Voip Tech Chat

Traveling with Fred and Patrick can be adventurous. If nothing else, the facial expression of the unlucky passenger winning the “I got to share a seat with Fred or Patrick on Plane” lotto is fantastic. Yes, we need to diet, but that’s another post. Besides the adventures in spacial planning one must overcome to sit on a plane these days, communication while traveling also provides challenges. Thankfully, the majority of places travelled provide wireless Internet access — via either HotSpot or, our favorite, Free WiFi. Mmmmmm… free WiFi.

VoIP allows us to connect like never before. Sure, most (if not all of this audience) use Mobile phones; but there are times where a cellular signal simply doesn’t exist. And with a cellular phone, you don’t have complete direct access to all of your “local” functions. Enter the WiFi phone — perfect for those times where you have ample WiFI signal and simply don’t feel like running your softphone client.

With most WiFi VoIP phones, one easily connects to the Wireless Access Point, registers, and makes calls. However, if the WiFi network requires a “click through” acceptance, a web logon, or a similar HTTP (web page) acceptance, the Wireless VoIP telephone becomes as useless as Brussels Sprouts in a buffet.

The Linksys WIP330 WiFi VoIP Phone includes a web browser, complete with mouse capabilities, allowing you to logon to hotspots, click ok buttons, or do any of the commonly required tasks of gaining access to WiFi networks. This one feature not only makes the WIP330 stand out from the crowd, it also makes it one of the only devices you can use while traveling.

Fred purchased a Linksys WIP330 in early August and is ready for the 3 month review…

First the Negatives

Battery Life: You’ll charge the phone every day. And, if you use the phone heavily, perhaps 2x / day. On the positive, the included cord is long enough to allow use of the phone while charging.

Voice Quality: Although no complaints from “the other side” of the conversation were received, the voice quality can be choppy; regardless of the codec used.

Overall Quality: Poor. Within three months, my speaker seems to have blown, causing the ringer to sound like a robot screaming for help while trapped in a well.

Any Positives?

Usage: Easy to use, saves WEP passwords, remembers last location.

Hotspot: Works GREAT at hotspots, airports, restaurants, schools, and every WiFi access point tested.

Bottom Line?

Decent WiFi phone with the ability to access almost any hotspot imaginable. Battery life needs improvement. If you need a WiFi phone that must be used at hotspots or Access Points with click through agreements, this is your phone. If you don’t need it, it’s a little too expensive for what you get

Pike & Fischer recently published their Residential VoIP Market Outlook. The reports advises that more than 8.5 million household will start using VoIP within 2 years — bringing the estimated number of US residential VoIP users to 30 million by 2010. Clearly 2010 will be a VoIP odyssey.

Traditional POTS providers such as at&t and Verizon will notice decreasing numbers of residential customers while stand alone VoIP providers (such as Vonage, Packet 8, and voip.com), Cable companies, and wireless providers pick up the slack.

TMCnet reports a 44% increase for phone revenues in the 2008 3rd quarter. Although new subscribers have slowed, Comcast anticipates an additional 2 million users by the end of the year.

Skype announces partnership with Asterisk at AstriCon. More to come

In the first day (or we guess “pre” day) of AstriCon, Fred proudly reports the swag received:

• Digium Pen
• Sangoma Pocket Screwdriver
• Orange Asterisk t-shirt
• Orange AstriCon tote bag

Going to Astricon? If so we’d love to meet you. Drop us a line and we can have VoIP Beer Chat in Arizona.

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.