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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Google Desktop Search

October 15, 2004

Verizon and Level3 VoIP feature

October 15, 2004

I just blogged about i2Telecom's "Cellular Bridge" feature that let's you pick up your cell phone, dial the i2Telecom InternetTalker, and the device will recognize your CallerID and give you "2nd dial-tone" to dial another phone number.

Well, coincidentally, a source has just told me that Level3 and Verizon are working on a similar feature that will let you dial your home VoIP phone (Verizon's VoiceWing VoIP service I assume), it will detect the CallerID, give you 2nd dialtone, and then let you make an outbound call.

Apparently it will only cost $0.12 PER CALL! (not per minute.) I'm not sure if this is U.S.

i2Telecom InternetTalker MG-3

October 15, 2004


The InternetTalker is another ATA (analog telephony adaptor) device that works in conjunction with i2Telecom's VoIP network services.

While there seems to be a new ATA coming to market every week, what I like about this ATA is a feature they call "Cellular Bridge".

Here is what their website had to say, Cellular Bridge Brings VoIP Savings to Mobile Phones. Exclusive, patented “cellular bridge” capability allows up to 3 authorized phones to remotely access the MG-3 for low-cost and no-cost global calling.

FCC Fiber Decision for the Bells

October 15, 2004

I was watching the news last night when the news anchor stated that an FCC ruling came down that the FCC had granted the regional Bell companies relief from having to lease their fiber networks to competitors at regulated rates. I was stunned considering how supportive FCC chairman Michael Powell has been in the past with regards to competition. He’s especially been a friend and proponent of competition in the VoIP industry, so this decision came as a surprise to me. It smelled to me like some serious Baby Bell lobbying paid off.

Skype phone

October 15, 2004

IPMind

A representative of IPMind came across my VoIP blog entry "Skype Keynote", saw that I "wished" for "a phone product with Skype technology embedded that DOES NOT REQUIRE a PC to be on to work!" and he posted a comment stating that his company has a prototype of a standalone Skype hardware phone.

Details are a bit sketchy at this point, but here is what I know. They have 2 early prototypes enclosed in a telephone shell that can dial to/receive calls from Skype users. For dialing you simply scroll to the desired buddy in the buddy list on the LCD screen (4*20) and you are connected to the buddy.

CuPhone and Skype

October 14, 2004

CuPhone Personal Phone Gateway (PPG)

Andy reminded me of a company that creates a USB portable gateway device that actually won an Internet Telephony Editors' Choice Award in 2000. Well, now they support Skype and in an interesting way.

Basically, this device connects to your PC (via USB) as well as a PSTN wall socket. Then you enter in a pre-specified PSTN phone number, such as a cell phone number into the CuPhone Personal Phone Gateway (PPG).

Red Sox or Yankees Evil Empire

October 13, 2004

Last night I watched the Yankees vs. Red Sox ALCS playoff game, including the pre-game on FOX. I enjoyed the Nomar, Goat Curse, and Bartman parody - it was pretty funny. But what really irked me about the pre-game was the intro just before the game started where they equated the Yankees as the "Evil Empire".

Audiovox SMT5600

October 13, 2004

Audiovox SMT5600

I'm in the market for a smartphone - preferably one with Bluetooth, Windows Mobile software, GPS capability, and email access that can rival a Blackberry. The HP h6315 has certainly seen some hype and a lot of interest. No doubt the new Audiovox SMT5600 smartphone will make some waves with its powerful features. The SMT5600 runs Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones Second Edition on a 200 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP processor.

AT&T CallVantage and TigerDirect

October 13, 2004

AT&T CallVantage Service is now available through TigerDirect. TigerDirect joins Amazon.com, Best Buy and Circuit City in the retail channel to market CallVantage's VoIP services. What about Walmart? Whoever (Vonage, CallVantage, Lingo, etc.) lands Walmart deserves some extra kudos.

Popular Telephony and Global IP Sound

October 13, 2004

Popular Telephony and Global IP Sound have announced a partnernership to provide best-in-class voice quality on Peerio 444 serverless softphone. I've used Global IP Sound's GIPS codecs and they are very impressive. I gave Global IP Sound a glowing review in a TMC Labs writeup last year, which you can see here: Global IP Sound TMC Labs Review

We found that the Global IP Sound codec had some pretty interesting positive effects under high packet loss conditions, which we tested using the Shunra Cloud 4.0 network emulator tool which can inject latency and packet loss. I should note that we used an older/slower PocketPC with a softphone client containing the GIPS codec engine, so the latency numbers are much higher than a PC or hardphone would have.

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