2. Reaching The Consumer Market
Hello, my name is Barry Sher and I am the Vice-President of Business Development at IVR Technologies, an advanced software development company in the area of IVR and real-time billing. Over the next 20 minutes I would like to share with you some recent market research, review some historical trends and then go on to discuss consumer needs and how we can address those needs and leverage the latest technology to drive more business to your network.
Presented by Barry Sher, VP Business Development IVR Technologies, Inc.
The Voice of the Next-Generation Network
Taking advantage of next-generation services to attract new subscribers and retain existing ones

3. The Market
“Wholesale VoIP origination and termination revenues will experience a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through Local wholesale VoIP is the fastest growing segment and will account for 27% of wholesale revenues by 2010, up from 7% in 2006.”
Source: In-Stat Research
In-Stat Research estimates wholesale VoIP origination and termination revenue will experience a 30% compound annual growth rate through to The fastest growing segment will be local wholesale at 27% and that’s up from 7% last year!

4. The Market
“Global telecom services revenue reached US $1.4 trillion in 2005, representing an 8.2% increase over Up to 2010, growth is expected to experience a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.6%. Revenues are expected to increase by US $275 billion to reach almost US $1.7 trillion.”
Source: MarketResearch.com
MarketResearch.com reports that global telecom service revenue reached $1.4 trillion in 2005, and by 2010 we will be up to $1.7 trillion!

5. The Market
“An estimated 1,079 billion minutes of VoIP traffic was carried by service providers worldwide in 2006.”
Source: Locus
And iLocus reports that last year over a trillion minutes of VoIP traffic was carried by service providers worldwide.
And people wonder if Voice over IP will take off? It already has, and resistance is futile!

6. Market Trends
Let’s take a moment to review some trends over the last 25 years. From this graph you can see that billed domestic minutes in the U.S. has gone from just over a billion minutes per year in 1980 to 40 billion minutes in 2005.
Over this same period revenue per minute declined from just under $1.50 per minute to less than 20 cents per minute!
If we draw a straight line through this graph we can see that we are trending and fast approaching zero!

7. Market Trends
Now let’s take a look at billed revenue per call for a similar period of time and we can see that revenue went from around $11 per call in 1980 to less than $1 per call in Again, the trend is obvious and painful.
According to the latest Oracle-sponsored global Communications survey over 80 percent of industry executives believe voice calls will drastically decline and will no longer be the major source of revenues for communication carriers within six years. For communication carriers, the most effective strategy to negate declining voice calls is to introduce new services aside from price changes or marketing initiatives, according to 75 percent of executives in the survey.
According to U.K. research house Informa Telecoms & Media , over the next five years, VoIP usage should drain $100 billion from carriers' PSTN revenues.
If you are a carrier whose primary business is the PSTN you need to be worried.

8. How Do We Reach The Consumer Today?
Through multiple providers and non-differentiated/fragmented services
Price
Legacy interfaces and devices
Closed networks
Static and non-personalized portals
We hear time and time again the promise of Voice over IP but I think we are really missing the potential of this technology. By and large the services we are seeing that are VoIP-based are nothing more than PSTN replacements. What have we done with VoIP so far? We have taken a great working model and have made it look like the legacy PSTN. So today’s PSTN and VoIP services suffer from the same mistakes and shortcomings.
The phone is difficult to use. By a show of hands, how many people know the key sequence on their PBX to park a call or initiate a conference? Was that *#6 or #6*? And of course every call transfer is still preceded by “If I lose you, I’ll call you right back”.
The phone lacks a certain amount of flexibility and control. Why can’t I just dial from Outlook? Why can’t we hand off a call from one device to another like transferring the call from our cell phone to our office line and vice versa?
And where are the Innovative services that are seamlessly overlaid on my phone line? Any why are the cryptic features that I do have like Do Not Disturb and Call Forwarding all or none features? So if I could remember the code, and I can’t, to turn on these features it blindly affects all of my calls when I typically only want to block one person and call forward one really important call.
My biggest pet peeve, access control. Why can anyone call me on my phone, and why do they always call me right when I am about to eat dinner?
We just aren’t developing applications today that are based on what is possible we are developing applications based on what already exists. As Chip and Dan Heath talk about in their recent book Made to Stick, we are most likely limiting ourselves based on the Curse of Knowledge -- where once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it is like to not know it.
When the television was first invented it offered the ability to not only hear a story but see it. Instead of using the mind’s eye we could collectively share in the world that a studio and the director created for us. Facial gestures, rich elaborate sets, elegant wardrobes, special effects -- this is what we have today, back then early TV was a radio personality sitting on a chair reading their radio programs. It was literally visual radio, initially we couldn’t let go of the past to see our the future.
I can’t help but think that’s where we are today. We have a great open standard communications protocol in SIP, we have high bandwidth and resilient connectivity and we have the consumer clamoring to communicate but we just can’t let go of the past and put the pieces together in the right way.

9. How Do We Do A Better Job Of Reaching The Consumer Tomorrow?
Cost Savings and Efficiency
Support
Simplicity
Control and Flexibility
Freedom and Empowerment
Personalization
So what does the Consumer want?
They want to save money, as long as it is not a drastic departure from their habituated process. No special phones, no need to sit in front of a computer, no new access numbers to dial...
They want support. Remember what it meant to be a valued customer? Why is it now common to send an or make a web submission and not get a response? Why does one medium take precedents over another?
The Consumer wants simplicity, which technology keeps promising but does it deliver on that promise? Back in the day when it was hard people called me at home on my home number and during the week they reached me at the office. Then life got simple and now I have a home number, an office number, a cellular number, a fax number, an address an IM address, an IP address and now maybe a SIP address. Ahhh, simple has never been so complicated.
The Consumer wants to be able to control how they communicate and have the flexibility to control as little or as much of it as they want. Sometimes I would like to forward some of my calls and other times I would just like to forward a select few -- solicitors always get voice mail!
Freedom and Empowerment. How many times have you heard, “Hi, I am just running out the door, call me on my cell phone”? How nice would it be to be able to transfer the call from any phone to any other phone, office to mobile, mobile to home? How about being able to access your local and long distance call records in real-time? Great for being able to bill back customers or projects or be able to find that telephone number you’ve seemed to misplace.
The Consumer wants personalization. They want to be able to “personalize” everything by selectively injecting their personality and flair into their communications -- look no further than the $1.5 billion - $3.5 billion ring tone market for affirmation of this point.

10. What Are The Revenue Opportunities?
Internationalization of Services
Integrated Communications
IP Based Conferencing
Video
Fax Over IP
Presence
Convergence
Voice is a staple but in many cases it is part of a flat rate bundle or worse a loss leader. What still inhibits VoIP adoption is that it is too difficult, we are fighting the war with marketing rather than technology. We do not want to be tied to a computer (a la Skype), we don’t want to manage multiple telephones or telephone numbers just to save money and we don’t want to have to engage in overcomplicated hurdles either– we just want life to get easier! We need to augment voice with other higher margin services that attract new customers and that creates a social system that builds up a natural resistance to migration – we want customers that don’t want to leave and who promote us within their circle of influence -- rather than the mobile approach that use restrictive contracts to force you not to stay. A recent study by Infonetics, showed 83 percent of service providers said that the availability of new applications and services are the biggest driver for adopting VoIP products.
Let’s take a look at some potential applications.
Global services that can be managed in one country but used by anyone in our immediate or extended family, regardless of location.
Web and SMS triggered callback to capitalize on rate disparities between locations
Screen pops from our CRM system for inbound calls
Using voice to send text messages and vice-versa
Drag and drop conferencing via your Contact Manager or Web Portal
I still do not know if I want to comb my hair or put on a tie to answer the phone but in some circumstances a video call is a good surrogate for a lack of physical presence (e.g. being away from your family at a trade show).
A typical Global 1000 company spends almost two-thirds of its long-distance dollars on fax traffic, and small businesses spend 40% so there is still a large market here, growing at a rate of approximately 50 percent year over year
82% of call attempts are still unsuccessful. We are more wired than ever but are we really getting more connected? Voice mail, IM, SMS, , we need to get it all tied together in a manner that is pervasive, easy and intuitive to manage, and granular enough to provide as little or as much control as needed. I personally think this is where VoIP is going to overtake the PSTN -- and I can’t wait where I now longer have to feel bad when I call someone and they tell me “Hey, I am in an important meeting, call me back later” -- if it is that important why is he answering his phone? Today, I don’t know he’s in a meeting, but with presence I would.
As long as mobile carriers charge outrageous amounts for international calls and for roaming there is tremendous opportunity for FMC to allow seamless handoff between cellular and wireless networks.

11. How Do You Capture Market Share?
Invest in the Right Technology
Deploy Innovative Bundled Services
Manage Your Network
Manage Your Revenue and Costs
Treat Your Customers Like Customers
So how do we capture more market share?
Invest in the Right Technology
We need to offer services beyond wholesale voice origination and termination.
Make sure it is standards base, this provides you with the greatest flexibility, affordability and future options.
Invest in packet based architectures that are intrinsically more stable and robust than TDM architectures. They scale better and are easier to maintain.
Look to consolidate hardware/software function to reduce management overhead and points of contact for support.
Deploy technology built on an open database architecture (e.g. Oracle, mySQL, Microsoft SQL Server) to allow you to customize, extend and access your data as required
Deploy Innovative Bundled Services
Deploy technology with an open programming architecture and/or supported by a professional services group to allow you to develop new leading market applications.
Bundle services also allows you to offer the customer additional savings through bill consolidation, cross-subsidization and it can help reduce churn by introducing additional inertia to movement.
Manage Your Network
Ensure that you do not need to over-commit during the initial deployment stages so select a solution that can grow with your needs and can properly scale for your organization.
Ensure that your solution is redundant and resilient-- as a primary component of your business you need to ensure that you plan against single points of failure
Ensure that you address security for your network using a SIP aware firewall or a Session Border Controller. As more and more communications travel over IP there will be a greater incentive and reward for unscrupulous and nefarious parties.
Manage your revenue/cost
This especially applies to the Prepaid market where revenue arrives weeks or months ahead of cost and in a rising market you may get away without being as diligent about prudent fiscal management but in a declining or stagnant market the wave catches up and that is where providers drown.
Treat your Customers like Customers
Track customer issues and look for trends that may need to be addressed by marketing, documentation and/or the call flow.
Provide knowledgeable, informed and empowered customer support representatives to manage customer issues.
Encourage viral adoption with bonuses, money back guarantees, referral programs, and VIP programs that encourage and reward usage and loyalty.

12. Summary
Capitalize on the Benefits of Broadband Connectivity and Voice/Video over IP
Augment Declining Revenues with New Applications and Services
Eschew Walled Gardens for Open Networks
Leverage Existing Infrastructure and make Judicious Investments in Next-Generation Technology
Embrace, Respect and Cherish Your Customers
VoIP is displacing TDM at a phenomenal rate and it will continue to exert tremendous downward pressure on local and long distance rates. As rates asymptotically approach zero or become subsumed by flat rate or bundled pricing plans it will eventually become a loss leader. In addition, increased demand for voice services will not be sufficient to offset the decline in overall pricing and revenues are going to be shared over more and more providers as IP networks do what they do best which is obliterate geographic boundaries.
Providers need to augment declining voice revenues with new applications and services. Companies like iotum and GrandCentral (now owned by Google) are starting to lead the way to more integrated and user-centric service but these solutions need to be more pervasive and intuitive as well as be entrenched in our access points rather than layered on top of them.
We need to eschew walled gardens for interoperable networks if we have any hope of reducing the significance of the PSTN. Proprietary technology and protectionist tactics have no place in the communications network of tomorrow. We need to work together in trusted, federated and broadly interoperable networks. Leverage your existing infrastructure and make judicious investments in next-generation technology that is readily adaptable to the ever changing market and that allow you to offer differentiated services that attract and retain customers and avoid having to compete solely on price.
Also remember to embrace, respect and cherish your customers to your mutual benefit.

13. Contact Details 555 West Fifth Street 30th Floor Los Angeles, CA 90013
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The following are my contact details, should you wish to contact me to discuss anything in today’s presentation.
I wish you all the very best in your business endeavors and I look forward to speaking with you very soon over a presence based, user-centric, service rich and video enabled communications network.