I was reading yet another article today from David Sims, this one focusing on VoIP security. It is quite good and I also saw that it is running on TMCnet’s Call Center Mexico channel. I was not aware this channel even existed but am pretty excited to see TMCnet addressing the needs of the Mexican communications community.
March 2006 Archives
EV-DO Revision A as a relatively new technology for wireless broadband access that will rock our worlds. For those of us who live on the road, we may not sacrifice our broadband connectivity at all. We’ll be able to do anything and everything with 3.1 Mbps downloads and 1.8 Mbps uploads. I am still not sure I’ll want to upload 100 8-megapixel photos over this connection but I am sure I won’t need to deal with WiFi hotspots ever again.
I have a rule that says if I am going to be in a location for more than an hour I will sign up for WiFi but if not I will use the current EVDO card that I have. Of course in some areas EVDO is miserably slow and there are other times when EVDO actually surpasses WiFi speed!
So any improvement to EVDO technology is a win for me and many others who aren’t tied down too often. Furthermore if EVDO is consistently faster than WiFi hotspots and hotel-based broadband connections more mobile executives will be able to justify using EVDO exclusively and thus the uptake of products based on this wireless standard will increase.
There is some great news in the market. Nortel and Sierra Wireless have achieved the industry’s first over the air test calls using EV-DO Revision A wireless technology and pre-commercial wireless data devices. The successful tests confirm the commercial viability of EV-DO Revision A for powering next-generation broadband wireless services.
Operators will be able to prioritize different users and applications, enabling tiered services and multiple pricing options. Operators also can make additional security enhancements by using authentication mechanisms that can identify users and give specific access rights based on the user’s profile.
“Given the tremendous success and momentum of 1xEV-DO, Nortel has embarked on an aggressive program to deliver 1xEV-DO Rev A,” said Richard Lowe, President, Mobility and Converged Core Networks at Nortel. “Nortel’s DO Rev A technology will allow operators to serve more customers on the same spectrum while delivering VoIP and other advanced multimedia services that enhance the end user’s experience and increase subscriber loyalty.”
So for the mobile warriors out there, today is a great day. We may not be able to travel less but at least we will be able to stay connected wherever we go.
According to Greg Galitzine, Alcatel could pick Lucent up and in the process create an entity that has more sales than Cisco. If the two companies do merge, they will create an IMS and IPTV monster. In addition the wireless strength of such a company would be potentially unequaled.
If you are a service provider you know time to market is key and anything you can do to shorten this is worth exploring. Now what if I told you there is a vendor who wants to speed your time to market and in addition wants to simplify the way you deliver hosted services?
Ensim aims to help you with some of your most challenging problems and then some. Their Unify application enables service providers to centrally create, control and deliver hosted IP and application services.
We live in a world where you need to deploy a number of disparate best of breed solutions to customers. At the same time you need to be cognizant of the fact that the competition may be offering similar services. How do you differentiate further? You come up with unique bundles that serve your target audiences. You may have a bundle for teens, another for small business and another for real estate agents.
The company supplies service managers that are basically adapters to popular services such as the hosted offering from Broadsoft. Using an API that Broadsoft supplies Ensim is able to configure, deal with metering and check the health of the Broadsoft application.
As the name implies, Unify can deal with multiple applications as long as they run on IP. For example you can support Blackberry Server and IM if you like. As long as it runs on IP you are OK. By encapsulating other applications the program allows you to deal with a single interface to manage disparate services.
The ultimate goal of course is programmatic provisioning allowing a service to be configured all the way down to the welcome e-mail, without human intervention.
There is no bigger believer in enhanced services than me and a solution like Ensim's is a good idea as it allows service providers to focus on how to make money by providing unique bundling strategies without having to worry about service enablement. In my opinion, anything that can be done to speed service provider profitability is a good idea.
One final note is that Ensim's licensing structure allows you to pay them only when you sell your services meaning no risky cash outlays for a product that may not pay for itself. If I were a service provider I would be spending that initial savings on things like research to determine what added services customers will pay for.
There are 15 million blogs in
Now is the time to get listed in TMCnet’s VoIP Service Provider Directory. We expect this directory to be the most widely used resource of its type worldwide. It will allow users to search by location, area code and type of service such as residential/business. You will also be able to compare services from different providers.
The service will be rolled out very soon. Please forward this link to any service providers you know of so we can keep this directory up to date and as accurate as possible.
When you own the lines you can get away with murder. If this sort of activity isn’t an example of a monopoly at work, I am not sure what is.
I now know a few people who have installed Asterisk at home. When I first heard the idea I thought it was crazy but there are lots of interesting things you can do with the software. In one case a person who installed Asterisk configured the system to stop an affair between someone and his wife. What he did was make sure that calls to each person were directed to an extension on the PBX that never answers.
Very clever. Each person thought the other was ignoring them.
But for all the potential benefits of having a free PBX at home, Asterisk is complicated to install. If only there were a home version of the game we could all play :-) . Well, the good news according to Andy Abramson there is indeed now a home version of Asterisk.
You may know Hunter Newby from Telx as he writes a VoIP peering column for Internet Telephony Magazine. I often speak at events with Hunter and this past week I was speaking about voice peering at Comptel while Hunter was at another event on the same day addressing the same topic.
Hunter asked if there were any good questions from the audience and I told him that there was a question about how peering affects Net Neutrality.
Hunter's response was as follows and I thought it worthy of passing along:
The Darwinian solution to Net Neutrality is private Internets. Voice peering occurs in this context. So, it is already having an impact.
Hunter is right on.
If you want to see Hunter and I speak together in one place and get some sun while you are at it, be sure to be in
I just finished speaking today in 
.
See you in Sunny Miami.
Covad has just joined with TMC to build an online community for small to medium businesses. The community can be found at VoIP forSMB.com and it will be an objective resource for the SMB community devoted to news and education on communications and technology. In addition it will include a VoIP for SMB blog.
If you want to learn more, check out the video on the home page!
New Telephony does a great job describing my peering panel today in
The panel will be moderated by
Tehrani says 2006 will be the year of VoIP peering. He points to the announcement just a few weeks ago of a joint initiative of cable operators in The Netherlands – comprising UPC Netherlands, Casema, MultiKabel, Essent and CaiW – with more than 7 million subscribers and more than 450,000 VoIP subscribers. They awarded a VoIP peering contract to a partnership of XConnect, a provider of VoIP interconnection services based in the
Today, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin spoke at the Comptel Spring 2006 show to a group of a few hundred competitive service providers. Comptel is not the first place you would imagine the Chairman would speak. In fact I thought I would see George W. Bush speaking on the benefits of Democracy and the perils of nuclear energy in
In general Comptel is an organization that has embraced lobbying the government to increase telecom competition. The group has done this incessantly if not successfully as the pro competitive telecom environment has slowly been eaten away by the FCC over the years.
So as I was surprised to hear Kevin Martin would speak at this event, I was extremely impressed by his decision to do so.
I missed part of the discussion but the parts I heard were quite interesting. Chairman Martin certainly swayed me with his intelligent dialogue. I went into the talk thinking the FCC is not so concerned about competition and I left thinking perhaps I am not 100% right.
At one point a person representing a CLEC raised his hand and asked if the FCC will help CLECs or put them out of business. He further implied that Chairman Powell started the snowball of CLEC elimination (presumably this referred to the retraction of the UNE-P rules).
Upon hearing this, the crowd broke out into spontaneous applause and it was unclear in Chairman Martin heard the applause as he seemed to talk through it. Perhaps this was a wise move by Martin as I got the feeling the cheering could have gone on for the better part of the day if nothing stopped it. It is unclear what he said in full as his words were muffled by applause, but he mentioned that the FCC is trying to have consistent regulatory guidelines that ensure providers can upgrade broadband networks all the way to consumer's houses.
They are trying to find a balance for the local exchange carriers and providers. In his answer the Chairman mentioned new technologies such as wireless, satellite and powerline as serious competitive broadband technologies.
At this point the idea of wireless competition came up. The question posed to Martin was as follows: Is wireless really a competitive technology or is it complementary? This question is based on the fact that the majority of wireless providers are owned by the incumbent providers.
Perhaps this answer was his best one. Martin said that if there is a dominant wireless provider in one area there are four other competitive platforms or providers competing for those customers. In addition there are WiFi initiatives from companies like Google and Yahoo!
He further went on to touch on whether wireless is a deficient technology when compared to wired broadband. This point was not followed through on.
At this point he Chairman of Comptel asked if we will eventually end up with a single service provider. This of course is in reference to companies such as SBC/AT&T and Verizon gobbling up service providers at will. He mentioned how many hundreds of thousands of jobs would be at stake if this were to happen.
Martin mentioned he doesn't have insight into the plans of the service providers. And in my opinion the FCC's job is not really about protecting jobs anyway. They are supposed to do what is best for consumers.
I was very impressed by what Chairman Martin had to say and the fact that he showed up at such a conference to speak in the first place. At the same time I came away realizing that the FCC seems satisfied with a few strong competitors and is not necessarily interested in a market where hundreds or thousands of broadband providers exist.
If I were a betting man I would guess that Chairman Martin will let more and more acquisitions take place and he will be happy to see a single LEC -- we may as well just call this entity the new/old AT&T as well as a single cable company.
Martin seems to really favor a handful of strong competitors and he wants them to be able to build out better broadband networks to the home. If you follow this logic further, he is potentially against net neutrality as well.
Jim Cramer who used to be bearish on VoIP is now a massive bear based on tonight's Mad Money program where he went "madder" than usual discussing how fast VoIP will grow. Apparently this article in the Washington Post is what started this fire. He surmised that Mindspeed would benefit greatly from the rapid growth in the VoIP market.
On a side note, in a past show Jim mentioned Skype would be a reason to bet against ILECs.
Getting back to Mindspeed, there are so many public companies benefiting from VoIP from Avaya to Inter-Tel. I am surprised he picked Mindspeed and focused on them so heavily. His praise seems to have done the trick as the stock is up in after hours trading.
I am looking forward to more widespread adoption of broadband on domestic flights. Here is an article from itWorldCanada discussing the issue. I was quoted in the article and so was Greg Welch from GlobalTouch Telecom:
But many other players, not just big telcos, may also try to get a piece of the action, says Greg Welch, CEO of GlobalTouch Telecom Inc., a VoIP provider based in
"This could be a telecom play only, but other providers of ancillary services may also be interested," he says. "Content providers like Google or Yahoo! may get involved, and even a company like Microsoft may want to get into this space and get control. With broadband access, these companies can push their search engines, portals and content."
These are the types of questions that will be answered as the playing field becomes clearer in the future, he says. The opportunities will be exciting for service providers. "This expands competition immensely. Everything's starting to sing together: IPTV, VoIP, different streaming videos, sites and portals. All these services will be wrapped up in a big bow and provided to passengers on airplanes," says Welch.
Rich Tehrani, president of Technology Marketing Corp. (TMC), a publisher of communications industry news based in
Tehrani points out that business travelers are currently cut off for large blocks of time from telephone, e-mail and corporate networks. With VoIP, phone calls will no longer be restricted, as VoIP calls don't cause the interference with navigation systems that cell phones do. "This will unleash all that time wasted on flights," he says. "This means wherever business people are, they will be able to communicate in the air with their clients and staff."
Many companies are already transitioning to VoIP, says Tehrani, and airline Wi-Fi will stimulate demand further and encourage more services. In addition to making more productive use of time, Tehrani also points out VoIP will have a mobilizing effect on companies, as staff will no longer need to wait until the boss gets back from
GPS technology is helpful in locating people in open areas but anyone who has tried to get a GPS system to work in a parking garage knows how difficult it can be have the system find the satellites that triangulate your exact location.
Fortunately Intrado is doing its part to help overcome this limitation and has found a way to make VoIP 911 in buildings more accurate than ever. They are working with a number of partners who have developed separate but ingenious ways of ensuring you can be found in-building in case of an emergency.
One partner, Rosum Corporation, utilizes triangulation of television signals to pinpoint location. Another, S5 Wireless Inc. has developed a special chip which works with remarkable accuracy inside buildings. The S5 chip costs under $1, is smaller than a pencil eraser, and has a battery life of about 3 years. The company claims its technology is uniquely suited to locating VoIP callers. Finally, Skyhook Wireless Inc maps the MAC addresses of the devices on the wireless network and generates a mapping radio footprint to help the VoIP user be found.
Intrado tells me they are trying to meet the precise location needs of VoIP users whether the FCC requires it or not. They also have commercial customers that can make use of this technology so it seems like an intelligent investment to me.
In the end, the FCC could require this level of granularity in VoIP E911 solutions and Intrado has done a great job of being one step ahead of impending regulation.
It is worth pointing out that Intrado will soon be acquired by West Corp, one of the top teleservices/call center outsourcing companies in the world. This acquisition should only strengthen Intrado and I see this as a smart move for both companies.
