VOIP Solution and Service

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.

Troubleshooting network connectivity problems can be an irritating and time-consuming task. Fluke Networks has put an end to this problem with the NetTool Series II Inline Network Tester. NetTool combines powerful NetProve diagnostics, inline Gigabit vision, digital IntelliTone technology and network, IP Phone and PC configuration testing in one palm-sized tool, so you’ll have everything you need to quickly resolve even the toughest connectivity problem.

You can verify, isolate, and document network connectivity and application port response problems faster than ever before with automated NetProve diagnostics. Suppose you receive a call from a user blaming the network for slow application performance. Armed with a NetTool Series II, in seconds you can prove whether the network is truly at fault by seeing connectivity to key network devices and services. If the network is at fault, NetProve will isolate the source of the problem so you can fix it fast. If it is not the network, NetProve will identify which application port is slow to respond so you can dispatch the appropriate resource to correct the problem.

This provides you a front-line VoIP management tool for verify link readiness during pre-deployment planning, as well as troubleshoot problems on active networks by monitoring real-time VoIP traffic. Simple inline connectivity provides visibility into VoIP calls to quickly diagnose both IP phone boot-up and call control problems, and to measure key call quality metrics. Series II adds H.323 to existing SIP and SCCP support.

Swiss firm ERA IT Solutions hopes to supply the Superintendent Trojan, a spyware application, only to government agencies. It hopes this policy will leave it off malware blacklists compiled by anti-virus and anti-spyware developers. Not only does it plan to monitor VoIP calls, the software is surreptitiously turning on the built-in microphones or webcams on target PCs.

However, there are a lot of loopholes in the plan. First and the foremost being whether evidence obtained via such covert methods would be legally submittable. More over the basic assumption that the software can be successfully planted without physical access to a PC is doubtful.

Charles Gudet, the head of the Special Services Department at UVEK said that there’s no basis for using such Trojan techniques under federal wiretap laws (such as the Federal Post and Telecommunications Surveillance Act). However, local laws and federal police procedures permit the use of software wiretaps providing surveillance has being authorized by a court.

Anyways, my Best Wishes for Sup. Trojan!!

Small and medium sized businesses in Asia will spend more than 500 million US dollars on internet phone calls this year, according to research consultancy Access Markets International Partners.
(AMI defines small businesses as those with fewer than 100 employees, and medium sized businesses as those with fewer than 1,000 employees).

IP telephony rollout is strongest in areas with good broadband coverage. “Within Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, IP telephony will be driven by SMBs in Australia, Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand,” predicted Cindy Sim, an analyst at AMI Partners’ Singapore office.

The IP telephony market will grow at a compound annual rate of more than 45 percent over the next five years, according to AMI’s forecasts.

Vendors are likely to see margins fall as smaller enterprises take to VoIP in greater numbers, according to Frost and Sullivan research published earlier this year. The firm predicts that the proliferation of VoIP devices supporting the SIP standard will lead to falling prices and a more open market.

However, the analyst warned that business decision makers may require education to convince them that IP telephony can have a significant positive impact on the bottom line.

IP telephony vendors may find managers unwilling to risk a sudden change from functioning traditional telephone networks to untried IP-based systems.

Fujitsu Services has scooped the ‘Network & Services Management & Operations’ award at this year’s InfoVision Awards for its Managed VoIP Service. Held at the Broadband World Forum Europe in Paris on October 10, 2006 and organised by the International Engineering Consortium (IEC), the awards recognise those deemed to be the most unique and beneficial to the telecommunications industry.

Fujitsu launched its Managed VoIP Service in May 2006 for medium and large companies. It provides a low cost and efficient means of complementing or replacing traditional phone systems, leading to a better range of services and greater organisational flexibility. Fujitsu’s VoIP service is offered on a Per User Per Month (PUPM) basis which guarantees predictable expenditure.

The key benefits from Fujitsu’s VoIP solution include:

* Predictable monthly cost and very low CAPEX .
* Greater organisational flexibility – With VoIP, the system holds the users’ profile so that they can remotely log on to retrieve telephone and voicemail services anywhere in a building or through any of the company’s global network connections by using a VPN link. Set-up time for the new service is minimal and uses a ‘plug & go’ philosophy.
* Services for staff – Using the new VoIP solution provides users access to a wide range of new and improved services including: voice conferencing, integrated e-mail and voicemail and softphones.
* Highly secure network – Fujitsu provides a high performance, fully integrated and secure communications network for businesses so that users receive excellent sound clarity and a highly secure working environment benefiting from Fujitsu’s history of working within Government.

One of the biggest challenges for consumers switching from a public switched telephone network (PSTN) to Voice over IP (VoIP) phone services is getting their fax machines or fax software to work reliably.

Fax over an IP network (FoIP) presents a special problem because the fax protocols rely on very precise timing mechanisms: Fax transmissions are more sensitive to the latency and delays that are inherent in a packet-based network than are voice transmissions.

There is no unevenness of the speed of transmission in the PSTN network. On the other hand, sending fax transmissions over the Internet has no Quality of Service (QoS) control.

It’s the nature of IP networks for some packets to occasionally drop or be lost. If this happens with a voice transmission, you may hear a quick “cut out” when the packet loss is small, but you’ll still probably be able to understand what’s being said. However, if it happens during a fax transmission, it can create an error in the fax transmission

One concern regarding sending documents by FoIP has to do with security. Fax transmissions over PSTN lines use a point-to-point connection over relatively private phone lines, whereas e-mail and other computerized transfer methods (and fax over VoIP, for that matter) use the public Internet.

Another concern that some fax users have is the ability to be sure from whom an e-mail document originates (fax machines are required by law to include the sending phone number on the fax). You can solve this problem by using digital signatures to verify the identity of the sender of the e-mail document.

Point Topic’s first spatial broadband forecasts for the UK show the installed base of broadband lines in the UK almost doubling in three years, from 9.77 million at the end of 2005 to 18.46 million at the end of 2008.

The forecast shows that the proportion of households with broadband will almost double, from 34% at the end of 2005 to 64% three years later. The remote rural areas where penetration is lowest today will grow fastest and catch up with the rest of the country to some extent. But the highest take-up will continue to be in prosperous areas of the South East of England. By end-2008 between 80% and 90% of homes will have broadband across a large part of the South East.

It is also said that by end-2008 the areas with the highest household take-up will all be in the South East. Waverley (South-west Surrey) is forecast to be the highest, with 91% of households on broadband, but many similar areas are close. Swindon, which was “the most broadband town in Britain” at the beginning of this year is forecast to be only number 11 by end-2008.

Despite the high penetration levels achieved in some areas, the forecast points to a declining growth rate. Net broadband adds are expected to fall from 1.9 million lines in the first half of 2005 to barely 1 million in the second half of 2008. The broadband market will find it increasingly difficult to maintain momentum as growth will increasingly need to come from winning over the groups which have low internet access today - such as poorer families, single people and older households.

Now free calls from computer to computer and cheap calls from computer to phone is possible for those willing to download software and speak while staring at a computer screen.

Rebtel, a Swedish start-up is using VoIP to bring cheap international calls to cellphones.
It takes a few minutes to set up an account with Rebtel, and users must do it online at the company’s Web site. But once done, the service can be used to call any country in the world from any mobile or fixed-line phone in 37 countries, including the United States, Japan and most of Europe.

The mobile and fixed-line numbers of family and friends abroad are entered on the Rebtel Web site, and the company creates a local number that forwards calls to each foreign number. The user can then call internationally by dialing the local numbers and paying the local calling rate.

Winbladh and Jonas Lindroth founded Rebtel in January. Services were first offered in July for a trial period and then officially started in September.

Mobile phone companies already use VOIP to lower prices and keep customers, but their services are more expensive and in most cases the user must have special software on the mobile phone.

While we have discussed IP as the only protocol for global internetworking, other contenders, most notably ATM, proclaims that it can provide all sorts of services, including voice, video and data applications. There are challenges for both IP and ATM if either is to succeed on a global scale. For ATM, the main obstacle is likely to be the huge installed base of non-ATM technology. For IP, one of the biggest challenges will be to provide quality of service guarantees that are suitable for high quality voice and video.

In the end, the real challenge is likely to be in the integration of IP and ATM which should provide an end-to-end quality of service guarantees in an internetwork that includes both ATM and non-ATM technologies. However, the problem of interoperating IP with ATM arises due to the following facts.

* Connection-oriented vs. Connectionless

ATM is connection-oriented, that is, a connection is needed between two parties before they can send data to each other. Once the connection is set up, all data between them is sent along the connection path. On the contrary, IP is connectionless so that no connection is needed and each IP packet is forwarded by routers independently on a hop-by-hop basis. To transport IP traffic over an ATM network, we have two options. Either a new connection is established on demand between two parties or the data is forwarded through preconfigured connection or connections. With the first approach, when the amount of data to be transferred is small, the expensive cost of setting up and tearing down a connection is not justified. On the other hand, with the second approach the preconfigured path(s) may not be an optimal path and may become overwhelmed by the amount of data being transferred.

* QoS-aware vs. Best Effort

Quality of Service is an important concept in ATM networks. It includes the parameters like the bandwidth and delay requirements of a connection. Such requirements are included in the signaling messages used to establish a connection. Current IP (IPv4) has no such concepts and each packet is forwarded on a best effort basis by the routers. To take advantage of the QoS guarantees of the ATM networks, the IP protocol need to be modified to include that information.

Convergence is introducing a new SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) management device that trunks SIP traffic through firewalls and across IP networks. The Eclipse CX-50 is a smaller version of the company’s previous gear and economically enables SIP support in small offices. Previous boxes were designed for data centers. Eclipse devices also handle SIP signaling and media encryption, virus scanning, QoS control and identity-based access control, among other features. Pricing has not yet been released.

The device is intended to trunk calls between SIP-based IP PBXs. It will maintain QoS to ensure voice quality and encryption to maintain privacy. It can perform these functions between PBXs and Microsoft Live Communications Servers as well.

The company also is announcing interoperability between its gear and Linksys VoIP routers to encrypt and authenticate VoIP generated by small and home offices.