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Tom Keating
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Unified Communications

Sangoma Launches B600 Series of Analog Voice Cards

December 4, 2008

Rich has a great interview with Sangoma's VP Sales and Marketing, Doug Vilim about their new B600 Series of Analog voice cards, which can be used in Asterisk-based systems. Apparently, Sangoma's über customizable & modular cards can be a slight cost detriment for those that don't need such modularity.

                        B600D PCI model.

Here's a teaser from Rich's blog:

What is the reason for these new cards to be introduced?

Some of our OEM customers;  those who are building IP PBX appliances Empowered by Sangoma, often do not require the modularity, port customization and single slot expandability that our A-Series analog cards provide.  Also, four PSTN lines and one fax connection is a common configuration that creates economies of scale, which can lead to a substantial cost savings for these customers when purchasing in larger volumes.

Read full story

Also, here are the specs:
  • 4 ports of FXO and 1 Port of FXS.
  • Support for Asterisk®, FreeSWITCH™, Yate™, trixbox™, and PBX/IVR projects, as well as other Open Source and proprietary PBX, Switch, IVR, and VoIP gateway applications.
  • Single synchronous PCI interface for all ports.
  • Dimensions: 2U Form factor: 140 mm x 55 mm for use in restricted chassis.
  • Includes both standard and short half-height compatible mounting clips for installation in 2U rack-mount servers.
  • 32 bit bus master DMA data exchanges across PCI interface at 132 Mbytes/sec for minimum host processor intervention.
  • Autosense compatibility with 5 V and 3.3 V PCI busses.
  • Fully PCI 2.2 compliant, compatible with all commercially available motherboards, and shares PCI interrupts.
  • Power: 3.6 W (0.3A @ 12 V) and 1.65 W (0.5A @ 3.3 V).
  • Temperature range: 0 - 50°C.
  • Cables are included.
  • Suports Fax: Single FXS Port designed for optimum fax support.
  • Sangoma B600 cards synchronize perfectly with Sangoma's T1/E1 cards and the PSTN clock for error-free fax and modem passthrough over T1 lines.
  • Optional: DSP Echo Canceller
  • G.168-2002 echo cancellation in the hardware.
  • 1024 taps/128 ms tail per channel on all channel densities.
  • DTMF decoding and tone recognition.
  • Voice quality enhancement: music protection, acoustic echo control and adaptive noise reduction.
  • No CPU load as a result of echo cancellation.
  • No additional slot is required.









Office Communicator clients cannot communicate with AOL Contacts Problem Solved

December 2, 2008

Nimbuzz VoIP app on Apple App Store

November 30, 2008

Nimbuzz is a free app that lets you call (VoIP), chat, message, and send photos, music and video on your iPhone, which was recently made available on the Apple App Store. Using a centralized contact list you can connect with all your buddies on Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, StudiVZ, Hyves, Jabber and Twitter, plus popular social networks including Facebook and MySpace. It features presence (who's online and where), group calling, chatrooms, and more.

VoxOx 1.0.1 Released

November 26, 2008

VoxOx just released a new version of their "Universal Communicator", which aims to combine VoIP, video, and social networks. VoxOx aims to take on Skype by offering more social networking features. Last year, I wrote an article titled Skype Could Trump Facebook in Social Networking, but Skype still hasn't added social networking functionality.

In any event, today version 1.0.1 was released, less than a month after their initial launch. I was never able to get the Facebook integration to work, but it was a beta release, so I'm hoping they worked out the kinks.

Here are some new features:

New Additions
• Status field set to your auto-response message when away
• Facebook icons link out to friends' profiles so you can write on their wall, private message them, etc
• View Facebook contact photos from their VoxOx Profile
• Text Message window remembers Mobile Numbers
• Chat to Email window remembers emails addresses

Bug Fixes
• Call-Back (Web and SMS) fully functional
• Fixed Crash bug when ending calls
• Added default group for new contacts to be saved
• Login screen text updated to "Login Automatically"
• Web Portal login back online

Some of the major updates they are working on include a new and improved user interface, more efficient memory utilization, smoother and faster SMS functionality, enhanced Facebook integration, MySpace integration, and Outlook & Mac address book integration.



















PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support

November 18, 2008


When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.

According to PIKA, "While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio.


Ribbit Launches out of Beta

November 17, 2008

Ribbit, which was recently acquired by BT, today rolled out its developer platform out of beta at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbits extensive APIs allow you to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and even social networks.


Ribbit launched its programming platform for developers today at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbit likes to call themselves "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company".


Bandwidth.com invests in FreePBX

November 14, 2008

Bandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get "preferred treatment" within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it "easier" to configure FreePBX (i.e.

Calling All Bloggers! Free Blogging on TMCnet.com

November 14, 2008

This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others.

Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis.
So if you enjoy writing about communications, telecom, VoIP, wireless, unified communications, mobile, etc.

TMC Launches NGN (Next Generation Networks) Magazine

November 13, 2008

Today, TMC announced the launch of NGN Magazine focused on next generation networks and how service providers and carriers can build these networks and what they will need to know to maximize savings and ARPU (average revenue per user).

"We're in an interesting time," says TMC President and Group Publisher, Rich Tehrani. No, he's not referring to the American political scene or the chaotic American economy. Rich is referring to Next Generation Networks, which Rich believes will be critical to the future of service providers and carriers.

Microsoft and IBM Announce Sametime and Microsoft OCS integration

November 13, 2008

As one of my sources told me a few days ago, IBM and Microsoft planned on offering Sametime and OCS 2007 integration to be announced at VoiceCon. Three days ago I wrote:
Rumor has it that Microsoft and/or IBM will announce integration between Office Communications Server 2007 and IBM's Lotus Sametime "Unified Telephony" platform at this week's VoiceCon show. If true, this would combine approximately 20 million Sametime users with Microsoft's fast growing OCS 2007 user base creating the largest unified communications user base.

Well, it just hit the newswires. At Voicecon, IBM and Microsoft announced that IBM Sametime and OCS will offer Interdomain Federation in Q4 of 2008, using SIP/SIMPLE.

The support will require an update to the Sametime Gateway 8.0.2. It will support OCS 2007 and OCE 2007 R2.


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