Dan Behringer On The Status Of FWD

Earlier today someone started a thread about FWD over at the VoIP Tech Chat forum on http://www.broadbandreports.com. Several forum regulars questioned the status of FWD, which is a fair question as not much has been heard from those involved. Certainly the web site has changed, and a lot of the old resource material seems to have gone away.

FWD CEO, Dan Behringer answered the thread as follows:

Folks,

The main thread seems to be FWD is not what it used to be.

This is quite correct.

How could it be? Jeff Pulver spent $4 million + on the service over the years as a experiment in support of the VON events.

VON events ended. The value of a standard SIP registration as an experiment ended.

The $30 annual service was assembled to support the users that did not want to bother jumping to one of the other free options.

FWD was always advertised as an “experiment” not a free ride in perpetuity.

FWD remains an “experiment” but at this point we are looking at activities in high definition voice.

Take a look at Jeff’s HD Communication Summit in NYC on May 21, 2009 – »www.hdcomms.com

A basic standard definition legacy SIP registration service remains up under new SIP domain – sip.fwdi.net

my.FWD, FWD.Communicator, voicemail, service numbers, voicemail all reached end of life in March 2009.

Please send support questions to fwd@pulver.com.

If you are interested in the new HD activities, please contact me directly at the email address below.

Regards,

Dan

This is really covering some of the same ground that Dan addressed in his April 24 appearance on the VUC call. Give it a listen. It might clear up some things and perhaps pique your interest in the coming wave of wideband IP telephony.