Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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VoIP

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

French Protest VoIP

December 17, 2004

FTTH - Fiber and VoIP

December 16, 2004

FTTH Integrated Voice, Video and Data IP Gateway GW-282

I haven't seen any news about FTTH (Fiber To The Home) and VoIP solutions. If you think about it, most of the news about VoIP has been about VoIP over cable broadband or DSL broadband connections, not fiber. So I was pleasantly surprised when I came across Telco Systems, which has an Outdoor/Indoor IP Media Gateway for Voice, Video and Data services convergence and FTTH applications.

They claim that "the BATM/Telco Systems GW-282 series Integrated IP media gateway is the most efficient, flexible, and powerful device in its class." According to Telco Systems, it’s capable of supporting various combinations of 2, 4 and 8 analog voice lines (VoIP FXS ports), 8 or 16 10/100BaseTX Ethernet ports and optical Fast/ Gigabit Ethernet uplink.

AT&T CallVantage New Features

December 16, 2004

Gary Morgenstern from AT&T sent TMC an email regarding AT&T CallVantage's new features.

The AT&T email states:
This is the single largest introduction of new feature and capabilities to AT&T CallVantage Service since its initial launch last March 29. With the addition of 'AT&T CallVantage Plus,' (the sub-account capability referenced), 2nd-line and Call Filtering, subscribers are able to configure a very sophisticated suite of customized capabilities that trump any competitive services to date. Taken in total, we have now matured AT&T CallVantage Service to a feature-rich offer in just 9 months.

Hmmm..."trump any competitive services to date"?

VoIP and WiMAX

December 15, 2004

Take the super-hyped WiMAX wireless technology and team it up with the super-hot VoIP technology and what do you get? A super-pumped hyped-up press release...

But hey, WiMAX and VoIP are a perfect match, so if WiMAX lives up to its hype, this bit of news could be important.

Wi-LAN and Quintum Technologies have teamed to provide VoIP via wireless broadband. Now enterprise.

Hotmail founder to Launch VoIP product

December 14, 2004

AOL Canada and VoIP

December 14, 2004

AOL Canada plans to launch Internet phone service in greater Toronto over the next couple of weeks. This will mark the first time AOL has entered the broadband VoIP market. The company said Tuesday that it plans to offer AOL TotalTalk, a residential VoIP service to all high-speed Internet users, whether or not they are AOL subscribers.

"High-speed Internet access is a commodity in Canada.

VoIP Trademark

December 14, 2004

I was just reading Russell Shaw's blog entry about his research on VoIP trademarks and patents here: AT&T will market VoIP | IP Telephony | ZDNet.com" href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=133"> Exclusive: I visit the Trademark Office and get the scoop on how AT&T will market VoIP | IP Telephony | ZDNet.com and decided to do some investigating of my own.

While doing a keyword search on "voip" like Russell, I too came across AT&T's application for a service mark on "VoIP is Everywhere". I agree with Russell - could be a new catch phrase or marketing term by AT&T.

But then I noticed a really interesting application.

Leadtek Videophone

December 10, 2004

My previous blog entry, (VoIP Videophone War), discussed Vonage's and Packet8's videophones. I mentioned Leadtek is the OEM for Packet8's videophone.

Well perfect timing - I just got some pre-release news from Leadtek that I thought I'd share...

First, at CES, Leadtek will announce the Leadtek Videophone for TV set-top boxes, Leadtek Surveillance Camera, and Leadtek Videophone for France Telecom.

VoIP Videophone War

December 10, 2004

In case you didn't catch the news yesterday, Vonage plans to offer a videophone in 2005 via a partnership with Viseon. But there's much more to it than that. First, go check out Andy's blog entry about it. VoIP Watch: 'Vonage Goes VideoPhone Soon' as well as Aswath's thoughts on the videophone service provider model here.

Vocal Technologies VOCAL 1x0 ATA

December 10, 2004

Vocal Technologies VOCAL 1x0

This release came out Nov 30th, but thought it was still worth sharing since ATAs have become quite popular. ATAs, or Analog Telephony Adaptors are used to translate analog signals into digital signals that are then transmitted over IP. In fact, ATAs have become quite popular in the tech community, with rabid fans supporting one particular ATA over another ATA that I've seen some heated debates in the VoIP Forums as to which is the best ATA.

Here's the release:
VOCAL Technologies’ New 1x0 Offers Industry’s Lowest-Cost, Low-Power ATA Solution for VoIP Market

Leverages State-of-the-Art Technology for Reduced Design Overhead

BUFFALO, N.Y.——VOCAL Technologies, Ltd., today announced the VOCAL 1x0, the market’s lowest-cost configurable low-power analog telephone adapter (ATA) and reference design platform for VoIP applications.

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