December 8th, 2006
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest written on December 8th, 2006.
>While poking around on the Net tonight, I found this interesting piece by Matt Brunk over at VoIP Loop . Matts piece is centered around a report in September from the DellOro Group , 51% of phone systems shipped in the first quarter of this year were Hybrid IP-PBXs. Mat goes on to give an excellent overview of the benefits and advantage of businesses using a Hybrid PBX in addition to alluding to the pitfalls of a pure IP PBX solution. The most important part of this piece though, and something I think Matt did not emphasize enough, is that with any business communication decision, you have to evaluate what is best for your business. In almost all cases, a pure IP PBX solution (with no PSTN fail-over) is a bad idea. IP connectivity and the uncontrolable nature of most IP networks makes pure IP PBX systems a bad idea especially for mission critical business functions like phone calls. Hybrid solutions offer the best of both worlds, allowing businesses to leverage lower long distance costs and toll-by pass, while maintaining reliable life-line connectivity (and local dialing) through the PSTN. I am huge proponent of VoIP, but I want to see businesses leverage VoIP to their advantage, not get caught-up in all of the hoop-la. This is why I give Hybrid solutions, like the Talkswitch 284VS , two thumbs up.
Written by Smith On VoIP - Insights on VoIP Products and Serv on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Yahoo! announced a company reorganization earlier this week, announcing what CEO Terry Semel calls the company's "third phase -- one focused on customers." The new focus seems like a maturation from Yahoo's previous focus on organization through directories, search, and now people.
Yahoo! is the biggest Internet brand in the United States and Japan as well as a significant player throughout the world. The Yahoo.com homepage, mail, and instant messenger are at the center of many people's lives, connecting them to the people and information they care most about. In the U.S. the Yahoo! brand might even be attached to your dial-up or broadband service through companies such as AT&T. Check your fantasy sports team, find a date, send e-mail, create your own cartoon impersonation, program your TiVo, download music, research your stocks, find a new job, all within the same web property.
Om and I evaluate the current and future prospects for Yahoo in our latest PodSesssion, Yahoo! for the masses. The podcast is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.
Written by Om Malik and Niall Kennedy on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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If Yahoo is getting out of the Voice game , then why are they inking deals with VoIP Peering and Termination providers? Yahoo! and VSNL announced today a deal that according to Michel Guyot, President of Global Voice Services, VSNL International is a Voice over IP peering agreement with Yahoo; that is voice-linked services. It makes our reciprocal network - Yahoo network and VSNL Teleglobe network - inter-operable with a diverse list of voice equipment. From the looks of this, the recent re-organization at Yahoo! has not yet effected the Yahoo! voice group. If anything, I think we are going to see even more from Yahoo! on the voice front in the very near future.
Written by Smith On VoIP - Insights on VoIP Products and Serv on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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>The Futiro Luna VoIP phone has by far the hottest design of any VoIP phone on the market today. Built for complete integration with Skype, the Futiro Luna is the type of phone every single technophile should have on display in their home to impress the memebers of the opposite sex (another benefit of VoIP > ). The Futiro Luna features a unique free standing design, hands free functionality, echo reduction technology, a one year warranty, and an economical $75 USD price tag. If only ever IP Phone vendor had Futiros eye for design
Written by Smith On VoIP - Insights on VoIP Products and Serv on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Don't expect the Apple iPhone until March at the earliest, and quite possibly not until sometime in the second quarter of 2007.
That's no idle speculation, but the result of some bound-and-determined sniffing around by researchers at CIBC World Markets
An analyst report released earlier today by CIBC World Markets Glen Anderson states the case for a [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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I interviewed Don Albert on Tuesday, 28 November 2006, over lunch at eBay’s cafeteria. Albert is Skype’s general manager for the United States and Canada, what Skype calls North America. This transcript is roughly edited. Jennifer Caukin, Skype’s North America public relations director sat in. – Phil Wolff
The day before our talk, Skype started reorganizing, moving marketing functions to their London headquarters under chief marketing officer Henry Gomez.
Skype Journal: With marketing more centralized in London and engineering in Tallinn, what’s here?
Don Albert: So Henry and the rest of the executive team thought it was really important to have a team on the ground. Because this market requires some special attention. Skype is not as well known or as well penetrated here as it is in Europe or Asia. We have a few marketing folks and a few business development folks here. I think our total team is probably ten or eleven people now. We have a couple of PR folks that you’ll be getting to know, and someone that does promotions within North America.
We’re also looking not so much at unique product for North America but at packaging, pricing, things like that, that might make sense for this market. I report to Henry and we have been working closely with the marketing functions over there and will continue to do so. We’re not totally self sufficient here; there aren’t enough of us to do everything.
Have you worked with Henry before?
A little bit.
Will the free SkypeOut continue in North America? Do you know yet?
We’re getting pretty close to finalizing that and we’ll probably be coming back to you in about two weeks.
How are you thinking about that decision?
The first thing is the program did everything that we wanted it to do. We saw a nice ramp up in new user acquisition in the U.S. and it stuck at the higher level, which was great. And we’ve seen a big surge in SkypeOut calling, so more people are trying SkypeOut, which is a good thing.
Jennifer Caukin: The calls on SkypeOut are beyond just North America; a lot them internationally too. Because people kind of adopt using it for their local and domestic calls going beyond as well.
Don Albert: Our revenue is back up above where it was pre-promotion, even though we’re giving away all the U.S. and Canada calls. So we have got so many more users now that our international revenue has more than made up for what we gave upon the U.S. and Canada revenue. We viewed the promotion as a marketing expense; obviously it required investment on our part, paying all the termination fees. And the amount of calling in the U.S. and Canada went up 10X so those fees, especially as we get bigger, can get fairly significant.
Our Canadians all want to know about SkypeIn. What is Skype doing to get SkypeIn in Canada?
The issues really are regulatory in nature. Chris Libertelli, working out of our Washington office, is the right guy to talk to about that.
From where you sit, what business is Skype in?
Written by Skype Journal on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to YNet, Metacafe - one of the more popular video sharing services not called YouTube - has been acquired for $200-million. So who's next? Who's going to be left without a seat when the music stops playing?
Written by Mark Evans on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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The Financial Post's Sean Silcoff has an interesting column looking at how Canada's private radio industry is thriving at a time when other media - newspapers, television, magazines - are struggling with the Internet's growing popularity. Silcoff points out radio listenership has remained steady at 532 million hours over the past six years, while sales have climbed by 5.6% a year over the past decade. Meanwhile, operating margins climbed to 21% - 3.5x the level in 1995.
So has commercial radio in Canada managed to thrive at a time when competition has increased from the Web, satellite-radio and the iPod? Maybe, it's the local nature of radio - the fact it provides people with local weather, traffic conditions and news; stuff that the Web and satellite-radio struggle to provide. While local search is all the rage these days as Google and others such as Ask.com look to expand, the job of providing local information has continued to effectively handled by local-based media.
This is something newspapers need to grasp as they look for a new recipe for success. Rather than trying to compete with Google.com or CNN, newspapers should put a lot more resources on local coverage in their print and digital publications. It's this kind of content that will keep them relevant to readers and advertisers. In Toronto, the Toronto Star's efforts to provide even more local coverage has been abundantly evident in recent months. This is a strategy more newspapers will have to embrace going forward.
Written by Mark Evans on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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TechCrunch runs a rumor that Metacafe is being sold. We’ve been hearing about this for the past few weeks, but never from a source with first-hand knowledge of the deal. Both Metacafe and Yahoo, the rumored buyer, deny it up and down. TechCrunch’s Natali Del Conte hears the price at $200 to $300 million. The most common number we heard quoted was $700 million. We’ll keep working the sources and get back to you. Continue reading the full post with latest update on NewTeeVee.com
Written by Liz Gannes on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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There’s a rumor going around that Google is investing a major stake in a Chinese P2P startup called Xunlei (or Thunder). Xunlei is reported to have between 75 million to 100 million downloads of its software, and has raised previous funding from Morningside and IDG Ventures. The rumor is that Google, along with Ceyuan Ventures, is participating in Xunlei’s next round of funding, and a source says that the pre-money valuation is around $100 million.
We haven’t been able to confirm this planned investment with the companies, but have heard this from three different sources in China and recently read the rumor here, too. We contacted Google and they naturally said “we don’t comment on speculation or rumors.” Ceyuan Ventures and Xunlei didn’t get back to us.
A source tells us that Xunlei’s software is getting an average of 140,000 downloads per day and the company has around 200 employees. The source also says that the company is working with television stations to do P2P downloads of television content that they attach ads to, and content partners include Phoenix TV and Hunan Satellite TV. There’s even a rumor from site ChinaByte that the company plans to partner with Horizon Media Group’s mobile community website 139.com to release an IM service soon.
Last week we emailed the guys at Pacific Epoch, a research company that looks at all things related to China and the Internet, to learn more about the startup. General Manager at Pacific Epoch Sage Brennan said:
Xunlei (”Thunder,” in English) has long been a popular download accelerator, for pulling in large files like video and e-magazines. Xunlei has recently leveraged Thunder (the application) to build a content-based platform, which offers and promotes video, audio, magazines, applications and other content categories. They are basically gunning for mop.com, toodou.com and all of China’s other big content players. I suppose the advantage is in Thunder’s background in serving up large files, as opposed to the UGC-built sites that have limited technology support for serving up, say, a feature-length film.
Brennan says about the Chinese Internet content market:
The portal business appears to be healthy and growing: Chinese Internet users are pounding away at anything that resembles entertainment, and all of the content sites are seeing tremendous growth as a result. This is still an ad-supported content play, which carries risk in China, where the online ads market is still approaching adolescence.
If anyone has any more details about Xunlei or the rumor that Google is planning to invest in them, contact us, or leave comments.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Mobile Linux is the hip thing to talk about this year — Motorola is making a big push, Garnett & Helfrich Capital is buying into the market, and Greenphone is trying for world domination. Now another startup that sells into the mobile Linux market, MontaVista Software, announced this week that the company has raised a sizable round of funding.
Santa Clara-based MontaVista says they’ve raised $21 million in funding led by Siemens Venture Capital, with other investors NEC, Alloy Ventures, US Venture Partners, and Aplix. The latest funding puts their total funds raised higher than $90 million, says Red Herring. MontaVista sells Linux-based operating systems and development tools for cell phones and mobile devices, as well as telecom infrastructure.
Using Linux for mobile phones and devices is a growing trend as handset makers like Motorola look for options outside of Symbian and Microsoft. Motorola says it can also use Linux to bring down development costs, shorten time to market, and tap the innovation of those savvy Linux developers.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission said that broadcasters have "only limited First Amendment protection," that the V-chip is "ineffective," and that they have every right to mete out punishment for the use of swear words as indecent practice.
I don't know about you, but when I hear a government agency scoff at the First [...]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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According to a report posted yesterday on the website of WBAY-TV, Green Bay, Wisc., a "911" ambulance request call placed over a Vonage line wound up being routed to the wrong county Tuesday.
The call originated from a house in Menasha, Wisc. which is in Winnebago County. The person requesting the ambulance was a Vonage […]
Written by Russell Shaw on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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I was watching a YouTube video (another funny take on Weird Al's Canadian Idiot) last night, which made me wonder how and/or if Google Video and YouTube are going to co-exist.
Let's start with YouTube given it's more popularity (23 million unique visitors a month can't be wrong, right?). Obviously, Google is probably going to implement AdSense throughout YouTube as a way to generate revenue. There will also be high-revenue banner ads to capitalize on the traffic. Then what? Does Google create a YouTube Premium section for people who want to download/buy videos such as TV shows and movies? If so, how would this affect YouTube's image/mojo given it's the place on the Web to access free video, albeit most of them amateur productions that leave much to be desired. If YouTube tried to make money from selling videos, would this potentially drive people away.
Then, there's Google Video, which has been a modest success since its launch. After all, Google would not have bought YouTube if its video strategy didn't need a $1.6-billion jump-start. Does Google stay upstream by mostly focusing on the sale of TV shows and movies, or does it continue to attract user-generated content as well.
Assuming YouTube pursues a premium strategy, and Google moves deeper into the user-generated content world, at what point will the two services start to look the same? If that happens, does it really matter as long as both businesses as thriving?
News: Google has signed a deal with BSkyB that will see Google provide its user-generated video, e-mail, search and targeted advertising tools to customers of BSkyB’s broadband internet service. “This is a really, really big deal for us,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “If it works, it will become our most lucrative deal from the get-go.”
Technorati Tags: Google, Video
Written by Mark Evans on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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The widespread criticism of the Yahoo reorganization announced on Tuesday has been a one sided affair - outsiders looking in. Much of the criticism while warranted, has become to personal. Was getting rid of CEO Terry Semel, the quick fix the erstwhile Internet leader needs? Nearly 36% of our readers didn’t think it was the going to help, versus 27% who thought it would help turn the ship around.
What do the Yahoos think? We did not hear much from inside of the company, up until last night when we came across a post on Jonathan Strauss’ blog. It is perchance that we stumbled upon this post. Strauss, who has a little transcript of the webcast, defends the company’s recent actions, and feels optimistic about the future.
At the next all-hands. Just as a reminder. I’m sorry I didn’t do it today. I’m gonna put up there all of the press reports on how Yahoo! was going out of business 5 years ago. And of how we were gonna be swallowed up by AOL, owned by Time-Warner, and by Microsoft, and by everybody else. And Yahoo! looked like it had a dim future. Well those headlines, of course, were used to wrap a lot of fish in a lot of people’s houses, as the expression goes. And they were all full of shit, and they had no idea what we had planned for them. And they do not now as well!
“So, we could read about how I’m gonna join some retirement home. And we could read about how the company doesn’t have a vision. And we could read about how we can’t do this and we can’t do that. Trust me, they will be as full of shit this time as they were last time.” (Terry Semel, Yahoo CEO on the webcast.)
There is a tiny little paragraph at the end of Strauss’ post which tells you that there is a pocket of resistance (so to speak) inside Yahoo, which sees the big picture clearly.
I hate to break it to all of you, but the Internet isn’t about technology. Cisco is a technology company, Yahoo! is a consumer services company — the fact that those services are delivered via IP is just a detail. The people who fault Terry for not knowing how IP switching works might as well have criticized Ted Turner for not knowing how to install a cable head-end.
Thank you! No all Yahoo has to do is stop obsessing with Google. Just focus on five things: make email the best experience in the world, make Yahoo finance better, use blogs and social media and build great media destinations, and of course, make My.Yahoo.com better.
I personally think of Yahoo as a consumer brand, not a technology company. Yahoo is a media company. It knows how to aggregate content pretty well, and it has the audience & has the ability to monetize it well. (My post from yesterday)
PS: We met Strauss before at the Widgets Live conference, and as a result we have him in our feed reader. If there are other Yahoo employees who would like to send me their blog links, please email me, so I can stay in touch with you.
Written by Om Malik on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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So the ad campaigns have been launched, the lines have been formed, and the products (most of them, anyway) have been shipped. With holiday shopping in full roar, there’s little Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft can do now to help the prospects of their next gen consoles, but wait for the market’s verdict. Here at GigaOM, we’ll be doing the same, waiting to see which console gamers spend their often capricious dollars on.
That said, the number of the week is 10 million. That’s the number Microsoft is sticking with; on second thought, make that 10 million plus change. Based on current market demand, that’s how many Xbox 360s that Peter Moore, the company’s gaming ubermensche, claims they’ll sell by the end of this year, worldwide. Next Generation also reports that Sony expects to have 2 million Playstation 3s on the market, and Nintendo, 4 million Wiis.
For those scoring at home, this means (assuming all of those units ship and sell), the world’s next gen market will break down like this at the end of the year:
Xbox 360: 62.5%,
Wii: 25%,
PS3: 12.5%
Previously I had predicted that Xbox and Wii would split the market evenly, with PS3 far behind, but looking at the numbers that way, I have to say, only the last part appears on target.
Microsoft’s lead seems unbeatable now, fueled by a one year head start, the raging success of Gears of War as 2006’s killer app (it’s already become Xbox Live’s most popular multiplayer game), and most recently, a blitzkrieg of promotion for Halo 3, scheduled for 2007. (The game’s ultracool teaser ad is now causing collective squeals of geek delight.)
Written by Wagner James Au on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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NewTeeVee has a post about Seattle-based audio-and-video search start-up, Pluggd, which has raised $1.65 million from Intel and angel investors. VentureBeat, which first wrote about the company says that Pluggd has “‘perfected the user experience’ for audio and visual search.”
Now we all know, perfection is subjective, but still is a pretty strong word, one that makes even Cornelius Willis, CMO of the company nervous.
I was also a little startled when I saw the word “perfected”. For the record, we believe we’ve done a better job on user experience for media search than anyone to date, but we’re not done, and we’re going to continue to work like crazy to make it even more easy and intuitive.
Anyway if you are so inclined, Liz’s post is worth checking out.
Written by Om Malik on December 8th, 2006 with no comments.
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