ITEXPO Blog
| The ITEXPO blog is where you can view the latest news and happenings at TMC's leading VoIP conference.

August 2013

You are browsing the archive for August 2013.

Steve Wozniak Keynote Video

August 29, 2013


Steve Wozniak "the Woz", Steve Job's right-hand man was the featured keynote speaker at ITEXPO. I captured a few videos of him speaking. My plan was to capture just a single video, but my iPhone 4S rang (on vibrate) in the middle of me video recording and it stopped the video recording! Why did Apple put calling priority higher than video recording?

Yealink has an Amazing Booth at ITEXPO!

August 28, 2013

FreePBX World iSymphony Session 360 degree Panoramic View

August 28, 2013

FreePBX World Live Blogging

August 28, 2013

Just stopped in the FreePBX World session located at ITEXPO and it's pretty packed. Check out the photo: {click for larger}


Tony Lewis is now talking about the FreePBX ecosystem. He started off by explaining why the FreePBX tree frog logo. Tony said, "Tree frogs can only go forwards, never backwards." Well, there ya go, mystery solved!

Tony talked about how FreePBX documentation was scattered and is now centralized into a new wiki.





ALICE Receptionist Wins StartupCamp 8 at ITEXPO

August 28, 2013

StartupCamp 8, located at ITEXPO featured startups giving their product pitches, pitting one startup against another until there was one man standing. Or should I say woman, since the winner was ALICE, a cool receptionist designed for visitors to corporations that have trended away from paying for receptionists near the front door just to greet guests.

StartupCamp 8 begin with a keynote address by Jeff Bonforte Communications Platform SVP at Yahoo. Bonforte told a great story about when he previously worked Yahoo! the first time and as one of the lead negotiators, he missed an opportunity to buy Twitter for $25 million, Twitters drop-bottom dollar amount and Yahoo offered $20 million. $5 million separating Yahoo & Twitter and preventing Jeff from becoming a deal-making legend.

Microsoft Lync Session Jam Packed at ITEXPO

August 27, 2013


I just got out of a jam-packed panel discussion on Microsoft Lync - Why You Need to Develop a Migration Strategy Now. I'd share a picture but I was moderating the session, so didn't want to whip out my phone and snap a picture. But I estimated about 36 people attended the session. I even had a surprise panelist, Skip from Microsoft (didn't catch his last name) making it 5 total panelists that also included Laura Neidel from Sonus, Ramon Felder from Patton Networks, Alan Percy from AudioCodes, and Jeff Dworkin from Sangoma.

As I was leaving the session I ran into a Digium / Asterisk employee who commented that the WebRTC session he attended and this Lync session were the two most well-attended panels.


Industry Veterans spotted at ITEXPO 2013 Las Vegas

August 27, 2013

Special Technology Innovation Panel at ITEXPO [VIDEO]

August 27, 2013

Grandstream UCM6100 Asterisk PBX Makes Major Strides

August 27, 2013


Last month I was pretty harsh in my analysis of the Grandstream UCM6100 and on top of the open source issues and burning their partners, it also had some security issues. Well, Ward Mundy has a new report on the UCM6100 and he is impressed with the response Grandstream has had to the community's concerns.

He writes, "The short version of this story is Grandstream has addressed most of the open source issues and they’ve resolved well over a hundred bugs. In addition, they’ve published excellent documentation on the PBX in addition to a tutorial on how to interconnect the UCM6100 with other devices including FreePBX®-based Asterisk servers such as PBX in a Flash. So we are pleasantly surprised by Grandstream’s efforts to address many of the concerns that were raised by some of us in the open source community."

He also posted this interesting tidbit:
The silver lining may very well be the functionality boost you’ll get from the addition of a $100 OBi202 device with a Bluetooth adapter.





FreePBX - Most Powerful & Flexible Phone System Known to Man

August 25, 2013

I've been writing about VoIP and reviewing VoIP products since 1996, but even I need help once in awhile to figure out how to get a certain VoIP feature to work, how to install an IP-PBX, how to configure an advanced phone feature, etc. Well, recently I had to deploy a FreePBX system in a production environment for another company and I hit a few stumbling blocks that required a call to FreePBX's technical support and I have to say they were very responsive, extremely knowledgeable and very helpful.

One of my first stumbling blocks was getting second dialtone on a specific FXO port simply by pressing one of the line keys on a Grandstream GXP2100 phone. The reason is there is a DoorKing security gate system hooked into one of the Sangoma FXO ports that listens for certain DTMF touchtones to open and close the gate.

First, I had to create three groups in chan_dahdi_groups.conf, which is done in the FreePBX UI via this URL:
http://[ipaddress]/admin/config.php?display=dahdi
group=0 -> FXO trunks - channels 5, 6, and 7 (normal inbound/outbound lines)
group=1 -> FXO trunk  - channel  8 (special DoorKing port)
group=2 -> FXS lines  - channels 1, 2, 3, and 4 (analog devices)

I separated the DoorKing into its own trunk line group so it wouldn't be used for outbound calling. I also had to change the context to "from-analog" for the FXO ports for routing via channel number to work.









ITEXPO 2013 Las Vegas Kicks off this week

August 25, 2013

Find Rich Tehrani at ITEXPO Las Vegas 2013

August 23, 2013

If you follow my blog or social sites you know I’ll be at ITEXPO next week at Mandalay Bay and I’m very excited to meet with you all.

This is where you can find me:

On Monday, 8/26 at 9:00am I’ll be checking out the Asterisk 1-2-3 training course and the SUITS conference which focuses on telecom patent protection. At 12:00 that day, I’ll be at the SDN preconference learning about software defined networking.

Snom Riding Lync Wave to Success

August 19, 2013

In a recent meeting with Snom’s Mike Storella in the company’s office in Massachusetts, I had a chance to learn how the company is riding the Microsoft Lync wave to success. One of the early differentiators they touted was Lync phones which allowed multiple lines – an essential feature for many, including executives who don’t answer their own phones.

This early flexibly caught the attention of Microsoft – not to mention a number of Fortune class companies who needed such features.

Mike touted other features as well like the company being first to allow device-based music-on-hold for Lync as well as being first to qualify a device for the Microsoft Lync 2013 compatible devices program.

Jobs Movie Inaccurate Say Steve Wozniak and John Sculley

August 16, 2013

By now everyone knows there is a movie called Jobs which celebrates the life of Steve Jobs and tries to recreate the events which surround the tech legend’s life. Of course whenever such an ambitious project is undertaken, the challenge you have is getting agreement on what happened and just as importantly trying to get everyone involved in the happenings to work collaboratively.

It is apparent this movie faced some challenges in both regards. For example, Ashton Kutcher who plays a pretty convincing Steve Jobs complained recently that Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak aka “The Woz” is being paid by another company to support a different Steve Jobs film.

Steve Wozniak

FreePBX World - Just Days Away!

August 12, 2013

The first ever FreePBX World co-located at ITEXPO is just 16 days away, taking place at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I recently wrote about FreePBX and gave a sneak peek of the conference agenda for FreePBX World you should check out.

I'm attending ITEXPO to cover all the latest news on VoIP, WebRTC, Asterisk & FreePBX, cloud communications, and much more. Oh did, I mention Apple legend Steve Wozniak is keynoting?

ITEXPO is one of the longest running communications shows and it continues to add excellent new content to the conference tracks, exciting new co-located events like FreePBX World & Startup Camp, as well as headliner keynoters like former Apple & Pepsi CEO John Sculley, 3Com founder and Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, and many more.

If you haven't registered already, head over here, but you better be quick, I hear the hotel room block is almost full!