VoIP

VoIP news, trends, and opinions, VoIP reviews. Covering Asterisk, Cisco, Grandstream, Polycom, Microsoft, Vonage, Packet8, etc.

Vapps offers Wideband Conferencing using Skype or PSTN

October 23, 2007

Today, Vapps will be relaunching their free conferencing service (HighSpeed Conferencing) as a flat-rate monthly service with unlimited usage. When I asked Ben Lilienthal CEO, Vapps "why the change?", Ben explained that they have gone from using a narrowband codec to a a wideband codec, offering premium sound quality conferencing that scales up to 500 PSTN and/or Skype users. He boasted having the only wideband conferencing service in the world that can scale to 500 participants and also pointed out that Skype by itself can only do 3-way conferencing. He feels there is a lot of valuable in offering wideband, high-quality conferencing.

Posted in Skype, VoIP

Chris Lyman on Unified Communications

October 19, 2007

Greg Galitzine has an excellent interview with Fonality CEO, Chris Lyman about unified communications, Microsoft (OCS 2007), and Cisco. Chris goes into the threat he believes Microsoft and Cisco may pose, as well as some analysis of Microsoft Response Point and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Here is a teaser of one of Chris's comments - "They are the two behemoths that have the greatest chance of unifying communications by dominating vs. integrating.

Posted in VoIP

Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service

October 17, 2007

Microsoft released Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service, which provides an automated way to update all unified communications devices deployed in an organization.

This includes all the OCS-compatible phones (Polycom Inc., LG-Nortel Co. Ltd. and Thomson Telecom) that run Microsoft Office Communicator Phone Experience.

According to Microsoft, "unified communication (UC) devices, such as Microsoft Office Communicator Phone Experience and Microsoft RoundTable, enable rich communication within an organization. Deploying these devices requires regular maintenance by the IT department, which includes providing available software updates to these unified communications devices. All UC devices rely on an automatic mechanism to obtain software update required on a regular basis."

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service provides an automated way to update all unified communications devices deployed in an organization.

This download is comprised of two files:

OCSSoftwareUpdateService.msi – used to configure the Software Update Service component on your Office Communications Server 2007 Web Component Servers or your Standard Edition server.
OCSSoftwareUpdateServiceSP.msi – to configure the Update site on the SharePoint Service.

Posted in Microsoft, Polycom, VoIP

Skype Surpasses 10 million simultaneous users

October 17, 2007

Posted in Skype, VoIP

Top Tips for Managing VoIP

October 17, 2007

Stephen Brown over at the Network Instruments blog (called Network Observations) has a good post listing top tips for managing VoIP that is definitely worth checking out.

He also lists some external links to outside resources, including InfoWorld (one of my favs & possibly in trouble) and even a link to little oh me with the caption - "Look at the cooler side of VoIP". Me, cool? Ah heck, I've never been accused of being "cool" before. If you call learning BASIC at the age of 9 cool, or wearing glasses cool, or being a huge Star Trek fan cool, or liking 80s "big hair" era music the best, or even dressing as Xena the Warrior Princess for Halloween as cool, well, then I am guilty as charged.

Posted in VoIP

Minimizing network load when routing to Ported Mobile Phone Numbers

October 17, 2007

Tyntec launched their new Voice Network Query service that enables major carriers to route voice calls to mobile phones directly to destination operator, minimizing network load. Now that regulations force the carriers to allow customers to port their mobile phone numbers, this introduces some network traffic issues. Of course, I should mention that you can port your traditional landline phone number to a VoIP provider such as Vonage or Packet8, but that introduces its own series of number portability problems.

in any case, mobile messaging services provider TynTec, announced Voice Network Query, a service which will allow major telecoms carriers to route voice calls to mobile phones directly to their destination network operator. The new service overcomes the issue of onward routing of voice calls to ported mobile numbers, thus reducing the issue of excess network traffic generated by voice calls misrouted due to mobile number portability.

When a mobile user switches network but retains their current phone number, calls have traditionally been routed via the user's former operator's infrastructure, which then routes calls to the operator which now provides service to the customer.

Posted in Mobile Phones, Packet8, VoIP, Vonage, Wireless

Myspace goes VoIP

October 16, 2007

TMC co-worker, Greg Galitzine, is reporting that Reuters stated Myspace will announce a partnership with Skype tomorrow. This is great news for Skype/eBay, but like I said before, I still think Skype itself could be a Facebook and MySpace social networking killer. I'm still waiting Skype...

MySpace users will be able to make Skype calls using MySpaceIM without having to download or install Skype. They don't even have to sign up for a Skype account.

Posted in VoIP

Aculab launches ApplianX Gateway for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

October 16, 2007

For my last post today on Microsoft OCS 2007 (hope you enjoyed the comprehensive coverage), I wanted to let everyone know that Aculab launched their ApplianX Gateway for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. ApplianX Gateway incorporates the Mediation Server function of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Dialogic, a competitor, also has a series of gateways that acts as the Mediation Server saving on the TCO. Nice to see several players offering OCS 2007-compatible gateways that include the Mediation Server.

Posted in Microsoft, VoIP

Drag-and-drop Conference Calls = OCS 2007 Success?

October 16, 2007

I was just checking out Rich's impressions of the Microsoft UC launch since he was actually there in the audience to gauge the audience's reactions. Rich writes, "Perhaps the most memorable moment about the event so far other than the dry ice smoke and blaring guitar at the start of the day is the fact the audience actually clapped when they saw how a conference call can be initiated with a simple mouse click."

I too picked up on this strong audience reaction to the simple mouse-click and drag-and-drop conferencing ability. (I was streaming the video of the UC launch.) As CTO and as a former IT Manager, I also speak from experience that no matter how many times I trained a sales person how to make a conference call, they would simply forget the next day because it's too complicated to remember. (no offense my fellow sales co-workers!)

It's surprising that TMC has covered this conferencing usability issue since 1996 when TMC launched CTI Magazine, a magazine dedicated to covering the integration of the computer and the telephone (hence CTI - Computer Telephony Integration) and how CTI would make using the phone much easier to use by leveraging the computer's user interface (UI).

In fact, all of TMC's publications, including Internet Telephony Magazine and Customer Interaction Solutions have been espousing the need for a "better phone" that leverages the computer with its more powerful and flexible UI.

Posted in Microsoft, TMCnet, VoIP

Dell Gets into VoIP Game with OCS 2007

October 16, 2007

Dell is now in the VoIP game! I was talking with Microsoft's Clint Patterson, Director of PR for Unified Communications, this morning and I asked him about Dell, since I noticed they were listed as one of Microsoft's OCS 2007 partners being announced today. I was curious if Dell's plans were to pre-install Microsoft OCS 2007 and leverage their huge professional services division to help businesses deploy Office Communications Server 2007. As you know, I've expressed some skepticism about Microsoft deploying OCS in the SMB space without channel partner help.

Well, Clint confirmed that Dell was indeed going to pre-install OCS on Dell servers and offer professional services.

Posted in Microsoft, Polycom, VoIP

Previous 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 ... 229 Next

VoIP & Gadgets Blog

VoIP