Digital Common Sense

We bloggers unleashed a storm of information about TalkPlus today( see here, here, here, here and here for examples.If you don’t believe me, try TalkPlus as a Technorati search term and look what you get.). In reading all the stories we wrote, mine included, what none of us did is really clarify why TalkPlus matters. We didn’t explain what’s really in it for you the end user.  We gave you how it works. We told you about their funding. We told you all the things and analyst or mainstream media outlet wants to hear.

Since I’m a big fan of understanding “what’s in it for me” (the WIIFM approach to buying), I thought it was important to take a little time and explain why it is this announcement excited me more than any other at the ITExpo in San Diego. For me, this was the show stealer at the ITExpo. Not just the show stealer, but second to none. The competition wasn’t even close.

I’m going to intermingle some material from their press kit and my own explanations of why this is HOT as a way of elaborating.

First about the company -

TalkPlus was founded by Jeff Black in February, 2004, with the aim of improving the mobile user’s ability to protect their privacy and improve control over their mobile experience.  In 2006, TalkPlus received venture financing from Menlo Ventures, LLC. The company is currently private.

That doesn’t tell you about their patents. It doesn’t tell you how they’ve worked through FCC processes, but it begs a question. If they began this work in 2004, why are you only hearing about them now, nearly three years later. I’ll tell you. They’ve been working. They didn’t dream this up over the summer and throw a solution together. They’ve been diligently planning and working on a solution for quite a while now. Those efforts show in what they’re bringing to the market

Read the press kit and here’s what you see -

THE TALKPLUS NUMBER
The TalkPlus Number is a single “virtual” number that works on a mobile user’s existing mobile phone. TalkPlus subscribers can both dial out from and receive calls on their TalkPlus number, so subscribers can easily separate their business calls from their personal calls, for example.

Not only can a mobile user have two mobile numbers on a single phone, but the TalkPlus number can be selected from any city in the United States that the customer desires. In this way, professionals who conduct business in multiple regions can use their TalkPlus number to give the impression of a local presence, since callers can see that they are reaching or being reached by a local number.

SAMPLE USE CASES FOR THE TALKPLUS NUMBER

• Small business owners/home office workers who want a separate mobile “office” number and a “personal” number.
• Lawyers who want to separate out clients’ billed calls
• Doctors with clinical practices who want a dedicated number for patients.
• Socially active individuals who want to easily manage dating or activity partners.
• Individuals concerned about privacy, who want to separate their inner circle of friends and family from their casual acquaintances and business contacts.

That sounds a lot like investor-speak, so let me translate based on really digging in and getting some firsthand demonstration. The TalkPlus number is another telephone number. It can be assignedto your cell phone. Now your cell phone can have two numbers, with CallerID working on both. That’s interesting, but not phenomenal. You can have a personal secret number on your cell phone, but there are a couple of other ways you can accomplish the same sort of thing if you’re creative.

But that virtual number can be anywhere. If you’re a foreign student attending college in the US, and recent reports say there are 674,000 of you with active VISAs right now, you can have a phone number on your cell phone in England, Japan, India, Australia. From home, your real home where mom and family are. Yes you can leverage international long distance abritrage to get the cheapest per minute cost to call home. But it also means mom can call you on a local phone call.

This isn’t limited to student. How many workers travel to other parts of the world from their home to work? I knowsome parts of the US are heavily populated with migrant workers in agriculture. I know that many professionals in the medical field come to the US from the Phillipines. I know more people that I can count who have corporate offices in their home country and another part of the world. What about a consultant in Idaho who wants a Washington, DC number to work on goverment contracts with the fed. This market is what we’d call a green field. The opportunities are limited only by our imagination.

You can have a local presence, via a local phone number anywhere. And Caller ID follows that number. Place a call from the UK number and that’s what the person receiving the call will see on their display.

What isn’t intuitive or obvious is that isn’t all. That’s a virtual number. Beyond that there’s aliasing. I’ll give you my personal exapmle for aliasing. I have phone numbers for home, home office, office, personal cell phone (Treo), business cell phone(Blackberry), and a couple of others that I use daily. With TalkPlus aliasing technology I can make them all appear on my cell phone, just like a virtual number. I can make and receive calls with the full presence of my telephone number. If I call on work business, I can place the call from my business number and that’s what the called party will see on their display. In short, the identity of my telephone number is extended to my mobile phone, complete with Caller ID information. I know I keeping mentioning Caller ID, but it’s important. Stick with me, because things are starting to get interesting.

The press kit goes on to explain some use cases, but let me share a more comprehensive vision. My view, sprinkled with thoughts from my chat with Jeff Black at TalkPlus. I’ll use professional services - consultants, doctors and lawyers - as examples.

I’ve run and independent consulting practice and there’s one mantra that underlies success in consulting - without billing, it’s just a hobby. Consultants and lawyers make their living on billable hours. Any company that bills for time does. I heard one story of a law frim in the Silicon Valley that estimates the lose $1.5 million dollars a year in billable time from attorneys talking on their cell phones while they are driving. If that attorney had a virtual number with an account code, that time could be tracked, and billed, driving back into corporate revenue.

Consultants may provide a block of hours or billable service to special clients. Many provide a dedicated phone number for the client to reach them any time. What a perfect fit! A virtual telephone number, dedicated to a client, with account code tracking for billing built right in. Are you with me?

Doctors have some different constraints. When a doctor calls a patient with test results, HIPAA regulations forbid patient test results being left in a voice mail message. The medical professional has to speak with the patient. Doctors don’t call patients from their cell phones because they don’t want patients calling them back there. If you get a call from your doctor’s cell phone, you’re likely to let it go to voice mail as an unfamiliar number anyway. But if you see the medical center number on Caller ID, you know they’re calling with test results. Everyone is assured the privacy and confidentiality of patient information, but through Caller ID, we leverage the telephone network for better efficiency.

But Wait, There’s More
Now let me touch on the enormity of this, because it’s noteworthy. Telephone numbers just became a disposable resource. Just like you have that throwaway Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail address (or two, four, six disposable addresses for different purposes), now you have disposable telephone numbers. Who says you’re forever limited to a single virtual telephone number? I’ll bet you a dollar or two that those incredible minds at TalkPlus have already thought about dynamic virtual telephone numbers, virtual telephone numbers on demand, phone numbers preprogrammed to “die” after 30-60-90 days, and an array of other interesting things we can’t even think of today because this is brand new.

Why not have a phone number for a unique purpose? Why not a home, work, dating, softball league, PTA and church number? And if you don’t need it any more, why not throw it away and let it get recycled? Telephone numbers can be used as a fleeting resource, then cast aside when they’ve served their purpose, just like an email address.

I spent a lot of years working directly in the telecommunications industry in the US. The way I see it, TalkPlus just delivered complete liberation from the constraints of the North American Numbering Plan. The old NPA-NXX phone number mentality is dead. I say it’s DEAD. And LATA boundaries can go out the window with it. In the world of Voice 2.0 they aren’t relevant.

Beyond North America, in Voice 2.0, global boundaries don’t matter. With TalkPlus, global boundaries don’t matter. If I do business in six countries, I expect I’ll be able to get virtual telephone numbers in every country at some point. All on my mobile phone. All at once. And with the race to the bottom in long distance abritrage pricing, it’s pretty clear to me that the winner who will lose on that commodity pricing madness will delivermy calls cheaply anywhere in the world/ I’ll let them worry about whether it’s over the PSTN or IP. It doesn’t matter to me because those folks are driving the cost to nothing as fast as they can.

TalkPlus delivers a freedom in service delivery that your wireline carrier - Sprint, Verizon, Qwest - cannot deliver.

TalkPlus delivers diversity in your mobile telephone service delivery that your wireless carrier - Sprint, Verizon, AT&T - cannot deliver.

That’s why TalkPlus delivers Voice 2.0 to your mobile phone. That flurry of blog chatter today was the death toll for some old, antiquated service models that just don’t work. They haven’t worked for me for years, and I bet they don’t really work for you.

Voice 2.0 works for me. TalkPlus will work for me, and they set the bar high in Mobile Voice 2.0.

Technorati Tags: TalkPlus, Voice 2.0, Mobile Voice 2.0, innovation, setting the bar

Filed by Ken at 7:10 pm under Technology, Unified Communications