Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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| VoIP & Gadgets blog - Latest news in VoIP & gadgets, wireless, mobile phones, reviews, & opinions

Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency

Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...

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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...

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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call

Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...

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IGEL Advances Future of Work

IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...

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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN

Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...

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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War

Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...

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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise

Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...

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Parus Interactive News

January 17, 2005


Have you ever tried finding the closest retail chain store from your cellphone by dialing the retail outlet's IVR? Or have you ever tried to check to see if a store in your area has a particular product in stock and what the current price is?

Well, I know I have and almost always it was a trying experience. For example, if you have ever called CompUSA's IVR/auto-attendant, you know it is not a fun experience.

10-10 Numbers and VoIP

January 15, 2005

You know those 10-10 numbers? You dial 10-10 followed by a prefix then a phone number to override your default carrier and go over a different carrier to get a discounted rate?. There used to be dozens of TV commercials that popularized 10-10 numbers with Hollywood celebs such as Dennis Miller and George Carlin espousing the benefits of 10-10 numbers. Have you noticed the 10-10 number commercials have dropped considerably since the 1990's?

Convad VoIP Trials

January 14, 2005

Not sure if you saw the news on TMCnet yesterday or not, but Covad will begin trials in the next 30 days of line-powered voice access that would enable Covad strategic partners to offer local and long distance voice services to their customers.

The interesting part is that you simply hook to your phone jacks and it isn't VoIP until it gets to the central office. So if the power goes off, you still have voice - one of the knocks against the dominant broadband VoIP players. While you can do this with existing broadband VoIP providers simply by connecting an ATA's analog port to your house wiring (to power the lines), technically you're supposed to "cut" the outside PSTN wiring that goes to your phone company.

Colleges and VoIP

January 14, 2005

Rich linked to my 2005 VoIP Predictions and pointed out my "Colleges Ramp up VoIP" prediction in particular. Well, ironically as he was blogging that, I came across something else that speaks of colleges and VoIP.

From a Reuters article:
For years, Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has braced for the start of school in Boulder, Colorado, where 30,000 college students would sign up for telephone service when they returned from summer break.

But this past September, Qwest not only saw no increase, but actually lost lines in Boulder.

Forbes and Cisco

January 13, 2005

Got VoIP?

Forbes had an interesting article on Cisco. It starts off in the beginning of the article saying, "Seven months later, Cisco's stock has been disappointing and trades around $19 per share--about 20% lower than when I discussed the opportunities for the company." However, it then states a more positive tone with, "But don't count out Cisco yet--2005 will be a big year for IP networks."

The article goes on further to explain why Cisco may make a turnaround in 2005 - all due to and thanks to VoIP. I agree with the Forbes article that "VoIP" could be Cisco's savior in 2005, at least market value-wise and stock price-wise anyway.

SFLphone Open Source SIP

January 12, 2005

SFLPhone Default Skin


An interesting new SIP softphone client to bring to light called SFLphone that I don't think many people know about. It's similar to the popular XTen SIP softphone client in that both are SIP-based, however unlike the Xten softphone client, this SIP-based softphone is "open source". So if you are a developer you can start hacking away at the code to tweak it your liking. It also supports "skins" so you can customize the "look and feel" of the graphical user interface.

Asterisk Review

January 12, 2005

MCI Conferencing

January 12, 2005

MCI announced a new conferencing service that leverages local access numbers across the entire globe. Personally, with VoIP bringing international calls per minute pricing way down, I don't see the need for this. But I suppose a Fortune 1000 company that does a lot of international conference calls with participants in multiple countries could benefit somewhat, especially if all the participants are from your own company. If the participants are customers then all you are doing is saving your customers a buck or two for the cost of the call.

Salesforce.com Passes 200,000 Subscribers

January 12, 2005

Salesforce.com sent me a package today containing a letter that states, "It took
four and a half years to reach 100,000 subscribers. Just 16 months later,
we are proud to tell you that we have surpassed 200,000 subscribers."

Congrats Salesforce.com!

They informed me in the letter that their subscriber numbers and financial results are scheduled for February 17th. If I remember, I'll try and post the numbers here in my blog.

Level 3 Layoffs

January 12, 2005

Several sources over the past few days have been telling me rumors of Level 3 performing layoffs. I didn't want to speculate on my blog, but it looks like the rumors I heard are true.

Layoffs are never a good thing. Level 3's backbone is used by several VoIP players, so what does this mean for the VoIP industry?

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