Recently in voip Category

There are a bunch of debates raging over the telecommunications infrastructure. 

Congress has looked at Open Access bills for cellular networks. By this we mean that a consumer can use any available handset or device on any cell network. This is kind of the Carterphone concept for cellular.

The 700 MHz auction had open access provisions built right in, so VZW's 4G/LTE network will need to incorporate Open Access.

Spectrum is a finite resource. TV, radio, public safety and the cell companies all share access to various licensed spectrums. Other companies, like oil companies to communicate with rigs and ships, have purchased spectrum licenses. There is also the unlicensed bands like 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 3650 MHz that are shared by any and all. We are seeing in the 2.4 GHz band that too much usage causes crowding and in some cases makes the spectrum useless. (Your little blue Linksys wireless AP's use 2.4 GHz, as does quite a few cordless phones and other consumer products). As more and more products and consumers go cordless and wireless, this resource will be used up. It must be allocated better. 

(An aside: Open Access has one advantage: less handsets in the landfill.)

Net Neutrality is based on network management. Both cable and DSL have bottleneck issues in your community. To manage those issues, the service provider uses tools, hardware and software, to prioritize traffic. This same set of tools can be used to degrade Vonage while prioritizing the ISP's VoIP service offering. These same tools can be used for DPI (deep packet inspection) to read every unencrypted packet that passes through the box. This same tool can be used to police the network (or Internet) of child porn, illegal downloads, and the like. Do we really want that kind of Big Brother action? 

At the heart of the NN debate is the fact that a few ISP's have degraded VoIP packets and legitimate P2P (peer-to-peer file-sharing) traffic. As networks go all IP, there needs to be a set of guidelines for peering traffic and network management. I don't think the FCC or Congress should be the ones making these rules. Any rules they come up with will be a compromise that will ultimately solve nothing, but create new problems.

The final debate in DC is about Fair Competitive Access to the telco infrastructure. After court rulings and Forbearance petitions in 2004-06, CLEC's and ISP's have been losing ground in the ability to get access to telco network elements to provide service to customers at a fair and competitive price. In so many cases, the CLEC "wholesale" rate is higher than retail. Make sense? Docket 05-25 at the FCC is the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Special Access Rates. 

While they may seem similar in that they are all about access to the network, they all are about different aspects of the network access. In the end, Open Access Rules and Net Neutrality guideleines will define how we use the networks for innovation, collaboration and communication.

Listened to XO to introduce Enterprise SIP (ESIP) to the Channel today. This offering is very targeted. Enterprise SIP is designed for multi-location customers such as Retail and Restaurant chains that are looking to get rid of PRI's.  

ESIP will be for high capacity connections with the minimum connection of 10MB at the hub (or HQ) for aggregated voice traffic. 

Essentially it is a SIP trunk (at 10MB) that will take all of the local and long distance traffic - inbound and outbound - from the branch offices across an MPLS (or other private network) through one or two hub circuits. 

Here's how it works.

You connect all of the offices together via a private network or MPLS architecture. Then you port all of the numbers to the SIP Trunking of XO's Enterprise SIP Service. The trunk will plug into an IP-PBX or an SBC and handle all of the voice traffic on the company network. All inbound and outbound voice traffic will utilize the ESIP Trunk.

A 10MB pipe will handle about 100 G.711 call streams (more or less). That means about 500 to 1000 extensions depending on the phone usage of the employees.

XO will even give Virtual-NXX numbers off this trunk. Although toll bypass is not allowed. 

The thing that surprised me the most was how specific the offering is. It's isn't for everyone. It was designed with a very particular market segment in mind - namely retail and restaurant chains.

The ESIP offering is designed to terminate on a Session Border Controller, IP-PBX or a Fax Server. 

Need to UPDATE that this is my take-away from the call. XO has many VoIP products and they want to match up the best solution for each customer. The ESIP is specifically for Multi-Location, MPLS-enabled customers. Not many companies need or can afford a Session Border Controller, so to me that is an indicator of the type of Enterprise that this offering i sdesigned for.

AT&T cancelled their CallVantage service. It will go dark on Nov. 20th. The porting process is probably the most painful part of changing service. If you are a licensed CLEC, it is a little easier. If you are a VoIP Provider relying on another carrier to LNP for you, you have to set expectations for the porting. And by that I don't mean blow smoke up my tush by telling me it could take 45-60 days. Sure that can happen, but I haven't seen that time frame in a while.

One of my clients who took over my VZ number ported it in 3 days. Bang! Done! And that's against VZ, one of the worst possible feet dragging, no-one-home LEC's. 

Do you know what On-boarding is? Personnel departments use the term to mean when you bring on a new employee. The process involves getting them email addresses, ID's, parking, a desk, badge, orientation, training, benefits, etc. Most larger corporations have a written procedure in place for on-boarding. Why is it important? Because the first impression the new hire gets is day 1. All to often Day 1 is a mess for the new hire. No desk. No computer. No contact or introductions. Welcome aboard!

Is that what you do to your customers? Because the on-boarding of a new customer is very important too. It's their first impression of your company's ability to provide service. Imagine how that feels when the customer gets no status update for a month. The porting happens suddenly and without warning. Or worse doesn't happen for a long time. (Long is relative). 

Did you map out the PBX extensions? Did you check inside wiring and the LAN design? Are the phones programmed? When will staff training occur on how to use the new system, voicemail and handsets? Is there a manual or a wiki?

These are the basics of the on-boarding process. LNP is just a part of it.

Gary Kim has an excellent blog view about How Not to Sell Hosted PBX. First, you need to sell that is Reliable, Dependable.  Even before the usual pitch of: Show me your phone bill and I will save you some money. (Blah!)  Give Gary's story a read.

In a discussion on twitter with @DougonIPcomm (that Doug blogged here), Doug is promoting the idea that HD Voice is here so buy the cheap HD Voice handsets from Polycom and Cisco now.  I think he missed my point.

Doug points to Xconnect, Simple Signal, Apteva and Sprint as examples of HD inter-connected ITSP. Big deal. There are 1100 VoIP Providers in the US alone. many not inter-connected with anyone but the PSTN.

To enjoy true HD Voice calling both sides of the call have to be SIP (supporting G.722). Most calls today still land either on a PSTN connected phone or (more likely) on a cell phone. That will break the HD Voice.

Doug dislikes this analogy but Fax over IP still doesn't work 99% today. Years after Brooktrout fixed this issue. Why? There are T.38 compliant fax machines and certainly Edgewater devices work, but the problem is in the WAN. Any conversions of the packet and you break the fax packet. So IP to PSTN, bye bye. The same issue with HD Voice. We do not have too many all IP networks.

Then let's look at the SIP Upstream providers. You mention Sprint. Most ITSP's buy from Level3, then Global Crossing, Bandwidth.com and Verizon. How many of those networks are G.722 end-to-end?

The best way to sell Hosted PBX service is to use the HD Voice demo. However, you need to set proper consumer expectations that it only works On-Net. That when Joe Sales calls in from the field on his cell phone, it will sound tinny, not HD.  

When Grandma calls in from her kitchen wall phone, it likely won't be HD either. 

Doug thinks you should buy the HD hadnset anyway. Go ahead. But if they are sub-$200 now, think what version 2 will be like price and feature wise?

At Broadsoft Connections this morning, Michael Tessler spoke about it being all about apps and the Customer Experience. (Has he been reading my slides?)

One reason IP Telephony grew (according to Dell'Oro) 7% to $737M in 2Q09 is because IPT lowers the cost of the capital expenditure (CAPEX) and it also lowers the cost of maintenance and support.  

As an industry we have to move away from talking cost savings to a discussion about value to the customer experience. Efficiency, Productivity, Privacy and Security will be key topics coupled with TCO and ROI studies.

The User Experience must be about usefulness, ease of use, reliable and enjoyable. (Something that most folks would not associate with telcos.)

You need to take the technology out of the way of the user. If you can do that, you win.

Another point Nicholas Carr made was that IT and telecom are colliding. A new landscape is coming. 

My thoughts immediately went to GV. Who will be replaced by Google Voice?

• Who is the commodity?  
• Who will add Value to the User Experience?

People will pay for easy and reliable. (Not all of them will, but more than enough will. Remember that Cbeyond only has 50k customers and PAETEC just about 100K). 

Stop selling on price. If you aren't talking TCO or ROI, you are selling telecom, not apps. 

PBX and software companies have had to stop thinking in terms of product and start thinking in terms of Managed Services deployed over the Network. If they are thinking about it as SAAS, should all the Hosted PBX folks be looking at Voice as just another app delivered over the network? Voice is just an app!

Garrett Smith blogs about a new patent that was awarded to 8x8, parent company of Packet8 (and holder of 74 patents on VoIP and communications technology). It's about the automatic connection of an IP device to an IP-PBX.

You would think that by this time all the patents covering VoIP would be done. I will say that VoIP Providers need to have an attorney examine the patent for any infringement.

All the talk about Hosted VoIP being on the rise, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, Paetec is on LinkedIn "hiring PBX (Telephone Equipment) Sales Reps for our Raleigh, Nashville, Memphis Offices." For the Allworx product line, I would imagine.

KeaneTel, a Master Agency, is advertising Training on ShoreTel IP PBX Sales. "This is the first of four Training Webinars on ShoreTel by KeaneTel."

All the talk about Hosted PBX and yet premise based PBX sales still seem to be doing alright.

Could be all the FUD. Could be the weekly outages. (Yesterday, it was reported on listservs that Level3 and Cogent had an outage. Level3's outage in Atlanta seemed to even affect VoIP.)

Outages seem to get a lot more press today, but if people are in The Cloud for apps, email, VoIP, data, etc. AND the Internet Access is down, well, you have to consider that. Redundant links - for everyone including the user.

Bandwidth.com just disbanded their agent channel. Other VoIP providers have done that as well.  And I hear some complaints about the cable company indirect channel programs.

The problem isn't the Agent Channel. The problem is the Channel Program design. 

You have to design a program that will work, folks.  You have to train your agents on the benefits, how it works, how it will be implemented, and how to sell it. You have to have a USP or marketing message that the salesperson can grasp and re-use. 

You can blame the agents, but most times companies don't spell out who the target prospect is and how that prospect will benefit. VoIP is not a replacement service. And you VoIP companies have over 1000 competitors all saying the same thing. It's like trying to differentiate between CLEC integrated T1's.

There's is also the whole compensation issue. Maybe you aren't paying enough to make it worthwhile for the agent. Again a VoIP sale is longer than a TDM sales and there are inter-operability and implementation issues to deal with, especially for PBX replacement.

There's a bias towards having a direct sales team in telecom. That bias is due to the huge expense - the office space, desks, laptops, utilities, cell phones, benefits, salaries and management structure. If you examined your direct team the same way you examine your indirect channel, you'd likely fire that division as well. Personally, I would put up Agents against AE's any day. I can pick 5 and outsell your direct team all day, any day - with less churn.

By the way, did you examine the channel sales process? How hard was it to get a quote or a sales engineer or a contract? What was the time from contract to install to commission check? All this will play into it. You look at AT&T's Channel sales process and it's just too freaking painful. 

In Internet Marketing, you can analyze the sales process to find out where the hurdles are, where the shoppers drop out. Is there a process in place to figure out the sales hurdles in the physical world? Do you track any of it?

I've been in the VoIP space since 2004, so many companies have imploded; not delivered; messed up; changed things again and again. With this kind of history, it gets more challenging to find agents willing to bet their business on it.