Ten Years And A Dream

Ten years ago today I started my adventure in the incredible and exciting world of IP communications and I thought there was no better place than Voyces to blow out the candles, sharing this event with the other five heavy names in the IP communications space who contribute to this new adventure and all the readers that will decide to bookmark this blog or follow us through all the social networks where our thoughts and ramblings will be shared.

After ten years, I admit I still have a dream that didn’t come true yet and, honestly, don’t really know when it will. For this reason, while blowing out the candles for my tenth year in VoIP, I would like to make a wish: no more phone numbers!

Yes, no errors, I don’t want to deal with phone numbers any more! I’d love to deal with names only and, when I choose the contact to call, my device, regardless of what it is, will find the best way to reach him/her, the cheapest way, the fastest way, the way that will get me the highest probability to find the person I’m calling and so on. Crazy man?

The other day I was trying to call my parents and I had to try four times before reaching them. I tried their landline but (I was told later) they were at the mall shopping for a new bag. Then I tried my dad’s mobile but it was turned off or without coverage at that moment. Third attempt, I tried his second mobile phone, but I was not lucky since it kept ringing forever without any answer. Last one, I called my mom’s mobile phone and finally I got her on the phone. According to my dream, I would have been able to activate something that could have achieved the goal “find my parents now” and get them on the phone.

Something like what I described above involves a lot of technology, most of which already exists. The point (and there is a reason I’m mentioning my 70 years old parents) is that this technology should be used to create something that anyone could be able to use effectively, without any hassle, even a not-too-techie 70 years old. Google Voice, with the “One number for life” payoff, started to draft a path to get to my dream, but it’s not enough yet. I dream of something that any telecom operator could easily embrace and offer to their customers, something that doesn’t require to be an engineer to be quickly understood.

I’m looking forward to a tomorrow when my dream will come true and no one would need to care of phone numbers anymore. Moreover, my 70 years old dad will finally be able to easily replace his mobile phone without having to struggle to get his address book working again on the new phone, forgetting phone numbers and so on, everything must just happen. Am I asking too much? Am I dreaming too much?

In the meantime, let me say that I’m proud to be part of this exciting industry and I’m pretty sure I did something, in the past ten years, which contributed to make others’ dreams come true. This is the main reason that makes me confident one day my dream will become reality, thanks to other engineers and professionals who work hard everyday to make this a better world. And now, let me say I’m very proud to join other five friends and professionals working hard to make dreams come true in the “voice” industry, last but not least with this new adventure called Voyces. No doubt about that.