VoIP Tech Chat

Or cleverly disguised secret agent for the video phone revolution?

I R Eatz U R Dataz!

I love my netbook. I love my netbook so much, I have two of them (okay, one is the wife’s). Surprisingly, I managed to survive months on nothing but my netbook doing fairly intensive SQL / VoIP / Web work. The hard drive is a little slow, but the overall performance is outstanding.

When I travel, I can use Skype to video chat with the built in webcam and get great quality (both ways) for both picture and sound. It’s like a giant smart phone. It reminds me of the $1000+ “video phones” that were supposed to be the future of talking on the phone… then people realized they really didn’t want to “get pretty” to use the phone. Now, for around $250 a unit, you can have that and so much more.

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Verizon recently issued a press release where they introduced two new “packages” aimed to help small to medium sized businesses through “rough economic times.” Although the packages are detailed and named in the press release (reprinted below), the release and website are a little lacking for information regarding costs and fees. If Verizon will be making it easier (and cost effective) to get SIP Trunks to end users, this may open a great window for PBX systems such as Asterisk, SwitchVox, FreeSWITCH, and more.

The press release follows:

Small and Medium-Sized Business Options Are Focus of Verizon Global Wholesale Offers

Voice Over IP and Powerful Internet Access Packages Bolster Business Success In Rough Economic Times

March 15, 2010

NEW YORK – At a time when small and medium-sized businesses look for every technological advantage to help them continue as the fundamental economic growth engine in the U.S., Verizon is providing support with three new voice-over-IP and Internet packages available through the Verizon Global Wholesale division. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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Links of “Interest:”

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

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 »

Residential VoIP - No Operators

Some say the media sensationalizes our economic woes for their personal gain. Others say the media accurately portrays the extreme financial burdens we find ourselves facing. And some people say, “Hey. I don’t care about anything, I always have and always will try to save money.” With today’s world becoming increasingly digital, VoIP (digital telephone) seems like a naturally good idea.

Clearly, we at VoIP Tech Chat advocate VoIP. We love it. We love it so much, we made a website called VoIP Tech Chat. And we actually now and then have chats and write articles on VoIP (ok, that last part was a little sarcastically since both Patrick and Fred seem to have been too busy to actually talk or write lately… but anyway…).
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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.

Hotels provide nightmarish dreams for any phone engineer and many business were built solely to provide solutions to the hospitality industry. (The word hospitality almost never makes us think of a visit to a hotel, but that’s another story). Thing5 entered the business in 2004 to provide inbound, outbound, voicemail, IVR menus, and more to the hotel industry.

Well… yesterday Verizon Business announced that Thing5 will leverage the Verizon’s VoIP and hosting services to bring VoIP service to about 1,300 hotels having more than 275,000 telephones. Hotel phone service without VoIP — now there’s a true nightmare. Could you imagine changing an extension for thousands of phones without VoIP?

About a month ago, Fierce VoIP reported on VoIP quality testing conducted by Keynote Systems. The results proved quite interesting.

Keynote determined (based on testing providers such as Packet8, Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, Lingo, etc.) that most VoIP users can expect “merely tolerable” telephone service when compared to an at&t POTS line.

One of the VoIP providers tested failed to achieve any calls with an MOS score of 4.0 or better (ouch).

Why did Voip Tech Chat wait more than a month to post this news? Patrick and Fred were too busy talking about Lifelock and Ben Affleck movies. 

Oh, and Asterisk Voip News posted that a cool new IP Phone with a huge video screen is coming soon.

Verizon recently announced new discounts for wireless only customers interested in Internet or television service. Called the “Flex Double Play” bundle, the discount offers a reduction of $8 – $12 a month for people combining Verizon Wireless with broadband or TV services.

Now, remember of course, that Verizon originates from the traditional POTS provider, Bell Atlantic. Back in the 80’s (1983 to be exact), when there was one big phone company called Bell, the US government decided that Americans would benefit from 7 companies instead of 1 big one. The 7 smaller phone companies, or “Baby Bells” were to handle local phone service and allow other companies to handle long distance.

With that historical digression, please remember that Verizon essential developed from this split; therefore sometimes still thinks like a traditional POTS provider.

How so you ask?

Well, the discount sounds great — but the big phone companies just don’t know how to provide something without conditions. If you want the fastest DSL or FiOS plans, you get no discount. The discount will only be offered towards DSL plans of 3 mbps and FiOS plans of 20 mbps.

Still, if you don’t want the best of the best, saving up to $12 a month still adds up to a nice deal. Maybe they should read our Wireless Only article to learn more about Wireless Only customers.

Welcome to this week’s Voip Cast. In this week’s chat, we discuss topics such as Pink Floyd, Five Nines Reliability, Al Gore, Florida Fires, and more.

You can download this week’s podcast for FREE at these fine locations:

• Voip Tech Chat (download mp3)

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• iTunes

For more information on any of the topics covered, check out these great links:

• Clearwire Internet Service
• Pink Floyd
• Asterisk
• Microsoft Response Point available at Costco
• Voip.com
• Voicepulse
• Verizon Wireless with Onstar
• xkcd.com