SIP

Apple iPad - Your Next Desktop Phone?

September 22, 2011

I've been thinking about how the Apple iPad could really disrupt the VoIP space and become your next desktop phone. Think about the impact to companies such as Cisco, Polycom, Aastra, snom, Grandstream, and others. While these companies do offer low-end IP desktop phones, they have higher margins on the high-end large color screen IP phones that sport advanced features like RSS feeds (weather, news), collaboration, and video conferencing.

Take for instance the Aastra BluStar media phone, which sports a 13" touch screen that achieves true HD 720p video conferencing at a rate of 30 fps or the Polycom VVX 1500, which sports a a 7" color touch-screen and 2MP camera. Both IP phones are over $650, while the latest iPad 2 can be had for $450 (16GB model).

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, ITEXPO, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds, SIP, Skype, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP, Wireless

Daily Skype Stats in An Infographic

September 6, 2011

Would you like to see just how successful Skype is? Well, look no further than this infographic put out by Skype to celebrate their 8th birthday last week:

It's indeed impressive. Skype's Big Blog writes, "700 million minutes of free Skype-to-Skype calls each day. To put it in perspective, 700 million is the equivalent of going around the earth 28,000 times in one day, if each minute represents a mile.

Posted in SIP, Skype, TMCnet, VoIP

PowerView Offers Powerful Microsoft Lync Reporting

September 2, 2011

Unify2 PowerView is a reporting and billing solution for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2. It comes with pre-canned reports including a report to track ROI so you see exactly how Lync's unified communications feature-set is saving your business money.

PowerView 3.0 aggregates data collected from Call Detail Records, Active Directory, carrier billing rate tables and other data sources. According to Unify2, "PowerView effectively complements the raw transactional data contained in the Lync CDR databases and provides a rich view of the data that's correlated with the enterprise's organizational and geographical topologies, enabling enterprises to leverage a comprehensive set of PowerView reports or easily develop custom views of business data related to Lync."

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Vlync Pilot - Hosted Microsoft Lync Launches

August 31, 2011

VCOMM, a subsidiary of internet telephony provider Coms Plc, a UK-based company, has launched Vlync Pilot, a hosted version of Microsoft’s Lync. Vlync Pilot is a fully managed and hosted Microsoft Lync service that comes bundled with 5 user licences and 5 Polycom handsets (per bundle) enabing businesseses to pilot Microsoft Lync.

Vlync Pilot brings full unified communications functions to the desktop in a hosted setup. Another similar offering is from Workflow Communications who told me back in February to be the only hosted Lync provider offering direct SIP trunking. Features in this hosted offering include: Instant Message conferencing, peer-to-peer voice and video, AV and web conferencing, Federation, desktop sharing, Exchange UM, Outlook Web App, Enterprise Voice and integration into Microsoft Office applications.

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

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

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

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

Twilio, the Cloud-based VoIP/Skype App Enabler

July 26, 2011

Today, Twillio is launching their cloud-based VoIP offering that enables developers to add VoIP capabilities to any website with just three lines of code. Twilio's VoIP developer toolkit called “Twilio Client” enables realtime two-ray audio to voice-enable browsers, iOS, and Android Apps. Twilio's product uses the Flash plugin to access the microphone. But since Apple's iOS doesn't support Flash I'm told for mobile they are integrating with iOS and Android through custom mobile SDKs. The mobile SDKs will allow the Android and iPhone mobile platforms to offer Twilio-powered VoIP to their applications.

Twillio explained that "with Twilio Client, web developers worldwide can now build Skype-like voice capabilities with Twilio’s scalable, reliable communications infrastructure-as-a-service. With just a few lines of code, web and mobile applications can host voice conversations, conference calls, and other forms of rich communication." Essentially, you can think of Twilio as a hosted Skype service that lets anyone into the VoIP game.

Posted in Android, Apple, Google, Mobile Phones, SIP, Skype, TMCnet, VoIP, Wireless

Kerio Technologies Launches New Asterisk-based IP-PBX

July 19, 2011

Kerio Technologies, a company established in 1997, is launching a new Asterisk-based PBX today. They are announcing Kerio Operator 1.1, an IP-PBX that is designed to be easy-to-use and targeting the SMB space. Kerio Technologies has 180 employees and is best known as a Microsoft Exchange Server alternative. I spoke with Kerio Technologies last week to find out more about this Asterisk-based offering.

They explained that Kerio Operator 1.1 features integrated security, including protection against SIP password guessing and can block IP addresses that fail SIP authentication automatically based on criteria you specify.

Posted in Asterisk, Polycom, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

magicJack Plus Review

June 30, 2011

The magicJack Plus is due out very soon, perhaps as early as next month, but I was able to get an early sneak peek at it for a review. The big new feature in the MagicJack Plus is that it sports an on-board ARM CPU, which means you can make calls without the need for the MagicJack Plus to be connected to a PC. It looks almost identical to the original magicJack USB stick, but it now has an Ethernet jack for connecting to any broadband connection, enabling PC-less VoIP calling.

Posted in Android, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, News, Reviews, SIP, TMCnet, VoIP

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