February 2005 Archives

Off to Comptel today. I am looking forward to the day soon when there is broadband access on the plane. Well at least half of me is. The other half cherishes a bit of quiet time so I can read, write and article and do anything else that is aided by an “interruption-free” environment.

Here issome good blog reporting from Al Bredenberg. I am very impressed with the FCC’s stance on broadband wireless. If they can help get this market off the ground, we will have a viable competitor for broadband access besides ILECS and cable companies. This is exactly what they should be doing.

Does the following line make you laugh? It made me smile – In a Beavis and Butthead sort of way

Microsoft Corp., world largest software maker, and Pfizer, the Viagra maker, has teamed up to fight Spam rigorously.

Read the story

Teleo is a new VoIP company that wants to bridge the desktop with the tools mobile professionals use today. They will be announcing their strategy at demo this week. According to Peter Sisson, Teleo President & CEO, “Mobile professionals use cell phone, e-mail and web browsers. They shouldn’t have a new VoIP interface as well”. He continued, “They should have the ability to click on an e-mail and initiate a call and should be able to click buttons on a web site to initiate a call.”

According to Sisson, You should be able to integrate VoIP with cell service as cell service is the future. We need to turn VoIP into a feature, not an application. He also believes in plug-and-play portability. “You should be able to receive your calls from anywhere,” says Sisson. “The trick is to use SIP and get through firewalls.” As curious as I am, I wanted more. I asked for details. Apparently they have a split-client design that is patent-pending.

One of the visions the company espouses is to make software and services to enable communications person specific not number specific.

In order to use the software, you download the client and get toolbars in Outlook and IE so both of these software apps become phones. You can use a phone that is USB based, use a TA or a new adapter from China they will sell that converts USB to RJ45.

The intelligence lives in toolbar. Applications will allow you to click and dial automatically. If the system can’t find a number you can highlight, right-click and dial. It can also translate 1-800-flowers into numbers. You can SIP forward from an enterprise system to Teleo as well.

One of the differentiators from free P2P software is that they can keep track of all calls not just PSTN calls. These are important considerations for enterprise users and of course will keep our government happy from a CALEA perspective.

I am happy to see companies realize it is not just about free or cheap minutes but we need to look at VoIP as a huge enabling technology. Applications are the future… VoIP is just a key that unlocks the door.

Lots of blogging software and other tools to help workgroups work more efficiently according to this article.

If you think society hasn’t been changed forever by the Internet you didn’t see the Grammys tonight. I just witnessed a montage of multitasked songs from Maroon 5 and other bands (I am so unhip, I didn’t know the others). The songs were actually interlaced, meaning a song went on for a minute and then another band started up and another band played in-between the spaces in the other bands singing and so on.

10 years ago everyone would have changed the channel. Today, probably most of the audience was on their laptops or reading or eating or conversing or whatever we all do now since we are so used to getting input from multiple sources at once.

This national ADD is contagious and it is going worldwide. I am convinced that humans are able to do more, faster, better and smarter due to the technology of multiple windows and multitasking.

The world is changing and I think for the better. Now that the Grammys have recognized geeks like me, perhaps I should put my laptop down for a few minutes and pay attention.

Microsoft Corp. announced a partnership with Singapore-based Flextronics International Ltd. on Monday to market a new range of high-specification phones, running Windows Mobile, to handset makers and network operators worldwide.

Amazingly I received a Spam message that mentioned offshore web hosting today. Something I never even thought of but a logical move in an interconnected world. You would probably would want to have a backup server located overseas anyway and one would think this is the next frontier for India.

Qwest Communications International offered around $7.3 billion for MCI, topping an earlier bid by Verizon Communications, Bloomberg News said on Sunday.

I’ve known Broadsoft’s Scott Wharton for years and after a good while discussing Broadsoft’s development of sophisticated hosting platforms, our conversations have transitioned from technology and applications to deployment. In the last few weeks for example the following customers were announced by Broadsoft:

Cbeyond, McLeodUSA, iiNET, and XO Communications.

These are some impressive wins. In addition to selling product the company has been busy trying to get the industry to rally around specs to interconnect CPE equipment with hosted services. The result is SIPconnect and it is backed by Cbeyond, Mitel, Cisco, Avaya and Centrepoint Technologies. It is a SIP based specification allowing service providers to easily inter-work with IP PBXs.

This alliance and specification shows there is the realization that companies may choose a hybrid approach to hosted services instead of throwing out CPE equipment in favor of hosted solutions. There is logic here as it seems change never comes as fast as we think in the world and intermediary (read “baby”) steps are often a smart move for companies pushing somewhat radical (but logical) technology advancements.

So I’m watching TV this morning and listening to the reporter talk about vintage computers and how they are going for at auction. Being the geek that I am I had to listen further. A few minutes into the BusinessWeek program they introduce none other than Evan Koblentz, the editor of a weekly newsletter on vintage computers.

Evan was the first ever TMC Labs Engineer Tom Keating, the Labs founder ever hired. TMC Labs was the first in-house testing lab in a publishing company focusing on communications. It is now the only such lab. Evan reviewed lots of products including the first ever VoIP products back in the nineties. He left TMC and went to eWeek for a while and is now on his own.

Nice going Evan, it is good to see a TMC alum do so well.

If you want to see what Evan is up to these days please visit:

http://news.computercollector.com.

Please be careful when doing business with any company claiming to be the Yellow Pages. There seem to be dozens of these companies masquerading around as the actual Yellow Pages that we all grew up with. I have Seen yellow pages Inc., True Yellow pages and countless others.

Apparently there is no law stopping people from starting companies with the name Yellow Pages, designing a logo that looks like the traditional Yellow pages and sending out invoices and other direct mail to try to get money from people that will confuse the two.

Case in point, I know someone who recently received a check from the Yellow Pages and cashed it. What they didn’t realize was the fine print on the back of the check that said they now owe almost $200 for a useless Internet listing.

Don’t fall for this scam.

I’ve known Citel’s Mike Robinson for a while and he has never been so enthused as the most recent chat I had with him about Citel’s future after the MCK acquisition. MCK was a very strong company in the 1999-2000 era. They sold remote access solutions and were well-respected in the industry. During the “crash,” they fell off the face of the earth it seemed. I didn’t hear from them so I assumed the worst. One of the key benefits to Citel in acquiring MCK is the breadth of legacy protocol experience both companies have together -- One on the remote access side and the other in the handset gateway arena.

In our conversation, Mike was especially happy to tell me about the VoIP opportunities for resellers... When coupled with a hosted solution, you can use Citel’s handset gateways to go into a customer site and tell them they will get more features, better service and a lower phone bill when they switch to VoIP. They’ll get features like simultaneous ring, CTI, web-based administration, find-me, follow-me, etc.

In his opinion, IP PBX sales are predicated on PBXs breaking whereas this sale is predicated on nothing. You go in and tell customers they will save money and get more. They can’t say no.

For reasons such as the above, we are seeing a massive surge in reseller attendance at our upcoming Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week. Resellers are a smart bunch and follow the money. I’m actually involved in a panel on How to Make Money Selling VoIP. I asked Mike Robinson to present in this session as well. Hope to see you there.

A new company to the VoIP space, Apparent Networks recently released AppareNet, a product that measures MOS, latency, and bandwidth in an effort to determine if your network is VoIP ready. They use microburst technology to look for the signs of VoIP trouble without needing to install anything in your network.

I spoke with Apparent networks representative, matt Dion and learned a lot about the company. They can pinpoint the exact cause and location of jitter, latency and dropped packets, traffic overload and misconfigured networks.

As I’ve mentioned before this is an area of tremendous growth potential as voice over IP quality is something that can’t be taken for granted… It needs to be checked and measured continuously.

Recently I witnessed how a service provider can work with an equipment manufacturer to differentiate themselves and their offering to do things that other companies without the same types of ties can’t easily do. Sprint is working closely with Tadiran selling IP based telecom systems. With a new SIP server coming later this year the two will be able to enable remote video monitoring via the PBX as well.

I saw a sleek ZyXel WiFi telephony phone and a proprietary wireless phone working with the Tadiran PBX. All of these solutions by the way are sold under the Sprint IPX brand of products and can be sold only by Sprint authorized dealers. In order to receive the above certification, dealers need to receive brand and technical training.

A recent win for Sprint was the University of Utah where there was a need for a complex solution that tightly coupled service and equipment. After exhaustive analysis they chose the Sprint/Tadiran solution and purchased over 30,000 handsets and 250 Coral IPX systems connected via fiber. Nice win.

Another area where Sprint has an advantage over other service providers is tight coupling with their wireless offering. OpenOffice for example allows cellular phones to act as extensions off the corporate PBX with every feature available in the office! Here is a great thing that this integration allows. Most cell phones can’t make international calls for security and fraud related reasons. Your workforce can continue to use cell phones that can’t call internationally but when they need to make international calls, they can just dial 4 digit extensions to make international calls to coworkers.

Tight integration is a tough thing to compete with. Tadiran and Sprint seem to be using their mutual relationship to sell more than either would sell on their own.