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Live Communications Webinars
April 7, 2008
How do you stay up to date on the latest in communications and technology without leaving your desk? One of the best ways is with a webinar which allows you to sit comfortably in your office while you learn from industry experts.In today's mobile work environment I should emphasize you really don't need to be at a desk. You could in fact be on a train or anywhere else as you learn everything you wanted to know about important issues such as secure SIP trunking, SBCs, communications enabled business services and how VoIP will coexist with IPV6.
Here is a complete list of upcoming webinars:
Thanks for reading and as a disclaimer I should mention these webinars all take place with TMC representation... A TMC editor and potentially an analyst will be on every one.
In addition, you should know a webinar is one of the few places online where you can learn something and have your questions answered by experts in real-time. I hope to see you on a bunch of these educational and informative sessions in the near future.
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Google Becoming Evil?
April 7, 2008
Google's rumored ploy to get the service providers to pony up extra dollars for the 700 MHz auction seems to be more fact than fiction. I was just reading an article on TMCnet from Susan Campbell that outlines how Google ensured there was open access to the frequencies and that service providers had to start bidding against one another to drive up the price.Is this behavior evil -- and subsequently in opposition to Google's corporate mantra; don't be evil, or is this just business as usual in corporate America?
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Sprint Pays Klausner
April 7, 2008
Sprint recently signed a deal with Klausner Technologies to enable them to use visual voicemail without the fear of being sued. This news is interesting as Sprint is one of the companies coming after VoIP providers who the company claims is infringing on their patents. It seems more than coincidental that Sprint decided to go after so many VoIP companies around the same time they were in negotiations with Klausner.Sprint Nextel is the seventh company to date to license the Klausner visual voicemail patents. Other licensees include ISP’s such as Time Warner’s AOL, VoIP providers such as Vonage and the visual voicemail/voicemail transcription company, Simulscribe.
See also:
- Apple, AT&T Re-Sued Over iPhone Voicemail
- AT&T, Apple Sued for Patent Infringement by Klausner Technologies Inc.
- Comcast, Cablevision and Ebay Sued for Patent Infringement by Klausner Technologies, Inc.
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EU Authorizes Fist Fights on Planes
April 7, 2008
OK I may be a bit over the top with this headline but allowing a plane full of passengers the ability to talk on the phone -- all in different languages... What is the EU thinking? According to TMCnet's Mae Kowalke, we will have the ability to talk in the air very, very soon. Sure, there are challenges like how will you deal with the fact that rows and rows of people will be talking at the same time while you are trying to nap?
The answer is unclear to me but riding on the trains in New York it seems like yelling at the telephone screamer seems to get them to quiet down a bit.
How do you invest to take advantage of such a change in policy. Well it should be obvious that ear plug and noise canceling headphone makers will be doing a brisk business over the next few years.
We can potentially expect planes to have talking and not talking sections soon as well.
Here is an excerpt from Kowalke's article worth sharing:
Germany’s Lufthansa on Monday said it won’t be offering in-flight phone service, stating that passengers don’t want to be disturbed by listening to all those calls around them, AP reported. The airline is, however, considering a re-launch of its on-board Internet access service (which previously was available from 2004-2006).
So the good (?) news here is even for airlines who won't participate in the talking part of on-board communications, they do realize that passengers need to be connected wherever they are.
I for one am with all the people who complain that the airplane was the last place where you could actually relax. While part of me understands the need to shut off from time to time, it seems the world is just getting more connected and we need to deal with it.
Then again, perhaps the ultimate way to relax while on-board a flight and sitting next to that noisy telephone screamer one seat over is to just slug him. That'll definitely let some aggression out.
The author does not advocate violence of any kind -- especially while traveling by air or rail.
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Mind CTI Interview: Monica Eisinger
April 7, 2008
In the past few years there has been tremendous interest paid to VoIP and the underlying internet protocol which allows IP communications to take place. For those people who started to pay attention to the communications space in the last few years, you may not be aware that over a decade ago the CTI market heralded the first time telephones and computers communicated with one another.My long-time readers know that about two decades ago the birth of CTI systems were a result of a collaboration between IBM and Rockwell and if you had a mainframe and a Rockwell ACD lying around and a few hundred thousand dollars to spend on connecting it all together, you could be among the first in the world to take advantage of computer telephony integration or CTI. The first application of such integration? Screen pops or the ability to see the customer record of who is calling.
But for most companies it was the nineties when they could first afford CTI systems based on operating systems from Microsoft and Novell.
The IP communications market was really born from the building blocks of CTI as gateways which allowed the PSTN and VoIP to interconnect were based on boards from leaders in CTI like NMS and Dialogic. The technical expertise to build soft clients that handled internet telephony came from the CTI space as well.
In an era where there are so few reminders as to the history of IP communications, one company not only remembers the past but has the word CTI in its name. I am referring to Mind CTI, the company that handles customer care, billing and call accounting for service providers around the world.
The Israeli based enterprise was founded in 1995 (the same year TMC launched CTI Magazine in fact) and is publicly traded on the Tel-Aviv stock exchange. Some of the company's customers include ARTelecom, China Unicom, Telefonica Del Peru and Verizon.
It has been a while since I covered the company so I thought it would be a good idea to connect with the President and CEO of Mind CTI, Monica Eisinger.I asked Eisinger how business is going and she told me things are extremely active as the North American wireless carriers are migrating to a single platform. In addition, she tells me her company has spent the last few years investing in a J2EE platform and adding enhanced functionality. In addition, they have been focusing on scalability and subsequently supporting millions of prepaid and postpaid subscribers.
She went on to describe how the company's business has shifted to sell more managed service agreements which last between 3-5 years. As part of such agreements, customers pay for implementation at the outset and through the time of the contract they pay for the right of use, maintenance and enhanced support.
As a result, MindCTI can sell their solutions as a licensed, managed services and completely outsourced business model and this helps them serve customers more effectively.
I asked why she thinks customers are leaning towards managed services and she says it is because this solution allows customers to make a smaller investment up front and they subsequently pay as they grow.
Furthermore, these customers are generally not interested in building billing expertise themselves and as a result they work with Mind CTI or similar vendors.
When asked about how Mind's solutions interface with taxes, Eisinger tells me they work with Vertex to handle taxes as Vertex is an expert in the space.
I asked about the company's customer care operations and she told me they have a flexible workflow engine which monitors the various steps of the business processes. Examples include order management, trouble tickets and payments. As the workflow engine is flexible, she tells me that the engine can adapt as the business changes.
I asked about growth in other parts of the world and to this Monica responded there is growth in Europe and other parts of the world but they focus on Western Europe and the US at the moment. She sees the wireless market in the US as very active and growing fast.
I asked about success stories and was told KDDI US, a large carrier in Japan and they world with Mind CTI in the US to provide billing for their wireless services and after a successful wireless deployment they were chosen to provide wireline services as well.
The goal now is to combine the mobile and fixed applications onto a single platform she says.
When asked about whether being a publicly traded company is a benefit or not, Eisinger responded that it is indeed a benefit as when carriers choose a vendor for billing it is almost a vendor for life. As such they need to be able to assess the partner's health and strength and as public company this is far easier to do.
I asked about how convergence with IPTV and other new technologies are affecting business and Monica was quick to point out her company started in the IP space and moved to the wireless and wireline spaces. She said, "We have strong understanding of IP services," she continues that her company just recently implemented an IPTV solution in Central America.
She continued by saying their solutions are inherently ready to handle new IP-based solutions like WiMAX.
When asked what customers should expect in the next few years she says solutions that are reliable, scalable and are developed to answer the market needs while continuing to be state of the art. All this while providing a single platform for mediation, provisioning, rating, billing, customer care and other services. In addition, expect to see the company's products continuing to be flexible in order to accept various customer business models.
Back in 1995 when I was fortunate enough to launch a magazine titled CTI, the mantra at the time was that communications was becoming more customized and flexible. For the first time in fact, companies were able to make telecom systems do whatever they wanted. This inherent flexibility was apparently not lost on Monica Eisinger and Mind CTI as they use it as a differentiator to this day.
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