Bill Gates to do away with phone numbers? Do I hear an Echo?

May 30, 2008

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This one is a doosey folks. Still trying to sort it all out and wrap my head around what our good friend Bill Gates is saying here. Early this month Mr. Microsoft mentioned, in a speech he made in Japan, that he could do away with phone numbers! That got us thinking wild and crazy thoughts. Here is what he said:

So, how is this business productivity different than we have today? One element is unified communications. Right now the mobile phone, the desktop phone, the e-mail that you have on the PC, or instant messaging, these are all very different things, and the issues about how much of your information or your schedule, your current activity you share with people who communicate with you is not well designed.

By bringing together all of these kinds of communication, we can greatly simplify them. We can get rid of phone numbers, have it so when you say you want to contact someone, based on who you are and where that person is, they can decide whether to take the call or take a message about that, and so a great efficiency improvement that can be made there.

Broad futuristic statements about what Microsoft could do are a hallmark of Mr. Gate’s rhetoric. But there may be more to this - on several fronts. Microsoft is making a huge effort in telecommunications of late (We will detail in a future post a new VoIP product being sold at Costco from MS, called Response Point, which may have VARs worried). One of their biggest projects is something code named “Echoes” which is a carrier service designed to integrate Microsoft content and services such as Windows Live with carrier networks. That would enable messaging, calendar, contacts, and click to call functionality for Mobile or VoIP carriers. But all of that is just phase one. You can be sure that there is much more integration of products and services planned. Perhaps even integration with the Microsoft Ad network - which could enable carriers to offer free service (by getting their revenues from advertisers).

Microsoft is obviously looking forward to a future model of telecommunications. It is possible to assign a code or address to an individual user on an IP network now. A phone number is only a necessity on a traditional telephone network. Could a name or related ID be used instead? Technically, yes! Someone BIG just needs to make the database that allows everyone else to tie into it. While some VoIP services such as AOL’s instant messenger allow calling based upon name rather than phone number right now (within their own network), very little of this is transferable between services. Perhaps Microsoft will be the company to crack the world wide telecom mess and provide a simple integrated solution. Then again, perhaps that is just wishful thinking on my part, spawned by hyperbole from Mr. Gates. I always was a sucker for “What could be.”

-iTodd

Written by Todd · Filed Under Featured, VoIP/SIP