Voip Tech Chat

Well, perhaps stop is too strong of a word. We should have stated instead that the FTC recently added more regulation in an attempt to severely limit prerecorded calls. But, that just doesn’t have the same BAM, in your face attention grabbing feel as “FTC Stops Prerecorded Calls.” Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah…

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission), established initially to “bust the trusts” and stamp out unfair competition, evolved into a modern day version of “We’re from the government. We’re here to help.” With a tag-line of “Protecting America’s Consumers” today’s FTC investigates advertising claims, marketing practices, marketplace competition, and well, generally looks at anything dealing under the commerce umbrella. With the creation of federal “Do Not Call” lists, the FTC established itself as the main enforcer of telemarketers; quickly creating many regulations and rules governing the practice of phone solicitation.

Interestingly, consumers do not receive individualized complaint protection. The FTC specifically does not resolve individual consumer complaints. Instead, the FTC collects complaints about companies, business practices, etc. and investigations result from the numerous complaints received.

Prerecorded Calls

First, let’s discuss prerecorded calls. Prerecorded calls occur when a caller receives a prerecorded message rather than talking to a live person. Examples could be something along the lines of “Hello Patrick and Fred. Because you are such amazing customers, I have a very special offer for you to save big big money. If you want to save big big money press one now. If you don’t want to save big big money hang up.”

From complaints received, the FTC rendered an opinion stating that consumers, who already do not like receiving unsolicited telephone calls, dislike prerecorded calls even more. We truly hope that the FTC and NASA hire from very different applicant pools. Anyway, the rocket scientists at the FTC used more than 13,000 complaints and comments during a “proposal” period to create the following rules:

• Prerecorded sales calls are prohibited unless explicit permission has been obtained
• Permission for prerecorded sales calls can be obtained electronically
• When permission is obtained, calls must have an opt-out mechanism
• Healthcare messages are exempt
• Charitable calls are exempt, however, must provide an opt-out mechanism
• Prerecorded calls must ring for 15 seconds before treating the call as unanswered
• Prerecorded messages must start within 2 seconds of answering
• Prerecorded calls must disclose that the recipient can be placed on the do not call list at anytime during the message
• 97% of all calls where a person requests to speak to a live person must be answered by an actual live person within 2 seconds

And when do these regulations go into effect? September 2009.

Identifying the strength of Asterisk, the revenue of Switchvox, and the popularity of Astricon, iLocus predicts the next VoIP company to go public will be Digium. Of course, we believe that if you can put 5 hyperlinks in the first sentence, you should just stop and let the hyperlinks do the talking. We have been in a non-stock buying mode, but an IPO from Digium might just change our minds.

• 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.
• Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk company, is the original creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the industry’s first open source telephony platform. Digium provides quality hardware and software products, including AsteriskNOW™, the complete open source software appliance; Asterisk Business Edition™, the professional-grade version of Asterisk; the AA50, the Asterisk Appliance™ hardware-based telephony solution; and Switchvox, a complete turn-key IP PBX solution, to enterprises and telecommunications providers worldwide. Digium also offers a full range of professional services, including consulting, technical support, and custom software development. All of Digium’s commercially offered products come with the Exceptional Satisfaction Program™ (ESP), the only 100% customer satisfaction guarantee in the open source telephony world today.
• iLocus conducts Business-to-Business (B2B) market research i.e. market data concerning products/services that are traded between two businesses.

VoIP provider Packet 8 announced a profit of 1.2 million dollars in the first quarter. Last year the company reported a first quarter net profit of 508 thousand dollars. With the news sharing stories of economic crises and devastating business loses, a VoIP provider doubling profit couldn’t come at a better time.

The launch of Packet 8’s business trunking service helped the company gain more than 1,000 new business customers (they now have approximately 12,000 business clients).

Digium announced today the release of Asterisk version 1.4.21.2 (as well as version 1.2.30). These releases address security issues with the IAX2 channel driver. More details of course can be obtained from the asterisk.org website. As always, you can download the updates free from the asterisk.org website.

Why free? It’s just how Digium rolls. They really take that GPL open source to heart.

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.

In a press release earlier today, VoIP Supply announced that it has partnered with Bandwidth.com to deliver total business VoIP solutions. VoIP Supply is one of the leaders (if not the leader) for VoIP hardware solutions. And Bandwidth.com has been providing origination and termination (along with other internet services) to consumers with an excellent track record.

For more information, go to VoIP Supply’s Bandwidth.com page.

Something just didn’t add up to us. So we looked to the Interweb for research, because as we all know, the Interweb is only filled with 100% accurately researched articles. Anyway, the good folks at Telephony Online, published a snazzy little article back in September 2007 about the way MagicJack earns revenue on their VoIP internet telephone adapter.

Apparently, while one hand created the the VoIP USB telephone adapter “jack,” the other hand created a CLEC. The acronym CLEC stands for Competitive Local Exchange Carrier and is the phone provider (or carrier) for local access numbers. These CLEC’s can charge for access to their numbers as well as lower costs paid to other parties for making or receiving calls. It’s quite the win/win.

MagicJack’s Don Burns explained that SunRocket was paying upwards of $7.00 per month for each phone number they had. By operating as a CLEC, MagicJack’s cost on the same service — zilch.

Talk about pulling a rabbit out of a hat!

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.