VoIP Tech Chat

VoicePulse, a VoIP Service Provider, announced today the addition of a new “regulatory” fee for it’s customers. In an email sent to account holders, VoicePulse advised that effective on the next billing cycle (in one example this was effective in less than 48 hours), users will be charged an additional fee to offset compliance and regulation costs assessed to the provider. This is the second new fee announced by the carrier this week.

As  of this posting (3/10/2010), the provider has not posted these announcements on their website’s press releases, press, or newsletters page. And, although the email indicates the terms of service had been updated, the public version did not include the “regulatory fee” as of this posting.

The announcement follows: Read the rest of this entry »

The VoIP Users Conference celebrates it’s 3rd anniversary on March 26th with a good ol’ fashioned sleep over. Ok, well it’s not really a sleep over, but it’s just as cool. That’s right, starting on March 26th, 2010 at 3am EST,  get ready for the 24 Hour Live Voipathon Podcast and Phone In.

24 Hour Voipathon

Use the Internet to bring voices together

Voipathon is a simple idea: To unite people from as many parts of the world (and time zones) in a 24 hour long discussion about the Internet, voice over the Internet and how communities can and do use these tools.

We will talk about

• Content creators, their rights and how important they are to the Internet
• ways to connect your voices together (including free phone calls)
• ways to get around obstacles to voice connections put in place in some countries
• communities that use the Internet to make the world a better place
• keeping the Internet free of censorship by spreading understanding of the principles of freedom
• piracy, copyright, takedown notices etc

We will hear from

• People from all corners of the planet sharing their experiences
• Experienced telephony users who can help you make a connection, free
• Members of communities who are helping improve lives everywhere

Join us on March 26th, 2010

For more information, please visit:

• voipathon.org
• VoIP Users Conference

Can you believe that we haven’t posted a true VoIP Tech Chat in over a year? Although many of you are thankful for the break, we have decided to invade your favorite audio player once more (with feeling) with the first of (what we hope) will be many podcasts for 2010. This week we discuss Verizon Wireless, Vonage, Customer Service, and well, just a good ol’ fashioned VoIP Tech Chat.

As always, VoIP Tech Chat can be accessed from:

• VoIP Tech Chat (download mp3)
• iTunes
• And, thanks to popular request, you can also stream the chat by pressing the play button below

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Links of “Interest:”

• Follow Fred on Twitter
• Follow Patrick on Twitter (Yay!)
• Past Post from Patrick regarding a positive experience with Verizon

VoicePulse announced today in an email that Business and Wholesale accounts will be required to meet a minimum usage of $10/month. They also advised that their Terms of Service had been updated to reflect the change. The company targeting users utilizing the service as a backup provider encouraged account holders to contact a representative to discuss becoming the “Primary” provider.

The email follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Leif Madsen explains things in a manner that makes concepts easy to understand — which is probably one of the reasons we like Leif. If you’ve read Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, then you most likely already appreciate his talent; he is of course one of the authors.

Anyway, Leif posted a great article on his “Asterisk, and other worldly endeavours” blog today regarding ENUMplus and ISNs. Check the article on his blog: Musings about ENUMplus and ISNs.

The Asterisk team of Digium announced new versions of Asterisk in reference to a potential security issue. The release highlights best practices and hopes to raise awareness of some potential security issues and injection statments. The announcement follows:

The Asterisk Development Team has announced security releases for the following
versions of Asterisk: Read the rest of this entry »

Free has a price, and it’s usually subjecting ourselves to marketing based on the magic numbers games.

Here at VoipTechChat(.com!) we don’t (as of this writing, but things change…) have any paid advertising on the site, and have abandoned AdWords, since it’s giving away real estate and not getting a lot of value. While we are open to targeted advertising (if you have a phone to sell, we are available to pitch it!), we appreciate that generic revolving text ads aren’t super valuable to anyone.

Today I started noticing the heavy addition of leading ads in my YouTube videos and I realized a critical feature all ads should share, and very few do: Read the rest of this entry »

When my little girl went from being a benign, unmoving lump of sleeping, drooling baby to a terroristic unplugging, biting, chewing, eating, swallowing, gagging, breaking, pulling, tugging beast of a toddler, my home decor changed. When we moved into our excessive 4 bed / 2.5 bath home in 2007, we had dreams. We had a guest room, and a Disney room, and my home office taking up about 25% of the under A/C space. When the beast began terrorizing our home, we retreated into a fallback position and isolated her to the safest room in the house, my former office. I was relegated to Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to integrate faxing into your Asterisk PBX?

Team Forrest describes how to install, configure, and then email your fax as a pdf. Check out the post at Team Forrest.

Good things come to those who wait…to cancel. On the heels of the “announcement” that Verizon Wireless will be doubling their early termination fees, I found myself considering how commerce and service has changed. As I have mentioned in our previous chats, I pay some $400+ a month for my extended family and I to have Verizon Wireless. Every month I give Verizon about $400, and on top of that, have spent over $2,000 on phones and another $500 on applications, ring tones, and content (that’s phone specific — if I buy a new phone, I get to buy new applications, ring tones, and content).

Businesses routinely (and almost exclusively) employ “short-timers” for their front line contacts — people that work at most six to twelve months answering phones, then move to another company. Customer service itself seems to follow the same pattern of always looking six to twelve months ahead, and making all judgements on a short-term basis. Have you been a great customer for 10 years? Who cares. What have you paid us lately? Read the rest of this entry »