SimpleSignal's opportunity in the downturn

Along with the economy, the traditional Telco service provider is in a market transition. SimpleSignal is a company that was built to navigate through the turbulence of economic contraction. This downturn is our opportunity to increase market share.

Traditional phone companies have been delivering their "voice as a service" for more than 100 years. This model, however, is changing. As mainstream business adopts VoIP this revenue stream will disappear. It's been disappearing since the advent of VoIP in 1997.

Over the last ten years hundreds of independent VoIP service providers have sprung up and begun to take customers away from traditional Telco providers. The problem is that they are non-differentiated from the giants like Verizon and Quest. These upstarts all promised to bring something disruptive to telco but as its played out many of them are just trying to emulate telco...only cheaper. Since their services look basically the same and because they are non-differentiated their value proposition is limited to bringing service to the consumer cheaper. This is a rough game to play. How much cheaper can you be and still be profitable?

Delivering cheaper voice is not and has never been SimpleSignal's sole purpose. Our vision is to seize the opportunity to change traditional voice services forever. We're doing that by building a company that delivers and distributes voice not just as a service but as an application with limitless potential.

Why is it important to deliver voice as an app? Voice has a better value proposition as a feature rather than a stand alone service. That statement is disruptive. Delivering voice as an app or as a feature embedded in a software program changes the game for telco service providers. We've been talking about creating these mash ups for a couple of years now but no one has been able to successfully build a working business around it...yet. So, we continue to slog it out trying to win market share by adding value to SMB's by being cheaper and more feature rich than traditional telco. Yet the concept of selling voice as an app has captured the thinking of visionary telcos. Most notably British Telecom when they purchased Ribbit for a stunning $105 million earlier this year. Why did they do that? Primarily because they realize that soon it's not going to be about VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) as much as it is EoIP (Everything over Internet Protocol). The world is changing the way we receive video, voice and data. It's not going to be a world where voice stands alone as a service or you subscribe to one network and not the other. All these services are being delivered over the net...everything is now converged to the net. This convergence changes the way people live, work, play and learn. What many people don't realize is that we are not connected to one proprietary network (ie. AT&T). We can actually seamlessly roll from one network to another. For example, now through a new feature we have called "call swap" a business can begin a call on their Cell carriers network and seemlessly move that call to the SimpleSignal Wi-Fi network where they can access the internet. The advent of the app store at Apple has unlocked some amazing technology that will change the way we live. It already has. You want further evidence?

•Today a new google app will launch in the iphone app store that let's us launch Google searches by voice command
•Loopt let's me know where my kids and friends are by mapping them on google earth in real time. This is the ultimate in "Presence"
•Facebook and other social networking sites allow us to stay connected with friends and family in real time.
•Improvements in video conferencing keeps me in personal touch without having to travel. Now the image is so clear you can interpret body language and even eye movement as if the person were sitting across the desk.
•We now have the option to connect to our video, voice or data wirelessly or wired.
•We want the option to work from anywhere. Some are still saying "oh that's terrible. Now I'm always available to my work." I'm of the opinion that "anywhere connectivity" is convenient. It affords freedom. We just have to learn new ways to manage it.
•When I buy the ticket for a sporting event online I'm asked to give up information about what team I want to win, my favorite players and what snack I want when I'm there so the stadium knows what to stock up on. They know what the consumer needs are so they can generate more revenue.

We live in an "intelligent, network centric" world. New business opportunities exist because the net knows us.

Ten years ago VoIP was thought to be a "disruptive" technology that would change telco. Disruption is what happens to an industry when somebody introduces a game changing innovation. Voip has the opportunity to "disrupt" but has largely missed the opportunity it has to "innovate".

In 2009 SimpleSignal will differentiate itself as an innovator by delivering voice as an app, as a feature not just a service, to business. We will concentrate on selling suites of business services and not just voice alone. An example of this is our SimplyMobile product. This is where we took Microsoft's Office Suite and "mashed in" our voice services to create an easy to use, hosted, no maintenance, feature rich service for one price per user. We are actively working with web and software developers to tie other apps together to create killer offerings that will create "mash ups" that will create interesting and easy to use voice enabled software for small business.

Our understanding and competency of this opportunity is perfectly timed. The giants of software are just now considering how they might include voice as a differentiating feature in their product. Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all delivering their services as "hosted". What each of them need is a voice. This year we "mashed in with Microsoft and Salesforce and won recognition and awards for it. In 2009 we can add revenue and scale by offering the world our feature rich voice services in collaboration with the software giants by using our voice as a feature in their software.

We are already executing our 2009 strategy. Since October we have made significant inroads with the Microsoft and Salesforce.com companies and their user communities. Our traction grows and our customer user base gets bigger each month. In January we will be cooperating with Google to "mash in" our voice and feature set with Google docs.