Recently in Packet8 Category

In the ITEXPO Press Room I just met with Cliff Rees, President & CEO of XCast Labs. They have some interesting VoIP technology, including a patent called  "direct RTP" which reduces VoIP bandwidth requirements in half.

The example Cliff gave was a VoIP call from Los Angeles to San Francisco using Net2Phone based out of New Jersey. When the Los Angeles user calls the San Francisco user, it initiates a 90Kbps IP call cross-country to Net2Phone's headquarters in New Jersey. Net2Phone then routes the call cross-country back to a termination gateway which connects to the San Francisco user. This too uses 90Kbps of bandwidth for a total of 180Kbps for the RTP media. The Net2Phone server in New Jersey has to allocate and hold 180Kbps of bandwidth for each call. Additionally, the call has to cross the country twice which adds more jitter and latency.

XCast Labs on the other hand uses their patented "direct RTP" which is able to tunnel through both user's firewalls and setup a direct peer-to-peer (P2P) RTP session between the two users. Once the call is setup, the two users are able to send the RTP media directly to each other. Since both callers are in California, they are just a few hops/routers away from each other thus dramatically reducing latency and jitter. XCast Labs simply maintains a small signaling connection to determine when the call ends for billing purposes.

When Cliff from XCast Labs explained to this me, I was dumbfounded that no one else had thought of this. It seemed so obvious that a direct RTP session would result in less bandwidth requirements, better latency, and better voice quality. Their technology sounded eerily similar to Skype's ability to penetrate firewalls and initiate high quality peer-to-peer calls so I made the analogy with Skype and Cliff agreed they are very similar. Though in the case of XCast Labs they use standard SIP while Skype uses proprietary technology. Further, XCast Labs offers both a consumer (residential) and a hosted business offering with advanced functionality such as call parking, call transfer, etc. They also support video calls and video mail. They support both Polycom video phones as well as Grandstream, including the new GVX3140 H.264 video phone seen here:


XCast Labs developed everything in-house, including their own SIP stack and softswitch so they are not paying Sonus Networks, Acme Packet, Broadsoft, etc. any sort of licensing fees. They told me this helps them be extremely competitive when compared to other VoIP providers. They offer their own residential VoIP service but they also sell to the cable MSOs who white label it for their Triple Play packages. Lastly, XCast Labs said they support HD Voice using G.722 so if you have a G.722 end device you have have HD audio.

Today, sipgate is launching a new free VoIP broadband phone service called sipgate one. sipgate one is similar to Vonage, Packet8, and other broadband VoIP providers, but with some additional cool features and a fairly unique pricing plan. For instance, you get a free telephone number, no set-up costs and no monthly charges or minimums.

I spoke with sipgate CEO Thilo Salmon to find out more about sipgate one. First, unlike many VoIP broadband providers, sipgate one isn't tied to any specific SIP hardware (locked ATAs, SIP phones, softphones, etc.), so you can use it with your favorite SIP device or use a SIP-based ATA and connect your favorite analog cordless phone. Want to use a softphone but don't want to mess with SIP credentials? No problem - sipgate one has a free softphone app that will autoprovision for you. Those that want to use their favorite SIP device will be pleased to see a helpful drop-down list of many popular SIP devices with corresponding screenshots on how to configure the device to work with sipgate one.

What does it cost?
When using a VoIP phone, outbound calls to other sipgate users are completely free, just like Skype. However, inbound calls on the free U.S. phone number are also free, unlike Skype which I know charges a monthly or yearly SkypeIn subscription. I was a bit surprised sipgate was offering the first phone number for free, so I contacted Thilo a second time to confirm. He responded, "The first U.S. number is indeed completely free. So we are inviting everyone to sign up for a free number and as long as one only uses sipgate to receive calls on a SIP phone the service is free in its entirety. We do not even ask for a credit card. That does set us apart from Skype. While they do not charge per incoming minute, Skype charges a yearly (monthly?) fee as you have pointed out."

When dialing other phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada are just 1.9¢ per minute and calls to toll-free numbers are free. Other rates apply when calling other countries. Thus, sipgate only charges for outgoing calls and E911 ($1.90 monthly), if activated. No other charges or fees are leveraged on a sipgate one subscriber. Thus, to get started you can initially charge your account with a minimum of $10 with automatic crediting if the balance falls below a user-specified amount ($5, $10, $20, $50). Thilo told me that they aim to keep their international rates lower than Skype's to make them a very compelling option to potential customers. I then asked Thilo who was comparable feature-wise and he responded, "Google Voice. They don't allow you to connect a SIP phone, but the features are very similar."

The true power behind sipgate is its Web-based interface which gives you full access to your voicemail messages, recordings, and faxes. I tested a preview version of sipgate one and was pretty impressed with the features and ease of use. My experiences in my mini-review of sipgate follow below...


Thilo told me that they designed the Web-based interface with Google's Gmail in mind. For instance, you can search, star/unstar a recording, as well as label recordings, which are very similar to Gmail. Additionally, the interface allows users to call someone back with a single click, as well as divert calls to other landline or mobile phones. Starting a call is as simple as clicking the New Call button and then choosing which phone device you wish to use. Below you'll see I have 3 options for a new call - an arbitary connection (specify any phone number ad hoc), phone of Tom Keating, and Mobile or Landline of Tom Keating.


As seen by the screenshot above, you can bridge a call to any of your phone devices by initiating a call via the web. This is very similar to Jajah, who made the web-based calling method famous. This interface can be used on your web-enabled smartphone - Windows Mobile, Apple iPhone, etc. if the device doesn't have an embedded SIP stack or 3rd party SIP softphone installed for making outbound calls.

Mobility features are just as powerful. You can have your home, office and mobile phone ring in parallel. If you are using a mobile phone with a SIP stack, (many Nokia series have SIP) you can be in the car, receive a VoIP call, and then simply press *6 on your mobile phone to record the call. When you next gain access to a web browser you can retrieve the call recording. This is perfect for sales people on the go and who need to enter important call details into a CRM system.

Other features included the ability to customize your outgoing message by uploading an mp3 file, divert calls to another number, create an ad-hoc conference with the touch of a button, and the ability to view missed calls with CallerID info. I asked Thilo what they use on the back-end and he told me they use a fork of SIP Express Router, which enables Class 5 type features. Additionally, Thilo stated there is no maximum storage limit for voicemail and faxes.

Outbound faxing is a breeze. You can click some fields on the web interface and add the fax number, from/to info, add a signature, and of course body text. You can also attach a PDF and it will render it. I asked Thilo about Word support and he said that was in the works.



Inbound faxing does require a separate phone number, but there is no fee to receive faxes. There is a nominal $2.90 one-time fee per additional phone number. I asked Thilo about CNG autodetection of fax tones using just a single universal phone number, but he said "We have found that most people don't really like that." Personally, I'd rather just have one phone number on my business card, but it's a minor complaint.

"There is simply no barrier to people disconnecting their old phone lines anymore. Phone and cable companies have long been pushing voice plans in the region of $25 to $40 per month--which end up being as much as $60 or more with extra charges--and that's just ridiculous," said Thilo Salmon, CEO of sipgate. "Even with calls to other landlines and mobile phones, most users will spend less than $5 a month using sipgate one. And for those people only receiving incoming calls on their VoIP phone, the service is completely free."

sipgate is also readying a multi-user edition of the service aimed at small businesses, which will not only replace landlines, but also customer premise phone systems. sipgate is certainly setting a new low-price benchmark with bundled powerful features that should cause VoIP fans to seriously consider them. Free phone number, free toll-free calling, free inbound calling, free inbound faxes, what's not to love?

A source tipped me off to a Packet8 VoIP service outage last night & today caused by a DNS issue. I contacted 8x8/Packet8 and Joan Citelli, Director, Corporate Communications for 8x8, Inc. to find out what caused the VoIP outage. Joan told me the following:

"We are providing all subscribers who experienced this issue with the following explanation and resolution procedure via email and customer support calls. Let me know if you have any further questions."

At 7 pm last night (January 22, 2008) Register.com changed the DNS for www.packet8.net and www.packet8.com by omitting the DNS and substituting a landing page in its place.  The net result was call failure and inability to find Packet8 website. Our telephones and DTA's have several hard coded fail-over processes built into them.  However, due to the landing page put up by Register.com, the end points were given a false signal of success and did not fail over to the backup IP addresses built into each device.

Within minutes Packet8 engineers saw the issue, contacted Register.com and got the issue resolved with proper routing instructions broadcast to all DNS servers on the Internet.

Most Internet Service Providers updated to the correct DNS routing instantly.  However, we have reports that ATT, ATT-Mobile and Time Warner Roadrunner on the East coast have not updated DNS servers with the correct information.
If you are having issues with the Packet8 service or reaching our self-service portal, please provide the solutions below to renew the DNS information in your modem, router, and computers.

If the solutions do not work, your ISP may be providing the outdate DNS information.  Please call Packet8 support with the following information and we will contact your ISP regarding the issue.

Call Packet8 Support at 1-888-898-8733 or, if outside the US, call 1-408-687-4120
Solutions
1.  Point the DNS server settings of your Packet8 endpoints and telephones to 63.209.12.18 or set your router's DNS settings to Open DNS with 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.
2.  Edit your hosts file to force www.packet8.net to 63.209.12.100
3.  Provide a network power cycle with step by step instructions shown below
Network Power Cycle
Power cycling the entire network refreshes and re-syncs all network devices with the most current network information broadcast from the ISP.
1.       Unplug power from the back of all network devices (modem, router, & Packet8 device) & shutdown any computers.  Then wait one minute.
2.       Plug the power cord back into the modem and wait one minute to let the modem synchronize with the ISP. (Check for ONLINE/Internet light)
3.       Plug the power cord back into the Router and wait one minute.
4.       Plug the power cord back into the Packet8 device and wait 30 seconds
5.       Check the Packet8 phone for a dial tone.  Also, the PHONE LED on the Packet8 device should come light up when the receiver is picked up or turned on.
6.       Check lights: solid POWER LED & an occasionally flickering LINK LED
If no dial tone, turn on a computer and make sure the customer can browse the internet.
Clear computer of old DNS information:  Start -- Run -- cmd  --  ipconfig /flushdns

Goes to show you that DNS is critical to VoIP availability. Register.com is a popular site, I'm surprised they made such a big mistake. I would think Packet8 would have to request a DNS change before Register.com would do it on their own. Actually from the explanation, it sounds like Packet8 did request a DNS change, but Register.com just pointed it to the wrong location (a Register.com landing page).

Toktumi recently announced a partnership with Dell to distribute its small business VoIP service through a co-branded site on Dell.com (www.dell.com/voip), which also features Fonality, Nortel, and Bandwidth.com. So what's so special about Toktumi, (a word play on 'talk to me') and it's USB-based plug-in device? Well, Toktumi is very similar to the popular Magicjack, which also uses a USB connector for connecting an analog phone. However, Magicjack is only $19.99/year (first year is $39.95) for unlimited U.S. calling while Toktumi is $179.40/year ($14.95/month) for unlimited dialing inside the U.S. and Canada. So what does this extra cost get you?

Keynote Systems released their latest VoIP quality report with some interesting findings. For one, Comcast, a cable company dominated the voice quality rankings beating the closest competitor by nearly 300 points. As for reliability, to no surprise AT&T won this category, no doubt to their decades of experience in building reliable voice and data networks.

Keynote Systems measures VoIP quality (MOS scores), call completion, etc. by automatically placing calls from corporate apartments using residential VoIP services and network services just like a typical residential customer would.  Service Reliability scores are based on the key performance metrics of Service Availability, Average Answer Time and Number of Dropped Calls. Additionally,  Audio Quality is an aggregate of Audio Clarity and Audio Delay (latency, jitter) performance factors. The study compares the relative performance of PSTN (regular analog) service, Broadband VoIP providers (e.g. Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, EarthLink trueVoice, AT&T CallVantage etc), and cable voice services (e.g. Time Warner Digital Phone, Comcast Digital Voice). Test calls were placed from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

Keynote ranked VoIP Service Providers in two categories: Reliability and Audio Quality. The Service Availability, Call Completion, Average Answer Time, and Dropped Audio performance factors all contribute to the Reliability ranking.

In the summary report they only list the top 3 VoIP provider names and then have Provider D - I as anonymous. You have to purchase the full report to see the names. I'm guessing Packet8 and Vonage are somewhere in this anonymous list.

Provider                   Reliability Points    Rank 
AT&T Landline                    996                1
Time Warner Digital Phone        925                2
Verizon VoiceWing                872                3
Provider D                       859                4
Provider E                       793                5
Provider F                       687                6
Provider G                       643                7
Provider H                       408                8
Provider I                       374                9

Audio Quality
Provider                   Reliability Points     Rank 
Comcast Digital Voice            901                1
Verizon VoiceWing                609                2
AT&T Landline                    506                3
Provider D                       500                4
Provider E                       487                5
Provider F                       480                6
Provider G                       462                7
Provider H                       252                8
Provider I                       0                  9

General Observations
• The best providers always deliver dial tine and connect the call to the number dialed in a timely fashion.
• Only one of the providers in the study failed to provide dial tone 99.9% of the time or better.
• All providers had very small percentages of calls with dropped audio, but only two providers had zero calls with dropped audio.
• One VoIP provider required two seconds more than any other voice provider to connect calls after dialing.
• Most providers had slightly more audio delay and slightly lower MOS in Wave 6 as compared to Wave 5.
• Eight of the nine providers in the study had a better call completion rate in Wave 6 than was evidenced in the Wave 5 results.

What's amazing is that Comcast has been adding a ton of new VoIP customers each quarter. In fact, Comcast has become the nation's fourth largest phone company. The cable company has signed up four million VoIP customers in just the last two years. Relatedly, Forrester Research analysts have projected that Cable VoIP providers will claim up to 80% of the 28.4 million residential VoIP users by 2013. This forecast includes an expected growth from the approximately 19 million installed lines in 2008.

Check out the summary report.

Vonage today announced an agreement for a $220.3 million financing which is seen by many experts as crucial to its survival. Silver Point Finance LLC, which already holds a $216 million financing stake in Vonage, will lead the financial deal, which consists of $130.3 million in senior secured first-lien credit, $72.0 million in senior secured second-lien credit and the sale of $18.0 million of convertible secured third-lien notes. The proceeds will be used to help refinance $253 million of debt.

Analysts and bloggers such as the VoIPPrincess, have pointed out that the recent financial crisis and credit crunch made Vonage's refinancing efforts very difficult. I too have had my doubts whether Vonage could secure more financing in this tight credit crunch market.

"We are pleased to reach definitive agreement on this refinancing at a time of unprecedented volatility in the credit markets," said John Rego, Vonage's chief financial officer. "This agreement provides clarity to our partners and suppliers regarding the Company's liquidity position in these challenging financial times," he said.

Even with the financial deal, Vonage still faces tough challenges ahead. It still has to replace 1/3 of its customer base due to churn and faces tough competition from Cablecos and phone companies that offer bundled & discounted triple play packages. Vonage started many years ago at $39.99/month (unlimited plan) if I recall and today's unlimited plan has dropped to just $24.99/month. As voice minutes continues its spiral towards $0, it becomes increasingly harder for single play players like Vonage to be profitable.

That said, 8x8 is a single-play VoIP company, which offers Packet8 residential and business VoIP services and they continue to grow. 8x8 doesn't get nearly the media attention that Vonage does, yet continues to perform well. Part of their success is that 8x8 has targeted businesses with their Virtual Office, Virtual Trunking, and Packet8 Hosted Key system offerings.

According to the VoIPPrincess, "In the last five years, 8x8 revenues grew 460.3 percent while Vonage's grew 0.0 percent. 8x8 made $700,000 during the first quarter of this year. Vonage lost $8.9 million and is shopping for a $215 million refinancing deal to stay out of bankruptcy. 8x8 holds 73 patents. Vonage just got its first."

I've talked to 8x8 over the past several years and when I remarked how much Vonage was spending on advertising and customer acquisition, 8x8 told me several times they did not intend to try and match Vonage's huge marketing campaigns. I recall commenting to 8x8,  "I'm reminded of the turtle vs. the hare. Slow and steady wins the race, right?" 8x8 agreed with the analogy. While Vonage just got an injection of cash/adrenaline to keep the hare running, one has to wonder if and when the hare will crash and burn. If it does, I don't think that spells the death knell for single-play VoIP providers just yet. It does however signal the end of high-flying, high-spending, VoIP (woo hoo) TV commercials on every other minute, which is good news for me, since I'm sick & tired of fast forwarding my DVR past those annoying woo hoo commercials. Lastly, I think 8x8 might just be in prime position to pick up many Vonage customers should Vonage fail.

Some great news from TMC about our IP communications conference & expositions (ITEXPO) taking place this week that I thought I'd share. The show is still going on, with today being the last day. Yesterday's exhibit hall attendance was tremendous as seen by some photos I snapped and posted yesterday. I had some great meetings or saw many important VoIP companies, including Asterisk/Digium, CosmoCom, Fonality, Microsoft, Packet8, PIKA, Skype, and more. Many companies announced news or launched new products at ITEXPO, which is now the #1 IP communications show in the U.S. Further, in talking to two vendors I learned some interesting news coming out next week at Astricon, that I can't divulge yet, but stay tuned.

In the meantime, check out this news release put out by TMC

ITEXPO West 2008 to Generate over $1 Million for Los Angeles; Brings Next Generation Technology to the City of Angels

Leading Communications Event Attracts Largest, Most Diverse Audience of any Conference in the Internet Communications Technology Industry

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that ITEXPO West 2008 taking place September 16-18, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, expects more than 7,000 attendees from around the world. Year after year, ITEXPO West plays a prominent role in supporting Los Angeles, with estimates of a more than $1 million influx surging into the local economy in less than three days.

ITEXPO West 2008 is the world's largest and most significant communications technology event, featuring more than 150 companies exhibiting on the EXPO floor, and hundreds of sessions led by the industry's most prominent thought leaders. Attendees are afforded unprecedented access to a diverse population of both global and local companies; in addition to executive keynote speeches from household names like Skype, Microsoft, Avaya and Texas Instruments, local companies, such as AireSpring, Fonality, Grandstream, TW Telecom, will use this conference as platform to make announcements and showcase their groundbreaking voice and video offerings.

What is also important to note, is that contrary to other declining economic sectors, IP communications and VoIP salaries had a noteworthy rise in the second quarter. OnForce, Inc., is an online jobs mart where employers and workers meet on the Internet and agree on an hourly rate. A recent report from the company showed growth in VoIP rates have increased from 1.5 to 1.95 between Q1 and Q2; VoIP jobs are now paying twice the average of all IT jobs.
"Over the past several years, we have welcomed many people from around the world who flock to the Los Angeles Convention Center each Fall to attend the Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO," commented Pouria Abbassi, P.E., CEO & General Manager of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

"Communications technology is important in every type and facet of business operations across the board, especially in Convention Center business. Knowing the communications technology of today will help anticipate and address our business issues of tomorrow. We are honored to host the ITEXPO 2008 at our World Class Los Angeles Convention Center," added Abbassi.
The show helps attendees identify the issues and challenges affecting the deployment of IP-based communications technologies. It provides a comprehensive forum for evaluating the latest products and services, and delivers a face-to-face networking opportunity that service providers, carriers, resellers, distributors, equipment manufacturers, and IT executives from enterprise and SMB companies need to cultivate new business relationships.

"Converged applications that leverage VoIP and video-over-the Internet are diving our industry forward, and may very well be one of the few silver linings in an otherwise dismal economy," said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and ITEXPO West 2008 conference chairman. "Clearly, this technology is here to stay as over 16 million U.S. consumer VoIP lines were in service by the first quarter of 2008, according to new data released by TeleGeography, representing nearly 14 percent of all households and 27 percent of broadband households.
"It is a no-brainer for us to host this event in Los Angeles at the Convention Center, as this facility and this City are second to none."

The expo hours for ITEXPO West are: Wednesday, Sept 17th from 4:00 to 8:00 PM, and on Thursday Sept 18th from 11:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

Free expo passes are still available, and interested attendees should visit https://www.tmcnet.com/scripts/itexpo/ca08/itfall08reg.aspx?theplan=D for more information. In addition to educational content and new product information for today's latest communications technology, ITEXPO also features several vendor promotions -- including the Toyota Prius Hybrid Giveaway, which is free to participate, with no purchases necessary. For more information on this exciting promotion, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-08/w08-prizes.htm.

As I predicted on July 3rd, AT&T would soon be dropping its CallVantage broadband VoIP service since they dropped their affiliate marketing channel.

Well, today I learned that AT&T is no longer accepting ANY new orders from ANY source - affiliate or otherwise. The slow death of CallVantage is a bit sad, but it isn't particularly surprising, not only because they dropped the affiliate channel last month but as I have previously indicated, AT&T is heavily promoting their U-Verse fiber-to-copper hybrid service that combines IPTV, data, and U-Verse Voice (in select areas).

It seems a little early to cut the cord on acquiring new Callvantage customers since neither U-Verse or U-Verse Voice are available in most of the country - including my neighborhood where it was promised for this summer. I would think they would want to acquire these customers on CallVantage and then easily port them over to U-Verse when it becomes available in their area. It is much easier and less expensive to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one. But perhaps CallVantage was burning money and wasn't profitable? Unlikely since there isn't a lot of overhead in offering VoIP, especially since AT&T has a vast network they already pay for. My guess is that internal politics played a role more than profitability. It's too bad. Callvantage has some cool features that other broadband VoIP players didn't have. Could be good news for Vonage, Packet8 and the rest - one less single-play provider...

Check out the announcement made on their website:

Thank you for your interest in AT&T CallVantage® service. Currently we are not accepting new orders for AT&T CallVantage service. We will continue to evaluate our AT&T CallVantage service and remain committed to providing leading, next generation voice services for today's consumer and business customers. For information on other AT&T products and service please visit www.att.com

BREAKING!
A source is telling me that Level 3 Communications and Packet 8 are having a system-wide network outage for the last 30 minutes. Level 3 is a huge provider of VoIP termination and I believe Packet8 uses their network for termination. Other VoIP service providers (Vonage?) will also be affected if indeed Level 3 is having an outage. I'm trying to confirm this as I type this.

I'm currently on hold (5min so far) for Packet8's technical support and sent my contacts at 8x8 an email. I'll update this post when I find out more.

Update: Just talked with Packet8 technical support and indeed they are experiencing outages. They also confirmed they use Level 3, so it appears Level 3 is the cause. Contacting Level 3 next. Stay tuned!

Update: 1:13pm
This from my source of the outage who I asked to keep me aprised of when service was restored. The outage seemed to have occured from approximately 11am EDT to 12:15pm EDT (1hr 15min long). He makes a good point about some VoIP customers being medical offices, which are obviously greatly affected by any sort of extended outage.

Yes... I am an IT Management and Communications consultant - a few of my customers are Packet8 customers (mostly medical offices, which poses many potentially dangerous situations when phones go out).

OK - As of 12:15pm EST Level 3 has restored their servers and service has been restored.

PS - great blog, thanks for putting this out there... Looks like a few companies need a crash course on Crisis Communications Management and Planning - "keep you publics informed"... (feel free to blog that too.)

Update: 1:34pm
Just spoke with Packet8. The issue was due to a Packet8 database crash at Level3's data center. Level3's NOC itself did not experience an outage. Also, stuff was failed over and business customers experienced NO outage - only residential. I'll upload a recording of the call that explains everything in just a minute.

Here's a mp3 recording of my conversation with Packet8 representatives.

Highlights of the conversation:
Packet8 was able to failover their business customers immediately. They were not affected at all. They prioritize the failover of their business customers over their residential. The residential customers would failover after 15 minutes or if they rebooted their device.

Medical offices should not be affected if they use the business plan unless they use the softphone application or if they violate the ToS (terms of service) by going with the cheaper residential plan. (which shouldn't be used for business)

I missed the 8x8/Packet8 news on July 16th about its new hosted small office "key" system and plug-and-play IP phones. Joan Citelli, Director of Corporate Communications emailed me asking for a briefing, but apparently I never replied since her email was still marked as unread and nothing in my Sent Items. Email overload I guess. The news was about 8x8, working with handset maker Aastra Telecom to provide a key system to the SMB market,which is part of the new Packet8 675xi series.

I happened to come across Carolyn Schuk's article while surfing the web and came across her post about some 8x8 news that I missed. She writes, "8x8 is VoIP's Rodney Dangerfield. It just gets no respect." She has an excellent point and one which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Carolyn then lays out her case: "Consider how it stacks up against its far better-known pure-play VoIP competitor, Vonage: In the last five years, 8x8 revenues grew 460.3 percent while Vonage's grew 0.0 percent. 8x8 made $700,000 during the first quarter of this year. Vonage lost $8.9 million and is shopping for a $215 million refinancing deal to stay out of bankruptcy. 8x8 holds 73 patents. Vonage just got its first. Despite this, Vonage's stock price is $1.58 while 8x8's is $1.03."

She goes on to explain that the news coverage of the new Packet8 675xi series was sorely lacking, which sparked the Rodney Dangerfield comment. I'm guilty as charged, since I didn't cover the news. Though it wasn't for a lack of respect that I didn't cover the Packet8 news. Sometimes it's just impossible to cover all the daily VoIP news in addition to my testing of VoIP products, managing the MIS department as CTO, etc.

Well, better late than never. Today, I thought I'd give an overview of the new Packet8 675xi series, which is actually part of their Packet8 Hosted Key System Services. Perhaps most importantly, this offering supports "call appearances" commonly referred to as "shared line appearances" or SLA, which enables you to know when someone is using a line. It's a popular feature of key systems and one which is often difficult to reproduce on VoIP systems. Supporting SLA is often a key selling advantage when targeting the SMB which is used to call appearance functionality.

First off, the Packet8 675xi IP phone series consists of three models -- the 6753i entry level phone, 6755i intermediate phone and 6757i CT advanced phone. Essentially these are OEM'ed versions of the Aastra 53i, 55i, and 57i CT but with a special firmware load. Each model offers full duplex speakerphone functionality, programmable softkey appearances, LCD display screens, embedded XML browsers and up to nine call appearance lines. All models support Power over Ethernet and come equipped with dual auto-sensing switched Ethernet ports.

Here's pictures of all 3 models:




The Packet8 675xi series include intercom paging and direct dial from a searchable corporate directory. Prices for the Packet8 675xi series range from $129.99 for the 6753i to $349.99 for the high end 6757i CT model which includes a DECT cordless phone as part of the bundled offer. The 6757i CT model's built in DECT antenna allows the user to roam up to a 300 foot radius from the 6757i CT base telephone. The Packet8 675xi IP phones also feature corporate directory display and lookup, intercom paging, and shared line appearance.

The Packet8 675xi series of IP phones incorporates 8x8's advanced NAT traversal technologies. This allows users to simply plug the phone into any Internet connection and immediately make or receive calls without performing any network or firewall configuration.

The high-end Packet8 6757i CT includes an integrated cordless handset with coverage up to 300,000 sq ft. It has a large 144 x 128 pixel graphical backlit LCD display and 6 dynamic context-sensitive softkeys, and with its large screen it can take full advantage of XML based programs.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Packet8 675xi series use SIP trunking to Packet8's network infrastructure. All of the telephony functions such as transfer, conferencing, voicemail, etc. reside on the Packet8 network. Thus, you don't need any costly IP-PBX hardware at the customer premise - you just need IP phones. This can be a huge cost savings for SMBs looking for an inexpensive VoIP solution, especially as the costs and margins for IP-PBXs continue to shrink with growing price pressure from more competition and open source solutions like Digium's Asterisk.

Packet8/8x8 certainly has earned my admiration with some great products and services, a cool videophone, and more VoIP patents than you can shake a stick at! My 'respect' has been duly given.