Jeff Pulver

Your VoIP Stocking Stuffers: News and Tidbits at the end of the year

Pete Wylie — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:33:39 -0500

> PEERLESS NETWORK SELECTS SONUS

> Jeff Pulver lists 12 clever things to do with VoIP for the holiday season.

> From Idaho, Lessons Learned in Finding a Solid Home VoIP Provider

> Genachowski to be new FCC Chaiman?

> BroadSoft and Sylantro - Thank you, Mr. Off-the-record

> AT&T rolls out U-Verse for SMBs

SPOTLIGHT: Jeff Pulver's one degree of Obama separation

Doug Mohney — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:13:11 -0500

Currently on the social media bandwagon, purple pundit Jeff Pulver may want to create a new Facebook category of "VON Alumni heading for the White House." While Pulver met Barack Obama at a fundraiser, he's likely to have less access than one-time VON keynoter and Obama adviser/contributor/transition team leader Reed Hundt, frequent VON speaker and FCC Chairman short-list member Blair Levin, and VON speaker/VON Magazine columnist Kevin Werbach.

In a blog note posted on November 14, Werbach said he had been named "co-lead of the FCC agency review team for the Obama-Biden Transition." He previously served as Counsel for New Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission from 1994-1998.

Vonage

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:13:47 -0500

Founded: 2001

Status: Suffering a death of a thousand cuts

What does it do: Independent VoIP service provider

Website: www.vonage.com

VoIP trivia fans know that Vonage origins have a link to Jeff Pulver's "Min-X.com" voice minutes futures exchange. Pulver apparently sought out Jeff Citron as an investor and, instead, ended up investing in Vonage at the start-up stage when the smoke cleared.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, where do we begin to document the turbulent pot-hole-filled road Vonage has been on? The company's appetite for capital has been ginormous, sucking down $658 million in VC money and private debt before going public. Its IPO raised around $531 million with an offering price of $17 a share, but the company fumbled the way it sold shares to its own customers, resulting in a lawsuit.

Speaking of lawsuits, Vonage has been successfully sued for patent violation by Verizon ($120 million), Sprint ($80 million), and AT&T ($39 million). (Nortel also sued on patent violations, but lost; draw your own conclusions).

In its latest adventures in finance, the company managed to work out a deal to refinance $253 million in debt with Silver Point Finance after four tries. This wasn't enough to get the stock price above a buck, so the NYSE sent over a notice of delisting if the price doesn't come back up within six months.

However, Vonage has yet to escape its three chronic diseases - financial losses quarter after quarter, a churn rate stuck at 3 percent per month, and Captain Insano marketing expenses of $272.24 per subscriber. If a typical customer is paying you $24.99 per month and you have to knock out $10 per month for operational expenses (like providing the service and billing him), that gives you a payback of Way Too Long.

Pulvermedia (including VON events & VON Magazine)

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:44:07 -0500

Founded: 1997

Status: Died March 2008.

Cause of Death: Multiple injuries, some self-inflicted

What did it do: Initial rallying point for the VoIP ecosystem.

Website: See below

The VON events were where VoIP geeks went to network, do deals and play at one of the evening parties hosted by purple-wearing founder Jeff Pulver. And what parties they were, with bands such as the Counting Crows, the Goo Goo Dolls, Heart, Huey Lewis and the News and Liz Phair headlining in venues intimate enough for you to get to the front of the stage and actually see the performers without a $300 ticket.

<sigh>

At some point during the past three years, Jeff Pulver's muse shifted from VoIP to social media, online video and Israeli start-up companies. New management came in to operate the pulvermedia empire at the same time vendors started spending less money at the shows.

Maturity soon set in, and the new management got an investment of $11 million in June 2007 from TICC Capital Group, structured as senior secured notes with warrants. By March 2008, TICC's SEC filing reported that pulvermedia had stopped paying interest on the debt, forcing TICC to write off $10.6 million; TICC managed to claw back about $1 million in cash about a quarter later.

More dramatically, TICC seized the assets of pulvermedia during Spring VON 2008 and shut the company down, leaving vendors in the lurch and devoted followers gnashing their teeth. How did TICC get the right to do this? Don't pay interest on your warrants, warrants convert over into stock, TICC maybe gets enough stock to control the company. And senior notes put TICC at the front of the line for repayment of any debt.

Latest word is Virgo Publishing bought the VON trademarks and domain names and is trying to launch a September 2009 event in Miami using the VON name. The new logo has no purple anywhere in sight.

(Full Disclosure: Doug Mohney worked for pulvermedia as a contributior and ultimately editor-in-chief of VON Magazine.)

SPOTLIGHT: VON, Pulver move in separate directions

Doug Mohney — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:15:57 -0400

As Virgo Publishing attempts to bring back the VON brand in a magazine and shows, original creator of the franchise Jeff Pulver has moved on to embrace social media.

A whois.net search for von.com and voneurope.com indicates Virgo Publishing picked up the domain names around September 19. Within the telecommunications space, Virgo currently puts out Phone+ and xchange magazines. One source said Virgo intends to resurrect the VON trade show and publish a magazine of the same name.

Meanwhile, Jeff Pulver has moved to the Next Big Thing. Pulver is actively cultivating Israeli high-tech start-ups these days and building a new franchise around social media; in his blog he indicates he will be producing a social media seminar series around the United States and also has plans for a "special UnConference event" in the works.

At its height, Pulvermedia put on large VON shows in the spring (San Jose) and fall (Boston) in the U.S. and a yearly European event. In April, the operating company abruptly closed its doors and left a vocal community of attendees and enthusiasts wondering what happened.

SPOTLIGHT: A Phweet conspiracy?

Doug Mohney — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:12:29 -0400

Twitter users can now VoIP directly to their contacts via broadband using a new service called Phweet. Chronic bloggers Andy Abramson and Jeff Pulver tossed up posts for the new service within 24 hours.

Pulver, a big lover of social media these days, embraces Phweet as a natural extension of Twitter.

Abramson pulled a bigger rabbit out of his hat, setting up an in-flight call with a journalist onboard an American Airlines Aircell demo flight. Andy says Phweet is written in Adobe Flash, so unless Aircell wants to filter all Flash traffic - a very ugly prospect given how embedded the software is around the web - Phweet and other Flash voice services will be an open hole to conduct in-flight voice calls.

For more:
- Jeff Pulver's little Phweet call
- Andy Abramson establishes an in-flight VoIP call with Phweet.

Related articles
McCain and Obama Twitter Up
Howe: A Telco 2.0 Technology Primer

Free World Dialup no Longer 'Free'

Doug Mohney — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:05:28 -0400

Over the weekend, the one million registered users to Free World Dialup (FWD) were told that free is no longer free. After 12 years of free operations, users will be asked to pay $30 per year as of September 1, 2008. The announcement also named Daniel Beringer, as CEO of FWD.

In an email sent out on Friday by FWD founder and VoIP pundit Jeff Pulver, the $30 yearly fee is being justified as a "magic number" that is only "10%" of the cost of Vonage's unlimited usage plan. However, Pulver has disavowed any connections with old style telephony and the PSTN, vowing not to chase per-minute arbitrage for lower-cost long distance calling as Skype, Jajah and others have done. According to the blog post, FWD "will provide no services to facilitate interconnection with the telephone network," which means the company won't support "-In" and "-Out" connection type services to the PSTN. It also won't have to worry about 911 and CALEA obligations.

It will be interesting to see how well FWD's business model will work in practice. In theory, users could pay $30 to be able to connect to a large number of SIP networks for voice, IM, and video calls. But it is only a matter of time before one or more of those networks start asking for interconnection charges since the "Free" has gone from FWD. Vonage has already nixed FWD's free calls on its network.

The blog post also cites Vonage as a successful business model on track to generate nearly "$1 billion," but this reporter isn't sure if that's a good analogy. Vonage is still burdened with significant debt due to high per user marketing costs and its services are also designed as a plug-replacement for PSTN, with the ability to reach any number anywhere, including 911.

For more
- Pulver FWD $30 per year manifesto blog

Related articles:
Beringer has pontificated on Lights Out for Phone Networks
FWD may have The Telco Skype Killer to fear