Recently in VoIP Category

I've been having a sideline conversation with one of the readers of my last blog entry on CounterPath, and I thought it was a good idea to share the back and forth comments here and perhaps expand the discussion to include input from others.

I have a question for you. First, I am a shareholder of a significant number of shares of CounterPath. For the life of me, I can't understand why the share price and volume have
languished in this stock. It has had nothing but good news for months now. They're landing huge customers, revenue is ramping up, insider (Steven Bruk) is buying shares in the open market.

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O' Loyal Blog Readers,

Here's another sneak peek at an upcoming column in Internet Telephony magazine.

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A great deal has been written about the concept of “Web 2.0” – with much of it in search of a workable definition. The term has certainly become wildly popular, with more than 56 million citations in Google. But there is also much disagreement about what it means – while some dismiss it as a creation of marketing and PR hypesters, others embrace it as the new model for Web-based businesses and services.

According to Tim O’Reilly in his seminal piece “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software,” he writes that the concept of “Web 2.0” “got its start during a brainstorming session between O'Reilly Media and MediaLive International a few years ago, when Web pioneer and O’Reilly VP Dale Dougherty noted that far from having "crashed", the Web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity.”

Indeed, it’s clear that the rise of “Web 2.0” has created a dazzling array of new companies, business models and services. Continue Reading...

Managed Service Provider (MSP) Whaleback Systems just completed a $7.5 million Series B round of financing, led by Castile Ventures with participation from new investor Egan-Managed Capital and existing investor Ascent Venture Partners. The financing will be used to expand Whaleback's channel and geographic market coverage and to fund aggressive feature development for Whaleback's CrystalBlue SMB Voice Service.

Unlike traditional systems, the Whaleback CrystalBlue Voice Service is 100 percent premises- based and software-driven. It includes an IP PBX with Key System Unit features and Road Warrior Functionality, and features an all-inclusive, unlimited nationwide calling package for SMBs that need between 5 and 1500 stations.

Castile Ventures is investing its third fund in innovative enterprises developing future generations of enterprise, mass market and service provider information technology. Continue Reading...

While profitable domestic U.S. arbitrage scenarios are hard to come by today, with all the cutthroat competition for transport and termination and resulting price pressure, the International marketplace still holds a number of intriging opportunities.

George Dinsdale,  a VoIP industry vet and principal at IGP (Internet Global Phone), a small but fast-growing ITSP that sells minutes between the US and a number of international POPs (including the Phillipines and South America), recently told me about how IGP is completing local Brazilian calls by routing them through New York. He said it's simply cheaper to do it that way!

Indeed, there are many other scenarios -- and I've love to hear from anyone who has an interesting "arbitrage anecdote" to share!
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I recently met up with Donovan Jones and Jason Fischl, CounterPath's President/COO and CTO respectively, and they told me that revenues are growing around 20% per quarter -- a very nice clip even if Donovan does say so himself! Given that almost every service provider and hardware vendor I met up with at the last VON show that had a softphone product was licensing it from CounterPath, this number is perfectly believable -- and in my view set to grow even larger.

CounterPath Solutions is without question one of, if not THE leading provider of VoIP and Video over IP SIP softphones (with over 191 customers and more than 6 million IP endpoints deployed), and they recently announced an alliance with Intrado Inc., the leading provider of VoIP E911 services to develop new functionality within CounterPath’s softphone to support automatic location identification on mobile VoIP 911 calls. For most prospective large corporate and government users of VoIP, this is a very important development, as access to emergency services is actually a mandated policy that in many cases severely restricts the use of softphones.

The technology will enable the softphone to integrate directly with Intrado’s systems in order to detect and send location information automatically when a 911 call is made from a wireless VoIP end-user device. This means that calls made from a softphone on a laptop or smartphone, for example, will be directed to the appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP) and that emergency operators can link the caller's current physical location with the phone number used to dial for help. Continue Reading...

Packet Island Inc., a provider of VoIP lifecycle management solutions for the SME VoIP market, received its first round of venture funding from a group of venture capital firms led by Startup Capital Ventures. The other VCs participating in the Series A round are Garage Technology Ventures and Rincon Ventures.

According to Andy Aczel and Preveen Kumar, co-founders of Packet Island, “We took two years to build a solid SaaS platform that had the architecture to support the deployment model and economic sensitivity of the SME market. By focusing our SaaS platform to solve the VoIP management needs of the IP Centrex market, we’ve been able to address a burning problem in a fast growing space, and gain industry recognition by means of key industry awards. We wanted investors who had the breadth and depth in the markets we were going after, and that’s exactly what we got with our VC syndicate led by Dr. John Davidson from Startup Capital Ventures.”

Dr. John Davidson, co-founder and CTO of LAN pioneer, Ungermann-Bass, and General Partner of Startup Capital Ventures, says  “As a long time participant in the networking industry, I have seen the remarkable scaling down of the price and size of enterprise networking gear without seeing an attendant reduction in complexity. Continue Reading...

Congrats are due to Steve Guthrie, all around good guy and a VoIP industry veteran, on his recent appointment as Director of Global Product Marketing for the IP telephony business unit at Integrated Research. Steve was formerly with Xelor Software as VP of Marketing.

In his new job, Steve will play a broad marketing role across the company’s Americas, Europe and PacAsia regions. One key initiative is to help lead the company from its Cisco-only focus to a multi-vendor strategy where the company's PROGNOSIS VoIP management solutions integrate into Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Alcatel environments and provide a single view for these disparate systems that so many large enterprises have deployed across their global operations.

Since joining IR last month, Steve has already been in front of a half-dozen prospects and customers, on site with a customer where IR is managing 22,000 IPT nodes, and together with several MSPs that have end-users ranging from several hundred nodes to many thousand nodes.

Steve's new business contact details are below.


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Steven Guthrie
Director, Global Product Marketing, IP Telephony
PROGNOSIS -- precise performance monitoring

(m) +781-248-6956
(f) +781-662-9166
(im) [email protected]
(e) [email protected]
(w) www.prognosis.com Continue Reading...

As Rich Tehrani wrote recently, IP peering was one of the main themes to emerge at this past VON event in Boston. Another peering trend, SIP Trunking, which involves the direct IP connection of a SIP-enabled IP-PBX and SIP-compliant VoIP service provider, was also evident at the show and generated a few notable announcements.

First and foremost, the SIP Forum formally announced their embrace and ownership of SIPconnect -- a SIP trunking specification originally pioneered by Cbeyond Communications, Broadsoft, Cisco, and other vendors.

Another announcement from Bandwidth.com entailed their recent roll out of a SIP trunking solution aimed at the SMB and enterprise business market. They announced distribution deals for that product with Mitel and VoIP Supply, both of which will bundle the offering with their hardware solutions for business looking to maximize the value of their IP PBX systems. Continue Reading...

I arrived at VON Fall in Boston this morning, and thought I'd share my initial impressions of the event so far.

The exhibit floor looks quite good, with 350 or so booths and decent traffic. The vendors seem pumped and ready for an expected 9,000 attendees over the course of the week. Other numbers being bandied about include 175 registered press and analysts, and 325 speakers on the conference roster.

I sat in on the opening keynote featuring Jeff Pulver and Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL and President of AOL Audience. Continue Reading...

By all accounts, looks like outsourced IP phone system provider M5 Networks is on a tear: Over the last three years (2002-2005), M5's growth was 491.2 percent, placing it at number 272 on the Inc. magazine 500 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. -- and one of only 27 telecommunications companies to make the list.

M5 is one of 17 New York City-based companies added to the list for the first time in 2006. This year's biggest gainer, the New York metropolitan area is now represented on the Inc. 500 list by a total of 42 of the country's fastest-growing companies, making it a close second behind
Washington, D.C. for hottest metropolitan area on the list.