Amongst all the burning wrecks of the voice over IP startup scene, is it possible that a $40 device hawked on late-night TV may be emerging as one of the biggest VoIP success stories ever? If you believe founder Dan Borislow, that is what is happening with his idea called MagicJack, a simple USB-based VoIP device that Borislow claims will generate $100 million in revenue this year, a market momentum that may spark an initial public offering to help fund his ambitious expansion plans.

Before we get too far into IPO dreamland, a caveat — Borislow’s company, which we wrote about when it was getting off the ground a couple years ago — is still privately held, so there’s no proof behind any of MagicJack’s claims other than your trust in Borislow’s word. That said, Borislow and MagicJack seem to have largely delivered on their main promise of two years ago, to create an easy-to-use, dirt-cheap voice service based on a simple device that you can now buy at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

Following the suggestion of one of the ardent followers of our earlier post on MagicJack — which has turned into somewhat of an ad hoc user forum board — we decided to call Borislow for a MagicJack update. (Even though I have moved on to other blogging locales myself, I am honored to update the GigaOM MagicJack followers.) As usual, the always-interesting Mr. Borislow didn’t disappoint, talking up lots of innovative ideas while dissing Skype as a competitor because of its “inferior voice quality.”

In addition to hinting that an IPO was “something we have in our mind,” Borislow said that sometime in the next year, MagicJack will ship a femtocell device which (he says) will allow users to make MagicJack-based calls from any GSM cell phone — theoretically saving cell phone minutes while in your home. Perhaps more believable is Borislow’s claim that a “major PC manufacturer” will soon include a MagicJack softphone pre-installed, eliminating the need for the USB device now necessary to link the broadband-enabled PC to a standard phone. Borislow also said there is a new device planned that will eliminate the need for users to leave their PCs powered on while making MagicJack calls; unfortunately, no ship date was given.

On the subject of number porting — the ability to switch your current telephone number to a MagicJack account, something the company has promised but never delivered — Borislow said he’d rather weather the storm of user complaints instead of subjecting potential customers to the mercies of the incumbent telcos who might hold their numbers.

“We’ve built up a lot of love over the last year or so, and I don’t want to give that love away [by making people tussle with sometimes-uncooperative telcos],” Borislow said. While he is confident that new FCC rules will help ease the number-porting pain, Borislow didn’t seem too concerned about hitting the latest self-imposed number-porting deadline of late 2009.

He also hinted of some new applications — perhaps VoIP-based conferencing — but there is only so much time and space, so we’ll leave those ideas for a day when they are closer to reality. As far as a potential IPO goes, Borislow said he took his last big company public on his birthday in September — “why not keep that love?” he asked, about using the same date.

Could MagicJack be the next big tech IPO? In this economy, who knows what the rules are? What MagicJack has in its favor is a solid network core and patentable technology. In a public statement earlier this year, Borislow claimed the company had a big network footprint with lots of hardware and interconect sites, and had patents pending for femto equipment based on designs from a chip company MagicJack’s parent company bought up along the way.

Perhaps most important is how many people are actually using the MagicJack, which is still an unanswered question. While Borislow is quick to claim that MagicJack has “sold” almost 4 million of its devices, now at a rate of “10,000 per day,” he won’t own up to the exact number of active accounts, so nobody’s sure yet whether MagicJack has passed Vonage’s base of around 2.6 million in terms of VoIP users, or whether there are a lot of MagicJacks buried unused in desk drawers. Maybe that answer can wait for the MagicJack SEC filings, where we might see exactly what Borislow has up his sleeve.

(Paul Kapustka, former managing editor at GigaOM, is the editor and founder of Sidecut Reports.)

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• Report: Web Worker Survey 2010
• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

Delivering lots of cool new apps is the promise of Android, the open source mobile OS project from Google. With a much-improved iPhone-ish look and feel, the base Android platform seems ready for prime time and on schedule to launch somewhere, sometime, later this year. But I still see three big problems for Android apps that could keep the add-on market small for the foreseeable future.

Specifically the problems are:

– how many carriers are really going to offer Android phones?
– how will users find Android applications?
– how will developers convince users to take a chance and download their app?

Until Google can help answer those questions, Android apps are probably going to lag far behind those provided by big carriers on their captive hardware/software offerings, especially those designed for the already popular iPhone.

With a big crowd overall and packed rooms at Android-specific discussions, the Google I/O conference Wednesday showed there is great interest from the developer community for the idea of an open-source platform for the development of mobile apps. And the list of early winners in Google’s Android app development contest shows a wide range of creative thinking, with developers using the features of mobility and base apps like maps to build new, rich and sometimes quirky programs that would likely never get past the first gatekeeper at AT&T Wireless or Verizon.

But getting back to the problems — without a committed list of service providers, Google doesn’t have much of a market to offer developers yet. Similarly, the company’s silence on any kind of an apps marketplace means developers might be on their own when it comes to marketing their one-off ideas, adding a huge degree of difficulty, especially for smaller shops.

And the lack of an application certification process (Google said Wednesday that users will be asked to certify an app themselves at install) means another big hurdle for developers to cross, namely convincing users to trust that their app is safe, won’t break their phone or transmit personal info to undisclosed locations.

Seems like a lot to ask from users, especially those in the U.S., who historically haven’t been able to do much with their phones other than download new ringtones. Add education to the list of above problems and you see why I think this market is going to stay small for some time.

UPDATE: It looks like the Google folks may have been more forthcoming about an Android Apps store in later panels at the I/O show, according to this post from the Register. (I only sat through the first panel led by developer advocate Jason Chen, who when questioned about such a store agreed that “distribution is hard” and that Google was working on something, but didn’t have anything to announce.) We have a message in to Google PR to clarify, and will update if and when we hear back. UPDATE 2: Here is an official statement from a Google spokesperson:

It would be a great benefit to the Android community to provide a place where people can go to safely and securely download content and where a billing system would allow developers to get paid for their effort. We wouldn’t have done our job if we didn’t provide something that helps developers get distribution. We have nothing to announce at this time.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide
• Report: A Mobile Video Market Overview
• In Q3, the Tablet and 4G Were the Big Stories

Class was in session when Stanford law prof Lessig delivered a powerful lecture on the need for neutral networks, telling the assembled FCC chairman and commissioners to their faces that they were part of a 10-year-long failure by the agency to “make a clear statement of policy” about how infractions against the open, end-to-end connectivity of the Internet would be policed or enforced.

Lessig’s key points — which included the assertion that the historic openness of the Internet has been the key to its economic boom — are important to record, since they are very likely to become key talking points for Net Neutrality proponents as the battle over potential neutrality regulation heats up during the current congressional session. But the lack of a viable opponent in the arena made for a somewhat lukewarm event, with more than half the auditorium’s reported 716 seats going empty. Those who were present cheered mightily for Lessig, while only issuing soft “boos” for Republican FCC commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate, whose brief remarks basically indicated their opposition to any Net Neutrality regulations.

Unlike the other assembled panelists, who had just a few minutes to present their specific-interest cases, Lessig was given all the time he needed to make a strong case for the need for clear network neutrality policies, either from the FCC or Congress. Two of his stronger points, which you can expect to see repeated, were one, that Net Neutrality principles have been the historic base of the Internet, and have been responsible for its unbridled competition and growth. And two, that providers should be governed by clear rules that make it more expensive for them to restrict network access than to provide broadband that doesn’t differentiate or prioritize different traffic types.

The FCC, Lessig said, should pass rules that make it more profitable for service providers to behave than to misbehave. “You have to make it so playing the games is not a good business model for them,” Lessig said. “If we really didn’t have a reason to worry that they were playing games [with network management], then what they did inside their networks would be of less concern.”

Though invited by FCC chairman Kevin Martin, all the major Internet service providers — AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, among others — declined to participate in Thursday’s open meeting. Comcast, which waded into a debacle on several levels at the last such open meeting at Harvard, was slammed by several panelists Thursday, including by Robb Topolski, who is credited as being one of the first to detect Comcast’s disputed P2P blocking activities.

Comcast’s activities, Topolski said, “are non-standard, and not accepted by the industry.” And Jon Peha, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon, disputed Comcast’s claims that it wasn’t “blocking” traffic, part of an seemingly unsolved question that Lessig said was at the heart of the problem.

“The most outrageous thing is that [the FCC] can’t get the facts straight,” Lessig said with regards to the Comcast controversy, expressing wonderment that a government body like the FCC was still somewhat in the dark about what Comcast was or wasn’t doing. “The least we should be able to do is get the truth about what is happening,” Lessig said.

Watch the entire session on video.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• For OTT Providers, the Real Net Neutrality Fight is Just Beginning
• What Comcast’s Win Against FCC Means for Broadband

If you don’t like golf or don’t care about Tiger Woods’ quest for the Grand Slam, I can’t help you there. But even casual followers of the sport should at least check out the live online coverage, especially the focused segments from “Amen Corner,” the famed stretch of holes #11, #12 and #13 at Augusta National. The widescreen option and excellent camera work — and did we mention no commercial breaks? — makes for a relaxing day of golf-coverage consumption while just an alt-tab away from real work. In my mind, golf is a better fit than basketball for the small screen since there is only one golfer to zoom in on (as opposed to 10 players), with more-predictable action for the cameras to follow. Plus the announcers give you handy audio cues (“here’s Tiger for birdie”) that allow you to switch from work in time to catch the onscreen action.

What makes the Masters work online is two things: The close-up, non-stop views of the best part of the course, as well as the pick-and-choose flexibility that makes newteevee a winning option. You can, of course, just watch the regular broadcast coverage (ESPN today, and CBS on the weekend) but there you are subject to a producer’s whims as to which golfer, or which hole, is on the screen.

At Masters.org, you’re in charge; if you want to watch Amen Corner all day, feel free. The wicked-tricky par-4 11th (with its nasty pond left), the storybook par-3 12th (small green over a small pond) and the classic risk-and-reward par-5 13th (go for it in two, if you can stop the ball on a long iron) provides more drama in a lore-filled setting that most regular tour stops can hope for over its entire 18 holes.

And there is also a separate stream for the underappreciated holes #15 and #16, the latter a par-3 with a severely sloped green that sometimes giveth, sometimes takes away. There are also the standard online create-and-share toys, but who has time for that stuff when you’re “working?”

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Report: The Connected TV Marketplace
• Why HBO’s TV Everywhere Economics Don’t Make Sense
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In addition to the video-franchising language, perhaps the most surprising thing about the bill is its timing — most telecom policy insiders doubt that any such legislation will pass until after the presidential election, since there doesn’t seem to be a wide consensus or support for the ideas it contains. But Markey’s somewhat expected bill — co-sponsored by Republican Chip Pickering of Mississippi — rolls the Net Neutrality ball back onto the court after basically being sidelined since the fall of 2006.

There have been many big changes since then, when the original Net Neutrality battle ended in a draw. (To recap, Net Neutrality proponents failed to get their ideas added to telecom reform bills; those bills went on to die in the Senate without every coming to a full vote.) Markey, who led the failed 2006 Net Neutrality efforts, is now the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunication and the Internet, following the Dem’s takeover of Congress. With control of the Senate as well — and with Google now a very committed backer of Net Neutrality ideas — Markey and pro-Net Neutrality Dems have apparently guessed they now have the political strength to push their ideas into law.

The new Markey bill seems to attempt to preserve much of the Four Freedom ideas that make up the basis of the original Net Neutrality argument, which basically say that carriers should not block services and that consumers should be allowed to attach whatever devices they wish. But there seems to be some new language surrounding the question of preferential pricing and preferential treatment of traffic, including a caveat that asks “whether the need for enforceable rules governing openness, consumer rights, and consumer protections or prohibiting unreasonable discrimination is lessened if a broadband network provider provides significantly high bandwidth speeds to consumers.” In other words, if there are enough fat pipes built, the need for regulation may disappear.

There is also a section asking whether broadband providers are offering “parental control protection tools,” which, like the video-franchising language, looks like a bit of a sop to make such a law more palatable to right-leaning legislators. And there is a call for the FCC to conduct eight public regional broadband summits, which if nothing else should lead to good theater.

On the opposition side, expect AT&T and Verizon (as well as their paid mouthpieces) to renew their “don’t regulate the Internet” argument, which combines some very real concerns about return-on-investment for infrastructure buildouts with traditional telco attempts to protect their monopoly advantages. One new ally on the telco side of the argument is the Federal Trade Commission, which has been actively campaigning over the past two years for a seat at the telecom-regulation table, even though its jurisdiction in such matters is openly questioned (especially by those at the FCC, who see the FTC’s actions as nothing more than a turf war). Don’t forget there is also the specter of a presidential veto hanging over any Net Neutrality legislation, from a commander-in-chief who is more than ready to stick his neck out for his deep-pocketed telco supporters, like he did in the current debate over telecom immunity in FISA lawsuits.

With recent Net Neutrality-like incidents involving Verizon, AT&T and most recently Comcast, it might be harder this time around for the carriers to claim supervision isn’t necessary. Expect the biggest battle to revolve around the concept of whether or not it makes sense to protect against such actions pre-emptively — as in an FCC-enforced law — or instead rely on the courts or the FTC to punish transgressions after they occur, via existing antitrust or consumer protection laws.

Either way, game on. Again.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Growing Mobile Data Use Turned Up Heat on Carriers in Q3

As one of the bigger communications infrastructure providers, Level 3 knows itself some Internet video — according to Crowe, IP-based video today accounts for between 60 and 70 percent of all the traffic on Level 3′s fiber. Read more over at GigaOM.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide

• Internet video use is here to stay, and will only increase going forward
• Bundling services with devices is yesterday’s strategy
• Legislators and regulators are right to be concerned about the potential for monopolistic practices by AT&T, Verizon and cable companies
• Net Neutrality violations could be handled better by the FTC than the FCC

According to Crowe, between 60 and 70 percent of the IP backbone provider’s traffic is currently video, a trend that he thinks will only increase, perhaps even substantially should applications like Cisco’s Telepresence take off. “It’s kind of a full employment act” for backbone providers, he joked.

While it’s not too hard to say Internet video will be more popular, Crowe did take a somewhat divergent tack by forseeing a future in which communications services, devices and applications will separate into different markets, much like they already have in the PC arena. The popularity of the tightly bundled iPhone aside, Crowe said that standard interfaces and operating systems for wireless devices will eventually produce more innovation by the best of each market breed, putting bundled plans “on the wrong side of economics.”

On Net Neutrality — a topic practically invented at the Silicon Flatirons conference — Crowe said that when it comes to possible monopoly abuses by the big carriers, “you ought to be worried” since the Bell companies “have a long history of abusing” their facility-based advantages. And while cable companies might have “a far less colorful legal history, competition is not in their DNA,” Crowe said.

However, that doesn’t mean Crowe is in favor of pre-emptive legislation, which most Net Neutrality proponents prefer. Instead, Crowe (like many other speakers at the conference) said abuses could be better monitored by the Federal Trade Commission, under existing anti-trust laws.

“I just think after 10 or 15 years of getting everything they want, consumers will not tolerate” anyone blocking or limiting their access to applications and content, he said. If there are violations, then “anti-trust courts are only a few lawyers away, and may be a lot more efficient than regulatory bodies, who have to react to politics.”

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• A 2011 Green IT Forecast
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast

First reported by Harold WFeld on the WetMachine blog, the rumor that machinations by Morgan O’Brien of Cyren Call fame may have helped to scuttle the plans of Frontline Wireless — perhaps the most likely bidder on the mixed-use D Block bandwidth — is something Adelstein is taking seriously, following what he called the “great disappointment” of the apparent failure of any winning bid for the D Block spectrum.

Adelstein’s pledge to look more deeply into the matter came during a question-and-answer period following his participation in panel discussions here at the Silicon Flatirons conference, one of the nation’s top telecom policy gatherings.

The FCC’s rules for the D Block spectrum, which would have required the winner to negotiate the building of a network that would be jointly used by public safety entities, apparently were not attractive enough to attract bidders, Adelstein said. (So far, the D Block has only attracted one bid for $472 million, which is far below the reserve price of $1.3 billion set by the FCC.)

“We clearly misjudged the interest [in the D Block] and set rules that apparently inhibited the financing [for bidders],” Adelstein said. “It’s a concern, and it’s something we will re-visit with our friends in public safety.” Since the current auction is not yet completed, Adelstein said there were no plans yet on how to deal with a possible re-auction of the spectrum.

Adelstein and others present at the conference were not hesitant to opine that the apparent failure of the D Block auction was in part an indictment of lawmakers’ unwillingness to fund a public-safety network for first responders.

“It was kind of a jury-rigged public/private system,” said Adelstein of the D Block rules the FCC came up with for the auction in an attempt to finance a first-responders’ network. Congress, he said “should have stepped up to the plate” and funded the network itself, a point several other speakers at the conference agreed with.

“The D Block [situation] is a failure of values,” said Mark Cooper, research director at the Consumer Federation of America. Cooper derided lawmakers for “covering their asses” by authorizing $1.5 billion to fund free set-top-boxes for the upcoming DTV transition while pushing the construction of a first-responders’ network into the uncertain terrain of public-private partnerships and spectrum auctions. “Congress should have just funded it themselves,” Cooper said, noting that the cost of such a network was small in comparison to what is being spent on the war in Iraq.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Growing Mobile Data Use Turned Up Heat on Carriers in Q3
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

Due out in the second quarter of 2008, Amphibian is slated to be shown live at the Demo conference Tuesday morning, according to the Ribbit folks who gave us a quick heads-up before preparing for their moment in the startup sun. Amphibian’s promised features — which include the ability to redirect a cell call into Skype, Google Talk, MSN or into a web-based voice mail application — may not seem particularly groundbreaking to anyone familiar with other VoIP-based web services. But viewed as a loss leader for Ribbit’s API, Amphibian might be the first product evangelist who actually made the company some money to boot.

Though the basic Amphibian service will be free, Ribbit plans to charge fees for services like its voice mail transcription ($5 for 15 messages, $29.95 for unlimited messages) and outbound calls ($5 for four hours, or $15 for 2,000 minutes a month). According to Ribbit, users simply forward their mobile-phone number to the Ribbit system to use the Amphibian service.

The real question that Ribbit needs to answer — for both Amphibian as well as its API plan, under which developers kick a percentage of income back to Ribbit — is whether or not consumers are ready to embrace an additional cost as well as some configuration leaps and jumps to merge their telephone services with their online world. While there is clearly a case to be made for having the flexibility to transfer a cell call to a Skype headset — or to view your voicemail as email — do people really need or want to start talking into their Facebook page?

“I’m not sure,” said Crick Waters, Ribbit’s vice president of strategy and business development, in a phone briefing last week. “But [with the Ribbit API] a hundred thousand people can try.” Ribbit’s technology allows developers to merge front-end applications with traditional telephony features, without having to worry about the plumbing. According to Ribbit, there have been 2,500 downloads so far of its developer platform.

(Amphibian messaging screen shot below.)

As Om noted before, execution and strategy will be the key to Ribbit’s success, since competition in the space seems to be increasing daily. In addition to traditional VoIP services like Vonage, which already offer a wide range of web-based services, there are web-voice mashups like Lypp’s conference calling plan and Jaduka’s enterprise-focused web services API. Also appearing in the same competitive sphere is Microsoft’s already-announced plans to blend together web communications and voice, as well as expected web-voice projects from Google’s Grand Central and Adobe.

While Ribbit has a few examples of Ribbit-based apps on its web page — including an integrated Salesforce.com app as well as a software model of an iPhone — it hopes to include a wide variety in a bigger online marketplace aimed at consumers and social networks, a segment Ribbit calls “the big soft middle” of the web-voice market. With any luck for Ribbit, Amphibian won’t be the only one in the pond.

“What we want is for our developers to make money, to create value and get paid,” said Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs. “Then we get paid too.”

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

Dunne, a telecom veteran who spent time both at a CLEC and at Verizon, said that capital expenditures for a WiMAX provider today are “about one-tenth” of the costs that a wireline CLEC might need. Combining WiMAX with low-cost fiber agreements and easy-to-install customer-premise gear from Alvarion is a recipe that is already producing cash-flow-positive results in Rexburg, Dunne said.

What will be interesting is to see how smaller, more focused WiMAX upstarts like DigitalBridge and Towerstream perform in comparison to bigger players like Clearwire or the ailing Sprint Nextel, which is reportedly close to unveiling another round of layoffs. Dunne acknowledged that DigitalBridge’s strategy is to “build around Clearwire and Sprint,” aiming at underserved markets with 150,000 residents or less.

According to DigitalBridge, the latest funding round was led by Paladin Capital Group, and includes previous investors Redshift Ventures, CNF Investments and Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Though DigitalBridge is based in Ashburn, Va., the company is targeting underserved rural areas in many geographical markets, especially in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, where the company owns licenses or leases to 193 MHz of spectrum.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

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• Growing Mobile Data Use Turned Up Heat on Carriers in Q3
• Mobile Wrap-up: Q1 2009