VoIP

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

SBC VoIP Tariff Scare

November 18, 2004

According to several sources, SBC plans to file a new tariff with the Federal Communications Commission that aims to increase the fees paid by Internet service providers for calls completed on the company's local-phone network. In other words, if you use VoIP and terminate on SBC's PSTN network you're going to pay up. If the interpretation of this tariff filing is correct, this would mark the first time that a RBOC or phone company has tried to levy a fee on VoIP providers. It's not "exactly" a correct interpretation, but I'll get into that in a minute.

Posted in VoIP

Streaming Live TV

November 17, 2004

Streaming Live TV has been a dream of mine. I'd love to have access to streaming TV from anywhere - wouldn't you? Well, last week I redeemed 170,000 Sony points to get a Sony VAIO RA920G PC running Microsoft's Media Center Edition 2005 operating system. I was curious if I could figure out a way to "stream" my home PC's multimedia content, including My Videos (.AVI, .Divx, etc), as well as stream live TV to my PC at work by accessing the TV tuner capture card.

Posted in Reviews, VoIP

Liz Claiborne and VoIP

November 16, 2004

Hockey Stick Growth Curve

According to this press release: Liz Claiborne Inc. Receives Cisco's 4 Millionth IP Telephone, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO - News) today announced the sale of its 4 millionth Cisco Internet Protocol (IP) telephone to fashion apparel and accessories icon Liz Claiborne Inc., a milestone that demonstrates Cisco's continuing acceleration in the enterprise voice market. "It took us 4-and-a-half years to sell our first 2 million IP phones and only 14 months to climb from 2 million to 4 million phones sold to customers," said Barry O’Sullivan, vice president and general manager for Cisco's IP Communications Business Unit. "The 4 million milestone that we achieved in October this year, confirms our leadership in the enterprise voice market and demonstrates the rapid market acceleration we are driving in this space. It also points to growing customer adoption of our IP Communications system."

More proof of the "hockey stick" exponential growth curve of VoIP. VoIP got off to a slow start slow, but that curve is hooking straight up now!

Posted in VoIP

Nuvio FCC Filing Advocates CALEA Guidelines For VoIP Providers

November 15, 2004

A couple of weeks ago Nuvio urged the FCC to keep broadband providers from tampering with third-party VoIP phone service providers riding on their broadband pipes. Specifically, Nuvio Corp., a private-label VoIP provider, wants the FCC to prohibit cable providers/MSOs, Baby Bells and other broadband providers from blocking access to other VoIP services or surreptitiously degrading the service level. Best analogy I can give - imagine you are using Comcast high-speed Internet and using Vonage for your VoIP provider. Since Comcast offers their own competing VoIP offering, they could in theory "slow down" or "block" IP traffic coming from or destined for Vonage's servers that have "known" IP addresses.

Posted in VoIP

Popular Telephony enters Japanese Market

November 15, 2004

Two things...
1) You know that lame excuse/expression, "The dog ate my homework"? Well, for me that excuse has come true. While I don't have "homework" to do, my foster dog ate my glasses making reading and typing quite a challenge this Monday morning. My wireframe glasses are so mangled they resemble a piece of impressionist artwork.

Posted in VoIP

Bandwith Shaping

November 15, 2004

Prioritizing VoIP traffic and performing bandwidth shaping is key to a successful VoIP deployment, so I thought sharing this bit of news about a bandwidth-shaping product might be useful...

APconnections Adds Support for Priority Voice Over IP Traffic to Its Entire Family of NetEqualizer Bandwidth Shaping Products

Plug-and-Play Solution Now Offers Support for Data and VoIP Traffic in One Product; Adds Additional Models to Product Family

LAFAYETTE, Colo., Nov. 15, 2004 -- APconnections, a supplier of plug-and-play bandwidth shaping products, announced today that it has added support for priority voice and video traffic to its entire NetEqualizer product family. In addition, the company has added additional models to its product family. Now, businesses ranging from Internet cafes and corporations to service providers and telcos will be able to take advantage of NetEqualizer's built-in traffic shaping controls to cost-effectively and automatically provide priority for voice and video traffic and relieve congestion for data traffic with one easy-to-install and manage appliance.

Posted in VoIP

Mitel 3300 IP-PBX

November 11, 2004

Mitel is releasing a the newest version of it's flagship product - the Mitel 3300 IP-PBX "Release 5." There are significant upgrades over Release 4, which became available in 2003, including:

1. 3300 can now support up to 60,000 users (up from 30,000 users) and network up to 250 sites;

2. The new 3300 can for the first time support SIP and MiNet (our proprietary protocol);

3. There are built in Enterprise Management tools (efficiency management, graphical topology views, inventory, network health);

Posted in VoIP

Andy likes AT&T CallVantage over Vonage

November 10, 2004

Posted in VoIP

VoIP spurs growth for Cablevision

November 10, 2004

Skibare pointed out this Wall Street Journal article: WSJ.com - Cablevision's Loss Narrows With Strength in Advertising

I used to have CableVision when I lived in Norwalk and was pretty pleased with their service - they were one of the first cable companies in the Northeast to offer cable broadband. Competing satellite providers and other "ventures" have hurt CableVision over the past few years, but they seem to be getting some legs under them with the help of voice over Internet services.

According to the article, Cablevision's Internet phone service got 74,142 new sign-ups. Wow, that's nearly 75,000 VoIP customers.

Posted in VoIP

FCC Exempts VoIP from state rules

November 9, 2004

The Federal Communications Commission voted today to exempt Internet-based phone companies (Internet Telephony or VoIP) from state regulation, making Voice over Internet to fall under federal jurisdiction - a major victory for the VoIP industry. With the FCC having jurisdiction over Internet-based phone comapnies this could certainly help keep the VoIP industry "red hot" and inspire others to enter the market as well or investment/capital money to flow into the VoIP industry..

The FCC decision is likely to anger some local state officials who say the FCC is usurping local authority. In addition they are concerned that they can not collect revenue from VoIP providers to subsidize high-cost rural phone service.

Posted in VoIP

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