April 2006 Archives

Oracle has a conference call to discuss this news about their Service Delivery
Platform (SDP) for the telecom industry in about an hour, which has implications for VoIP. I figured I'd share the news now even though I haven't fully digested it myself. I'm going to be on the conference call to find out more, but for now, enjoy!
 

Oracle Outlines Roadmap for Comprehensive Service Delivery Platform for Telecommunications Industry 

Carrier-Grade Solution to Enable Communication Service Providers, Network Operators, Integrators and Enterprises to Extend Existing IT and Network Investments and Rapidly Deploy Revenue-Generating Services
 

Redwood Shores, Calif., April 18, 2006
- Building on Oracle's leadership in middleware and information management and the company's experience in carrier-grade communications infrastructure, Oracle today outlined its roadmap for a comprehensive, standards-based Service Delivery Platform (SDP) for the telecommunications industry.  The new Oracle SDP is being designed to enable communication service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and shrink the time and cost to deploy new voice data and integrated multimedia services on existing and next-generation communication Internet Protocol (IP) networks.  Enterprises are expected to be able to extend their communication infrastructures with the Oracle SDP, providing a strong foundation for new Voice-over-IP (VoIP), mobile, and real-time applications.

The Oracle SDP plans to embrace the convergence of IT and network technologies to deliver a scalable platform with carrier-grade reliability, real-time performance, connectivity to traditional and next-generation IP-based networks and interfaces to operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS).

"IT-standards-based service delivery platforms offer compelling value to operators as the basis for developing interactive, media-rich, next generation data services," said Philip Marshall, director, Wireless/Mobile Technologies, Yankee Group.  "Service delivery platforms that enable immediate ROI through out-of-the-box services and integration with OSS/BSS systems through standard interfaces are likely to be particularly compelling. Vendors who are able to provide a broad portfolio of products that are stable, mature and carrier-grade will have a definite edge over the competition."

Oracle SDP -- A Roadmap to Meet Industry Needs
Oracle SDP plans to extend Oracle Fusion Middleware for network-centric applications by enabling users to access next generation mobile; voice services; and Enterprise Applications through traditional communication networks; and next generation networks based on IMS and VoIP infrastructure. The new Oracle SDP roadmap incorporates a broad suite of Middleware functionality specific to the communication needs of carriers and enterprises including:

Oracle SDP - Available Today

• IMS Support: Oracle SPD includes the industry's leading SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) Application Server, Presence Server, Proxy Registrar and Location for a complete IMS-ready Infrastructure. Oracle acquired the SIP Infrastructure as part of its Hotsip acquisition.
• Support for Legacy Networks: Oracle SDP provides a programming environment that extends J2EE for asynchronous, event-based programming that is crucial to support and leverage existing legacy telecommunication networks. It supports the industry standard Java API Parlay X Web Services standards. Oracle has acquired Parlay and SLEE technology as part of its acquisition of Net4Call, a Norway-based provider of carrier-grade Parlay infrastructure software.
• Network Adaptation Layer: Oracle SDP provides a rich set of adapters to connect the SDP to existing network elements and telecommunications equipment enabling service providers to rapidly roll out new services while protecting their existing investments.
• Messaging: Oracle SDP provides facilities to access content from Mobile Devices across a variety of standard protocols including SMS and MMS.
• Carrier-grade Communication Infrastructure including Oracle Database 10g, Real Application Clusters and Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for supporting scalable, always-on, real-time services.  This is particularly relevant in a telecom environment where end-to-end service availability across middleware and database tiers is critical.
   

Oracle SDP - Future Functionality Plans

•         Call Control, and Charging Facilities: To provide call control capabilities that are intended to work across IMS and Legacy networks as well as a charging enabler to quickly integrate SDP with billing systems.

•         Device Management and Device repository: To provide support for standards-based device management, and a comprehensive device repository.

•         Out of the Box Services: To include a suite of services such as mobile content delivery, VOIP and virtual PBX that can be immediately deployed for faster Return on Investment.

Oracle SDP Advantages
Oracle SDP plans to provide a more complete, standards-based solution that will have the following advantages over existing market offerings:

• Comprehensive-Oracle plans to deliver an integrated suite of best-in-class products in its service delivery platform. The integrated suite plans to offer unparalleled functionality when compared to any other industry player and offers customers the flexibility to adopt either an evolutionary or revolutionary approach to new service deployment.

•         Integrated user profile-Oracle is uniquely positioned to combine its leadership positions in identity management and middleware to bring to market an SDP that would allow operators to provide highly personalized services to their customers based on customer profiles and preferences.

•         Converged programming model-Oracle plans to enable a single J2EE-based programming environment to provide support across next generation and current generation networks and OSS/BSS integration, thereby simplifying service development, integration and management for developers.

•         Hot Pluggable architecture-Oracle SDP plans to support multiple application servers, including Oracle Application Server, OC4J, JBoss and WebLogic.

•         Oracle Ecosystem-Oracle offers a large ecosystem of network equipment manufacturers, system integrators and ISVs with industry expertise and solution offerings that are built on Oracle Fusion Middleware and the Oracle Database.

•         Out-of-the-box services-Unlike pure platforms that could take months of development in order to realize revenue, Oracle SDP plans to include a suite of services that can be immediately deployed or used as templates for additional service development.

"Our vision is to address market needs and provide customers with a comprehensive, scalable, IP-based services platform," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies.  "We are building the ideal platform for developing and deploying new telephony services that deliver value over today's networks, both wireline and wireless, as well as for the converged networks of the future." 

Availability
Key elements of Oracle's Service Delivery Platform are already available and in use by several service providers around the world. A broader suite of functionality is scheduled to be made available this calendar year.

Is Earthlink having an e911 programming issue? A reader wrote me saying:

I'm an Earthlink VoIP customer since December '05 and Earthlink cannot set up an e911 address that is different from the billing address. I've had multiple tickets open with their (so-called) customer service since intitial activation. Is this somehow related to the Packet8 "separate number for e911" I read in a previous blog or just incompetence on Earthlink's part? Every time I've to check on this (Earthlink never updates on my issue) I get what appears to be a "form letter" saying my issue is being resolved and my e911 address will be corrected with 24-48 hours. One gentleman did tell me that they were unable to correct my problem and did not know when or if they ever would.

This sounds to me like they programmed their e911 service to use the billing address location as the actual physical location of the VoIP subscriber instead of separating the two. In most cases, the billing address is the physical location, but not always. Some VoIP subscribers may use a business credit card along with their business address but have the Earthlink VoIP service in their home. I'm sure there are countless other examples of where the billing address is different than where the VoIP service is being used. Heck, that's why .com ecommerce sites let you specify a mailing address and billing address since they often differ.

I checked Earthlink's website to see what if any information they had on e911. On their website it states, "You must register the exact physical location with EarthLink for the E911 service to function properly." Ok, nothing about forcing the billing and service address having to be the same. I read further, and their website states, "If you move the device to a new location, you must register the new location with EarthLink immediately." At first, I interpreted this to mean that Earthlink enables their VoIP customers to temporarily move the ATA device to a different location, (i.e. a hotel), but they are asking the customer to register the new location. So it sounds to me like you don't need to change your billing address. However, this sentence could just as easily be interpreted as EarthLink assuming you have permanently moved the device and therefore you have a new billing address and therefore you must change both the billing address and the registered location.

Requiring this seems a bit odd to me, so I'm going to contact some people over at Earthlink and see what they have to say. I'll keep you posted.

Interesting news the past couple of weeks about Best Buy adding flat-panel televisions from HP and Lenovo notebooksand desktop computers.

Seems, on one hand, this would herald the return of TVs from a major U.S. manufacturer to the retail market. In case you haven't noticed, TVs are from predominantly Asian manufacturers now (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc.); retailers shelves used to be packed with U.S. made TVs from companies like RCA (and oh so many more).

Lenovo news now places the former IBM personal computer line (always a big revenue/no profit generator for Big Blue) back squarely in consumers' eyes -- will be nice to see something besides HP and Sony in the stores/flyers with Dell always a player with its genius business model (if you pay, they will build it -- the Field of Dreams mantra upside down).

Men are from VoIP and Women are from PSTN - at least according to Preston Gralla over at Networking Pipeline who quotes a recent HarrisInteractive survey about VoIP awareness. (great metaphor Preston!)

Preston writes that according to the survey, "Men are more aware of VoIP than women by about a two-to-one margin. And, one would assume, from those numbers, they're much more likely to use VoIP as well."

Of course, my theory is that once women find out they can talk more for less using VoIP I'm sure they'll catch up to the men. Though there is one significant hole in my theory. My wife has been using Vonage for the past 3 years with me and she complains at every little Vonage hiccup, every little "fast busy" when dialing, every little Internet outage that brings down the phone line. She used to complain about the sound quality on the VoIP connection all the time, but she has gotten better. Or perhaps she's resigned to the fact that I'm never going back to PSTN.

Me? I'm like "Hey, sounds great to me. I never have any problems when I'm making a call using Vonage. Sure, when the power goes off or the Internet connection dies, we lose our phone, but hey, we're saving a ton of money each month. And it's a cool technology to boot. Plus I write about this stuff all day long, so I should practice what I preach."

I don't think she bought it.

When there are sound quality issues (robotic sounding, voice cutoffs) it always happens she she is on the phone. It's only happened to me once in all the time I've had Vonage. My theory is that computers and VoIP equipment are female and therefore they act up out of jealousy any time a female is using it since they prefer nerdy men - often their creators. But what do I know? It could be that she just uses the phone more and I'm just lucky when I use the phone.

I think most women could care less how much money they save if they can't guarantee near 100% uptime for their phone to make and receive calls.

In fact, a new phenomenon has begun in the era of VoIP - instead of blaming the phone company for any phone outage, wives/girlfriends now blame their significant other. "Why did you cancel our landline! I was perfectly happy with it! It's your fault you cheap bastard!"

I bet at least 10 male readers reading this that switched to VoIP and ditched their landline have experienced this.

Or am I just being sexist?

According to the XYZ Computing's Sal Cangeloso as reported in today's CEA SmartBrief newsletter, the PDA will likely return to its roots as a personal organizer and cede high-end features to smartphones and laptop computers.

Will we ever have one single portable device that does everything -- is Dick Tracy's WristRadio as good as it gets? 

Strreaming media is hot!

Apparently besting other streamers, MSN announced it plans to stream live and on-demand coverage of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on the consecutive weekends of April 28-30 and May 5-7. Scheduled performers include Dave Matthews Band, Jimmy Buffet, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Fats Domino, and Ani DiFranco.

According to Adotas.com ("where interactive advertising begins"), MSN plans to only cover a number of center-stage, “anchor” performances, as the event spans a big area of the city and includes many lesser-known acts. The festival, which has been a part of New Orleans’ cultural heritage since the 1970’s, is especially important and attention-grabbing this year because it will help revitalize the city’s devastated economy and tourism in the wake of last year’s hurricanes. This plan is part of an ongoing expansion of MSN’s entertainment coverage and sponsorship offerings for advertisers.

The top-three portal streamed video of the Live 8 concert last July, as well as the “Jam Rock” Bob Marley festival held this past February. Though they plan to incorporate some of their advertising partners into their exclusive sponsorship of the event, MSN had no specific brands to mention at time of press.

Freeswitch, an open-source softswitch started earlier this year, leverages open-source software libraries and has recently added support for Google Talk. The codebase now includes Jingle (Jabber XMPP Voice) support with the addition of libDingaLing and mod_dingaling libraries. Jingle is an XMPP based protocol used by GoogleTalk. Using FreeSWITCH you can gateway GoogleTalk to SIP, H.323, or even the Asterisk IAX2 protocol. They also support Sangoma PRI cards and they recently announced support for secure RTP communication.

The libDingaLing library is currently considered to be in Alpha stage, but has been compiled and tested on many computer platforms including Windows XP, Solaris, Linux and MacOS X. The new endpoint module appropriately named "mod_dingaling" couples FreeSWITCH to libDingaLing and allows both inbound and outbound communication thus enabling GoogleTalk to gateway to the PSTN or to other VoIP protocols such as SIP or H.323. Looks like "Google Out" PSTN capability won't have to wait for Google to offer it themselves after all!

Congratulations to all of those who correctly guessed that the 10 shows in the Tuesday blog were Disney shows now available for free download on the web.

No one knew that I Wanna Be a Soap Star III is actually on Soapnet ...

What see what happens next in the wild world of streaming video!

Concerned about Internet security? Who isn't?

Interesting and useful item from PCMag.com about spoofing the Internet Explorer Address Bar. Here's a summary: A new bug was found in IE 6.0 that allows a Web site to display a URL in your address bar that is different than the URL of the site that's displayed on your browser. That means your address bar could say "Amazon.com" but you're really on some hacker's Web site on the other side of the world. That's scary. It's no surprise that another major security flaw has been discovered in Internet Explorer, so please find out if you are at risk (unless you're singing a different tune).

http://ct.eletters.whatsnewnow.com/rd/cts?d=181-641-1-278-1003015-33767-0-0-0-1

EQO Communications today announced EQO Mobile for Skype for Mac users.
EQO Mobile lets users make and receive Skype calls, exchange Instant Messages, and view presence information about their buddies over the Skype network from more than 45 different phone handset models from vendors including Nokia, Motorola, Palm, and Sony-Ericsson. Most recently, EQO announced support for Palm TREO 650 and Motorola ROKR, SLVR, and RAZR handsets.

Jajah is offering 100 free minutes if you can find the hidden Easter Egg on their web site. Good Luck! (image above is what you will see. I found it. )

Nortel, AT&T Texas and TANDBERG teamed up to provide ABC's hit reality show, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" with a state-of-the-art communications system for a fire station in southeast Texas damaged by Hurricane Rita. The Sabine Pass Fire Station No. 4 was severely damaged when the hurricane made landfall east of the town last September and has been out of operation for the past five months, forcing its firefighters to work out of a trailer at a local U.S. Coast Guard station.

AT&T Texas donated the overall coordination and project management time, network planning, design and installation during the weeklong shoot. Nortel also donated a Business Communications Manager 50E platform, which includes a voice mail system, a dozen VoIP phone sets and a 24-port data switch for the fire department's LAN.

TANDBERG provided a video communications solution designed especially for emergency communications and firefighter training, which includes two desktop videphones and two room-based video systems with 50-inch plasma screens. Sweet! Of course, the 50" plasma screens will be used exclusively for video communications - there will be no high-definition football or other TV programs going on here.

The solution also includes a Tactical MXP Command Center, a mobile system that allows firefighters at emergency scenes to connect to the command center visually through integrated satellite capability.

Rebuilding the Sabine Pass fire station is one of two main projects of the fourth episode in the special "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - After The Storm" series. The Sabine Pass episode will air at 8 p.m. EDT on tomorrow (Friday), April 14, on ABC. I'll have to keep my eye out for the VoIP system and see if the Extreme Home Makeover cast pronounces it "voyp" or spell it out - "V O I P", or say "voice over IP".

Sony announced a camcorder trade-up program.  According to Sony, "You can trade in that old camcorder, help the environment, and receive Sony credit. Use the credit for a brand new Sony camcorder purchased online at SonyStyle.com. They have an online estimator to get your estimated trade-up value. I have an old HI-8 myself, which I rarely used, but now with a baby imminent, I'm sure I'll be breaking out the camcorder. At which point, my penchant for wanting to have the latest and greatest gadgets will kick in and I'll buy a digital camcorder with direct to DVD burning. Though, I have to research this "direct to DVD burning" technology. Just seems unreliable to have a camcorder using a laser to burn to a spinning DVD while you are moving the camera. Maybe they have some high-tech Star Trek stabilizers to counteract movement and gravitational displacement in these new fandangled camcorders? Here's some sample trade-in pricing.

 

Camcorder Type Typical Value for Range for other Mfgs Typical Value for Sony Products     VHS & VHS-C $0 - $50 -   8mm and HI-8 $0 - $50 $25 - $100   Digital-8 $50 - $150 $75 - $200   MiniDV $50 - $1000 $75 - $1000   MicroMV - $250 - $600   MD - $250 - $350   DVD $125 - $350 $125 - $400

How about getting MapQuest on your cell phone when you're lost and won't ask anybody for directions?

Seems AOL is planning MapQuest Navigator, a mobile service in partnership with Telmap that will enable drivers and pedestrians to access GPS, turn-by-turn and voice-guided directions on their cellular phones. Launch date -- later this year.

According to the company, in addition to audible directions, the service will offer various features ranging from print-quality color maps (are cell phone printers coming soon?) to directions that factor in time and tolls.

Lef me ask you again: What do these 10 TV shows have in common?

• Alias
• Commander in Chief
• Desperate Housewives
• I Wanna Be a Soap Star III
• Kim Possible
• Lost
• Power Rangers
• The Suite Live of Zack & Cody
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!
• That's So Raven

Tune in tomorrow for the answer!