[娛樂時尚] 電話的末日

The end of the phone as we know it

Andy Jagoe is zigging while the rest of the mobile world zags. Let everyone else chase the next hot iPhone app. He’s betting the next big thing is a twist on the same old thing: making calls.

He may be right. Jagoe, CEO and co-founder of startup 3jam, is one of several Silicon Valley dreamers who thinks he can reinvent the phone call. And really, let’s admit it’s in need of some Internet-style innovation. We’re in 2009, for crying out loud. Why isn’t call forwarding as easy as e-mail forwarding? Why don’t your voicemails live in a niFTy little online inbox?

Remember web 2.0? It’s time for phone 2.0.

And it’s arriving. The most prominent example is Google's (GOOG) Google Voice, an invitation-only service that offers a free Internet telephone number that forwards calls wherever its owner chooses and delivers features like visual voicemail, call screening and transcription.

Mountain View-based Ditech Network. (DITC) has a similar invitation-only offering called toktok. San Francisco-based 3jam, which is open to the public and starts at $5 per month, adds tricks like convenient group text messaging.

Voice apps are coming

Not everyone is a fan. Apple (AAPL) caused a stir last month when it barred Google Voice software from the iPhone App Store, saying it duplicates features the handset already provides. But Jagoe thinks the services will prevail eventually. “It's going to be hard,” he says, “to prevent this kind of functionality from appearing on a phone.”

Indeed, people who use these services swear by them, and in Silicon Valley these days it’s a growing cohort. (At a mobile technology panel this month at Microsoft’s (MSFT) Mountain View campus, Google Voice users outnumbered Amazon (AMZN) Kindle users five to one.) The reason is simple: phone 2.0 is liberating phone calls the same way webmail liberated e-mail a decade ago. Now you can keep your phone number, your call history and your voicemails no matter how many times you move, change jobs or switch carriers.

Over a burger at a San Francisco lunch spot, Jagoe explains why this revolution in phone calls is happening now. First, it recently became more affordable for startups like 3jam to forward calls to landlines. Second, Neustar (NSR), a company that enables text messaging, this year gave Internet-based phone numbers a boost by allowing them to send and receive text messages. And third, mobile consumers increasingly crave better options for managing their conversations and staying productive.

Of course, even if the masses are ready for a phone call revolution, there’s no guarantee they’ll buy it from 3jam. If Google Voice opens up its free service to the general public soon, it will get a lot tougher for Jagoe to sell monthly plans. And then there’s the threat from the phone giants: Glenn Lurie, president of Emerging Devices at AT&T (T), tells Fortune that he’s keeping an eye on Internet-based voice services. Clearly carriers would prefer to be the ones selling those kinds of features.

Regardless, Jagoe has a couple of things going for him. 3jam recently finalized a deal with Peek, maker of the eponymous e-mail device, where 3jam will offer phone numbers to Peek users. With those numbers, users soon will be able to more reliably send texts as well as e-mails, and even get voicemail transcripts.

Perhaps more important, Jagoe is running a lean operation, having recently cut 3jam’s full-time payroll from 25 people to 5. He says the company is on track to be cash flow positive by the end of the year, which should help him to avoid the fate of VoIP peers like Yoomba and Jangl that burned through cash before they could figure out a long-term business model.

In the end, the business part has to work. Even in the phone 2.0 world, if you can’t pay the bills, you get disconnected.

整個手機行業在向左走，而安迪•賈戈爾（Andy Jagoe）則往右行。讓別人去追逐下一個熱門的iPhone應用吧。賈戈爾正在下注下一件大事是老一套翻出新花樣：打電話。

他可能是對的。賈戈爾是新創企業3jam的聯合創始人兼首席執行官，同另外幾位硅谷夢想家一樣，他也相信自己能徹底改造電話呼叫行業。確實，我們必須承認電話呼叫需要一些網絡方式的創新。別忘了，我們可是身在2009年。呼叫轉移爲何不像郵件轉發那麼容易？語音郵件爲何沒放在一個小巧的在線收件箱裏？

還記得web 2.0嗎？現在應該推出phone 2.0了。

Phone 2.0正在到來。最突出的例子是谷歌（Google）的Google Voice，這是一種需要邀請的服務，能提供免費的網絡電話號碼，可將呼叫轉移到被呼叫者選擇的任何地方，並具備可視語音郵件、呼叫篩選和轉錄等功能。

位於山景城的Ditech Networks有一款名爲toktok、需要邀請的類似產品。位於舊金山的3jam——對公衆開放，起價爲每月5美元——增加了便捷羣發短信等功能。

語音應用即將登場

並非所有人都歡迎這一改變。蘋果公司（Apple）在上個月阻止Google Voice軟件進入iPhone App Store，稱該軟件複製了手機已經提供的功能，此事引發騷動。不過，賈戈爾認爲這項服務終將流行。他說道：“要阻止這類功能出現在手機上將很難。”

確實，使用這些服務的人對其十分信賴，眼下在硅谷，這樣的人正越來越多。（本月，在微軟（Microsoft）的山景園區，在一個移動技術專門小組上，Google Voice的使用者與亞馬遜（Amazon）Kindle的使用者的比例爲5：1。）原因很簡單：phone 2.0正將電話呼叫解放出來，正如十年前網頁郵件解放電子郵件一樣。現在，不論你搬多少次家、換多少份工作、換多少家運營商，你都能保留自己的電話號碼、呼叫記錄以及語音郵件。

在舊金山某家午餐館吃漢堡包時，賈戈爾解釋了電話呼叫革命爲何現在發生。首先，將呼叫轉移到固定電話的成本近來有所下降，像3jam這樣的新創企業比較負擔得起。其次，Neustar——一家提供短信功能的公司——今年允許基於網絡的電話號碼收發短信，此舉促進了此類號碼的發展。再次，手機用戶越來越渴望管理其談話並保持效率的更好辦法。

當然，即便大衆已經準備好迎接電話呼叫革命，也無法保證他們將從3jam購買服務。假如Google Voice馬上向公衆公開其免費服務，賈戈爾再想銷售包月計劃難度將大得多。此外還有來自電話業巨頭的威脅。美國電話電報公司（AT&T）新興設備主管格倫•盧裏（Glenn Lurie）向《財富》表示，他正在關注基於網絡的語音服務。顯然，運營商們更希望由自己來銷售此類功能。

不論如何，賈戈爾也算有些收穫。3jam最近敲定了與Peek——同名電子郵件設備製造商——的一筆交易，3jam將向Peek用戶提供電話號碼。有了這些號碼，用戶很快將能夠更可靠的發送電子郵件和短信，甚至能獲得語音郵件副本。

或許更重要的是，賈戈爾在輕裝上陣，他最近將3jam的全職員工人數從25人減少至5人。賈戈爾表示預計到今年底該公司的現金流就將爲正，這將有助於他避免重蹈Yoomba和Jangl等VoIP同行的覆轍，後者還沒來得及找到長期的商業模式，就把錢全花光了。

最後，商業部分必須產生效果。即便在phone 2.0的世界裏，假如你付不起賬單，服務還是會中止。