world’s broadband users are signed in. He also mentioned some things in passing that I want to look into, including SkypeSpeed or Skype See? [bad link, best i could find in a hurry], eDonkey, and eMule. EuroTelcoBlog is now on my aggregator.
My overall impression is one of being very, very impressed with what is going on in Europe in this domain.