>> it also makes the headsets used by nearly every phone operator you've ever talked to. particularly those in overseas call centers. >> 7,000. >> reporter: air traffic controllers and college kids skyping their boyfriendses. plantronics will always be most famous, forever by the headset worn about a man from ohio who used his plantronics for a very long distance call, saying it. >> it's within small step for m man. one giant leap for mankind. >> reporter: fast forward several decades and the company is dealing with new ways of communicating. telecommuting and unified communications, what the industry calls you see, text, voice, video carried by the internet. ken kannappan is ceo of plantronics. he heads a company named as one of the best in america by forbes magazine. joined by sarah lacy and tom giles of bloomberg "business week." it turns out i know you as the car in mey ear company but it's not a huge part of your business. >> it's the most number of units since how we touch the most consum consumers. the largest part of the revenues and profits come from business-to-business communications. >> why do you win in business-to-business communications because, you know, you've got pretty big competitors there, and you know, frankly, when, you know, tech crunch we need to do a call with someone, plantronics isn't the first naming that jumps to mind? >> we're usually used as a part of the other solutions from the larger enterprises. actually, we're the number one player in that market. the reasons you us, number one, audio quality will be distinctly better. you won't have any annoying background sound. you'll have good, clear communication. nothing more us straighting when someone has an accent and you can't hear them clearly. >> you're seeing enterprises looking for an all in one solution. what can i get to solve all of my communication problems in another provider? >> shortly cisco will sell me the headset? >> cisco will recommend our headsets. on the one hand you see vendors, cisco, microsoft, bich ibm comi great solutions. the ecosystem that they provide, we're working cooperatively with all of the players so that our products work well with theirs. for those guys, they're worried about competing with each other they are necessarily trying to get into the headset business as much as making sure our solutions make well with theirs, providing a great experience and quality. >> why not fold your business into theirs? >> to some degree they could but they can't get into every single business. they want good partnerships. >> but they could buy you. >> of course, you they they could buy us. they have the financial resources and we're a public company. having said that they can't buy every single business that is out there. in our case, a lot of the enterprise that we work with, they want somebody that can work with every platform. they might use an ingredient from cisco, microsoft, and they want some vender who is neutral enough that they're able to work with all all different types of equipments and systems. >> might be problematic if someone bought you? >> there's a gain and a loss, right, because all of a sudden the warm welcome we have the system enterprises might get diminished. >> we've had companies on the show, this is our business model and you can play out, i can see where that's going to go. and yours is the opposite in the sense that i can only see the communication within offices particularly telecommunications, getting bigger to the point where having the office was kind of quaint. >> what we'rie seeing around th world more and more people spending their time not in the office, okay? you've got people remote global organizations they're at home, the time other people are in the enterprises. 90% of people are spending a significant amount of time with remote communications, either due to globalization, telecommuting or the fact they're on the road and they've still got to communicate because the way business is trying to compete is towards how do we collaborate more effectively, okay, how do we understand things better so we can innovate more effectively? pure functional replication is never going to get anybody any money. you have to create a difference experience. you have to be able to brainsto brainstorm. those are things we have to do with real time comprehension, real-time dialogue, it becomes crucial to figure out how to figure out how people are distributed. >> die it with e-mail. i think having you on the show was arranged entirely phoneless. >> so i'll make the point that that arrangement of logistics can be done well versus e-mail. when trying to understand, how does somebody feel when they try out our product, okay, or what is it that somebody in brazil wants or be in in india. >> emoticon. >> how good that is comprehension or something that is more complex, it's more conceptual, more emotional. if i do it at the pure easy level, yeah, i can do it versus e-mail but i want a product that's like everybody's else product, i never make money that way. >> i understand the reason people use you now. i talk to people all over the world i cover a lot of entrepreneurs in emerging markets i don't particularly have a communication problem. google voice is great for making low-cost phone calls. skype is pretty good. >> what do you use for google voice, your phone? >> yeah. >> depending where i am in the world. but it's like, i mean, the point being i have a plantronics headset for when i'm doing skype calls, it works great. i don't feel like i have this big oh, my god i need to find some way to communicate with someone halfway around the world and -- >> we are helping solve your problem. >> no, i'm saying i get your existing business. what are you going to solve 0 for me next. >> gee going forward, with a phone it's got eight built-in handset. with a cell phone i can pick it up. with a computer i'm not going to pick it up. there's noise pollution if i use it around other people. there's a built-in mike and not good quality. i'm trying to do things maybe in a star bucks, hotel lobby vishg to are effective communications integrated into a platform, in this case, not very well designed for it. trying to use video communications, got to have the screen. with the smartphones i want to see the image. i have to have some way to interface with that. above and beyond that, uc creating a brand-new opportunity for us because we used to connect to closed systems, that's what a phone used to be. the pc is an open platform. with unified communications you might be on a pc call but does somebody else know you're on that pc call? if they don't, are they trying to ring you on your cell phone? we can communicate the information because we're attached to those different devices. we can make it easier for you to do different things. okay, for making calls, to conferencing we can connect these different systems because we're connected both of them. there's more value that we can add than we've ever been able to add before. >> how are adapting to the change in travel? how does that affect the way you design your products? >> we have a couple of things that are opportunities for us. one, of course, still the base level of audio quality, it's a loud environment, and all of the things that you want to do that you can be able to do depend upon good audio quality. nothing worse than voice commands that don't work. as you have greater capability at a car, you want to leverage that, with your eyes free, okay, which is even more important, okay, perhaps than hands-free in that context. secondly, you know, because you've got all of this greater capability, you know, both directly and indirectly, the systems that are around are becoming smarter. when you talk about unified communications a related thing that is important is communicated enabled business processing, because all of the er pieces, whether oracle, sales force, pc, trying to deliver their systems to you in those environments so you can leverage them and that's opportunities for us to authenticate and make those transactions possible. >> what's when ford incorporates all of that -- i have a car in which i use a headset and one i don't because it built in. are you part of that technology as well? if not, why not? >> there's gains and losses for us. if we say okay, within a car, you know, they can provide a pretty good level of audio quality. >> acceptable. >> if they choose to do so. they don't provide privacy, it's obvious. you have other people in the car, you're not going to have that. having said that the flip side is you have more of the smartphones where people are trying to look at the screenses. so to do the video call, make a call on that, if you're trying to use other applications or web conferencing, all of a sudden you need to have us for there. while on the call, could some of the time people decide to use the in-car system, absolutely. but there's other growth drivers going our way. >> one minute left. i want to ask you this last question which is, can you tell people to stop wearing the headset when not on a call? are you with me on this? >> walk around the street with the -- >> the advertisement for plantronics. >> i'll tell you honestly. >> can we rule, it's not cool? >> products are starting to look cooler and cooler. >> no, they're not. no, no, no, no, no, no. >> we have to go to commercial. i want a final vote, not cool, not cool. >> kind of cool. >> i agree. >> he works hat bloomberg business. >> the jury is hung. it's tied. ken kannappan is the ceo of plantronics. next on "press here," one man mapped future of the internet and says it's doomed. we could write him off as crazy but he's one of the smartest people we know. columbia law professor tim wu. our points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel. we're like forget florida, we're going on a safari. so we're on the serengeti, and seth finds a really big bone. we're talking huge. they dig it up, put it in the natural history museum and we get to name it. sethasauraus. really. your points from chase sapphire preferred are worth 25% more on travel? means better vacations. that's incredible. believe it...with chase sapphire preferred your points are worth 25% more on travel when booked through ultimate rewards. s. welcome back to "press here." one of the top thinkers on the internet. tim wu law professor at columbia and author of two books, and a leading advocate of the concept of net neutrality. >> reporter: in fact, leading advocate is probably not a strong enough description-tim wu is widely credited with inventing the very phrase, net neutrality. the concept that all data on the internet should be treated equally. wu argues, the internet is in dang or of following the path of older technologies from free and wild towards stifling monopoly. just as the telegraph was nearly the exclusive domain of western union or bell moved to dominate telephones -- >> long distance. >> reporter: -- the internet, he says, could someday be more or less owned by google. or at&t. his new book "the master switch, the rise and fall of information empires" documents that ever-repeating business psychel from invention to domination. scientific and american named tim wu one of the people of the year. independent magazine at harvard called him one of the university's influential advocates. boing boing says he's one of america's great scholars though like many great americans he's from canada. sarah lacy, tom mcgrew. you say there is this pattern that is going to happen in almost every industry, information industry. >> right. >> and it's almost inevitable. you've seen it in telegraph. you've seen it in cable news, cable television, it's inevitable? >> the question of our moment actually is whether there is something so different about the internet it might be different this time around. however, if you read history, ice had and spent years studying industries you see that this pattern that repeats between an open period, highly entrepreneurial, innovate inthat becomes consolidated into one giant industry. the question of our times whether there's something that might change it. >> we think of radio as being sort of a standardized thing or we think of television as being standardized. all of these things were wild west when they very first started. >> sure. there was a time 110 years ago, young men, women, started telephone companies the way we do a start-up now. radio in the 1920s was anyone's game. you'd get involved, set up a station, anyone could start a radio station. so all of these media in the 10er to 15 years after their invention had the period like we had in the ' 90s, a wild west, this was the real west. >> is it true to say the same as it is now? you didn't have a cough indicso system, you didn't have more internet users in china than here, by and large they see the same web that we do here, you don't have the situation where you have sophisticated entrepreneurs and silicon valley churns through companies. it was incredibly open. there is a flow of logic. people are leaving companies to start something else. >> certain things haven't changeded. america was incredibly entrepreneurial in the 19th century. >> bootstraps, not 10 million with so competitors. >> when you had bell, edison -- >> sophisticated entrepreneurs. >> sophisticated. they were inventing things like crazy, the radio was invented around that period. >> there's more invention that happened around that period. i don't think it was a start-up machine like silicon valley was. you didn't have a thousand start ups and $10 million put into each one intentionally every six months in order to all eviscerate each other to get to this one standard. >> every era thinks -- >> doesn't that force openness? >> everyone thinks there's something special about their era. i'm not sure. there were -- i mean, different credit market but was capital markets back then, they functioned. the number of entrepreneurs was -- there's less people, but there were a ton. that is the question for the time. i'm not sure maybe things are different. it is different because the internet is the open protocol is the internet let people get started without being destroyed by the competitors. >> let's talk more history if we could, for a second. what happens? how do we know when the thing that happened to telegraph, to telephone, to cable television, when do we know that that's happened? what are the danger signs? >> there's a couple of signs. you see the rise of a few big firms that start talking about the need to integrate the medium, to put it altogether, to improve quality, better customer and service, and reliability. >> organize the world's information. >> organize it all or, as apple says integrate everything together. you're starting to hear this now, particularly from apple and google. particularly from apple everything needs to work together better. americans are tired of amateur hour. that's what hollywood said in the 1920s. sick of too many films. americans want predictable, straightforward thing. same in radio, 1920s, said radio's too chaotic, we need one radio serving the people. >> sounds good. if computers were working together it would be fantastic. >> consumers like the developments. >> in the presence of apple and its alternative means to information through apps through the ecosystem, however closed it may be, provide the bull work that's needed to keep google from becoming this big -- >> like a balance of power? there is dlsh the-- there could balance of power between google, apple facebook allied with at&t, verizon but that's different than what we're thinking the internet as a free for all with thousands of competitor zblez facebook didn't exist six years ago. t how quickly it has google rung scared and freaking out. >> the way the internet is now. >> exactly. >> not how it will be late. >> that's what give me comfort, we're 15 years into, you can see facebook or twitter come out of nowhere and quickly disrupt these giants. i'm with you. if it was all apple and google i'd be more concerned. >> let me pick up a development which is the start-ups like facebook were internet start-ups. start-ups today are app start-ups. you cannot write an app on facebook that destroys facebook. you cannot write an apple app that destroys apple. the move to the app is a possible development in the end of the cycle based on open internet where you have companies coming out of the nowhere and destroying them. i hope you're right. i want to say i hope you're right. >> we hear more noise about apps. they're easier and cheaper to start. but i mean, the companies that i see that we write about on tech crunch that we see, they're still plenty of swing for the fences big plays. groupon has come out of nowhere, a company that is no way built on top of facebook. >> that's true. >> there's going to be more. i find it hard to believe that everyone is going to feed the platform of facebook. >> in 1910 there were approximately 5,000 telephone companies. everyone said this is the most competitive industry. by 1920, one telephone company. the history suggests, i'm not going to say next year, industries do consolidate. >> and with the help of the government. >> true. >> the government comes in first, later the government will come to break you up. >> right. >> at first the government says you know what, they're right? this is madness to have 5,000 -- >> i mean, can the united states government have this same sway and the same -- because, look, again, if the internet was the purview of the u.s. government, i'd be concerned because the u.s. government is more behold tonight corporations than ever before but it's not an american thing. does that protect it in some way? >> i think -- i actually don't because i think other countries are more interested in monopolies than america. the china government want to -- they want single champions to run every industry. they want baidu -- >> in you pin countries who want to be a monopoly you don't have a monopoly. >> you have a world of national monopolies. where governments are pushing monopoly, when foreign governments are pushing monopoly you can't expect globalization to solve the problem. >> stop right there. we'll be back in a minute. so, we book a flight to hawaii using our points from chase sapphire. last minute... on christmas. and sitting next to us, chevy chase. and we really hit it off. we play golf, and then the luau. he's like da vinci with ice. and after, we help hang christmas decorations. wait, wait, wait. you flew last minute... on christmas... with points from chase sapphire? yeah. amazing. believe it. with points from chase sapphire, you can book airline tickets with no blackout dates or restrictions. talking with tim wu, one of the nice things about having a tv show, you can have a question about net neutrality, invite the guy who invented the term. give me -- you've got 4:30, a little less if sarah starts talking, if you could just tell us, what does this mean? why do i care about your net neutrality thing? >> net neutrality is how entrepreneurs get their start. the idea if you have an open network a entrepreneur can go to that network, reach consumers and not go through some month onlist it needs to go through. when we didn't have net neutrality, say with at&t in the 1950s you, you have to go to at&t and say may a please. it's permissionless innovation. that's why i wrote this book, we're going to get locked if we lose net neutrality into some monopolist. >> isn't google one of the biggest components? >> they don't have net neutrality in the same way at&t did. >> what is net? are we talking about the wire that goes into my house net neutrality or talking about my iphone net neutrality? >> i don't trust google to be the protector of net true trneu. >> verizon said they would consider of charging less if you wan