Just when we were going to post the next series of “What is,” Mr. Cory Andrews scoops us with his “Ask Mr. Andrews: What is NAT Transversal?” post. He even made a super cool logo.

Well, we have only 2 comments:

1. No Star Wars or Dungeons & Dragons references?
2. Two Words: Ben Affleck

Seriously, it’s a nice post. And if you liked it, please check out:

• What is a VoIP?
• What is POTS?
• What is DTMF?
• How does 911 work with VoIP?
• and the opinion piece, Mommy, What’s a Phone Cord?

Two weeks ago, we discussed how MagicJack recently became the fastest growing phone company in the US. Well, today twice.com reports that MagicJack is on track to reach 500,000 subscribers. Not too shabby considering the population of Tampa, Florida is about 300,000.

If MagicJack reaches 500,000, they will be the second largest VoIP provider; with only Vonage’s 2.5 million plus internet telephone subscribers ahead of them. The twice.com article talks about the MagicJack business plan and some of their future ideas. It’s not a bad read.

Digium announced today the release of Asterisk version 1.4.21.1. The release is a “ bug fix” for the voip telephone system and is available, as always, free from the asterisk.org website. This includes a critical bug fix for 1.4.21. All users that experienced lockups when upgrading to 1.4.21 should have their issues resolved with this update.

To paraphrase Spinal Tap, this is 1 better than 1.4.21 — this is 1.4.21.1.

Asterisk is free, open source software provided under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Asterisk is the most popular open source software available, with the Asterisk Community being the top influencer in VoIP.

For more information, please check out:

• Asterisk.org
• Digium, Inc.

Thomas Hughes, CIO of the Social Security Administration (SSA), gave a nice interview to Nick Walkerman of Washington Technology. The interview provided some insight into the VoIP deployment of the SSA.

For more on the deployment, check out our VoIP Tech Chat article.

The New York Law Journal made the most unusual comparison today; stating that VoIP may actually represent the Holy Grail of information technology. Although the article, written for lawyers and the legal community, discusses many legal issues, it actually discusses some interesting aspects of recorded internet phone calls.

Some huge names finally see the attraction of VoIP. On June 27, 2008, NetCracker announced they had been acquired by NEC for 300 million dollars. NetCracker, based out of Massachusetts, provides technology to service providers to assist in telecommunications deployment (ie Triple Play services).

Some big names call on NetCracker for assistance, such as Sprint, france telecom, Time Warner, and more. NEC expects to earn over 1 billion dollars in new sales over the next 5 years from this investment.

One of our favorite — honestly, not sure if this should be called a bit, routine, or poem, but anyway… one of our favorite recent memories of George Carlin has to be his Modern Man material. It’s a good read, but it’s a better listen. We’ve posted the words below and here’s a link to the You Tube video. Enjoy.

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi cultural, post modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high tech low life. A cutting edge, state of the art bi coastal multi tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.

I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot wired, heat seeking, warm hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive.

Continue Reading »

Imagine this scenario — You’re the bus driver. At your first stop, half of your passengers get off the bus and none get on. You keep driving and on the next stop, half of the remaining passengers get off, and again, no new passengers get on the bus. At the next stop, the same thing happens. You keep seeing passengers get off the bus, but no one is getting on. Now, what do you do? If you’re at&t, you raise the price of bus service. (For extra credit, who’s the bus driver?)

The Tennessean posted today that at&t is raising the rates of basic phone service and calling features in the hopes of increasing profits. Although basic phone service would increase by “pennies,” other features would see a much more significant increase. For example, Caller ID and Call Forwarding would increase about a dollar and bundle packs would increase about 2 dollars. Oh, and at&t reported a profit of 3.46 billion dollars — in just the first quarter.

So now, you’re a landline service provider. People are dropping landline service for VoIP and Wireless Only plans. You’re making an average of just over a billion dollars a month profit. You want that number to increase. So, you raise rates? Wouldn’t that make people jump ship even more? So, instead of making your services more attractive, you’re going to jack up prices on your loyal customers who are chosing to stay with you despite cheaper alternatives. Nice.

We love this quote:

A spokeswoman for AT&T, Dawn Benton, said the company’s decision to raise rates had nothing to do with the loss of landlines.

“Our focus is to bring greater value to our plans: a unified portfolio, greater consistency and simpler pricing right up front,” she said in a statement. “Even with these changes, we still offer some of the best values and offers in the market today.”

VoIP providers like voip.com, Vonage, and Packet8 bundle residential service and include more features than you’ll ever need. Oh, and most plans include long distance, too. Someone needs to help Dawn Benton find a clue.

Well, even though it happened back on June 11th, Digium posted on their blog today a recent award the Switchbox SMB 3.5  received from TMC Labs.

With the 2008 Internet Telephony awards, TMC Labs honored products that demonstrated significant contributions towards improving communications. For the past 9 years, awards have been given to products that TMC Labs finds “truly innovating.”

Digium better be building a new trophy case — it’s only the end of June and they’ve already racked some significant bling. Along with the TMC innovation award, Switchvox also was named the 2008 Unified Communication product of the year. Not to mention being named Best of Show for IT East. (Did we mention Switchvox has a free version?)

And let’s not forget Asterisk. So far this year, Asterisk was named 2008’s Best IP PBX by Infoworld as well as a Product Leadership award from Searchnetworking.

Not to be outdone, Voip Tech Chat was recently awarded the Most Likely to get a Restraining Order from Ben Affleck award.

Andy Abramson posted a great comment about American Airlines blocking Skype from their new inflight internet WiFi access. Now, only the wisdom of Solomon can understand either this rule or how American Airlines is interpreting the “federal ban on phone calls.”

Should we believe that somehow, using VoIP during a flight will present a security risk compared to being allowed the use of a cellphone the second you land and right before flight? There’s a great line from Man of the Year where Robin Williams’ character explains that if old ladies in walkers are trying to blow up planes, the game’s over.

We understand that using a cellphone during a flight could bother airplane electronics — but if you can use WiFI, then how does a VoIP conversation pose the same threat. Unless, we are to believe that somehow allowing Skype or telephone conversations during a flight will somehow allow devastation to occur? We don’t get it. Isn’t blocking more than 4 ounces of liquid already protecting us?

Does this mean that all IM communication will be blocked, or is it just the verbal communication that Feds deem destructive?