During the 3 days the show floor was open at VON I had 20 Press and Analyst interviews. There were quite a few who had questions regarding Microsoft's announcement of Istanbul and how that may affect Xten's market for SIP softphones. Our response is simple, Istanbul is still an enterprise play and is not part of our target market. I actually think it's great because it will educate the business sector which will of course help foster the growth of IP communications in general. Xten sells soft SIP endpoints to anyone who wants to buy, the volume discounts are the same for all. This is why we are favoured by the carriers, multiple service operators and large service providers. Xten does have enterprise customers but we do not go looking for that business, as a matter of fact we have yet to place an outbound sales call! It's the truth! Since this company started selling software back in May of last year we have not made 1 outbound sales call. We are hiring people like mad and we are STILL in reactionary mode from a sales perspective. Xten is in a very unique position, the excitement around our products and company is something I have personally never been part of before. It's unreal! There are so many awesome things happening here, I wish I could SAY SOMETHING!!!
October 2004 Archives
VON was buzzing with talk of VoIP Mobility and complete IP Communications solutions. I am always interested in what is happening in this space. Xten demonstrated open standards IM and Presence with the aid of SIMPLE and XCAP. eyeBeam for MAC OS X made it to prime time and Pocket PC v2.2 went live. Excellent show! More later...
What is really going on at VON?! There was a lot to say about large vendors and such but the real story was, what is next? Stay tuned, it's coming. -e
BroadSoft customers today had a sneak preview of Xten's enhanced eyeBeam SIP softphone supporting VoIP, Video, Instant Messaging and Presence based on open standards SANTA CLARA, CA, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Xten (OTCBB: XNWK - News), a provider of VoIP (Voice over IP) and Video over IP SIP softphones, today announced support for Instant Messaging and Presence using IETF proposed standards including SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) and XCAP (Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol) will be publicly available very soon. Xten demonstrated the new IM and Presence features to be offered in eyeBeam and the eyeBeam SDK at BroadSoft Connections Conference in Phoenix yesterday. "The crowd was very excited to see SIMPLE and Presence with Centralized Buddy Lists in action in an open standards softphone", commented Erik Lagerway, president and chief operating officer at Xten, "Based on the feedback we have received the eyeBeam VoIP and Video softphone SDK with support for SIMPLE and XCAP will be an attractive alternative to other somewhat proprietary offerings already available and soon to be launched in the market."
Yesterday Xten performed live demonstrations of eyeBeam with Instant Messaging and Presence at BroadSoft's Connections Conference 2004. The new IM and Presence features based on SIMPLE and XCAP for eyeBeam 1.1 will be released before the end of 2004. The demonstrations at Connections were flawless and created tremendous interest!
NetEvents: The traditional phone companies are trying to stifle innovation in next-generation IP services, according to equipment makers Old-school telecoms operators are suspected of scheming behind the scenes in an attempt to hamper the new wave of companies offering IP-based telephony services. Bert Whyte, chief executive of net.com -- a maker of broadband telecoms equipment -- claimed on Thursday that incumbents are lobbying regulators and governments in an attempt to stop Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers damaging their existing profitable voice services. "Every carrier is concerned about this trend towards VoIP. There´s nothing they can do about this emerging explosion, unless they work with governments to regulate this business," Whyte told a group of journalists at NetEvents in Barcelona on Thursday.
Santa Clara, October 6, 2004 – /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – Xten (OTCBB: XNWK), a provider of VoIP (Voice over IP) and Video over IP SIP softphones, today announced the appointment of Sean O’Neil as Director of Software Development. O’Neil has 8 years of experience as a software development manager with a number of high technology companies including Cisco Systems in San Jose, California and Brooks Automation Software in Richmond, British Columbia. Highlights of O’Neil’s career include his leadership in the development and delivery of a pioneering open source voice project called VOCAL, for Cisco-acquired startup Vovida Networks. Since VOCAL’s release in 2001, it has been downloaded by many of the significant telecom developers and providers.. “Functionality and value in VoIP networks are moving to the edge, and that is where Xten lives. Xten produces the most reliable and feature-rich, standards compliant softphones in the industry,” said Sean O’Neil, newly appointed Director of Software Development of Xten. “I am honored to be joining this team as we take softphones to the next level.”
RTC? What the heck are people thinking? Here is another good example why no one should use RTC or LCS exclusively. MS are rumored once again of making noises about disrupting business for their own customers. No surprise here. Why anyone would tie themselves down to RTC / LCS exclusively is beyond me. reSIProcate, SIMPLE and XCAP are already in-hand. There is no reason for this at all. If you are a customer and you are dealing with an RTC user base you should be looking for an endpoint that is more open standards minded and build some RTC functionality into that product. I can hardly believe I just said that but if you must deal with RTC and LCS then you should at the very least interop with other SIP, SIMPLE and XCAP end points and services. Every customer we have been working with, the biggest in the world, are all bailing out of RTC and LCS because of it's severe limitations. Xten will be providing demos of a new version of eyeBeam at VON with support for SIMPLE and XCAP in 2 weeks. The proof is in the pudding.
More proof that Xten is doing what we set out to in SIP. If you are an EarthLink subscriber you can Download the EarthLink Softphone powered by Xten, Click Here. Sign up for the service here. EarthLink has peered their new VoIP network with 2 other Free VoIP networks FWD - Free World Dialup and SIPphone. Both of these networks use Xten software. At Supercomm 2004 Mr. Pulver's team presented some slides that showed over 42% of the entire FWD endpoints as being Xten's X-Lite software, not including X-PRO or eyeBeam. This is almost more than all other endpoints combined including Microsoft's Messenger, Cisco's IP Phones and ATAs, Pintel softphones and handsets.
Cox Communications has released details of its residential and business Voice over IP rollouts. The cable giant said Tulsa, Okla., has become its second consumer voice market (Roanoke, Va., was the first). By year's end, it will add Baton Rouge, La., parts of west Texas and southwest Louisiana. Cox also announced plans to launch its first business VoIP-based offering in Roanoke, Va., later this year. Amy Cohn, a Cox spokeswoman, said pricing varies by state, but the company's strategy is to offer phone service for about 10 percent less than the regional telecom carrier. Besides cable providers, there's an increasing number of VoIP choices from Baby Bells, long-distance companies and deep-pocketed Internet upstarts. more...
Baby Bell Aims to Lure More Dial-up Users to DSL by Offering Speed Bursts OCTOBER 01, 2004 By Alan Breznick, editor, Cable Datacom News Beating U.S. cable operators to the punch, BellSouth has started trying out an on-demand broadband service that will let Internet access subscribers temporarily crank up their data transmission speeds whenever they wish. One of the most innovative players in the broadband business, BellSouth is testing the on-demand concept in up to 750 homes in southeast Florida. As part of the scheduled three-month trial, which started in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area in August, the regional Bell is offering customers an always-on, 56 kilobits per second (kbps) DSL connection with the ability to upgrade to as high as 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) speed at a moment's notice.
No sooner had AT&T announced a $5.00 a month cut in its VoIP service effective Friday, than Vonage Holdings dropped its VoIP monthly charge by $5.00, thereby remaining $5.00 below AT&T's charge. With the new prices, AT&T's monthly charge is $29.99, while Vonage's price is $24.99. Both services are similar, offering local and long-distance service in the U.S. and Canada, in addition to a host of advanced features, such as call forwarding, which can be managed over users' PCs. more...
