VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

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IMS and SIP Print Magazines Debut in Q1, 2006

Please feel free to start signing up for SIP and IMS Magazines. SIP Magazine already has 28,000 subscribers and will be available in print in the US and digitally elsewhere. I assume if you read my blog you know SIP stands for session initiation protocol and is a superset of VoIP. The target audience for this publication is developers, enterprise decision-makers and service providers.

IMS Magazine is a newer publication and stands for IP multimedia subsystem. The publication will be available in print in the US and digitally elsewhere. The circulation is 25,000. Think of IMS as the glue that ties together wired and wireless networks. It is further an enabler for rapid provisioning of and delivery of next-generation service. The target market for this magazine is service providers in the wired and wireless spaces.

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Nuvio Denied By Federal Court

The U S Court of Appeals, DC Circuit today denied Nuvio's Emergency Motion for a Partial Stay of the E911 Order for VoIP Service Providers. According to Jason Talley, president and CEO of Nuvio, "While I'm greatly disappointed in today's decision by the U S Court of Appeals, I am heartened by the fact that the court's decision did not address the substantive issues in this case. We will still proceed with our appeal and still believe that the FCC's E911 Order for VoIP Service Providers is arbitrary and capricious."

Talley continued, "Although the FCC decided not to force Nuvio to disconnect its customers, that does not ameliorate the impact of the forced withdrawal of our VoIP service from the marketplace. The fact of the matter is this: the FCC's E911 requirements will translate into less choice for consumers and less technological innovation for our country."

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My Travel This Week

I visited IP4IT this week and met old friends from Sphere Communications. They told me about me about their new relationship with Ingate systems allowing secure SIP trunking in the enterprise. This is important because dedicated SIP trunks are the future of telecom as they reduce the need for large amounts of proprietary hardware to connect to the phone network. Using Metro Ethernet you can connect directly to your SIP provider. Now you can do this more securely which is great for enterprises looking to bypass the PSTN altogether.

For the record I always have interesting taxi stories when I travel and others have urged me to keep a record of these activities in my blog. A colleague of mine and I ran into the most flirtatious cab driver I have ever seen and she volunteered multiple stories about life as a Las Vegas cabbie. She has been doing this job for 2 years and has established a $20 room rate if you want to use the cab for activities beyond normal transport.

The quote for the day has to be "I thought I had seen everything as an adult until I started driving a cab in Las Vegas."

Later today I am traveling to Kansas City, KS for a live seminar I will be keynoting for Interactive Intelligence and Vonexus. I hope you get a chance to come see me live tomorrow.

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Just in Time Communications is Close

We are getting closer to realizing the dream of Just in Time Communications or JiTC. As you may recall, JiTC is the concept of squeezing inefficiency out of communications. It is very similar to real-time communications but different in one essential way. Communications shouldn't be real-time. When you are on vacation or on the phone with your best customer and your boss calls, she shouldn't have real-time contact with you. She should receive a polite rejection message. Of course if the boss has an urgent reason for their call -- or anyone else does for that matter -- they should be able to break through to you.

For all the advancements we have made over the years in telecom we still need to pick up the phone to realize if the call is important enough to take. Yes Caller-ID helps but doesn't solve the problem.

In order to get around this quandry there needs to be a way for users to specify what is important, when it is important and how important it is. A company called Iotum has been working on this problem and has a novel solution to it. They have developed what they call a Relevance Engine and in the company's words it's the world's first smart platform to intelligently assess the relevance of a phone call, and route it to the most appropriate device on any network.

In a conversation with Alec Saunders the CEO of Iotum, he explains that people have an average of 14-16 ways they can be reached based on their surveys. This includes various phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IM accounts. Alec actually shut down three softphones just prior to our conversation so we wouldn't be interrupted.

What Iotum focuses on is squeezing inefficiency out communications; they help the right call get to the device of choice at the right time. They are actually able to rank calls based on numerous parameters such as whether you have taken calls from the person before, the time of day and whether your presence is set to do not disturb. You can also set your own rules if you like. The system ranks phone calls the way Google or Yahoo! might rank a web page. Google calls their ranking system Page Rank and many sites on the Internet are assigned a number between 1 and 10. The Google toolbar shows you this ranking depending on the site you are on.

The system also knows if your call will be short or long based on past history. We all know there are a few people that talk our ear off and if we have a choice we won't speak to these people five minutes prior to a board meeting. Why shouldn't your communications systems make sure you don't take calls from such people when you don't have the time to speak with them? Sure you could pick up the phone and politely ask to call back but we all know how offended people can get sometimes.

Another neat trick the system will soon be capable of is putting people into a conference bridge automatically. In other words if you schedule a conference call, the system detects when the people who belong on your call are calling in. Other callers not scheduled to be in the conference call will be routed to voicemail automatically.

So far Iotum's solution works with systems from Asterisk, Versatel Networks and Epygi. Contact the company directly for specifics.

I am 100% sure systems like this one from Iotum are the future of putting users in control of communicating. Iotum's Relevance Engine is Just in Time Communications at its best. The company is looking to partner with PBX makers not compete with them. I think every PBX vendor should be looking at JiTC and offering it to customers. There is no better application or differentiator for a PBX vendor than squeezing inefficiency out of communications.

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