VoIP

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

U.S. Soldiers in Iraq using VoIP to call home

August 19, 2004

Whether you are in the Bush or Kerry camp, and as divisive this election year has become, I think we can all agree that we should support our troops.

I was surfing the web and came across a company, Freedom Calls Foundation, that is offering free VoIP and video services to our troops abroad so they can call home for free. When you haven't seen your loved ones for months at a time, having not just voice capabilities, but also video to "see and virtually feel" your loved ones from afar is a real morale booster for our troops. I'm sure seeing live video has a very powerful impact on the miiltary families.

Posted in VoIP

MCI deploys Ericsson's VoIP Engine solution

August 18, 2004

Ericsson and MCI Inc. today announced an agreement to deploy Ericsson's Engine solution to migrate MCI's US-based international gateway traffic from traditional circuit switching to carrier-class Voice over IP (VoIP).

Building on its domestic VoIP migration plans, announced in June 2003, MCI has become one of the first U.S.-based service providers to provision the transition of its international voice service to its core IP backbone. Already well into the deployment of Ericsson's latest generation voice switching platform into the network, MCI
expects to begin transitioning traffic by mid 2005.

The reasons for the migration to an all IP backbone are simple:
1) It enables MCI to flexibly and cost-effectively converge international voice services onto its IP backbone to optimize the network.
2) It increases efficiency and realizes operational savings while providing more value and feature offerings (such as "follow me") to customers.
3) By having a 100% IP core, MCI can become a "true" international phone company offering phone service throughout the world.

Posted in VoIP

Kagoor Delivers Session Border Control Solution For Voice over Broadband

August 17, 2004

Remember Aravox Technologies? Well I do. They were one of the first companies to offer a session border control (SBC) that solves the issue of NAT traversal over VoIP without compromising security. Basically a SBC device, is an edge device that opens and maintains a secure hole through a firewall for real-time traffic, such as voice over IP or video.

Posted in VoIP

VoIP via power lines

August 17, 2004

First came voice over copper and for a over one hundred years voice was carried over copper. Then came wireless which allowed car phones and cell phones to flourish. Next, came the Internet and we had Voice over the Internet aka Voice over IP (VoIP) over dial-up (ex: VocalTec's Internet Phone, Microsoft Netmeeting). Next came broadband and much improved VoIP offerings from Vonage and other players using ATA devices such as the Cisco ATA-186 and now Sipura.

Posted in VoIP

Pingtel drops hardware and goes all open source

August 17, 2004

It was only a matter of time before Pingtel switched to a completely 100% software company. (See: Pingtel Completes Strategic Transition with Sale of Its Award-Winning xpressa Desktop Phone Product Line)

First, let me state that I've always loved Pingtel's VoIP phones which include a very cool LCD display with the ability to run Java applets. In fact, their vision was that users could access the phonebook on the LCD display, lookup a local pizzeria, and even be "pushed" a coupon for a discount or special.

But the high pricetag on the Pingtel phones as well as competition from Cisco and other VoIP phones that also often had LCD displays took some of the competitive advantage away from Pingtel.

Posted in Reviews, VoIP

AT&T CallVantage VoIP calls blocked

August 12, 2004

Some VoIP calls being blocked | CNET News.com

Cnet.com has reported that some users are having issue receiving inbound calls. This has once again raised the issue of whether or not cable broadband companies are blocking VoIP calls.

I discussed the potential for network service providers to block VoIP traffic in my Vonage Outage Part 2 blog entry. Damn hypercompetive bastards!

Posted in VoIP

VoIP2Save.com "We have Number Portability - Our Competitors Do Not!"

August 10, 2004

VoIP2Save.com "We have Number Portability - Our Competitors Do Not!"
Na na na na!

Well they weren't actually quoted saying it like that, but pretty damn close! : )

I just saw this release hit the wire:
PRESS RELEASE: Broadband Internet Phone Company, VoIP2Save.com Announces Full Phone Number Portability

The release claims that Vonage, Packet8, Voice Glo, Lingo and I-Connect do not allow customers to keep their phone number the company assigned to them, if the customer decided to switch to another phone company. I know I have heard complaints from users when they tried porting their phone number when switching from one broadband VoIP service provider to another.

Posted in VoIP

Snom's new 220 VoIP phone

August 10, 2004

I am a fan of the Snom VoIP phones, TMC Labs reviewed a couple Snom phones recently and were pretty impressed. (Snom 100 and 200 product review)

so I thought I would share their press release announcing their new 220 phone which features a 128 X 64 pixel graphical backlit display:

Berlin, 2004-08-10: snom technology, situated in Berlin, is expanding its VoIP phones business line with the new IP phone snom 220, which has been specially developed for the small and medium-sized enterprise segment. This high-end affordable device addresses the communication needs of power users such as executive and administrative staff who require very high standards from communication systems.

Convenience is guaranteed by the 128 x 64 pixel graphical backlit display.

Posted in VoIP

AT&T the Sleeping Giant Awakens to blitzkrieg the VoIP market

August 10, 2004

So every industry pundit is claiming that AT&T has surrendered to the Baby Bells, but I know better.

Here are some headlines:
AT&T surrenders fight for home telephone services
AT&T Gives Up on Consumer Market
AT&T rings in a new business strategy

"AT&T last month said that it would stop promoting its local and long-distance services to consumers, marking the end of an era for the company that once served virtually every U.S. home. AT&T plans to focus exclusively on big business customers, which account for 75% of overall revenue.

Posted in VoIP

Nortel buys 5 percent of Global IP Sound

August 9, 2004

In the February 2003 issue of Internet Telephony Magazine, I wrote about Global IP Sound's excellent GIPS VoiceEngine codec, which can be integrated into VoIP applications. GIPS VoiceEngine is a software package that handles all the voice components and includes an adaptive jitter buffer (GIPS NetEQ), acoustic echo control, packet loss concealer, and any standard codec can be plugged in, including G.711, Enhanced G.711, and iPCM.

Their codec is designed to handle heavy latency and heavy packet loss. In fact, I tested their codec using Shunra's Cloud 4.0 to induce 25% and 50% packet loss to see how their codec would handle it and it performed remarkably well.

Posted in VoIP

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