VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead

By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent

Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.

When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.

The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.

Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.

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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, big data, customer care, KPIs, network monitoring, procativecare | Responses

10 Lessons from Volleyball

By Peter on Monday, May 20

I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...

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Tagged hiring, strategy, volleyball

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...

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Tagged emerging threats, interop, malware, security

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...

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Tagged bss, carrier, ericsson, huawei, interoperability, nfv, nokia siemens networks, nsn, oss, sdn, software telco

SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

By Rich Tehrani on Thursday, May 16

Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space...

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Tagged help desk, itsm, mdm, sysaid

Avaya Takes Networking Lead in SPB

By Rich Tehrani on Wednesday, May 15

At Interop Las Vegas 2013 Avaya was demonstrating their real-world Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) solutions and while interoperating with Spirent, HP and...

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Tagged alcatel-lucent, avaya, hp, interop, lucent, mpls, networking, spb, spirent, zeus kerravala

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco

By Rich Tehrani on Tuesday, May 14

The software telco(r)evolution representing the move from hardware to software is perhaps the biggest trend in the world of carrier telecom this...

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Tagged acme packet, alianza, etsi, hosted ims, nfv, oracle, software telco, software telco congress, virtualization

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Skype From Your Home Phone - FINALLY!

August 31, 2011

Skype has finally built a standalone analog telephony adapter (ATA) (via their FREETALK brand) that you can hook up with your home phone line. Called the FREETALK Connect•Me Home Phone Adapter it is a PC-less standalone Skype device. It's a relatively small device that can be plugged directly into a wall outlet. It's sort of an oversized AC adapter with connectors on the bottom, as seen here:

In the picture above you can see the two-prong electric plug and then a white phone wire (to landline), black phone wire (to phone), and a blue network wire.

Posted in Skype, TMCnet, VoIP

Tagged: analog telephony adapter, calls, home phone, phone, skype, standalone, voip : Related Tags: freetalk connect, connect phone, analog telephony, skype device, standalone skype, skype

Windows 8 Explorer Sports Ribbon Interface

August 29, 2011

Microsoft has redesigned the venerable Windows Explorer based on opt-in data they collected. The new UI (image above) to be featured in Windows 8 will sport the "ribbon interface" made famous in Microsoft Office. The Microsoft ribbon is loved or hated with no luke warm fans, so it'll be interesting how Windows fan will react to this. The Windows 8 team explains the new Explorer:

This data is pretty interesting.

Posted in Microsoft, TMCnet

Tagged: microsoft, ribbon, user interface, windows 8, windows explorer : Related Tags: windows explorer, power users, ribbon interface, windows, explorer, ribbon

Steve Jobs the Man, the Myth, the Legend: How it began.

August 26, 2011

I grew up as a computer geek in the late 70s through the 80s into the 90s admiring Bill Gates much more than Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was just "that other computer guy" whose computers were used by less than 8% of the computing world. Microsoft was #1 and Apple was #2 and I liked a winner. Steve Jobs was an also ran to Bill Gates and Microsoft, especially after Windows 95, which arguably copied much of the Macintosh ideas. Microsoft took over the desktop PC world and Apple was relegated to Apple enthusiasts.

Then a funny thing happened.

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Video Hardware & Software, Wireless

Tagged: apple, bill gates, consumer electronics, digital music, iphone, ipod, steve jobs : Related Tags: digital music, whose computers, apple, steve, microsoft, computers

China's telecom patent boom - Is China Ready to Enforce IP?

August 25, 2011

China has a reputation for not enforcing other countries' patents and copyrights, including bootleg DVDs that can be found in just about any major Chinese city street corner. It was even alleged that China's telecom giant Huawei stole Cisco's routing software. According to one article:

Bootleg DVDs in China are very slickly produced and packaged. In fact, many have extra features that make them better than those found on legitimate discs.

Posted in Cisco, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: china, copyright, huawei, intellectual property, mobile, patent, reuters, telecom, united states, wireless : Related Tags: intellectual property, bootleg movies, property rights, telecom sector, enforcement intellectual, china

Skype Launches App Store - Yawn...

August 25, 2011

So today I read that Skype is launching a third-party app directory on their website. Unless, I'm missing something, you can already install add-ons into Skype. Interestingly, within Skype, clicking Tools, Extras is now greyed out/disabled and I cannot install any new add-ons. Does this mean I have to go to the Skype app directory now to install apps/add-ons?

I suppose the ability to comment on apps via the online directory is nice.

Tagged: apps, directory, skype, voip : Related Tags: skype, directory, install

Microsoft front-facing cameras, Skype & Lync Mobile client Coming Very Very Soon

August 25, 2011

Microsoft confirmed Mango Windows Phone 7 handsets would sport a front facing camera as well as Skype integration and a mobile Lync client. The confirmation came via the TechEd event in New Zealand, where two Microsoft employees mentioned that Microsoft's Lync VoIP client also be available on other mobile platforms, including iOS, Android and Symbian. But the Lync client would be first available on the soon to be launched Mango Windows Mobile 7 software.

The employees stated that the mobile Lync client would support both voice and video on Android, Apple's iOS and Windows Mobile 7, explaining "it will dependent on the device, but it will be enabled at some point at time." They pointed out that some devices don't have a front-facing camera so having a videoconference via a mobile Lync client wouldn't necessarily make sense.

The Microsoft Lync client for mobile devices is a long time coming. I was actually told by Microsoft in NYC during a live demo of Microsoft Lync that mobile versions of the Lync client would be coming out "very soon".

Posted in Android, Apple, Gadgets, Lync, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, Wireless

Tagged: android, apple, google, ios, lync, mango, microsoft, mobile phone, video calls, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: windows mobile, windows phone, facing camera, mango windows, mobile, microsoft

Skype Click to Call Add-on Now Supports Firefox 5 & 6

August 24, 2011

If you're a fan of Skype's Click to Call browser plugins for Windows, you probably know back in January Mozilla "soft" blocked this toolbar because "Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week." The Skype Click to Call add-on/plugin auto-detects phone numbers on web pages and lets you dial them via Skype. Personally, I see this as a bit of an esoteric feature of Skype, but perhaps a lot of people do use it?

In any event, Skype just released new updates to the Skype Click to Call as part of release build, 5.6.0.8153.

• Support for Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 on Windows
• Minor improvements to Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox on PC

Here's to hoping they resolved the crashing and performance issues.

Posted in Microsoft, Skype, TMCnet, VoIP

Tagged: browser, chrome, click to call, firefox, microsoft, plugin, skype, voip : Related Tags: skype click, skype, firefox, click

Sporadic Cell phone outages due to 5.9 Earthquake

August 23, 2011

There are reports of sporadic cell phone and perhaps even landline outages after an unusual 5.9 earthquake hit Virginia at 01:51:03 pm, with the epicenter located 41 miles northwest from Richmond and 83 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

A few co-workers and I were unable to get through to some phone numbers. According some reports the carriers are experiencing peak usage related outages. Could be people checking in on loved ones similar to the 9/11 related phone outages.

I felt the earthquake in my office located in Norwalk, CT and have read friends' reports on Facebook that states as far away as Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio felt it. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Washington Monument is leaning.

Posted in TMCnet, Wireless

Tagged: 5.9, cell phone, earthquake, east coast, outage, phone, virginia, washington monument : Related Tags: phone outages, phone, outages, earthquake, reports

Physicists build first single-photon router - Positronic brain next?

August 23, 2011

Cool - the first photon router! From PhysOrg.com:

By demonstrating that an artificial atom embedded in a transmission line can route a single photon from an input port to one of two output ports, physicists have built the first router working at the single-photon level. The single-photon router could one day serve as a quantum node in a quantum information network, in which it could provide basic processing and routing of data.
...
As the scientists explain, controlling and directing photons is more difficult than controlling and directing electrons, which are used in most of today’s routers.

Well done physicists! This is one more step in the Star Trek timeline when Dr. Noonien Soong will be able to create Data's Positronic brain, which features a storage capacity of 100 Pb (800 quadrillion bits) and a total linear computational speed of 60 THz (60 trillion operations per second)!

Posted in Internet, TMCnet, Technology and Science

Tagged: brain, cisco, data, electrons, internet, photon, physicists, positronic, router, star trek : Related Tags: single photon, photon router, controlling directing, positronic brain, photon, router

Skype (Microsoft) Blows $85 Million on GroupMe

August 22, 2011

Skype was in talks with GroupMe to acquire them before Microsoft's (pending approval) bought Skype. With Microsoft purchasing Skype you would have thought Microsoft would have squashed any pending purchases by Skype or at least approve them. The fact that Microsoft didn't stop Skype means Microsoft must agree with the GroupMe acquisition. I'm honestly not sure why though.

GroupMe is simply a group SMS platform that enables you to create group messages leveraging SMS.

Posted in Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: apple, facebook, google, groupme, instant messaging, microsoft, mobile phone, skype, twilio, voip : Related Tags: skype microsoft, group messages, voice message, skype, microsoft, group

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