VOIP Solution and Service

Luca Filigheddu has given such good reviews about Sitofono in his website that I was tempted to try it and let my readers know about it. I can definitely say he was not wrong. This click-to-call solution offered by Abbeynet is really worth noting.

Sitofono is a simple click-to-call service that any web site or portal can use to get calls from their customers/website visitors for free. The websites can receive calls from their customers without the need for them to be registered to any VoIP service. The website or the portals can bind it to any fixed-line phone number worldwide for the over 60 country codes where Sitofono is active.

As for the customers, they don’t need to be registered to any VoIP service, they don’t need to have headphones, they don’t need to pay one single cent to call you. They just have to click and call you from their browser.

Just hold on. You don’t even need to have a website as well. Your email will work fine or you can get a personal Sitofono which can become your personal website. Starting from January 2007, Sitofono will offer a Voicemail for free as well and you’ll also be able to choose different numbers where you can be reached depending on the time of the day.

Click to call services are here to stay. They will make the difference between a normal, old web site and a truly 2.0 “speaking” website. Who can use it? Tell me who can’t? E-commerce portals, bloggers, banks, pubs, insurance, shops, mortgage portals, travel agents and so on and so forth.

Sitofono has just reached 100.000 business customers this week. It costs just € 499 /year, just about € 1,37 / day. As a perfect marketing strategy, Abbeynet is now giving away Sitofono for two months to selected companies which would like to try it out for FREE.

In the Google’s official website, Min Zeng tells us how he found Click to call on Google maps useful to buy blue lightbulbs. Thought it was time to let my readers know about it too, so they could also use it for their shopping.

To begin with, you search your need on the Google maps and click the ‘call’ link next to its phone number. When you click the “call” link next to a business’s phone number, you’ll be invited to enter your phone number. Once you select “Connect For Free,” Google Maps calls the number you provided. When you pick up, you will hear ringing on the other end as Maps connects you to the business.
As an added advantage, the business’s phone number appears on your caller ID when Google calls you. This allows you to save the business’s number on your phone so you can quickly call the business again at a later time. Again, Google pays for all calls, both local and long-distance. However, if you give your mobile phone number, the normal airtime fees or other fees charged by your phone provider may apply. So, it’s just search, click, call and shop……. Grrreeeaaattt!!

Convergence is the word today. After the convergence of Wi-Fi and cellular technologies, the solution providers are now looking forward to drive WLAN, VoIP, applications and services sales.

Aruba Networks is about to deliver Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) to enterprises, while Cisco Systems is gearing up for the launch this week of its Master Unified Communications specialization, its new top-level certification for VoIP partners. Other vendors such as Meru Networks, Nortel Networks and Trapeze Networks also are preparing VARs to capitalize on the emerging FMC market. The Santa Ana, Calif., distributor last week launched a new mobility division to encompass new partnerships with wireless carriers such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint/Nextel and Cingular as well as with device manufacturers and ISVs including Palm, Nokia, Motorola, Research in Motion and Good Technology to help VARs build wireless solutions.

I-mate, Motorola, Nokia and Paragon Wireless have already flooded the market with their Dual-mode handsets that have both Wi-Fi and cellular radios. By 2009, the Wi-Fi phone market is expected to hit $3.7 billion, up from $125.5 million in 2005, according to Infonetics Research. The firm projects that 91 percent of Wi-Fi phone revenue will come from dual-mode handsets by 2009, up from 42 percent in 2005.

With business flourishing via mobile phones, the idea of replacing separate desktop and cellular phones with a single mobile device that provides access to enterprise VoIP calling features and messaging applications is extremely attractive to a wide variety of customers and service providers are working hard to tap this opportunity.

Convergence technology finally steps in India. For the first time, the Indian consumer can avail of electricity, internet and telephone services on a single line. The $90 billion tech giant IBM global is all set to launch a pilot project in India to usher in the broadband over power line (BPL) system in December.

The company is in talks with state electricity boards and power utilities for the project implementation. Sources said the Uttar Pradesh government is keen to implement a pilot project in rural India. What more, by increasing grid observability, BPL, can deliver stable and quality electricity, apart from internet and telecom facilities through the same line.

BPL will make the electricity network intelligent and keep transmission and distribution loss minimum. As telecommunication signals are also going through the electricity line, network errors and breaks can be located easily. This will help the controlling unit to deploy the worker in the right spot in minimum time to solve the problem.

Not long ago, if an Army infantry battalion commander wanted to communicate, he relied on radios that had limited range and often spotty coverage. But today, the army has harnessed he power of VoIP as a battlefield communications system by using a phone connected to a Joint Network Node terminal.
VOIP phones connected to Cisco Systems routers in the JNN equipment suite enable infantry commanders to make phone calls as comfortably as anywhere else in the world. The commercial routers connect to satellite circuits via a Datapath dish.
VOIP used in the battlefield is indeed a great achievement of technology but it has its own limitations. Phone calls made via JNN don’t sound as bad as communications on a tactical radio, but they also don’t sound as good as a circuit-switched or VOIP phone call made via a commercial, wired phone network.
Besides the Cisco routers, commercial equipment used in JNN includes Redcom PBX switches, Juniper Networks firewalls and Promina broadband network interfaces. After the Army selects that equipment, developers only needed to integrate the equipment into shelters or hardened transit cases.
In the JNN configuration that battalion commanders use, much of the commercial gear is on a trailer towed by a Humvee. The equipment can be set up quickly after the vehicle stops.
Jim Sintic, technical director of the Army’s Program Manager for Tactical Radio Communications, said the battalion JNN can be established in 30 minutes to support “a highly mobile and agile fighting force with broadband voice, video and data.” (source fcw)

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.

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.