VoIP

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

China's telecom patent boom - Is China Ready to Enforce IP?

August 25, 2011

China has a reputation for not enforcing other countries' patents and copyrights, including bootleg DVDs that can be found in just about any major Chinese city street corner. It was even alleged that China's telecom giant Huawei stole Cisco's routing software. According to one article:

Bootleg DVDs in China are very slickly produced and packaged. In fact, many have extra features that make them better than those found on legitimate discs.

Posted in Cisco, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Skype Click to Call Add-on Now Supports Firefox 5 & 6

August 24, 2011

If you're a fan of Skype's Click to Call browser plugins for Windows, you probably know back in January Mozilla "soft" blocked this toolbar because "Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week." The Skype Click to Call add-on/plugin auto-detects phone numbers on web pages and lets you dial them via Skype. Personally, I see this as a bit of an esoteric feature of Skype, but perhaps a lot of people do use it?

In any event, Skype just released new updates to the Skype Click to Call as part of release build, 5.6.0.8153.

• Support for Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 on Windows
• Minor improvements to Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox on PC

Here's to hoping they resolved the crashing and performance issues.

Posted in Microsoft, Skype, TMCnet, VoIP

Skype (Microsoft) Blows $85 Million on GroupMe

August 22, 2011

Skype was in talks with GroupMe to acquire them before Microsoft's (pending approval) bought Skype. With Microsoft purchasing Skype you would have thought Microsoft would have squashed any pending purchases by Skype or at least approve them. The fact that Microsoft didn't stop Skype means Microsoft must agree with the GroupMe acquisition. I'm honestly not sure why though.

GroupMe is simply a group SMS platform that enables you to create group messages leveraging SMS.

Posted in Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

BT Kills the Rabbit, err Ribbit

August 10, 2011

Ribbit, which was acquired by BT, and which Ribbit claimed was "Silicon Valley's First Phone Company" has been killed. Ribbit was a cloud-based phone system with APIs to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and social networks. It was a promising concept.

So is cloud-based voice dead? That'd be too bad, since Fonality just released a Cloud VoIP for Dummies book just yesterday. Well, one defunct hosted voice platform doesn't make for an industry trend. We've still got Google Voice, Phono, Twilio, TeleSocial, and others that are going strong.

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

Skype releases Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X

August 8, 2011

Today, Skype released Skype 5.3 for Mac OS X, with a number of fixes and some notable improvements, including HD video calling. In addition to an improved user interface, Skype 5.3 will feature support for the new Mac Lion operating system and be backwards compatible with existing Mac OSes. To receive clear HD video calls on your Mac, you'll need an upload/download speed of 1.5Mbps.

Check out the left (non-HD) vs. right (HD) video calling example Skype gives:

Posted in Skype, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Bob Metcalfe Keynotes StartupCamp, Communications Edition, collocated with ITEXPO

August 8, 2011

Bob Metcalfe is a living technology legend who invented Ethernet in 1973 while at Xerox PARC and he also founded 3Com. Without Ethernet, where would local area networks, WANs and the Internet be? We owe Bob a great deal of gratitude for his contribution to computer networking. Metcalfe is also known for his 1995 prediction that the internet would suffer a catastrophic collapse the next year and he'd eat his words if it did not. Well, he was wrong on that, but everyone loves or loves to hate an opinionated pundit, whether its someone like David Pogue at the NY Times, Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal, or a fiery political pundits like Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann.

So I am ecstatic to announce that Bob Metcalfe will keynote TMC's fourth installment of StartupCamp, Communications Edition, collocated with ITEXPO West, on September 14 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

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

Number Portability Still Sucking After All these Years...

August 4, 2011

I decided to drop Charter's triple play package because they raised the monthly bill from $166 to $222 per month -- only to find out that the curse of number portability still exists in 2011. Flashback: Back in 2006 I griped that my phone number I owned for 10 years couldn't be ported from Vonage to Charter.

Recently, I decided I would drop Vonage in favor of a triple play offering from Charter, which would give me cable TV, high-speed Internet, and "voice over cable" - all at a very reasonable price. My wife and I encountered too many network or Vonage QoS issues which affected our phone service. It was time to port the number to Charter, which advertised that they could port customer's numbers in a mailer we received.

Posted in SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

Vonage Time to Call iPhone App Makes Cheap International Calls

August 3, 2011

Vonage today launched Time to Call for the iPhone, a new mobile VoIP app that aims to deliver low-cost international calling. Vonage claims Time to Call is the first downloadable app that allows pay-per-call international dialing to more than 190 countries. The app, designed for iPhones, lets consumers make 15-minute international calls and it features payment directly through iTunes, which will no doubt improve the adoption rate.

For a limited time, Vonage will provide a free international call, up to 15 minutes, to 100 countries.

Posted in Android, Apple, Google, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, VoIP, Vonage, Wireless

Panasonic Launches Line of Desktop SIP Phones

August 3, 2011

Today, Panasonic launched a line of new desktop SIP phones pitting them against Aastra, Cisco, Polycom, snom, and other SIP desktop phone vendors. I spoke with Panasonic to learn more about their new offering. First, it's worth pointing out that Panasonic already has a desktop phone called the KX-TGP550, which also supports DECT, allowing up to 6 DECT phones to register to the desktop phone. Panasonic mentioned this particular product is useful in small businesses and gave the example of a salon which needs a desktop phone at the receptionist desk, but the hair stylists and salon owner can have a DECT phone on their belt clip and freely roam, while still taking calls.

Posted in Asterisk, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

Skype for iPad Released then Pulled

August 2, 2011

Skype for iPad was released but then pulled. But not before Rich Tehrani snagged a copy and tested it. Works great! Though the resolution of the iPad 2 camera could be better.

As for the reason it was pulled, according to Skype's Twitter account, "To ensure your best Skype experience, we’ve temporarily removed Skype for iPad which went live prematurely today.” They also tweeted, "We know you’ve been eagerly awaiting Skype for iPad and apologize for the inconvenience."

If you cannot wait for Skype to put it back on the App Store, you can always try my workaround to make Skype iPad video calls.

Update:
It's back on the App Store!

Posted in Skype, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, VoIP

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