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One of the unexpectedly cooler demos at eComm08 was the launch of a Canadian company (based in Toronto) led by experienced entrepreneur Shai Berger fonolo. What fonolo does is help you, as a consumer, kick the butt of any dial-in customer service system. The fonolo service tracks and publishes the dialling tree and IVR scripts for popular customer service numbers. So you can skim over long scripts and at a glance see what option, however many layers deep it is that you are looking for.

From there, you then click on that option, and fonolo dials in for you, listens to using voice recognition and punches all the buttons then connects you only once it gets right to the spot you wanted. Super cool. No word yet on whether it also helps you skip the pain of keying in your 10-digit mobile phone number to the IVR then re-telling it again to a human agent 2 seconds later.

Better still though, you can use fonolo to log and track all your calls to customer service and record them too, and rate call center agents. You could even then play back a previous conversation while on the phone. If it works, this could be powerful stuff for consumers.

The other thing learned? Turns out there’s a lot of room left for innovation left in the telecom industry even for dusty old applications like “voice” as developers create new value by mashing-up voice with web interfaces and external data sets. (For another great example see Ribbit also demoed at eComm.)

Fonolo is in closed beta for now but look for the official launch soon. We’ll keep you posted on WirelessNorth.ca with a full review once it becomes available to the public.

What is the android? Android is the antidote to the iPhone. It takes what iPhone did, Apple’s windows 95 moment and blows it wide open. The last time we had a unifying platform like this was micosoft windows and i think apple would be even worse to have than Microsoft. What’s great about Android [And he can’t talk about names] but theres people who should have no business in the mobile space [like startups, CE and CPG companies one presumes] creating things that are going to go right at the likes of Motorola and Samsung and everybody else.

- Mark Rolston, Frog Design at eComm08

And it’s a pretty simple one. Vringo does things like video ringtones and kitchy personalization bits for phones. A good enough business one might imagine. But Andrew Perlman, from Vringo was talking up something today IMHO much cooler today. A Facebook app that syncs all your contacts on facebook with all your contacts on your mobile, keeps it up to date, and shows your friends current profile picture when they call. Awesome. Sign me up. Maybe the first actually useful facebook app ever? And it’s mobile.

Another interesting tidbit from his talk? their monetization strategy is ad-supported and freemium. We live in a temporary stage where there is a scarcity of supply for mobile ads, CPMs as high as $80 on mobile. The moment they announced their product, even pre-users the phone was ringing from mobile media buyers. Presumably this is a UK story. A little ahead of Canada they are.

Update: Oops I lied, the app, or rather facebook, won’t let you export personal information of your contacts from facebook. What the Vringo app does is let you match up your existing mobile contacts with your contacts on facebook to sync elements like the profile photo.

Live from Ecomm08 MountainView. Three speakers in a row this morning at eComm2008 are hammering on the point of network accessibility and neutrality in the US (yes it’s an issue here too). First up was Jonathan Christensen from Skype who gave us a history of the company, including some admissions (we got a little distracted after the eBay purchase but new things and great new developments are on the way he claims).

Some notes:

- 2003, it wasn’t rocket science but Skype was the first to close the loop in voip, solve the NAT problem, just worked, unlike other IM voice services which would be foiled 20-30% of all calls by home routers or firewalls.
- Now skype is everywhere 250M+ users and on may devices, mentions Nokia N800, PSP
- In the future sees smart applications driving the network, not coming from the core netork providers (a common refrain).
- But mobility is the last anchor to the old way, spectrum scarcity make it perfect walled garden. The good old way again, phone numbers tied geography, contracts, locked devices – yuck
- Finally(?) though the internet goes mobile, 700 mhz aucion (in the U.S. not yet canada), open platform conditions apply, new games begin. Still need to be vigilant about net neutrality, but maybe this is a great hope.
- Next 10 years: multi-modal communications, real time hd video, data, presence,, text, wideband audio, fixed mobile convergence for real, mashups, freedom with mobility

- Final point: what the future holds and needs is Natural segmentation competencies
1) infrastructure players focus on what they do best (pipes)
2) application innovation comes from outside

Next up Michael Shiloh from Open Moko

- Open Moko is an open hardware platform for mobile
- General purpose device with completely open specs, open source OS, drivers and application layer
- Even the form factor is open, plastic casing is released as open CAD files
- No devices are ever locked, everything can be rewritten
- Great also for special purpose devices, like adapted designs of in-dash connected GPS/car mobile computers, or other special purpose apps
- Of course, requires a degree of open networks for these devices to be useful
- The missing question that I didn’t get the answer too was, how does the company help/work with 3rd parties with design, manufacture or distribute open moko based hardware?

3rd up, David Isenberg a man after WirelessNorth’s heart: a legendary Telco troublemaker

- 10 years ago wrote the highly influential “the rise of the stupid network” (are we still waiting for this?)
- He brings up Martin to the stage. A Brit. Martin has the old iso stack printed on his tshit: physical layer, network layer etc. then topped with application layer, finance, political layer — you are here!
- At home, Edward has 30 isps to choose from, 24mb dsl is about 35USD a month.
- David: most of us live in duopoly or monopoly world. The reason for that is political. Politics determines what our internet looked.
Structural separation.
- David: We need pipes separate from the apps.
- David is organizing a confernce in Washington DC “Freedom to Connect” March 31st. This is a fantastic idea we should copy in Ottawa btw.
- David’s key point is this: Net Neutrality is essential – but the devil is in the details. There needs to be exceptions for network management, but for 60 years (the days of radio even) the big players have playing the network management card to lock out competition
- What we need to do is consider, instead of absolute network nuetrality is structural separation.

Think about how relevant this is when the biggest network players are also vertically integrated with media companies. How much incentive is there to roll out the capacity to serve other people’s content channels and services (whether it be anything from voice on skype to tv over IP).

Favourite conversational quote of the morning: “What? Canada has worse networks than the U.S.? We thought you guys were always supposed to be way more progressive than us.”