Recently in voip Category

There are so many mobile voice apps I cannot even keep track. Some are convoluted. Some are callback services. Some are pure packet based VoIP that eat up data usage. Others actually use up minutes.

With all the hype about Skype on the iPhone, I have to wonder why you would need it. Most cellcos offer an unlimited plan. Are you making THAT many international calls on your cell phone? How many people could that possibly be?

Don't people work in an office at all? Couldn't or more correctly shouldn't important phone calls be made at the office? Here are the benefits of calling from the office: the background noise is less, the sound of flushing toilets is minimal, and no one can overhear your conversation. Oh, yeah, HD calling! At the minimum, you have better call quality than a cell phone at the office.

I know that people travel more than I do - Rich certainly does - but how much international dialing are you doing? It would seem that any domestic calling can be done via your cell plan. Conference calls? How about Google Voice or other conference platform that dials out?

It just seems like there are so many mobile VoIP apps and not enough benefit to the caller. Also, as Gary Kim writes here, this will likely result in more expensive data plans. What Gary didn't mention is that the cellular network is based on a finite bandwidth schema. Voice calls take up less than 10K. VoIP calls have to take up at least 35k, so every VoIP call is taking up about 4 voice calls. That's a huge displacement. Add in backhaul costs that have now quadrupled and the cost structure (or more precisely the RBOC profit structure) just went out of whack.

At the end of the day, I don't understand the mobile VoIP app.

At VoiceCon, Grandstream had some new SIP-based gadgets including the video telephony units that VidTel is using and video surveillance gear. As TMC's Erik Linask reports here, "The first products in the new line include one- and four-port video servers/encoders -- its GXV3501 and GXV3504 -- and an IP video camera -- the GXV3601.... All three products leverage Grandstream's experience with H.264 real-time video compression, providing clear video while optimizing bandwidth usage, and SIP-based VoIP technology for providing two-way audio and video streaming to mobile phones and desktop video phones."

But the other hardware surprise for me was Aastra's Clearspan. It's basically an Aastra branded version of Broadsoft on a blade server for enterprise. (One review here). Taqua is also reselling Broadsoft to smaller service providers but under the Broadsoft umbrella.

Meanwhile at CTIA, WiMax gadgets were launched, including the Nokia N810 tablet and the Samsung Mondi.WiMax gadgets WILL be key to WiMax actually taking off - although Nokia called WiMax BetaMax. I guess no one at Nokia knows that professional videographers and studios were using betamax up until the HD upgrade recently.  Anyway, if Sprint, Claerwire and others are going to get the most out of the billions in deployment money, there will need to be gadgets that consumers can use with WiMax (even at 3650 MHz). Why? Because handsets drive mobility - even if you define a handset as a Kindle or a mini-PC or other gadget.

Ars technica doesn't believe the articles in CNET and AOL-Tech about people switching back to dial-up. Well, info from dial-up aggregators indicate that dial-up is on the uptick. As some angry comments mention not everyone needs broadband.

Last year we saw the plateau of broadband subscriber numbers. This year we are seeing an increase in dial-up maybe due to the economic situation we face in the US. Certainly, AOL, Earthlink and United Online are showing revenue increases in their financial statements.

If there was a 10% drop of broadband, would that affect VoIP? Unlikely. It would affect Vonage and 8x8 and other stand-alone VoIP players, but it wouldn't have any effect on the Business VoIP businesses nor on SAAS.

Also, bundling means that the consumer probably doesn't know the pricing of the high speed internet component.

Certainly this has to be a consideration for the RUS and NTIA. What if everyone who wants to live online has broadband? What if the $7B results in just a 10% increase in broadband? Will that justify the $7B? Maybe. If the 10% are all business ventures of one kind or another - eBay, Amazon, affiliates, SOHO, freelancers, tele-workers. 

John Todd is an Asterisk evangelist and works for Digium. VoIP Users Conference reposted John's 7 steps to better SIP Security on Asterik (here). The reason for the 7 steps now?

"In the last few months, a number of new tools have made it easy for knuckle-draggers to attack and defraud SIP endpoints, Asterisk-based systems included. There are easily-available tools that scan networks looking for SIP hosts, and then scan hosts looking for valid extensions, and then scan valid extensions looking for passwords. You can take steps, NOW, to eliminate many of these problems."

It's not just Asterisk either. There are holes in every PBX and softswitch. There is long distance fraud, especially in International calling. You should be checking your CDR's at least daily - or run a script to pick up anomalies.

Security in entirety will become extremely important this year. New tools; a tanking world economy; criminals will be looking for every lever to make money or get something free.  So will disgruntled employees, so network admins need to be on top of any changes in human resources.

This morning on Twitter, it was announced that Hosted VoIP company, Acredo, had laid off all its staff. Acredo is the second Hosted PBX player in Orlando to axe its staff in the past few weeks. VOX also laid off most of its staff, while waiting for a big deal to close, which is supposed to be its savior.

We are entering the time when there will be a parring down of the 1000+ companies offering VoIP. The majority of users have migrated to cable digital voice service due mainly to the bundle, the price, the Quality of Service, the name brand, and the large advertising campaigns.

Acredo was Avaya based and not inexpensive. I have no further details about the company.

VOX had over 100 partners reselling their service including NCTA, WISPA and FISPA members. Most notably Junction Broadband was a reseller. The deal with UTGI was supposed to be the saving grace for VOX. The funding partners decided that they couldn't pour more money in while they waited to land the UTGI deal.

Certainly, we will be seeing more of this as VC and hedge funds have been hit by the financial crisis too and cannot continue to fund companies that have not hit a revenue and cash flow stance.

An UPDATE on this story: see Rich Tehrani's update. Acredo is in re-organization - not closed.

A correction: the VOX reseller is Junction Broadband, not Junction Networks as I wrote yesterday. (Please note that the linked press release clearly stated Junction Broadband.) I apologize for the typo.

The blogosphere is all a-Twitter with the news of the re-launch of Grand Central as Google Voice.  Read here for Google Voice is like Gmail for Voice Mail and here and TechCrunch for the break down of features.  Highlights would be SMS integration and voicemail transcripts.  It makes me wonder why other providers haven't done this kind of integration and "special" features before. Is it because Grand Central is really a techie toy?

The CLEC show, COMPTEL, is in Dallas this week. Stupidly, COMPTEL had their show overlap the Channel Partners Expo. Hello! Same exhibitors and people can't be in 2 places at once.  But it's this exact kind of planning that has led to the troubles that the CLEC's are experiencing.

Has COMPTEL ever won a major battle at the FCC? Nope.

Yet COMPTEL is a lobbying organization. And its insulated. Where's the outreach?

Anyway... COMPTEL never pushed their members to cooperate in the marketplace even after the TRRO ruling went against them. By now, CLEC's should primarily buying transport and transit from other CLEC's. There should be a COMPTEL database of lit buildings, of fiber routes, and of central office collocation, so that members can easily propose solutions and wholesale to other CLEC's.

At the fall 2009 show, Verizon, Level3 and XO didn't exhibit. (I didn't attend but this is what I was told). That means that two of your vendors don't care that much about you - Level3 who many buy transit from and VZ who with AT&T and Qwest make up the bulk of the cost of services to COMPTEL.

As Tara Seals writes here, lines are moving to VoIP and cellular. While CLEC's are moving to SIP trunking, the majority have no cellular component. Why hasn't that been a priority for COMPTEL? Did they think that cellular was a fad that would fade?

There isn't much reason for the CLEC's to start screaming SIP because in the majority of cases, SIP Trunking is just a PRI replacement - and while the marketing is about cost savings, there is any cost savings to the CLEC. Net sum is that SIP Trunking means less revenue and lower margin.

The MVNO model has proven itself to a road to failure. Maybe Verizon's Wholesale Partner plan for Mobility will work. (But I wouldn't bet on it).

Landline replacement to cellular has been increasing with the market dip. That will likely continue, especially with T-Mobile's new $50 plan as well as the Sprint Everything Plan at $99. Garrett Smith thinks this will kill VoIP. WIthout fiber and without cellular, CLEC's are stuck as a NxT1 pipe pusher.

Where's the innovation?  CableLabs and AT&T Labs pumped out some good stuff like DOCSIS, cablecard and DSL. Where's the COMPTEL Lab or at least the COMPTEL Think Tank?

Is Integrated T1 it? Now to be replaced with SIP Trunk? Wow! Unified communications didn't come out of the CLEC world either. Re-invent or die.

A quick congratulations to Thomas Howe who took the CEO position at Jaduka. Thomas Howe is called Mr. Mashup by Telephony magazine because he not only evangelizes about mash-ups (and API's) but has won a number of contests including the Broadsoft mash-up award last year.

Stanford International Bank is the other Madoff. While Madoff burned people to the tune of $50B in his Ponzi Scheme, Stanford wiped out $8B in its investors money. In its wake, it has erased the credit line of Reignmaker Communications. It is reported that Reignmaker laid off 19 of 25 employees. It looks like this Broadsoft based VoIP provider will be closing.

Reignmaker is an Atlanta based ITSP that purchased a CLEC with a Broadsoft switch. It back-ended into Tampa-based CommX, a wholesale Broadsoft ITSP. A good dose of its employees came from Cbeyond, down the street.

"SMB Nation is a community of over 35,000 small and medium business (SMB) technology consultants, channel partners, sponsors and resellers. With an impressive 10-year history serving as a trusted advisor and mentor to the SMB consulting and  reseller channel, SMB Nation has been able to consistently reinvent itself based upon changing market conditions." SMB Nation did a VoIP survey with NGT. 260 responded (results here).

These are the services they currently provide:

• Networking infrastructure (91.1%)
• Mobility sales, services, support (52.7%)
• VoIP-specific sales, services, support (44.2%)
• Telephony sales, services, and support (35.3%)
• Line of business applications (35.7%)
• Database development/programming/development (32.6%)
• Web hosting (27.5%)
• Host e-mail (26.7%)

These are the services they will add:

• VoIP sales, service, support (56.2%)
• Security (36.6%)
• Telephony sales, services, and support (28.1%)
• Web hosting, hosted services (25.5%)

It's interesting that Telecom Agents sell circuits and very few want to sell non-telecom services, but VAR's and MSP's are marching in to take over the Agent Arena.