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ITEXPO says "Slumping economy? What slumping economy?" - VoIP tradeshow thrives

February 5, 2009

Many people I talked to at ITEXPO before the exhibit floor opened had muted expectations about the attendance, because of the slumping economy. But I knew better... I talked to Rich Tehrani and he told me a week before the show opened that the pre-registration numbers were up from last year. VoIP when properly deployed and with the right product has an extremely fast ROI and can result in cost savings in just a short period of time.

Posted in ITEXPO, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Bootable Flash Drive creates 15-Minute Turnkey Asterisk Installs on Atom-based processors

February 4, 2009

How'd you like a bootable USB flash drive which can create turnkey, full-featured Asterisk PBX systems in 15 minutes or less? Nerd Vittles has a recipe specially designed for the new Atom-based motherboards found in most netbooks. Nerd says it also works just fine with Dell's PowerEdge T100 servers.

He writes how this is perfect for on-site demos:

For those that demo systems for a living, no one will touch this presentation. Just show up at a customer site with a $300 Acer Aspire One NetBook and an Aastra 57i business phone.

Posted in Asterisk, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

ContactQ Enhances Asterisk's Call Center Functionality

February 4, 2009

ContactQ is a new call center application server created by Braxtel Communications designed to run on Asterisk that brings advanced call center functionality to the Asterisk platform. Their aim is to handle any sort of contact method and put it into their advanced multi-media queue. For instance, they plan on queuing video calls, text messages, web callbacks, and of course regular calls. ContactQ is a fully featured multi-media skills based routing ACD.

Posted in Asterisk, Call Center and CRM, ITEXPO, Unified Communications, VoIP

OCS 2007 R2 Online Labs

February 3, 2009

A new website ocsforum.com aims to offer a hosted OCS 2007 R2 lab environment for online training and learning. According to Tom Cross, CEO of TECHtionary.com, "OCS-Office Communications Server R2-Release 2 Labs are intended to provide specific "personal training" on specific OCS topics and allow users to test concepts, ideas and strategies in a non-production environment."

Tom told me he plans on adding SIP gateways to the hosted environment to enable PSTN termination for a more realistic testing lab environment.

Tom Cross runs the popular OCS 2007 training classes at ITEXPO. He told me the Miami ITEXPO classes are larger than the previous show in Los Angeles, demonstrating increased interest in OCS 2007 training.

If you're interesting in playing with OCS 2007 R2, but don't want to spend the time installing and and configuring the various server components, heads on over to ocsforum.com.

Posted in ITEXPO, Microsoft, Unified Communications, VoIP

Plantronics .Audio 1100M USB phone for Office Communicator 2007

February 3, 2009

Plantronics today unveiled a phone handset optimized for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. The new wideband .Audio 1100M USB phone handset features a standard, 10-key dial pad combined with call-answer and call-end keys, a visual ring indicator, a speakerphone activation key and ringer volume control. A headset jack is also available on the handset for users who want a hands-free option.

The Plantronics MCD 100 USB speakerphone, also announced today, is an option for those conducting group conference calls via Office Communicator 2007.

Posted in Microsoft, SIP, Unified Communications, VoIP

D2 Technologies Demos reference design for WiMAX mobile phones at ITEXPO

February 2, 2009

D2 Technologies is demonstrating a complete reference design for WiMAX mobile phones at ITEXPO. D2's mCUE communications user interface claims to be the industry's first turnkey software solution for quickly delivering mobile WiMAX devices to market

D2 Technologies, a market leader in embedded IP communications software platforms, today announced that private demonstrations of the industry's first complete reference design for the creation of WiMAX mobile phones are available at ITEXPO East 2009 in Miami, Florida from February 2-4, 2009.

Built around the company's breakthrough mCUE converged communications client, the reference design provides manufacturers with a powerful turnkey software solution for quickly developing and delivering WiMAX handsets and similar portable devices to market. The reference software implementation is running on a dual-mode mobile platform running Linux on a Texas Instruments OMAP-based processor; this version is available immediately, with additional implementations on the Google Android and Microsoft® Windows® CE/Mobile platforms coming in the second quarter of 2009.

ITEXPO attendees as well as those attending the 4G Wireless Evolution Conference collocated with ITEXPO East, can arrange for a first look at the WiMAX mobile phone reference design utilizing D2's mCUE by contacting the company during the show.

"The industry is pouring tremendous resources into the creation and delivery of a WiMAX infrastructure, and manufacturers will need a fast and cost-effective way to develop mobile devices that take advantage of the greater bandwidth, range and other benefits of this technology," said Doug Makishima, vice president of marketing and sales at D2 Technologies.

Posted in Android, ITEXPO, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Speculation that eBay wants to offload Skype

January 26, 2009

According to The Times of London, rumors are that eBay wants to sell Skype after paying $2.6 billion to acquire Skype back in 2005. I wrote back then a few times that I thought eBay overpaid for Skype.

Let's assume the rumors are true. Who would be a potential buyer?

Posted in Microsoft, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Ready for ITEXPO?

January 26, 2009

Posted in ITEXPO, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Verizon VoiceWing Exits VoIP Business

January 26, 2009

Verizon VoiceWing customers received letters in the last couple of days saying, "We regret to inform you that effective March 31, 2009, Verizon will no longer offer VoiceWing. At that time, all VoiceWing service will be terminated". Rumors of VoiceWing's demise have been circulating, especially with Verizon FiOS (Voice, Video/TV, data) a much more profitable long-term business than single-play VoIP. I should add that Verizon stopped marking VoiceWing last year.

Verizon VoiceWing uses a locked Linksys PAP2 ATA, but the letter says they don't want the ATA back, once again fullfilling prediction #2 in my 2005 VoIP predictions.

I wrote:

2) VoIP providers will continue to harp that the government shouldn't impose any regulations on VoIP and that the industry should be open & free, while simultaneously VoIP providers will continue to alienate their customers by password-protecting and locking the customer's ATA (analog telephony adaptor), thus preventing customers from easily switching to another VoIP provider and using the same ATA. This is hypocrisy at its worst!

Posted in Unified Communications, VoIP, Vonage

Verizon Hub News

January 23, 2009

As I wrote a few days ago, Verizon plans to launch the Verizon Hub. I just learned the Verizon Hub will launch February 1st. As I also was the first to point out, my source told me that the Verizon Hub is essentially the same thing as the Verizon One (created by OpenPeak), which I wrote about in March 2007. In my post from a few days ago, I wrote, "One of my sources told me that the Verizon Hub is the same thing as the Verizon One, but apparently Verizon changed the name to the Verizon Hub deskphone."

The Verizon Hub is the evolution of the Verizon One. As part of that evolution, I hope they no longer restrict you to surfing specific websites. Or if they do have to limit it, I hope the list of allowed websites includes YouTube, Digg, Yahoo!

Posted in Home Entertainment, Internet, Reviews, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, VoIP

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