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Tom Keating
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Apple Planned the iPad BEFORE the iPhone. Who knew?

February 10, 2012

Everyone assumes that Apple was working on the iPhone before the iPad. However, the recent lawsuit by Proview Electronics suing Apple over the name 'iPad' says others wise. The iPhone was launched in 2007 and the iPad in 2010. However, in 2006 Apple purchased the iPad trademark from display manufacturer Proview Electronics (Taiwan) for $55,000 by way of a front company called IP Application Development. So it appears Apple planned on making a tablet before the iPhone even came to market!

According to TMC's Peter Bernstein, Proview says the trademark deal with Apple did not include the rights to the trademark in China.

Dell Voice Launches in Canada - Will it Fail As Badly As Dell Video Chat?

February 9, 2012



Dell has partnered with Ontario-based Fongo to offer Dell Voice, a VoIP app exclusively available exclusively in Canada that offers a Canadian phone number and free calls to most of Canada. Also, incoming calls and Dell Voice-to-Dell Voice calls are free of charge. This reminds me of how Dell partnered with Sightspeed, now a part of Logitech to offer a multi-party video conferencing service called Dell Video Chat. I reviewed the software and it works well, but with free alternatives like Skype, having the ability to do 9-way (3x3) Brady Bunch video is a very niche application. Practically nobody has ever heard of Dell Video Chat, so here let me share a couple screenshots of it...

Screenshot of me testing it:


2x2 (4-way video call)


I suspect Dell Voice will suffer the same ignominious fate as Dell Video Chat. There's just too much competition, including superior offerings from Google Voice, Skype, and most recently Vonage.









ITEXPO IP Communications Trade Show Continues Solid Growth

February 8, 2012

ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami was TMC's best show ever with over 200 booths and over 8,200 attendees. Conferee attendance for ITEXPO East increased more than 50% from 2011, resulting in dozens of standing room only sessions at ITEXPO and collocated conferences such as HTML5 Summit, M2M Evolution, Business Video Expo, Super WiFi Summit, and 4GWE. As an example, here's a photo I took at the jam-packed Ingate SIP trunking conference session:


Even with the additional third day of exhibit hall hours, foot traffic was pretty good - on a Friday no less. I heard from several exhibitors saying it was their best ITEXPO ever.

TMC's next show, ITEXPO West 2012, is scheduled to take place on October 1-4, 2012, in Austin, Texas, (the 'new' Telecom Corridor) which will be the second time in Austin after moving from Los Angeles.




Verizon and BT Announce Cross-Network Video Calling & Telepresence

February 8, 2012

Verizon and BT announced a deal enabling each of their respective customers initiate high-quality video conferences and telepresence sessions. I spoke with representatives from BT and Verizon to learn more about their collaboration.

Marc Hambley, Sr. Product Manager at BT explained, "We are connecting our respective telepresence exchanges together - that will allow BT clients to have meetings with Verizon clients, either hosted on BT service or Verizon service.

Forget Super Wi-Fi! Go with Super Wi-Fi! Wait. What?

February 3, 2012


Everyone is hyping the new Super Wi-Fi standard which uses lower-frequency white spaces between television channel frequencies. These lower frequencies enable the signal to travel further (miles) and penetrate walls better than the higher frequencies previously used (hundreds of feet). Well, forget about Super Wi-Fi!

I met with Thomas Ngeow from Altai Technologies at ITEXPO, a Hong Kong-based company and he explained they coined Super Wi-Fi for one of their products long before the Super Wi-Fi standard was coined. You're probably wondering who cares who coined it first and you'd be right.


Billionaire Gives Secrets to Startup Success

February 3, 2012



Sir Terry Matthews is a Welsh/Canadian high tech entrepreneur, and Wales's first billionaire. He has directly started 89 companies with an amazing 83 out of 89 success rate. It's an even more astounding fact when you consider that according to TMC's Peter Bernstein, 90% of startups fail. Terry has sold many of these companies for millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars.

TMC Showcases the Top 40 "Newsmakers" at ITEXPO

February 2, 2012

There is a lot of news (product launches, new versions) being made at TMC's ITEXPO, some of which I've already covered (Digium, Xorcom)... ITEXPO has a record number of exhibitors that have unveiled new products and services at ITEXPO in Miami.

There have been many competing shows over the years, most notably VON, which suffered an untimely demise. ITEXPO and VON were the two best shows focused on VoIP and IP communications.


Digium Gamechanger! Launches D40, D50, & D70 IP Phones

February 1, 2012


Today, at ITEXPO, the premiere communications event, Digium launched a line of IP phones that work in conjunction with their Asterisk and Switchvox solutions. This truly could be a gamechanger, since Asterisk is a popular IP-PBX solution that popular 3rd party phone vendors such as Aastra, snom, and Polycom offer products for. This move by Digium and the impact on these phone vendors could be quite interesting. This reminds me of 2008 when Aastra, a traditional IP phone manufacturer decided to offer a full-fledged IP-PBX based on Asterisk, called AastraLink. As I said during the AastraLink 2008 product launch:
Aastra Telecom has entered the IP-PBX game with the AastraLink Pro 160.

Zultys MX Release 7.0 Unified Communications Release Adds Android Support

January 31, 2012


At ITEXPO in Miami, Zultys today announced their latest UC software offering mobility features for Android, call center enhancements, and third-party CRM integrations. The latest major firmware release for the MX platform, MX Release 7.0 Unified Communications Software is a secure, all-in-one SIP-based IP phone system that is highly scalable and highly customizable. This version also includes enhancements to SIP security. 

Zultys introduced Zultys Mobile Communicator for iPhone and Blackberry users in MX Release 6.0.


Symantec - Disable pcAnywhere Now! Who the Heck Still uses it?

January 27, 2012

Symantec suspected in 2006 that its network had been breached, but when Anonymous started talking publicly about Symantec source code it confirmed their suspicions. According to Wired:
The company surprised the public last week when it disclosed that hackers had obtained source code for its pcAnywhere software and other products, and that the code had likely been stolen in a six-year-old breach that Symantec had never disclosed.

Symantec said in its announcement that users should disable pcAnywhere until the company had time to update the software to ensure that hackers are unable to exploit holes they might find in the code.

Disable pcAnywhere?
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