[VOIPSEC] An issue of trust?

[Michael Slavitch]

There seems to be lots of thoughts on pine needles and trees here with
little thought to the value forest.  Until there is end to end identity,
security and trust you cannot monetize the session.  The session itself no
longer has value as it is a commodity, so the only value left is
monetization and applications that run over the session.

Skype has monetized the session.  This puts them at a distinct advantage vs.
the telcos and the service providers. Both the call and the overlay network
are now commodities with little value with implicit security and
encryption.  They are the equivalent of protocol stacks and device drivers
for the real value, which is the transaction that runs over the session.

My mother uses Skype.  I very much doubt that she will ever understand or
care about H.235. She is 75 years old and very Ukrainian and barely speaks
any English, but once I set up PayPal on her account she can send money to
her grandchildren end-to-end, during a video call, and the kids are well
trained enough to smile and say thank you, which is what she wants as their
part of the deal.

She does know what eBay is, she uses it all the time to both buy and sell
tchotkes.  Like Phil Zimmerman and zPhone, eBay and Skype understand the
real problem at hand is not a protocol problem but a trust and usability
problem.

eBay/PayPal/Skype are not competing against telcos, they are competing
against settlement houses and banks that depend on IMS.  They have set the
benchmark without need for massive IMS infrastructure. Skype's total staff
is around 200 or so people, their infrastructure can be implemented on a few
servers.  If they needed more people or more infrastructure they couldn't
pull it off.

To compete with H.235 you need a massive investment in infrastructure, an
immediate cost sink that cannot be recovered.

Note what has happened:

1.  CPU/RAM is now a commodity.
2.  Bandwidth is now a commodity.
3.  Encryption is now a commodity.
4.  Long term store is now a commodity.
5.  Spectrum is a commodity.
6.  End-to-end monetization is now implemented by a proprietary vendor and
is available for wide consumer use.

I firmly believe that what we will call P2PSIP will offer the same
capabilities using open standards, with security and identity federation
being automated commodities supporting the real value, which is the
transaction.  It will have to have all this to compete.

Regards

M