Linksys has been rumored to be moving upmarket for a while. Today the company announced MCI will be using Linksys devices for the SMB VoIP market. PBX makers need to keep an eye on entry level equipment makers as they have well-known brands and have access to factories that can churn out low cost equipment quickly.

If there is a genius idea out there it is putting ringtone and ringback capability into the US telecom market. It is not a new idea but we in the US seem to be the last in the world to be making money in this space. Ringtones are making a fortune for mobile providers in Europe and Asia and in the states it has been slow to catch on. Part of the slowness in my opinion is less marketing of the concept here and the fact that the US is generally behind most of the world when it comes to mobile and other sorts of telephony.

I mentioned the lack of domestic wireline carriers getting into the ringtone business just this weekend and I am blown away that wireline carriers are acting so slowly in getting into this market.

I saw a good sign that the ringback market is evolving here as BayPackets just announced they are leveraging RealNetworks to provide multimedia ringback tones for service providers.

In 2003, ringtone revenue topped $2.3 billion worldwide, according to telecom consultancy Ovum.

In case anyone is interested in this opportunity, please contact Steve directly.

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Hello Rich,

My name is Steve Holmes and I own and operate a Telecom consulting firm up here in Maine that serves the business community here in the Northeast and a little beyond that as well.

A few months back, I had acquired the following domain names:

http://VoIP2Phone.com
http://VoIP2Phone.net
http://VoIP2Phone.biz
http://VoIP2Phone.org
http://VoIP2Phone.us

Along with this, I have also applied for Trademark protection through http://uspto.gov. A LOGO has been designed.  And lastly, I have acquired a couple of "800" version Vanity toll free numbers that spell "VOIP" and "FAX" within each number.

I am explaining this to you to portray the fact that I have wanted to launch a VOIP telephony business in a very bad way but am now running slim in the financial department. My question to you is, would you know of any company or individuals that may be interested in joining me to run with this endeavor?

I am sure you receive MANY solicitations weekly, if not daily and I apologize in advance if this e-mail is a nuisance.  A reply from you would be greatly appreciated and respected.

Thanks for all of your time.

Steve Holmes
SteveH(at)VoIP2phone.com

SBC seems to be moving along with their Project Lightspeed rollout but some are saying the project is much further behind than planned. A trial of the technology is set for Texas and 40 SBC employees will be able to get this triple-play service which includes VDSL in the range of 20-25 Mbps.

This level of bandwidth is sufficient for one HDTV channel and three regular channels. Expect 18 million households to be reached by the first half of 2008.

The question I have is why the bandwidth limitation? One HDTV channel shouldn’t be enough for most households. I would think the company should be deploying technology to allow 50 Mbps of bandwidth.

Dr. Christian Stredicke has launched a new company called PBXNSIP which is short for PBX and SIP. As you may recall Christian also founded SNOM. The new company has a very slick product I just witnessed today called simply VoIP Box which is essentially a PBX which is about the size and weight of a deck of cards.

The device has a CompactFlash slot, USBconnectivity, two Ethernet connectors and a line in and out for music on hold.

At $1,295 you can have up to 50 extensions and 10 simultaneous lines.

I am off to the VPF or Voice Peering Fabric to speak. I am very excited about the talk and think my presentation should be very well-received as it discusses the benefits of VoIP peering as well as what the future will be in a VoIP peered world. I hope to see you at the conference.

One has to think of Metcalfe’s Law when discussing VoIP peering. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of users that are added to the network. So n2 would represent the value of the network. Since you can’t connect to yourself the value becomes (n-1)2.

What does this mean to you? The longer you wait to join a peering network, the more value the network has to you.

I just saw Earthlink’s statement about applauding the FCC’s decision to require SBC/Verizon to offer stand-alone or naked DSL service. The statement is entitled “Victory For VoIP.” The full statement is as follows:

"We applaud today's Federal Communications Commission decision that requires SBC and Verizon to offer Stand-Alone DSL as a condition for their separate merger approvals.  As a result of this decision, more than 80 million consumers will now be able to take advantage of emerging Internet voice and data applications without also having to buy legacy wire-line local telephone service from their phone company.

"Today's FCC decision in favor of mandatory 'net neutrality' provisions helps guarantee the rights of all consumers to access the Internet content and applications they choose.

"EarthLink strongly believes that the promise of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other IP-enabled services is vast.  By requiring consumer safeguards, the FCC is fostering more Internet competition and innovation, which will directly benefit our economy and homeland security."