Unedited Session Transcript

You Haven't Seen 'Nuthin' Yet! VoIP Technology

Tom Smith, Jim Crossley, Randy Brown, & Sheila Hitchen

4/10/03

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: Can everyone hear me all right? And see me. Good morning. I wanted to welcome you all to our presentation. In case you're not sure about what presentation you're attending, this is you haven't seen nothing yet, VoIP technology and why this is just the tip of the iceberg. I want to introduce myself, my name is Tom Smith. I'm the president and CEOB of the Taj Group, Inc. We're out of Portland, Oregon, working in telecommunications.

>>: Hi, I'm Sheila Hitchen. I work in Portland, Oregon, if you have state coordinators for the deaf in your state, that's what I do. I have been working with Tom off and on on technology stuff for years now, excited to have him here. We also have Randy Brown.

>>: Hi there, I'm a CISCO certified engineer, been in the networking field for 25 years, and hopefully I can add a little knowledge without getting too geeky on you.

CHRISTINE>>: On the video outside of the building, is that in Vancouver, Washington?
>>: Yes.

CHRISTINE>>: We have Jim Crossley on standby when we get into the demo part of the demonstration. We have a few glitches over here, but we should have it cleared up by the demonstration period.
What we're going to talk about today is we're looking back on technology, where we have come from, and then we're going to get into telecommunication today, part of the deaf and hard-of-hearing telecommunications and an overall view of voiceover Internet Protocol, and then the next stage coming soon, using existing and emerging technologies in new ways, and then, again, closing up, looking ahead, where the future leads.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: Before we get started on the looking back, a couple of announcements, there will be evaluation forms we're asking you to fill out and return to the back. If you need CRC or RID certification credit the evals are in the back, the CRC and RID are at the registration table. Additionally, if you want an FM system, they have them available at the registration table and you can use them throughout the length of the conference. Back to the presentation.

We start off with the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, many people know, some people don't, was the child of a deaf adult. His mother was deaf. He was also married to a deaf woman. Given the time and location where he was, there was a real strong oral push in his life. He was fascinated with sound, he was a musician, researcher related to sound and sound quality and obviously an inventor. March 10, 1876 was the date that he invented the telephone.

He invented it by mistake. What he was trying to do was trying to make a multiple telegraph machine, a machine that would be able to do several messages at once. And he came up with the telephone instead.

In 1878, just a few years later, the first telephone was installed in the white house and the first call was made to Bell himself. He was about 13 miles away. The first thing president haze said to Mr. Bell is please slow down, and with those of us with a hearing loss and dealing with the telephone, that was a precursor of difficulties we would have with the telephone even up to now. I think it's ironic the first thing the president said was slow down.
In the days before TTYs, the deaf community especially would be dependent to drive across town to set appointments, depending on hearing family members, neighbors, friends, whoever, to make phone calls. Hoping to meet up with deaf friends at the deaf club or at the school for the deaf, not quite sure knowing everybody was going to be there, because there was no way to use the telephone like the hearing community could. There was a lot of dependence and isolation.

Since the TTYs came out and the relay service came, you can call through the relay to set up appointments. There is independence there. You can call deaf friends TTY to TTY and hearing friends VCO to VCO. You're not required on hearing people to make the phone calls, but you are to use the relay service. Since the Internet came in, there has been huge huge jumps in access and equality of telecommunications for the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. Online relay services, there is several available. You can just type on your computer, instead of typing on your TTY. You can do video relay, which as a side note we're working on getting up in the exhibit high. If you haven't seen it or tried video relay, it should be workable later this morning, hopefully. That means you can sign instead of having to type. If you're an ASL user, you're not dependent on making sure you are typing in English, you can use your native language.

Additionally, web cam to web cam chats. You can communicate directly with friends, don't have to go through the video relay. Incidentally, hearing people use web cams a lot because they can see facial expressions and hear voice at the same time. It's an equalizer. Instant messaging and email has taken the world by storm, it is fantastic to connect with people and get information back and forth quickly, the way I can with a hearing person on the telephone, without the problem, can they hear me, am I speaking slowly enough, that sort of stuff. With the advent of the Internet and involvement of deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, the involvement and the ability to set your own course and not be waiting for someone else to help you out has hugely improved, and isolation has really reduced.

The phone has changed just a bit since Mr. Bell came up with it. We now have direct connect TTYs, we have TTY pay phones, we have voice carryover phones, you can do two line phones, the person you're speaking to doesn't know there is a relay operator on the line. We have CapTel, it's a voice recognition system in trial around the country, and hopefully available throughout the country soon. There is hearing aid compatible cell phones, and every day there is something new.

There are still problems. Communication technology for deaf and hard-of-hearing people isn't optimal. Cell phones are not all hearing aid compatible. There is problems with coverage, there is problems with getting information to the people who manufacture the equipment and to get the industry to respond to the needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The hearing community still does not get the relay, they still think it's a telemarketing call or, you know, it's somebody trying to set an appointment, they don't understand it, there is a lot of hang ups. Still that problem. And specialized equipment is still expensive. Without vocational rehabilitation, without a job that pays well, without a employer that is willing to help. If you need any specialized equipment or telephone, that can be pretty high. That's still a problem. So, one potential solution is what we're here to talk about today. I'm going to hand it over to Tom.

CHRISTINE>>: One of the areas we're going to be talking about, is what is VoIP? Voiceover Internet Protocol. First of all, let's us understand what Internet protocol is.

CHRISTINE>>: IP is normally used by computers to transfer data and files between computers. Each computers router and so forth on the network and Internet must have a unique IP address. This IP is like your home address but only for your computer or other electronic host using the Internet.

For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address. IP addresses consist of 32 bit number and represented by the dot-decimal system. There are four decimal digits separated by three dots. Each digit is allowed the range of 255 and the range corresponds to 8 bits which is one byte of information. I won't get into too much of that. That's a quick summary how the IP address is set up. Next page. Voiceover IP or VoIP is a blanket description for any services that deliver standard voice telephone services over the Internet. VoIP is considered by some as the next evolutionary step in the transmission of voice.

Very brief history, in the beginning all telephones were analog. A telephone conversation required a pair of copper wires to carry the speech path. Both sides of the conversation were carried on a single pair.
This was okay for short distances, however, the longer the telephone cables, the louder you had to speak. Eventually the distances became too great for shouting and electronic amplification had to be added. This requires two pairs of wires. Since the two speech paths require separate amplification, one for the mouthpiece and one for the ear piece, a signaling system is also required to provide routing information for the call, the dialing number, and whether the handset is on or off hook, the signaling adds a further pair of wires.

Thus if 200 people in town A wanted to talk to 200 people in town B, 600 separate wires are required. This might be great if you own a copper mine, but comes up to heavy wires. This land line is referred to the public switched telephone network, PSTN.

Digital telephony transmits information in binary format. They are simple, reliable, have enormous capacity and above all they are cheap. Digital telephony converts from an analog signal to digital signal. Analog CDs store in analog format. Once the speech has been digitized, transmission and switching becomes a lot simpler. Both analog and digital telephony, rely on a fixed transmission path being opened at the start of a call and being kept free of all other traffic for the duration of this call. At the end of this call the path is closed.

For example, analog telephony is the reserving the whole length of a road from A to B when the car at one time is only occupying a small part of the road on its journey from A to B. VoIP mirrors how roads work in the real world. Where only a small section of the road is reserved for the single car and on the crowded road each driver knows where he came from and where he is going. Each car is like a packet of data which has a starting IP address, and a -- can't talk today -- destination IP address. The red car is traveling from A to B. In front of it is a blue car traveling from C to D and behind it is a car traveling from E to F. Each car completes its journey without impeding on the other cars on the road. One of the attractions of VoIP is that it can make more efficient use of transmission path.

Having troubles with my pages. No problem.

The advantages of VoIP. Single network infrastructure. Only a single cable is required to the desk for both telephone and data. You are eliminating separate telephone wiring as required in PSTN installations. VoIP uses soft switching, which utilizes most of the required PBBX, reducing the cost of installation, infrastructure and the maintenance cost once installed.

Simple upgrade path. VoIP Gateway and PBX technology is software based. It is easier to expand update and work better. Bandwidth efficiency. VoIP can compress more calls into available bandwidth than regular. VoIP as efficiency can offer substantial savings for individuals and companies with multiple locations, being charged distance times bandwidth for communication links.

To begin understanding VoIP, let's look at a simple VoIP call. Consider two VoIP calls connected via IP network. In our example both VoIP calls are connected to a LAN, but it could be over the network, in our example on number 1, Sally's phone has an IP address of that particular number, you can see it underneath her, Bill's phone is just a little bit different number on the end. IP addresses uniquely identify the telephones. Both the telephones are configured to use a is it the call H 323. Bill wants to talk to Sally and his phone knows the IP address of Sally's phone. Bill lifts the handset and dials Sally. The phone sends a call setup request packet to Sally's phone. The call setup message from Bill's phone contains information about the phone's capabilities using a procedure called fast call setup. Sally's phone uses this information to decide how to respond to the call setup message.
Sally's phone examines the call setup message, decides whether it's compatible and therefore able to answer the call. Unlike analog calls, it can decide to reject, deflect, ignore or answer the inbound call. Sally's phone responds with an alerting answer which informs Bill's phone it has reached Sally's phone and sends ringing messages. He gets the phone sound and she answers. When Sally there is a connect message and there is a continuous sending of UDP packets from each phone containing Bill and Sally's conversation. Each phone sends about 30 packets a second. Each digitally encoded packet contains 300ths of a second of speech. When Bill puts the phone down, a disconnect message is sent to Sally's phone and responds with the release message. Both phones quit sending the packets and the call is terminated.

Traditional analog telephone systems convert sound into a veritable voltage, and this varying voltage is goes to the end and converted by the ear piece. VoIP takes a different approach. Bill speaks into a mouthpiece of his phone, the phone chops Bill's voice into 30 mill seconds sound. Each of these sounds is converted to a packet of data. It is given a number, time stamp and wrapped into a UDP packet before being dispatched to Sally's phone via the Internet or network. When Bill is silent waiting to Sally's replies. Bill's phone sends a packet every 181 milliseconds and the packet is smaller. Each 30 second of sounds has an Internet address that routes the phone. We all agree on the quality of the VoIP call. The speech encoders at each end, the amount of bandwidth, and the high use, you get the phone being used by a lot of people and you get high IPQs. Jitter is the handling of the phone call changing from millisecond to millisecond. They take longer to route when the data increases. This variance is known as jitter. As an occasional rule, the lost packet will not affect the call, but lose 5 in a row an entire word might be loss and this might be a problem.

Talk about how the two systems converge. Randy is going to explain that a little better.

MARK SCHWIER>>: Thank you, Tom. I have to get my mic on. I love this technology.

CHRISTINE>>: Only if it works.

MARK SCHWIER>>: Okay. Everybody awake? We're going to have some fun now, because we're going to talk about -- Tom has built the basics and foundation of how this stuff works. Now we're going to talk about what we can do with it and kind of some of the future. Voice data, why two different systems? The basic answer is voice came first, voice phone systems came first, and then ironically when companies like IBM came out with their main frame systems and wanted to connect New York to Seattle, they looked for a way to do it and there was the voice net work, the phone network was there, so they started using that. That's kind of why they are separate and they have been separate. You talk to any CEO or CFO, especially the CFO of a company, and their biggest problem with voice and network is I'm paying two sets of people to run those nets works, why do I have to do that? The answer now is they don't. Some of the advantages of converging we'll talk about in a minute. The key to converging voice and data together is the Internet. The Internet is ultimately the key to that.

As you know, voice came first, needed to connect, using the voice network circuits to connect to computer systems. Some of the first connections made between two main frame computers, to give you an idea of how big the bandwidth was, today we think nothing of getting a dialup Internet connection with about 56 K of connection. That would be equivalent to about a two-lane highway, but back then when IBM connected their mainframes, it wasn't even a dirt road, it was a path in the forest. It was a simple dialup connection and the speed they call 300 baud. If you remember back that way, when we had the green screen we worked off on a main frame, it was letter by letter it came on the screen, that's the initial speed the connections were connected at. The phone gave them connectivity but not very high speed connectivity.

One of the problems of running voice on one network is it's costly because you're running that separate cost. The average business owner that needs to connect two locations for voice, they have a choice, they can either pay long distance to get to the other location or they can put in a dedicated what they call T 1 line, and the T 1 line has only 24 talk paths between the two locations. And the T 1 line can cost $1,000 a month for that connection. And run management costs if you have followed CISCO and Lucent and other people, they want us to buy new systems to use their systems. The other problem business owners and we in general run into is running data on separate network. Corporations have separate network for their data.

If we bring the two systems together and some of the technology, voiceover IP being the key, allow us to bring the two systems together, we have a single network cost, but we have the added thing where technology replaces people. There is an ongoing joke in the voice and data industry today that the data people need to learn voice and the data people need to learn voice. It's one network in the future. Question here?

>>: Given my ignorance here, can you tell me what data is opposed to voice?

MARK SCHWIER>>: Great question. As we talk about digital voice Tom talked about, it is data, it's voice data but runs on a separate network. Data can be emails, it can be corporate accounting application, in the insurance industry it's all the insurance tables and everything passing back and forth. Data is anything that has to do with information exchange.

>>: The written word, is that what you mean?

MARK SCHWIER>>: Yes, it's the written word, that's a good description of it. To give you an idea, give you a basis of how much data, bandwidth, whoopee, one K of bandwidth, how much is that? One K of bandwidth is one page of written word. One megabyte, which is T 1, is 333 full pages of the written word. Use that as a basis, I have a dialup to the Internet and I have 56 K. And it gives you an idea how much bandwidth you have for that. The only thing putting both voice and data on the same platform, it allows you to do applications. Both my mother and father-in-law are deaf and I have watched them deal with technology. One of the things, he goes to the store and he's going to get milk and bread and she sits at home and realizes she also needs peanut butter. How does she get the message to him? She doesn't. She can't. He has to be intuitive to know I better check with her, give me a TTY phone booth, and he doesn't, and he walks in with the groceries and she says I needed peanut butter, too. When you bring voice and data together, you add applications. That's a way of communicating. Now he walks into a store and the store has a wireless Internet connection and he's carrying around a PDA with a wireless card in it. He gets a message pops up, don't forget peanut butter. She was able to communicate. That is done by bringing voice and data together. That's what voice and data being brought together does.

Next slide. So really, you think, okay, he's in a grocery store, how did he get data, how did he get the data connection in the grocery store? The Internet is the key to that. The grocery stores aren't going to connect their store to store communications from their internal functions to my mother-in-law's phone at home so she can ask for peanut butter. Internet becomes the key for that. If you talk to most companies, they have an Internet connection. Starbucks has WiFi, and we'll get into it. Starbucks allows you to walk into with a PDA or anything that uses WiFi, and communicate to anybody in the whole world. We will see we are using it for video, actually now testing video on the PDA. They are $500 or $600. Dell just broke the mold, that's $200 and a $50 card. It's affordable.

True worldwide communications are available when you bring voice and data together and it empowers the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, things we can do with that network we could never do with separate networks. Using the VCO and the translation services, the phone network is no good to us in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and that is extremely limited. You heard me mention a minute ago, WiFi, not hi-fi, not like hi-fi stereo systems and everything in the '70s. But WiFi, connect anywhere there are other WiFi certified products. Speed, flexibility, and freedom. We are seeing it more and more so you can walk into a Starbucks, for example, get on the Internet and run any application you want. I myself as an engineer, will go from one customer site, I've got a little time between customer sites, I'll go into Starbucks and check my email. Send files, just like I'm in the office.

Next slide.

The future is happening right now around us. How many of you have heard what McDonald's is up to? Anybody? How many like McDonald's value meals? We got some healthy eaters. McDonald's is doing test marketing now in a few cities and you walk into McDonald's with your PDA and wireless card in it, if you buy a value meal, you get a hour of free Internet. The point being, in the last year we have seen WiFi hot spot connectivity like Starbucks and McDonald's increase 10 fold. In a year we will get WiFi spots commonplace, in your bank, in your grocery store, Wal-Mart, everything. How are we actually going to do that? This is a busy slide, but if you look at the bottom, the bottom is what I was talking about, where can we connect to the Internet? To give us mobility and connectivity we need to be able to connect to the Internet wherever we're at and whenever we are at. McDonald's is doing it, hotels are doing it, Marriott just announced they are doing it in every single hotel. If you go to the Sheraton Hotel, counsel in Tacoma. There is nowhere in that building you cannot get on the Internet with a WiFi connection. It is completely wireless in that facility. The hot spot operators, there is companies out there, like alpha tech and the Taj Group, that are actually building out these networks today. The real key is -- does anybody remember cellular 1? They owned a large part of the industry some years ago, they built up the network and sold it off. The third line is the aggregate ore. They are buying up all the WiFi hot spots and we as uses have the true mobility. City of Portland Oregon is in the process of doing an evaluation to put wireless hot spot in the entire downtown area. Anywhere you're at in downtown Portland Oregon, you'll be able to get on the Internet through the citywide free network for Internet. I'm working with the man developing that for the city of Portland. And there is at the top the end users. You get a feel how this is building, we have to get all the locations together, bring them in, allow us to talk between them. 3 weeks ago there was a group of people that left Seattle in a care van of cars, they had wireless connectivity between each other in 6 cars, and they drove all the way down to San Francisco communicating with each other. They didn't have connection with the Internet but they could communicate with each other, play games, write emails, all the way down the freeway. When the aggregators do that, you'll be able to communicate with each other and be connected to the Internet at the same time.

What we can't do today? We can't do video conferencing. When we wrote this slide this week, we couldn't do video conferencing from a PDA. Some of the gentlemen here today we have been working with will be showing you video conferencing and ways of using video conferencing, we have started beta testing of bringing the video conferencing to a PDA. If you needed a interpreter you could have video coming in. Video relay from the PDA is coming. Mobile communications with video relay, those things are coming. All of those things depend on voice and data coming together as one network and the Internet becoming that back bone underneath.

>>: Can I ask a question?

MARK SCHWIER>>: Yes.

>>: Is PDA what I would call a Palm Pilot?

MARK SCHWIER>>: Yes. The challenge there, ma'am, and -- I don't know if there is any Bill Gates haters in here, or Microsoft, but the challenge is Palm has gone down the road to the business user, where it's calendar, to do, things like that. Not application other than cool games you can play on Palm. They haven't built in a operating system that can do things like video conferencing. The pocket PC like the Dells have the underlying Microsoft operating system, so the features are there, applications are being written to use these features. Any other questions?

>>: What about the interference problem? Would all these hot spots and other problems have hearing aids and assistive listening devices and cochlear implants that are beginning to blow up?

MARK SCHWIER>>: That is a great question. Really is a great question. One of the things that the Federal government has done is there is licensed and unlicensed frequencies. Licensed frequencies, only certain applications and users can use the frequencies. The WiFi technology, which is 80211 B technology is a free open frequency and not being used by any other system like you described. The only interference we see with WiFi is distance. You get too far away from the access point, which is the wireless connection to the Internet, you lose signal. That's the only thing holding back WiFi being mobile wherever you go. They cover a very small area. So until the infrastructure builders get enough WiFi out there and they overlap and will talk to each other. They are building the WiFi spots for money and they don't like talking to each other. Kind of like the cellular industry is, they don't like to pass calls between each other but they do it and charge each other for it. That's going to happen with wireless hot spots. And it will. The applications that we have will be tremendous. After the break we're going to have some demos and we'll show hands on. And some of the other things -- I've been in the industry 25 years and what I know is coming now that the pieces are there blow me away. That doesn't even talk about what's in the labs today being developed. I'll give you a little peek and then we'll take a break. Imagine driving by the car dealership and it reads your diagnostics and it gives you an email at home, you need to come in and get that fuel filter changed because it's really clogged.

>>: Just security, and I'm sure it's already been addressed, especially Portland is looking at citywide, but I think the group would like to know about the securities of being able to send things off remotely and can they be snatched?

MARK SCHWIER>>: That's a good question. If I were to take the PDA with the wireless card. The question is security, and I'm talking my corporate network, checking email, passing corporate information back and forth and how secure is that? The key to that, and quite frankly the way the hot spots are wired now, you connect in and go straight to the Internet, there is no security there. Somebody can drive up outside the Starbucks and sniff your connection and they are not doing security. It is user beware and user security. I use VPN, virtual private networking. It's an encrypted past from the wired hot spot through the Internet to my network. That traffic is secured. What needs to happen at the WiFi is at the point of connecting to the WiFi network is it's secured there. The problem is you have a Catch-22 if I secure it so it's lock down secure, I make it very difficult for somebody to walk into a hot spot and reconfigure their device for the network. So they have taken the approach if you need to secure your data, use virtual private networking to do that or encrypt your emails. If you use Microsoft outlook, you can encrypt your emails before sending it. It's user aware.

>>: Are they notifying people of that?

MARK SCHWIER>>: It is in the fine print. And T-Mobile when you hook up -- I read the agreement when I signed up to T-Mobile and Starbucks, it says security is the user's responsibility, we do not guarantee security on the network.

CHRISTINE>>: Any other questions?

MARK SCHWIER>>: Any questions?

>>: How soon is this going to happen? Can you estimate the time?

MARK SCHWIER>>: My best guess --

>>: What's the question?

MARK SCHWIER>>: The question is how soon will we be able to have the mobility we talked about here, the vision to have wireless connectivity like we have cellular phone service today. You still have drops in connection, I'm sure. Me best guess is we'll be seeing community level wireless where you can go anywhere in the city and be on the Internet through the connection, wireless system. You go to Aspen, Colorado, the entire city, the ski slopes and everything are completely wireless. Anywhere in that town and any home in that town you are wireless connected, if you subscribe to the city's service. So it's going to take some time. Cellular took 10 years, and it's still kind of -- if I go through Portland, Oregon, and drive through certain streets I lose my phone call, still today. It will take time.

TOM SMITH>>: Any other questions? >>: When you go to different hot spots, do you have to change configurations or settings?

RANDY BROWN>>: This is a good group, great group, great questions. When I go to a Starbucks --

>>: Repeat the question?

RANDY BROWN>>: I'm sorry, when you go to different hot spots do you have to change your connection whether you go to a different hot spot? With Starbucks you get a user name and password when you sign up, and any Starbucks you go in and it pops up on the screen and it recognizes you. You can go to any Starbucks. The problem is I want to go to McDonald's and use their Internet. That's a whole different log-in setup. I can show you if you want to see it after the break or after the thing today, I can show you how the wireless card software allows you to have a pulldown window. I'm at McDonald's, and pull down window and now I'm connected to the McDonald's. The real challenge is I want to go from the Starbucks to McDonald's and don't lose connection. They have to talk to each other. Somebody has to come in and take control of all the wireless hot spots and make it a seamless network. Kind of like what happened with cellular. You make it a seamless network and that's a challenge. It will take a while. We're already starting to see it. The scenario with the peanut butter, I'm talking to a couple of grocery stores about putting it in there. You got your grocery list at home and put it on your PDA. You walk into window, and it shows you the store layout and the best route through the store to get your product. But, beware, as you're walking down row 8, it's flashing a coupon for a large peanut butter. We're getting there.

>>: I'm assuming, based on what you just said, there is going to be a lot of junk mail, and that's one of the biggest issues of people for email, keep logging on. And I go to Google and still I get popups.

RANDY BROWN>>: The question is will we have the same kind of popup nightmare that we have on the Internet at home and business today. And part of me says for a little while we will see that. But there is a big movement forward with different companies. I don't know if you have seen the different programs out there, popup protector, Norton is putting something out there to stop pop ups. But as soon as they do that another routine is written. It is a battle. If they go to a point where city of Portland wants to provide a free wireless service downtown, it has to be subsidized somehow. That's the challenge. Tom and Sheila and I were talking about, driving by McDonald's it says come on in, we'll give you 20 percent off on your value meal today. You drove by, they saw you.

TOM SMITH>>: We'll take a short break to get set up for the demos. 10, 15 minutes.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: So if you're back about 11:15, 11:20, should be good.
(Brief recess.)

RANDY BROWN>>: Welcome back. Okay. Well, welcome back. We have got know through most of the technical difficulties that technology will give us. This isn't an ideal environment to demonstrate this, but we're pretty excited about partnering with DNA communications and these gentlemen here. They are going to demonstrate a couple scenarios of video conferencing. They are breaking some pretty new ground here and I'll let them explain what that is.

DAVID ADEN>>: Thanks, Randy. My name is David Aden, I'm a managing director of DNA communications. This man is my partner and he's running the presentation from down in front. To give you a little background, DNA communications is a Portland based technology integration firm and we focus strategically on convergence, technologies that enable the breaking down of communications barriers. The whole core of our solution set and what we develop brings equal value to the individual as well as to the enterprise. We're going to take a step back from what I've been talking about and we're going to focus in on one particular aspect of our solution set. We're going to look at the audio-video conferencing set of this and it is a module of our solution portfolio. Randy reverse to convergence in networks and next generation applications and the devices necessary to execute those applications. The converged network, that exists today. The Internet is the highway, it is the way 234 which that information is shared and as we move forward we are going to use the Internet as the fabric, the core that supports this type of application. Really, all you need to set this up is an access Gateway to that Internet infrastructure, DNS connection at your home or corporate network. PC, next generation is hand-held devices and a camera. As we move into convergence there is a couple of things we need to look at. Converged technology is good, but there is a problem when they are together. There is an issue of cross pollination, like Randy said, you can go into Starbucks and it works and not at McDonald's. We are going to do away it that here. We are going to make it so you can take it to work with you, and access at any time, benchmark level of quality that ensures usability to anything. The cost for something like this, and the reason we set it up today is to put the emphasis on how unnecessary the expensive equipment is, $40 web cam, average business laptop and we have a DSL connection here at the auditorium, it's a $5 or $75 connection. This is the setup you would see in your home or take with you on the road and get a similar level of quality or heightened level of quality in a hotel or place of business. I'm going to stop talking and we're going to move over to the application itself. This is the Defero meeting room and in the meeting room you would see at home and you can sit at your desk and assign to another family participant or this is in the business environment. If you need to conduct an interview, business interview or job interview with a nonsigning person, this is a great way you could go to their place of work and using their equipment, open up their laptop, sit at their desk computer, pop a camera up and you believe you can have the interviewer and yourself and a signer from anywhere remotely coming into your meeting and you can participate in that meeting seamlessly. Show that.

As you can see, there is the ability to adjust the size and quality of the video. The audio delay on this is about 300 milliseconds and it's less than half a second. If you're a nonsigning person, as you communicate through the interpreter there is not a substantial delay at all in their communication back to you through the interpreter. What else do we want to talk about?

>>: One thing we see here, we do have kind of a bad screen resolution, if people want to take this aside and look at this, off hand, you can see it on my computer screen and it looks better than on the big screen.

DAVID ADEN>>: I wanted to make a point he was making about the quality of the presentation. What you see here is the granular, that's the result of the Infocus projector. If you want to look at his screen now or after the presentation, you can see it's got much finer resolution, and so the display to the end user on the laptop is pretty nice. This is the two scenarios I see, this type of application often working in, and it's the on the fly bringing in an interpreter, and if you're at home and you want to communicate using video with anyone else outside yourself, which leads myself to access and ubiquity. And there is gaps, there is a WiFi network here, here, and here. With this application, because the Internet is the fabric of this application, what holds it all together, as long as you have an Internet connection, you can invite anyone to this conference. They don't have to be a subscribing member of the service, they don't have to have any special gear. All they need is a web cam and a laptop. You can communicate or invite to communicate with you in an environment anyone who has an access to the Internet, a web cam, and microphone, if necessary. So let's go on to the next room I think is a training module.

>>: Matt and Jim, go ahead and go to the training email.

>>: One thing about the interpreters, where are they stationed, each state or one central area? How do they judge the quality of the interpreters?

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is where are the interpreters, is there a group of interpreters per state or how does it work? This service as it is set up is a core communication service, it's an enabling platform, this is all happening out of network operations center in Portland, Oregon. How you would bring an interpreter into the meeting would depend on the various agencies and services that allow interpreters into meetings today. So if there is a group that Sheila works with out of Portland, pick up the phone and talk to those folks and tell them what you saw today and you want their group, their department to offer translation services via this technology. So the interpreting element, the signing element is not an inherent part of the communication. They are just another participant in the meeting. We are focusing how this could be used in the deaf and hearing impaired community to enable communications more seamlessly. Not inherent part of the communication.
Part of it I'm getting confused with the sprint. Can you use the same camera that sprint uses for this or do you have to use a different thing?

DAVID ADEN>>: I'm unfamiliar with what's going on in the sprint presentation. What I will tell you is this, your requirements as an end user to participate in this conference and everything you're seeing today is an Internet connection, any web cam of any kind, and a desk top or laptop. Those are the only necessary components. The nice thing about this is you have a desk top at home and not a laptop. You're not a mobile person. I go to my place of work, I have a desk top there, attach my web cam, I log into the service online and there is my desk top, there is my computer, there is my Internet at the place of work, and I log in, I bring the service with me at work. I go to a friend's house, want to access it from there, they have a computer, a web cam, they have an Internet, I can access it from there. It goes with you as long as those necessary elements are there.

RANDY BROWN>>: One of the things, I'm familiar with what sprint does. It's more of a standardized service type of video translation service. This allows you to use anyone, anywhere, anytime as your trans later. All they have to have is a happen top or desk top with Internet access and camera and log into this service and be an interpreter. If I know sign language as well as my mother and father-in-law say I should after 15 years, I could be an interpreter for any deaf or hard-of-hearing person, just because I have camera and laptop and access to the Internet and registered user of the service. We're taking that rigid service environment and saying this is the application, this is one of the converged applications anyone anywhere can be the interpreter or receiver of an interpreting service. There is a company down in Vancouver I know of that provides multiple language translation services for the medical community. One of the things they have talked about is being able to use this with their sign language interpreters. They are tied in with how do we do that? Nobody has the equipment. If I want to provide these translation services for Providence, how do I do it? I have to get equipment, they have to get equipment, we have to be able to talk to each other to do video conferencing. This takes that away, you need Internet, camera, log into this web page as part of the -- as user of the service and you can use this to video conference.

>>: I have question. I have grandchildren out of state and on a Sunday evening we set up a web camera. I'm wondering if this is a better technology or what? Because there is no way we can sign, it is -- do I need this system, do I need this software, what?

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is this lady is actually attempting to do this now with existing technology, setting up web cams and communicate with her family on the weekends. And the quality is so jerky and granulated it's inhibiting use and not an application she can use. Do I have a system issue? My answer is probably not. That's why we're here, interesting next generation technology. Can you understand what's going on on the screen, the signing? Can you understand that? Yes? This is exactly what you see at home, well, less granulated because it's not being blown up to a 6-by-6 screen. But that's the same type of quality you're going to get extended into your home on 128 K DSL connection. The other thing we talked about was security. I'm sure that what you say to your family you want to keep private. Business conversation, you want to keep it private. This is 128 bit encryption, browser to browser, so, that goes with you, as well, you're logging in on a windows based or Mac machine, the encryption is inherent? The setup of the connection.

>>: I work at a college and we have firewalls, how would this work if you set it up in an institution where you have firewalls.

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is this gentleman works at a university and they have network firewalls designed to keep out attacks and hackers and typically multimedia communication is blocked by those firewalls. How does it work? This is going through a firewall. We don't open up, for those who know, we don't open up any incoming access ports that could be exploited by the hacker to get in. And you are allowing your staff to view any web page already, we're not expanding your security risk already. This is all part of that ubiquitous solution where you can be at work, your university, let's say, are not set up for the service, you log in at your computer and you can speak or sign with a remote user merely by inviting them. So you now as an individual have control over I think we can invite up to 5 people right now per license. If you're a licensed subscriber, you can have 5 licensed people come in and communicate as long as you like.

>>: Also, even if you have a very open firewall, that is an issue.

DAVID ADEN>>: For those of you who are familiar with network address translation, I'm not going to go into that too far. But with the technologies this lady was describing with your home networking communications and you mentioned with sprint solution, as well, apparently, most corporate environments and even home office environments, home networks, there is some form of network translation, which is this swapping of those IP addresses that we talked about earlier. What this allows you to do is pass through the NAT, it's in essence another security device, passes through the NAT-enabled device seamlessly. That is not an issue.

>>: Can you hold on while we have an interpreter ready. I can't see you.

>>: I just wanted to clarify with you and make sure I had this correct. We could use the system from home and do video conferencing?

DAVID ADEN>>: Yes.

>>: And only if you're using DSL, not the 56 K hookup, is that correct?

DAVID ADEN>>: The answer is yes and no.

>>: And I know there is a group in LA, LA, California, who is using the 56 K and not the DSL.

DAVID ADEN>>: The answer is yes and no. It can work, it does work, it has the ability to work. It's not going to be as seamless and as nice as you're seeing here today. It will work on the 56 K connection. You're only going to be able to tolerate two points of video conferencing. When you get into 128 K DSL connection, you can start bringing in 4 or more participants and you maintain a level of useables and quality. Although it's technically possible, I don't think you would enjoy the experience on a 56 K connection.

>>: Hi, I'm from the office of deaf and hard-of-hearing in Olympia here in Washington state, and I know there is general centers around the state setting up video conferencing and video relay services, with the 56 K I think it's acceptable, we can use it, the speed, the clarity of sign is pretty good, and definitely a 300 K system or up would be better, but looking at this, with a 56 K you could have three or four, you know, five parties connected to that service, and I would expect there would be degenerative picture, you know, problems going on with that with the speed of a 56 K. Is this set up through a DSL line or set up through 56 K? I'm not sure of that, looking at this large screen.

DAVID ADEN>>: I would like to do two things, if you could invite the gentleman at the end of the presentation to come up and take a look at the video monitor we are looking at, it's a lot clearer than is being put up on the screen, and the bright lights affect it as well. It's a lot clearer than represented here.

To your point about bandwidth, if you could go out and show them how you can change the bandwidth. To your issue of bandwidth, we highly recommend the DSL connection, 128 K connection, bring in any number of participants and connect clearly. You could have a 56 K connection and participate, but it's my personal experience there is a degradation in the video quality and audio quality, so if you are participating with people speaking, it's affecting their ability to participate in the conference. But you have the ability to optimize the bandwidth setting. (He is clicking on the screen, see it in the middle).

DAVID ADEN>>: In the middle you see the ability to optimize the setting for DSL, LAN environment, a custom solution, so you can set upstream and down loan streams for anything you want, and there is a modem option for those with 56 K and 33 K modem option and no other option. There is ability to shape the bandwidth for optimal performance. That's all I wanted to speak to. Any other questions?

>>: First to comment that I can see the monitor and when I compare it to the screen, the monitor is great. I could easily understand the signing of the interpreter, but on the screen it is really fuzzy.

DAVID ADEN>>: The lady's comment is from where she is sitting, she can view the monitor and it's great, she can clearly understand the signing and up here on the screen it is granular and hard to understand.

>>: Now that I see the good quality on the monitor of the laptop, I work at a college where we have several campuses, and I'm wondering if it's possible to in some way record the interpretation on a disk, a DVD, videotape, so, for example, having a deaf person having a meeting with their instructor, could we have a set of "notes" in a visual form?

DAVID ADEN>>: Absolutely. I'm sorry, the question was is there a way to do store and forward video. If you're meeting with a counselor at a college and you want to have video notes, signed version of notes of that meeting, is that possible? Yes, absolutely. We're not going to show it here today, but there is a store and forward video element to this solution. Most commonly that's video email, and I think it's limited to -- actually, my mistake, it is unlimited recording time. There is a way to do longer duration store and forward video and store and send to yourself and archive notes of a video with someone.

How does this differ from using like MSN messenger for being able to video conference?

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is how is this different from MSN messenger being able to video conference. MSN messenger is good, Microsoft has done a great job at trying to do what you want to do is chat. When you move into video conferencing, video solutions where the ability to pass through the firewalls and the NAT-enabled devices is difficult, extend the service to multiple people, not just the once on your communication, there is an issue there. And ultimately it's quality. I don't know how many folks have had a great quality session, video session on MSN messenger. I never have. I am not saying it can't happen, but when we set up terms of success here, it was ubiquity, it was -- we want good quality video, and this allows you to use if on a frequent basis. Any other questions?

>>: I don't think one question was answered about what was the connection speed right now.

DAVID ADEN>>: The connection speed right now, we are on the DSL connection now and we are.

RANDY BROWN>>: 640.

DAVID ADEN>>: 640 K DSL connection right now.

RANDY BROWN>>: Is there any way you can downgrade it to 128 now?

DAVID ADEN>>: I'll do Monday's, though. It's 128.

RANDY BROWN>>: Let me zoom in.

DAVID ADEN>>: This is a 128 connection right here. We artificially downgraded the bandwidth with the custom options.

>>: Can other people move around?

DAVID ADEN>>: Have Jim do whatever he's doing? Whoever is there, have them do it.

>>: Right now you're on 128?

DAVID ADEN>>: Yes, that's the setting, that's correct.

>>: So can you have like three other guys moving around?

>>: Matthew is on DSL, as well.

DAVID ADEN>>: We are seeing two participants on 168 K, they are looking at common document, they have the ability to chat and there is video conferencing as well. Have Matt do something.
(He's moving around and waving.) .

DAVID ADEN>>: Is that what you're looking for?

As we move on out of the first meeting room that was just heads, audio-video with the chat feature, we get into application. Some of you folks that are university people, see how this will would integrate into the environment. We have a PowerPoint presentation in the upper part of the screen, chat that can be archived and then the audio-video going on again in a secure environment and so you can share personal communication that you don't want to share in another format. This can be a health document, paperwork of a personal nature, but we have a PowerPoint presentation here. The nice thing about this -- I'm going to move back. What you have is a presenter in the upper right-hand corner, Matthew, is the presenter of the meeting and you have a audience of any number of people. All you people could be logged in at your desk or a conference room and watching the presentation. Not all of you are going to be able to participate in the conference in an audio only environment. So the second box down below could be an interpreter anywhere, she could be at her house, at, you know, Starbucks, Randy's example. And sign into the meeting that way. That way participants that are the deaf or signing people that are not going to be able to take advantage of the audio on the product can have an interpreter there, and again this store and forward can be applied to this. It doesn't have to be a priority one to one.

>>: I think if a lot of interpreters hang out at Starbucks, Starbucks is going to start whittling down the bandwidths.

RANDY BROWN>>: We're at 128.

>>: I'm wondering how much of this can go through a wire his.

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is wireless, how does this solution work in the wireless environment. The 80211 B protocol that Randy spoke to, WiFi, adds 60 milliseconds one way, so you add 120 milliseconds delay on the round trip. For video, you know, you start pushing total delay of half a second in that time. Which to me is where I want my threshold to be, half second delay. Audio quality, again, you have to speak, it is half a second, three-quarters of a second, you have to respond to that. That becomes a environment that isn't necessarily ideal in every situation but it can be pulled off, and we are looking at that very issue as we move forward with the hand-held solution here. So what we intend to do here in the next coming weeks is overcome the coding issue so this can be delivered to the hand-held PC in a wireless environment. But the wireless connection will add a small amount of delay. Any other questions?

>>: Could you do this, for example, for a college website, like have the text explaining about your services and then have an option for different bandwidth to receive a signed interpretation?

>>: The question is, could you set this up on a college web page with information about a service or any information, and then the college to download a signed version of that information at a variety of speeds. And the answer is yes, but it would be done through either a store and forward environment, but as you download it, you can choose, select your download speed. If I am sitting at 56 K connection, I choose 56 K. And my download is taking advantage of the what I have available. If I'm at DSL I set it higher. You the user have total control over that aspect of the communications.

RANDY BROWN>>: Just to comment on that, that's an interesting approach to using the video application. That's an interesting approach to the video application. I can see a lot of applications for that. One of the big things in corporate America, hairy and David are talking about web enabling their web page so if you want to talk to a live operator, click a button and talk to them live. Why can't the deaf and hard-of-hearing have this functionality? You could with this platform. You can do what hearing world is doing in business today. This would be the deaf version of web enabled web page where you talk to a life operator.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: Additionally, if you are doing distance learning, this is perfect. You have the instructor, the interpreter, the PowerPoint thing in there. You could run classes, training in a corporate environment. There is a whole variety of applications but this is perfect for that.
>>: Maybe you could speak to I guess the core platform, the big difference between this solution and other solutions: No client install.

DAVID ADEN>>: We talked a little about the hardware and the connections that are necessary. But we didn't talk what you need to install on the user's machine to pull this off. And the answer is nothing. Which adds or further illustrates the ubiquity of the solution. Once you're in the service, once you have a valid user ID, valid log-in password, anywhere you go that has a computer, camera and Internet connection, you have access to this. I will let you imagine how this can be used in your personal lives. But I want to reinforce the barrier entry for cost is no problem. Most people have a computer. This is a $50 web cam. For colleges and what you have talked to, you might say this is not sufficient. That's fine. You have the resources to pay $200 for a nice camera, you have DS 3 or high speed Internet connection in those environment and this communications platform will support broadcast quality 30 frames a second video and full text audio and we have strived to show today how this is going to look at home and at your place at home, in an ad hoc environment where conditions aren't real, where the camera has to be stood up on a stand to work. We think it works pretty well. Any questions or comments on what I said?

>>: I have a question about the Internet? Can you use like Juneau? That's free Internet?

DAVID ADEN>>: The question is about Internet access providers. Do you have to use a particular access provider, can you use Juneau? This is ubiquitous solution. If you use Juneau to get to the Internet, I don't know if there is a sacrifice of quality through Juneau, but as far as we're concerned, as long as you can get to the Internet and get to our Internet operations center and get established, you're fine. It's any Internet provider, any desk top, any environment, secure firewalls, this will get -- the service will be established. Any other questions? No other questions. So we talked about distance learns applications, we talked about a meeting room application, store and forward video, that came up, wasn't supposed to. Was there anything else that we were -- we're not going to go to the other room. So in conclusion, my droning voice, I'm sure. We have cards in the back and information, go ahead and pick these up, this covers some of the core bullet points I talked about today and as well as provide contact information to myself and Ari, and get us to help you provide a solution. This is for an individual. If you're an individual out there that doesn't represent a business, I want to see what the technology is out there. This is relatively affordable. $75 a month and goes down from there depending on the user population. If you're an individual and you think this is a service that could be used in your life and you could take advantage of, give us a call. We'll make it happen. If you represent a larger institution, it can be scaled in quality and scaled and branded for your university logo, this is look like a university solution, government based solution, we can put a base on this whatever you want. And customizable and we'll work it into your business environment the way you need. Again, security, ubiquitous and low cost or no cost entry.
I don't have anything else to say. Is there anything else before I leave?

>>: She mentioned about distance education, so every student would have to have a subscription to this, as well as the instructor, to be able to use it?

DAVID ADEN>>: In that application, distance learning environment, we have talked to people, the college or the learning center is the customer. They would purchase, say average class size is a hundred. They purchase a hundred licenses. They are the customer of record and as you register for a class, if you want a distance learning option it's 10 bucks extra or whatever. They can use the same seats over and over again. It's not a user ID password and nobody can use it. The point of this is to flex and allow any number of people to come in at your invitation. That's the thing, if you're a home user and I want to invite grandma into a call to sign with me, she doesn't have to pay $75 or $100 a month. She gets an email invite. She clicks on the email and goes to the secure environment and that is all she does. All she has to do is say I allow this communication to occur on her computer and that's it.

>>: To follow up with that, then, if you had like three or four distance learning classes and your school may only have 10 or 15 deaf students, would you buy like a set number of licenses, 50 or 100, and it could be applicable to different classes and different times, so forth?

DAVID ADEN>>: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Those 50 or 100 licenses can be used by any number of students as long as they are not obviously overlapping each other in times. This doesn't have to be an application that you only push out to your deaf or hard-of-hearing community. Specifically, when you want to go back to your university and say, hey, I see this neat application, they might want to write a check for recurring costs that apply to a certain population of the community. Right or wrong, that's their choosing. But this is an application, we haven't focused on this, the audio quality is delay is 300 milliseconds, it is next generation, it's great. You can empower all your students with, give them the power to react with a live instructor, record those sessions and also make provisions for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in your user environment. Any other questions? So you said just to make sure I got this right, you said that I have this software, so I want to connect in with somebody else, all I have to do is invite them. They don't have to have the software and pay $75 a month?

DAVID ADEN>>: There is no software, no install. It's a service. You as a single individual user have the ability to invite up to 5 people at a time. They are nonpaying folks. You can have 5 family members, friends or enemies, talk to them at one time. It's all part of your license and package, is your ID and 5 invitees.

>>: Maximum of 5.

DAVID ADEN>>: That's the way we have structured it.

>>: At one time?

DAVID ADEN>>: Yes. You can revolve who the people are, doesn't have to be the same all the time, but only 5 at one time.

>>: 5 at one time?

DAVID ADEN>>: 5 people, 5 locations, 5 conference rooms whatever at one time.

>>: The firewall, you said you only need to open one outgoing port and no incoming ports.

DAVID ADEN>>: No incoming ports open. You need port 80, to surf the web you have to have that open and there is an outgoing only multimedia port that typically in today's security is open 98 percent of the time.

>>: How is the video coming in?

DAVID ADEN>>: Great question for an engineer, they can answer it.

RANDY BROWN>>: The way I've been working with the service for quite a while, and what I've seen is I've sniffed the connection and it's using a standard web browser port 80 to come back in. And port 80 is open anyway in a firewall for web page traffic. It doesn't have a security problem with back in. You see a lot of those, as net meeting using their engine for video, they have to open ports in both directions through a firewall to get in. They run into a lot of has also, a lot of trouble doing that. This uses outbound, straight out port 80, multimedia comes back in port 80 and you don't have a security issue and it's encrypted traffic. And in an security organization they are comfortable, we have the encryption coming in, don't have firewalls to watch for, it's port 80. It's the best of both world for security and ease of use.

>>: And the reason we may have -- we don't have to open up the ports and the reason that MSN has to open up those ports is that it's pure video conferencing solution, whereas this is a server based

>>: Say that again?

>>: Repeating what I said before, the reason that MSN may have to open up more incoming ports than we do, they have to open up and we do not, MSN is peer to peer based and you have conferencing in your software and the other person has to have the identical software and they communicate together, and this application is server based.

DAVID ADEN>>: I think I have eaten up more than my allotted time up here. I'm going to be in the back if you have any questions or comments good or bad, please feel free, pick up the flyer with the bullet points and contact information, that's on the back table there, as well. Thank you for being a patient audience and I look forward to speaking to you in the back after the conference. Thanks.

RANDY BROWN>>: What we're going to do now is we have got to swap laptop computers on the overhead to show you the next demonstration which is a wireless demonstration of using messaging. We'll get into that and wrap it up by 1 o'clock. If you want to stretch for a couple minutes, walk around, it will take us about 5 minutes to switch the laptops.

(Brief recess.)
TOM SMITH>>: Sheila, invite me in.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: I will. Okay. Hang on.

RANDY BROWN>>: If everybody could take their seats, we're going to get started with the messaging demonstration.
What we're going to show now is we have a temporary hot spot, WiFi hot spot set up here for the show. The area that it covers, the area that it's covering, yes, I'm standing in the back of the reason with a wireless PDA, pocket PC, Sheila is sitting up there, on the screen up there above, she's connected to the lap tap and the DSL connection and I'm on the DSL connection through the WiFi, and we have a network and we have a gentleman Jim Crossley, who is in Vancouver, Washington. I'm going to walk out of the room and go quite a ways down the hallway and I did testing yesterday and we were able to go out to the Key Arena with the PDA and still maintain connection to the wireless Internet. Coverage is pretty good. When you're in a Starbucks and drinking your coffee and on the Internet, the reality is you could be in the parking lot and be there. We don't have an antenna on the access point, we are going off the wireless card now. If I put an antenna on there, I could pretty much cover the Seattle Center in there. To prove it works, I'm going to walk out there and Sheila and I are going to have a conversation.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: I don't know how far the microphone works. Now you get to see how poorly I type. So, it's one of those industrial hazards. And there is Randy. (She typed H-i-y-a).

TOM SMITH>>: Can you still hear me?

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: As you can see, he loves his pocket PC. What he can do is be anywhere as long as he has the access, and I am able to communicate with him, and Jim can share information, just like you would on any other messenger chat and have a three way conversation, bring in as many people as the messenger program will allow. You can share applications, you can do anything you can normally do with a PC that was connected traditionally, whether it's a laptop or desk top, through a standard connection. But because Randy is able to move around, he's not tied down like I am here with the hardware connection.

RANDY BROWN>>: Hello, I'm back. I actual will you went all the way down the hallway to the far end to your right from where you're sitting and maintained connectivity and high speed. I had a good 10 megabit of bandwidth from the wireless into the connection. And I had Internet connection. All the bandwidth available to me, I had the whole time. This is to give you a peek into how you can use the hand-held PCs and talk to anybody anywhere in the world.

I had occasion I was sitting in Starbucks and having a conversation with a gentleman in India and we talking about 20 minutes. I didn't know he was going to call, he just popped up. It will usually take scheduling a time to talk, getting back to the office and time to talk. And with 10 hour time difference that's difficult to do, because of this technology, I can have that conversation anywhere, anytime and that's how it works.

>>: Are you going to leave the hot spot up for the rest of the conference?

RANDY BROWN>>: Great question. Am I going to leave the hot spot up for the whole show? Sheila has asked me and I have agreed we will leave the hot spot up for the whole session. If you want to use it, SSI D, all you need to use it is alpha tech one, A-l-p-h-a-t-e-c 1. I'll be glad to help you, but you can certainly use it.
Now we're going to go back to the slides.
(They are mumbling at each other.)

RANDY BROWN>>: Okay, now we are really going to have some fun. Let me give you a peek into the future.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: Hang on. We're both signing out of our messaging so nobody bothers us, says we want to chat right in the middle of a presentation. It's running down there. -- it's actually already running. There you go.
(They are having fun making it work.)

RANDY BROWN>>: Thanks for your patience on that. Go ahead and go to the next slide. What the future may hold. The whole underlying goal in all of this technology that we're showing you and talking about today is to get to seamless communication. The business world talks about I've got to have an accounting package, I've got to have an inventory control system, in the personal world we have to have our own checkbook, talk to our friends and neighbors, we use the phone as our primary means of communication. If you really sit down and think about it, everything we do every day of our lives is about communications. It's the key to everything we do. We're happy or sad based on how well we communicate. The ultimate goal is seamless communication, using the technology and stuff to do it. The gold is high speed mobile connections with wireless data connections. Whoever we are, whatever our challenges are in life, whatever the obstacles are, we should be able to communicate seamlessly and wherever we are at. That's the goal. Roaming between hot spots is a way to do it. That's where we get the T-Mobile and the McDonald's hot spots between them, you can roam between them. True open communication between the hearing and the deaf worlds. That's a goal. That's an ongoing goal. The goal is to create no barriers, bring all the barriers down.

Some of the technologies that are coming out. Here is a cell phone with PDA built in. Now you have wireless, you have got cell phone for voice communication, but you can also do messaging all on one phone. There are some tests going right now with Nokia and Motorola and Avaya communications, but the phone is my phone and it has WiFi technology and cellular technology on the same phone. The thing there is you walk out of your car into the Starbucks, you're not on the cellular network paying cellular charges, you're on a WiFi hot spot network. When you walk out of that hot spot, you are back on the cellular network. True seamless, mobile roaming communications anywhere, anytime.

Notebooks. 2002, 5.7 percent of all notebooks were shipped with built-in WiFi radios. What somebody is doing with their processor now, every computer, every laptop you buy is coming with wireless technology built in. Right now we have to use cards to do that. The next generation of Dell's axiom system, built in wireless. 2003. Will grow 35 percent. 2005 projected 90 percent. I think 2005 is going to be the year you start to see the roaming mobile wireless to wireless connectivity. Modems and wired Ethernet ports to become standard equipment on laptops after 10 years. WiFi is happening in 2 or 3 years. A year ago I was telling people, WiFi is where it's going. The cellular community out in the cellular phones, have you seen in the last 2 years they have reared to it as wireless communication, and they are trying to take advantage of WiFi and confuse us, the public. They are running scared. PDAs we talked about, many more coming. Dell has broken that mold of cost. I'm a PDA geek. I've had every PDA, Palm or otherwise, that you can have over the last 2 years. Dell's isn't the best but for $199 it's pretty good. You'll be able to have that WiFi, depending on the device, whether it's laptop or desk top or PDA. Next slide. I give you a little peek into this. Here is an interesting one, you pull into the service station and you top up on your data as well as gas. You need new MP3 music files, you get them at the service station. Maybe you feel like from that service station to home you need to listen to a certain person, you get it. If you need update on your emails, Mercedes Benz has a screen on the top line Mercedes and it's voice activated touch screen, you can check your email, voicemail, and soon it will be video. It's going over a cellular connection, and as WiFi becomes dominant, it will be a WiFi connection to do that. Update your information to WALL STREET JOURNAL audio edition. When you pull in at home, you dock with your home wireless network and download information. It can also talk to your car dealership and say here is how my car has been running this week on a scheduled basis when you dock at home, and send that information to the dealership. It can also upload information useful to the dealer. Insurance company, I'm not sure I want to tell the insurance company. How many people know when you rent a car there is a good chance there is GP S tracking built into that car. Have any of you heard of the guy in Florida that rented a car to New York and Florida and he had unlimited mileage inside the state of Florida, and he got a big bill because they knew he drove it outside the state of Florida. >>: I have a question. Does this mean we're going to get automatic tickets, too, for speeding?

RANDY BROWN>>: Let's hope not. Let's hope not. There has been some Federal regulation, on the side bar there, to try to make the three big auto makers put governors on our cars so we can't go over a certain speed. That hasn't happened.

Game Boys, wireless, I have two boys ages 20 and 22 and they beat me every time. I have to wait 3 hours before I get to do it again. They love this idea. Can be anywhere in the world. And digital camera, being WiFi enabled and you take a digital picture in Iraq and it's sent immediately to you or you can send that picture somewhere else. They are using the technology now. They are using WiFi on the embedded reporters and if the defense would admit it, they are using WiFi for their communications between vehicles.

WiFi, that's it, that's a phone on a pocket PC. That happens to be the Avaya phone, it's using a BP N connection, sitting in a Starbucks, and I have used it in my own network at work. I log into my extension at work and my calls come to me there in the Starbucks and I can make calls from there. If I want to call New York from the Starbucks here in Seattle, I'm calling through my company's long distance service, not long distance across. Why? I'm using VoIP into my corporate network to my corporate network and then going out PSTN to the long distance trunk the company has. The day will come, and Tom and TaJ and I are working on communications, can't say too much, but we are breaking ground in one country, they are bypassing the public switch phone system completely. They are going to provide the entire country with voiceover IP wireless connections and then video and messaging. So they are going to empower a nation that has never had this technology before. What's that going to do to their literacy level. What's that going to do to their economy? That's where bringing data and voice together and applications together really goes to.

VoIP, the tip of the iceberg. Back to the tip of the iceberg, what's under the water, the Titanic knew what was under it. There is some land mines, some gotchas some watch-out-fors. I ask you as part of the public to use this technology in the future, help me make sure our government agencies and businesses give us what we want securely, but not put a hand hold on it. Scream loud and long about popups on your Internet. Complain to anybody and everybody on that. The only way it changes is if we scream about it. Otherwise we get hit with it.

TOM SMITH>>: This is a collage, gives you past present and future communications and you can go back to time of early man where feature and hand signals was the form, and then antiquated two cans on a string, to the electronics part of it, and all the way to the future where we are talking about WiFi.
This is where we talk about communication anywhere, anytime, anyhow. It's connected --

RANDY BROWN>>: And the key there, no strings attached.

TOM SMITH>>: Any questions or comments?

RANDY BROWN>>: Appreciate you hanging in there with us this morning and afternoon. If you have any other questions, we'll be around after this also to answer questions. Yes?
>>: Has there been anyone trying a 911 service.

RANDY BROWN>>: Great question. Is anybody trying the 911 service? With that pocket PC with the phone software, that's 911, too. The challenge right there is I'm not sitting at alpha tech in Tigard, Oregon, if I dial 911 on this phone. How does it know where I'm sitting? It doesn't. 911 is still an issue with voiceover IP in that kind of scenario. If I'm in a remote location of the company on the corporate network, location A or B, and it knows I'm in location B and it will sent that information to 911. If you watch what's going on, Federal government is all over the cellular to get 911. The woman who crashed her car into the lake, and she had her cell phone but didn't know where she was, and she had her cell phone, they couldn't get to her in time. And there is a lot of people working on 911 networks when you merge these.

SHEILA HITCHEN>>: There is also questions about where is the handouts. Because we weren't sure how many people were coming, we didn't want to kill a whole forest, and we figured we would collect business cards with email cards. I'm more than happy to email them to you, and additionally we will have the slide show with full speaker notes up on the website you went to get conference information. There will be print proceedings, as well. The quickest way to get the handouts and slides, again, is to get me a business card. I'll be happy to do that for you. Thank you very much. Remember your evaluations and if you need certification, go see the registration desk. There is box lunches available in 15 or 20 minutes in the exhibit room 0-it's in the lobby in front of the Olympic room. Thank you very much, Pam. Cool.
(Session ended at 12:40 p.m.)
(Noon recess.)