Broadband, T1 and VoIP Site Projects

The internet's next big talking point: why VoIP telephony is quickly coming of age

2005-09-09T16:21:00.000-05:00

Friday Sep 9 2005 . All times are London time.

By Paul Taylor, Mark Odell and Michiyo Nakamoto Published: September 9 2005 03:00 Last updated: September 9 2005 03:00

One of the pioneers of internet telephony this week reached a milestone. Vonage Holdings, a New Jersey-based start-up, announced that, less than two-and-a-half years after it launched its consumer services, it had signed up its millionth paying customer. Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's chief executive, talked of its having created "a tidal wave of change" in a dormant telecommunications industry.

In the hyperbole-prone technology world, such claims might be easily dismissed. But most analysts agree that the recent dramatic growth of residential services and subscriber numbers using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) - albeit from a relatively small base - points to a big future for the technology.

Bell plays VoIP catch-up

2005-09-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

By CATHERINE MCLEAN
Friday, September 9, 2005 Updated at 5:03 AM EDT
From Friday's Globe and Mail

Bell Canada is rolling out two versions of its digital telephone service for consumers, a strategic response to cable firms' attacks on its home territory.

The country's largest phone company yesterday launched Bell Digital Voice in Hamilton and the Greater Toronto Area, marketing it as a reliable substitute for traditional phone service but with new features. It also expanded what it calls a "lite" version of the product, which is positioned as a secondary line over a high-speed Internet connection, throughout Ontario and Quebec. Both are voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services.

It is a necessary move by Bell as VoIP is dramatically reshaping the telecommunications world.

The new technology has thrown open the gates of the phone market to entrants ranging from cable giants to upstarts such as Vonage Canada Inc., and these new competitors have swiftly made their mark. Vidéotron Ltée, for example, has wrestled away more than 75,000 customers from phone companies including Bell since its calling service was launched in January.

That's a coup for the Quebec-based cable firm, which has clearly put the phone companies on the defensive.

"Many customers are very well served by their existing phone service," Ron Close, president of VoIP at Bell Canada, said yesterday at a press conference. "There needs to be a compelling reason for customers to change. If they're considering changing for features and functionality or offerings they're hearing from their cable companies, we need to get the message out . . . you don't have to go to the cable companies to get the services you need and deserve."

(Bell is a unit of BCE Inc., which controls Bell Globemedia, the owner of The Globe and Mail.)

The Bell offerings include many bells and whistles such as voice-mail to e-mail as well as competitive pricing.

Bell dipped its toes in the VoIP products undercut its own traditional circuit-switched phone service, analysts said. Its lite service is also cheaper than most of the phone offerings from the cable firms on Bell's turf, said Brahm Eiley of Convergence Consulting Group Ltd.

"This is Bell's shot back at the cablecos," Mr. Eiley said. "Bell is putting their foot in the sand and saying stick with us. Bell has taken the strategy of we'd rather cannibalize ourselves than be cannibalized by someone else."

Bell is charging $40 a month for Bell Digital Voice, with extra charges for long-distance calling. The lite version starts at $34 a month and includes long-distance calls.

The main difference between the two is that the lite service is delivered through a high-speed Internet connection, so if a client's Internet service is unavailable or the power goes out, the phone won't work.

The company plans to roll out Bell Digital Voice to other areas of Ontario and Quebec. Mr. Close said Bell will be a very aggressive competitor against Vidéotron, but didn't give further details.

Both of Bell's VoIP services let customers select phone numbers in cities in Ontario and Quebec, in addition to nine other locations across Canada.

The numbers outside Quebec and Ontario are aimed at customers who have relatives or friends in other cities and want to call them without long-distance charges, Mr. Close said.

By allowing customers in Ontario and Quebec access to area codes in cities across Canada, Bell could be preparing to eventually offer VoIP services to clients outside of its traditional territory in the future, according to Mr. Eiley.

BCE shares rose 17 cents to $32.11 on the Toronto Stock Exchange yesterday.

New York City Has an E911 Solution for Nomadic VoIP Telephone Subscribers

2005-09-09T14:40:00.000-05:00

News Staff
Sep 09, 2005

New York City is the first city in the nation to offer an E911 solution for Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone subscribers, according to Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) Commissioner Gino P. Menchini and New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

This solution addresses a major emergency dialing problem associated with "nomadic" VoIP services. Nomadic services allow subscribers to move their nomadic VoIP subscribers were not routed to trained calltakers at the City's 911 phone system. Rather, they were directed by VoIP companies to a telephone on the desk of an administrative employee. The administrative phone line was not equipped to address an emergency. The implementation is the first of its kind in the US.

"The VoIP/911 solution exemplifies what can be accomplished when government and industry work collaboratively," said DoITT Commissioner Gino Menchini. "The City of New York recognizes that VoIP service provider customers to deliver calls into the City's existing dedicated 911 network.

The effort began when NYPD observed an influx of calls from VoIP customers to one of its administrative lines late last year. In total, over 6,000 calls were received from VoIP subscribers to this line. With the current implementation, such calls will now be routed to 911 call takers and will include caller ID and location information.

The City's VoIP/911 initiative has been closely watched as a model, particularly in light of a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order, which mandates the implementation of enhanced VoIP/911 service nationwide by later this year.

New York City's 911 answering center receives approximately 30,000 calls a day and 12 million calls a year. To handle this load, the City utilizes a sophisticated 911 call routing system and employs approximately 1,300 trained 911 calltakers.

Centile Named to the 2005 'pulver 100'; Delivering Leading VoIP Applications at the Best Price Elasticity

2005-09-08T15:50:00.000-05:00

September 08, 2005 12:53 PM US Eastern Timezone

MELVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 8, 2005--Centile today announced that it has been named to the 2005 "pulver 100" - the VoIP industry's premiere listing of privately held growth companies that represent the future of the communications ecosystem. Centile has been named to the list due to its ability to deliver leading VoIP applications at the best price elasticity.
Centile is the leading hosted VoIP telephony application software vendor in Europe. Centile's communication platform, the IntraSwitch, provides a comprehensive range of powerful applications including Hosted iPBX, Premise based iPBX, Residential VoIP, Conferencing, Conferencing Media Server and CTI Applications. The powerful software allows carriers to have the shortest time to market with one of the lowest TCO in launching VoIP services. With Centile's software, carriers are able to take and grow market share from day one quickly and cost effectively.

"The pulver 100" is theVoIP industry's first and foremost award listing, and continues to grow in significance, as companies like Centile, continue to spread IP communications via their platform, the IntraSwitch," said Jeff Pulver, Founder and Chairman of pulvermedia. "We're proud to name Centile to this year's pulver 100."

"We are proud to, once again, be selected to the prestigious ranks of the pulver 100 and to be contributing to the innovations of the telecommunications industry," said Shahal Khan, CEO at Centile. "Centile has been a leader in the VoIP application software space since its founding and will continue to develop cutting edge software that will enable carriers and vendors to deploy
VoIP as a mainstream service."

VOIP ‘experts' cloud the issue

2005-09-08T14:47:00.000-05:00

BY MARTIN CZERNOWALOW, ITWEB SENIOR JOURNALIST

[Johannesburg, 8 September 2005] - Much confusion has been created in the voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) market, mainly by so-called industry experts who bombard potential home and small and medium enterprise (SME) users with irrelevant facts, says Canadian-based HowzitOnline.com spokesman Allan Carbardo.

“There are four basic issues when selecting a VOIP solution: call costs, voice quality, ease of use and coverage,” he says.

“But technical people are creating side issues that are not important. The main points to consider when selecting a VOIP solution for home or small business use are savings on call costs, being able to hear the person speaking clearly at the other end, ease of use and whether there are limitations to call destinations.”

Voice quality

Carbardo maintains that VOIP is only suited to someone phoning nationally or internationally on a regular basis.

“Typically, someone with family or friends either in another city or overseas, or a company that does business in the main centres of SA or another country, and makes regular overseas or national calls.”

Calls to other popular destinations provide savings of 80% to 95% on standard Telkom rates, he points out.

Carbardo argues that voice quality is also a key issue, adding that HowzitOnline.com uses a proprietary bandwidth compression technology, which ensures good voice quality. The technology is ideally suited to the bandwidth-constrained environment in which South African users operate, he says.

“To ascertain the voice quality, prospective users must test the service to evaluate the quality.”

Voice quality on dial-up is not always good, he says. Users will also need to pay for the call, defeating the object of VOIP.

“So ideally, an ADSL or similar line is recommended. The most suitable connection for home and SME use is broadband. These are typically ADSL, ISDN, MyWireless and iBurst.

Back to basics

“In terms of ease of use, the phone looks and works the same as a normal phone. Instead of requiring a phone line, the handset plugs into a computer USB or Ethernet connection,” says Carbardo. He adds that the implications are enormous in terms of reduced call costs when roaming overseas.

HowzitOnline.com marketing director Charles Smith believes VOIP should be taken back to basics.

“The consumer is confused by all these consultants to the industry who actually cloud the issue. Consumers don't need to know the intricate details of VOIP; they simply need to know that if it works it works,” Smith says.

VoIP, Inc. Launches Industry's First Private Network 911 Service for VoIP Calls

2005-09-08T14:07:00.000-05:00

[September 08, 2005]

FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. --(Business Wire)--Sept. 8, 2005--VoiceOne(TM) Network Provides Unprecedented Quality and Reliability

VoIP, Inc. (OTCBB:VOII), a global provider of advanced communications services utilizing Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) as its core technology, announced today the release of the industry's first private network 911 service for broadband and packet communications. The private network 911 service is
provided by VoIP, Inc.'s wholly owned subsidiary VoiceOne Communications LLC.

"The industry has been focused on creating quick solutions to meet FCC deadlines related to recent regulatory actions that require VoIP service providers to offer 911 services to customers. Some of these solutions continue to use unsecured, and best-effort transport of the Internet for critical emergency calls," said VoIP, Inc. CEO Steven Ivester.

"We are changing the dynamics at VoIP, Inc., with this unprecedented move to go beyond the requirements of the FCC order to help ensure reliability and quality of 911 calls. We are utilizing our private VoiceOne(TM) MPLS network along with our proprietary softswitch, selective routers, and media gateway controllers to provide the redundancy necessary for best-quality of service for 911 calls over IP," Ivester added.

VoIP, Inc.'s VoiceOne network provides five redundant entry points for IP 911 calls to enter the network through the Internet or private peering. These entry points are strategically placed geographically to provide the shortest path for a phone call originating anywhere in the U.S. These first levels of redundancy, and the strategic geographic locations, provide the best practical implementation to achieving the best-possible quality of service (QoS) connection to the VoiceOne network from Internet voice subscribers.

VoIP, Inc. CTO Shawn Lewis said, "Once the call is received on the VoiceOne network, the call is analyzed for the proper delivery to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), call center, or other emergency location. Based on the destination of the location required to deliver the call, it is maintained on the private VoiceOne MPLS backbone, ensuring the best-possible quality and redundancy for transport, compared to other solutions utilizing the Internet for call delivery."

Carriers, service providers, cable operators, and others can manage the entire 911 service feature set through the VoiceOne web portal or XML provisioning system in near real-time fashion - - another feature not offered by solution providers in the 911 industry today.

Lewis added, "Offering IP related services, with the quality of service and reliability levels carriers and consumers demand and deserve, was our primary focus in designing this product offering. Secondly, making the service affordable and available to all with a simplified interface was critical.

" Currently VoiceOne is working with select carriers and service providers in the industry through its 911 product trials. VoiceOne plans to release the entire product at the CompTel/ASCENT Fall 2005 Convention and Expo in Orlando, Fla., Oct. 9-12, where demonstrations of the provisioning interface, reporting, etc. will be demonstrated at the VoiceOne Booth (#500).

Some of the compelling features of the V911 service offering from VoiceOne include:

-- Private transport of the emergency call on the VoiceOne MPLS network

-- Redundant and geographically dispersed entry points for 911 calls

-- Ability to provide 911 service to numbers not owned/serviced by VoiceOne

-- Full web portal for the management of all 911 features

-- XML provisioning interface for electronic management

-- SMS notification when a 911 call is made, chosen by subscriber

-- Email notification list when a 911 call is made, chosen by subscriber

-- 24x7 NOC monitoring of all 911 calls made through VoiceOne

-- VoiceOne NOC can intercept, bridge into 911 calls to provide assistance

-- 911 calls can be recorded as an option of the Service Provider

-- 911 Verification Service, subscriber can dial 555-9191 and receive verbal confirmation of provided service

-- Online interface for subscriber to modify address, or mark nomadic

VoIP Pushes Security Market

2005-09-07T15:54:00.000-05:00

Author: IT-Observer Staff
Wednesday, 07 September 2005, 17:57 GMT

Businesses deployed Voice over Internet Protocol to enhance business telecom systems, facing difficult security challenges and are planning to replace their current security appliance within the next year. As a result, the security appliance market is poised to strong growth over the next few years.

These new findings were published by In-Stat , a high-tech market research firm, in its latest report dealing with the impact of VoIP on security appliances.

Key findings of the report include: small-medium-sized businesses show high concerns about VoIP solutions have higher budget for new security appliances and reliability is the playing role for the purchase of new security products.

"Traditional firewall technologies can complicate several aspects of VoIP, most notably dynamic port trafficking and Network Address Translation (NAT) transversal," says Victoria Fodale, In-Stat analyst.

"Security product vendors are adding functions that address voice applications in their products, but, as history has shown, security typically lags behind advances in technology."

Survey shows VoIP unfamiliar to Americans

2005-09-07T15:33:00.000-05:00

Hi-Tech
United Press International

NEW YORK, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A new survey shows a significant lack of understanding of Voice over Internet Protocol telephone technology and capabilities among American consumers.

Verizon said Wednesday that the Harris Poll found that 87 percent of the respondents did not know VoIP allows phone calls to be made over the Internet rather than traditional telecom networks.

Some consumers ventured that VoIP was a type of hybrid automobile while others guessed it was a new brand of low-carb vodka, Verizon said in a release.
"The acronym VoIP ... can be intimidating for many consumers, because it sounds like something that only tech-savvy people can understand and use," said Verizon executive Michelle Swittenberg.

Swittenberg insists that consumers are quick to jump on the VoIP bandwagon once they experience the technology's ease and its many bells and whistles.

The Harris Poll contacted 1,006 consumers nationwide in late May. It has a 3.1 percent margin of error.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

Vonage Reaches a Million Subscribers

2005-09-07T14:40:00.000-05:00

The Internet telephony provider doubles its subscribers this year, pulling ahead of the pack.

Ben Charny - PC Magazine

Sept. 6 Internet phone operator Vonage said Tuesday it now has more than a million customers, marking another milestone for the nascent industry of selling phone calls over Internet connections.

The 4-year-old firm, based in Edison, N.J., smashed the million mark on the strength of its present advertising campaign, which Jupiter Research analyst Joe Laszlo said he considers to be among the top two currently on the Internet.

Vonage Holdings Corp. is the largest of the new breed of phone operators selling VOIP (voice over IP), which is software that digitizes phone calls so they can travel over the Internet just like e-mail.

Calls to other VOIP users are typically free, while calls to and from traditional land line phones or cell phones cost a few pennies a minute.

Typically, VOIP plans cost $25 a month for unlimited dialing, about half of what local phone operators charge to make calls over their own networks, which use more expensive circuit-switched technology invented more than 130 years ago.

There are other VOIP operators with more than one million subscribers, but none have reached the milestone the way Vonage has.

One notable member of the million subscriber club is Skype Technologies SA, a Luxembourg-based VOIP operator founded by the creators of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer software for swapping files.

But Skype's achievement is literally only half of Vonage's. About 1.2 million people subscribe to SkypeOut, which allows Skype users to make phone calls from their PCs to any phone for a few cents a minute. SkypeIn, a tandem service for receiving calls, is sold separately.

Vonage has also managed to grow—it has doubled subscribers during the last six months—despite serious challenges from major U.S. cable operators Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and Comcast Corp.

In the past two years, all of these cable operators have
embraced VOIP technology as a way to sell phone service to their broadband or cable TV customers.

But once again Vonage stands out. Both Cox and Comcast said they each have more than 1 million phone subscribers, but the vast majority still use a network of circuit switches rather than VOIP technology. Time Warner Cable, which uses VOIP exclusively, has about 614,000 subscribers. Cablevision has about 250,000 VOIP subscribers.

Infozech Offers an Integrated Solution for VoIP with BroadSoft

2005-09-06T16:40:00.000-05:00

Tuesday September 6, 12:03 pm ET

Infozech Integrates with BroadSoft's BroadWorks to Offer a Complete Solution for a Broadband Service Provider in Mexico

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 6, 2005--Infozech Software Inc., a leading provider of convergent telecom billing and settlement solutions, has integrated its offerings with BroadSoft's BroadWorks® platform. The integration has allowed the two companies to provide an end-to-end infrastructure for a VoIP services provider in Mexico. Infozech's offering is an integrated, feature-rich solution that provides scalability, redundancy, interoperability and the ability to introduce new and innovative services in real time.

Infozech's solution for the Mexican telco consists of various modules including mediation, customer management, order entry, credit control and payments and accounting. An independent interface for its subscribers allows them to make online payments and access other Web self care options.

"The customer is benefiting from Infozech's rapid response time which translates into a 50 percent faster deployment capability than competition," commented Mr. Ankur Lal, CEO Infozech Software Inc.

"BroadSoft's state-of-the-art, global standards compliant VoIP applications software has further reduced deployment time and enabled the customer to cut time-to-market for its solutions. Rapid response has also led to a fall in deployment costs, higher revenues and an increased Return on Investments (RoI)," Mr. Lal added.

Speaking about the benefits of the partnership, Mr. Scott Wharton, vice president of marketing for BroadSoft said: "The integration of BroadWorks and Infozech's Billing and Settlement server has created a sound value proposition for established service providers to satisfy their convergent prepaid as well as postpaid billing needs for their suite of broadband VoIP services."

The BroadWorks VoIP application platform predominantly uses an open client interface; by virtue of which, service providers and solution vendors can seamlessly integrate their solutions and deliver best-of-breed services without the need for large customizations. BroadSoft's interoperable platform, coupled with Infozech's highly reliable, scalable, platform agnostic and secure products, give users the flexibility to add new and innovative services rapidly and easily.

Hearing the VoIP call, and giving it a whirl

2005-09-06T15:20:00.000-05:00

Sept. 5, 2005, 11:57PM

By DWIGHT SILVERMAN
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

In the late 1990s, I remember being called to a small kiosk at a tech trade show and offered a test of something called Voice over Internet Protocol, which is a way-too-geeky way of saying "phone calls over the Net."

I got to make a call with what looked like a regular phone handset to my home. The volume was very weak, and there was a slight delay as I talked to my wife. It was like talking on a bad cell phone connection.

Thanks, I said, but I'll pass.

Fast forward to the new century, and VoIP, as it's called, is changing the telephone business. From big businesses to families, a growing number of people are letting the Internet do the calling. And that tinny, frustrating phone call I made is a thing of the past. Most of the time, anyway.

Net-based phone service is everywhere, with companies as big as AT&T offering it alongside smaller names you've likely never heard of. For home users, it usually works like this:

You need a high-speed Internet connection, such as DSL or a cable modem. You connect a box for the phone to your modem or router — there also are some combo router/phone interfaces — and plug a standard phone into the box. Voilà , you've got phone calls.

I decided to give VoIP a try, and have been testing a small service called Sunrocket. It works the same way as the more familiar names, but with an appealing twist — extremely simple pricing.

Sunrocket charges either $24.95 per month, or $199 for a year's service. The latter is a great deal, coming to just over $16.58 a month. There are no additional charges or fees. That's all you pay — the price even includes taxes.

For that amount, you get all-you-can-eat local and long-distance service in the United States and Canada, with a $3 allowance for international calls. International rates vary from country to country, from 3 cents a minute to call France to $1.78 to reach cell phones on the Solomon Islands.

Gaining a second number

As with most other VoIP services, you can switch your main current phone number to Sunrocket, but it's easier to do when you start the service than if you want to do it later.

You also will be given a second phone number for incoming calls. You can use this to set up a distinctive ring, so you can give that number to specific people and know who's calling.

As with most Net-phone services, there is also a slew of technologically advanced features that are the result of this being a computer-based product. Voice mail messages can be forwarded in a variety of ways, including as a sound file to an e-mail address, or even as an instant message.

You can set up the system to do what's called "find me" — you provide a series of phone numbers and the system will ring each one consecutively until you answer, or it goes to voice mail.

The system generates call logs that you can view on Sunrocket's Web site, and you can even click on one to dial a call. There's also a program to download from the site — though it requires a fairly complicated process to get access to — that will pop up caller ID info on your computer screen when a call comes in.

The service question

It all sounds groovy, but how's the service?

Installation is fairly simple. Sunrocket sends you a box it calls the Gizmo, which you plug into your DSL or cable modem. If you have a router, it will plug into the Gizmo. (You can try putting the router first in the chain, but if you have problems, switch back to the recommended setup.)

Next, plug a phone into the Gizmo. The company sometimes runs specials in which it sends a cordless phone with a satellite handset, giving you two telephones linked to the service.

This highlights one downside to VoIP service. Because you are not using the phone company's lines that come into your home, normally you cannot use the phone jacks and wiring in your house. However, if you disconnect your home's wiring at the phone junction box so you're not on the traditional phone network, you can then run a line from one of your home's jacks to the Gizmo. This will "light up" your phone wiring with the Sunrocket service so you can plug any phone into a wall jack and get a dial tone.

Keep in mind, though, that if you have a home burglar alarm that calls out over the phone company wiring, you won't be able to do this — or even give up your land line completely. Check with your alarm company for work-arounds.

You should also know this about all VoIP services: If your power goes out and your cable or DSL modem dies, so will your phone service. Some folks I know who have VoIP put their modems and phone boxes onto a standard computer battery backup, or UPS. When the power goes out, they've got a brief period while the phone service keeps working.

You also are at the mercy of your Internet provider. If you have frequent outages, you'll also have phone outages.

How's the sound quality? For the most part, pretty good. Early on, I heard an occasional delay, and some callers said they heard a slight echo, but it was not severe. Over time, the audio quality has improved.

I made a few calls to France, and the quality for those international calls was clear. There was a bit of a delay, but I've had that making international calls with traditional phone service.

Some report problems

I've had no problems with the Sunrocket service, but it has not been perfect for others. Reports in the user reviews area of BroadbandReports.com, which tracks Internet and VoIP providers, show some Sunrocket customers initially have problems with incoming or outgoing calls. There are also complaints about customer service being slow to resolve some issues — a complaint typical of rapidly growing companies.

But Sunrocket has its heart in the right place, I think. I recently got an e-mail sent to all Sunrocket users apologizing for a two-day outage. Though I was not affected, I was impressed Sunrocket even bothered. When was the last time a utility mailed you an apology?

If you're willing to be a guinea pig for a relatively new service for a low, simple price, Sunrocket is a great deal. If you insist on the same kind of reliability you get from traditional phone service, you still may want to do what I did years ago — take a pass

Microsoft joins VoIP crowd

2005-09-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

Software giant acquires service provider as market hots up

Trevor Treharne, CRN 05 Sep 2005

Microsoft has become the latest vendor to jump on the Voice over IP (VoIP) bandwagon by acquiring service provider Teleo.

The deal will enable Microsoft to add voice capabilities to its MSN messenger service and keep pace with Google and Yahoo.

Blake Irving, corporate vice-president at MSN, said in a statement: “This acquisition opens up infinite opportunities for Microsoft to enable even more relationship-centric communications experiences for our customers in the future.”

Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at EuroLAN, said: “It shows the direction that Microsoft will take MSN, just like the way Google, AOL and Yahoo have gone.”

Andy Bills, senior vice-president of sales for UK and northern Europe at VoIP software vendor Swyx, said: “This acquisition is a reflection of the growing value of voice as an integrated software application.”

Everything You Need to Know About Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

2005-09-02T17:17:00.000-05:00

By David Silverberg

Digital Journal — Carriers of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) claim the old phone system will soon lie unused next to VHS players and dot-matrix printers. They offer a phone service that uses the Internet to send voice data, just how email transmits data in microseconds. VoIP shoots analogue signals from your traditional phone and chops them into tiny bits, then reforms them into digital packets, allowing many calls to be juggled at once.

Using an adapter, you can call anyone who has a phone, albeit by paying a monthly charge to popular carriers such as Vonage. Some services offer softphones, which turn your computer into a phone and you talk via headset. Alternately, free services like Skype are gaining ground — it recently topped 100 million downloads — as frugal chatters prefer a P2P option that only requires a download and a headset.

It hasn’t won over the public yet, but telecom researchers predict VoIP will soon burst into homes and businesses. U.S. residential VoIP subscribers will reach more than 4.1 million by late 2005, estimates TeleGeography, and North American VoIP service revenues will soar 1,431 per cent in 2009, according to Infonetics Research.

To fully explore if and how VoIP can revolutionize global telephony, Digital Journal dishes out the pros and cons of this burgeoning trend.

The Upside
Long-distance charges are rarely a consideration for VoIP adopters, because sending voice data across Internet lines is so cheap for carriers. Pricing plans from Vonage Canada, for example, feature $40 per month for unlimited calling in North America. Note that VoIP is only available for those with broadband Internet.

Flexibility is another big draw for VoIP users. Calls can be made from anywhere with broadband connectivity, so travellers can bring along their Internet phone to any destination across the world. Also, some services allow you to choose your area code, so you can be an entrepreneur from rural Maine with an upscale Manhattan phone number.

A worthy feature is voicemail attachment, which sends voice messages to your email inbox. Several systems even let you dial phone numbers directly from Outlook.

Using VoIP at wireless Internet hubs may soon be coming to a city near you, as several companies roll out Wi-Fi handsets later this year and in 2006. That means talking cheap will not just be for stay-at-home gabbers.

The Downside
VoIP requires high-speed Internet, so dial-up users can only watch the trend pass them by. But they can also watch VoIP’s early adopters struggle with problems associated with this nascent technology.

If a power outage hits your block, you can still use your traditional phone to reassure Mom and Dad. Not with VoIP, which will go down with the network during a blackout. However, some services can set up an alternate number in case the primary one fails.

Security is another issue yet to be completely resolved. Recently, a security research group discovered a software flaw that could crash Cisco Systems’ IP phones, opening the service to denial-of-service attacks. When the technology goes mainstream, VoIP attacks could involve a hacker sniffing out voice packets from your business’ Internet traffic and then reconstructing them to intercept phone conversations. Smart protection, such as firewall proxies that monitor voice and data, is recommended for any small- to medium-size business moving from traditional to VoIP phones.

Consumer Reports published their overview ofVoIP services after trying out several systems over a month. They concluded that VoIP is recommended for consumers with phone bills exceeding $60 (US) a month but they also cited VoIP for poor voice quality, dropped calls and complicated self-installs.

The Vonage Voice
Many players are jumping into the VoIP arena, including cable and telco companies. But Vonage is already enjoying success, as critics applaud its quality and investors funnel funds to its operations. More than 700,000 lines belong to Vonage Canada with 15,000 added each week. To discuss the success of Internet phones and what VoIP rookies should watch for, Digital Journal talked to Joe Parent, vice-president of marketing and business development for Vonage Canada.

Digital Journal Why is VoIP so appealing?
Joe Parent: Within the enterprise base, many businesses have two separate networks that they must maintain. To cut costs, merging two existing networks makes sense.

Digital Journal Respond to the claim that if a VoIP call ends up routed over a congested part of the Net, quality can suffer.
Joe Parent: Since we transmit phone calls over the Internet, we have a virtually unlimited number of diverse routes. This is superior to providers who route calls over a single private IP network, which has much less redundancy and fewer alternate routing options.

Digital Journal What do you suggest to someone hunting for a VoIP service?
Joe Parent: Ask about the supplier’s reputation and inquire about the benefits that you’re looking for. Find out if you’re in it for the long run and if you need mobility. Do you mainly call local or long-distance? There should be a plan that will meet your needs.

FCC Names VoIP 911 Panel

2005-09-02T16:40:00.000-05:00

September 2, 2005
By Roy Mark

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has named a task force to oversee the agency's Voice over IP E911 mandate.

Scheduled to begin meeting this month, the 10-member panel of FCC staff and National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) members are charged with developing educational materials, ensuring compliance, data collection and best practices.

The FCC unanimously voted in May to require Internet telephone companies to provide emergency 911 services to all their customers by the end of the year.

Because of the nomadic nature of VoIP, the first generation of commercially viable Internet-based voice services frequently route 911 calls to public safety administrative offices instead of directly sending the calls to Public Service Answering Points (PSAPs).

After hearing wrenching tales of VoIP customers unable to reach a PSAP during an emergency, the FCC dictated that Internet telephone companies not only provide more traditional E911 services, but also notify and receive acknowledgments from all customers of possible service limitations.

The FCC also ordered incumbent carriers to provide access to their 911 networks to Internet telephone companies, including access to trunk lines, selective routers and 911 databases.

The initial deadline for receiving customer acknowledgments was originally set for the end of July, a deadline that has twice been extended. The current deadline is the end of September.

One of the primary duties of the new task force will be to develop educational materials to ensure consumers understand their rights and the requirements of the VoIP E911 rules.

VoIP providers are already distributing warning labels to all subscribers for use on or near VoIP equipment interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

FCC members of the panel include Joseph Casey, chief of the Spectrum Enforcement Division; Colleen Heitkamp, chief of the Telecommunications Consumers Division; Sue McNeil, acting deputy bureau chief of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau; Louis Sigalos, chief of the Consumer Affairs and Outreach Division; and Julie Veach, acting chief of the Competition Policy Division.

NARUC representatives include Gary Klug, chief engineer of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission; Robert Mayer, director of the Office of Telecommunications, New York State Department of Public Service; Jeff Richter, principal telecommunications analyst, Public Service Commission of Wisconsin; Eddie Roberson, chief of the Consumer Services and External Affairs Division, Tennessee Regulatory Authority; and Steve Wilt, public utility regulatory analyst for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission

VoIP Marks Latest Microsoft-Google Battleground

2005-09-02T15:15:00.000-05:00

Sept. 2, 2005

The battle over consumer VoIP is just the latest in a dizzying string of competitive product rollouts between Microsoft and Google.

By Laurie Sullivan and W. David Gardner
InformationWeek

In what's become a chess match between Google Inc. and Microsoft for the attentions of Internet-savvy consumers, Microsoft made another move earlier this week. It acquired voice-over-IP startup Teleo Inc., with plans to expand on the Internet phone-call capabilities it offers through its instant-messaging software, MSN Messenger.

The acquisition comes one week after Google released Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application for instant messaging and PC-to-PC voice calls. That same day, Microsoft disclosed an upgrade to MSN Messenger, version 7.5, that it says offers better voice-chat quality and some new features, including the ability to send a 15-second audio clip.

Users of Microsoft's MSN Messenger already can click on telephone numbers stored in Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer to make calls from PCs equipped with a headset or speakers and a microphone. Microsoft says Teleo's technology offers more options for conducting voice communications, including the ability to place calls from PCs to traditional landline phones and cell phones. Google Talk doesn’t offer those options. "If you're a product manager at Google, AOL or Yahoo, you have to be worried," said Jeff Pulver, a VoIP expert and creator of the Voice Over Net conferences. "If it chooses to, Microsoft could dominate" consumer VoIP.

The battle over consumer VoIP is just the latest in a dizzying string of competitive product rollouts between the two companies. Also this week, Google released Google Desktop 2, which updates its desktop search software with new personalization features. In July, Microsoft launched a test version of a search engine that lets users search PCs and the Web with a single tool. Microsoft also unveiled a Google-esque MSN search site, eliminating paid advertising from main search results and introducing a simple, fast-loading design.

That same month, Microsoft launched Virtual Earth, a Web site that lets users scroll around a map of the United States that includes satellite photos of buildings and streets. That came a month after Google released Google Earth, which gives users 3-D maps with zoom-in, zoom-out capabilities.

The battle doesn't stop at technology. Microsoft sued Google and one of its former executives, Kai-Fu Lee, in July, claiming Lee was violating an agreement he signed in 2000 barring him from working for a direct competitor in an area that overlapped with his roles at Microsoft. Lee had been recently hired by Google to head up operations in China. Now VoIP is in Microsoft's crosshairs, and other consumer technologies are ripe for the technology. For example, it makes sense as an option for Microsoft's Xbox or Xbox Live, says Drew Brosseau, managing director at equity firm SG Cowen & Co. LLC, who follows, but doesn't own, Microsoft stock. "On Xbox Live, you can message back and forth while you're playing, and you can talk back and forth, but that's over a traditional telephone line," he says. "Ultimately, that could all go through the same IP pipe."

Skype, German Cellco converge 3G, VoIP

2005-09-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

By Mobile Pipeline Staff
Mobile Pipeline
Sep 01, 2005

Voice-over-IP vendor Skype said Thursday that it is partnering with German cellular operator E-Plus, enabling the operator's customers to use VoIP over a cellular data network.

Skype said in a statement that, starting in October, its software will be bundled with each E-Plus flat-rate 3G cellular data subscription. Skype said it is its first partnership with a cellular operator. Many market analysts have said that wireless VoIP has the potential to compete directly with cellular operators.

In a statement, Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom said he believes this VoIP being offered via cellular data networks is a trend that he thinks will continue.

"We look forward to working with other innovative mobile operators around the world to bring the value and convenience of the Skype global Internet communications experience to their millions of mobile phone subscribers," Zennstrom said.

E-Plus claims it has just under 10 million subscribers.

VoIP 2.0 Gets Closer

2005-09-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

[September 01, 2005]
By RICH TEHRANI
TMCnet Technology Analysis Columnist

To me the most amazing change in the competitive landscape since I decided to launch Internet Telephony Magazine in 1997 is
VoIP is being adopted by this company or that. And we are talking about the top technology companies like Microsoft, AOL and Google.

Every company is trying to ride on the the future of VoIP is VoIP 2.0, where we focus more on services and not on cut-rate pricing. This is now an inevitability, not a hypothesis. Google, Microsoft and Skype are software companies providing primarily a free service. Where do they have to go but to add more features and new services? That is the holy grail of VoIP and these behemoths will get us there faster.

VoIP 2.0 is the evolution of VoIP and it will allow everyone to take advantage of more flexibility, more customization and more powerful features. Conferencing and do not disturb functions are simple services that we have today. I expect widespread adoption of other services that allow a caller to dial a single number and be connected to a workgroup instantaneously. This workgroup can be anywhere and will be connected by cell phone, land line orVoIP.

In addition, the ability to launch immediate collaborative conferences from a phone call is something people would give a body part for and lo and behold, VoIP companies are beginning to provide this functionality. I lump these productivity-boosting, time-saving applications into the category of Just In Time Communications (JITC). I don’t believe real-time communications is what the world needs. We need communications that allows users to take control of calls and to be disturbed when necessary, not when the caller feels like calling. That is the true benefit of JITC.

For the first hundred years of telecom, we were bound by hardware. Now communications is software-based and that is where it gets so absolutely exciting, as developing applications to improve telephony is a great deal easier than developing new hardware.

Software like Skype was made possible because today’s PCs are powerful enough and today’s broadband networks have enough bandwidth to allow us to have truly high-quality VoIP calls without additional hardware. In Skype’s case, these calls are free.

Which, of course, leads to the next phase of VoIP. A company like Skype has started to embark upon offering services to generate revenue. Making calls to the PSTN, for example, is a simple way for Skype to generate cash, but the easy revenue is now being collected. The next phase is getting some really compelling killer applications on their network and charging for them. People will pay for services that make them more productive and efficient.

Of course, VoIP 2.0 is the theme of Internet Telephony Conference & Expo this October 24-27, 2005, in Los Angeles. The whole show revolves around this concept. We are no longer bound by the shackles of traditional telecom and as an industry we are ready to boldly go into the world of VoIP 2.0 and become more productive, efficient and profitable. I look forward to guiding you through this new world.

Meru, Juniper Deliver Wireless VoIP

2005-08-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

[August 31, 2005]

BY JOHANNE TORRES
TMCnet VoIP Minute Watch Columnist

Meru Networks partnered with Juniper Networks to co-market wireless VoIP products and services, the companies announced today.

According to the news announcement released this morning, the agreement calls for Meru to join Juniper’s J-Partner Infrastructure Alliance program as a preferred member, and "immediately begin collaborating with Juniper on several fronts, including joint sales engagements and other co-marketing activities."

"We are pleased to welcome Meru Networks to the Juniper Networks Infrastructure Alliance," said Tony Scarfo, vice president, Partner Management at Juniper Networks. "Juniper’s advanced IP and security solutions combined with Meru’s wireless LAN portfolio provides a unique, best-in-class solution for the growing wireless VoIP market."

The new agreement will enable both companies to bundle Juniper’s IP routing and security offering with Meru’s Air Traffic Control technology for WLANs, in order to enable IP voice for mobile enterprise users.

The companies' news release noted that "network security policies will have common enforcement, regardless of whether users are accessing the network via wireless or wireline." These features would be key for companies wanting to develop and market WLAN phones, dual-mode handsets and WLAN-enabled PDAs.

"Meru Networks believes strongly in a best-of-breed partnership strategy to give our customers a complete solution that meets their needs," said Jim Ciociolo, vice president of business development at Meru Networks. "Our partnership with Juniper is a perfect illustration of this strategy, and allows our customers to benefit from our partnership with one of the market leaders in IP routing and network security."

Today's news follows Juniper's recent deal with Speakeasy. The deal, announced two weeks ago, enabled Speakeasy to deploy Juniper's E-and M-series routing platforms.

Speakeasy used Juniper's-E series to support its VoIP service to aggregate traffic and apply QoS policies. The company uses Juniper's M-series for its central sites. Speakeasy also used Juniper’s routing platforms to introduce a new Bonded T1 data service, which enables businesses to combine multiple T1's and add or remove circuits based on need.

The year has been significant for Juniper as well. Indeed, back in March, the company announced it had acquired session border control (SBC) technology provider Kagoor Networks for $67.5 million in cash.

The move, according to Juniper, was an additional step in its strategy to bring secure and assured networking to customers worldwide through rich traffic processing. The service combination of Juniper's networking system and Kagoor's SBC technology will offer an option for network operators looking to cost-effectively deploy VoIP services.

3Com Extends Corporate VOIP to Telecommuters

2005-08-31T14:30:00.000-05:00

By Bary Alyssa Johnson
eWeek

3Com Corporation and Ingate Systems announced this week a partnership to offer enterprise-level enhanced IP telephony solutions for workers on the go.

3Com unveiled yesterday its new IP Telecommuting Module, designed to give remote employees secure access to corporate VOIP (voice over IP) applications, including IP conferencing and IP messaging.

"The 3Com IP Telecommuting modules provides a critical capability for businesses with remote workers, satellite offices, even customers and partners who need reliable access to convergence communication applications including—but not limited to—IP telephony," 3Com vice president and general manager, Convergence Business unit, Denis Aull said in a company statement.

"Existing 3Com IP telephony system customers looking to add remote access capabilities will benefit from secure, converged seamless interoperability, a tremendous asset for any large enterprise today."

The open standards-based IP Telecommuting Module uses SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to allow for increased user mobility.

Employees can now utilize existing corporate VOIP systems to make telephone calls through their computers from any location with internet access (such as airports and home offices), according to a recent news release.

With the enhanced IP telephony solution, users can also opt to re-route incoming calls to wireless devices or even hotel rooms, when they are working out of the office.

3Com will utilize Ingate Systems technologies to combat NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal issues that often come about with SIP communications, according to the release.

"Being chosen by 3Com to provide the far-end NAT traversal solution for the 3Com IP Telecommuting validates Ingate's technology as the best solution for enterprise remote connectivity," said Ingate Systems Chief Executive Officer Olle Westerberg, in a company statement.

"Ingate Firewall and Ingate SIParator products offer businesses a proven solution for SIP-enabling the enterprise and for IP-PBXs (Internet Protocol Private Branch eXchange). Through this arrangement Ingate brings 3Com an important but small portion of its full traversal technology."

Each 3Com IP Telecommuting Module manages up to 100 concurrent remote users. The module, along with required software and licenses, retails for $80 per user and is available for purchase through 3Com's Convergence and IP Telephony Product Information page.

Microsoft Phones in VoIP

2005-08-31T14:16:00.000-05:00

Online staff -- Electronic News, 8/31/2005

In a move to advance its MSN messenger service, Microsoft Corp. has acquired today Teleo Inc., a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) player.

Microsoft expects to combine Teleo’s technology with the existing VoIP investments of MSN, and ultimately projects delivering new VoIP consumer applications in future releases of MSN services.

Lack of solid VoIP, a growing consumer demand, was a hole in the MSN's messenger service. Today's move comes a week after Google announced its Google Talk voice application and follows Yahoo’s purchase of Dialpad, a long distance PC phone service, in the spring.

"Teleo has great technology to deliver superior VoIP quality and an excellent overall customer experience," said Blake Irving, corporate VP of the MSN Communication Services and Member Platform group at Microsoft, in a statement. "This acquisition opens up infinite opportunities for Microsoft to enable even more relationship-centric communications experiences for our customers in the future."

Members of the Teleo executive team will continue to work closely with MSN following the acquisition, and a number of Teleo product developers are expected to join the MSN ranks, Microsoft said.

Financial details were not disclosed.

The New Generation of VoIP in the Workplace

2005-08-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

Jack M. Germain, newsfactor.com

Integrated Voice over Internet Protocol conferencing is the technology of the future, say communications experts. Unlike conferencing technology of the past, VoIP -- integrated with video and collaboration tools -- allows people across the globe to work on business projects and develop documents in real time, with unmatched accuracy and unparalleled efficiency.

Experts predict that 95 percent of large and midsize companies will start adopting integrated VoIP technology within the next five years. Heightened mergers and acquisitions within the communications industry, plus increased regulatory actions by the government and tighter controls on corporate expenses, will position the next generation of VoIP service to change the way business is conducted forever.

Convenience aside, the ability to curtail rising travel costs likely will spur adoption of this teleconferencing technology. The savings in business travel expenses alone will make up for much of the implementation costs, especially for global companies. Yet many companies are unsure how the technology can be applied most effectively to achieve positive business results.

Closer View

Integrated VoIP conferencing combines voice, video, Web and instant-messaging functionality into a single, seamless meeting experience. According to Richard Zimmermann, Forsythe Technology's director of network solutions, the technology differs from earlier forms of conferencing in several ways.

With new on-premise conferencing systems, such as Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO - news) MeetingPlace or Nortel's (NYSE: NT - news) Multimedia Communications Server, customers exercise greater control over their conferencing environments.

In traditional or outsourced conferencing, companies pay a fixed charge per minute to a service provider for audio- or Web-conferencing services. These services are provided through third-party hardware not located on the customer's premises.

In contrast, a premises-based, integrated-conferencing system uses conferencing hardware directly connected to the customer's internal network. This allows customers to ensure the conferencing traffic adheres to their internal security policies and that external users can access conferences securely.

This conferencing strategy differs drastically from earlier conferencing technologies that required customers to set up separate systems for audio conferencing, Web conferencing and video conferencing, said Zimmermann. In many instances, configuring these separate systems to operate together proved difficult, making the user experience cumbersome at best.

"Integrated conferencing is driving video-conferencing capabilities to the desktop, with the result that scheduling a multimedia conference call becomes as easy as sending out an e-mail invitation to a meeting," said Zimmermann.

"Integration with a corporate e-mail system, such as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) Outlook or Lotus Notes, enables users to set up a conference bridge and reserve audio, video and Web ports with a single mouse click," he explained.

Drive to Desktop

Analysts see integrated VoIP service as gradually replacing corporate use of call centers for setting up conference calls.

To set up a conference call through traditional call centers, the corporate worker must contact the call center, schedule a virtual conference room and then distribute the call-in number and user ID to all participants. By contrast, having integrated VoIP service at the corporate location lets workers simply pick up the Internet phone and conference with all involved parties.

The New York Times (NYSE: NYT - news) recently reported that by the end of April 2005, Vonage had amassed 600,000 residential subscribers, up from 400,000 in January 2005. Meanwhile, Cablevision had 350,000 subscribers in April 2005, up from 270,000 in January 2005.

"People are starting to use VoIP conferencing quite a bit as the cost is falling sharply," said Fonix Telecom CEO Matthew Sines. "Find-me-follow-me features and conferencing are all available on-demand and controlled by the user."

Clearly, said Forsythe's Zimmermann, VoIP is not a temporary technology. In fact, analysts predict that by 2009, most businesses will be buying VoIP phone systems exclusively and sales of traditional analog phone systems will all but disappear.

"Most major manufacturers have announced that they are no longer developing new features or applications on their analog systems and have shifted their investment dollars and efforts to VoIP systems," noted Zimmermann.

Network Investments

Like most new technologies, VoIP technology was initially adopted by the business-to-business market, although it has quickly found application in the consumer markets for the same reason business adopted it: avoidance of toll charges.

Several providers have been offering VoIP service directly to consumers. And consumer adoption has increased rapidly as monthly service fees have fallen and the technology's quality of service has increased.

Zimmermann said one of the key reasons for the growth in popularity of these telephony systems is that they use existing data networks, allowing consumers and businesses to leverage the investments they have made in their networks.

"Instead of making multiple investments in telephone switching equipment at each distinct site, companies can make a single investment and realize the benefit of that investment at geographically dispersed locations," he said.

But, as with most things based on new technology, it takes several generations of development for consumers and enterprise users to replace older technologies with the newer versions.

Improved Efficiency

The growth of VoIP in recent years has followed that same course. Although users' risk-tolerance varies greatly, both business and residential customers seem to be gaining confidence in VoIP systems as they become more widely deployed and as the services become more sophisticated with collaboration technologies built right in, said Zimmermann.

"Great strides have been made in ensuring quality of service on these systems so that the difference in voice quality between traditional systems and VoIP systems is becoming negligible," he explained.

Zimmermann noted that many residential users already have disconnected their landline services, opting either for VoIP or cellular services. Similarly, many businesses are operating exclusively on VoIP systems and getting significant improvements in efficiency as a result.

For instance, traveling business users who routinely check in to hotels, both domestically and internationally, can log on to a high-speed Internet connection in their rooms and use VoIP softphones to make calls through their computers and collaborate with colleagues anywhere in the world.

"From the perspective of the people they are talking to," said Zimmermann, "they appear to be at their desk using their office phone."

Sigma Systems' OSS VoIP solution selected by Cable One

2005-08-30T15:19:00.000-05:00

Tuesday August 30, 3:03 pm ET
Enabling Nationwide VoIP Rollout for Cable One

TORONTO, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire/ - Sigma Systems, the leading provider of service management OSS solutions for delivering next-generation services on cable, wireless and IP broadband networks, announced Cable One, a rural market cable operator in the United States, has selected its VoIP OSS solutions and services to deliver a suite of new Packet Cable telephony services to its entire subscriber base.

"The role of OSS service management is essential as we deploy VoIP services, scale operations, and look to grow revenues for our subscriber base," said Steve Fox, VP Digital Services and Technology, Cable One. "Using Sigma's solutions, we gain operational efficiencies by significantly reducing the manual work and processes associated with service order management and service provisioning for complex VoIP services. In turn, we can deliver greater customer satisfaction by ensuring timely and reliable provisioning of new cable telephony services."

The award winning Sigma Service Management Platform, the Sigma VoIP Service Package, Sigma Service Profile Manager and Sigma Voice Client Services Center (CSC) interoperate seamlessly with all business, network and operational systems, allowing Cable One to easily deploy new next generation services to its customers.

"Crucial to selecting Sigma Systems at Cable One was their proven experience and deployed OSS installations for VoIP at other leading cable operators," said Kishore Reddy, Director Voice Services, Cable One. "Sigma's OSS solutions for VoIP and related broadband IP services are highly trusted in the cable industry - hence our deployment risk is significantly reduced and time to market can be accelerated."

The Sigma(TM) Service Management Platform (SMP) and VoIP Service Package provide Cable One with the order management, resource management, service provisioning and inter-carrier gateway integration (i.e. E911, LSR, LNP, PIC/CARE) capabilities for VoIP services such as dial tone, voice mail, long distance service provider selection and CLASS/calling features. Sigma's SMP is an end-to-end solution that automates complex billing integration; soft switch and voicemail activation; as well as CLEC inter-carrier processes.

The Sigma Service Profile Manager is used by CSRs as a service order entry portal at Cable One for Voice telephony services. This application also provides visibility to the entire lifecycle of the subscriber's order, invaluable to track and manage orders from the call center. The Voice CSC is a self-service portal application and is the latest addition to the company's award-winning Sigma Systems Product Portfolio. CSC is designed specifically to meet cable operators' demands for subscriber self-care; enabling web portal management of call feature options/parameters and the ability to add/modify/delete call features.

"For cable operators, end-to-end automation for VoIP services is "mission critical" to scale business and operational processes, and meet their objectives for new revenue growth. Our significant VoIP deployment experience is a key differentiator, gained from our numerous deployments across the globe," explains Tim Spencer, President and COO, Sigma Systems. "Cable One is capitalizing on the benefits of a robust product portfolio constructed from nine years of complex integration experience for cable telephony services."

Channel players set to fuel the growth of VoIP

2005-08-30T14:18:00.000-05:00

Analyst predicts big opportunities as the European telephony market enjoys rapid expansion
James Sherwood, CRN 29 Aug 2005

Channel players will be on the frontline in migrating users to voice over IP (VoIP), as the value of Europe’s telephony market swells to $4.4bn by 2008, according to research by market watcher Datamonitor.

The firm said service providers, VARs, system integrators and ISVs will help end-users to “realise the true value of IP”, especially in financial services, the public sector, healthcare and manufacturing.

Kathleen Klasnic, lead analyst of vertical market technology at Datamonitor, said that if IP telephony vendors and the channel take full advantage of the opportunities, then the VoIP market in western Europe alone could be worth $2.6bn by 2008.

Andrew Saunders, divisional managing director at distributor Crane, said: “The market is large and expanding, so these figures don’t seem unrealistic. The channel will have an increasingly important role to play.”

Klasnic said adding value will be vital. “The channel will find
tying VoIP into specific software applications for vertical markets,” she said.

“Resellers just selling kit will be pushed out of the market. We will see vendors developing programmes to tie the channel into this technology.”

Bernie Dodwell, alliances manager at Westcon, said: “VARs also need to look at the bigger picture. There are so many additional opportunities in this space that VARs are currently missing, such as wireless handsets and call recording services.”

Datamonitor’s report contrasts with an earlier ABI Research report that said worldwide VoIP services will win fewer new subscribers over the next five years than conventional fixed-line and mobile phone offerings.

FCC: VoIP Service won’t be cut off, yet

2005-08-29T16:08:00.000-05:00

Aug 29th 2005 03:39 PM
IT Water Cooler

Telephone customers who use the relatively new Voice over Internet Protocol technology to power their phones need to understand how 911 dialing works. If they don’t, they’ll lose their phone service, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Here’s the reason: In the past, when emergency calls were received by 911 call centers from VoIP lines, the operators had no information as to the whereabouts of the caller. Unlike traditional landline phone service, which attaches detailed location information to all phone numbers, VoIP lines have no information. In the case of an emergency, when callers sometimes cannot give his or her location, this information is crucial to saving lives.

That’s when E911 for VoIP was introduced to solve the problem. (It stands for, “Enhanced 911.”) It allows VoIP phone numbers to contain the same location data as regular phone lines do, but there are a few kinks in the system.

VoIP phone service is powered by the internet, so there’s no way to tell exactly where the VoIP call is coming from. The location data, therefore, has to be entered in by the user. This raises a problem, however. VoIP lines are portable; if a customer moves from, say, Minneapolis to New York City, and does not update their address with the system, serious problems can arise.

Not only will a Minneapolis 911 call center be called if the customer dials 911, but the call center will be given the customer’s previous address. (Dispatching police incorrectly to a Minneapolis residence, for example). It is for this reason, that the FCC wants all customers to understand how E911 works.

And, if they don’t acknowledge their understanding, they won’t have phone service. It’s that simple, says the FCC. To date, an estimated 100,000 VoIP customers still have not acknowledged their understanding – which prompted a move by the FCC last week.

The FCC said on Friday that it is extending a deadline, which used to be today, to September 28 to give VoIP providers more time to contact their customers.

Intel And Cisco Partner On VoIP And Wi-Fi Access

2005-08-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

Aug. 29, 2005

The companies hope to create systems that are secure and easy to use for both home and business environments, executives say

By Edward F. Moltzen, CRN
InformationWeek

The companies hope to create systems that are secure and easy to use for both home and business environments, executives say

Intel and Cisco Systems have entered into a new partnership to make it easier for users to connect to wireless and voice-over-IP technologies, according to the vendors.

The Intel-Cisco alliance--disclosed at the semiannual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco last week by Sean Maloney, executive VP at Intel, and Charlie Giancarlo, chief development officer at Cisco--will combine the efforts of two industry powerhouses as they attempt to solve some of the thornier issues in the growing Wi-Fi space.

The companies are seeking to "create an out-of-box experience that is secure and easy to use on both [home and enterprise] environments," Giancarlo said at the forum. "Voice over IP on Wi-Fi is really, really tricky."

Specifically, Intel and Cisco will work to develop enhanced VoIP quality-of-service technology to more reliably deploy VoIP and voice communication on notebook PCs.

In addition, the companies will optimize access-point-selection technology, giving notebooks the ability to sniff out Wi-Fi networks based on quality of bandwidth and ease of connectivity, as well as providing more-efficient roaming capabilities. Cisco and Intel call the new feature set the Business Class Wireless Suite. It will be aimed at companies that deploy both Cisco's Unified Wireless Architecture and Intel's Centrino mobile platforms.

Maloney also revealed at the forum that Intel has agreed to work with electronics company and notebook vendor Panasonic to improve notebook battery life. The joint development, which will include adding "some nickel" to existing battery technology, would add as much as 30% improvement in overall battery life, Maloney said. Intel has stated a goal of providing eight-hour battery life in notebooks by 2008.

Is Wireless VoIP Ready to Take Off?

2005-08-29T14:13:00.000-05:00

SDA India Magazine, Singapore
News

A new report from research firm In-Stat hammers home the notion that dual-mode cellular/ Wi-Fi smartphones are key to expanding the wireless VoIP market. The report's projections are bold: From the beginning of broad shipments in 2007 to the start of 2009, 66 million dual-mode devices will be in operation, In-Stat predicts. Zero to 66 million in less than two years. That's growth.

Although we've tested a number of smartphone devices that can deliver both cellular and Wi-Fi data services, we've only seen controlled demos of systems that deliver voice services across the two. Key elements are coming together, but more work must be done on both the network infrastructure and the devices. And here's the kicker: Will wireless carriers--the real customers of smartphone manufacturers--believe such mass rollouts are in their best interests? The answer will depend on whether the devices can enable new, multimedia applications that drive more traffic to their networks.

FCC Extends VoIP E911 Deadline

2005-08-26T16:15:00.000-05:00

Net phone providers will have an extra month to warn customers about 911 limitations.

Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Friday, August 26, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has delayed an August 28 deadline for U.S VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) providers to warn customers about limitations of enhanced 911 emergency dialing service, after VoIP carriers complained that tens of thousands customers could lose service next week.

The FCC ruled in June that customers who have not responded to an E911 VoIP advisory would have their service cut off, and the cut-off deadline had been August 30. The FCC on Friday said the deadline had been moved to September 28 for VoIP providers to obtain a response from all their customers saying they have read an advisory describing limitations of E911 VoIP services.

On Thursday, the VON Coalition, a VoIP provider trade group, urged the FCC to extend the August 30 service cut-off deadline. As of August 10, about 1.5 million VoIP customers had responded to the advisories, but close to 100,000 customers had not yet responded to the advisories, estimates Jim Kohlenberger, VON Coalition's executive director. VoIP providers have made multiple attempts to contact the remaining customers, he says.

Kohlenberger praises the FCC for extending the deadline. Most of those customers who haven't responded likely have 911 service on their VoIP services, and a loss of service could endanger lives, he says. "We believe most of those people have 911 service and could be put in harm's way if they haven't acknowledged it," he says.

"Soft" Disconnects

The FCC announcement Friday acknowledges "significant efforts" made by VoIP providers to gain customer responses. The FCC also asked VoIP providers to detail any plans to use so-called "soft" disconnect options for customers who have not responded to the advisories by September 28. Under a soft disconnect, all non-911 calls would go instead to the VoIP provider's customer service line, while 911 calls would continue to be routed to emergency dispatch centers.

In reports due in September, VoIP providers not planning to use soft disconnects must tell the FCC their reasons.

The FCC's Friday announcement was the second month-long extension for VoIP to gather customer responses.

Many VoIP providers have faced technology problems when attempting to connect customers to E911 service connected to the traditional fixed-line telephone network, controlled by telecom carriers that compete with VoIP providers. Some VoIP providers, including Vonage, require customers to sign up for E911 service separately from signing up for VoIP service. Among the challenges for VoIP providers: E911 service shows the emergency dispatch center the address of the caller, but VoIP users can pick up their phones and plug into a broadband network anywhere and keep the same phone number.

In March, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit against Vonage, saying the provider had not adequately warned customers of its E911 limitations. Then in May, the FCC ordered VoIP providers to offer E911 service by late November.

While the FCC deadlines are "painful but necessary," the extension of the service cut-off deadline was a good move by the FCC, says Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst. A better decision would be to find another solution besides cutting off service, he says in an e-mail.

"VoIP has been gaining steam," he says. "There are too many VoIP users who have cut their traditional phone service for turning off VoIP service to be a valid solution. While we do need to address the E911 issues, and while users need to understand the problems, cutting off their phone service is no longer an option. This is 2005, for crying out loud."

VoIP providers must have filed a progress report by August 10 to be eligible for either deadline extension. They must file further updates by September 1 and September 22, the FCC said Friday.

The Benefits of Using GSM VoIP Gateways

2005-08-26T15:13:00.000-05:00

[August 26, 2005]
TMCnet

These days it is not uncommon for a business to spend 50% or more of its telephone call costs on fixed line to mobile calls (F2M) to and from the office PBX. More and more, it is becoming standard that customers and business contacts leave their mobile telephone numbers as their main method of being able to be contacted. This of course makes good sense as most people always have their mobile telephones close at hand.

The problem is that business pays handsomely for this convenience. The GSM carriers charge their customers dearly for the privilege of being able being to contact people on their mobile telephones. One of the reasons for this is that when a call is made from a fixed line to a mobile telephone the call has to go through a PSTN to mobile interconnect facility, also known as the Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO). This is an overhead that the PSTN operators have to pay for when delivering calls from fixed lines to mobile telephones. These costs are then passed on to the fixed line customer in the form of increased call rates

VoIP and GSM gateways

The 2N VoiceBlue Lite and 2N VoiceBlue Enterprise are IP telephony environment as analogue signalling has to be converted to VoIP signalling to make it work. This becomes cumbersome and costly as the two different technologies were never designed to work together.

The VoiceBlue Lite gateway has a pure VoIP interface using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Real Time Protocol (RTP) to enable it to talk seamlessly with an IP PBX. SIP is fast becoming the industry standard for most IP telephony vendors and environments. By using the native VoIP protocols in the IP telephony environment many advantages are gained than by cobbling a solution with analogue units.

The VoiceBlue Enterprise gateway is capable of operating in both a SIP and H.323 environment, either at once, or simultaneously. H.323 is an older standard for VoIP but is very stable and still used by many vendors today. By being able to use both protocols, the VoiceBlue Enterprise is able to work in just about any IP telephony environment imaginable. VoiceBlue Enterprise even offers a built in SIP proxy, effectively making it a “mini” IP PBX. This makes it perfect for environments where business who wish to deploy IP telephone handsets and have the benefits of PBX functions where normal landline services are not available or are not cost effective to deploy. Examples are building site offices, remote locations, temporary facilities, etc.

Summary:
The case for using VoIP GSM gateways lies in their ability to dramatically reduce the F2M and M2F call costs to business. When deployed in an IP telephony environment most businesses are able to reduce their F2M call costs by at least 50% with no reduction in call quality or user comfort. Many are able to achieve over 60% savings.

It is not uncommon to achieve an ROI (Return on Investment) of 6 months or less after deploying the gateways. In some cases it is even possible to save money on National calls, depending on the plan chosen for the SIM cards in the gateway. The powerful LCR (Least Cost Routing) ability on the VoiceBlue gateways makes this possible.

Business VoIP Gains Momentum

2005-08-26T14:40:00.000-05:00

By Doug Johnson
UPI
08/26/05 5:00 AM PT

The good news for business owners is that cost wars continue to push pricing lower as more service providers enter the competition for the business VoIP market. However, serving the business market is far more complex than the general consumer and residential markets.

Driven by the pressures to reduce capital expenditures and increase communication features and functionality, businesses are rapidly embracing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services to unify corporate communications.

VoIP promises enhanced mobility and productivity -- and significant cost savings -- and has attracted so much interest in the market that industry research firm IDC now predicts the hosted IP-voice-services market will reach US$7.6 billion by 2008. Now that these services have evolved to a point were they are truly viable for all businesses, what market issues remain and what applications are driving VoIP adoption?

When VoIP first came to market, the service challenge was simple: voice quality and reliability. Over the past several years, vendors have taken a giant leap forward in the operational implementation of VoIP, and made great progress in eliminating quality as a market barrier.

Pricing Dropping

This has been partly achieved by the arrival of "managed" VoIP services via proprietary networks that are rigorously engineered to ensure quality. Certain applications that relate to perceived reliability, such as emergency 911 functionality, are also being integrated as a standard network service.

The good news for business owners is that cost wars continue to push pricing lower as more service providers enter the competition for the business VoIP market. However, serving the business market is far more complex than the general consumer and residential markets. In addition to higher quality requirements than those of consumers, business customers often have multi-layered infrastructures with multiple office locations, highly mobile employees, varying service levels for different management functions and differing opinions on how to manage telecommunications equipment and services.

For this reason, it is essential to select an experienced service provider that has a diverse set of applications that are easy to use and manage.

There are several choices available to business customers. They can install and integrate their own VoIP infrastructure , or they can outsource that function to a "hosted" VoIP service provider. Initially, the allure of migrating to hosted VoIP often is its ability to reduce deployment complications and capital expenditures, but many businesses are recognizing that the benefits go well beyond these initial cost savings.

Various Applications

VoIP service providers have been rapidly expanding their application diversity and functionality in recent years. In addition to standard services such as local, long distance, international and free "on net" calling, today's new VoIP applications are taking corporate communications to new levels and significantly enhancing productivity. The following are some of the compelling VoIP applications businesses should look for when selecting a provider:

Conference Calling: Utilizing VoIP for conference calling helps ensure availability and flexibility. With instant access and "always on" functionality, impromptu calls can begin immediately, eliminating timely set up and costly fees. Look for providers that include easy Web controls and toll-free numbers.

FindMe/FollowMe: For those employees, especially mobile employees, who are tired of juggling multiple phones and voice mail boxes, FindMe/FollowMe will drastically reduce the time spent connecting with customers, partners or co-workers. This application enables one number for all communications needs. Whether it's a cell phone, desk phone, home phone or any other phone, FindMe/FollowMe provides a single point of communication that allows individuals to auto-route calls on a pre-set schedule depending on the time of day. Look for providers that can route voice mail messages to e-mail or pagers.

Unified Messaging: The ability to listen to messages from any Web-enabled computer or touch-tone phone can save valuable time. This application lets employees forward messages via e-mail or phone, download or save messages to a computer, and returns calls with the touch of a button. Look for providers that offer unlimited message storage capacity and broad support for wireless devices and PCs.

Virtual Receptionist: Businesses today require that customers can easily connect with the right person immediately, wherever he or she might be located. Virtual receptionist applications enable a company's main number to be a gateway to instant communication by seamlessly linking cell phones, work phones or home phones anywhere in the world. Most of these applications offer custom greetings, auto rerouting and voice mail. Look for providers that support messaging alerts and offer instant conference calling access.

Toll-Free Calling: A toll-free number makes connecting to a business simple and free. These applications enable calls to be easily received and routed. Look for providers with integrated voice mail for additional functionality and convenience.

When bundled together, these advanced voice services applications -- and others such as fax management, calling card support, hunt groups and more -- offer a powerful communications platform for businesses

VoIP users may be cut off

2005-08-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Posted on Thu, Aug. 25, 2005

Internet phone users may find themselves without service if they do not respond to an FCC-mandated notice about sketchy 911 service.

BY BRUCE MEYERSON
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Providers of Internet-based phone services may be forced next week to cut off tens of thousands of customers who haven't formally acknowledged that they understand the problems they may encounter dialing 911 in an emergency.

The Federal Communications Commission had set the Monday deadline as an interim safeguard while providers of Internet calling, also known as ''VoIP'' for Voice over Internet Protocol, rush to comply with an FCC order requiring full emergency 911 capabilities by late November.

Vonage Holdings Corp., the biggest VoIP carrier with more than 800,000 subscribers, told The Associated Press Wednesday that 96 percent of its customer base have responded to the company's notices about 911 risks. But that still means as many as 31,000 accounts would need to be shut off as early as Tuesday.

RESPONSE RATE

Other leading carriers declined to quantify the response rate beyond the updates they were required to file with the FCC two weeks ago. AT&T spokesman Gary Morgenstern said customer acknowledgments are now ''significantly higher'' than the 77 percent figure it reported to the FCC on Aug. 10.

The FCC issued its order in May after a series of highly publicized incidents in which VoIP users were unable to connect with a live emergency dispatch operator when calling 911.

Vonage, AT&T and other carriers have indicated that they plan to comply with the FCC deadline to disconnect customers.

''There is no way to know just how close [to a 100 percent customer response] we will get by Monday,'' Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz said.

She added that the company has been meeting with the FCC weekly ``to seek their guidance as to how to implement the approaching Aug. 29 cutoff date.''

But Time Warner Cable, the biggest VoIP provider in the cable-TV industry with more than 600,000 users, has told the FCC it sees no need to disconnect anyone.

The division of Time Warner said in its FCC filing that all customers have already been adequately informed about the risk of losing 911 service in a power outage -- the primary issue for cable-based VoIP services -- and that all have already acknowledged that risk.

THE OUTCRIES

Some VoIP users have expressed anger on Web forums at what they perceive as a heavy-handed approach by the FCC, while others have mistakenly seen the disconnection warnings as an arbitrary policy adopted by their service providers.

Compared with many vague government pronouncements, the wording of the FCC order is clear-cut on the disconnections, which could create a situation where some
VoIP users suddenly find themselves with no phone service at all during an emergency rather than a functioning phone with inferior 911 service.

The FCC declined to say how it might enforce or check up on compliance with the order, which originally called for disconnections in late July before the agency pushed the deadline to Aug. 29.

Vonage IPO: What It Means For VoIP

2005-08-25T14:44:00.000-05:00

[August 25, 2005]

At some point Vonage is going to have to prove they can be profitable while becoming a major telecom carrier. They need to pull off this feat while facing competition from Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft, Google and industry leader Skype, who are all battling for dominance in VoIP.

By RICH TEHRANI
TMCnet Technology Analysis Columnist

VoIP companies enjoyed two surges in the public markets. The first was in the Fall of 1997 when companies like Inter-Tel and Franklin Telecom were VoIP darlings. Inter-Tel who at the time had a service provider offering was one of the few public ways to play what at the time we called IP telephony or Internet telephony.

We then saw public interest leave the VoIP space for a while and then it came back with a vengeance in 1998-2000. The public markets haven’t had too many tech darlings since the ensuing bubble burst, though. Google and eBay come to mind, but since Google there haven’t been too many household-name tech blockbusters your grandmother asked you about investing in.

That could potentially change as a rumored Vonage IPO would be a huge deal in the VoIP market. It is huge because Vonage will be a barometer for the entire VoIP industry and more importantly its success or failure will be amplified a thousands times due to its influence on the companies in this space and the capital markets reaction (or over-reaction) to whatever develops.

Many investors have told me they have been so burned by telecom they will never invest in the space again. Many of these same people were also burned by Internet stocks and chose not to invest in Google. This was obviously not the correct move as Google is trading at around three times its IPO price. So it is possible a successful IPO of the leading US VoIP provider will bring investors storming back into VoIP.

But Vonage is not without competitors and the biggest competitive threat to Vonage was supposed to be AT&T. Instead of becoming an obstacle, the once feared phone company is slowly being absorbed by SBC and in the process has all but stopped marketing its CallVantage service. The regional cable companies and phone companies are also a threat but their geographical limitations pretty much ensure they are lions in their home range only. At least for now.

So this leaves Vonage as the leading paid VoIP service, and amazingly the next pure VoIP competitor in the US is Packet8 who has a fraction of the customers Vonage does. This means the NJ-based Vonage certainly has a leading position in the market and they are far ahead of their competitors in mindshare and market share. It is worth pointing out that Packet8 is part of 8x8 which is a public company but with 8x8’s stock price languishing if not spiraling downward, it is not considered by many to be an industry bellwether.

The question is whether Vonage will make money selling VoIP service. At some point Vonage is going to have to prove they can be profitable while becoming a major telecom carrier. They need to pull off this feat while facing competition from Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft, Google and industry leader Skype, who are all battling for dominance in VoIP.

In my opinion, in order for Vonage to get to the next level they are going to have to continue their international push and at some point soon they have to focus on selling incremental services like conferencing to generate higher ARPU or average revenue per user. I imagine in the not too distant future we will call on Vonage (certainly no pun intended here but make sure it is an Internet telephony call if you please) to supply TV for us so they are likely exploring ways to provide IPTV. Wireless is another area they will have to thrive in, so expect Vonage to become an MVNO or mobile virtual network operator -- meaning they will resell service from a company such as Sprint PCS. Vonage is already starting WiMAX trials, which shows they are painfully aware of the disadvantage they have by not controlling the last mile to their customers.

As a pure-play public VoIP service company, Vonage is in a position to set the stage for many other companies in the VoIP space to also go public. Investors are eyeing Vonage more and more closely, and if we expect the excitement and purchasing in the VoIP space to continue at its current pace we have to as an industry hope Vonage can continue its whirlwind pace of customer acquisition while at the same time delivering profits to keep Wall Street happy.

-----

Rich Tehrani is President and Editor in Chief at TMC.

VOIP Equipment Revenue Up 18%

2005-08-25T14:14:00.000-05:00

AUGUST 25, 2005

BOSTON -- Worldwide next gen voice product revenue jumped 18% to $614 million between the first and second quarters of 2005, a new record for a quarterly gain, and is up 55% year-over-year, according to Infonetics Research's latest report, Service Provider Next Gen Voice Equipment. Annual revenue is forecast to grow to $5.7 billion by 2008.

All segments of the next gen voice market are up year-over-year, and all but softswitch class 4 and media servers are up from 1Q05.

"Growth in equipment sales is very strong as carriers continue down the network modernization and service innovation path," said Kevin Mitchell, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "We upped our North American subscriber forecast and added a European subscriber forecast. In both regions, we expect penetration of VoIP to near 40% in 2008."

North American residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers jump from 1.1 million in 2004 to 24.3 million in 2008, with over 6 million new subscribers added in 2006, 2007, and 2008. In Europe, VoIP subscribers multiply from 2.2 million in 2004 to 27.8 million in 2008, with close to 8 million new subscribers in 2007 and 2008.

2Q05 Highlights

Worldwide softswitch revenue totaled $247.9 million, up 15% from 1Q05 and 106% from 2Q04, with all growth due to class 5 applications

Nortel leads in worldwide media gateway and softswitch revenue market share, followed by Siemens and Sonus

Worldwide session border controller sessions totaled 1.1 million, a 10% sequential increase and an 82% increase from 2Q04

Infonetics' report tracks VoIP subscribers, media servers, session border controllers, trunk media gateways, voice application servers, softswitches, and class 5 packet switches.

Companies tracked include Acme Packet, Alcatel, AudioCodes, BayPackets, Broadsoft, Brooktrout, Carrius, CIRPACK, Cisco, Convedia, CopperCom, DiTech, Ericsson, Huawei, IPeria, IP Unity, Italtel, Juniper, Lucent, Marconi, MetaSwitch, Mera, NeoTIP, NetCentrex, Netrake, NexTone, NewCross, Nortel, Pactolus, Persona, Sansay, sentitO, Siemens, Sonus, Sylantro, Tekelec, Ubiquity, UTStarcom, Veraz, Xener, others.

Infonetics Research Inc.

VoIP Stealing Thunder From Fixed Connections

2005-08-24T16:48:00.000-05:00

[ news_ebusiness_news ]
Chris Crum Staff Writer 2005-08-24

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a new report forecasting the doom of the fixed-connection phone industry.

Maybe doom is a strong word, but the OECD says that the fixed-line revenues are threatened by VoIP, as it gains popularity, and land lines lose theirs.

As mobile phones continue to gain in popularity as well when compared to land lines, VoIP threatens their revenues too.

"VoIP presents a challenge to mobile telephones, which in many countries are now more numerous than fixed connections," said the OECD.

According to Light Reading,
In 2003, for the first time ever, the number of fixed phone lines actually fell in OECD countries, with mobile operators gaining market share at the expense of the traditional telecoms companies, a trend which continued in 2004 and 2005. As for Internet telephony, a comparison of the cost of calls via Skype, a VoIP provider, and via traditional fixed-line carriers in OECD countries revealed an average saving of 80% using Skype, according to the OECD report. On a per capita basis, Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands are the largest users of Skype.

I would assume that land line services will have to go down in price to stay competitive with the VoIP industry.

Wireless VoIP threatens mobile carriers, says Alexander

2005-08-24T16:01:00.000-05:00

By Dan Meyer
Aug 24, 2005

Wireless Voice over Internet Protocol services are emerging as a threat to traditional wireless carriers, according to a report from Alexander Resources. The report, "Wireless VoIP: What Threats to Mobile Operators?," predicted wireless VoIP service will have a similar impact on competition and the price of service as wired VoIP offerings are currently having on traditional wired operators.

"Just as VoIP increased competition and lowered calling rates for wireline local and long-distance services, so to will wireless VoIP bring about similar changes to mobile-phone networks and services," Alexander Resources claimed.

The report also noted that while wireless operators are looking to deploy next-generation architectures in the guise of UMTS Release 6 and CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A to combat the potential threat from wireless VoIP service, lengthy deployment timelines put those plans at risk. The updated wireless networks are expected to provide sufficient data speeds to enable VoIP services using traditional cellular networks, but are not expected to begin commercial deployments until late next year.

In response to the increased competition from wireless VoIP service providers, Alexander Resources said it expects wireless carriers likely will roll out lower-priced rate plans that include unlimited calling for fixed, monthly rates in an attempt to combat wireless VoIP offerings.

VoIP Will Replace Traditional Telephony

2005-08-24T15:28:00.000-05:00

24/08/2005 / Enterprises lead charge:

IP-based telephone line shipments are expected to surpass those of traditional lines this year, signaling the continued growth of voice traffic on data networks, Internetnews.com reports.

According to research from In-Stat, network administrators are increasingly moving their telephone networks, the PBX , onto the data network as their traditional phone networks reach the end of their equipment lifecycle. In-Stat expects to see a rapid decline in the traditional PBX as companies replace them with IP-based and less-expensive hybrid PBX equipment, which is server-based but uses traditional phones.

By 2009, analysts at the firm predict IP-based PBX shipments will make up 91 percent of the total PBX market, at a compound annual growth rate of 6.6 percent. Shipments for the next-generation PBX, in that time, will jump from 9.5 million to 28.1 million lines.

The reason for the switch toIP-based telephony networks, said Keith Nissen, a senior analyst at In-Stat, is that companies are comfortable with VoIP and are now looking at ways to integrate their data and voice networks. The move toIP-based telephony networks today is mainly occurring at the large enterprise level, Nissen said.

Source: EDITTECH INTERNATIONAL

VoIP User base Grows to 2.7 Million

2005-08-22T17:58:00.000-05:00

Posted by Michael on 20 Aug 2005

According to analysis done by the TeleGeography research group, VoIP usage is on the rise as more and more people abandon their traditional telephone companies for broadband telephone service also known as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

According to the analysis VoIP usage has toped 2.7 million in the second half of 2005 compared to just 440,000 just a year ago.

The revenue for VoIP users is cable companies which bundle their VoIP service with their internet service.

Vonage currently is the largest VoIP provider with over 750,000 users, coming in second is AOL Time Warner.

VoIP although an affordable alternative to regular telephone service it is required that you have a High Speed internet connection that will cost a user anywhere from 19.95 – 50 dollars a month.

VoIP has also come under fire due to lack of E911 support. However that is about to change in the coming months. VoIP providers are going to be forced to support E911 by FCC regulations that will go into effect November 28th.

The Lowdown on VoIP

2005-08-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

Posted by Mike Schuda on: 2005-08-21 14:31:28

It seems like technology is headed for a massive telephone change over. The traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is looking to be replaced by VoIP. VoIP is short for Voice over IP. VoIP is the routing of conversations over an IP network or the Internet. VoIP uses a packet-switched network instead of the circuit-switched voice transmission lines used by traditional telephone networks. VoIP does not need an Internet connection to work. A company that has a LAN connection with all of its computers can utilize VoIP technology.

VoIP is a great technology, but has a variety of issues with implementation. VoIP may face problems with latency because IPs do not provide Quality of Service guarantees, nor do they provide their packets of information in sequential order. High-speed Internet connections are required for VoIP and firewalls often prove tricky for VoIP technology. To combat this, many people use Session Border Controllers (SBC).

VoIP technology has many advantages. There are more new features with VoIP because of the lack of an International Telecommunications Union. VoIP is still very much an open market for developers, so the technology is constantly being improved. VoIP also has a lower cost than traditional sources because of the monopolies that exist or traditional phone companies being controlled by the government. Some users even see VoIP phone calls as free because they do not have to pay extra for the service. The user only pays the Internet service provider, and therefore the usage of VoIP seems to be free. You can also take your VoIP phone wherever you go because all you need is a network connection to make it work. VoIP technology will also benefit network agents who work for call centers. Agents can help callers from anywhere in the country with an Internet connection. Finally, because VoIP is on the computer, there is increased functionality. Conference calls can be held, information can be sent, and things like address books can be updated and shared over VoIP.

While VoIP has many advantages, there are a few drawbacks to the service. One of the biggest drawbacks is reliability. Telephone lines have back up generators in case of power outages, so phones can keep working. BecauseVoIP is connected to the Internet, a power outage will end a VoIP call when the computer shuts down. To combat this, users must buy an expensive uninterruptible power supply or a generator that must then be installed on the premises. Internet connections are also subject to disconnection, depending on crowded networks, and the quality of the ISP. If the Internet connection drops, then the VoIP call will be dropped. VoIP is also a problem for emergency calls. Because of the nature of the Internet and VoIP systems, emergency workers cannot trace calls. In the event that someone with an emergency has a problem but is unable to give an address, the emergency worker will not be able to trace the call and find the person. VoIP carriers are already attempting to fix this problem by implementing a technical work-around. Finally, it will be very difficult to integrate VoIP on a massive scale, because while the standard Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) has a common standard, VoIP does not.

VoIP has many advantages as well as some large drawbacks. The main roadblock in the way of global VoIP adoption is reliability. When VoIP proves that it can be just as reliable as traditional telephone services have been over many years, then it will start to be adopted. VoIP technology is always improving, so the problems with VoIP today are likely to be solved sooner than many people expect. VoIP can truly revolutionize both the business world and home life.

Number of Internet-phone consumers soars beyond expectations in U.S.

2005-08-22T16:45:00.000-05:00

Brian Bergstein, Ap Technology Writer
Canadian Press
Saturday, August 20, 2005

BOSTON (AP) - The number of consumers bypassing the traditional phone network and opting for Internet voice service is soaring beyond expectations.

An analysis by the TeleGeography research group found 2.7 million subscribers across the United States in the second quarter, compared with just 440,000 a year earlier.

The technology, known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, requires a broadband Internet line but generally offers inexpensive calling plans and novel features such as the ability to manage voice mail on a web page.

The revenue generated from consumer VoIP services remained relatively small, at $220 million US, but that is expected to change quickly. TeleGeography forecasts annual VoIP revenue hitting $3 billion in two years.

The biggest factors in the numbers are cable-TV companies, which are using VoIP to bundle phone service with their TV offerings in hopes of staving off competition from incumbent phone companies that are just beginning to get into the TV business.

Time Warner Inc.'s cable division is now the nation's second-largest VoIP carrier, trailing only Vonage Holdings Corp., one of the earliest commercial providers of the service. Vonage is estimated to have 750,000 U.S. subscribers, more than three times its level a year ago.

Colleges Test VoIP Cellphones

2005-08-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

August 19, 2005
By Jim Wagner

Three universities are testing a new service from VeriSign (Quote, Chart) that puts wireless phones on IP (define) networks.

Texas A&M, Northwestern University and the University of Michigan started trials of VeriSign's Wireless IP Connect Service earlier this week. The offering lets students and faculty place cell phone calls over a campus Wi-Fi (define) or commercial wireless carrier network

Officials see it as a way to keep university members -- students and staff -- connected at all times, using the Wi-Fi network for calls on the campus and the regular phone service off campus.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based IT infrastructure company uses SS7 (define) to manage call-switching from dual-mode handsets to wireless broadband networks and back again, as well as provide security measures like media stream control and firewall management.

The net effect is people with dual-mode phones or devices will be able to use their one phone number to roam across wireless, Wi-Fi and VoIP (define) networks seamlessly using the VeriSign service.

"We've seen tremendous growth in the use of mobile devices by faculty, students and staff on campus," Andrew Palms, University of Michigan's director of communications systems, said in a statement. "We believe that the trial services provided by VeriSign will enhance the ability of our community members to use those devices both inside and outside of buildings, and on and off campus."

Officials at VeriSign were not available for comment at press time, but said in a statement the wireless VoIP offering gives universities and carriers the ability to provide a service under one device, one number and one bill.

VeriSign, known more for its management of the .com and .net registries and digital certificates, has been building up telecommunications support through its Intelligent Communications, Commerce and Content Services group. The company provides not only interoperability services but billing, content and applications and database services for carriers.

VoIP: Let Us Do E911 Better.

2005-08-19T12:49:00.000-05:00

Nuvio’s lawsuit challenging the FCC’s E911 deadline is a good ploy.

By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

In May, the FCC ordered that VoIP providers must provide a way for their customers to reach an emergency dispatcher when they call 911 the way it works from standard phones, which is to say dispatchers also must be able to identify the caller’s phone number and location on the screen, without requiring someone who’s fallen and can’t get up to rattle it off. The deadline is November 28th.

Kansas-based VoIP provider Nuvio Corp. has filed a lawsuit saying that’s an unreasonable length of time. Maybe not unreasonable to comply with the law, but unreasonable to do something a lot better than what the law requires.

Nuvio’s not challenging the fact thatVoIP should provide emergency 911. Nobody who objects to providing 911 service belongs in the VoIP way, which means better than it’s currently provided by POTS.

“We have worked diligently to provide our users with 911 access,” Talley tells the Associated Press. But, “the 120-day requirement imposed by the FCC is arbitrary and capricious and without support in the record.” He's pointed out elsewhere that "The cellular industry has been grappling with these same issues for a dozen years."

What the industry wants is to rethink 911. “To enable E911 service, VoIP providers must obtain access to incumbent local exchange carriers systems, interconnection facilities, numbering resources, public service answering points and other critical elements that traditional telephone companies employ to provide E911 service,” Vonage has said in an official filing.

VoIPers, however, would like to run it through routers, and provide maps, photos and other cool stuff the current system doesn’t do but which is possible with VoIP. Note that there’s no government regulation requiring them to do so, because it’s not the nature of government to require ingenuity and technological advancement. That’s why business is business and government is government -- business creates new realities and government comes along afterwards with the pushbroom.

Government can require VoIP to provide E911 the old-fashioned way, or it can let VoIP come up with a better way.

This reporter thinks the Nuvio lawsuit’s just to buy time. Talley knows he won’t win, but maybe he can use government’s own inefficiency and bureaucracy against it as he buys time for the industry to create the better way of doing 911 before they have to waste a great deal of time and energy complying with the very system their technology has rendered obsolete

VoIP Firm Launches Interactive Online Community

2005-08-19T12:20:00.000-05:00

August 18, 2005
Courtesy of TechWeb News

The company that provides the Packet 8 broadband Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and videophone communications service has launched an interactive online community, creating a forum so its subscribers and users can collaborate.

The Packet8 Online Community, created by 8x8 Inc., allows users to network, post blogs, create forums, get technical support, list classified ads, share business tips, and learn about Internet phone service with VideoPhone users worldwide. Many of the company's employees, including CEO Bryan Martin, have created their own blogs.

Almost 40 percent of Americans reported participation in online communities, according to an AC Neilsen study conducted last fall. Forums that feature hobbies, shared personal interests and health-related topics are the most popular.

Avaya IP telephony shipments top 7 million

2005-08-17T15:55:00.000-05:00

Company says that its IP line shipments have overtaken its traditional telephony sales for the first time.

By Matthew Friedman
Networking Pipeline
Aug 17, 2005

Avaya Inc. has yesterday that its IP telephony line shipments have topped seven million, marking a milestone in its VoIP business. The company also announced that its IP line shipments have overtaken its traditional telephony sales for the first time.

Avaya cites Synergy Research Group studies that say Avaya is the global leader in IP telephony in the first quarter of this year with a 21% market share, a position it has held for six consecutive quarters.

VoIP overall is growing at a rate of 70% per year, according to Synergy Research. Eight percent of the 423 enterprise telephony lines shipped last year were IP. Synergy expects the IP telephony market to quadruple by 2007.

"Businesses are beginning to understand the true value of IP telephony lies in the integration of communications applications and business applications," Avaya chairman and CEO Don Peterson said in a statement. "We call this Intelligent Communications, and it is leading to a redefinition of business processes while creating new business models and greater customer satisfaction."

The recipient of Avaya's seven millionth line was India's ING Vysya Bank, which will use IP telephony technology to deliver 24-hour telephone banking to its customers.

Yahoo readies new VoIP service

2005-08-17T15:05:00.000-05:00

17th August 2005
By Rhonda Ascierto

Yahoo Inc is readying to capture a larger piece of the VoIP market and one analyst said it would announce a new VoIP product during the next two weeks.

The new service would be comparable to Skype Technologies SA's, said Safa Rashtchy, senior research analyst at Wall Street researcher Piper Jaffray Co, which makes a market in Yahoo stock.

"VoIP is fast becoming the new killer app of the Internet and this move should push Yahoo ahead of its competitors," Rashtchy said in a research note.

Yahoo is planning to become a full-service VoIP provider, but declined to give a timeline on new product announcements beyond "coming months," said spokesperson Terrell Karlsten.

The impending move by Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo into the VoIP arena would potentially be disruptive.

Skype currently leads the VoIP consumer market with more than 30 million users, according to the most recent market research.

Yahoo will have a big lead to chase, but its existing user base and household name may serve it well. Still, America Online and Microsoft both recently included voice capabilities into their messaging services, as well.

David Grabert, spokesperson for Cox Communications, which offers VoIP as part of its triple-play service (voice, TV/video and Internet), said Yahoo would likely find it difficult to compete against bundled VoIP services. Another major US VoIP provider, Vonage Holdings Corp, did not return calls requesting comment on Yahoo's planned push into its market.

Last week, Yahoo launched Messenger 7.0, which includes free PC-to-PC VoIP service and voicemail. Both parties must have the latest version of Messenger for it to work.

Karlsten stressed the new VoIP feature is SIP-based and is a significant upgrade to previous VoIP capabilities, which Yahoo has had since 1999 and did not enable two-way conversations and had rather poor sound quality.

She said the next VoIP enhancement for Yahoo has been "prioritized" within its Messenger service, but that the company is looking to expand its VoIP offerings beyond just a souped-up messaging software.

Rashtchy said thenew VoIP would expand Yahoo's content footprint and further establish its brand as "comprehensive provider of content, search and communication services." He said Yahoo is likely to run the new service with an advertising-supported basic service and potentially a premium paid service.

Karlsten said Yahoo would "in coming months" leverage the technology it acquired when it bought six-year-old VoIP service provider Dialpad Communications for an undisclosed amount in June. Back then, she also said Yahoo would use Dialpad's PSTN capabilities to add in-bound PC and PC-to-phone calling to Yahoo's offerings "in coming months."

Karlsten declined to say how many Yahoo Messenger users had tried its new PC-to-PC service, but noted that during beta trials in May, the company saw a two-thirds increase in voice usage among users.

Is it time for a VoIP firewall?

2005-08-17T14:28:00.000-05:00

By Amy Storer, News Writer
16 Aug 2005 SearchEnterpriseVoice.com

Spam commonly proliferates using STMP and HTTP protocols, which are critical to e-mail and the Internet, but it could soon become the nemesis of SIP as well.

Session Initiation Protocal(SIP) is a VoIP call-control and application protocol technology serving as the Internet Engineering Task Force's de facto standard for initiating a multimedia interactive user session.

Andrew Graydon, vice president of technology with Mississauga, Ontario-based BorderWare Technologies Inc., said traditional security measures -- such as authentication, authorization and IPsec -- are not designed to secure and manage SIP-based communications in real time.

But, Graydon said, new technologies like SIP firewalls are emerging to address the protocol's distinct security requirements. A SIP firewall is an appliance that manages and protects the traffic, flow and quality of VoIP and other SIP-related communications.

According to Graydon, the industry is working to secure voice communications at the transport layer with VPN-like encryption. But he said hackers will eventually learn how to attack Internet calls at the application layer.

BorderWare's recently released hardware and software SIP-based firewall, SIPassure, authenticates user connections and allows system administrators to set and enforce VoIP security policies to address application layer exploits.

More specifically, SIPassure's features include:

Protection with a range of controls, including unique session profiling that prevent spam and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Antispam filters for securing, managing, monitoring and administering SIP-enabled communications.

Built-in audit and reporting capabilities designed to address critical security issues by providing visibility into all SIP-related communications, including SIP proxy, SIP registrar, spam, user access and capacity planning.

While SIP-based firewalls aren't necessary today, Teney Takahashi, market analyst for The Radicati Group Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., said companies will soon need a device like SIPassure to protect themselves from communication exploits.

"It would be prudent for a company not to invest in something like this over the next couple of years," Takahashi said. "If they're going to protect their e-mail and their Web traffic, they should also protect their SIP traffic -- especially if they have VoIP or an instant messaging system they rely on for business communications."

Takahashi said companies such as Cisco Systems Inc. may have security measures in place to prevent attacks on its SIP networks, but BorderWare was the first to market with its dedicated application for filtering out illegitimate SIP traffic.

He said some vendors have products that filter out IM traffic or VoIP traffic, but no other offering filters SIP traffic at the application layer like BorderWare.

"It definitely seems that SIP is the chosen protocol for real-time communication," Takahashi said. "As this trend progresses over the next few years, a SIP-specific firewall will become very valuable to companies."

Wireless IP Phones the Key for VoIP Markets Reports In-Stat

2005-08-16T15:40:00.000-05:00

August 16, 2005 08:01 AM US Eastern Timezone

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 16, 2005--In both business and consumer markets, widespread adoption of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) depends on the availability of wireless VoIP handsets, reports In-Stat. Dual-mode cellular/WiFi handsets will be the key driver to mass consumer adoption of VoIP, the high-tech market research firm says. By 2009, In-Stat forecasts that over 66 million cellular/WiFi handsets will be in operation.

"Wireless high-speed broadband access, unified messaging, video, and dual-network cellular/WiFi services are making the mobile triple play a consumer market reality," said Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. "The key to successfully capturing the market for these next-generation personalized services is control of the end-point device."

A recent report by In-Stat found the following:

-- Worldwide, consumer VoIP subscribers using wireless IP phones will grow from 2% currently to 73% in 2009.

-- Based on competition from mobile carriers without wireline operations, Europe will be the largest initial market for dual-mode smartphones.

-- While mass production of dual-mode sets is not scheduled until 2007, an In-Stat market survey found that more than 80% of businesses have an interest in the technology.

The report,"Wireless IP Phones Drive Future VoIP Markets" covers the evolution of business and consumer IP end points, and analyzes the impact on the future telecom industry. The report outlines the continued migration of PBX markets to enterprise IP telephony, along with the deployment of dedicated and standards-based IP telephones and soft clients, and the growth of wireless LAN and dual-network WiFi/cellular handsets. 2004 unit shipments are presented by category, along with 2005-2009 IP phone forecasts.

Nuvio Seeks Delay on VoIP 911

2005-08-16T14:48:00.000-05:00

VoIP provider Nuvio wants time to comply with the FCC’s 911 directive.
August 16, 2005

Nuvio, a VoIP service provider, has decided to fight the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s directive ordering all VoIP providers to provide access to enhanced emergency 911 services before the end of the year.

The Overland Park, Kansas-based company filed an appeal with the FCC requesting an extension of the November 28 deadline, and asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to deliver a decision by November 7, before the FCC order goes into effect.

If the FCC order goes into effect before the court decision, Nuvio said it will have to start disconnecting its mostly small- to medium-sized business customers.

No one in the VoIP industry doubts that enhanced 911 services, which include a call back number and a registered location, are needed. But VoIP providers point to the fact that the wireless industry has gotten years to comply with its E911 mandates and still have not completed many required connections.

James Talley, chief executive of Nuvio, called the deadline “arbitrary and capricious.”

“We have worked diligently to provide our users with 911 access,” Mr. Talley said. “The wireless companies have been given decades to implement this kind of 911 service.”

Wireless vs. VoIP

The cellular industry is also facing an end-of-the-year deadline for E911, but began implementing the process in the late 1990’s. The carriers’ mandate is slightly different, and either through carriers’ handsets or networks must locate the 911 caller within 100 feet roughly by the end of the year.

But according to the National Emergency Number Association, NENA, only 46 percent of local public safety answering points or PSAPs, the sites which route emergency calls to a local emergency service provider, can pinpoint a wireless 911 caller’s location within the mandatory 100 feet.

Since the mandate was issued, carriers have managed to convince the FCC to extend various deadlines several times. Recently, wireless trade groups Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association and the Rural Cellular Association sent a petition to the FCC. It called for a suspension or a waiver for the section of the mandate which says that 95 percent of handsets in the market issued by Verizon, Sprint, and Nextel must have E911 location capability.

VoIP Deadline

If the giant carriers are having problems meeting deadlines, small VoIP providers say the deadline is a brick wall. Telcos, cable companies, and established VoIP providers like Vonage can survive the added costs and can use their size to influence policy. But small VoIP providers say they won't be able to make the large investment.

Small startups are at the bottom rung of an industry facing increased competition, imminent consolidation, and a race to offer the lowest price point of roughly $25 per month. The added investment in renting network access from the network owners, along with the costs of maintaining the system, could be a barrier to entry for newcomers and an impossible burden for fragile companies.

Many of the bigger companies are already providing these services. Vonage recently pledged to spend $10 million on setting up a so-called E911 network, plus $1 million per month to keep service running. The large companies can stomach the costs and will likely support the FCC’s strict E911 deadline.

“While 120 days is an aggressively short amount of time in which to comply with these requirements, the threat to public safety if we delay is too great and demands near immediate action,” wrote the FCC in the Federal Register.

Vonage made headines this year when the states of Texas and Connecticut sued the VoIP provider when the company’s technology was unable to connect 911 callers. Victims and family members involved in the suits testified before the FCC. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin called the VoIP/911 ruling an action “to remedy a very serious problem—one quite literally of life or death for the millions of customers who subscribe to VoIP service as a substitute for traditional phone service.”

How Much Bandwidth is Required for VoIP Phones?

2005-08-16T14:14:00.000-05:00

Written by: Chris Landry
Date posted: August 15th 2005

A long-standing question for potential VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) consumers is “How much bandwidth does a VoIP phone require to make quality telephone calls?”

First of all, bandwidth is defined as the ability to transfer data
(such as a VoIP telephone call) from one point to another in a fixed amount of time. The higher the bandwidth speed you have, the more data you can send over your broadband internet connection.

There are two types of bandwidth at your location: upload bandwidth and download bandwidth. The upload bandwidth is the amount of data you can send to the Internet and download bandwidth is the amount of data you can receive from the Internet. The more Internet bandwidth you have from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) the better.

In most cases, the normal VoIP telephone call will use up 90 Kbps (kilobits per second). If you have a broadband ISP that doesn’t offer much bandwidth then most VoIP providers give you the option to lower the VoIP voice quality by lowering the bandwidth used for VoIP calls to 60 Kbps or, to really conserve your bandwidth, 30 Kbps. Most people can't tell the difference between the three settings. We suggest you use the high sound quality setting (90 Kpbs in most cases), if bandwidth is not an issue. High VoIP voice quality is generally the default setting but if you are running into a situation where your bandwidth is limited then you can adjust your VoIP bandwidth to one of the lower settings. Some consumers with 128 Kbps upload connections can receive less VoIP service quality due to a poor quality ISP (Internet Service Provider). By selecting a lower quality VoIP bandwidth setting, this problem can be avoided.

If you plan on using a VoIP service provider, should you get a DSL or a Cable Internet access provider? In general, DSL upload bandwidth starts at 128k where as cable internet upload bandwidth starts at around 600k. cable internet is a little bit more expensive, but it is also about 4-5 times faster than residential DSL and a bit friendlier to a VoIP telephone call. Having said that, both DSL and cable modem high-speed services provide sufficient broadband Internet access bandwidth to support any of the top VoIP service providers. If you are experiencing low broadband ISP bandwidth, we suggest you try Packet8 VoIP. Packet8 VoIP boasts an advanced compression technology in which each active voice line uses approximately only 23Kbps of total data throughput, upstream and downstream.

The amount of bandwidth that a VoIP provider requires to make a quality telephone call is only one thing to consider when choosing a VoIP service provider. In fact, there are many things to consider when choosing a VoIP provider. An educated consumer generally results in a satisfied consumer.

Get ready for the E911 disconnects

2005-08-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

Posted by Russell Shaw 8/15/2005 @ 5:25 am
General Regulatory CallVantage News Vonage E911

The Federal Communications Commission has given most VoIP providers until August 29 to receive and document acknowledgement from all subscribers that they recognize the current limitations of E911 service.

Those subscribers who fail to acknowledge they understand this current state of affairs may well be disconnected if they don't reply to their VoIP provider by then.

Not that the VoIP providers aren't trying everything but smoke signals to contact, and prod the laggards.

A Reuters story that moved on the wire early this morning appears to indicate that many VoIP providers have quite a way to go.

As of last Wednesday,Vonage reported 90 percent compliance. AT&T CallVantage logged only 77 percent compliance as of last Tuesday.

But I think those percentages, while high, represent the low hanging fruit. In any compulsory procedure - Census filing, taxes, driver's license renewals - there are always those who wait up until the last minute. And those who don't even get it together by then.

With the E911 acknowledgement deadline two weeks away as of today, you laggards are going to get pestered. And if you don't get on the stick, you might well get cut off - or at least get your VoIP blocked until you comply.

Resistance is futile.

FCC Requires Certain Broadband and VoIP Providers to Accommodate Wiretaps

2005-08-15T09:54:00.000-05:00

News Staff
Aug 15, 2005
Responding to a petition from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FCC determined that providers of certain broadband and interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services must be prepared to accommodate law enforcement wiretaps.

The Commission found that these services can essentially replace conventional telecommunications services currently subject to wiretap rules, including circuit-switched voice service and dial-up Internet access. As replacements, the new services are covered by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, which requires the Commission to preserve the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct court-ordered wiretaps in the face of technological change.

The Order is limited to facilities-based broadband Internet access service providers and VoIP providers are called interconnected VoIP providers.

The Commission found that the definition of "telecommunications carrier" in CALEA is broader than the definition of that term in the Communications Act and can encompass providers of services that are not classified as telecommunications services under the Communications Act.

CALEA contains a provision that authorizes the Commission to deem an entity a telecommunications carrier if the Commission "finds that such service is a replacement for a substantial portion of the local telephone exchange."

Because broadband Internet and interconnected VoIP providers need a reasonable amount of time to come into compliance with all relevant CALEA requirements, the Commission established a deadline of 18 months from the effective date of the Order, by which time newly covered entities and providers of newly covered services must be in full compliance.

The Commission also adopted a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will seek more information about whether certain classes or categories of facilities-based broadband Internet access providers -- notably small and rural providers and providers of broadband networks for
educational and research institutions -- should be exempt from CALEA.

The Commission's action is the first step to apply CALEA obligations to new technologies and services that are increasingly used as a substitute for conventional services.

The FCC says the Order strikes an appropriate balance between fostering competitive broadband and advanced services deployment and technological innovation on one hand, and meeting the needs of the law enforcement community on the other.

VoIP over Instant Messaging? It's Coming - and It's BIG!

2005-08-15T05:20:00.000-05:00

August 15, 2005
By Sean Michael Kerner

According to the Radicati Group, there will be 867 million instant messaging accounts in use by the end of this year, growing to over a billion by 2009. It's likely that a good number of those accounts will have direct access to VoIP within the same timeframe, which could profoundly alter both the IM and VoIP landscapes. Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL all have serious VoIP-over-IM products in the pipeline and all are set to capitalize on VoIP.

Skype has had little impact on IM usage according to vendors and analysts; VoIP-over-IM's impact on Skype however may be a different story.

Voice in IM—current usage
Voice connectivity in IM is nothing particularly new. Microsoft's MSN Messenger has had it since 2000, with AOL and Yahoo! for almost as long. For the most part, historically speaking, IM voice connectivity has been PC-to-PC and was not always of land-line quality.

MSN Messenger at one point also had PSTN services as well. "We actually did it a few years ago," Brooke Richardson, lead product manager for MSN explained to EnterpriseVoIPplanet. "We had PSTN services that we delivered with partners, but at the time the infrastructure and the service just wasn't quite there in terms of what it was delivering, so we wound the service down a year ago and have been improving the PC-to-PC functionality."

Voice quality of PC-to-PC calls has steadily improved over the last several years, however, as the technology has evolved and broadband adoption has increased. Neither Microsoft, Yahoo!, nor AOL was able to break out voice minutes used for VoIPplanet but all indicated a non-trivial amount of usage.

MSN's Richard said that though she couldn't provide an accounting of total minutes used, 25 million MSN Messenger users have been using the service's audio and video capabilities on a monthly basis. Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president and general manager for AIM & ICQ, America Online, told VoIPplanet that penetration of voice services into AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM)'s user based was as high as 75 to 80 percent. "Everyone for the most part has tried it," Palihapitiya commented. "Though we don't disclose minutes, it's a service that clearly we've had interest in and we've seen enough pent up demand that we've sort of double-downed our efforts in the space."

AOL recently launched a new beta of AIM, called Triton, which places a heavy emphasis on voice. Yahoo! has also launched a new IM client which similarly has favored voice.

"Since the introduction of high-quality voice, we've seen a two-thirds increase in voice usage among beta users." Yahoo! spokesperson Terrell Karlsten said. "With the launch of our enhanced voice calling feature, we expect even more people will take advantage of the high quality service as well."

Codecs
There are a lot of different reasons why VoIP quality over IM is improving, not the least of which are the improved codecs currently being used. Skype, which arguably first popularized high-quality PC-to-PC calling, makes use of the Global IP Sound (GIPS) codecs. Microsoft recently licensed those codecs as well and MSN's Richardson noted that they'll likely be included in a future version to help further Microsoft's voice capabilities. AOL's currently in-beta AIM client, Triton, also makes use of GIPS among a suite of codecs.

"The GIPS codec is a great codec," AOL's Palihapitiya said. "We've taken great pains to make sure we support the best codecs in the market."

Vonage's softphone makes use of the Xten codec, which also happens to be the same codec that Yahoo! Messenger now also uses. Yahoo's spokesperson noted that in a recent study three-fourths of those who have used the PC-to-PC calling feature rate the sound quality equal to or better than a traditional phone line.

"Yahoo! Messenger's voice capabilities are based on the industry standard SIP protocol, enabling us to easily evolve and advance our voice offering to consumers in the future," Karlsten said.

The Skype effect
Though the Skype software has been downloaded well over 140 million times and is arguably the most used PC based VoIP application, the major IM players and at least one analyst don't believe it has had an effect on IM usage.

"We do not believe that services such as Skype have had a significant impact on regular public IM use," Radicati Group Analyst Matthew Anderson told VoIPplanet. "Since services such as Skype are still emerging in the market place, we have yet to see what type of impact it will have on the market."

The new generation of IM clients, offering enhanced voice capabilities, amongst a myriad of other advanced features, means that users don't need to leave their IM client. "What we're trying to do is to delight our users," MSN's Richardson said. "With our unified contact store we want to help connect our customers however they want to be connected."

AOL's Palihapitiya sees the evolution of AIM Triton as an evolution of how users view not just IM but communication in general. "People will make less of a distinction about the type of communication and more of a distinction about what they use to initiate it," he explained.

Palihapitiya however sees a major difference between what AIM Triton offers in terms of voice quality and what Skype offers.

"When you're talking about voice quality, you really have to address where the voice modulation is actually occurring," Palihapitiya said. "Rather than running on public networks, we took the view that we should upgrade the codec technology and the voice quality so that it's equivalent to a land line and then make sure that we take some of the responsibility for the quality of service itself so that we don't rely as much on the public network."

Palihapitiya argued that when you compare AIM's offering to its competitors' the focus on not relying on a public network is a key differentiator. In particular, Palihapitiya noted, for example, that AIM is not running on the FastTrack network (first popularized by the peer to peer (P2P) sharing application Kazaa), which is the network that Skype uses.

"That's a public network that relies upon aggregation points and publicly available people," Palihapitiya said.

A Skype spokesperson confirmed that it does use the FastTrack network. "Skype was founded to develop the first P2P telephony network," the spokesperson explained. "A true P2P system is one where all nodes in a network join together dynamically to participate in traffic routing, processing, and bandwidth-intensive tasks that would otherwise be handled by central servers."

AOL sees the way to build out voice quality somewhat differently. "From our perspective, we're going to buy the muxes (multiplexors), we're going to put it into our data centers, and we're going to run it ourselves," Palihapitiya stated emphatically. "And we'll take great pains to ensure that the quality of service we demand of ourselves is as high as when we bring someone online in our access business."

"I'm very confident that when you compare us side by side, we'll stack up incredibly well, because we control as much of the experience as possible before we funnel it out onto the public networks."

Is VoIP the killer app for IM?
"I think VoIP will be the 'next big thing' for IM, but I do not think it will have as great an affect on the public IM networks as some may anticipate," Radicati Analyst Matthew Anderson cautioned. "I will say that it is a great tool that the average IM user will probably try at least once, and depending on their experience may use it somewhat regularly."

AOL's Palihapitiya however is somewhat more optimistic.

"It's a really big opportunity," Palihapitiya said. "If we cast the widest net possible and we have great relationships with our consumers so that they're all signing up to what is the equivalent of a softphone solution, that is fertile ground from which to up-sell to a primary line replacement, in my opinion."

Palihapitiya explained that the primary line partner could just as easily be Time Warner Cable as AOL, which gives AIM an advantage in his view. "Our view is that we're focused on the free tier and from there more people will connect to full VoIP."

"From the business side we're making sure that the offer is disruptive," Palihapitiya said. "That as much as possible what we can make free we make free, and whatever you have to pay for is competitively priced, and what you're paying for stands above our competitors."

Whether AOL, MSN, or Yahoo! adversely affect the Skypes, Vonages, and even traditional teclos of the world still remains to be seen.

One thing is likely though, with 867 million instant messaging accounts and counting, VoIP over IM is a market that simply cannot be ignored.

Article courtesy of Enterprise VoIP Planet

Future Of VoIP Calls For Growth In Services

2005-08-12T15:31:00.000-05:00

By Jennifer Hagendorf Follett Courtesy of CRN

Solution providers say VoIP’s star continues to rise, and they predict growth in the IP telephony market for the next several years.

At the same time, VoIP systems will become an integral part of broader communications solutions, a trend that will usher in more services and consulting opportunities for the channel, solution providers said. They also expect the adoption of dual-mode phones that can traverse both Wi-Fi and cellular networks, as well as more opportunities from the growth of managed VoIP services.

“It’s not that bleeding-edge technology, that ‘bet-your-job’ technology anymore,” said John Freres, president of Meridian IT Solutions, Schaumburg, Ill.

While SMB customers have been quick to jump on the VoIP bandwagon, larger enterprises have taken a more cautious approach. But solution providers said that is now changing as enterprise concerns are being eased by an increasing number of customer success stories.

Over time, however, the VoIP craze will become more commoditized and sales will taper off, they said.

“We’ll see probably another five to seven years of continued acceleration and growth,” said Steven Madick, director of engineering at Nexus Integration Services, Valencia, Calif. “I think at that point, you’ll start to see a significant plateau.”

One reason why VoIP sales are hot now is because customers that replaced or upgraded their phone systems in advance of Y2K are looking for new solutions, since the average PBX life span ranges from five to 10 years, Madick said.

While routers, switches, IP-PBXes and handsets still carry significant sales prospects, Madick said even bigger opportunities can be found in services and consulting as VARs and integrators create sophisticated solutions that that tie VoIP in with messaging applications or back-end data systems such as ERP.

“It creates a consulting environment where the customer is not sure how to take advantage of the technologies or how, from a business-process standpoint, it will impact them,” he said. “It calls for an analysis of where customers are now and where they want to go.”

A big piece of that broader communications solution will include dual-mode phones that run on cellular networks but can switch over to internal wireless LANs once users enter their offices, solution providers said. “Smaller companies are becoming more mobile. They are less facilities-based,” said Pete Busam, president and COO of Decisive Business Systems, Pennsauken, N.J.
“As long as [dual-mode phones] stay simple and easy to use, they will find success.”

Dual-mode phones could mean the end of desktop phones as we know them, creating an environment where users no longer need to carry multiple phone numbers and voice-mail systems, solution providers said.

“The roaming phone will be the replacement, where maybe the desktop phone has a slot to cradle the cell phone, so you use a regular handset at the desk, then pop it out and go,” said Gaby Batshoun, president and CEO of Global Business Solutions, a network integrator in Newport, Ky.

Solution providers also predict the increasing popularity of hosted or managed VoIP services, or IP versions of today’s Centrex circuit-based services. “Through IP Centrex, you’ll see the viability for a lot of companies to look at VoIP more like a utility,” said Meridian’s Freres.

As more service providers roll out IP Centrex offerings, the opportunity arises for them to team with VARs and integrators, Freres said. In such a partnership, the service provider supplies the dial tone while the channel partner designs and delivers the solution, tying in the necessary router and switch infrastructure, phones and services, he said.

IP Centrex can be an especially good fit for SMB customers, Freres said.

“It doesn’t make sense for a 200-member company to have redundant phone systems and voice-mail systems,” he said.

Meridian has already begun exploring possible service provider partnerships, he said.

Tough Sledding for Residential VoIP

2005-08-12T14:39:00.000-05:00

By Sean Michael Kerner
August 12, 2005

The most successful strategy for growing retail VoIP is adding value to existing broadband subscriptions, according to a new report from ABI Research.

Though residential VoIP is growing at a rapid clip, by 2010 the majority of the world's residential telephony access will use the PSTN. Michael Arden, principal analyst of broadband technologies at ABI Research expects that for North America penetration will be less than 30 percent, and may even be closer to 20 percent. "VoIP will have an impact on the market, but most homes will still use traditional phone service or will move to mobile service only," Arden told EntepriseVoIPplanet.com.

Arden sees public perceptions and issues of broadband access as the biggest barriers to mass adoption of residential VoIP. In his view, most consumers worry that the quality of VoIP is not good enough to warrant changing phone service. Also, only those who have broadband can take advantage of VoIP, so the market is automatically limited.

Arden argues that even with increased broadband access the perception issue, will remain—especially for hosted services.

"Hosted services will be at the mercy of the broadband provider and will not have their data packets given priority for quality issues," Arden explained. "So, the perception will be worse for those guys versus the cable and telco operators who can give voice traffic priority in the network to ensure that the signal integrity remains at a level necessary to support quality voice service."

Despite the fact that popular VoIP service Vonage is not a broadband provider itself, Arden noted that he doesn't expect them to fade away.

"The feedback that I received from most people is that they expect Vonage to continue to be a player in the market," Arden said. "They will lose their strong early lead in the market, but they will continue to have an impact."

Arden suggests that Vonage will have to focus on advanced applications and being price competitive, but they automatically enter the market with a pricing advantage due to the fact that they don't have to pay for and maintain a lot of access-network equipment.

Cable and telco operators on the hand will only be able to lower prices to a limited extent without compromising their network costs.

"With an uptake in triple play subscribers, however, cable and telcos may be able to compete a little more on price, but they still won't get down to the same level as Vonage and the hosted providers for voice service," Arden said.

The ABI Research report looked at cable, DSL, hosted, and WiMAX operator networks. In North America, the cable companies will have the best position, according to Arden, Outside of North America, it will be broadband providers with DSL service.

"Softbank in Japan has proven that the combination of broadband penetration and the leveraging of value-added services, like VoIP, make a great business model," Arden commented.

In North America, Arden expects that cable's dominance of the broadband market will enable cable operators to leverage their assets and subscriber bases to roll out VoIP.

"The same goes for competitive broadband operators in other regions—most focused on DSL," Arden said. "The ILECs, RBOCs, and PTTs of the world will be more reluctant to jump into the market, because they have a large legacy PSTN network that they don't want to decommission."

"Hosted operators will have price on their side, but the quality of service that the broadband operators can offer will attract customers."

VoIP Test Market to Hit $637 million by 2008

2005-08-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

Aug 11, 2005
Business Wire via NewsEdge Corporation :

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, World VoIP Test Equipment Markets, reveals that revenues in these markets totaled $215.8 million in 2004 and projects to grow to $637.5 million by 2008.

VoIP networks are highly complex and the absence of standardized protocols complicates the task of developing effective test solutions that meet end-user needs. Further, vendors need to comply with evolving standards and have to upgrade test solutions to ensure the interoperability and conformance of VoIP equipment.

"However, the lack of a single protocol or standard governing VoIP acts as a blessing in disguise for the VoIP test equipment vendors," note Frost & Sullivan Research Analysts Olga Yashkova and Sankara Jambulingam. "With the existence of a wide range of signaling and proprietary protocols, equipment must be tested prior to network implementation and this creates more opportunities for the vendors."

Despite the upsurge in adoption of VoIP services, the lack of sufficient VoIP knowledge among end users remains a critical concern, as they need to know about the quality of
deploy VoIP services in the near future and this provides VoIP test equipment vendors with an opportunity to offer scalable solutions to monitor and manage these networks.

"International corporations, financial institutions, and federal governments are a few end users that are likely to deploy VoIP and they require dependable monitoring solutions as any downtime could potentially cost them millions of dollars," notes Yashkova.

The global VoIP test equipment markets are gathering momentum and factors such as ensuring quality of service (QoS), convergence of multiple networks onto a single platform, offering test solutions that are compatible with different networks and evolving industry standards are poised to drive them forward.

"The markets will offer enhanced scope for the test equipment vendors that can overcome industry restraints by educating customers and also convincing carriers, enterprises, and service providers to allot more funds for testing and monitoring solutions," concludes Jambulingam.

FAQ: Demystifying VoIP

2005-08-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

By Ben Charny,CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News:August 11, 2005, 10:19 AM PT

As the popularity of voice over Internet Protocol surges, and lawmakers put more pressure on Net phone providers to fully support 911 services, many consumers are asking what exactly they need to know about the technology.

Since about 1995, when it was first offered to consumers, VoIP has become one of the world's most widely used telephony products. Current estimates put the number of VoIP users at about 5 million, although industry observers say that number will increase fivefold in the next two years.

VoIP--which enables phone calls to be carried over the Internet--also is one of the most economical phone technologies available. Many VoIP services are available for as little as $20 a month, though with some important constraints.

The key to making the most of VoIP is understanding its basic forms and what you might expect to pay for them. Here are the essentials.

What is VoIP?
VoIP refers to voice calls that are routed over online networks using the Internet Protocol--the IP that serves as the backbone of the Internet and is used to ferry e-mails, instant messages and Web pages to millions of PCs or cell phones.

VoIP tends to be relatively inexpensive. Why?
VoIP calls are just another application riding over the Internet. And these calls are unregulated. So at their core, they are no different from e-mails, instant messages or Web pages, which all can be distributed for free between Internet-connected machines. Those include computers and wireless devices, such as cell phones and handhelds, that are set up to receive online information.

Why do some VoIP services cost money, and why are some free?
A VoIP service can connect users not only with other VoIP customers but also with phone services that are offline, such as those that use traditional landline networks and wireless cell phone networks. For those calls, VoIP service providers must pay access fees to the landline and wireless operators. Those charges are passed along to VoIP customers. VoIP services that stay on the Internet--calls that are between personal computers with VoIP service--are free.

What do you need to use VoIP?
The first thing you need is an Internet connection. It can be as basic as dial-up service, but the faster your Net connection, the better the call quality is. With a high-speed broadband connection, for example, you can make calls and surf the Internet at the same time.

You'll also need VoIP software. Consumers can choose a version that loads onto a desktop or laptop computer, which allows the computer to make calls through its modem connection to the Internet. The customer uses the computer's built-in microphone and speakers, so there is no actual phone or extra adapter needed for this version of VoIP service.

But in cases where customers want to convert their home phone to a VoIP dialer, an adapter is necessary. In this scenario, the the VoIP software is available preinstalled in a separate piece of hardware known as an analog telephone adapter, which is installed between your home phone and the broadband modem.

The cost of these adapters is dropping rapidly. Most are priced well below $100, and in many cases they are simply given to customers who buy VoIP service.

Who sells VoIP?
A surprisingly varied group of vendors sells VoIP. Cable operators, for example, typically sell VoIP services as part of a "triple play" of voice, video and high-speed Internet services that are all steeply discounted when packaged together. They say their VoIP services are the best because calls are carried over the cable company's privately owned network, allowing its operators to give priority to VoIP calls. That guarantee doesn't hold, however, for calls to someone who is not a cable broadband subscriber.

There also are companies, such as Vonage, that don't own their own networks. Calls placed through these providers are sent out on the general network serving the Internet, which means the calls are out of the providers' control and can be negatively affected by network congestion networks and security problems. These services require you to supply your own broadband service.

There's also a growing class of companies that give away VoIP software and then sell premium services, such as those that allow users to dial traditional phones using their PC-based VoIP. The most famous of these companies is Skype, a Luxembourg company that has millions of devotees. On most days, there are about 3 million people making calls over the Skype service.

What does it cost to call traditional phones from my PC?
Typically, it's less than 2 cents a minute. For instance, Skype just lowered its fees to about 1.7 cents a minute, on average, for VoIP calls made to traditional phones.

What happens when the power goes out?
While traditional telephones continue to operate when the power goes out, your VoIP service goes down. That is because the modem you use to deliver your broadband service requires electricity. While traditional phone systems actually deliver power to your phone, broadband networks can't do that.

What if I call 911? Will my call get through to an emergency dispatcher?
In general, 911 calls cannot be reliably made using a VoIP service. But VoIP providers in the United States are under a looming deadline to make it possible to dial 911 and reach the appropriate emergency call center. That capability is several months away, however. Most VoIP operators suggest keeping a cell phone on hand just for emergency calls. The exceptions are VoIP services provided by cable operators, all of which have the appropriate agreements in place to supply what's known as "enhanced 911."

What does VoIP cost?
In the United States, it's about $25 a month for unlimited dialing between PCs and to any phone number in North America. Some operators sell VoIP for as little as $15 a month, but that's an exception rather than the rule. VoIP providers also typically give away analog phone adapters and their software. Calls overseas typically cost between 2 and 15 cents a minute, depending on which nation you're calling.

Given growing concern about VoIP customer service, are VoIP users given the same legal guarantees of service as traditional phone customers?
Most VoIP operators don't guarantee any particular level of service, although the trade-off there is that they also don't require customers to sign multiyear service contracts. The overall quality of Internet phone service still lags behind that of traditional landlines. But there is recourse for those who feel they are being mistreated by their VoIP operators: Both the Federal Trade Commission and your regional branch of the Better Business Bureau handle consumer complaints.

How secure are my calls?
There are few clearer signs that an information technology has hit the mainstream than when it becomes the focus of security attacks. Only two consumer-focused operators--Skype and VoicePulse--encrypt their calls, a method of keeping the digital packets that constitute VoIP signals from being decoded by hackers. Almost all of the VoIP systems installed in businesses, meanwhile, use current encryption techniques

VoIP right for single-site call centers

2005-08-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

By Barney Beal, News Editor
10 Aug 2005 SearchCRM.com

While Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers clear advantages for multi-site call centers and remote agents, there are some key strategic reasons to implement the technology in a single site.

"A single site running VoIP helps the call center move farther into enterprise," explained Lori Bocklund, president of Beaverton, Ore.-based consultancy Strategic Contact.

Regional banks and credit unions have been some of the single-site centers that are early adopters of VoIP. Typically, these companies have one call center and multiple branches. With VoIP installed throughout the company, the branches are more closely connected to the call center. When there's a high volume of calls at the call center and downtime at the branches, calls can be routed to a branch.

Similarly, customer service -- continually struggling for attention, budget and mindshare within organizations -- directly benefits from VoIP's emergence.

VoIP installed throughout the company allows agents to more easily connect customers to people within the company with expertise regarding their specific problem. For example, an agent can quickly connect a customer with a loan question to a loan officer if he can't answer the question himself.

Additionally, single-site call centers are typically smaller companies and aren't hamstrung by existing technology investments. The move to VoIP is made easier when a company needs to refresh its technology, such as a need for new functionality or a version of software that is outdated.

"As single-site center hits those triggers, [it] should ask 'should I use VoIP?'" Bocklund said.

Centers moving to multimedia and handling e-mail should also consider VoIP. VoIP is better suited for a common routing and reporting engine, according to Bocklund. While many of these goals can be accomplished without VoIP, the technology makes it easier and cheaper.

"The interesting challenge is it's not just a technology thing," Bocklund said. "Those require business changes. The nice thing about single sites is they're smaller, more agile companies."

VoIP in the contact center has been slow to catch on, however, Bocklund admits. Quality control when running customer interactions over a network becomes a serious concern for organizations and a lack of large reference customers makes many potential adopters nervous.

Groups Slam FCC on Internet Phone Tap Rule

2005-08-11T14:28:00.000-05:00

FCC Rule Making It Easier to Tap Internet Phone Calls Will Lead to More Hacking, Groups Say

By JENNIFER C. KERR Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON Aug 10, 2005 — New regulations making it easier for law enforcement to tap Internet phone calls will also make computer systems more vulnerable to hackers, digital privacy and civil liberties groups say.

While the groups don't want the Internet to be a safe haven for terrorists and criminals, they complain that expanding wiretapping laws to cover Internet calls or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will create additional points of attack and security holes that hackers can exploit.

"Once you enable third-party access to Internet-based communication, you create a vulnerability that didn't previously exist," Marc Rotenberg, executive director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in an interview Wednesday. "It will put at risk the stability and security of the Internet."

Acting on appeals from the Justice Department and other law enforcement officials, the Federal Communications Commission voted last week to require providers of Internet phone calls and broadband services to ensure their equipment can allow police wiretaps.

The decision applies to Voice over Internet Protocol providers such as Vonage that use a central telephone company to complete the Internet calls. It also applies to cable and phone companies that provide broadband services.

The companies will have 18 months to comply.

"We recognize that people use different methods for communication and certainly most of the time the people are using the method that they can avoid detection most," said FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell.

Voice over Internet Protocol technology shifts calls away from wires and switches, instead using computers and broadband connections to convert sounds into data and transmit them via the Internet.

Besides the privacy and security concerns, digital rights experts worry that expansion of the wiretapping law, known as CALEA, will stifle innovation.

"Creativity and innovation will end up moving offshore where programmers outside the U.S. can develop technologies that are not required to address the onerous CALEA requirements," said Kurt Opsahl, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The U.S. companies will face competition from foreign providers who will enjoy an advantage."

The groups also argue that the FCC doesn't have the authority to order the companies to make changes to their systems for wiretapping purposes, since CALEA only pertains to telecommunications systems, not information systems like the Internet.

An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) required the telecommunications industry to build into its products tools that federal investigators can use after getting court approval to eavesdrop on conversations.

Lawyers for the Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration asked the FCC in March 2004 to affirm that Voice over Internet Protocol falls under CALEA.

Infrastructure in place, municipalities start offering VoIP

2005-08-10T16:23:00.000-05:00

By W. Gardner
TechWeb.com
Aug 09, 2005

A Massachusetts telecommunications start-up company has spied some low-lying fruit in the form of municipalities interested in rolling out VoIP for their citizens and taxpayers. The firm, vCentrix Inc., has already begun working with the town of Norwood to provide VoIP.

Steve Crummey, vCentrix CEO, said Tuesday that of the some 2,000 municipalities in the U.S. that already provide some sort of public utility, about 400 are ripe for VoIP. “They’ve already laid all the infrastructure,” he said.

Norwood fits that bill, because its utility, Norwood Light, has already built out a fiber optic network including local loop as well as broadband services for subscribers. The charter of Norwood Light has been to serve the town’s citizens and save money for its taxpayers.

Talal Ali-Ahmad, founder and president of vCentrix, said VoIP is simply the next migration of services, not only for municipalities, but also for other ILECs, CLECs, MSOs, and ISPs--all of them targeted by vCentrix. Ali-Ahmad said the firm has “plenty of work to keep us busy,” although it’s too soon to discuss other customers. “Our network is developed to deliver [VoIP] as long as there is a broadband network first,” he said.

One driving force behind the rapid growth of VoIP, he added, is the growing interest on the part of telecommunications service providers to deliver VoIP as part of their triple play bundle, typically a package of offerings that include cable television, broadband, and local and long distance telephoning.
VoIP is e911-compliant. The company noted that its technology, which is not aimed at wireless users, forces subscribers to change addresses when they move.

The Norwood service will be priced at $24.99 a month and will include unlimited local and long distance calls. Subscribers are required to have at least two other Norwood Light services such as broadband, electricity, or cable. The initial wave of test users is scheduled to be hooked up this month.

To date, many municipalities have rolled out Wi-Fi services, although existing telephone companies have generally resisted the services. Philadelphia, for instance, is installing a citywide Wi-Fi hotspot, but the state of Pennsylvania has issued a moratorium on further municipal Wi-Fi build outs after telephone and cable industry interests voiced opposition.

CommPartners expands VoIP network to 92% Of US

2005-08-10T15:15:00.000-05:00

By Mia Gralla
Networking Pipeline
Aug 10, 2005

CommPartners has announced that it will expanded its wholesale VoIP network coverage area to include over 92% of the calling public in the U.S.

The IP-based network will cover 5,000 rate centers in the U.S. for residential, SMB, and enterprise hosted VoIP services. Providing VoIP wholesale services and applications to over 50 service providers, CommPartners' footprint will now be comprised of its own IP network and extended coverage through partnership with other carriers. CommPartners expects to obtain CLEC status in all 50 states by next year, making it one of the largest networks of its type in the U.S.

CommPartners selected Level 3 Communications, Inc. for its underlying carrier in this latest expansion of its network.

CommPartners company built its network to provide business-quality VoIP services, 911 emergency services capabilities and CALEA compliance-emerging issues that pose challenges to many VoIP service providers, according to the company

The VoIP solution includes CommPartners Management System (CMS) proprietary OSS platform for automated provisioning, billing, user interface and back office support capabilities. It will provide VoIP facilitation services such as Subscriber Endpoint Control, connectivity to the Public Switched Telephone Network ("PSTN"), long distance services, and subscriber management. The hosted features include simultaneous ring, voicemail-to-email, feature activation via the web, and four digit dialing between offices.

Dropping the Hammer on VoIP Testing

2005-08-10T14:20:00.000-05:00

by Bob Wallace
Wed, August 10. 2005

In further evidence that the market for VoIP testing is ascending, Ohio CLEC Buckeye TeleSystem today announced it's chosen Empirix products to drive its service deployments, this on the heels of the the vendor landing a lucrative deal to provide its Hammer XMS platform to cable giant Cox Communications.

The global market for VoIP testing is projected to climb from $293 million this year to over $637 million in 2008, according to a recently released forecast from Frost & Sullivan, which tracks all segments of the test and measurement industry.

Buckeye TeleSystem provides voice, data and video services to the Northwest Ohio's business market using a fiber backbone. Its customers range from large, mnulti-site corporations to small offices. The CLEC is looking to Empirix test products to help it monitor and manage VoIP services.

"The selection and deployment of a VoIP monitoring system was key to our quality assurance strategy [with] our operations, engineering and executive management involved in the competitive evaluation we conducted,'' said Doug Ward, director of network operations for Buckeye TeleSystem, in prepared comments. Hammer XMS provides a user-friendly interface across multiple divisions, along with the ability to troubleshoot individual calls, monitor overall network quality and provide detailed management reporting, he added.

Empirix says the Hammer XMS tracks all VoIP and TDM protocol activity as well as media quality in realtime for every call. Data from multiple remote probes can be correlated and centralized enabling reporting and access to diagnostic info from a Web interface.

The Future of VoIP: Secure, Integrated Collaboration?

2005-08-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

August 09, 2005]
By Cathy Planchard, VIACK Corporation

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is growing in popularity, but bundling it with other conferencing and collaboration tools such as video conferencing, Web conferencing, instant messaging and information sharing might just turn it into the "killer app" we've all been waiting for. Unfortunately, these types of applications to date have not been known for their ability to keep private information private, critically important for businesses and government agencies alike. No one – especially an organization’s legal department – wants to be the next example of a hacker’s “success story,” with the company name strewn across the front page of the national news.

So, how can your organization realize the productivity and cost benefits of these integrated IP-based collaboration tools without becoming the next victim of a security breach? The first step is to learn what to look for when choosing the software for your organization.

Online Collaboration Defined

Whether you’re the chief executive officer or the most junior level marketing assistant, there’s one thing all professionals have in common: the need to work together to ensure success. The scenarios requiring collaboration among staff, team members, clients, partners or vendors are truly endless. In fact, while nearly 11 million meetings take place each day, according to the “Meetings in America” series from MCI, a professional’s responsibilities require collaboration far beyond official meetings. Quick calls or instant messages to check on the status of a project, e-mails with the next version of a press release or whitepaper for review, or turning a spontaneous lunchroom discussion into a spontaneous brainstorming session on a new product idea are only a few of the ways in which an organization conducts business. While technology for collaboration has been around for years, factors such as cost, the privacy of the information and the efficiency of the work have encouraged the creation of IP-based collaboration tools, otherwise known as “online meetings.”

The most advanced of these tools deliver live video, telephone quality VoIP, joint editing of documents and spreadsheets, instant messaging and archiving, and information sharing, all integrated into one convenient and inexpensive package. VIACK’s VIA3 Assured Collaboration Service also includes security as the foundation, protecting all components of the communication with encryption such as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Using this type of software, professionals can see and hear their colleagues while holding weekly staff or strategy meetings, especially with remote managers, partners or the board of directors; review and edit articles, press releases or training presentations in real time; or store documents to access at a later time.

Fortunately, they can do it all without fearing that the information they’ve exchanging or storing might be compromised by those who do not have a right or a need to know about the information.

How Does the Security Work?

It’s natural for an organization to be a bit leery of any technology that might open private information, including customers’ credit card information, to unwanted intruders—even when that technology can increase employee efficiency and actually make them money by enabling increased productivity throughout the day.

IT administrators are responsible for ensuring that firewalls, anti-virus software and various network security devices are in place. It takes much more than that, however, to ensure your data remains secure, especially when it might be compromised by someone inside the organization. As a result, complete, airtight security of both the perimeter of your network and the data/file level needs to be at the top of your requirements checklist when looking for an integrated IP-based collaboration tool. Half-measures or add-on safeguards won’t do the job: the entire system must be fully protected from end-to-end.

Look for a tool with security built-in, not as an add-on or afterthought. Preferably, that security would be fully based on AES, with no information ever sent or stored in clear text format. So what else should you look for when choosing a secureIP-based collaboration tool and what can your organization do to ensure your data remains secure while using it?

Ensure that the software you choose has both voice and video over IP integrated in, and use them both whenever possible during your online communications so attendees can be identified by their voice and face.

Find a software that enables users to change passwords (and/or a service that doesn’t store the passwords) and require your employees to change passwords frequently (and do not use services where passwords can be easily obtained and abused).

Do not allow storage of company data on home computers unless the employee teleworks or does a lot of authorized work at home.

Review the actions of individuals. Knowledge that such “audits” occur act as a deterrent to unauthorized or inappropriate actions.

Warn interviewers to note any job applicants who provide too much information about the last big project they worked on. This is a red flag that the applicant is likely to remove similar materials when he or she eventually leaves your company.

Create a company-wide security and privacy policy that includes the above issues and continually educate your employees on this policy.

By protecting data from every possible point of external access and implementing a company side security policy, you can insure that you're doing your part to keep your organization's — and your customers' — data private and confidential while using the next generation of integrated IP-based collaboration tools.

Cathy Planchard is Director of Marketing Communications at VIACK Corporation. Cathy represents VIACK in radio interviews and as an author on secure collaboration for security, government and collab

VoIPAction Launches International VoIP News Portal

2005-08-09T14:40:00.000-05:00

Press Release Source: VoIPAction
Tuesday August 9, 1:00 pm ET

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 2005--VoIPAction today announced the launch of its VoIP News Portal featuring daily articles from 2,000 news sources around the world.

More than 1,000 news links are published on the site every day covering North America, Central and South America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa.

The portal includes 140 news channels separated into five main sections of IP/VoIP News, Wi-Fi & Mobile News, Broadcast & Entertainment News and IT Security News, plus a Company Watch Channel with daily coverage for 55 leading technology companies including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Skype.

Articles include news coverage from leading technology sites like CNET, ZDNet, TMCNet, Information Week, Light Reading, Forbes and IT Facts, as well as press releases from Business Wire, Market Wire, I-Newswire.com and PrimeZone Media.

Skype is leader on VoIP in North America

2005-08-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

Geekzone, New Zealand News : Computing
Posted 9-AUG-2005 23:29
Sandvine, an equipment maker specializing in broadband network, has released the results of survey showing that Skype is leading the VoIP provider pack in North America.

According to the company, 2004 was termed the 'year of VoIP rollouts' and the first half of 2005 has seen explosive consumer adoption. Yankee group projects that by year-end 2008, VoIP will serve 17.5 million U.S. households.

With over 1,100 VoIP providers identified, Skype takes the lead and garners an astounding 35.8% of all VoIP calls in the US.

Skype goes even further taking 46.2% when it comes to share of minutes. Other PC-based VoIP services like Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL chat are distant seconds.

Third party paid VoIP providers represent 35.7% of all VoIP minutes. Broadband service providers hold the strongest position in this category since joining the race, quickly closing the gap with an 18.1% share of all VoIP minutes on their network. Vonage, Primus, and AT&T CallVantage capture the next three positions.

"VoIP consumes minimal bandwidth on a broadband service provider's network. Understanding which subscribers are using VoIP, how much of it, and for how long gives service providers actionable data to prioritize VoIP traffic and ensure optimal quality of experience," said Tom Donnelly, Sandvine executive vice president, marketing and sales.

"VoIP represents a small percentage of bandwidth, but a very large revenue opportunity for broadband service providers," said Lindsay Schroth, senior analyst, Broadband Access Technologies, Yankee Group. "Broadband providers can capitalize on this opportunity by protecting their subscribers' VoIP service and delivering a consistent, reliable, and high-quality service."

Sandvine intelligent broadband management solutions monitor traffic across service provider networks representing over 40% of the US broadband market.

Wiretaps For VoIP

2005-08-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

August 8, 2005
By Roy Mark
Networking News

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expanding the reach of U.S. wiretapping laws to wireline broadband providers and Internet telephone companies.

In an order issued Friday, the FCC gave the providers 18 months to comply with the network wiretap accessibility rules of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

Previously, CALEA applied only to traditional telecommunications carriers, such as incumbent Bells and wireless firms. The advent of Voice over IP (define), however, raised national security concerns at the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the FBI.

The DoJ petitioned the FCC to extend CALEA to new advanced services to expand CALEA to airline broadband.

"Although I believe that new technologies and services should operate free of economic regulation, I also believe law enforcement agencies must have the ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance over these new technologies," FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said.

The FCC ruling was hardly surprising. Since launching an inquiry into
VoIP services more than a year ago, the agency promised a light regulatory touch but said it was likely providers would have to comply in some fashion with CALEA.

"There is still more work ahead of us," Martin said. "In the next few months, we intend to issue a subsequent order that will address other important issues under CALEA, such as cost recovery, standards and enforcement."

Congress passed CALEA almost 15 years ago with no anticipation of advanced services, such as VoIP. The law specifically applies to telephone networks and exempts what the FCC classifies as "information services," such as cable- modem broadband.

Friday's FCC ruling re-interprets CALEA to include wireline broadband and VoIP.

"Expanding CALEA to the Internet is contrary to the statute and is a fundamentally flawed public policy," Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the privacy advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement.

According to Opsahl, the FCC's action will force VoIP providers to build backdoors into their systems that hobble "technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government standards."

FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said further congressional action to clarify the FCC's decision is necessary. In her official comments on the vote, Abernathy predicted "some might not read the statute to permit the extension of CALEA" and litigation was as "inevitable as death and taxes."

ABI Research Cites Recipe for VoIP Success: Add Value to Broadband

2005-08-08T15:18:00.000-05:00

Press Release Source: ABI Research
Monday August 8, 9:35 am ET

OYSTER BAY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 8, 2005--The subscriber base of Voice over IP (Internet Protocol) services worldwide will remain small compared to the numbers of conventional fixed and mobile phone customers, even by 2010. But in terms of relative growth, VoIP is -- and will remain -- a dynamic market. And the most successful business model for VoIP services uses its strengths to add value to existing broadband subscriptions.
These are the key conclusions drawn by ABI Research's latest study of the residential VoIP market, "Global Residential VoIP Assessment."

According to Michael Arden, principal analyst of broadband technologies, the study focuses on subscriber growth, and goes on to discuss the key consumer premises equipment.

Consumers can get their VoIP services from a variety of sources: telcos and broadband providers using DSL, cable companies, or hosted providers that own no networks, such as the well-known Vonage.

"For the consumer," says Arden, "VoIP's greatest benefit is that you can consolidate many things. For example you could have your email working with your voicemail, working with your telephone, working with your Outlook calendar. Such enhanced value services are a key drawcard."

One of the largest residential VoIP deployments, accounting for a sizeable percentage of the world market, has been carried out in Japan by Softbank BB, a broadband provider that is also dipping a toe in the "telco TV" pool. Softbank, says Arden, is the subject of one of the case studies contained in the new report.

"Such broadband operators trying to take market share away from the incumbent telcos have had some success," Arden adds, "mostly leveraging an existing DSL network and adding VoIP to its data services. That's also the approach cable companies will take. In North America, because of the dominance of cable broadband, the battle will be between hosted VoIP companies and the cable companies. The cable companies will push VoIP to their existing customer base using cable modems."

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, ABI Research maintains global operations supporting annual research programs, intelligence services and market reports in automotive, wireless, semiconductors, broadband, and energy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact:
ABI Research
Beth Schechner, 516-624-2542
pr@abiresearch.com

Navy sails with VOIP

2005-08-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

By Bob Brewin
Published on Aug. 8, 2005

The Navy plans a revolutionary upgrade of shipboard communications systems to handle voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone calls and converged voice, video and data traffic.

The IP convergence project will provide a significant increase in shipboard throughput, which will enhance warfighting capabilities for afloat forces, said Robert Wolborsky, program manager for network information assurance and enterprise services at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (Spawar).

Those ships rely on satellite communications and have data rates over a single satellite circuit that top out at 1.5 megabits/sec.

Spawar expects to complete the VOIP phase of the project by 2006. It will start work on a program to dynamically manage shipboard bandwidth next year.

Spawar plans to provide shipboard VOIP capability through an evolutionary upgrade of the existing Automated Digital Network System (ADNS) developed by Science Applications International Corp., which uses data routers from Cisco Systems.

The ADNS upgrade, known as Increment II, will occur on about 110 surface ships and will free up bandwidth by reducing the number of satellite circuits to and from the ships allocated to handle voice calls, Wolborsky said.

Currently, ships allocate a certain amount of bandwidth to voice time-division multiplexed circuits, whether or not a voice call is being made, which he called a waste of bandwidth.

The enhanced ADNS system will also include software to ensure the quality of voice service, with voice packets taking precedence over data packets so calls are not broken up, he said.

Delores Washburn, network domain chief engineer for the Navy's ForceNet project managed by Spawar, said that later in the year Spawar wants to start fielding ADNS Increment IIA, which will provide the capability to dynamically manage and allocate bandwidth.

The IIA upgrade will add management of video along with voice and data, for a converged network, Washburn said.

Besides helping to better manage ships' limited network resources, Wolborsky said the shift to IP will help eliminate separate shipboard switches and wiring to handle voice calls distinct from data networks, for savings in weight and space.

Craig Mathias, an analyst with the Farpoint Group, said VOIP is such an established technology that it "makes sense [to use it] just about anywhere." He said the Navy will gain efficiency by using one IP network for all traffic.

Get a Virtual Phone Number Eliminate Long Distance Charges with VoIP Phone Service

2005-08-05T16:10:00.000-05:00

Posted by Allan Ramsay on: 2005-08-05 18:33:04

There’s a revolution brewing in the telephone industry. But it’s not the recent demise of AT&T or the failure of Worldcom. It’s a new, yet proven, technology that lets you talk with friends, family and loved ones over the Internet.

It’s called VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) or broadband phone, and it lets you use your ordinary home or office telephone to dial and talk to anyone using the Internet as your "channel" of communication. Instead of dialing through the Bell System copper wires, you make calls through your DSL or cable Internet access provider. No microphones or headsets. Just use your existing telephone to talk throughout North America and the world.

This new technology not only saves you 50 to 60 percent on your monthly phone bill. It also provides a host of services the phone company cannot. One of these – a "virtual phone number" -- can eliminate long distance charges to friends and family who want to call you. Here’s how it works

When you order your VoIP phone service you can also order a second phone number in a distant city. For example, if you live in Philadelphia you’re in the 215 area code. And, if you have relatives in Los Angeles, you can order a virtual number in area code 818 (Los Angeles). Then, when a family member in LA wants to call you, they simply dial the 818 phone number, which is a local call for them. Amazingly enough, your phone rings in area 215. Your family gets to talk to you for the cost of a local call: for free.

Virtual numbers are great for kids going away to college. Rick and Patti live in Cleveland and have a son going to college at Kennesaw State University, near Atlanta. They can order a VoIP phone number with the Cleveland area code for the home phone, and get an Atlanta area virtual number. Then, when their son wants to call home, he makes a local Atlanta call and the phone rings at Mom and Dad’s house, 700 miles away.

Of course VoIP phone service also provides toll free numbers – usually at less than two cents per minute – giving you yet another way to make it easy for friends and family to stay in touch.

Get virtual! Join the millions of people jumping on the VoIP bandwagon and start enjoying the rich features and accessibility you can get through broadband phone service.

Allan Ramsay is a 25-year veteran of the I.T. industry and principal at www.VoIP-USA.net,providing voice over IP phone service, landline, long distance plans, cellular phones, cellular calling plans, broadband access to the Internet and a host of Internet and telecommunication services to residential, SOHO and small business customers nationwide

VoIP means business both sides of the Atlantic

2005-08-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

Friday, 05 August 2005
John Williamson

New analyses see corporate spending rocket, but the deal's not open and shut...

According to the latest intelligence from the AMI-Partners consulting company, 42% of small US businesses say that they currently use, or plan to use some form of IP telephony over the next 12 months, while for medium businesses the proportion rises to 61%. Given that AMI-Partners calculate that in 2005 US small to medium businesses (SMBs) will spend nearly US$63bn on telecommunications solutions, the opportunity for IP telephony vendors to supplant even a portion of this spending is thought to be huge.

The '2004-2005 U.S. SMB Telecommunications Market Overview and Assessment' reasons that US SMBs with multiple branch offices, large numbers of customers and suppliers, and higher percentages of mobile and telecommuting employees, are especially good candidates for IP telephony solutions. The most compelling benefit initially is the substantial cost savings possible due to routing voice calls over digital and converged networks. However, says AMI-Partners, in the long run these solutions will also provide the platform for new kinds of real-time interactions that promise business benefits such as improved customer service, easier access to information, and great employee productivity.

The projected corporate VoIP take-up story is broadly similar on the other side of the Atlantic . The Analysys market research company calculates that 32mn corporate employees across Western Europe will be connected to a VoIP system by 2010 quite a large percentage of them being connected by wireless terminals. 'VoIP versus Mobile: forecasts for the future of enterprise voice' calculates that spend on VoIP systems and services will grow by over 17% per annum for the next five years, reaching €12bn in Western Europe and, by 2010, 1.6mn corporate employees in Western Europe will have discarded their traditional fixed office phone and have only a mobile phone handset.

In-house versus hosted?
As might be anticipated there's some imponderables in the corporate VoIP proposition on both sides of the pond.

While the US may have major commercial potential, for example, it's unclear how the spoils will be split between solutions and service providers. "The jury is still out on whether the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and other service providers will be more successful with hosted IP telephony services than they were with Centrex services", comments Janet Stone, director of AMI-Partners' telecommunications practice. "Considering the richer and more differentiated feature set available with today's IP Centrex platforms, along with carriers' greater sophistication in mass marketing and use of channel partners to reach the SMB customer base, there is potential for greater success today. And the appeal of an outsourced phone solution with no upfront capital expenditures and minimal ongoing staff support is even more compelling in today's business environment where companies must focus on their core competencies". However, notes Stone, this opportunity is balanced by the reality that today's service providers are faced with intense competition from myriad IP PBX vendors with rapidly evolving product lines and aggressive marketing and sales programmes.

Cost a packet
In Western Europe, says Analysys, VoIP may be the de facto future of of voice systems, and vendors may be ceasing development of older time division multiplex (TDM) office systems, but cost justification remains an issue in 2005. The company believes that enterprises cannot necessarily justify spend on VoIP outside of contact centres unless they need a new voice system anyway. "Existing TDM equipment cannot compete with the new features but it works adequately for most situations" reasons author of the Analysys report Margaret Hopkins. "It is only in the contact centre, where performance is closely monitored, that upgrading to VoIP can be justified."

VoIP Is Just The Beginning, Industry Panel Says

2005-08-05T14:16:00.000-05:00

By Paul Kapustka,Advanced IP Pipeline
1:30 AM EDT Fri. Aug. 05, 2005

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Intel’s Michael Stanford thinks voice is just “the first drop in the deluge” of applications for IP-enabled networks. And Digium’s Mark Spencer has an interesting toolkit for building IP telephony apps.

Perhaps that’s why the two were paired in the morning keynote session Thursday at the VoIP Developer Conference here, to spell out some of the ways developers, resellers and corporate users might take advantage of the power of IP-based networking.

As director of Intel’s VoIP strategy group, Stanford’s comments to the couple hundred attendees were definitely future-looking, particularly in the area of VoIP and other services over wireless broadband. One huge market about to emerge, Stanford said, is that of dual-mode phone handsets, which will seamlessly roam between cellular, Wi-Fi and WiMAX or other fixed-wireless broadband networks.

“The writing’s on the wall for wireline voice,” Stanford said, prediciting that within 3 to 5 years, cellular services will “totally dominate” voice traffic. As for VoIP, Stanford sees it as “just the baseline feature” of advanced IP networks. “Services over IP is the huge thing,” he said, mentioning videoconferencing, interactive television and converged voice and data applications as potential new market ideas. “It’s gold rush time for developers.”

Spencer, whose company Digium is the commercial outlet for the open-source IP PBX platform Asterisk, said the Linux-based Asterisk offers VoIP developers a launching pad for any number of vertically targeted IP telephony apps. Asterisk, according to Spencer, supports all conventional phone traffic protocols, and can act as a “black box” to merge all types of voice and data traffic in a heterogenous network.

Analysts: Need to replace aging telcom equipment to give SMB VoIP a boost

2005-08-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

8/4/2005
Posted by Russell Shaw @ 4:45 am
General News trends

AMI-Partnersis out with a new study that could merit some mulling over around here….

The study, "2004-05 U.S. SMB (Small and Medium Business) Telecommunications Market Overview and Assessment," says that 42% of small U.S. businesses (less than 100 emplyees) and 61% of medium-size ones (100 to 999 employees)currently use or plan to use some form of IP telephony within the next 12 months.

The research firm believes this number could be higher. The inference is there that because nearly 95% medium size businesses and 62% of small businesses have broadband access, then they are ripe for the pickin.'

The other key issue -which I have reported on here and elsewhere- is that VoIP seems to be catching on at a prescient point in the legacy telephony systems lifecycle.

"Another factor driving
IP-based telecom adoption is the shrinking lifespan of communications products and services," AMI-Partners says in a press release accompanying publication of this report.

Noting that the average life of a phone system among small businesses is less than three years, AMI says that "many SMBs are ready to replace their aging PBXes and key systems, and both the business and the technology decision makers in these firms are open to hearing about the many benefits offered by the new generation of IP telephony products and services."

MCI launches VoIP services

2005-08-04T10:29:00.000-05:00

Published: 04 Aug 2005
Datamonitor

As part of its $1m investment in new VoIP enablement services, MCI Inc yesterday rolled out its carrier IP termination and SIP gateway services.

The carrier IP termination product is designed for companies that have media gateway equipment and want to originate and terminate IP traffic over a global network, MCI said.

The IP termination service is available throughout the US, while the SIOP gateway service is available to just more than half, or 54%, of US companies and homes.

The services were initially planned for later this year, but MCI said it accelerated product development to meet growing demand for VoIP enablement products that not only have the necessary features and functionality but that ride on an integrated global network," said John Krummel, senior vice president of MCI wholesale services, in a statement.

The Ashburn, Virginia-based company said it plans to expand its VoIP enablement services and had earmarked $1m in capital expenditures this year to do so.

View from the Top: VoIP comes of age

2005-08-04T10:09:00.000-05:00

August 04, 2005
Voice over Internet Protocol has emerged as an increasingly popular alternative to traditional phone connections for its ability to transport voice communications over data networks like the Internet.

Users are adopting VoIP services in record numbers, attracted to its relatively low cost and the ability to make unlimited calls anywhere in the United States and Canada for a flat monthly rate, and other international calls at modest incremental fees.

As telecommunications and cable service providers continue to launch an increasing array of VoIP offerings to enterprise and residential markets, potential users need to educate themselves on the technology, its benefits and current limitations.

In a traditional telephone system, a phone number is part of a circuit-switched network that links callers via wires and routing computers. VoIP services work by transforming voice signals into data packets that are able to travel over IP-based networks before they are converted back to voice signals when they reach their recipient.

With VoIP, a caller's number is linked to an IP address. Voice signals are broken up into data packets and travel from one computer to another, across the Internet, until they reach the intended recipient's IP address. At this point, voice packets are reconciled into a complete signal, enabling users to hear and speak to each other exactly as they would using a traditional telephony service. Or, at least, that is the goal.

VoIP already has transformed the communications landscape, and many industry watchers predict it likely will completely replace telephone services as we know them in the United States and abroad. However, mainstream and widespread adoption will depend on how well the industry addresses performance and security issues, including enabling reliable connections to 9-1-1 services, deterring Internet hackers and ensuring quality of service.

The industry has made significant strides, but there is more work to be done.

One current challenge associated with VoIP is both a physical and information-technology security issue. During emergency situations, connecting to 9-1-1 dispatchers in a timely manner can be the difference between life and death. Because VoIP calls are associated with IP addresses, rather than a phone number linked to a physical location, not all VoIP providers must supply 9-1-1 emergency calling capabilities to their customers as a mandatory feature of service. With government-backed mandates on the table, it now seems assured that users will soon experience the same dependability from Internet-based voice communication that they have come to expect from conventional phone services.

Information security concerns have touched all areas of IT recently, and VoIP is no exception. The nature of VoIP, ruled by the laws of data communications, opens the potential for security breaches on a par with those that impact any IP-based service. To address the need for secure, predictable and efficient VoIP services, security must be pervasive and proactively built into the network, not just an afterthought hastily developed in response to a security breach.

For example, there is the potential for hackers to break into VoIP servers, compromising data. In VoIP, private branch exchanges are replaced by server-based IP PBXs. These call-management boxes, used for both serving VoIP services and for logging call information, are susceptible to virus attacks and hackers. Server break-ins could result in the loss of sensitive data.

Another example of a VoIP security threat is a concept known as spam over Internet Telephony or SPIT. Much in the same way that SPAM afflicts e-mail in-boxes, a VoIP spammer or "spitter" can copy one phone call and send it to many other users, mirroring the process of carboning an e-mail to create spam. The potential exists for an individual to make unwanted calls to hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously and anonymously.

Perhaps the most basic challenge that VoIP must overcome is also the most complicated. The data networks over which VoIP services must traverse were never designed to carry voice. The migration from circuit-switched networks to VoIP brings a new set of quality challenges that can manifest in packet impairment and ultimately result in poor call quality. Measurement and monitoring of performance and QoS parameters have assumed critical importance. Service providers must commit to delivering toll-call quality without impacting other critical data applications and provide a highly reliable infrastructure that can survive partial outages.

VoIP has accelerated competition among service providers looking to increase time-to-market for new services and ultimately boost revenue. For residential and enterprise users alike, service reliability will have a dramatic impact on the adoption rates and providers' ultimate success. Enterprises in particular are demanding enhanced management of QoS levels and new ways they can measure, understand and negotiate service levels with their providers.

VoIP is gaining major momentum, but service providers must meet the high standards both residential and enterprise customers have come to expect from traditional telephone services. Providing customers tangible evidence of the health and performance of IT services will be key to winning their confidence and loyalty. In the end, the goal is clear, consistent, good-quality conversation.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

What can VoIP phone system do for small business? @ BonaFideReview

2005-08-03T16:21:00.000-05:00

Wireless/Networking Reads from WWW
Wed 03 Aug 2005

Bona fide Reviews -- Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a term used to describe the transmission of telephone calls using a data network, rather than over traditional phone lines. It is a simple concept, but one that is having a very significant impact on the world of business communications.

VoIP is itself enabled by a much broader technological evolution, namely the convergence of multiple forms of communication, including voice, video and data, into a single network. This transformation is creating a revolution in the way communications works, and it has the potential to offer major benefits to your business. It can help your company grow by broadening your communications capabilities, it can save you money on your telecommunications costs, and it can enable more productivity, mobility and flexibility in your workforce.

Many small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) around the world are already benefiting from the advantages of VoIP systems,many of which are well suited to these kinds of organizations. Here are some examples of why VoIP is making a major impact on business communications for SMBs:

• It provides the ability to use an integrated voice and data network at a lower cost than the separate parts.
• It offers the SMBs communications capabilities on a par with the largest of companies.
• It can open the door to new services and applications that can drive additional revenue and help cope with expansions in customer demand.
• It can lead to increased employee productivity by giving employees a more flexible means of communicating and allowing more mobility, while increasing the flow of information.

There are different ways for SMBs to take advantage of the benefits from VoIP. An upgrade to an existing phone system, when available, can allow VoIP communications between different locations, without any major disruption to the infrastructure in each office. Alternatively, a new VoIP system can be purchased to replace an old phone switch and open up new capabilities. Yet another option is to pay monthly for a Service Provider to provide a hosted VoIP system, without buying any capital equipment at all.

Small and medium sized businesses are often good candidates for VoIP systems, and have represented a majority of the early adopters of technology. While large companies have complex networks, with a multitude of different phone systems that can be difficult to integrate into a single converged network, small companies' networks are more straightforward, allowing an easier transition to VoIP.

However, some companies have found that there are complexities or difficulties that get in the way of them maximizing the impact of the new technology. Lack of good advice, a misconceived plan or a deployment by inexperienced personnel can all led to problems. The keys to a successful transition to a VoIP based network start with a clear understanding of the business case behind it and an implementation plan that best fits the company’s overall objectives.

There are certain circumstances, however, where the technology is likely to have a more significant impact than others. If your company is in one or more of the following situations you will tend to get a faster payback:

• expanding and need or likely to need larger offices
• have a significant percentage of employees that travel on business or work full-time or part-time from home, using laptops
• making acquisitions and need to integrate with other business
• have international offices
• have a growing volume of incoming calls
• have not replaced or upgraded their phone infrastructure in the last 5 years
• have a good penetration of Ethernet cabling and have communications equipment that is less than 3 years old
• operate in an industry with dynamic competition where strong customer service levels are essential

Overall, VoIP based phone systems offer great potential for small companies and can help to keep costs under control while growing a successful business.

'VoIP Developer Week':TMC Salutes World’s Communications Developer Community

2005-08-03T14:55:00.000-05:00

[August 03, 2005]

S. San Francisco, CA [August 3, 2005] - TMC, the world's leading communications and technology media company, is saluting developers of next-generation communications networks by declaring thisVoIP Developer Week.

It is no secret that products like Skype and TelTel have changed the way the world communicates. How many more millions of people are able to speak with loved ones today because telephony is cheaper than ever? According to TMC President Rich Tehrani, VoIP and the innovative developers who have harnessed this technology to provide us with next generation products and services have combined to make the world a smaller, more tightly connected place.

"We live in a world where VoIP developers have toiled tirelessly to develop items like a bicycle-powered VoIP system that enables people in remote villages in third-world countries to communicate via telephone with others. VoIP developers from those that design products like Skype to the Vonage network should be commended for their tireless effort that results in a world where people are able to communicate with one another more effectively. IP Communications developers are on the forefront of the telecom market. They a rare breed of individual who as a whole work together for the betterment of society."

Tehrani continued, "We declare this VoIP developer week to commemorate the legions of new developers churning out the products and services that millions more people will use tomorrow. Without these developers, we cannot expect the rapid pace of innovation to continue. The first phase of VoIP has lowered cost communications but the next phase will be adding really amazing services to communications networks that people will use and gladly pay for."

VoIP Developer Week coincides with TMC's second annual VoIP Developer Conference (www.voipdeveloper.com) being held this week in San Francisco, California. The show attracts the world's leading IP communications developers who have traveled from around the globe to participate in this event. Over 1,000 people have registered for the event already and the final attendance is expected to double that of the prior year.

According to Mike Genaro, TMC VP of Marketing, "We launched this show to give the VoIP development community a centralized location where they could come together and learn from one another and meet with partners in order to more rapidly deploy VoIP products and service."

About TMC
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes two print magazines: Customer Interaction Solutions, and Internet Telephony; five digital publications, SIP Magazine, Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, WiMAX Magazine; and the online publications TMCnet, Planet PDA Magazine, WiFi Revolution, Alternative Power and BiometriTech. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs

Enterprise VoIP trends: Numbers only tell part of the story

2005-08-03T14:08:00.000-05:00

8/2/2005
Posted by Russell Shaw @ 12:27 pm
General Research News trends

Over at our Datapoint blog, colleague Liz Lightfoot points to new Gartner Research that shows the percentage of enterprises planning for VoIP solutions has more than doubled in the last six months.

The exact percentages have risen from 15% in January to the latest level of 35%. That's off somewhat from a May peak of 45%, but I think that is due to the factors that some of those surveyed as planning for VoIP in May have either VoIP planning at other times of the year. In fact, the low point of VoIP planning in 2004 was in May, when only 10% of respondents said they wereplanning for VoIP. So the trend should be charted by looking at identical months in successive years.

That, then, would point to a wide uptake in enterprises that are at least considering VoIP. Yet Gartner feels there is still a major leap between "planning" and implementation.

Given that assumption, Gartner points to a two to five year period before VoIP in the enterprise sees a "plateau"- a saturation point at which most companies that would consider VoIP will already have deployed it.

Visual Tackles Enterprise VOIP

2005-08-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

AUGUST 02, 2005

ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Visual Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: VNWK - message board), a leading provider of network and application performance management solutions, today announced a new assessment bundle that VARs and enterprises can easily deploy to manage the entire VoIP lifecycle -- from pre- assessment to ongoing management. VoIP Advisor incorporates Visual UpTime(R) Select(TM), a modular solution that provides in-depth, real-time and historical information that enables enterprises to intelligently manage network availability across the entire enterprise.

VoIP Advisor is available exclusively via Visual Network's VAR partners and has a promotional retail price of $8,499. It includes two 10/100 Ethernet appliances with 20 Mbps WAN/LAN analysis, full Visual UpTime Select software, and the Visual UpTime Select server.
VoIP lifecycle management. Select VoIP MRI utilizes actual real-time customer application traffic to assess VoIP readiness and, once VoIP is deployed, monitors site-to-site traffic to discover the root cause of VoIP performance problems.

The VoIP Advisor package provides us a feature-rich, low-cost solution for VoIP assessments that can be used multiple times in professional services engagements and leveraged across multiple customers and prospects," said Randy Riemersma, President of Parabon Solutions, Inc., a Visual Networks VAR. "Additionally, we can use VoIP Advisor as a stepping stone to deploy a complete Visual UpTime Select solution for enterprises that require ongoing visibility and insight into VoIP and other important applications."

VoIP Advisor helps enterprises determine readiness for VoIP by baselining network usage and delivering in-depth intelligence into existing performance levels and bandwidth usage at each site. VoIP Advisor determines the number of VoIP calls that can be supported at each site and measures key performance metrics such as jitter and delay. For existing VoIP deployments, VoIP Advisor delivers real-time and historical measurements and reports on key performance metrics.

VoIP Advisor can be utilized to manage and fine-tune the performance of existing VoIP deployments," said Larry Barker, President and CEO of Visual Networks."VoIP Advisor is a powerful solution for VARs and their enterprise customers to assess network readiness and manage the deployment of VoIP -- or any other key application."

Visual Networks Inc.

VoIP Security: Is a Firewall the Answer?

2005-08-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

[August 02, 2005]
By RICH TEHRANI
TMCnet Technology Analysis Columnist

Not all security issues originate from outside the network. A growing number of threats are coming from inside networks. In fact some security analysts have found that there are more successful attacks coming from within than outside your network. Cyber criminals working inside a company can steal the identities of coworkers on a large scale. Usually these criminals are difficult to spot. They don't look like criminals.

This concept is not lost on crime syndicates who equip members of their organizations with fake identification and send them to apply for and obtain jobs in Fortune class corporations. Once inside, these criminals have access to the inside of networks -- on the "soft" of the firewall, and from there can unleash an array of internal attacks on a company's computer network in an effort to steal identities.

Other times such syndicates direct their efforts towards the corporation and in some cases are able to steal money from banks and other financial institutions. When they are caught it is often too late to get the money back.

Enter VoIP
Internal and external hackers are always looking for new ways to get confidential information they can use to make money from. Techniques such as VoIP eavesdropping allow a hacker to listen-in on phone calls. Conversations with banks where PIN codes are used can be saved for later analysis. Think of unprotected VoIP networks as a hacker gold rush.

VoIP encryption is one way to deal with the problem and if you read Internet news sites like TMCnet you probably have noticed a growing trend by companies to encrypt voice packets. The problem is that encrypting voice packets in a way that an enterprise cannot unencrypt them causes problems for law enforcement agencies as well as the corporation. Skype is an example of a product that cannot be centrally unencrypted. HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley are two laws that require corporations to record certain employee conversations in order to be in compliance with the law.

Phil Edholm the CTO of Nortel Networks told me a while back how concerned he is about peer to peer encryption of SIP messages as these messages can contain viruses and other malicious code. Encrypting SIP messages on a peer to peer network can lead to absolute disaster if you aren't careful. If all of these problems aren't bad enough, there are issues relating to latency caused by encryption you also have to deal with.

Encryption, unless centralized, is a bad idea for enterprise VoIP. In this world where security is so important to all of us, any sort of p2p

VoIP security protocol that governments can't break is bad news for the population as a whole. Rich Mendoza the Managing Director of SIP Solutions at BorderWare tells me that the firewall, not encryption, is going to have to deal with using VoIP.He goes on to say that service providers aren't in the packet censorship business; this is why we have desktop applications for antivirus, anti-spam and anti-spyware (he forgot anti-adware -- how can anyone live without this?) We need endpoint applications to protect VoIP calls.

BorderWare sells firewalls, so they are obviously biased towards firewall use. Their appliances sit behind your general purpose firewall and when deploying you just open up ports 5060 and 5062 on your general firewall so that the VoIP firewall can handle the job of dealing with the VoIP traffic.

Another application of these firewalls is deployment by service providers to their customers so that the softswitch is segregated and customers can't get to other customers on the same softswitch.

This past December 2004 I wrote the following about VoIP E911 in Internet Telephony Magazine:

VoIP E911

I have said it before and I will say it again: If we don't get our act together soon as an industry we will have some serious headaches to contend with. The positive press friendly to VoIP that we witnessed for a year will vanish the moment someone is injured or worse because there is a problem with VoIP and E911 connectivity.

The current state of 911 over today's VoIP providers is not good. The incumbents aren't as much of an issue as the newer carriers who transfer 911 calls to lower priority administrative lines in PSAPs. E911 over VoIP can be much better than PSTN 911. We need to come together as an industry and discuss the challenges and standards issues and make sure that e911 over VoIP becomes a reason to adopt and not a reason to pass on VoIP.

I consider this a stumbling block that needs addressing on our way to achieving VoIP 2.0. Companies like Vonage, who use technology from an innovative company called Intrado, are taking bold steps to ensure the safety of their customers. They should be commended for their efforts and others need to follow.

Few service providers listened. These providers are now scrambling to meet the FCC deadline for 911 compliance

Now I'm at it again. I am telling you that if you are a service provider or an enterprise putting VoIP on your network: Understand the security implications of not having a VoIP aware firewall in the mix. Understand full well what you are doing.

If you are unsure, come to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo this October to learn everything you need to know to roll our VoIP safely and securely. We have extensive and in-depth education on this topic. Remember that if a 911 call doesn't work on your network because of some sort of attack, someone will be held responsible. The same goes for sales calls and revenue that may be lost. Be sure you know as much as you can and do as much as you can to ensure a successful and secure VoIP deployment.
-----
Rich Tehrani is President and Editor in Chief at TMC.

VoIP Drives Alluring Opportunities

2005-08-01T16:32:00.000-05:00

Hosting the perfect party.
by Diane Myers
Mon, August 1. 2005

Just as you wouldn’t hire a fledgling firm to handle a high-end family function flush with Kodak moments, neither would corporate America hand over its critical communications services to an unproven outsider.

But all that has changed dramatically with the last several years of telecom turmoil, a far tighter focus on cost reduction and avoidance, and the rapid rise of future IP-focused providers willing to spare users the pain of technology transitions.

As a result, the migration to hostedIP services is well underway, with VoIP largely responsible for the evolution of a market with sorely needed business brawn that offers more than just reduced communications costs.

The Migration to Hosted IP Services
With little exception, all businesses purchase some form of voice services. In this manner, VoIP represents not a new service but rather a replacement of an existing system. This is a key point in understanding not only the market potential but also the competitive landscape.

An early benefit of VoIP has been cost savings, and this remains a primary driver for VoIP adoption. If service providers are going to turn VoIP into a growth opportunity, it will require creating a migration path from trunking and integrated access solutions focused on cost savings toward feature rich platforms that provide a distinct advantage over current circuit-switched capabilities.

For most Tier 1/Tier 2 service providers, including RBOCs, IXCs and CLECs, VoIP services do not represent a new revenue stream but rather a replacement for circuit-switched local and/or long-distance voice. With the exception of service providers using VoIP to enter the voice market, and service providers serving enterprises (mostly SMEs via UNE-P), it is harder to justify the deployment of new services when a significant amount of resources have been used to deploy a circuit-switched architecture.

This represents a challenge for the industry to define and successfully market value-added VoIP applications for which customers are willing to pay. These applications might include worker mobility, wireless/wireline integration, unified messaging, number portability, collaboration and conferencing.

Laggards and Leaders
Stratecast Partners recognizes that because of these factors a number of service providers have taken a conservative approach to the deployment of VoIP services, particularly network-based, hosted services. However, VoIP is the direction in which the market is heading, and those service providers that continue to drag their feet will be left behind.

Long term, the majority of businesses will utilize some form of IP-based equipment and/or services for their voice communications. Those service providers that have deployed or are currently deploying the necessary infrastructure to offer VoIP services will be best positioned for success long term, even if it results in the short-term cannibalization of existing, higher-revenue services.

There is no disputing the fact that the transition from circuit-switched to IP is happening within the business and residential markets. For businesses, there are a number of options to explore as they move down the migration path toward a converged IP environment.

While a number of service providers jumped into the market with fully hostedVoIP service offerings, we are now beginning to see providers developing a suite of offerings that provide businesses with a migration strategy. Having a migration plan that allows businesses to adopt different levels of IP voice capabilities takes into account a variety of factors including existing investments, quality and security concerns, site specifications, and number and location of offices within the business.

Migration Path to Hosted VoIP
While full VoIP solutions, hosted or customer premises, are ideally suited for greenfield sites, the value proposition becomes slightly more challenging for those businesses that have significant investment in existing PBXs or key systems, and corresponding handsets. In these instances, providing customers with an entry point through IP integrated access or trunking services is the first step toward full IP migration. This provides an entry point into a customer to help solve a key requirement: reduction of telecom expenses.

Integrated Access
IP integrated access, similar to a TDM-based integrated access solution, allows enterprises to carry voice and data traffic over the same connection. Two key differences are the ability to offer lower overall costs through IP and to provide dynamically allocated bandwidth. IP integrated access represents basic circuit-switched line replacement, providing businesses with lower bills for local, long-distance, and toll-free phone service, while at the same time enabling them to continue utilizing an existing phone system and handsets. The service is implemented through an integrated access device or router placed at the customer premises.

To date IP integrated access services have been targeted primarily at SMEs and branch/remote offices of larger enterprises. The WAN transport of the voice traffic may be over the PSTN or a packet-based network after it hits the gateway or softswitch, depending on the service provider.

Customers can retain their PBX or key systems for internal call management and feature control. This allows businesses to gain the cost benefits of IP voice while retaining existing investments. VoIP access in this regard is being successfully marketed by CLECs such as Cbeyond, Covad, US LEC, and XO. In some cases the IP-based solution is an evolution from successful TDM-based integrated access businesses.

Those service providers that are not offering a basic IP trunking or integrated access services are missing an opportunity to build an installed base of customers in which to upsell value-added features and capabilities over time. Beyond basic local and long-distance voice and high-speed data offered with an integrated access solution, service providers can layer on enhanced features as a PBX overlay.

These features compliment a company’s existing PBX and might include conference calling, integrated Web conferencing, auto attendant, find me/follow me, and call screening. These features allow businesses to gain access to capabilities that may be unavailable with an existing phone system but without having to completely migrate to IP.

Making the full migration to VoIP, a business can opt to implement an IP PBX or contract with a service provider for hosted voice services. Hosted IP voice is a network-based/Class 5 replacement solution that involves complete management of the system by a service provider.

Enhanced Application
Stratecast Partners considers hosted IP voice services as an enhanced application running over a packet network; these services are available with varying degrees of applications/calling features and place service providers in direct competition with the IP PBX manufacturers. This does not include the hosting of a customer-owned IP PBX in a service provider data center, which is an option some businesses have chosen to implement. Most services are available over a T-1 or higher-speed connection.

While a hosted voice solution must include all the standard Class 5 features such as call forwarding, call waiting, caller identification, voice mail, and three-way calling, there are also a number of enhanced capabilities which are becoming requirements. These enhanced features begin with a voice portal that allows users to manage their voice communications and options from any location.

As the core user component, the portal is key for productivity and integrated communications. Additional features offered through a hosted voice solution that have quickly become expected include click-to-dial, auto attendant, call logs, call screening, find me/follow me, and do not disturb.

The challenge for service providers is in developing a further set of capabilities off the hosted voice platform that businesses will be willing to pay for above and beyond the current feature set typically offered with IP voice. A number of solution providers are working on enhanced service capabilities that include integrated instant messaging, mobile wireless features, advanced security and encryption policies, and integrated video. The challenge will be in building a pricing model that offers a compelling value to businesses while at the same time providing an avenue for revenue growth for service providers.

Stratecast Partners has long held that in a tough competitive environment, service providers with a highly focused strategy will be better positioned for long-term success. In the VoIP services market this has become especially true, given the number of competitive operators vying for the same business. Certain service providers, however, stand out by differentiating themselves based on target market, channel strategy or geographic coverage.

The path to success in offering full hosted voice business services will be the result of offering a migration strategy that begins with IP integrated access and trunking services. Those service providers that have laid the foundation by marketing IP integrated access will have greater success in upselling hosted service capabilities.

Diane Myers is program manager for communication service strategies and opportunities at Stratecast Partners. (dmyers@stratecast.com)

Wholesale VoIP provider: differentiate yourselves on promotions, not price and features

2005-08-01T15:04:00.000-05:00

7/31/2005
Posted by Russell Shaw @ 2:07 pm
General Promotions trends

I've just read a brilliant piece on some takeaways Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) can learn from the early success of pioneering Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in capturing customer bases of several million loyal users.

Entitled Part V: VoIP Product Packaging-It's Not Just About Price, the piece is the last in a (well, duh) five-part series by industry thought leader Shawn Lewis, is the CEO of VoIP wholesales services provider Volo Communications.

One of Lewis' key points is that VoIP service providers need to differentiate their offerings based on "high-demand features and promotions," rather than play the discount price game.

"The parallels …hit home about the need to differentiate your offering by not focusing on price alone," Lewis writes. "Of course, that’s easier said than done. One thing is certain: the VoIP industry will feel the affects of competition. This will put pricing pressures on ITSPs over the next 12–18 months."

Lewis implies what to me is a potentially hazardous nexus: those VoIP providers who feel the pressure to compete on price will be strained by the expense of implementing unique services. So the way you set yourself apart is by marketing more creatively than your competitors.

"Successful ITSPs will find themselves offering a wide range of features and services that will include IP-PBX services and unified messaging," Lewis admits. "They are also going to need to differentiate with other marketing and promotional campaigns that may include rewards — loyalty programs, and friends and family incentives."

Even with creative loyalty and incentive programs, there's a danger of overpestering the customer, confusing him/her with too many offers, or not having the most effective promotions fulfillment engine.

A tough balancing act for sure.

I have two questions for readers. What promotions or loyalty program(s) would you like to see your VoIP provider offer? And what type of promotions could a VoIP access provider offer that might encourage you to switch from your current ITSP?

Portal Offers VOIP Downloads

2005-08-01T14:03:00.000-05:00

By Caron Carlson
August 1, 2005

As voice-over-IP systems prove to be less easy to use than the technology's champions suggest, vendors are responding to small and midsize businesses' need for simpler, more intuitive IP telephony.

Nimcat Networks Inc. this week is launching a Web portal where users can download new features for their VOIP handsets within minutes. The portal, called NimGate, provides an array of features that can be purchased, installed and used without the need to add hardware to the network. The new features include a System Web Administrator, which lets the telecommunications manager make central changes to the system, such as designating extensions for an office and determining the length of messages that is allowed.

Ottawa-based Nimcat touts its technology for its ease of use, requiring only that users plug a Nimcat-powered phone into the LAN and turn it on. Standard VOIP handsets embedded with Nimcat processing software recognize other devices on the network and form a virtual exchange to interact on a peer-to-peer basis or connect to a WAN or the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).

Earlier this year, Multiple Capital Inc. traded in the traditional phone system that it had been using for 15 years for Nimcat-powered handsets from Aastra Technologies Ltd., in Concord, Ontario. Following a work force reduction earlier in the year, the Montreal-based company relocated to a smaller office and took the opportunity to install a less expensive, easier-to-use system, said Claude Vachet, a partner at Multiple Capital.

No central processing gear is needed with Nimcat call processing software, making it more affordable than traditional key systems or IP-based PBXes. Multiple Capital also saved money from the outset in its migration to VOIP because separate lines did not have to be installed for voice and data traffic.

Once the building was wired, Vachet had only to purchase handsets. He chose Aastra equipment, but other manufacturers, such as Tecom Co. Ltd., in Hsinchu, Taiwan, also embed Nimcat's technology.

If an enterprise connects directly to a service provider that supports IP connectivity, no equipment other than the phone is needed. To connect to the PSTN, however, Nimcat's Thin Trunk interface must be added.

Vachet said he is particularly impressed with the features, which include call forwarding, transferring, holding, returning, logging, conferencing and paging, as well as a voice mail notification system being launched this week.

With plans to grow, Vachet said he needed to install a system that would grow easily with him. "With Nimcat, we just buy more phones and plug them in, and it works." The Nimcat software can handle more than 100 handsets, according to the company.

In the future, Vachet would like to see a feature added that lets users listen to their voice messages via Windows WAV files on their computers. "One thing that would be nice would be access to voice mail via a Web page," he said. "It would be cool if while you're away, you could access voice mail via your e-mail."

VPN infrastructure keeps ERP system optimised

2005-07-29T16:02:00.000-05:00

29 July 2005
By Alisanne Casey

AEROCELL, a US composite manufacturing company whose products are widely used by the aerospace industry, heavily depends on its ERP system to optimise and standardises its manufacturing and product ordering process. Using a VPN infrastructure, Aerocell runs its ERP between its two facilities located in the state of Washington.

“The ERP application is imperative. We estimate that a loss of WAN connectivity at any point during a regular work day would decrease our productivity levels about 40% in terms of processing,” said Aerocell’s Brandon Green.

Understanding the consequences associated with WAN downtime, Aerocell sought to find a product that would help it actualise WAN redundancy for its VPN. “Aerocell uses FatPipe Networks’ MPVPN to ensure always-up connectivity,” he said.

The MPVPN unit at Aerocell’s site in Marysville bonds three T1 lines and a DSL connection, providing increased speed due to the aggregation of the lines, while providing redundancy of inbound and outbound traffic for that site. Similarly, the Newport facility bonds two DSL connections and a T1 line through a second MPVPN unit. When a data line or any component or service fails, FatPipe automatically and seamlessly reroutes traffic to available lines.

The MPVPNs sit transparently in Aerocell’s WAN. Its ability to work with any VPN technology as well as bond any combination of data lines -- without the need for BGP or the co-operation from its ISPs -- is designed to save Aerocell time and money. “We see a savings of about $US500 a month, just by bonding DSL connections with T1s,” commented Green.

FatPipe is said to be the only product of its kind that can sustain a VPN session even if one of the lines fails, no session re-initiation is required.

“The MPVPN has been flawless for us; we have not had any WAN downtime since the product has been installed,” said Green.

Inveneo to Demo Bicycle-Powered VoIP at VoIP Developer Conference Next Week on Aug. 4

2005-07-29T14:53:00.000-05:00

[July 29, 2005]
Nonprofit group bringing communications services to developing communities will appear at 2nd Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Norwalk, CT, [July 29, 2005] -- TMC announced today that Inveneo will be demonstrating its innovative solar- and bicycle-powered, Linux-based VoIP system at next week's VoIP Developer Conference in San Francisco.

The conference runs Thursday, August 2nd through Thursday, August 4th. Inveneo will have their demo running all day Thursday, August 4th.

Inveneo has built a Linux-based PC with a VoIP connection that's powered by either a bicycle or solar panel.This "rugged-ized" solution is designed to withstand the African climate and has no moving parts and is designed to be serviced remotely, if required.

Inveneo, working with various international relief organizations, is installing this "VoIPcycle" in remote African villages that have neither electricity nor phone access.Through a series of transmitters and receivers, the Inveneo solution hopscotches to the nearest PSTN connection thus providing telephone and Internet service.

Inveneo will set up the bicycle (on a frame especially designed by Inveneo to be easily copied by local blacksmiths) which is connected to a battery, which in turn powers the Linux box, connected to the VoIP gear, connected to an antenna!

TMC president Rich Tehrani has been impressed with the concept since he first heard about it a few months ago.

"A while back I wrote about Inveneo and their bicycle-powered VoIP solution. I really think this sort of application is how we in the VoIP market can give back to society. Many of us who have made a living in the VoIP industry should be proud that this same technology is being used in third world countries to allow people to communicate with friends and relatives more easily and inexpensively," said Tehrani.

Tehrani continued, "We take telephone calling for granted, but in remote villages, even if they have the means they have to travel many kilometers to get to a telephone. With the advent of the bicycle powered VoIP phone, these residents can now communicate with friends and relatives around the world.

"The VoIP Developer Conference is the only conference in the world this year 100% dedicated to educating pioneers building the next-generation of telecom applications.

In addition to Inveneo's appearance, the show features three days of conferences, great networking opportunities, and an Exhibit Hall featuring all of the latest VoIP development tools. Keynote speakers from Aculab, AudioCodes, Avaya, Digium, Intel and Inter-Tel are also scheduled to appear at the conference.

About TMC
Technology Marketing Corporation(TMC) publishes two print magazines: Customer Interaction Solutions, and Internet Telephony; five digital publications, SIP Magazine, Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, WiMAX Magazine; and the online publications TMCnet, Planet PDA Magazine, WiFi Revolution, Alternative Power and BiometriTech. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs

Comcast VoIP Push Enlists Sprint, Level3

2005-07-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

Cableco Comcast is starting to get more serious about telephony with a rapid deployment of VoIP across its national footprint. To do so, it’s enlisting the long-distance services of Sprint and Level3 Communications; service-provisioning arrangements revealed today between the cableco and the two carriers underscores a strategic importance now being placed on the “Comcast Digital Voice”-branded service aimed at current and new video subscribers.

"As we aggressively deploy Comcast Digital Voice, we are working to make sure our customers enjoy the quality experience they come to expect from Comcast," says Catherine Avgiris, senior vice president/finance and administration for Comcast Voice Services.

Comcast reportedly has about 21.5 million cable customers, 7.4 million high-speed Internet customers and 1.2 million voice customers.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint says its agreement to provide connectivity between traditional phone providers and Comcast Digital Voice in select markets represents a continued expansion into the cable market. Broomfield, Colo.-based Level3 says it will expand its backbone to support the Comcast Digital Voice rollout, essentially serving as a privately managed network for transmission of the IP-based calls.

"We believe the market is poised for rapid adoption of innovative voice services and look forward to further supporting Comcast as it adds IP-based phone service to its leading suite of cable, entertainment and communications products and services," adds Sureel Choksi, executive vice president of services for Level3. "In addition to our key VoIP services, we're continuing to see strong demand from our cable partners for IP and transport services.”

AT&T Selects Intrado for VoIP E911 Support

2005-07-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

Jul 27, 2005
Business Wire via NewsEdge Corporation :

Intrado Inc., a global provider of integrated data and telecommunications solutions, today announced an agreement with AT&T to provide a VoIP-enhanced 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) solution for some AT&T CallVantage(R) Service subscribers.

The deployment of Intrado(R) V9-1-1(SM) Mobility Service will support AT&T's nomadic users, users with telephone numbers foreign to the local rate center (out-of-area), and some fixed-location users not covered by AT&T's own service footprint. This will help AT&T meet new FCC guidelines that require VoIP providers to offer E9-1-1 services that deliver the caller's name, call-back number and street address to the appropriate 9-1-1 call center in the event that a 9-1-1 call is placed. This new agreement builds on an existing relationship between the two companies.

"We began deploying E9-1-1 capabilities to our AT&T CallVantage users in April and have successfully migrated the majority of our user base to it," said Cathy Martine, AT&T senior vice president for Internet Telephony. "We appreciate Intrado's willingness to help us expand our capabilities to that segment of our community that we are not able to reach."

Intrado V9-1-1 Mobility Service represents an industry first, offering AT&T a complete solution to address the three key components of VoIP E9-1-1 delivery: provision of routing instructions based on a validated address, 9-1-1 network access, and local 9-1-1 selective router connectivity.

AT&T CallVantage subscribers can determine their account status by logging on to their personal Web portal and visiting the Account Management & Settings page where they can review the type of emergency service they are currently subscribed to. AT&T urges all users to proactively check their 9-1-1 status online, read their 9-1-1 notification letters and not to place test calls to 9-1-1 as this creates an unnecessary burden on the nation's emergency calling system.

Copyright ©2005 Business Wire

Verizon Gets Schooled on VoIP

2005-07-27T14:52:00.000-05:00

July 27, 2005
By Colin C. Haley

Verizon Laboratories is working with Columbia University to research ways to improve the security and functionality of Voice over IP (define) services.

The collaboration focuses on two areas: protecting voice packets from being compromised while traveling over converged networks; and improving presence features that let callers know the availability of their contacts.

When the project concludes this spring, any equipment and prototypes will be transferred to Verizon Laboratories to supplement the Baby Bell's own efforts to advance VoIP technology.

Mike Weintraub, director of converged services at Verizon Laboratories, told internetnews.com that some of the technology developed at Columbia may eventually help Verizon set future technical requirements for softswitches (define), the platforms that connect wireline phone calls to IP networks for VoIP.

The project, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of Columbia's computer science department, will be funded by Verizon Laboratories and overseen by Prof. Henning Schulzrinne.

Weintraub described Schulzrinne as "a pioneer in VoIP and a world-renowned, world-class researcher" who will bring attention to Verizon's VoIP efforts.

A $120,000 Verizon grant was presented to Schulzrinne by Stuart Elby, vice president of network architecture and enterprise services at Verizon Laboratories. Elby is no stranger to Columbia; he earned his Ph.D. from the school in 1994.

"This project allows us to work on real-world problems for a very large-scale deployment, exploring how VoIP systems can move from laboratory and small-scale systems to serving a leading telecommunications provider," Schulzrinne said in a statement.

Verizon launched its consumer VoIP service, dubbed VoiceWing, a year ago. The service includes call forwarding and detailed call logs, among other features.

The New York-based carrier doesn't disclose its VoiceWing subscriber total. Overall, however, consumers are making the switch to broadband telephony.

The number of U.S. households using VoIP is expected to jump to 12 million in 2009 from 400,000 in 2004, according to JupiterResearch, which is owned by the same company as internetnews.com.

VoIP upstart Vonage is the industry leader and predicts that it will have 1 million customers by year's end. However, JupiterResearch analysts said telecoms like Verizon and AT&T (Quote, Chart) hold two advantages over startups: they have strong relationships with customers; and younger consumers prefer wireless telephony to landlines, making the case to switch to VoIP more difficult.

Internet Phones Call on Wi-Fi

2005-07-27T14:20:00.000-05:00

We test two of the latest Wi-Fi VoIP phones to see how wireless Internet calling works.

ABCNEWS.com 7/27/2005
By Jeff Bertolucci, special to PC World

Internet phones are going wireless. Internet phone vendors have merged wireless networking with voice over Internet Protocol phone service to create the Wi-Fi VoIP phone. This promising—if somewhat rough around the edges—technology brings wireless calling to Net phones.

A Wi-Fi VoIP phone is a handset that looks a lot like a cell phone, only it sends and receives audio signals via a wireless network. It works within Wi-Fi's transmission range, which isn't very far. In our tests, Wi-Fi VoIP calls abruptly disconnected whenever we ventured 70 to 100 feet from our wireless router.

But, you say, you already have a cell phone. Why should you consider a Wi-Fi VoIP phone? Well, for some callers, VoIP is a whole lot cheaper. Let's say you're on the road and dread paying those outrageous cell phone roaming charges. With your Wi-Fi VoIP phone, you simply enter a free wireless hotspot and make a call. If your VoIP calling plan provides unlimited minutes to the U.S. and Canada, your call is essentially free. If you're calling internationally, you'll pay low VoIP rates, often as little as 3 cents per minute to Europe. And with VoIP, there are no roaming charges.

Wi-Fi VoIP handsets are already available from some VoIP providers, including BroadVoice and Net2Phone, as well as from hardware retailers such as ZyXel. Siemens will sell a Wi-Fi handset later this year. Vonage, the biggest VoIP startup, plans to introduce a Wi-Fi VoIP phone before the end of the year.

The handsets are not difficult to use: If you can use a cell phone, you've got the skills necessary to work a Wi-Fi VoIP phone. To make a call, you key in a number and press Send. Calls are routed onto the public-switched phone network via your VoIP carrier. The handsets can also accept incoming calls; the phone number is likely the same as your home VoIP line.

You need to have an account with a VoIP provider, and you need to make sure that your handset works with the company's service. In most cases, the handset works as part of your existing account, and the service is included in the monthly fee you already pay. If you don't already have a VoIP account, you can sign up for service when you purchase a handset.

Initially, Wi-Fi VoIP should appeal to people calling internationally, and to travelers who want to avoid roaming fees.

"A lot of people who travel may not have robust minute plans, and they'll find this very useful," says IDC research manager Will Stofega. He used a Wi-Fi phone during a recent trip to Montreal. "The savings were incredible," Stofega says.

Don't confuse a Wi-Fi VoIP handset with a cordless VoIP phone, such as the Uniden UIP1868, a 5.8-GHz unit designed for Packet8 subscribers. (Uniden makes an identical model for Vonage and other VoIP providers.) The UIP1868 includes a base station that plugs directing into a broadband connection or router, and supports up to ten cordless handsets. The difference is that a Wi-Fi VoIP phone works anywhere there's a free wireless access point, whereas the cordless handset works only near its base station.

We tested two Wi-Fi VoIP phones: the UT Starcom F1000, which we used with BroadVoice's VoIP service, and the Net2Phone VoiceLine XJ200. (We have previously reviewed Net2Phone's earlier model, the XJ100.)

Both are promising devices, but they're not ready for the mainstream. Battery life is poor: The XJ200 kept conking out after 4 to 5 hours of standby—yes, standby—time, during which we made maybe 10 to 15 minutes of calls. The F1000 did much better, with about 33 hours of standby time, but that pales in comparison to today's average cell phone, which goes days between charges.

Another tech issue needs to be addressed: call handoffs from one wireless access point to another. If you move from one hotspot to another, your call gets dropped.

You can't roam between access points," acknowledges Net2Phone spokesperson Sarah Hofstetter

Furthermore, Wi-Fi VoIP phones don't work in fee-based, password-protected hotspots, such as a McDonald's or Starbucks that offers wireless access. For a list of wireless hotspots worldwide (free and fee), go to PCWorld.com's Hotspot Finder.

Setup may be tricky for Wi-Fi novices too. You'll need to know whether your wireless LAN uses encryption, and if so, what kind (64-bit or 128-bit). In addition, you'll have to input your LAN's security code into the phone, a task that allows the handset to run on your network.

At first glance, Net2Phone's slim Wi-Fi handset looks like your average cell phone. At 5 inches long, it easily fits in a coat pocket or handbag. Its 112-by-64-pixel LCD is backlit a cool shade of blue and is easy to read. The phone includes all the features you'd want—voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding, and call blocking—and its $159 price is reasonable. Then again, if you want a combo camera phone/MP3 player, look elsewhere.

Our main gripe is the XJ200's battery life, which at less than 5 hours is way too short. We found ourselves recharging the phone daily; in fact, we even reserved a spot on our strip outlet for the XJ200's AC adapter. That said, the phone looks good, and its audio quality rivals that of a comparably priced cell handset.

This handset, which we received from VoIP service provider BroadVoice, costs $100 (after $40 rebate) and easily surpasses the XJ200 in battery life, lasting 33 standby hours in our tests. It's slim like the XJ200 (only three-quarters of an inch thick) and only 4 inches long. It's downright petite: too petite, actually. We had to use the tips of our fingernails to press the tiny number keys.

The F1000 also supports voice mail, caller ID, and other essentials. Its screen controls are fairly intuitive, the orange-backlit LCD was bright and easy to read, and audio quality was as good as the XJ200's.

Our biggest complaint wasn't with the F1000, but with BroadVoice's VoIP phone service. Audio quality was terrible whenever we downloaded streaming video on our PC. Words were garbled and sentences were clipped. By comparison, Net2Phone's quality stayed the same during video streams.

Our advice: Save your money for the next generation of dual-mode cell/Wi-Fi phones, which are 6 to 12 months away, according to Net2Phone's Hofstetter. These devices will provide the best of both worlds: cell and Wi-FI VoIP access. We'll wait.

Copyright (c) 2005 PC World Communications, Inc.

Privacy Guru Locks Down VOIP

2005-07-26T16:24:00.000-05:00

By Kim Zetter
10:20 AM Jul. 26, 2005 PT

First there was PGP e-mail. Then there was PGPfone for modems. Now Phil Zimmermann, creator of the wildly popular Pretty Good Privacy e-mail encryption program, is debuting his new project, which he hopes will do for internet phone calls what PGP did for e-mail.

Zimmermann has developed a prototype program for encrypting voice-over IP which he will announce tomorrow during a presentation at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas.

Like PGP and PGPfone, which he created as human rights tools for people around the world to communicate without fear of government eavesdropping, Zimmermann hopes his new program will restore some of the civil liberties that have been lost in recent years and help businesses shield themselves against corporate espionage.

VoIP, or internet telephony, allows people to speak to each other through their computers using a microphone or phone. But because VoIP uses broadband networks to transmit calls, conversations are vulnerable to eavesdropping in the same way that e-mail and other internet traffic is open to snoops. Attackers can also hijack calls and re-route them to a different number.
Few people consider these risks, however, when they switch to VoIP.

"Years ago, people kind of stumbled into e-mail without really thinking about security," Zimmermann says. "I think that what's happening today with VoIP is that we’re kind of stumbling into it (as well) without thinking about security." People don't think about it, he said, because they're used to phone calls being secure on the regular phone system -- known as the Public Switched Telephone Network.

"The PSTN is like a well-manicured neighborhood, (while) the internet is like a crime-ridden slum," Zimmermann says. "To move all of our phone calls from the PSTN to the internet seems foolish without protecting it."

Interest in VoIP is growing rapidly because the user pays less for the service and pays no long-distance toll charges. Some services are free. According to one recent survey, 11 million people worldwide use a subscription VoIP service, compared to only 5 million in 2004, and at least another 35 million use free VoIP services. That leaves a lot of people potentially open to eavesdropping.

It's not as easy to eavesdrop on VoIP as it is to intercept and read e-mail. Phone conversations aren't stored or backed up where an attacker can access them, so the conversations have to be captured as they occur.

But a program available for free on the internet already allows intruders to do just that. Using the tool, someone with access to a local VoIP network could capture traffic, convert it to a audio file and replay the voice conversation. The program is called Voice Over Misconfigured Internet Telephones, a name clearly chosen for its catchy acronym -- VOMIT.

Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of security firm Counterpane and author of the Cryptogram newsletter, says that the need for VoIP encryption is a given.

"If you're concerned about eavesdropping, then encryption is how you defend against it," he says. "And it's not that hard to do. It's just a matter of writing the code."

But David Endler, chairman of the VoIP Security Alliance industry group and director of security research at TippingPoint, says a protocol for encrypting and protecting VoIP data already exists and companies are starting to make VoIP phones that support the protocol. But he said, typically, people don't enable the encryption option.

"Probably because we're not seeing attacks yet," he said.

He said most users are less concerned with eavesdropping than with having VoIP service that provides the same quality and reliability that they expect from regular phone service provides.

"Some people can see clearly that there's a need for this, and others wonder if anyone cares about protecting phone calls," Zimmermann said. "But those are the same people who wondered why anyone would want to protect e-mail. I think as people gain experience with VoIP they're going to have a great appreciation for the need to come up with extra measures to protect it."

Endler also said that companies using VoIP are reluctant to implement encryption because of the overhead involved in managing the public key infrastructure, or PKI.

"You have to be able to store a key on most of these end points," he said.

PKI requires two keys for encryption: a public key that a user gives to anyone who wishes to communicate with him or her, and a private key, which decrypts messages that the user receives.

That won't be a problem with Zimmermann's system, which doesn't use PKI. Zimmermann said PKI is unnecessarily complex for VoIP.

"There's no need to centrally manage public key infrastructure to make a phone call, in my view," he said.

He won't elaborate on how his system works but is preparing a protocol document that will describe it in detail, which he'll post on the internet when the program is ready.

The program is currently only a working prototype and still has non-security bugs that need to be worked out. For example, sometimes the program fails to hang up after a call, forcing the user to exit the program to end the call.

It's designed for a Mac, but will be adapted for PCs before Zimmermann makes it available for download. He's looking for investors to back a startup company that will support the product and oversee its distribution.

Zimmermann envisions it both as an add-on for manufacturers to put into VoIP phones and as a software client that users can install on their laptop to use when they don't have a VoIP phone with them. Both parties in a conversation will need to have the software on their phone or computer. If only one person has it, the call will still go through but it won't be encrypted.

It's been a while since Zimmermann came out with a new encryption product. He released PGP in 1991, then it was another five years before he released PGPfone to encrypt data passing between modems.

Who could blame him for laying low for a while after the Justice Department launched a three-year criminal investigation against him in 1993? Officials accused him of violating a ban on exporting cryptography when he made PGP available for download on the internet. The government finally dropped its investigation in 1996.

The export laws were relaxed in 2000, so at least they're no longer a problem.

"There's a lot more crypto in the computer industry now than there was in the '90s," Zimmermann said. "And there's not much authorities can do about it now because we went through this struggle with them in the '90s and we won."

Zimmermann isn't taking chances, however. He worked closely with a law firm that specializes in export controls and filed the required paperwork with the Commerce Department notifying the government that his product exists.

Still, he delayed producing VoIP encryption after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, because the climate wasn't right.

"I was concerned that maybe this would attract some criticism," Zimmermann said. "I just felt that maybe the government had their hands full with enough problems, and I also needed to concentrate on other consulting projects to make money."

Zimmermann received hate mail after 9/11 from people who accused him of aiding the attackers by creating a program that allowed terrorists and criminals to shield their correspondence from authorities.

The Washington Post erroneously reported shortly after the attacks that Zimmermann was overwhelmed with guilt over the possibility that terrorists might have used PGP to plan their attacks.

What he actually said was that he was sorry if al-Qaida used the program, but that this was the tradeoff of having a tool that could protect everyone's privacy -- some people would use it for malicious intent. Overall, he said, the world was better off with cryptography in the hands of the masses rather than just in the hands of government.

Zimmermann is hoping people will accept his new program with the spirit in which he created it.

"Because there are a lot of people who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties that the Patriot Act brought," Zimmermann said, "I'm hoping that more people would approve of this project than disapprove."

Ultimately, however, he said that his encryption program was not about politics, but about the need for protecting critical infrastructure.

Vonage Adds Motorola VOIP Gateway

2005-07-26T15:09:00.000-05:00

July 26, 2005
SPI Firewall Included For Improved QOS
By ExtremeTech Staff

Just days after Vonage signed VTech to provide a cordless VOIP phone, the VOIP provider agreed to partner with Motorola to supply a home VOIP gateway.

Like other Vonage routers, such as the WRT54GP2 from Linksys, the new Motorola VT2442 VOIP router will accept an Ethernet input, handle two phone lines, and contain four outgoing Ethernet ports, to the WRT54GP2's three. An "advanced firewall" is also included, which includes stateful packet inspection, a feature the WRT54GP2 lacks, according to Vonage support personnel.

"Motorola is an ideal partner: they are a market leader in broadband-enabled products that are high-quality and easy-to-use. This partnership builds upon Vonage's product portfolio giving customers more choice when they subscribe to our award-winning service," said Jeffrey A. Citron, chairman and chief executive of Vonage Holdings Corp., in a statement. "Motorola is a proven partner with the experience and support to ensure the quality that is essential to our business."

Call waiting, call forwarding and caller ID features are included within the router, which uses the Texas Instruments TNETV1060 VoIP gateway chipset, Vonage said.

Customers can get the Motorola VT2442 by ordering the Vonage service directly from www.vonage.com. The gateway is scheduled to be available in the fall of 2005.

XO Expands VOIP Coverage

2005-07-26T14:09:00.000-05:00

JULY 26, 2005

MINNEAPOLIS -- XO Communications, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: XOCM - News) today announced the launch of its industry-leadingVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services bundle, XOptions® Flex, in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

XOptions Flex is an integrated VoIP services solution that gives business customers enhanced features, functionality and value for their voice and Internet services, all in one simple package. It is the industry's first VoIP services bundle for businesses that combines unlimited local and long distance calling, dedicated Internet access and web hosting services for a flat monthly price.

XOptions Flex offers businesses in the Twin Cities the most comprehensive and flexible VoIP services bundle," said John Unger, vice president and general manager of XO Communications' Minneapolis sales office. "VoIP is truly revolutionizing the telecommunications industry, and XOptions Flex leverages the power of the Internet to provide a high quality and reliable communications solution that integrates voice and data over a single broadband connection with more valuable features for small and medium-sized businesses that save them time and money."

The service leverages the latest in VoIP technology to provide customers with next generation communications capabilities, such as unlimited voice calling, dynamic bandwidth allocation, voice virtual private networking (VPN), and a simple Administrative Web Portal. With a broadband connection on the XO IP network, XOptions Flex utilizes XO's award-winning national IP network and softswitch technology to carry customers' voice calls more efficiently and cost-effectively than traditional services that rely on the public switched telephone network. In addition, businesses can take full advantage of all of these IP-enabled capabilities and features without having to replace their existing analog phone systems.

" Businesses are ready to adopt VoIP, and take advantage of its ability to more cost-effectively improve communications with customers and among employees," said William Stofega, Research Manager with IDC's Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Services Program. "The providers that will differentiate themselves are those that offer more features with the flexibility to deliver true business benefits. XOptions Flex provides that flexibility with a simple, integrated VoIP solution that can expand as businesses' voice and data needs grow."

Brix Intros Customer Care App for VoIP Providers

2005-07-25T15:45:00.000-05:00

[July 25, 2005]
BY JOHANNE TORRES
TMCnet VoIP Minute Watch Columnist

VoIP technology provider Brix Networks of Chelmsford, MA introduced today the BrixCare Self-Service, a new VoIP quality measurement and reporting application for VoIP service providers. According to the company’s news announcement released today, the new application was designed to “measure VoIP quality from the customer premises, and enable providers to launch, operate, and assure their residential and business broadband voice services.”

The new application is comprised of the following three components:

• An on-demand VoIP Agent: A digitally signed, lightweight Java applet that is downloaded to a subscriber's PC, either in self-service mode or at the direction of a customer service representative.
• Central Management Software: A platform that collects information and presents it in audience-appropriate formats that is actionable and relevant to customer service reps, NOC engineers, and management.
• And the Brix Verifiers: Hardware appliances that reside in the provider’s network for terminating test calls and measuring VoIP call quality."

Most VoIP providers have minimal visibility into their customers' environments or access networks where quality issues often arise," said Laura Holly, product line manager at Brix Networks. "BrixCare Self-Service allows both users and providers to quickly determine whether a problem originates in the user's environment, the ISP's network, or the VoIP provider's service delivery infrastructure. Our customers have told us that by using BrixCare Self-Service they have realized significant reductions in the average handle times of calls to their support reps in the vicinity of 30 to 40 percent.

"The news release explained that the BrixCare Self-Service can be used as a pre and post-sign-up app. Providers can use the new app within the pre-sign-up stage to identify users with poor broadband quality as a demo of service quality for prospective customers. At post-sign-up stage, providers could use the new app in order to avoid expensive customer service calls by enabling users to diagnose and resolve problems by accessing a self-help portal. In that situation, the BrixCare Self-Service would cause call length reduction and increased resolution of problems by enabling representatives to more quickly confirm and resolve or appropriately escalate user-reported problems.

New app tests signaling quality metrics including the time for each call setup phase and complete call setup time, and also provides a host of delivery quality diagnostic metrics, such as latency, packet loss, and jitter. The application also reports a bi-directional Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and analyzes the impact of each quality factor on MOS degradation.

The BrixCare Self-Service also measures overall call quality using the E-Model (ITU-T G.107) standard. According to a study conducted by the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering of Carleton University in Canada, “the E-model assesses the combined effects of varying transmission parameters that affect the conversation quality of narrow band telephony.

A BrixCare Self-Service Starter Kit, which includes a Brix 1000 Verifier, Advanced VoIP Test Suite (SIP), Self-Service Application, and related licenses, is currently available with a hefty price tag of $65,000.

Today’s news follows Brix’s recently announced partnership with PRIMUS Telecommunications Canada Inc., a telecom carrier and ISP in Canada last month. PRIMUS tapped Brix for its service assurance products to measure and verify the quality of the telecom’s TalkBroadband Internet telephony service. PRIMUS Canada will initially deploy the Brix VoIP PreQual Application as part of its recently introduced, free Web portal My TalkBroadband, which lets customers manage their calls and various business and residential service features online.

VoiceLog Solves VOIP E911 Regulatory Notification Challenge

2005-07-25T14:35:00.000-05:00

Monday, 25 July 2005

VoiceLog LLC, provider of Third Party Verification in the world, announced E911Alert™ - a new service specifically designed to meet new FCC requirements for notifying VOIP customers of their E911 service.

Under new rules that go into effect July 29, VOIP carriers who connect with the public telephone network are required notify their customers of any limitations to their E911 service, including where and under what conditions it may not be available. Importantly, VOIP carriers must also obtain "affirmative acknowledgement" from every customer that they have received and understood that information. Carriers who do not provide E911 service will be required to do so, but the rules for that go into effect November 28, subject to OMB approval.

"Getting affirmative acknowledgement from every customer is an incredible challenge," said Larry Leikin, Vice President at VoiceLog. "Fortunately, with our integrated platform that incorporates outbound and inbound voice response services, live agent services and Internet-based services in Any Language on Earth™, we can mount a campaign that will get a response from every customer willing to respond. And, with our 99.999% uptime storage platform, we'll keep the proof carriers need to document their compliance with FCC rules."

VoiceLog E911Alert starts with an automated outbound call that plays a message with the required information, then asks for confirmation of receipt and understanding. Options include voice recording of the customer's response, an inbound number to call back with a response, live agent failover and Internet integration. For this service, pricing starts at less than $0.10 per call.

In addition to E911Alert, VoiceLog is the world's leading provider of Third Party Verification, helping more than 60% of telecommunications companies and more than half of electric and gas utilities using TPV to meet their regulatory needs.

Wireless VoIP to meet customer roaming demands

2005-07-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

Jul 25, 2005: VoIP has evolved from the desktop and can now be used for wireless, roaming purposes to increase flexibility and extra convenience for users.

Zultys has released the WIP 2 to deliver the full functionality and ease of use of a desktop IP phone in a handy mobile format, providing seamless connectivity as users roam throughout an enterprise.

Tony Warhurst, the director of business development, at Zultys Technologies Australia, said that nearly 80 percent of the company's customers asked for this kind of technology.

"They tell us they would like the ability to take their desktop IP phone with them rather than have a second mobile unit with reduced capability.

"Other WiFi IP phones are coming into the market today don't provide users with enough features or sufficient battery life. The WIP 2 excels in all areas."

Zultys also claims that WIP 2 is the first wireless IP phone to provide presence, and tow call appearances, voice encryption, paging, 3-way conferencing, instant messaging, and all standard telephony functions.

In addition, it can be used as a desktop phone, but it also allows employees to move around the office and retain full control of their availability and communications.

idm.net.au
image and data Manager online

Strong Growth Projected in WiFi VoIP Handset Market, Says Infonetics Research

2005-07-20T15:25:00.000-05:00

[July 20, 2005]

LONDON, July 20 /PRNewswire/ --
Worldwide WiFi VoIP handset revenue totaled $54.7 million in 2004 and units totaled 143,000, and strong growth is expected at least through 2009 as steady adoption of voice over WiFi continues, according to Infonetics Research's latest report, WiFi Phones Biannual Worldwide Market Size and Forecast.

Worldwide dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue hit $6.7 million in 2004, the report says. WiFi capability will eventually become a common feature in cell phones, just as it is becoming standard in laptops today.

WiFi VoIP handsets represent a small market currently, but one with great potential. In logistics and healthcare verticals in particular, VoWLAN is already gaining momentum and will become widespread throughout the enterprise as VoIP and wireless LAN adoption continue.

There is potential for enormous growth in the consumer space, as VoIP services and wireless gateways are bundled with a broadband connection. More dual-mode WiFi/cellular handsets will reach the market, enabling enterprise users to roam across 3G networks, home networks, corporate wireless LANs, and WiFi hotspots.

"Some challenges remain, such as QoS, roaming across different wireless platforms, and the relatively short range of WiFi signals, but with vendors currently addressing these issues, it is likely we'll be at the foot of the adoption bell-curve by mid-2006," said Richard Webb of Infonetics Research, author of the report.

The WiFi Phones report tracks VoIP handsets with integrated WiFi (802.11) functionality and dual-mode WiFi/cellular handsets, and provides 2004 market size totals, annual revenue and unit forecasts through 2009, and analysis of the WiFi phone market for all regions (worldwide, North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and CALA).

Infonetics Research (http://www.infonetics.com/) is the premier international market research and consulting firm specializing in data networking and telecom. We provide a complete view of the market through constant interaction with equipment manufacturers, service providers, end-users, chip and component manufacturers, sales channels, and the financial community.