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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Facebook Skype Video and Group Chats Features Launch

July 6, 2011

Facebook announces video calling leveraging Skype! They also announced a new chat design that includes a sidebar that lists the people you message most. The sidebar adjusts with the size of your browser window, and it automatically appears when the window is wide enough. From the sidebar you just click your friend and then select video calling.

Posted in Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Tagged: facebook, skype, video chat, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: video calling, google hangout, group video, video, calling, facebook

Disney PhotoPass Photos Bent by Callous Post Office

July 5, 2011

My family and I took a trip to Disney World in May and snapped lots of pictures with our digital camera, but we also took advantage of Disney PhotoPass. This is a service where Disney employees snap professional photos in certain prime photo areas of the parks. Each Disney PhotoPass photoshoot results in then giving you a card with a unique code, which you then enter into the website for ordering prints and such.

I was excited to receive the photos we ordered. To my horror when I opened the mailbox one day, I saw this:

Isn't it lovely how the United States Post Office handled our family's memories of our trip?

Posted in Digital Cameras, Personal and Humor

Tagged: disney, disney world, fedex, photopass, pictures, post office, shipping, united states, ups, vacation : Related Tags: disney photopass, disney world, photos, disney, office, package

magicJack Plus Review

June 30, 2011

The magicJack Plus is due out very soon, perhaps as early as next month, but I was able to get an early sneak peek at it for a review. The big new feature in the MagicJack Plus is that it sports an on-board ARM CPU, which means you can make calls without the need for the MagicJack Plus to be connected to a PC. It looks almost identical to the original magicJack USB stick, but it now has an Ethernet jack for connecting to any broadband connection, enabling PC-less VoIP calling.

Posted in Android, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, News, Reviews, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

Tagged: dan borislow, magicjack plus, nettalk, review, usb, vocaltec, voip : Related Tags: wideband codec, magicjack vocaltec, should verified, broadband connection, asked wideband, magicjack

Skype for Android Gets Video Love

June 30, 2011

Skype today announced an updated version of its Skype for Android app (Skype for Android 2.0), which finally brings Skype video calling to the Android platform. No longer is the Android playing second fiddle to the Apple iPhone's version of Skype.

They did a complete redesign of the Skype for Android user interface. There's a new main menu on the Skype app for Android where users can navigate through their contacts, access their Skype profile to change personal details or see the balance of their Skype Credit.

Tagged: android, android market, google, iphone, nexus, skype, sony ericsson, video calling, video conferencing, voip, xperia : Related Tags: skype android, version skype, ericsson xperia, video calling, skype, android

Blue Jeans Network Launches Video Conferencing Service

June 29, 2011

Today, Blue Jeans Network announced the commercial availability of its cloud-based multi-party video conferencing service, which they've dubbed "any(ware) videoconferencing". I reviewed their impressive video conferencing product last month. I liked how their platform bridges together various business video solutions from Cisco/Tandberg, Polycom, Lifesize along with consumer video offerings from Skype and Google Talk. Users each get a private “meeting room” in the Blue Jeans cloud that they can use to schedule, host, and manage meetings through an easy web interface. Users can join the meeting using anything from a high-end Cisco/Tandberg videophone all the way down to a user running Skype and a cheap webcam.

As part of its public release, Blue Jeans announced that it has raised $23.5 million from Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Norwest Venture Partners.

Posted in Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Tagged: accel partners, blue jean network, cisco, polycom, skype, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: video conferencing, jeans network, cisco tandberg, conferencing service, video, jeans

Zombies, Toshiba Laptops, and the Butterfly Effect

June 29, 2011

Butterfly effect definition: A small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. For example, the presence or absence of a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to creation or absence of a hurricane.

Now imagine if Toshiba decided to not include the "impact smart hard drive" in their latest line of laptops. Why the devastating impact of this decision would result in a nationwide blackout, spoiled milk, and of course zombies. Don't believe me? Well, then you need to watch the funniest laptop commercial of all time to see for youself!

Posted in Computer Hardware, Internet, Technology and Science

Tagged: butterfly effect, chaos theory, commercial, humor, impact smart hard drive, laptop, toshiba, zombies : Related Tags: butterfly effect, butterfly

Microsoft Patents VoIP and Skype Wiretapping

June 29, 2011

Microsoft was recently granted a patent for a technology called Legal Intercept, which apparently enables Microsoft to secretly intercept, monitor and record Skype calls. I'm skeptical. Many Skype calls are peer-to-peer (P2P) with the packets traveling across different router hops. There's no way to predict exactly where the packets are going.

Of course, if you know the target user's ISP, a government entity could put a packet capture device at the ISP where all the user's traffic goes first.

Tagged: eavesdropping, legal intercept, microsoft, patent, pstn, skype, wiretapping : Related Tags: skype calls, patent application, recording agent, based communication, protocol entity, skype

U.S. House of Representatives Approves Skype for Video Calls

June 28, 2011

Looks like the U.S. House of Representatives is adopting Skype to lower costs. According to Skype's Big Blog:

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced that they will open up the world of Skype communications to Members of Congress and their staff.

Posted in Skype, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Tagged: house of representatives, obamacare, skype, town hall, united states, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: house representatives, using skype, members congress, skype video, skype, representatives

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