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