VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

August 8, 2007

Without a doubt one of the most interesting websites I have used these past months is Pandora, a site which allows you to rapidly assemble a customized radio station for yourself. Initially, you are presented with a form where you can enter an artist name and the site plays music from the artist and others who are similar. It tries to guess the kind of songs you like. I have only been using Pandora for a few days but it is pretty amazing as it is able to blend genres to pick songs I really like from artists I have specified.

 

I really like the site’s user interface. It is as if they said let’s make this as easy to use as an iPod. The site also allows you to vote on songs and you can even stop a specific song from playing for a month if you so choose.

 

It is worth a try.

August 8, 2007

Last year I proclaimed it the year of VoIP peering. 2007 is becoming the year of rapid VoIP peering growth. Case in point is the Voice Peering Fabric or VPF who recently stated they have reached a 200 billion minute run-rate up from a 100 billion minute run-rate in October 2006.

 

I recently had a chance to see the VPF’s New York location at the Telx carrier hotel at 60 Hudson Street. Believe it or not, this was my first trip to 60 Hudson. I have been to many of the other carrier hotels in the country such as One Wilshire in Los Angeles, 56 Marietta in Atlanta and the NAP in Miami.

 

In every case, you really aren’t allowed to mention who the tenants are or take photos of the equipment customers have in the facility. Thankfully I did manage to snap a few anonymous shots of the Hudson Street building. This will give you an idea of how organized it is without giving away any of the tenants.

 

In conversation with Hunter Newby, Telx Chief Strategy Officer I learned that Telx got its start in the wholesale business but saw margins in wholesale were far lower than what they were receiving from clients who were leasing space. They got into the space leasing business because the landlord of the building was interested in renting only large blocks of space.

 

A side benefit of the focus on space leasing was these companies are better payers.

 

So the company decided to seriously pursue the leasing business with a heavy focus on meet-me room interconnections they could facilitate. First they designed a sophisticated physical layer inventory management system and customers continued to stream in. Shortly thereafter one of the largest telephone companies in the world started to see the power of interconnecting through the Telx facility and the VPF in particular.

 

If you know the VPF and its founder, Shrihari Pandit you know his company is a big believer in disruption and automation. Though I am sworn to secrecy on the details we will see a great deal more disruption and automation coming from him and his team in the upcoming months.