Recently, TMC's Stefania Viscusi interviewed Paul Wiggins, convergence technology manager at Tone Software.
She asked him how proactive quality control management can ensure that overall VoIP service levels are met. Wiggins said that in-depth management is a big piece of ensuring service levels.
"When quality issues arise, technicians need to be armed with a set of metrics that help them diagnose the root cause of the issues, so they can expedite remediation," he said.
In addition to providing out of the box best practices, and management for every major hardware vendor, ReliaTel Streamline provides a "robust set of voice quality metrics," Wiggins noted, such as "density, differentiating between packet discard rate and network loss, and degradation due to signal noise and echo."
All of these, he said, give insight into the cause of quality impairment: "These VoIP quality metrics, together with infrastructure performance and health metrics, are visible within the ReliaTel Streamline single pane of glass management interface, which provides a 360-degree view to both pre-empt quality and performance issues, as well as to expedite remediation.
Nextiva officials are describing their Nextiva Connect service as giving users "one central local or toll-free phone number" to offer clients.
Using an on-line control panel, users can, "choose how your calls are handled," company officials say: "You can have the calls go to your cell phone, your home phone, a phone in your hotel, all three, or anywhere else. You can even send them to department voice mail boxes that you set-up."
Basically the service is designed so you don't have a real good reason to miss another call.
Since establishing the concept that developing an iPhone app was the way to go, "we needed a phone system because using our cell phones all day wasn't going to cut it," said Ben Fisher of Inetmania.com, explaining why his company went with Nextiva.
Nextiva vFAX officials touting their service as being one where, "all you need is an Internet connection in order to send and receive faxes."
According to Nextiva officials, the online fax service is "easy to use, affordable and gives you great flexibility."
Indeed, one distinct advantage of an online fax service is no paper jams, system errors, or busy signals.
This is because Nextiva online fax will enable you to fax by e-mail, via Microsoft Office, from your online control panel, or continue sending faxes through your fax machine.
Some features the company promises:
No more busy signals. "No matter which method you chose to fax through our service, we will keep sending your fax until your party's fax Machine is available. Go sit down and relax. We will send you the confirmation."
Recently TMC's Carl Ford had a chance to sit down and talk with iPass's Steven Wastie, senior vice president of marketing, at the show. Wastie spoke about the differences between iPass now from years ago.
The company started off aggregating networks around the world, Wastie said, dial networks at that point: "Rather than signing agreements with 50, 60 ISPs you could sign one agreement with us and we'd give you access around the world," he said, explaining how iPass would solve the complexity problem at the time.
It was a great business for iPass, Wastie said, and when Wi-Fi came on the scene, they aggregated Wi-Fi hotspots around the world: "The access mechanisms have evolved and changed over time, but we still provide those network services, that's one part of our business."
The other part of their business, Wastie said, is related to that, managing the mobility problem - "how do you get connected?" He said iPass has an open mobile platform that allows them to work with any network, no matter where you are.
Recently TMC's Carl Ford had a chance to sit down with Trilithic's senior product manager, Sam Johnson, to discuss the directions the company's taking.
Johnson explained that Trilithic is really six divisions in one company, and that he represents the RF & Microwave division, which makes filters, components, switches and the like.
Most of the company's activity is geared to better signaling, "better throughput on the signals for customers," as Ford put it. Johnson said a lot of their products are used in guidance and radar systems for the military, and commercially in signal processing for PCS and other cell bands and communications equipment.
