September 8th, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on September 8th, 2006.
Just a quick note before signing off for Fall VON. I've had two articles just published - one solo for Telemanagement Magazine, and one co-written with Danny Klein of Vesbridge for Telecommunications Magazine. Thought I'd share them here for reading before the conference.
So, if you're interested in a couple of quick reads on things I'm writing about, you can find them in the Articles section of my website. Any feedback is appreciated!
Technorati tags: Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates, Telemanagement, Telecommunications Magazine
Written by Jon Arnold's Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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A new research study conducted by IDC revealed that households with home-based businesses are likely to adopt VoIP telephone technology in large number. Adoption rate among home business users is higher than that among residential users. At present, 39.1% of corporate home offices and 23.7% of independent home businesses in the US are planning to use VoIP in some way. This compares to just 10.8% of other households. IDC predicts that this trend will continue to develop over the next few years.
In another post, I had provided information about global IP phone sales. The post was titled as "Global IP Phone Sales Reach $500m".
Written by Sagar on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Residential VoIP.
The demand for mobile VoIP devices is growing up. You must have heard about a different mobile VoIP devices launched by various companies. Now, UTStarcom Inc. has launched its newest portable Wi-Fi handset, known as the F3000. The phone comes in black or gold clamshell design. It features a full color, 1.8-inch LCD screen, polyphonic ringtones, text messaging capability and talk-time of up to three houses. It also has a stand-by time of approximately 75 hours.
Read our previous post titled "GN Netcom Launches New VoIP Headset" to know about GN Netcom's VoIP headset.
Written by Sagar on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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AOL LLC said it would make available its AIM Phoneline VoIP service, which is part of its instant messaging client, to developers in a bid to spur new hardware and functionality for the service. The company is owned by Time Warner Inc. The company is planning to release three APIs for the development of a few new features of Phoneline. The company has launched another free service PC-to-PC VoIP service within its AIM instant messaging client. It is known as AdvertisementPhoneline. Users can add outbound calling to the service for a flat fee of $9.95 a month.
Recently, I had written a post titled "Carrier VoIP Market Up". You must read it to know about carrier VoIP market.
Written by Sagar on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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British companies will be able to set up local access numbers in over 40 countries in just two days. They will be able to do so by using the latest VoIP technology. The new service has been launched by Voxbone, which is Europe's first and largest provider of high quality VoIP services to businesses around the world. Voxbone's high quality Direct Inbound Dialling (DID) VoIP technology will allow companies to extend their reach globally at a fraction of the cost of setting up a traditional fixed line service.
Read my previous post titled "VoIP to Landline Calls are Free on Gizmo Project" to know about Gizmo Project.
Written by Sagar on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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CTI Group, an online billing, self-care and communication management solution provider, has announced the release of SmartRecord IP. The Web-based call recording solution is positioned as enabling service providers to deliver a superior contact center solution as well as facilitate legal and regulatory recording scenarios. VoIP service is gaining popularity in the service provider sector. Industry analysts estimate that the hosted IP telephony market is estimated to grow from $310 million in 2005 to nearly $6 billion by the end of 2010.
Read my previous post titled "Consumer VoIP in the Workplace", which provides information about consumer VoIP in the workplace.
Written by Sagar on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Packet8 does business VoIP? Now of course, I'm aware many residential VoIP service providers, including
Vonage "offer" business VoIP plans, but they don't really promote it that much. Has anyone seen Vonage promote "business VoIP on their "woo hoo" commercials? No? I didn't think so. Well, Packet8 seems to be very high on business VoIP. I was reading
Rich's blog and he pointed out that
Packet8 has partnered with TMC on a Business VoIP portal called
VoIP Services for SMB and Residential, which has
unique VoIP news, articles, and features that you won't see elsewhere on TMCnet or
anywhere else on the Net for that matter.
TMC continues to strive to provide our readers with the best information on VoIP and the new Packet8 portal is no exception. Make sure to
check it out regularly.
Speaking of providing our readers with the best information on VoIP - I just got my September issue of TMC's Internet Telephony Magazine, which is a
whopping 168 pages!!! No other magazine in the world exclusively dedicated to IP communications has that many pages in their print publications. Hat tip to my fellow TMC team members on a job well done.
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Phone number portability
is becoming more of an issue for people who tend to move around a lot,
obviously. Tom Keating recently talked about his frustrations of moving his stationary phone number
to a different VoIP provider. Imagine the problems of trying to move
your mobile number. (Everytime I've changed cellular providers, I've
had to get a new number.)
In Japan, mobile operators will be allowing cell phone users to keep their phone numbers
[VNU Net] when they switch providers. This government-mandated option
will not officially take effect until late October, but millions of
switchers are expected. Part of the reason for this is that Japan has a
very high percentage of mobile phone users (97 M) compared to the
population size (127 M).
Portability in this situation is
actually beneficial to mobile service providers because of the
saturation. Customers have the advantage, but providers also benefit
from customers who switch - since the chance of gaining new customers
is reduced. Everyone's happy. Hopefully.
Written by ewriter on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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A few months ago, Robert Young had said that Rupert Murdoch will and should be very interested in fixed wireless technologies. Subsequent media reports and aggressive (and failed) bids for spectrum in the recent Advanced Wireless Spectrum (AWS) auctions indicate that the wily old fox and his company are seriously interested in life beyond satellite. There hasn’t been much concrete proof of his plans, but today we did discover another little gem which indicates that News Corp. is very interested in WiMAX.
At the upcoming IBC 2006 show, NDS (Nasdaq: NNDS), a PayTV software maker based in UK will demo a TV-over-WIMAX system in partnership with Intel and Modern Times Group’s Viasat Broadcasting, a leading digital satellite pay-TV broadcaster in the Nordic countries. They will show that WiMAX TV software from NDS will be able to deliver content over WiMAX to personal Consumer Electronic (CE) devices such as laptop computers and other handheld devices.
Visitors to the NDS stand at IBC 2006 (1.171) will be able to see a demonstration of live Viasat content encoded in MPEG-4 AVC using a Grass Valley Argos advanced H.264 real-time encoder and then delivered through the NDS WiMAX TV system over WiMAX to an Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology based notebook PC.
Normally one would dismiss this as yet another demo-ware press release, but the fact that NDS’ largest shareholder is News Corp., makes us take note of this announcement. TV-over-WiMAX could take away the important video-over-fixed line arguments that Cable & DSL guys constantly offer when dismissing wireless.
From Murdoch’s perspective, unlicensed spectrum could be one way of getting into the broadband game? Of course we have speculated a future relationship with Clearwire in the US. So many scenarios that can play out, but the one that makes most sense to me: no need to cannibalize his core satellite businesses. Thoughts?
Written by Om Malik on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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We launched Web Worker Daily earlier this week, and I wanted to take a minute to point out some of the highlights from this week.
- We are running a series on WiFi City States which compares some of the better wifi cafes, public places and of course pubs. Cities covered so far: Austin, New York, London and Seattle.. If you would like to write/contribute something similar from your city, do lets us know. Niall Kennedy writes about Cafes that inspire him.
- Liz Gannes compares the online spreadsheets. Our readers think, ThinkOffice maybe old school, but it is still pretty cool.
- A new SWAT approach to virtual work.
- Approver.com, a new document approval service.
- Is Email good enough for collaboration?
Written by Om Malik on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Note: Safe to say no one is surprised about this.
A proposal to blanket 1,500 square miles of Silicon Valley with affordable wireless access to the Internet stepped closer to reality Tuesday after a joint task force selected Silicon Valley Metro Connect to build and operate the network. Metro Connect, a tech consortium that includes Cisco Systems, Cisco Systems and IBM, said it secured the winning bid from the Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force. Further approvals by individual municipalities still need to be worked out, however, before the wireless network aimed to serve the region's 2.4 million residents gets built.
Dozens of other communities across the United States, including the city of San Francisco, also are planning similar public wireless networks, but the Silicon Valley project would be one of the largest in scope. The Wireless Silicon Valley Task Force, comprised of local government officials and representatives from utility companies, is proposing a network of thousands of radio transceivers that could carry Internet signals from South San Francisco all the way south through Santa Cruz.
The project would essentially create a giant "WiFi hotspot" like those frequently found at individual airports and coffee shops. Metro Connect said its privately owned and operated network would be financed through sponsorships, giving residents in the region free access to basic WiFi Latest News about WiFi service at broadband speeds. Additional features, however, such as Internet-based phone calls or streaming video, would carry some fees. Actual pricing for the paid services have not yet been determined.
Source: AP
Written by Dal on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Really like the fact that my favorite newsaper, the New York Times, has just launched a web site optimized for mobile phone users. They even released a press release about it.
The site, http://mobile.nytimes.com, provides access to news and information from NYTimes.com via mobile devices including Web-enabled phones and PDAs.
Readers can scan headlines on the section-fronts or read the complete articles from Latest News, World, Business, Sports, Arts and all other top-level sections of the Web site.
Spent some time playing around with it already via my Treo 650 (Sprint service), and let me tell you the downloads are much faster than via the regular NY Times web site! How much faster -- very much faster!
The NYTimes.com mobile site can be activated for free by typing http://mobile.nytimes.com into the Web browser of a Web-enabled phone or PDA.
Get all the news that's fit to download!
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Skype announced a couple of days
ago that SkypeOut calls would be free from France to landlines in
France. As with the SkypeOut offer in Canada and the US, this offer is
only good until Dec 31, 2006. (However, out calls to mobile numbers are
not free in France, but are in North America.) Skype also recently
announced free SkypeOut calls to toll-free landlines in Taiwan. Skype calls can be made on PC, Mac, Linux computers, Pocket PC phones/ PDAs, and several new Wi-Fi and DECT phones.
On
the other hand, if you don't live in France or North America - or even
if you do - Fleurop-Interflora Flowers, a Skype partner, is running a free phone promo. Buy flowers, refer five friends, and if one of them buys flowers, you'll get a free Perfectel USB Skype phone.
Written by ewriter on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Skype and Phones.
I just wanted to quickly comment that some bloggers have correctly noted that the best coverage on AIM's Phoneline Developer Program news has come from the blogs, and not the mainstream business media. I was hinting at that yesterday, and maybe people picked up on that. Regardless, it's pretty clear that in this instance, the blogger community is far more plugged into what the story really means - not just at face value, but for the bigger picture we call Voice 2.0.
On this count, I especially wanted to cite posts from Alec Saunders and Jeff Pulver. Alec's post is particularly good because he points out how poor the coverage was from CNET, including their not being aware that TotalTalk had been shelved.
There are many well informed bloggers in this space who write well, and with a lot of valuable insight. In time, scenarios like this will become too frequent that big media will need to re-think their sources and start paying more attention to the blogger community. In the end, readers will be better served, and that's really the most important thing here. So, I'd chalk this one up as another W in the blogger win column!
Technorati tags: AIM Phoneline, Jon Arnold, Jeff Pulver, Alec Saunders, blogs
Written by Jon Arnold's Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Seems like everyone and his brother is developing VoIP extensions for Firefox. I
wrote about Zoep which adds a
VoIP extension to Firefox. It appears that Zoep's website is no longer available, so that project may have been killed.
Openwengo is yet another VoIP player offering a VoIP extension to Firefox. Today, I was given a
heads-up by Luca Filigheddu that
AbbeyNetLabs, a VoIP service provider has just released VoIP extensions for Firefox and Thunderbird that runs on both
Mac and
Linux. (A
Windows version of their Firefox VoIP extension is already out.) The software is called AbbeyPhone and it is SIP-compliant.
Continue reading Firefox VoIP extension...
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Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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This week's podcast was with Kevin McCracken, NewStep Networks's Director of Product Management. NewStep is based here in Toronto, and is a Bell Canada spinoff, now making their mark in the FMC space. Kevin and I talked about the current trends in FMC, and how it is gaining good traction in a pre-IMS environment. We also compared market conditions between U.S. and Canadian wireless opeators and how that impacts their FMC plans.
You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Kevin and NewStep Networks.
FYI - I'll be at Fall VON next week, and my regular podcasts will resume the week after, with Vonage Canada being my scheduled guest. I'm hoping to do a podcast or two from the show floor at VON, so I should have something in the podcast bin next week for those need their weekly podfix.
Technorati tags: FMC, Jon Arnold, NewStep Networks, VoIP Podcasts
Written by Jon Arnold's Blog on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Social network Facebook, facing rebellion from within its ranks, scrambled last night to address backlash against new features. The company has apologized for the abruptness of its launch of its new friend monitoring tools, News Feed and Mini-Feed, and made their privacy settings more specific. CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an open letter to all users, explaining that though the site is built around closed networks and control over sharing information, “Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it.”
Information submitted to News Feeds are now divided into three categories: optionally excluded, excluded, and always included. Some of the most contentious issues, such as notifications for when a friend left a group or changed his relationship status, are now optional. Information about passive activities on the site, such as viewing profiles and reading notes, is excluded, as well as declining to be friends with someone or to join an group or event. But Facebook is holding firm on a few points: always published are expansions to a person’s profile, such as new favorites, photos, notes, events, or groups.
Users seemed appeased by the response, leaving comments such as “The fact that they started working to fix the problem so quickly really shows how much they care. I feel like a jerk who created silly high-school drama,” and “Zuckerberg is obviously willing to take our input, so give the dude time to work out the kinks. In the meantime, celebrate that someone cared enough to listen to what a bunch of kids had to say!!” Still, nearly 750,000 people remained part of the core Facebook protest group, Students Against Facebook News Feed. The group’s leader wrote “We’re not completely done yet, but we’ve made incredible progress,” noting he was not satisfied that changes made to membership in groups were still displayed.
Zuckerberg and other Facebook staff promised to be available in a discussion group this afternoon to address concerns. This does seem like a case where tools that Facebook hasn’t built would be better for facilitating conversation — the venue is a simple bulletin board!
Facebook’s rapid response to its community may save it from becoming the next Friendster. The company is most certainly pushing its ideal of a social network utility rather than let its users evolve the site naturally. Facebook works best for relationships that people want to maintain — in those cases, privacy is much less important.
What would be best for Zuckerberg is if all his members went through and deleted all the legacy connections, making their networks accurate depictions of who they currently have relationships with. However, as we noted in the comments to our previous post on this issue, the Venn diagrams of friends on Facebook are becoming more complicated every year. Facebook makes considerable effort to parse out which of your friends can see what, but it needs to continue to innovate in this levels-of-relationship area to have any hope of its lofty visions.
Written by Liz Gannes on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Software 2.0 and Startups.
It has not been a good week for HP - what with the troubling news the company
hacked into the phone records of its directors and a CNet reporter to
track down a leak. Now, they've gone and pissed off my friend, Drew Hasselback, who took his hard-earned dollars and bought a Compaq laptop from Best Buy in July but has had nothing but trouble with it. His efforts to get some love from HP customer service have been a series of calamities and incompetence. Drew's recounts his sorry tale in a guest post called "10 Strikes and Counting".
I've had customer service problems with companies in the past -- who hasn't? -- but I've never gone through anything like my experience with "JD
Power-certified" Compaq.
I bought a Compaq Presario Laptop on June 6. The computer broke on July 16. I spent about three hours on the phone over three days trying to sort this problem out. I was told of a temporary fix that involved removing the battery and perfoming a "hard reset." This got the computer up and running for a few days, but the problem didn't really go away. Product failure is
Strike One.
- I phoned on July 22 and arranged to ship my computer back to HP Compaq under warranty. I also asked for a Restore CD, in case that might help resolve future problems. I shipped the computer on July 27.
- According to FedEx, my Restore disc was shipped to an address in Port Moody, B.C. on July 25. I live at Yonge and Lawrence in Toronto.
Strike Two is forgetting what province Toronto is in.
- On August 4, Compaq emailed me to warn that the parts needed for my repairs were on backorder. I'd later learn that Compaq needed both a fan and a mother board.
Strike Three is excessive delay for the repairs. I can understand how this happens, but I shouldn't be the one to suffer for it.
- On August 18, I phoned and requested an update. By August 21, I received emails telling me the parts were still on back order. On September 1, I called to request an update.
Strike Four is that I would actually have to do this. Compaq should have been contacting me at least once a week, by email or by phone, to bring me up to speed. Anyway, Compaq asked me to fax my details to the Customer Satisfaction Department at Compaq. I provided my WORK telephone number for future contact. I sent the fax over the long weekend.
- On September 5, Compaq called my HOME number and left a message. My wife called me at work and passed along the news.
Strike Five is failure to read my fax, which was written in 18pt type. Eventually I spoke with the Compaq guy. We struck a deal: Compaq would send me a new machine, a superior model to the one I bought. The terms of this deal specificly required that the machine be sent to my WORK address, because I didn't want to have to truck out to the Purolator hub in Etobicoke to pick up a mixed delivery.
- On September 6, Compaq shipped a product to my HOME address during the day. This meant I had to drive 60-km and clock 90 minutes on a round-trip to Etobicoke (which BTW caused me to miss the opening kickoff of the 2006/07 NFL season).
Strike Six -- Failure to comply with my otherwise simple shipping instructions.
- When I got home on September 6, I discovered the Compaq had shipped me not my new computer, but my old broken one.
Strike Seven. Of course, the broken one hadn't been fixed at all.
Strike Eight. I will likely have to ship the broken machine back to Compaq, a process that is bound to gum up another hour or so of my time.
Strike Nine.
- I called September 7 to complain. I asked for the case mnager so I could ask how this problem will be solved. This wasn't possible -- Compaq's
customer service department isn't able to transfer calls (seriously -- this is a technology company that can't transfer phone calls). Compaq could only
say that someone will contact me within 48 hours. That's
Strike 10 -- I've been waiting since July 16. I need someone to solve this now, not pass the
problem along to someone else for later.
- So that's 10 ways in which Compaq has failed to deal with my problem. I've owned the computer for 14 weeks. It worked for only five. I've waited the last nine weeks for a resolution.
Written by Mark Evans on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to a published report today on Yahoo! via Reuters, Nokia is abandoning its long-standing practice of giving its cell phones numbers instead of names.
Seems that it's influenced by Motorola with all of its snazzy phone names.
Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?
Or would the RazR be so cool as the Motorola CP356 or would LG Chocolate excite everyone's taste buds if it was the LG-907 CH?
On the other hand, where would James Bond be without 007?
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Somedays when he is not being a Cranky Geek, John Dvorak comes up with good stuff. Today he points to HolerSoft, a French company that has come-up with a Windows-only application that allows you to watch 1200 channels from around the world on your PC. “The cable companies should consider the Holersoft announcement as a shot over the bow and begin to rethink their business model, fast,” he quips. Of course, while the broadband players dither, there are other options. John points to Channel Chooser, which has a few hundred channels. Now we know, if Jeff Pulver reads this post, he is going to be late for the VoN show next week.
Written by Om Malik on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Media and Broadband.
Emerging broadband nations like China and India are deploying DSL as fast as they can. But not fast enough - because of some serious talent shortage. China is facing an acute shortage of DSL engineers. Recruit.net, an Asia-specific job search engine, shows 150 openings for “DSL” related jobs. 326 jobs in India. Vast.com has over 14,000 job listings under the keyword “DSL.” Interesting indications for an ongoing broadband boom… not that there is anything wrong with it. Anyway if you are a DSL dude (or DSL Diva), time to put on your traveling shoes and go find your fortunes elsewhere.
Written by Om Malik on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Om Malik thinks Palm's Treo line may be in trouble.
While I keep repeatedly writing how much I love my Treo 650, reading
what Om has written makes me realize that I have some of the same
issues, and then some. Apparently the company is aware of this and
already says their sales for this new fiscal quarter will be lower than expected.
Now
I got a good deal on my Treo, either $149 or $199 - I don't remember
exactly, because I think I got an extra $50 rebate from an already
unexpectedly low price. And for my purposes, it's quite sufficient. I
owned a Palm V from late 1999 and I loved it. But after dropping it way
too many times - even inside a Rhino aluminum case - it ceased to work
altogether. Back then, the damn thing cost me around $650 including
sales taxes, and they didn't have any connectivity whatsover.
However,
I love Palm's OS and interface, and the opportunities to develop
software for it (my own projects) seemed more worthwile, since Palm OS
PDAs rule the market. Or did. That's probably changing. And now with
RIM's slick new Blackberry Pearl mobile phone/ music player, leaked news of Palm's not-yet-shipping Treo 750 phone may not make a difference. Throw in the fact that a prototype Apple iPod Phone (iPhone?) has now been confirmed ready for manufacture, the hybrid phone/ MP3 player war is going to likely be furious. Ultimately, the player/ PDA/ cell phone I'll settle on has to have simple to use mobile VoIP.
Written by ewriter on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Amid the flurry of photo and video-sharing start-ups, it is interesting to see Shutterfly file for a $73-million IPO. Remember Shutterfly - the online photo service company that popped up during the dot-com boom along with rivals such as Ofoto and Snapfish? Shutterfly's high-profile investors include Jim Clark (remember him?) and Tom Jermoluk. According to the company's S-1 filing with SEC, Shutterly had operating income of $4.4-million on revenue of $83.9-million last year. This compares with operating income of $3.9-million on revenue of $54.4-million in 2004. So, unlike all those Web 2.0 photo "newbies", Shutterfly is a real company with real revenue and profits. I wonder whether investors will snap up the IPO shares, which will be sold at $13 to $15.
Written by Mark Evans on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Nokia, which plans to start giving its devices names rather than numbers, could emerge as a more viable rival to the Blackberry (including the impressive Pearl) than the Motorola Q. I just got hold of a review unit of the Nokia E62 earlier this week, and came away pretty impressed. It comes with a nice colour screen, push e-mail, Bluetooth and QuickOffice (for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents). The E62 has a natural, intuitive feel that makes it quite easy to use. This compares with the Q, which was somewhat frustrating to manipulate. Perhaps this has to do with being a long-time Blackberry user. I'm not about to suggest the E62 will be the newest Blackberry-killer (editor's note: can we stop trying to promote this concept until a real rival appears?) but the E62 is pretty appealing. Nokia plans to encourage consumer adoption by aggressively pricing the E62. Rogers, the first North American carrier to offer it, will sell the device for $249 with a three-year contract.
Written by Mark Evans on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and Research in Motion.
We've seen two large user communities take to the virtual streets this week in protest over new and planned updates from Facebook and Digg. Facebook introduced a new way to keep up with your friends and later put up a blog post in an attempt to calm the site's community. Digg announced changes to how it handles story promotion and classifications of top users, causing at least one top user to resign in disgust.
The participatory web has created a two-way relationship between websites and their users. Social sites are reliant upon the contributions of individual nodes to add value to the total power of the network. The site must continue to introduce new features to keep users engaged and to stay ahead of the competition.
The Web is a place of constant change. Companies can either engage with their online communities or watch their brand and user base fall apart as users move to the next best solution. Many of the mini-revolts rapidly emerging in online concentrated communities can be prevented with better communication and adaptability of businesses.
This week's PodSession, User Generated Revolt, is 21 minutes in length, a 20 MB download.
Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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