June 2004 Archives

By Faultline Published Tuesday 22nd June 2004 11:40 GMT Last week we carried our thoughts and impressions from the VON (voice over networks) conference in London and focused on the difference between the instantaneous gratification of Skype for private individuals and the safe and efficient enterprise wide VoIP implementations, reliant mostly on the SIP protocol. Rohan Mahy, co-chair IETF SIP and SIPPING Working Groups, took issue with some of the things that Niklas Zennstrom of Skype and Kazaa fame said at the conference, and although enterprise VoIP isn't a central technology to Faultline, it is a valid and radical cost pressure on telcos and an opportunity for various vendors. more...

Klaus Schulz makes history by making the first ever VoIP call on a commercial airline flight using Xten software. Xten® Networks, Inc. (OTCBB: XNWK) yesterday announced that VoIP history was made when Klaus Schulz, a former 3COM® Chief Technology Architect, boarded Flight 452 from Munich to Los Angeles on May 17th. Mr. Schulz did not know that he was going to make history on that day, however, he knew that he was going to be able to use the Internet on Lufthansa®’s first commercial “production” flight with the very much touted new service from Connexion by Boeing®, this, because he helped with the overall implementation of the system.

It was my Dad's birthday today so I thought it would be a good day to launch free calling on myPhoneBooth.com. Free 1 Minute Calls To: United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore Taiwan, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom I called my Dad in Cranbrook, BC from Santa Clara and wished him a Happy Birthday. I then called my brother in Australia and give him crap for not calling my Dad yet and then he called him using myPhoneBooth.com as well. Pretty cool! Now that they have Wifi on comercial flights I can see that myPhoneBooth.com might get some real traction. Soon it will have Acoustic Echo Cancellation so you don't even have to use a headset! There is also Free Unlimited Calls To US 1-800 Numbers and Free Unlimited VoIP Calls on These Networks: Call any SIPphone Account (1-747-XXX-XXXX) Call any Free World Dialup Account (1-393-XXXXX) Call any Iptel.org Account (1-477-XXXXXX) Call any Iaxtel Account (1-700-XXX-XXXX) The PSTN connectivity is provided by SIPphone, which was founded by Michael Robertson the founder of MP3.com. Have Fun!

Xten(R) Expands SIP Softphone Offering to include support for Wireless CDMA Networks, Video Conferencing and Instant Messaging Xten demonstrates its newest SIP softphone eyeBeam(TM) at Supercomm eyeBeam is slated for commercial release in October 2004 SUPERCOMM '04, McCormick Place, Booth No. 13840O. SANTA CLARA, CA, June 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Xten (OTCBB: XNWK - News) today announced the upcoming release of its newest carrier-grade SIP softphone - eyeBeam. eyeBeam will offer significant enhancements to Xten's current commercial SIP softphones, delivering features not yet seen in the VoIP and IP telephony industries.

Vonage(R) Releases Xten's X-PRO SoftPhone for Mac OS X. Vonage's cutting edge Voice over IP service now available for Mac users Vonage, the leading broadband telephony provider in the U.S., and Xten Networks (OTC Bulletin Board: XNWK - News), publisher of the award winning X-PRO SoftPhone, announced today that Vonage and Xten have completed interoperability testing of an OEM version of Xten's X-PRO SIP SoftPhone for Mac-based Vonage subscribers.

I can safely say that Supercomm 04 was a great success for Xten. We made contact with some great potential customers and met with some existing customers we had not had the chance to yet. SIPop! was a little poorly organized, namely the lack of signage caused problems but all in all it turned out well and Xten SIP Softphones received a clean bill of health and played well with all the other participants.

Multi-Tech and Xten Demonstrate Interoperability between MultiVOIP Voice over IP Gateways and Xten SIP Softphones Minneapolis, June 22, 2004 - Multi-Tech and Xten together have achieved SIP interoperability between MultiVOIP Voice over IP gateways and Xten's family of SIP softphones. Xten provides a cost-effective, high-quality "software-only" IP phone that can talk to any MultiVOIP gateway. Together, the solution provides Voice over IP mobility allowing road warriors to capitalize on toll bypass voice connectivity. "If you want to make calls via the Internet, and you are mobile, the best way to do that is with one of our softphones on your laptop," explains Erik Lagerway, President and Chief Operating Officer of Xten. "With Xten softphones and Multi-Tech MultiVOIP Gateways, deploying SIP-based VoIP networks for SMEs and SOHO businesses is a no-brainer." Attaching MultiVOIP to an IP-based PBX creates an interconnect to the PSTN that allows mobile users to use the Xten Softphone to make toll-free telephone calls from anywhere in the world into their corporate office, or use their IP PBX to make calls out of their local exchange. Conversely, callers can come from a local exchange into the PBX and out to the Xten software via the MultiVOIP gateway. "SIP is gaining a lot of momentum in the industry," explains Chip Harleman, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Multi-Tech Systems. "Our alliance with Xten opens the door for SIP-based, mobile, Voice over IP applications. In fact, we advocate multi-vendor SIP implementations. We believe that interoperability benefits the entire industry and ultimately our mutual customers." The MultiVOIP family is available in analog and digital models ranging from one to 60 ports. MultiVOIP gateways connect directly to phones, fax machines, key systems, PSTN lines or a PBX to provide real-time, toll-quality voice connections to any office on a VOIP network. It is designed to help maximize investments already made in the existing data and voice network infrastructure and is SIP (RFC 3261) compliant. Xten's X-PRO softphones are business-grade IP Telephony solutions, delivering the quality of service and features found in business-class telephones including conferencing and multi-proxy. Xten also has a feature-rich FREE softphone dubbed X-Lite which does not include some of X-PRO's premimum features but still provides the same level of call quality. Xten's softphones are fully RFC3261 (SIP), RTP/RTCP (RFC 1889) and SDP (RFC 3264) compliant. They are available for Windows (Windows 98SE/ME/NT 4/2000/XP/CE), Mac OS X and LindowsOS operating systems. About Multi-Tech An ISO 9001:2000 certified global manufacturer of award-winning Internet, remote access, and telephony products, Multi-Tech Systems provides end-to-end solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. Multi-Tech's products are available through a worldwide network of business partners (distributors, resellers, system integrators, ISPs, and ISVs), or in embedded solutions from OEMs. Privately held, Multi-Tech Systems has over 61 U.S. patents and numerous international patents. The company's intellectual property portfolio includes patents covering transmission of multiplexed voice, data and video packets used in technologies such as Internet telephony, PC telephony, voice over IP or frame relay, and DSVD modems. For additional information, contact Multi-Tech at 800/328-9717 or 763/785-3500, via fax at 763/785-9874 or browse the company's World Wide Web home page at www.multitech.com About Xten® Networks, Inc. Xten is a provider of award-winning, high-quality, carrier-grade SIP-based VoIP software and softphones. Xten's goal is to be the primary choice in SIP-based client-side audio and video IP communications software for Telecoms, Cable Providers and Internet Telephony Service Providers and OEMs. Those who are interested in Xten products should visit sales.xten.com On the Web: www.xten.com For more information, please contact: Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. Paul Kraska 763-785-3500 [email protected] Xten Networks, Inc. Mark Bruk, CEO 408.876.4344 [email protected]

OTTAWA, June 18 /CNW Telbec/ - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) should refrain from regulating prices for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services offered by Canada's established phone companies, according to a joint submission being filed today by Aliant, Bell Canada, SaskTel and Télébec. "What we are opposed to are rules that stand in the way of delivering competitively-priced services to customers" said Lawson Hunter, Executive Vice President, Bell Canada Enterprises. "However, we do support social regulation such as access to 9-1-1 service and rights to privacy rules to the extent that these protect customers and the public interest." more...

Michael Robertson of SIPphone.com had some cool news on Thursday... Last month history was made. On May 17, Lufthansa and Boeing successfully launched the first commercial flight with WiFi broadband service, Connexion. There were many "firsts" on that flight, but perhaps the most influential one was the first SIP phone call from 21,000 feet over Bahrain. That call was made by 3Com's Global Strategic Webmaster, Klaus Schultz, to a colleague around the globe in San Jose using his laptop, XTen's softphone and his SIPphone.com account. Today, Lufthansa offers Connexion broadband WiFi service on only one of their flights, but in the coming months and years, it will be come routine to access the Internet from 35,000 feet. So soon we will all be making free calls to our friends, family and colleagues. Let me tell you, I could have really used this on my recent 18 hour flight from Los Angeles to Singapore, the longest commercial flight in the world. more...

COMMENTARY--Will May 19, 2004, be a date that lives in infamy for proponents of VoIP? Two ominous developments took place on that day. The New York Public Service Commission declared Vonage to be a regulated telephone company. Meanwhile, several key companies pulled out of the inter-carrier compensation forum (ICF) that is attempting to negotiate a replacement for the outmoded access-charge regime. That brought the effort to the brink of collapse. These seemingly unrelated events illustrate the failings of the Federal Communications Commission’s current piecemeal approach to VoIP, or voice over Internet Protocol. Though no one in Washington seems to want to make VoIP subject to legacy telecommunications regulations, we may be drifting in exactly that direction. more...

Cable & Wireless is widening its range of corporate Internet telephony products by launching a voice over IP (VoIP) service for UK businesses. It will be called Cable & Wireless IP Voice and the company says it will offer a better quality of service than is possible with VoIP connections that run over the public Internet. Cable & Wireless said the service is aimed at businesses that have operations at multiple sites and use separate private networks for voice and data at present, and who want to merge their traffic onto a single IP-based network. more...

Jeff Pulver's Free World Dialup VoIP service [http://www.freeworlddialup.com] is growing a rapid rate, which is great to see. I thought the readers would like to know that Xten represents over 138,000 users in that community. I think that is more than half but I am not sure. Here is a geographical representation of those users which was created today. Each red dot could represent thousands of users. The total user count of the X-Lite / FWD auto-configured software was 138,907 at 11:00 AM today. The daily average of registrations of Xten X-Lite softphones on the FWD service exceeds 500. Imagine what will happen when peerSee goes live! I believe these numbers will seem like peanuts in short order.

Look out world, here come Wireless IP Comm! Watch VoIP take flight as 3G and CDMA2000 1x gets it's legs. Nokia 6260 Series 60 Second Edition is the first smart phone platform that will include both CDMA configurations as well as dual-mode WCDMA-GSM. Dual-mode WCDMA -GSM will offer full support for operators’ 3G services and pave the way for video telephony and advanced streaming & browsing capabilities on mobile devices.

I am getting so sick and tired of hearing proprietary advocates abusing the open standards in feeble attempts to shore-up their own commercial position. Screaming about the vulnerabilities of open standards VoIP?, how about we look at the history of proprietary applications, especially in P2P plays. I distinctly remember a certain file sharing application which was comprised mainly of adware and spysware. In the article below, Niklas is once again screaming about the major security issues surrounding open standards VoIP. Well Niklas, I guess we should just abandon those open standards and stick with the proprietary apps because they are so much more secure, like hell they are! I agree we have some work to do regarding security but the last thing we should do is stick our heads in the sand. Proprietary vendors are building another IP Communications Tower of Babel, open standards advocates will be those responsible for tearing it down. In open standards we can all work together to solve the issues that arise and design a shared vision that will stand the test of time. Proprietary vendors would have you use 1 application, THEIR application. Sounds a lot like a dictatorship to me. Healthy competition has always been good for the consumer, using the same protocol in competitive software services drives innovation and provides the consumer with far more choices. Let's take the gloves off. I would like to see Jeff Pulver present a panel in Boston this year at Fall VON. That panel would be comprised of 3 open standards advocates and 3 [if you can find them] pro-proprietary spokesmen. The topic "Open Standards versus Proprietary Technology, Which Will Prevail and Which will Fail!" Each presenter would have 10 minutes to speak their mind. At the end, 2 from each team are chosen to debate the issues for another 15 minutes. During this time the audience will ask the panel questions and each member will have a chance to respond. What say you Jeff? Ready to take it to the streets?

3G is nearing the boiling point in Europe. CDMA2000 1x is in trials in the US and VoIP has never been hotter. Soon you will see Voice and Video over IP deployed via 3G and CDMA 1x networks which will once again change the communications landscape. Keep your ears and eyes open, for those companies that are actively involved in contributing to the Cellular + VoIP movement will prosper greatly. On that note, here is an article on WiFi VoIP... Wireless VOIP Not Ready for Prime Time LONDON—Enterprise might already be using voice over wireless LAN, but the technology is still far from perfect, admitted networking and telecom executives at this week's VON Europe conference here. Even the most bullish said that a host of problems, from security to ease-of-use, need to be ironed out before wireless VOIP (voice over IP) can live up to its potential and shake up the wireless voice industry. "I believe the impact of this technology will be massive, disruptive and chaotic, but also opportunistic," said Graham Rivers, the former director of business development and strategy at T-Mobile. more...