VOIP Solution and Service

The joint efforts of Yahoo and Linksys have given birth to the cordless phone. The new-born comes with a base station that plugs into a regular phone jack to provide regular phone service. Users can switch between the regular phone service and their Yahoo Messenger with Voice and VoIP service by clicking a button on the phone. You can also use the web portal’s search engine for things like Yellow Pages, weather, and one-click restaurant search.

The Linksys Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo Messenger with Voice (CIT310) lets users make free PC-to-PC calls using Yahoo’s voice over Internet Protocol service. Users can also use their Yahoo Phone Out accounts and Yahoo Phone In accounts to make and receive calls.

Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, has designed a similar phone for Skype users called the Linksys CIT200 Skype. Both the Yahoo and Skype versions of the phone allow users to control “presence” information, letting people know if they are away, busy or online. Users also have the ability to view the presence of their Yahoo Messenger “buddies.”

However the Yahoo version offers additional features like get daily weather reports, Yahoo’s local search service for information about local services and businesses, etc.

GetConnected has entered into a relationship with Vonage America Inc., to offer in-store activation of Vonage broadband telephony service through kiosks in leading retail stores throughout the nation. Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of broadband telephone services with over two million subscriber lines. GetConnected offers the leading transaction processing platform for enabling the sale of digital services.

Providing dual advantage to the consumers the combined offering lets consumers purchase Vonage hardware on premise and register at in-store kiosks to immediately subscribe to its flat-rate, full featured service.

Through GetConnected’s relationship with Vonage, retailers can now offer consumers the option to activate their Vonage service immediately in-store, thus shortening the activation process. Retailers can also add customer service by broadband facility for Voange.

The kiosks provided by GetConnected help consumers find the Vonage service plan that best fits their needs. Once the customer completes their order, it is sent electronically to the Vonage system and the customer immediately receives an order confirmation. The customer’s service is active immediately and subscribers can use many of Vonage’s features such as call forwarding, SimulRing, online voicemail and online account management before they connect their new device to their broadband connection.

Skype Ltd. will begin testing an upgrade of its free communications software Skype 3.0 that can automatically detect phone numbers in Web pages and initiate calls. It also features community conference calls and text chats, as well as IT management features.

The new feature that recognizes telephone numbers in a Web page is called Click-to-Call. It allows users to place calls to those numbers using the fee-based SkypeOut service.

It has also introduced two new features: Skypecasts, for conference calls and public chats, in which people with a common interest can gather to communicate with each other.

Finally, the user interface has been modified to make it easier to find commands and perform actions. This launch shows Skype futuristic considerations. Skype keeps on venturing into new areas to find newer source of revenues. No wonder Skype is the leading VoIP provider today.

Niklas Zennström, Skype’s CEO and co-founder, aptly said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, “
This software upgrade reflects Skype’s strategy of diversifying beyond Internet telephony toward other modes of online communications and of finding new revenue streams beyond phone charges.”

He also said, “Eventually, the price of telephone calls will continue falling until they are free, so Skype needs to generate revenue from other sources, such as e-commerce and advertising.”
Source: IDC News

YouTube, the video-sharing website which had been recently acquired by Google for 1.65 billion dollars, beat out a vaccine that prevents a cancer causing sexually transmitted disease and a shirt that stimulates a hug to grab top honors at ‘Time’ magazine’s “Invention of the Year for 2006.”

Great, isn’t it? ‘Time’, owned by media conglomerate Time Warner, wrote that YouTube’s scale and sudden popularity have changed the rules about how information – along with fame and embarrassment- gets distributed over the web.

YouTube, which had 27.6 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen Netratings, came along at just the right time: Social networking sites were hot, camcorders were cheap and do-it-yourself media was expanding beyond text-based blogs.

The RVA Market Research clearly indicates the arrival of fibre-era. The firm estimates that there were more than 1 million fiber users in North America as of September.

That’s almost a three-fold increase from the 332,700 subscribers at the end of last year and more than six times the 146,500 counted in 2004. The homes passed numbers — 6.09 million in September, 2.7 million in 2005 and 970,000 in 2004 — show the same level of growth.

The telephone industry — led by Verizon (FiOS) and AT&T (Project Lightspeed) — know very well that cable modems and DSLs are here to stay and they are taking apt actions to squeeze this opportunity. Equally competent are the projects by many smaller carriers and municipalities.

Earlier people knew nothing other than the dial-up access. Then cable modems and digital subscriber line (DSL) took the world by storm. Now, fibre and faster cable services are heralding their arrival. Indeed, it is a world in transition.

Telcos’ are targeting the current cable modem customers and their own DSL services. Cable operators are also looking to speed things up. For one thing, they are informally adding higher speed — and higher priced — services for corporate customers. They are looking to add fiber to the mix as well.

The market is developing and changing at a tremendous pace. The next generation of wired broadband — which is running parallel with similar evolutions in the cellular and wireless sectors — will be fiber-rich, super fast and convergence-friendly.

Source: IT Business edge

2006–2010 forecast and competitive analysis for the worldwide VoIP support services market by IDC clearly points out to a transformation in the VoIP market. IDC notes that as the VoIP market evolves and vendors begin providing software that runs on a dedicated server, network equipment vendors (who now provide integrated solutions) will need to alter their support services model to focus more on supporting the software, rather than supporting the entire system.
IDC has predicted that the VoIP equipment market will push network support services spending to $1.27 billion in 2010. It says that the boundaries between telephony and IT will continue to blur as network equipment vendors move from proprietary hardware and software solutions and towards hosted software and solutions.

“As the market evolves, voice will begin to look like other mission-critical applications running on the IT infrastructure,” said Matt Healey, senior research analyst for IDC’s Software and Hardware Support Services program. “The networking support services will no longer be independent from IT support services.”

“Traditionally, networking vendors have experienced very little competition for support services due to the proprietary nature of their products,” a press release announcing the report’s availability states. “But, as the market shifts toward software solutions running on general purpose servers, a slew of third-party support services providers and systems vendors have an opportunity to provide support services for the hardware.”

As this market shift advances, VoIP equipment vendors will need to evolve from a hardware-centric support model to a software support model. So, it you are a VoIP vendor planning to venture into the field of supporting software and hardware in partnership with a systems vendor or a third party, just plunge into it.

Rimax has introduced Mystic which is an MP3/MP4 player as well as a VoIP phone.

Rimax Mystic is your very trusted media player with FM radio, Play ACT, MP3, WAV and WMA audio files. It also plays MPEG-4 video converted to the AMV format. JPEG phones can also be saved in it.

But change into VoIP mode and lo! It becomes a VoIP phone. Just connect it to your PC through USB cable and enjoy VoIP services with the pre-installed Skype software. There is a microphone and also headphones on the player.

The Mystic comes with a full colour 1.5″ screen and a choice of either 512MB, 1GB or 2GB of memory. It comes with blue, green, white and orange coloured casings.

Next time when I pack my travel kit, I’ll make sure I have this Mystic to kepp in touch through Skype during day and to soothe my ears and mind with the player when I am off.

Google has just bought Jotspot, a silicon Valley startup that helped pioneer the market for collaborative business software like online spreadsheets. This is Google’s latest move into territory dominated by Microsoft.

Three year old Jotspot had developed a series of online productivity software programs that offer many of the functions of Microsoft Office programs like Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheets. But instead of running on individual computers, Jotspot applications are delivered as Web-based services. Jotspot’s programs run on collaborative wiki software, a flexible form of Web publishing for groups that allows any approved user to edit or change individual documents. The 27-employee company has helped popularize the idea that wikis are not just for software geeks but can be used within small groups by non-technical office workers or family groups to accomplish practical scheduling or financial tasks.

Following the lead of companies like Jotspot, Mountain View, California-based Google entered the market this year by acquiring the Writely word processor and introducing other Web-based applications such as Google spreadsheets and Google calendar.

“It was pretty apparent that Google shared out vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online,” said Mr. Kraus, Jotspot’s co-founder and CEO. He was also a co-founder of Excite, one of the first internet search sites started in 1994.

Now, who dareth say Google is just a Web search player?

At Symbian Smartphone Show in London, Truphone announced a beta version of its free VoIP download for Nokia’s best-selling, Wi-Fi-enabled N80 mobile handset which will be available from the Truphone website soon.

Truphone handsets are free, worldwide. As a launch offer to the end of the year, USA users benefit from free calls to USA and Canada, while the unique UK telecoms market enables Truphone to offer UK users calls some two billion landlines in major countries for free until Dec 31st 2006. This means free mobiles calls to other Truphone users or very cheap calls to anyone else.

You can install Truphone wherever you are and begin making free or VoIP-rate calls right now. All you need is to download it. You will be given a Truphone number, which you can use to get a number of benefits over your current mobile.

Initially, only users in the UK and US will get Truphone numbers appropriate to their countries (i.e. +44 and +1 respectively). These users will be able to make and receive calls on their Truphone numbers just like a traditional mobile/cell phone.

Users in other countries will temporarily be given US Truphone numbers. They will be able to make free calls to other Truphone users and VoIP-rate calls to anyone else. We intend to roll out local numbering to other countries as soon as we can.

The company has opened a discussion forum at www.mobilevoipforum.org where users and developers can share their views and reviews

Was going through the voip magazine online and caught sight of this new release by Cisco Systems Inc. - The TelePresence Meeting solution. Tied tightly to Cisco’s Call Manager platform, TelePresence Meeting is the first application for the $300,000 ultra-high (1080 p) definition system. It also comes in an $80,000 version. Cisco joins Hewlett Packard and Teliris, both of which are already offering similarly priced telepresence solutions to the marketplace.

To support the service, carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, which were involved in testing the system and were on board for the unveiling, will need to go through a service provider certification program that Cisco is developing to ensure all customer sites are served by Cisco-certified TelePresence network connections. Cisco’s initial strategy is to sell the system to Fortune 1000 customers for internal use. Once there is a user base, Cisco envisions inter-company use taking place. Achieving intercarrier agreements that enable this is the third step. The TelePresence services road map includes service provider hosted-service; managed end-point, reporting and scheduling services; virtual concierge; and multipoint connections.

Cisco is ready to install and check this system. Cisco President and CEO John Chambers has directed his employees to use TelePresence Meeting to cut travel expenses by 20%. If Cisco or any company can achieve a 20% savings in its travel budget, the expense of deploying TelePresence might turn out to be a worthwhile investment, says Jon Arnold, principal of J Arnold & Associates.