I mentioned recently that we'd be launching our eJournal here in the Digital Library. While similar efforts are underway in each of the Realtime Communities, the premier edition of Unified Communications in Realtime is here here for your reading pleasure.

In this first edition, we're talking about some issues around Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). This month we'll look at what lies ahead in FMC, some of the trends and tools that are gaining momentum, and we'll look at the future of mobile or casual computing as the technolgies mature. This months articles are:

• Fixed Mobile Convergence: What Lies Ahead? By: Ken Camp - Today's range of mobile solutions really enables work any time and from anywhere. Learn more about Fixed Mobile Convergence and how it benefit your business.
• Fixed Mobile Convergence: How Many Phones? By: Ken Camp - How many phones do you really need? The answer may depend on how you are using them.
• Fixed Mobile Convergence: Mobile and Casual Computing By: Ken Camp - For many workers, personal tools and business tools blend together. Learn how FMC has given rise to the age of casual computing, and how this will keep workers connected and productive.

Each month, we'll watch for a series of news stories and blog posts that relate to the eJournal topic of the month. This month I'm watching for news and podcast opportunities with companies delivering FMC solutions. And I'll be paying close attention to the people at the VON conference next week to see if I can get any special podcasts or videos.

Next month, my partner Sheryl Breuker and I are writing a series of articles on video - for personal use, mobile use and business use.

This eJournal series is being promoted as part of the Reatimepublisher's Nexus - The Digital Library for IT Professionals.
While promotion on the Nexus site won't begin until next week, I'm
tipping readers of the site here off early to give you first peek

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

We've begun a new series of publications here on the Realtime Unified Communications Community. This monthly eJournal - Unified Communications in Realtime -  will consist of three articles each month in PDF format that you can download and read at your leisure. I'll be writing some of the series. We'll also have other guest authors write pieces from time to time. I'll be inviting some of my colleagues to send pieces to me that I can help incorporate into the topic each month.

In this kickoff edition, we're talking about some issues around Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). This month we'll look at what lies ahead in FMC, some of the trends and tools that are gaining momentum, and we'll look at the future of mobile or casual computing as the technolgies mature. This months articles are:

• Fixed Mobile Convergence: What Lies Ahead? By: Ken Camp - Today's range of mobile solutions really enables work any time and from anywhere. Learn more about Fixed Mobile Convergence and how it benefit your business.
• Fixed Mobile Convergence: How Many Phones? By: Ken Camp - How many phones do you really need? The answer may depend on how you are using them.
• Fixed Mobile Convergence: Mobile and Casual Computing By: Ken Camp - For many workers, personal tools and business tools blend together. Learn how FMC has given rise to the age of casual computing, and how this will keep workers connected and productive.

Each month, we'll watch for a series of news stories and blog posts that relate to the eJournal topic of the month. This month I'm watching for news and podcast opportunities with companies delivering FMC solutions. I'm working now to schedule a podcast briefing with Acme Packet who's bringing their new solution into play.

Next month, my partner Sheryl Breuker will join me in a series of articles on video.

This eJournal series is being promoted as part of the Reatimepublisher's Nexus - The Digital Library for IT Professionals. While promotion on the Nexus site won't begin until next week, I'm tipping readers of the site here off early to give you first peek





Technorati Tags: Unified Communications in Realtime, unified communications, fixed mobile convergence, FMC, Ken Camp

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Reminder that I'll be at the IT Expo in San Diego from October 10th - 13th. I'm moderating two panels on VoIP security on the last day.

I'll be blogging, podcasting. taking pictures (maybe some video), and interviewing folks while I'm there. In addition to all the folks you'd expect me to chat with, I'm also looking for others. If there's someone specific you'd like me to try to connect with for an interview or some information, please drop me a note.

New today - I plan on meeting with interested in meeting with Lesley Kirchman, director of marketing for Actiontec Electronics during the show, to talk about a new version of their VoSKY Exchange
product. VoSKY Exchange brings the benefit of Skype to an office environment. I hear they have a couple other announcements as well. Actiontec will be exhibiting on the show floor (booth #634).

Technorati Tags: IT Expo, ActionTec Electronics, Skype

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Some stories in the news worth noting. There were a lot of stories I felt were rehashes of old news and just not newsorthy in the past couple of days.

Interop Reporter’s Notebook: VoIP security still spotty
Observations from our reporters at Interop New York. Check back for updates through the week.
By Network World staff, Network World, 09/20/06

A frank assessment of the state of VoIP and security technologies came from Gregory Lebovitz, technical director and solutions architect at Juniper Networks, at an Interop session on Tuesday.

“No [intrusion-prevention system] or firewall vendor supports all VoIP protocols and technologies," said Lebovitz, whose company’s products claim to offer a measure of security for VoIP nets. “If [security vendors] are telling you that they support all VoIP technologies they’re lying. There just isn’t anyone who supports everything today."

Interesting, and brutally honest quote from Greg Lebovitz. No vendor sells the magic silver bullet. This really reinforces the need for a layered security architecture.

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Comcast Has A Million VoIP Customers
Aswath isn’t going to be thrilled with the headline, but I am still calling it VoIP. Cable giant, thanks to some aggressive marketing and bundling has managed to chalk up a million digital voice (VoIP) customers. The growth has been so good that the company is adding 4000 jobs. Yet another proof of CableCos continuing success with voice and triple play offerings.

Other Story at Comcast: One Million VoIP Customers

I danced around Comcast and the CableCos a bit the other day when talknig about Vonage's woes.

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Debitel Launches VOIP

SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France -- Centile , the leading global Application Software vendor for VoIP, fixed-mobile and multimedia networks today announced that Debitel, one of the largest service providers in Denmark , has chosen Centile’s IntraSwitch platform to deliver Hosted Enterprise and Residential VoIP services to the Danish market.

Centile’s IntraSwitch is a scalable and reliable SIP based carrier-grade VoIP Telephony service platform, designed to adapt easily to customer needs and grow with them. It provides the scalability, reliability and manageability to support hundreds of thousands of enterprise and residential customers in a highly available, distributed, and scaleable architecture.

I think this is probably a larger story than meets the eye, Could lead to some broadening advances in Europe that those of us in the States don't fully appreciate.

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Experts: VoIP Represents Serious Security Risk

Banks and other companies switching their phone systems to voice over IP (VoIP) are making themselves vulnerable to phishing attacks for which there are currently no effective detection or prevention tools, a security researcher warned Wednesday.

"People will be able to penetrate bank networks and hijack their phone lines," said an independent security researcher, known by his pseudonym The Grugq, in an interview. VoIP is becoming increasingly common as companies and operators look to the technology to help cut costs, which makes them more vulnerable to attack, he said.

Other Stories
VoIP Presents Major Security Risk, Experts Say
HITB - VOIP presents major security risk, expert warns
VOIP presents major security risk, expert warns

While I'll agree that The Grugg is a well know expert in VoIP security, let's keep in mind that his presentation was also to unveil his product for sale. And he's one expert, not "experts" as the headline says. I suspect he wasn't taken entirely in context and this looks like shoddy reporting trying to capture a headline myself.

---

Building VOIP into the enterprise

Leon Erlanger, InfoWorld

Voice over IP is slowly but surely making strides at organizations far and wide. According to Infonetics Research, 36 percent of large organizations were already using VOIP products and services in 2005. And a few are embracing the full promise of VOIP, which is the creative integration of voice and data in ways that change the way people work.

There is no killer VOIP application that spans all markets, but there are select environments in which the integration of voice and data are solving real-world problems. Here's how four very different organizations are using VOIP to address an array of business challenges, transforming their operations in the process.

There's a really accurate point made in that snip - There is no killer VOIP application that spans all markets, but there are select environments in which the integration of voice and data are solving real-world problems.

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (1) |

I wrote recently about Changes Coming Later in September

Just want to give you a heads-up that these changes are on the way. I don't know our exact timeline, but things may begin changing later this week.

Friday I'll be leaving town for the weekend, so posting will be very light to non-existent over the weekend until I get back. Hopefully we'll have the new front up and live before I go.

And on Monday I'll be interviewing Walter Snell at Pandora Networks. That will bring some interesting new views into the mix here.

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

This on the heels of his well-received talk at VON -

Leonsis Pulls Away From Helm of AOL
Tech Visionary Refocuses Interests

By Sara Kehaulani Goo and Thomas Heath
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 15, 2006; Page D01

Ted Leonsis, a self-made technology entrepreneur who helped turn AOL into a multibillion-dollar business and later helped guide it through a recovery from the dot-com bust, said yesterday that he plans to step down at the end of the year from his day-to-day responsibilities at the company to focus on his sports, entertainment and philanthropic interests.

Leonsis, AOL's vice chairman, said he made the decision after conducting a "personal gut check." Over the past several years, he has juggled a number of growing commitments to his sports teams and movie projects as AOL was trying to overhaul its business strategy.

Technorati Tags: AOL, VON

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

There are some changes ahead, and I want to set the stage, so none of you are surprised. The Realtime VoIP Community and this associated VoIP Conversation blog are going to be getting a new face (and a new URL).

When Realtimepublishers and I began the VoIP Community last year, there was a real focus on enterprise VoIP technologies. That focus isn't going away, but it's broadening out soon.

Over the past year, VoIP has shown constant, steady growth and progress, but communications technologies tightly wrapped in the VoIP mix have also elevated. VoIP remains vital to communications technologies, but it's not always center stage. It's a step forward on the road to unified communications. VoIP is not the end game. It never was. It's a milestone along the way. VoIP has achieved and is achieving critical mass in many ways. It's a carrier technology. It's an enterprise technology. It's a consumer technology. But VoIP isn't the only technology in unified communications. 

As we noted in all the talk surrounding the VON conference this week, video has become a key technology. Video is a key piece in more that one way. Certainly there's the impending wave of IPTV or Television over IP. I see TVoIP as being something completely removed from IPTV. To me, IPTV will become broadcast television over Internet technologies. Mass delivery of television news and entertainment using new media. TVoIP seems different. It's about place shifting, user control, and multimedia streams from a variety of sources, delivered to a user's TV, PC, PDA or phone using IP technologies. I may be splitting hairs over a fine point, but things like Slingbox and SightSpeed place-shifting are more TVoIP than IPTV in my view.

Wireless continues to grow. 2G, 3G, 4G and fixed mobile convergence advances clearly show that the communications environment is changing. And it's changing quickly. Wireless and VoIP integration via FMC are going to be hugely important pieces of the communications puzzle over the next couple of years.

IMS is simply the carrriers' tool for unification and service delivery. I don't see it as anything more than a service delivery tool for carriers. But it's a tool that lets wireless and wireline carriers more effectively bundle services...if they use it wisely. So far, I'm not sure they are.

IP is the unifying protocol. In the enterprise, it might be the corporate WAN. In the larger world, it's the Internet. Regardless, IP has proven to be what the designers intended. It's a resilient, reliable architecture that can deliver anything that can be digitized - date, voice and video.

The shift you'll see ahead here is that the VoIP focus is broadening out to encompass a wider technolgoy set. We're moving from VoIP to Unified Communications. And we're shifting architecture a bit as part of the facelift. The VoIP Community has run on a DotNetNuke framework from the beginning. That's changing. This blog began inside that architecture, then moved to Typepad when we quickly determined the need. That's changing too.

The new face will move to www.realtime-unifiedcommunications.com soon, although it's under construction behind the scenes right now. We'll be putting redirects in place for anyone who hits the existing URL. The platform is changing, and a new blog face, running on Movable Type will provide both the face of the community and the promary entrance point for those articles and discussion forums our members use. It's still all free, but the community itself will still require registration to participate in the discussion forums there and to access the resource library.

The podcasts will continue, and grow. The VoIP ThinkTank will still be here, but we've never constrained ourselves to jsut VoIP. There will be more podcast interviews and video blogging as well.  I already have three podcast interviews scheduled, with more to follow.

Stay tuned. If you've been with us since we started this last November, rest assured that we're not going away. It's time to turn things up a notch.

Ken




Technorati Tags: Realtime VoIP Community, VoIP, fixed mobile convergence, video, Realtimepublishers, Ken Camp

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Here are some news items for the past day or two.

8x8 Announces High Performance T.38 Fax Over IP Service
ITU T.38 Standard Offers VoIP Industry's Most Reliable Fax Solution
BOSTON, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Fall VON 2006 -- 8x8, Inc. , provider of Packet8 residential, business and video Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services, today announced the launch of a new, high performance T.38-based business-quality fax over IP service. Packet8 fax service can be immediately provisioned on the 2nd line of any Packet8 Virtual Office BPA-410 business phone adapter. No additional hardware is required, other than the business' existing fax machine(s).

I probably don't fully appreciate the need for FoIP (or another acronym). Certainly fax is important to business, but more and more electronic document processing is performed every day and I see fax as a shrinking business.

---

Covad and Level 3 Team to Accelerate VoIP Adoption in the Small and Medium Business Market
BOSTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Level 3 Communications today announced it has added Covad Communications (Amex: DVW), a leading national provider of integrated voice and data communications, to its Premier Master Reseller program, which provides sales and marketing support to select service provider business partners.

Interesting news from two companies who haven't made a lot of noice in VoIP space lately.

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Polycom Selling New VoIP Phone
By TSC and IRIS Staff
9/11/2006 1:26 PM EDT

Polycom (PLCM - commentary - Cramer's Take) started selling a high-definition voice over Internet protocol phone.

The Pleasanton, Calif.-based said the SoundPoint IP 650 provides good quality, clarity and richness beyond the capabilities of existing traditional and VoIP phones.

Polycom has been in the news a lot the past few months with a variety of new offerings. As the premier provider of speakerphone technology, they continue to bring new products to market.

Other Stories
Polycom Announces VoIP Interoperability Partner Program for VoIP ...
Polycom Brings HD Voice to Telephony with the SoundPoint IP 650 Great review of the Polycom IP 650 by Dal

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Samsung VoIP phone uses Broadcom chipset

Broadcom says its Wi-Fi phone chipset has been selected by Samsung for use in its consumer Internet phones.

"Broadcom's Wi-Fi phone chipset offered Samsung a compelling solution for our next-generation families of consumer and small business IP phone products," said W.S. Cho, v-p for the Internet Infra R&D team at Samsung. "Broadcom provided us with a solid roadmap that will enable us to incorporate advanced functionality for features such as video and multimedia into our phone designs."

Other Stories
Broadcom(R) Chipset Shipping in New Samsung Wi-Fi(R) Phone
Broadcom Drives Emerging Residential IP Phone Market in Asia by ...

Quite a few articles in the news from another mobile device maker and another chipset manufacturer that tie to FMC and VoIP.

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Leading Vendors Initiate Voice and Video Over IP Quality Alliance
VON Fall - BOSTON, Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ditech Networks (Nasdaq: DITC), Empirix, Global IP Sound, JDSU (Nasdaq: JDSU), Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) and Telchemy jointly announced today that they will take a leading role in establishing the V2oIP Quality Alliance (http://www.v2oipqualityalliance.org), an alliance of communication industry innovators that will help shape and support the direction of voice and video- over-IP (V2oIP) quality issues. The new alliance will combine the expertise of key technology providers, service providers and industry experts to define industry best practices as well as help educate the market about relevant technologies, standards, and deployment methods.

Other Stories
West Corporation Chooses Ditech Networks' Packet Voice Processor ...
Another story coming out of the VON conference that again points to the importance of video in the constantly evovling world of unified communications. Look for other key players to join in and grow the V2oIP Quality Alliance in the months ahead.

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Global Crossing Launches VoIP Professional Services
FLORHAM PARK, N.J., Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC) today announced it is introducing VoIP Professional Services, which will leverage an enhanced agreement with Avaya (NYSE: AV), a global leader in business communications applications, systems and services.

VoIP Professional Services includes technical services, transition management and managed solutions. Common elements in many solutions may include network readiness assessment and design, network integration and implementation, and managed VoIP PBX services. The offer includes an initial four-hour consultation to qualified prospects, which is risk-free, with no charge or further obligation for customers. Global Crossing's agreement with Avaya also would allow Global Crossing to resell Avaya's IP telephony applications, systems and services as part of a complete VoIP-based solution.

Other Stories
Global Crossing, SunRocket Implement Industry-Changing VoIP ...

I expect we'll also be seeing more about this on Global Crossings VoIP Blog Dave Seigel and the rest of the Global Crossing team do a great job of sharing their insights there.

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Alcatel, Lucent Shareholders Approve Merger
Shareholders approved Alcatel's takeover of Lucent Technologies Thursday in a deal worth $10.8 billion. The new company will be called AlcatelLucent.

The merger was first introduced to shareholders last April and is expected to close in the next six to 12 months.

This really isn't new news at all. It's been in the works from quite a while now. Richard has some more info on his VoIP and ENUM blog.

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Apparent, Nortel Unite to Tackle VOIP Problems

Apparent Networks at VON on Sept. 12 will announce that it has
signed an OEM deal with Nortel Networks to deliver greater visibility
into problems affecting the quality of voice over IP calls in customer
engagements.

Apparent Networks, which markets software that measures and
diagnoses problems across networks that can affect the quality of VOIP
calls, is working across multiple Nortel organizations to integrate its
technology into Nortel products as well as services.

This is another announcement coming out of VON, but was of particular interest to me. I had a long conversation yesterday witha financial analyst in the industry about something I posted recently around the Mircrosoft and Nortel alliance. In particular we talked about how the players fit. They cover a broad range from Microsoft, as a desktop player, to Cisco as a network player, to the triad of Avaya, Nortel and Siemens as the telecom players. Each brings unique strengths, but none will win the dominant position without embracing aspects of the others and integrating smoothly with applications.

Technorati Tags: 8X8, FoIP, Fax over IP, Covad, Level3, V2oIP Quality Alliance, Global Crossing, Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel, Apparent Networks

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Here's a summary look and some of the interesting news topics the past few days.

This is one of the bigger and more interesting news stories of the week. I wrote about it here.

AOL opens VoIP platform to devs
8th September 2006
By Staff Writer
AOL LLC has said it would make available its AIM Phoneline VoIP service, which is part of its instant messaging client, to developers in a bid to spur new hardware and functionality for the service.

The company, which is owned by Time Warner Inc, said it plans to release three APIs for the development of a few new features of Phoneline.

Phoneline, which launched in May, is a free service PC-to-PC VoIP service within its AIM instant messaging client. Users can add outbound calling to the service for a flat fee of $9.95 a month.

Recently those of us who write about VoIP have noticed the depth and breadth of the blogging community. This story also raised another point that didn't escape Alec Saunders.

Open AIM Phoneline: Hangin’ With the Bloggers… ‘Cause That’s Where The Cool People Hang…
Yesterday’s AIM Phoneline story was broken by bloggers, and made by bloggers.  Each brought a unique perspective to the story that wasn’t reflected in the mainstream press.  When you contrast what Jeff Pulver, Jim Courtney, and Dameon Abernathy-WelchBruce Stewart, Ken Camp, and today’s second post from Jeff) wrote with the story written by CNET’s News.com, it’s pretty stark.  The bloggers produced insightful reflections, which were meaningful to the developer audience AOL is trying to reach.  CNET’s Caroline McCarthy wasn’t even aware that AOL’s TotalTalk service has been mothballed, devoting a whole paragraph to this now defunct service.  No comparison.

It's an indication of a huge shift that's been underway for a long time. Journalism and public relations have been radically changed by blogging.

Other Stories
AOL opens VoIP platform to devs
AOL Calls On IM-based VoIP
AOL To Launch Web Phone APIs

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Home Business Users More Likely to Adopt VoIP
A new study by IDC suggests that households with home-based businesses are considerably more likely to adopt VoIP telephone technology than other residential users.

At the present time, 39.1% of corporate home offices and 23.7% of independent home businesses in the U.S. either use or are planning to use VoIP in some way. This compares to just 10.8% of other households.

The PC turned 25 last month and here's a testament to how Alvin Toffler's electronic cottage has become a reality. Continued growth of SOHO business is in every prediction as the volume of knowledge-based work continues to rise. SOHOs adopt the technologies that provide the best bang for their buck and VoIP continually proves to be a winner.

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VoIP startup untethers would-be mobile workers from wireline office phones
By Amanda Mitchell, News Editor
08 Sep 2006 | SearchMobileComputing.com

VoIP startup DiVitas Networks says it's time to set would-be mobile workers free from the limitations of wireline business phones.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is taking on the emerging voice-over-WiFi-to-cellular convergence space with dual-mode handsets that seamlessly transition calls between Wi-Fi and cellular connections, depending on which service is available from their location.

DiVitas is putting an innovative Voice over IP (VoIP) spin on its solution, however, which it claims will benefit enterprises both in cost and flexibility -- freeing up so-called corridor warriors immobilized by wireline phones. The solution also gives end users access to stored enterprise applications and information.

"This is really a VoIP application first. If you look at the first application we are mobilizing, it is voice," said DiVitas president and CEO Vivek Khuller. "We are extending all of the features of existing desk phones and moving them on to mobile phones. The entire user experience is going to be a presence-based experience."

I'm not sure that I see this as anything entirely new. What I do see is a company that clearly recognizes the criticality of untethered productivity and presence-based tools. That's a central theme beyond VoIP, into unified communications.

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New VoIP threats to listen for
BY ‘THE GRUGQ’

As the business world rapidly embraces VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) technology for its cost savings, little heed is given to the new dangers that are introduced into our telephone networks.

Ranging from simple denial-of-service attacks, where a company or an individual is prevented from using the telephone, to sophisticated phone number hijackings which can redirect calls to malicious hackers; these new threats will radically alter the way the common telephone is perceived.

Although Skype, with its millions of users, is the public face of VoIP, the majority of VoIP usage is less consumer-oriented, and much less sexy.

Many businesses are currently replacing, or looking to replace, their internal telephony infrastructure to cut costs. Even the telco companies, while terrified of what VoIP will do to their revenue stream, are eagerly transferring much of their backbone Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) traffic to VoIP technology.

The article talks about new trends in VoIPhreaking, toll fraud, eavesdropping and other threats as a teaser for a two-day training session at HITBSecConf2006 entitled Tactical VoIP: Applied VoIP Phreaking.

More important are the last two paragraphs in the excerpt above. If you don't think VoIP is a mainstream technology, read them again. VoIP isn't just mainstream, it's mainstream that's evolving into the next generation...quickly.

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Nokia to focus on VoIP
Mobile enterprise solutions are gaining popularity around the world, what are its prospects in India? These are interesting times for the business of mobile solutions globally. People are increasingly becoming mobile in both their personal and professional lives and more than 30% of the workforce in Europe is mobile. In India too, the mobile workforce is driving up demand for mobile applications. The market for these applications is being fuelled by the penetration of mobile devices such as laptops. Currently, the customers are using multiple devices for various services and content. This is also an opportunity for mobile solutions as it indicates a customer preference for selecting the best content and service that is there.

When a player like Nokia focuses on a technology like VoIP, you better believe fixed mobile convergence is more than just a buzz phrase.

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Real life: When good VoIP vendors go bad
Big company turns nasty when customer looks elsewhere

The story you are about to read is true. Well, mostly true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty, although the guilty are somewhat less deserving of anonymity.

This is the tale of two voice-over-IP (VoIP) vendors that have taken very different approaches toward a common customer over the years and how those approaches worked out for them in the end.

It all started ...

It begins late in the year 2000 with a midsize company I'll call "Acme Retail Distribution." Like most companies, Acme had separate data and voice infrastructures and had settled on vendors of choice for each area. Acme's voice network was provided almost entirely by one of the largest time division multiplex voice technology companies in the world. You would surely know its real name, but we'll call it the Old TDM Guys company, or simply OTG. On the data side, Acme had a routing and switching infrastructure provided entirely by a different company that we'll call R&S.

The people at OTG approached Acme about trying out some new VoIP technology that promised to integrate with Acme's private branch exchanges (PBX) and give them VoIP capabilities. The OTG product was designed to provide virtual trunks via IP that would allow Acme to move its interoffice voice traffic over to its data network. The potential savings from uninstalling all those voice tie lines was rather appealing, and Acme was very interested in pursuing the matter.

This ComputerWorld story provides a good example of how not to behave.

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VoIP Quality Is Getting Worse . . . Er, Better
Over the summer, Massachusetts-based Brix Networks caused a mild stir in VoIP circles when it issued a press release titled Internet Phone Quality Drops Significantly and Steadily over Last 18 Months. In it, the company contended that one in five broadband Internet calls proved unacceptable on the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) scale, a subjective measurement of call quality long established in the telephony industry. (MOS rates call quality from 1 (worst) to 5 (best), with the acceptability cutoff at 3.6.) This week, Montreal-based competitor, Minacom Labs, responded with a press release titled Internet Phone Quality Improves Significantly and Steadily over the Last 12 Months. Not only has the quality of VoIP calls improved, says Minacom, it has outstripped traditional circuit-switched (PSTN) calls with a MOS score of 4.2 compared to an average of 3.9 for PSTN. Furthermore, the VoIP calls connected more quickly than PSTN calls in some parts of the world.

So, what's the real story?

This story by Ted Stevenson on Datamations IT Management site does the best job I've seen of describing the competition and disagreement between Brix Networks and Minacom.





Technorati Tags: AOL, AIM Phoneline, DiVitas, VoIP, nuified communications, VoIP security, Nokia, Brix Networks, Minacom

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (0) |

One of the VoIP bloggers I've been paying more and more attention to is Luca Filigheddu. Luca's the CEO - ICT Operations at Abbeynet - www.abbeynet.com. He's added some great insights into numerous discussions I've been following, and clearly has a strong vision for the direction VoIP needs to take to succeed and evolve into truly unified communications.

If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because in June Abbeynet Labs released the first version of a Firefox VoIP extension, that enabled a full featured SIP user agent directly into Firefox.

Yesterday they released the first version of those extensions for MacOSX and Linux OS. I just installed them on my MacBook and they're working great so please check them out and send me your feedback. Comments and any kind of feedback are appreciated. The Firefox Extension works great under Flock too. See Luca's post with screenshots and more details - Firefox VoIP for MacOSX and Linux is out

You can download the new extensions at:

MacOSX
Firefox / Flock: http://labs.abbeyphone.com/firefox/abbeyphone-ff_mac.xpi
Thunderbird: http://labs.abbeyphone.com/thunderbird/abbeyphone-tb_mac.xpi

Linux
Firefox / Flock: http://labs.abbeyphone.com/firefox/abbeyphone-ff_linux.xpi
Thunderbird: http://labs.abbeyphone.com/thunderbird/abbeyphone-tb_linux.xpi

I installed and checked out the first release. At some point soon I'll explore the Linux version as well. I can't say I use it, but that has to do more with my current calling habits than anything else. The problem of multiple VoIP clients and disconnected networks plagues many of us who use VoIP solutions daily. My contacts are spread across Skype, Gizmo, and SightSpeed, with a few Gtalkers in the mix. And I already use softphones from both SJPhone and Counterpath.

I'm also highly mobile, so a huge amount of my voice calling time is on my Treo. I have a Skype client on my Treo, and it works well. I'd love a good SIP phone client, but haven't found one yet that works for me on that platform.

The larger issue...the really important point...the forward-thinking key here, is that Abbeynet is steadily moving forward with what I believe is the real future of VoIP. Softphones are dead. They don't add value. Not really. The value, and the evolution to unified communications is toward softphones as plug-ins, widgets and imbedded tools. The next-generation softphone won't be a client you install at all. It will be a component of the web page, a component of the application. It will be where you need it to be.

Today, many of us need it to be in the browser because that's a very convenient place, and it's where we spend an inordinate amount of our time. Abbeynet's made the leap of placing it where users need access to it. But I firmly believe it will migrate from the browser to the page and to the application. And given the leadship Abbeynet is showing in moving the client to where it servers the user, I'm confident they'll be leading with new approaches and ideas as unified communications evolves.

And if Luca thinks I've missed a key point or am way off the mark, I know he'll jump in and we'll explore deeper.


Technorati Tags: Abbeynet, Luca Filigheddu, softphones, VoIP, unified communications

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (1) |