June 2005 Archives

Interesting news from Asterisk...They've released a new version of Asterisk Business Edition

According to a Forbes article, the recent Supreme Court Ruling against a small Internet service provider called Brand X Internet will open the door to VoIP blocking. The Supreme Court ruled that cable operators don't need to share their broadband access lines with other businesses. Thus, the Forbes article "theorizes" that this will lead to VoIP port blocking by the cable broadband providers by stating, "That's good news for big cable companies but could be trouble for voice-over-Internet Protocol providers like Vonage, which sell digital phone service."

Jeff Pulver seems to agree that port blocking will occur when he is quoted in the Forbes article, "I believe it's a matter of when, not if. If I'm a service provider offering my own voice-over-broadband offering, and I've got the ability to block my competition, why not?"

Respectfully to both Forbes and Pulver, I say, "hogwash!"

All it takes is one 911 call to fail due to cable companies performing port blocking and the million dollar lawsuit that will ensue will keep the cable companies in line. The liability is just too great. The FCC will step in and prevent this from happening. If not the FCC then certainly Congress will step in if rampant port blocking were to occur.

The financial risk to smaller broadband providers is just to risky to "test" the legality of port blocking. As for the larger broadband players, let's just imagine for argument sake that tomorrow Cablevision (based in New York + Northeast) started port blocking anyone using Vonage that uses Optimum Online high-speed Internet. I would guesstimate that on any given day there are hundreds of 911 calls in the New York/Northeast area. Of those hundreds of 911 calls, lets say just 20 of them use Vonage. That's 20 potential lawsuits in one day. Now let's assume these 911 lawsuits aren't filed for a month or so. That's 30 days x 20 lawsuits per day = 600 potential lawsuits before Cablevision realizes what a terrible mistake they made? C'mon, they're smarter than that. I'm sure they have lawyers that assess this kind of liability risk. Sorry, Forbes, but port blocking by the cable broadband providers just ain't gonna happen.

Russell Shaw has some thoughts on this as well.

I came across an interesting article on Linksys that once again points to the possibility that my prediction that Linksys would enter the VoIP consumer/SMB market with a SOHO IP-PBX just may happen by the end of the year. In fact, in this prediction I stated, "LinkSys will announce this as early as December of this year."

Here's the Linksys story which also cites some interesting Linksys VoIP port numbers sold. I bolded the relevant sections that I think may point to a Linksys IP-PBX by the end of the year..

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VOICE-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) is hot, and Linksys founder Victor Tsao has been coolly surprised by the market acceptance for the technology.

'We have shipped over 2 million VoIP ports for the period September last year to May 2005,' said Mr Tsao, senior vice-president and general manager of Linksys. 'This is beyond my expectations.'

'VoIP is absolutely one of our drivers for growth, and its market acceptance will be the driving force,' he added.

Sanjeev Gupta, Linksys' regional sales director for north and south Asia, revealed that in Singapore, its VoIP products are already being sold by StarHub to business users. Consumers however, will have to wait a little longer. Mr Gupta said: 'With the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore's recent liberalisation of VoIP services. . .I'm guessing in the next 90 to 120 days, we will see someone in the (consumer VoIP) fray.'

<Me: Hmmmm, could that someone be..... Linksys?>

Mr Tsao (Linksys founder) said that digital home products were another area his company is working on, but added frankly: 'While the current products are good for the early adopters, I must admit that it's not there yet for the mass market. This is something we're working on and hopefully we'll see more products by Christmas this year.'

<Me: Did I not state in my prediction, "LinkSys will announce this (IP-PBX) as early as December of this year"? Christmas and December, coincidence? I think not! Maybe?? C'mon, Linksys, you know you want to!>

Actually, if you read the article, he was talking more about digital media products like the Wireless AG Media Centre Extender, which is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. I'm still not giving up home on a Linksys IP-PBX though. It will happen. I'd bet my Viper on it. Ok, maybe not.

Internet Telephony Conference & Expo is shaping up to be a fantastic event with some great speakers and keynoters. Michael Powell, former FCC Chairman and Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO are just two of the headliners.

What you may not know about Carly Fiorina is that prior to joining HP, Fiorina spent nearly 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions and directed Lucent's initial public offering and subsequent spin-off from AT&T. Ms. Fiorina has previously served on the boards of Cisco Systems, Kellogg Company and Merck & Company.

We already know Michael Powell's strong support for VoIP when he was Chairman. He helped keep regulation off the nascent VoIP industry's back.

Other important speakers will be at Internet Telephony including Yahoo!, Cisco, Nortel, Skype, Juniper Networks, Toshiba, NEC, Lucent, Siemens, Inter-Tel, Deloitte & Touche, Aculab, Volo and, potentially, Alcatel and 3Com.

I can't wait to hear Michael Powell's take on VoIP and if he thinks the new chairman will continue his "hands off" policy.

Thought I'd share this bit of interesting news that involves all the hot buzzwords these days: wireless, VoIP, SIP, and WiMAX.

SOMA Networks Completes Validation with BroadSoft to Deliver Industry-Leading VoIP to the Broadband Wireless Market

First Pre-WiMAX Voice Interoperability Test Successfully Completed between SOMA' solution and BroadWorks(r)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 2005 - SOMA Networks, Inc., a leading provider of next-generation broadband wireless access technology, today announced the successful completion of interoperability validation between SOMA Networks' end-to-end SIP-based voice solution and BroadSoft(r)'s BroadWorks(r) platform. By testing the seamless integration of these two solutions, BroadSoft Inc., the leading provider of VoIP application software, and SOMA Networks have certified the reliability of next-generation voice applications over a broadband wireless air interface. This trial marks the industry's first successful interoperability test of BroadWorks service delivery system and a pre-WiMAX voice system.

BroadSoft's BroadWorks, which provides a rich set of web-enabled telephony services such as call waiting, voice mail, conferencing, auto-attendant and follow-me-anywhere applications, will work seamlessly with SOMA Networks' advanced wireless system to provide a complete end-to-end packet-telephony solution for the service provider market. The SOMA' solution provides assured quality of service (QoS) and bandwidth efficiency for VoIP applications over a broadband wireless infrastructure, as well as fully integrated VoIP wireless broadband gateways. The BroadWorks architecture provides a core infrastructure that enables VoIP services and manages call routing. The resulting end-to-end voice solution is uniquely capable of providing applications with the reliability, redundancy, scalability and regulatory capabilities required to deliver landline-quality voice service on a worldwide basis.

"Over the past ten years, the explosion of Internet-based applications like VoIP has radically altered the telecom industry. BroadSoft is pleased to be working with a leading BWA company like SOMA Networks to forge a presence in this exciting new market," says Scott Wharton, Vice President of Marketing for BroadSoft. "Service providers that deploy BroadSoft's VoIP application software and the SOMA solution have the added assurance of interoperability through SOMA Networks' completion of this testing process, thereby shortening their testing cycle and reducing time to market."

SOMA Networks is the only BWA vendor to offer a fully converged all-in-one gateway device that integrates the functionality of a wireless broadband modem, WiFi router, analog terminal adapter (ATA), and SIP User Agent (SUA), into a single, self-installable unit. Service providers looking to offer voice as one of many revenue-generating applications over a wireless network no longer have to deal with the complexity of procuring, testing, provisioning, and managing multiple subscriber devices for voice and data services. Customers can plug any standard analog phone or FAX line directly into the SOMAport' 300 wireless broadband gateway and instantly register for VoIP services via an Internet browser. The SOMA solution eliminates the need for external voice equipment, resulting in increased savings and simplified deployment for both service providers and consumers.

"This BroadSoft validation is a critical benchmark for the BWA industry as it paves the way for advanced VoIP services in this market," said Greg Caltabiano, Chief Operating Officer of SOMA Networks. "Voice has been an integral part of the SOMA solution from day one. Service providers that seek to offer reliable voice service, and other multimedia applications, over a broadband wireless access network must absolutely ensure the QoS, scalability and bandwidth efficiency of their voice offering. This interoperability certification with a leader in VoIP applications validates the high quality of SOMA Networks' voice service."
Both SOMA Networks and BroadSoft will appear on a speaker panel entitled, "Implementing A Long-Term VoIP Profit Model" during WCA 2005 in Washington, DC on June 30.

Google is now offering video channels to stream various content, however Google is not streaming Internet TV content as I "theorized" due to Google's recent acquisition of massive amounts of bandwidth. I still think Google TV may be a future possibility. Check out the Google video story on TMCNet.com here: Google Unveils Video Viewing Software

Brian McConnel has written an excellent article on Asterisk titled "The PBX Is Dead; Long Live VoIP". Brian and I go way back to the days when I wrote for CTI Magazine and Brian worked for Pacific Telephony Design/PhoneZone. If memory serve me, Brian was one of the biggest proponents and one of the authors of SCTP (Simple Computer Telephony Protocol). Nothing ever came of SCTP that I'm aware of, but Brian is one smart guy with lots of telecom experience I even have some of Brian's email newsletters from when he worked at Pacific Telephony Design/PhoneZone in 1997. (Yes I'm an email hoard!) Ah yes, the days of proprietaty, expensive, hard to develop CTI systems. Weren't those days fun? I still miss TSAPI and TAPI, don't you?

By pure chance I came across Brian's article today whre he both praises and critques the Asterisk open-source PBX. It was a fascinating read with some interesting insights about how he feels the "open" Asterisk platform is going to finally help to put the final nail in the proverbially coffin of "closed system" PBXs. But all is not roses when it comes to Asterisk as Brian claims that for him, Asterisk isn't quite ready for a production environment due to reliability concerns. His concerns primarily have to do with relying on the CPU for media processing. The example he gave was that the PC's CPU can have a processing spike due to say a cron job, which would affect the VoIP quality. I'm sure some Asterisk advocated would be to differ on whether Asterisk is ready for a production environment, so feel free to post a comment here.

Also, the article is too damn good not to put a teaser here. So read the teaser and then go check out the article:

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The private branch exchange (PBX) has been the reference standard for business telephone systems for decades, but of late, its age has been showing. While the computer industry has changed vastly, telephone systems until relatively recently have changed only superficially. They are expensive, proprietary, and often so arcane that only factory-authorized dealers have the remotest clue how to manage them. This, coupled with the emergence of open source Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, leaves PBX on the verge of obsolescence. In this article I'll look at Asterisk, a Linux-based open source softswitch, and why it heralds the end of PBX.

In the mid-1990s, vendors began to introduce PC-based telephone systems, mostly based on Windows NT, although one vendor, NexPath, made a Unix-based small-business phone system. These systems were a great improvement over completely closed systems, offering more features for a more reasonable price, but fundamentally they were based on the same circuit-switched architecture as their predecessors. These vendors, AltiGen and Artisoft--two leaders in this space--have since reengineered their systems around VoIP, but they still depend heavily on proprietary switching hardware to handle basic telephony functions.

Enter Asterisk. It threatens to turn the business telephone system industry on its head, and in my mind, that is a very good thing. For years, I've been listening to clients complain about how overpriced telephone equipment is compared with other networking hardware, how difficult their systems are to manage, and how once they select a vendor they are locked in for life. Some systems are more open than others, but for the most part telephone equipment vendors really don't want customers to have the freedom to mix and match equipment from different vendors. <click here for more.>

Interesting tech news from a BusinessWeek newsletter (I'd hyperlink to it, but I got it via email).

The sun rises and sets, and winds come and go—but the ocean’s waves roll all day and all night. That’s why harnessing wave energy promises more reliable power than solar cells or windmills, according to engineers Annette von Jouanne and Alan K. Wallace at Oregon State University.

They have built a buoy that may prove to be an efficient, nonpolluting generator of electricity. The mechanism is surprisingly simple. Inside the buoy is a motionless magnet that’s anchored to the seabed. Around the magnet is an electrical coil attached to the floating buoy. As the buoy bobs on the waves, the coil moves up and down around the magnet, producing electricity—from 50 to 200 kilowatts, depending on wave size. A fleet of such buoys 1 to 2 miles offshore could feed electrical power to coastal towns or factories. Next summer, OSU and the Electric Power Research Institute plan to test the buoys off the coast of Oregon.

Marco Andretti made it 2-for-2 on road/street courses in the IRL Menards Infiniti Pro Series in his Vonage-sponsored car. According to the racing newswire, "Andretti's No. 26 Vonage Dallara/Infiniti/Firestone was challenged only once during the 25-lap event."

Hmmm, the Vonage car challenged only once? Let's hope that "Vonage the VoIP company" continues to be challenged by upstart VoIP compamies. Competition in the the VoIP industry is a good thing. Glad to see Vonage chose to pick a winner - a racing legend in fact - to sponsor.

Still, I can't help but picture the Vonage commercials where people do stupid things like chop down a tree that crashes onto a car, launching a snowmobile and crashing, throwing a bat backwards into a sliding glass door, etc. Now every time I see the Vonage car racing 160+MPH around the track I can't help but sing their theme song in my head "doot doo doot doo doot" and half expect something bad to happen.

Anyway, here's the rest of the Vonage/Andretti racing news if interested...

Andretti, the grandson of racing legend Mario Andretti and son of IRL IndyCar® Series team owner Michael Andretti, won the inaugural Liberty Challenge at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It was his second win in three starts this season.

"I had the car to do it, that's for darn sure," said Andretti, who also won the first non-oval event at the Menards Infiniti Pro Series Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in April from the pole. "(Engineer) Tony (Cicale) and the guys set up an awesome car. Like I was telling them, I never had a better in my career yet, so far. Right to the flag, it was consistent and it showed with the lap times."

Andretti's No. 26 Vonage Dallara/Infiniti/Firestone was challenged only once during the 25-lap event. Jeff Simmons, who started third, took the lead on the opening corner, but missed the second corner, handing the lead back to pole sitter Andretti.

From there, Andretti pulled away for his family's first win at Indianapolis since his grandfather won the Indianapolis 500 in 1969.

"It's big, but to me right now it's another race track until I get on the oval in the IndyCar (Series)," said Andretti, who is running a partial schedule in the IRL's top ladder series.

Skype gets all the hype - and deservedly so. Skype (for better or worse) just plain works 98% of the time - even behind firewalls. I found this bit of Skype ingenuity fascinating.

A Norwegian company, IPdrum, has found a use for that old mobile phone that's been kicking around in your desk drawer. IPdrum has developed software and a cable that can turn an old handset into a wireless gateway for Skype's VoIP (voice over internet protocol) application. VoIP is a telephone service that uses the internet as a global phone network.

A prototype of the cable was on display this week at the CommunicAsia 2005 exhibition in Singapore. The IPdrum Mobile Skype Cable connects a mobile phone to the USB and sound ports of a computer. When the software is installed, the handset can be used as a gateway for the Skype app, allowing you to forward calls to the mobile phone you currently use.

Similarly, you can use the gateway to place a call using Skype. It can also be used to send and receive SMS (short message service) messages. The Mobile Skype Cable will be particularly useful for people who have a phone contract that allows them to make free calls to people on the same network, or to a group of friends and family. Those with this type of plan can use the cable to make free VoIP calls from anywhere using their mobile handset.

In addition to Mobile Skype, IPdrum has developed a cable that can be used with conventional fixed-line phones. However, the company has chosen to focus on mobile phones because of the availability of service plans that allow free calls between users on the same network.

"You still need to pay for the local call between the two cellphones,
but most mobile operators offer flat rates for local calls or selected
numbers," said IPdrum's boss Kjetil Mathisen.

The Mobile Skype Cable and software will be available worldwide in August. It’s expected to retail for between $60 and $80.

In a recent blog I predicted Linksys would target the SMB market with a plug-and-play SOHO /SMB IP-PBX. This bit of Linksys news comes close to that prediction .The Linksys division of Cisco is teaming up with VoIP provider engin to target the small-to-medium (SMB) space.

Under the agreement, engin will start reselling Linksys routers with phone ports. The devices include the Wireless-G Router (WRT54GP2) and Wired Broadband Router (RT31P2) which have two phone ports and Quality of Service (QoS) features.

Still, this doesn't meet my SMB threshold of at least 4 phone ports. Also, these routers are simply configured to work with a SIP-based ITSP, such as a Vonage, Packet8, or in this case engin. Thus, there is no intelligent telephony switching built into these routers to perform your traditional PBX features such as extension-to-extension dialing, call transfer (to an extension), etc. Of course the ITSP could provide this functionality and provide a Web interface for configuration, but I'd like to see a SOHO/SMB IP-PBX that you can configure locally on the box itself.

Priced at $219 for the wired and $249 for the wireless version the routers will be made available to engin’s authorised retailers, resellers and wholesale channels eventually.

According to VoIP News Australia, the deal comes about as the result of Cisco’s acquisition of Sipura Technology in April. Engin’s customers were using Sipura Technology’s SPA-2000 products.

Victor Tsao, co-founder, senior vice president and general manager at Linksys said, “Our relationship with engin will help Linksys to replicate the success we’ve had in the consumer VoIP space in the United States rapidly in Australia. Working with engin as our launch partner in Australia will enable us to both to provide customers with added value to their broadband connection and more features than traditional phone service.”

Ilkka Tales, Chief Executive Officer, engin, said, “We are pleased to work with Linksys and continue the tradition of offering the best technology platform to our customers. This alliance will bring greater value to our customers as they will be able to benefit from the additional networking features, such as wireless and router functionality, that the new product bundle will offer.”

This initiative will result in both companies actively promoting voice-over-IP (VoIP) product and services to consumers and small and medium businesses (SMBs), said a company statement.

Erik Lagerway who has in my opinion done a fabulous job of marketing Xten's products, signing up major partners (i.e. Yahoo) has stepped down as President of Xten Networks, but will continue as a consulting co-founder.

Here it is from the horses mouth - Erik's SIPThat blog - explaining the deal.

And from Yahoo! News:

Xten Networks, Inc. (OTCBB: XNWK - News), a provider of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), Video over IP, Instant Messaging (IM), and Presence SIP softphones, today announced that Mr. Larry Timlick has been appointed as President and a Director of the company, effective June 17, 2005.

"Larry brings experienced leadership and management expertise to Xten. His vision combined with over two decades of sales and management experience will be a great asset to our team, our shareholders and our customers," said Mark Bruk, co founder and Chairman of Xten. "Larry brings a keen understanding of the global communications industry, as well as the right combination of strategic insight and operational discipline to Xten."

With over 22 years of technical sales and management experience, the last 13 years of which was at Cisco Systems Canada, Larry brings extensive knowledge of the Enterprise and Service Provider markets. Larry was responsible for developing a sales region for Telus, a major telecommunications carrier in Canada, which was named Region of the Year, Americas International FY 2004. Under his leadership in this region, sales and technical teams increased accounts from $25 million to over $115 million in two years. Larry had many accomplishments with Cisco Systems, including: Top Americas International Performer - Regional Manager FY 2000; Highest Regional Percentage of Goal - Americas International FY 2000 (152% of Goal); Top Canadian Regional Performance FY 2001 - Western Region Service Providers (120% of Goal); and Top Customer Satisfaction Americas International FY 2002. As the first Cisco Systems Employee in Western Canada, Larry expanded the business and opened offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg. Larry has also held management positions with AT&T Canada and Telex/Tulsa Computer Products.

"Xten has an outstanding team that has developed award-winning technologies in one of the hottest sectors in communications, as is shown by Xten's customer and partner base. I look forward to strengthening relationships with our current customers, building relationships with future customers, delivering new products and services to the market, and capturing maximum value for Xten from our industry alliances," said Larry Timlick, President and a Director of Xten. In the near term, we will focus on driving value by developing new products and services for service providers, cable operators, MSOs, Internet telephony service providers, ISPs, IP PBX manufacturers and OEMs, including set-top box manufacturers and VoIP device manufacturers."

The world’s first solar sail spacecraft named Cosmos 1 crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday’s takeoff, Russian space officials said. The Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the northern Barents Sea, the Russian space agency said.

The Cosmos 1 vehicle, a joint U.S.-Russian project, was intended to show that a solar sail can make a controlled flight. Solar sails are designed to be propelled by pressure from sunlight. While not quite Star Trek warp speeds, solar sails are seen as a
potential means for achieving interstellar flight, allowing spacecraft to gradually build up great velocity and cover large distances.

What I'd like to know is why they used a nuclear submarine to launch this spacecraft instead of a land-based launch pad? Was it for safety reasons that they launched at sea? How ironic that a submarine which harnesses the power of the sun (nuclear fusion) was launching a spacecraft that directly harnesses the power of sunlight.

My guess as to why a submarine space launch was that Russia has to do something with all those nuclear missiles just wasting away in their submarines. I'm sure one of our nuclear treaties calls for decommissioning of some sub-based nuclear missiles. Probably a lot cheaper to remove a nuclear warhead from a missile, slap on a U.S. co-sponsored science project (namely Cosmos 1) and launch that into space rather than decommission and remove nuclear missiles in the subs. Just a theory. I have no idea if the rocket used was indeed a former nuclear missile, but seems to make the most sense. Probably a heck of a lot cheaper to launch from the ocean as well.

Well, here's to the future Cosmos 2 - may you have better luck.

TomTom finally licenses superior NAVTEQ GPS maps. I say it's about friggin' time! TomTom has one of the best GUI front-ends to any GPS navigation system, but the maps they previously licensed from Tele Atlas plain sucked. Sorry Tele Atlas, but it's true, your maps suck! I was thinking about buying a TomTom Go, but I figured they were still using the crappy Tele Atlas maps, so I waited until TomTom finally realized the superiority of the NAVTEQ maps.

TomTom finally heard the cries of its frustrated users and inked a deal with NAVTEQ.
If you are looking for TomTom map updates, you can get them

here.

Update! 6/21/05 12:21pm
It appears that TomTom is only licensing the NAVTEQ map ONLY for the TomTom Rider (motorcycle GPS) product and not other popular TomTom products such as TomTom Go. I happened to check out Tele Atlas's website and came across a news release stating that TomTom and Tele Atlas signed a 3 year extension through 2007. Say it ain't so! Damn, and I thought just perhaps TomTom Go would finally get good U.S. maps utilizing the NAVTEQ GPS maps. Guess I was wrong. Ah well, I guess this could be a good excuse to go buy a Harley just so I can use TomTom Rider. Ok, maybe not.

NAVTEQ (NYSE: NVT), a leading global provider of digital map data for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, has signed a license agreement with TomTom, a leading navigation solution provider, to feature NAVTEQ(TM) maps in TomTom's new RIDER product, which is TomTom's first navigation product made specifically for motorcycles worldwide. The RIDER product will be launched later this year. TomTom's selection of NAVTEQ data for the TomTom RIDER product makes the integration of NAVTEQ maps of the United States, Canada and Europe possible across all TomTom navigation solutions. TomTom products will be NAVTEQ map ready following the planned release of the new TomTom RIDER product. This agreement brings together two market leaders. TomTom is well recognized for a range of portable personal navigation devices. Every automobile manufacturer that currently offers a navigation system in Europe and North America uses NAVTEQ maps in one or more of its models, and NAVTEQ is a leading provider of digital maps for the mobile navigation device and location-based services industries. "Making our products NAVTEQ map ready supports our commitment to customer satisfaction. The NAVTEQ brand is the power behind so many well-known navigation solutions. Pairing TomTom and NAVTEQ products together makes certain that our customers have an excellent experience with our navigation products," said Harold Goddijn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TomTom NV. "TomTom has grown its market share significantly over several years, particularly in Europe, as it continues to introduce new and improved portable navigation and PDA solutions. We are pleased that NAVTEQ maps will be showcased in TomTom RIDER and expect NAVTEQ maps to help contribute to TomTom's continued success with both consumer and business customers," said Judson Green, President and Chief Executive Officer of NAVTEQ.




Again, if you are looking for the latest TomTom maps, you can get them

here.

Is it just me, or is there something strange/weird about Vonage partnering with Avaya? Here you have Vonage, a cool technology trendsetter in broadband telephony that has helped changed the telecom landscape forever partnering with Avaya, a "traditional" PBX manufacturer. According to the release pasted below, Vonage is using Avaya's IP telephony contact center solution for their customer service call center. Nothing against Avaya, but I would have expected Vonage to go with something "cool and hip" like an open source Linux-based Asterisk PBX solution. I believe much of Vonage's infrastructure if Linux-based so it would make sense to choose an Asterisk solution. Of course, Asterisk is probably not as mature as Avaya when it comes to advanced call center functionality. Although, Fonality, which I just blogged yesterday adds some additional advanced call center functionality to the Asterisk platform. Well, strange bedfellows if you ask me. No offense Avaya - really.

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Vonage Customer Service Doubles Call Capacity and Handling with Avaya IP Telephony Contact Center Solutions

New Avaya SIP-based Solution Selected as Worldwide Customer Care Platform for North America's Leading Consumer Broadband Telephony Service Provider

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., US - Today, Vonage, the leading broadband telephony provider in North America, announced its sales and service subsidiary, Vonage America, has chosen Avaya's SIP-based telephony and contact center solutions to quickly expand its call center capacity and productivity. To meet its goal to provide best in class customer service, Vonage turned to Avaya Inc. (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of business communications applications, services and systems, to expand its customer service capabilities and greatly increase the number of callers the company handles daily.

As the market for broadband telephony becomes increasingly competitive, an emphasis on customer satisfaction will help give Vonage the edge to continue its growth.

"Our vision is to provide world-class customer service," said Dan Bemis, senior vice president of Customer Operations of Vonage America Inc. "To do that, we needed to make a number of changes - starting with an intelligent communications solution that would help us maximize the customer experience."

Building from the company's existing call center, Vonage and Avaya Global Services collaborated on a design that would expand capacity and enable it to serve as the core platform for its worldwide customer service operations. Essential elements of the technology strategy included a SIP-based platform that could tightly integrate with Vonage's own SIP-based, IP phone service and existing network. SIP is an emerging protocol that enables seamless interoperability among various media, including audio, video, instant messaging and presence. Vonage also needed a stable, highly reliable and available business communications platform to perform well during peak call times. The Avaya solution offers Vonage the flexibility to scale to global proportions and to seamlessly hand off calls to other centers when volumes hit critical mass.

"We see a dynamically scalable customer care organization that enables us to leverage resources from any location, whenever and wherever they're most needed," said Bemis. "With Avaya's real-time, right-time communications approach, we will be able to 'think globally and act locally' from a customer service perspective."

Based on Avaya Customer Interaction Suite and powered by Avaya Communication Manager IP Telephony software, the main contact center will serve as a hub for other customer care centers as they open around the world. The integration of SIP into Avaya solutions heightens interoperability with other Vonage applications and networks.

Additionally, new SIP-based capabilities in Avaya's Customer Interaction Suite can enable Vonage agents to establish buddy lists of fellow agents or experts located anywhere in the business who could be quickly tapped through presence and instant messaging while a customer is on the line.

"It was important to us that Avaya's portfolio of business communications applications supported standards like SIP - the technology core of Vonage's service offering - that will easily integrate with other business applications and which create value on top of the network," said Bemis.

For Vonage, the contact center upgrade has simultaneously improved customer satisfaction and agent productivity. "Since implementing the new solutions, we handle more calls, wait times are significantly down and agent productivity is up," said Bemis.

Avaya partnered with Witness Systems, an Avaya DeveloperConnection member, to help ensure Vonage had all the solutions it needed to meet - and exceed - its customer service goals. Vonage invested in contact center workforce management solutions, which can help it forecast, schedule and plan around future call volumes and staffing needs to enhance service and more strategically deploy its workforce.

Avaya Customer Interaction Suite is a key component of Avaya MultiVantage(TM) Communications Applications, a suite of business communications applications that includes IP telephony, contact center, messaging, conferencing and speech access solutions and is based on open standards, industry-leading reliability and security. Avaya Global Services provided professional consultative, design, implementation, managed, monitoring and maintenance services.

Avaya DeveloperConnection is Avaya's independent software developer program which promotes the development, compliance testing and co-marketing of innovative third-party applications that interoperate with standards-based Avaya solutions. Member organizations have expertise in a broad range of technologies-including IP telephony, contact centers and mobility applications-and have created hundreds of innovative solutions tested for Avaya compliance.