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PIKA WARP Appliance Adds FreePBX Support

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 18th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Bandwidth.com, David Clarke, PIKA WARP Appliance, Philippe Lindheimer, SIP, TMCnet, Terry Atwood, Unified Communications, VoIP, appliance, bandwidth, freepbx, freepbx support     

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When I met with PIKA Technologies  at ITEXPO they told me support for FreePBX was coming. Well today, PIKA Technologies announced that PIKA WARP the Appliance is now compatible with the Asterisk-based FreePBX GUI (Graphical User Interface) application. I reviewed the PIKA Appliance recently and was pretty impressed with it. Having FreePBX support is a huge milestone for the PIKA Appliance. FreePBX is a popular user-friendly web application  that makes it easy to setup and configure Asterisk.
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According to PIKA, “While customers often develop their own GUIs, many have told PIKA that if WARP were compatible with industry-standard GUIs like FreePBX, they would be much more inclined to adopt the portfolio. With today’s announcement, PIKA has once again demonstrated its responsiveness to the needs of its user base.”

“We are very pleased to have supported the effort to adopt the FreePBX application to run in the PIKA Warp environment,” said Terry Atwood, vice president of sales, marketing and customer care at PIKA Technologies. “Used in many Asterisk implementations around the world, including Trixbox, FreePBX has proven its value, time and again. When the FreePBX team expressed their willingness to work with us to port to the Warp Appliance, we jumped on the opportunity.”

“FreePBX has become the de facto standard for enterprise grade PBX functionality delivered to the SMB business and includes a very rich set of functionality and customization potential,” said Philippe Lindheimer, open source community director of Bandwidth.com and leader of the FreePBX project. “But no GUI is complete without a wide range of hardware options to complete the package. We are delighted that PIKA can now include FreePBX in the PIKA WARP and bring our two eco-systems together.”

Today’s announcement from PIKA follows news of a new partnership between FreePBX and Bandwidth.com, a complete business communications provider offering advanced VoIP, Internet services and managed network services to small and medium businesses. Bandwidth.com will devote significant resources to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to remain open source and free.

“The partnership with Bandwidth.com is great news as it gives FreePBX the support it needs to grow while ensuring it remains a free GUI for the entire open source eco-system,” said David Clarke, business development manager at PIKA and director of the PIKA Warp Community. “I know the choice of Bandwidth.com was a decision that Philippe made only after months of consideration and sound input from the key developers and contributors to the FreePBX project.”

Out of the box, FreePBX provides a long list of features including many typically found only in an enterprise-grade PBX, some examples are:

• Unlimited number of voicemail boxes
• “Follow me” functionality
• Ring groups and call queues
• Unlimited number of conference bridges
• Paging and intercom functionality
• and much more

The PIKA WARP Appliance product portfolio is ideal for deploying small- to medium-sized IP-PBX systems, IVR self-service systems, predictive dialling systems, fax servers and many other features typical of a traditional, purpose-built business telephone system that are often lacking in a computerized system. Compatible with a variety of open-source development platforms, including Asterisk and Linux, the Appliance offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional off-the-shelf computers and plug-in-card network connectivity in a smaller footprint.

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Ribbit Launches out of Beta

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 17th, 2008   
Topics: BroadSoft, Developers, Ribbit, Salesforce.com, Sylantro Systems, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless, applications, messenger, platform     

Ribbit, which was recently acquired by BT, today rolled out its developer platform out of beta at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbits extensive APIs allow you to integrate voice communications into business applications such as Salesforce.com, CRM systems, call center applications, and even social networks.

Ribbit launched its programming platform for developers today at the Adobe Max conference. Ribbit likes to call themselves “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company”. Post-acquisition, BT and Ribbit are taking the platform public with “Bring Your Own Network” which they claim is a telecom industry first. Ribbit said, “Carriers around the globe can tap into the power of the Ribbit platform and active developer community, to create new revenue streams and provide their customers with more choice and function through innovative voice-enabled applications.”

As seen by the charts above, Ribbit has extensive support for industry standards, including SIP, XMPP, XML, Flash, and more. When I spoke with Ribbit Ribbit CEO Ted Griggs he compared their software platform to Amazon’s cloud computing, enabling programmers to build powerful integrated telephony applications for Web sites. A proprietary softswitch (the Ribbit SmartSwitch) mediates communication across protocols, networks and devices. That includes MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and Skype. As I have previously written, the Ribbit API functions include call control, authentication, billing, messaging, and more. The Ribbit API abstracts the protocol inter-communication between MSN Messenger, Google Talk, and even Skype. Ribbit has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol to provide the ability for Skype users to receive calls from MSN Messenger users, Yahoo! Messenger users and Google Talk users by leveraging the Ribbit SmartSwitch.

Their most famous application to date is their use of the Ribbit API to integrate with Salesforce, a popular hosted CRM application. Also, Oracle On Demand support in Q1 2009 is forthcoming. Ribbit told me they’ve done a lot of work to simplify and automated the process to make it easier for developers to get started. They explained you can sign up, access the APIs and documenation, and play with them for ‘free’ in a sandbox before deploying and charging for the applications. When I asked if the highly successful iPhone apps sold by third parties on the Apple Store was a good analogy for their applications being developed and sold by developers they agreed that was an appropriate analogy.

BroadSoft and Sylantro Systems are two of the first VoIP providers to leverage the Ribbit platform, which Ribbit now claims has 7,500 developers.

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Updates: iNum, Calliflower and Entering “Last Name” onto a BlackBerry

by Jim Courtney in November 17th, 2008   
Topics: BlackBerry, Business, Mobile, News, SkypeOut, VoIP, conferencing, jcourtney     

With both VoiceCon and Under The Radar events in the Bay Area last week, there were lots of announcements in the Voice 2.0 communications space; I wrote up some GigaOm and Web Worker Daily Posts to cover a few of them:On Tuesday Voxbone announced the l…

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No More Landlines – Comm Forecast #1

by Tom Evslin in November 17th, 2008   
Topics: VoIP, Web/Tech, telecommunications     

By the end of President Obama’s first term, there won’t be any more landlines left in the country. One of the challenges facing the Federal Communications Commission and the new administration is how to deal with the fallout from the end of this venerable technology. It’s gonna get ugly for some people – people who can’t afford to do without…<br style=”clear: both;”/>
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How Do Wireline Voice Services Measure up?

by Om Malik in November 16th, 2008   
Topics: AT&T, Comcast, Hitlines, Lingo, Packet 8, Time Warner Cable, Truvoice, Verizon, VoIP, Voice, Vonage, truphone     

If you are like me, then you’re one of the many millions who have cut the cord with their landline and gone all wireless. However, that doesn’t mean people don’t want phones for their homes. Of course for them, there are many options — some that use traditional telephony like AT&T and others like Vonage, which provide broadband-based voice service. It’s hard for folks to pick the one that is the best and most reliable.

Audio Quality Rankings
  • Comcast Digital Voice
  • Verizon VoiceWing
  • AT&T Landline
Service Reliability Rankings
  • AT&T landline
  • Time Warner Digital Phone
  • Verizon VoiceWing

Keynote Systems recently conducted a study (link to PDF) of some of the more popular services — AT&T VoIP, AT&T Landline, Comcast Digital, Time Warner Digital, Verizon VoiceWing (VoIP), Packet8, Vonage, Lingo and Truevoice. According to their study, AT&T’s landline service was the most reliable service, while in terms of voice quality, Comcast’s Digital Voice comes out on top.

I wish Keynote had not been stingy and shared complete rankings instead of this teaser results. Nevertheless, even the very limited data they made available shows that pure-play VoIP services ranked pretty low, hinting at poor quality and less reliability.

More importantly, not a single service measures up to being both reliable and exhibiting good quality; and though Verizon VoiceWing is a good enough compromise, it’s not clear if you can actually sign up for the service. I tried on their web site and failed — only existing customers can seemingly log into the site.

These results align closely to my own findings — while AT&T used to work, the quality of the calls was just horrible. I could not make a single call to India without redialing. So I gave up that service and then opted for Comcast. I very quickly realized that spending $40 a month for a voice service when I could easily get nearly unlimited minutes from my mobile phone just didn’t make much sense. Good-bye, Comcast. 

I would love to know which service you use and what your real-world experience is.

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Bandwidth.com invests in FreePBX

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 14th, 2008   
Topics: Asterisk, Philippe Lindheimer, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, bandwidth, com, freepbx, philippe, phillipe     

freepbx-logo.pngbandwidth-logo.gifBandwidth.com has just made an investment in FreePBX, the popular front-end interface to Asterisk-based distros. I discussed this news with Philippe Lindheimer just a couple hours ago. One of the questions I asked was if Bandwidth.com would get “preferred treatment” within the FreePBX interface, since Bandwidth.com offers SIP trunking. Obviously, if FreePBX gives Bandwidth.com a prominent position in the GUI or they make it “easier” to configure FreePBX (i.e. plug-n-play) that could be a huge boon to Bandwidth.com Philippe said that that isn’t part of the investment announcement being made today, however, that is something they are looking at.

As for the purpose of the investment, Philippe said it was mostly due to Bandwidth.com’s desire to grow the market and help build the FreePBX community. The idea is that the more IP-PBXs out there, the more SIP trunks, and hence more revenue for Bandwidth.com. I have some further thoughts on this, but I’m pretty busy today and wanted to share the news.

Philippe Lindheimer said, “Part of assuring the success of FreePBX is to make sure that we continue to have strong leadership, community participation and a thriving eco-system of users and partners. I would like to announce a new partnership that will help the project tremendously. I have joined forces with Bandwidth.com as their Open Source Community Director, where we will be devoting significant resources and effort to expand the scope of FreePBX while protecting its charter to make sure it remains open and strong.”

One significant piece of news is that Bandwidth.com helped protect the FreePBX’s project several months ago when the FreePBX trademark (which FreePBX.org nor Phillipe never owned) was “being shopped around to parties that did not have this project’s best interest in mind” according to Phillipe. Thus, Bandwidth.com preemptively purchased the trademark with Phillipe’s blessing in order to assure FreePBX was not jeopardized.

You can read Phillipe’s blog post about this here which has more details.

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Calling All Bloggers! Free Blogging on TMCnet.com

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 14th, 2008   
Topics: Internet, Mobile Phones, MovableType, News, Rich Tehrani, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless, blog, bloggers, blogging, communications, movable type 4.21, skype, telecom     

This is a call out to all bloggers out there - Rich Tehrani, my boss has extended an open invitation to bloggers interested in blogging for TMCnet.com, a leading communications/telecom site according to Alexa, Quantcast, and others.

Today, TMC launches its Blog Aid program to help people out of work stay in the public eye - in order to improve their hiring prospects in a tough economy. In the last few months, many good marketers, PR people, engineers and others who have been laid off. These potential Blog Aid bloggers have a good deal of quality commentary and information to share which could be very useful to the TMC community of online readers.

TMC is offering these new bloggers - especially those working in the communications and technology industries, a venue to voice their thoughts on the spaces where they have expertise so as to allow them access to the 2-3 million global visitors who come to TMCnet on a monthly basis.

So if you enjoy writing about communications, telecom, VoIP, wireless, unified communications, mobile, etc. and want a wide audience, go check out Rich’s blog for more details.

p.s. The blogging platform is Movable Type 4.21.

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Callpod Drone VoIP Bluetooth Headset

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 14th, 2008   
Topics: A2DP, Callpod, Drone, Gadgets, Headsets, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, USB, VoIP, Wireless, bluetooth, bluetooth headset, dongle, headset, skype     

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Callpod’s new Drone USB Bluetooth adapter turns your mobile phone’s Bluetooth headset into a headset/mic for your PC or Mac allowing you to receive Skype or other VoIP calls using your high-end Bluetooth headset (Plantronics, Jawbone, etc.). Just connect the Drone into the USB port of your computer, and it will immediately connect with your Bluetooth headset or headphones to provide streaming music and voice over a 100 meter (328ft) range. When a Skype call comes in, Drone switches over to the call automatically. It supports the A2DP (Stereo) Bluetooth profile.

Of course, many PCs and laptops come with Bluetooth built-in, making this device unnecessary. It’s basically a $50 USB Bluetooth adapter/Bluetooth dongle, which is nothing new. Still, if you need to add Bluetooth functionality to your PC or Mac, this might be the way to go. Though, you can pick up a Bluetooth USB dongle for $20. However, they claim their software automatically switches the audio to the Bluetooth headset on an incoming Skype call. I don’t believe most Bluetooth dongles support that functionality. Not sure it’s worth the extra $30 for the auto-Skype answer, but you make the call.

Features:

  • 100-meter (Class-1) range
  • VoIP and music streaming to any Bluetooth headset or stereo headphones
  • Automatically pairs with your headset or headphones
  • Seamlessly switch between music and VoIP calls
  • No software installation - Plug and Play
  • Optional software install for advanced functions such as data transfer
  • Upgradeable firmware

Read

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TMC Launches NGN (Next Generation Networks) Magazine

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 13th, 2008   
Topics: ARPU, Erik Linask, Mobile Phones, NGN Magazine, NY Times, Networks, Rich Tehrani, Service Providers, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, Wireless, generation networks, magazine, next generation networks, print, times, video conferencing     

Today, TMC announced the launch of NGN Magazine focused on next generation networks and how service providers and carriers can build these networks and what they will need to know to maximize savings and ARPU (average revenue per user).

“We’re in an interesting time,” says TMC President and Group Publisher, Rich Tehrani. No, he’s not referring to the American political scene or the chaotic American economy. Rich is referring to Next Generation Networks, which Rich believes will be critical to the future of service providers and carriers. Certainly, in these tough economic times, squeezing the most efficiency and most value-add services is critical. Verizon is probably the best example of that. They’ve been investing billions in their fiber-based FiOS service which supports high-speed Internet, voice, and TV/video/HDTV.  They are no doubt also looking to tie in their considerable wireless/cellular network with their FiOS network to offer customers a competitive advantage over competing solutions.

In his video interview with TMCnet Group Managing Editor Erik Linask, Rich discusses NGN Magazine. [click to visit video link]

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The topics TMC’s NGN magazine will address, some of which Rich mentions in the video interview:

» How do you deploy new services and applications ?
» What technology should you consider ?
» How do you integrate new technologies with legacy elements?

Erik points out that a lot of publishing companies have been cutting down on staff and even folding print publications. Rich addresses this point by pointing out that 2-3 million executives visit tmcnet.com to read the content digitally. He also discusses how TMC offers digital (PDF) versions of the print magazines which greatly reduces costs. Thousands of people subscribe to the digital PDF format.

While all facets of the economy seem to be slowing down, TMC continues to grow — not only launching a new magazine, but recently adding new telecom/wireless industry talent such as Carl Ford, Scott Kargman, and more. Newspapers may die, print magazines may fold, but good information and news will always be needed. And where there is a need for good information, people will pay for it. Publishing companies which are nimble enough to adjust to the trend towards online news dissemination will survive, while those that can’t will die.

Case in point is the NY Times, which must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009 or face bankruptcy. But if you’re a New York Times fan, don’t worry. I’m sure President-elect Barrack Obama will add them to the $700+ billion bailout. Can’t have the NY Times go bankrupt, can we? Don’t answer that question…

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Microsoft and IBM Announce Sametime and Microsoft OCS integration

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 13th, 2008   
Topics: IBM, Microsoft, Microsoft OCS, OCS 2007, OCS 2007 R2, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, integration, sametime, voicecon     

As one of my sources told me a few days ago, IBM and Microsoft planned on offering Sametime and OCS 2007 integration to be announced at VoiceCon. Three days ago I wrote:

Rumor has it that Microsoft and/or IBM will announce integration between Office Communications Server 2007 and IBM’s Lotus Sametime “Unified Telephony” platform at this week’s VoiceCon show. If true, this would combine approximately 20 million Sametime users with Microsoft’s fast growing OCS 2007 user base creating the largest unified communications user base.

Well, it just hit the newswires. At Voicecon, IBM and Microsoft announced that IBM Sametime and OCS will offer Interdomain Federation in Q4 of 2008, using SIP/SIMPLE.

The support will require an update to the Sametime Gateway 8.0.2. It will support OCS 2007 and OCE 2007 R2.

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I’ll be speaking today in a “Hosted Speech Solutions” webinar…

by Dan York in November 13th, 2008   
Topics: Cloud Computing, VoIP, Voxeo     

In about 2.5 hours, at 11am US Pacific / 2pm US Eastern, I (Dan York) will be participating in a “Hosted Speech Solutions” webinar sponsored by Speech Tech Magazine. I’ll be joining colleagues from Microsoft (TellMe), Angel.com and Convergys. We’ll…

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magicJack - the Saga Continues - be Careful Out There

by jonarnold in November 13th, 2008   
Topics: VoIP     

I first posted about magicJack back in June, and I’ve never had a post with legs like this. I don’t generate tons of comments like uber-bloggers do, but for some reason this post keeps finding people, and I think it’s a sign of the times.

If magicJack is new to you (yes, that’s a small “m” - part of its charm I guess), then just read my post, and you’ll have the story. Basically, it’s a USB gadget that gives you “free” VoIP. The company/inventor behind the product is more interesting than the product itself, and that’s what my post focused on.

Aside from the post itself, the comments tell you what people really think about this thing. Just when it looks like the world has moved on to other can’t-miss ideas, I get another magicJack comment last night - here’s an excerpt:

I am completely shocked at how Dan Borislow has misrepresented his product, and his “free, 30 day trial” which is nonexistant. I ordered 2 on the trial, just to have my credit card immediately charged. I went to their chat window customer service, and they refused all phone numbers to reach anyone at an administrative level. They charged my creditcard without my authorization, after they sent me an email stating it would not be charged for 30 days. They then refused to reverse the charge. I will not accept their delivery, I will file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, and look into a class action lawsuit against this company, as it seems thousands have been scammed by this company’s blatant misrepresentation.

Oooh. Not a happy customer, and he has more to say - check it out for yourself.

I’m always happy to get comments, but this one sets off red flags for me. First of all, magicJack is still around. They are either the real deal and must be doing something right - or, there are still loads of people out there reading mass market advertisements who will jump sight unseen at the prospect of saving some money. Unless magicJack has changed its stripes - which is doubtful based on the above comment - there’s a lot of fine print that prospective buyers should be reading and understanding before placing an order.

You don’t need me to tell you how bad things are out there, and telecom is not immune. What worries me is how attractive the promise of magicJack is to people trying to save money any way they can. Nothing wrong with saving money in tough times, but magicJack is hardly a straight up proposition. It may seem that way if you’re not careful, but Paul’s comment from yesterday is a reminder that it’s not.

His parting thought says it all for me…

The moral of the story is don’t trust a phone company that tells you they do not have a phone number you can call if you have a problem with billing or anything else. A phone company with no phones sure sounds fishy…

The allure of FREE is pretty strong these days, and generally you get what you pay for. Clearly magicJack is still attracting interest, and based on some of the comments I’ve had, they do have happy customers. However, for a product I have concerns with, I tend to put more stock in what people like Paul are saying.

In short, caveat emptor. Free can be a beautiful thing, but everything comes with a price, even VoIP!

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Comcast Best in VoIP Quality, AT&T Best in VoIP Reliability

by VoIP & Gadgets Blog in November 13th, 2008   
Topics: AT&T, Comcast, Comcast Digital Voice, Keynote Systems, MOS, Packet8, TMCnet, Triple Play, Verizon VoiceWing, VoIP, Vonage, audio quality, dropped audio, jitter, latency, provider, providers, pstn     

keynote-systems-logo.gifKeynote Systems released their latest VoIP quality report with some interesting findings. For one, Comcast, a cable company dominated the voice quality rankings beating the closest competitor by nearly 300 points. As for reliability, to no surprise AT&T won this category, no doubt to their decades of experience in building reliable voice and data networks.

Keynote Systems measures VoIP quality (MOS scores), call completion, etc. by automatically placing calls from corporate apartments using residential VoIP services and network services just like a typical residential customer would.  Service Reliability scores are based on the key performance metrics of Service Availability, Average Answer Time and Number of Dropped Calls. Additionally,  Audio Quality is an aggregate of Audio Clarity and Audio Delay (latency, jitter) performance factors. The study compares the relative performance of PSTN (regular analog) service, Broadband VoIP providers (e.g. Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, EarthLink trueVoice, AT&T CallVantage etc), and cable voice services (e.g. Time Warner Digital Phone, Comcast Digital Voice). Test calls were placed from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

Keynote ranked VoIP Service Providers in two categories: Reliability and Audio Quality. The Service Availability, Call Completion, Average Answer Time, and Dropped Audio performance factors all contribute to the Reliability ranking.

In the summary report they only list the top 3 VoIP provider names and then have Provider D - I as anonymous. You have to purchase the full report to see the names. I’m guessing Packet8 and Vonage are somewhere in this anonymous list.

Provider                   Reliability Points    Rank 
AT&T Landline                    996                1
Time Warner Digital Phone        925                2
Verizon VoiceWing                872                3
 Provider D                       859                4
Provider E                       793                5
 Provider F                       687                6
Provider G                       643                7
Provider H                       408                8
Provider I                       374                9

Audio Quality
Provider                   Reliability Points     Rank 
Comcast Digital Voice            901                1
Verizon VoiceWing                609                2
AT&T Landline                    506                3
Provider D                       500                4
Provider E                       487                5
 Provider F                       480                6
Provider G                       462                7
Provider H                       252                8
Provider I                       0                  9

General Observations
• The best providers always deliver dial tine and connect the call to the number dialed in a timely fashion.
• Only one of the providers in the study failed to provide dial tone 99.9% of the time or better.
• All providers had very small percentages of calls with dropped audio, but only two providers had zero calls with dropped audio.
• One VoIP provider required two seconds more than any other voice provider to connect calls after dialing.
• Most providers had slightly more audio delay and slightly lower MOS in Wave 6 as compared to Wave 5.
• Eight of the nine providers in the study had a better call completion rate in Wave 6 than was evidenced in the Wave 5 results.

What’s amazing is that Comcast has been adding a ton of new VoIP customers each quarter. In fact, Comcast has become the nation’s fourth largest phone company. The cable company has signed up four million VoIP customers in just the last two years. Relatedly, Forrester Research analysts have projected that Cable VoIP providers will claim up to 80% of the 28.4 million residential VoIP users by 2013. This forecast includes an expected growth from the approximately 19 million installed lines in 2008.

Check out the summary report.

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