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.

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.

Sunrocket has announced an offer of 2 years of VOIP phone service with free activation and free equipment. The plan offers:

* Unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico.
* Free Activation, Shipping, and Equipment
* Free Built-In Features - Caller ID, Call WAiting, 3-Way Calling and Much More!
* Free Enhanced Voicemail
* Free International Calls - Up to 100 Minutes per Month
* Free Enhanced 911
* No Hidden Fees, No Term Contracts and No Cancellation Penalties

SunRocket is growing in popularity as one of the cheapest — if not the cheapest — VoIP services around. For $199 a year (that’s less than $17 a month), you get unlimited calling anywhere in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. The company’s international calling rates are pretty low, compared with other VoIP providers. Reviews about Sunrocket claim the voice calling clarity and quality being about as good as a traditional phone’s. One can block not only outbound international or 411 calls but also anonymous calls, or calls from specific numbers. Voicemail is very easy to configure through the SunRocket site. One can get voicemails sent to their e-mail address. SunRocket also offers one important extra service that most other VoIP services charge for: You get a free additional phone number with its own voicemail box and its own set of features. To sum up, I give ten on ten to Sunrocket.

According to a 2004 study of consumers by The Derringer Research Group, the number of teleworkers supported by broadband connections leapt from 4.4 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in 2004.

A number of VoIP softwares are there in the market for telecommuting. For example, the Avaya Inc. softphone. With a broadband Internet connection at the home, the telecommuter can blend in Netmeeting, The Avaya gear offers the flexibility of using the softphone or using an IP handset that connects to the corporate PBX via an IPSec virtual private network (VPN) connection. This gives end users flexibility and allows them to connect using whatever Internet connection they can get.

All the PBX features are extended to the telecommuter’s softphone or IP phone, including conferencing, call displays and call forwarding. Calls can also be forwarded to cell phones if telecommuters leave their home offices, and they can pick up voice mail and e-mail over the phone. Avaya text-to-speech software reads the e-mail. In addition, the remote workers can use speech access that listens to spoken commands to carry out calling or retrieving of information.

Recently Cisco Systems Inc. introduced VoIP phones that include VPN software, eliminating the need for a separate VPN router to tunnel calls over the Internet. This can reduce the initial cost of setup. Nortel Networks Corp. says its support for Session Initiation Protocol, while not new, is the most powerful telecommuter feature of its VoIP platforms, enabling workers to know the presence status of their co-workers and reach them by instant messaging, phone or videoconference.

VoIP technology in general lays the foundation for adding video capabilities, although these are not widely deployed yet. Voice quality over affordable broadband connections such as DSL and cable is too uncertain to trust to.

Skype PBX (Private Branch Exchange) Gateway is now becoming the fundamental core of the Skype & Enterprise Application. By adopting this solution, enterprise-users can use an office PBX/phone to make or answer incoming or outgoing calls without needing a PC. Some more powerful applications added recently by Skype include:

1. Easy Web Call is the most popular application for the majority of Skypers to provide a Web Call to service your customers globally.

2. Virtual Office is very beneficial for small & Medium Enterprise. All the users will just call regular phone-number provided by the Skype, then all the calls will automatically forward to the Office PBX, i.e., to anyone in this company.

3. Travelers’ Soft-phone is a helpful to the company’s managers & sales that are traveling a lot. By using this solution, they are able to just simply bring their laptop, installed with Skype, and have a meeting anytime with the staff in the location where Internet services are provided.

4. Inter-VOIP is the key to manage all the telephony within your enterprise. By using this solution/product, it is easy to integrate your company’s VOIP like, Skype, MGCP, H.323, SIP, CISCO (Call Manager), etc. It not only can manage all the VOIP telephony but inter-VOIP as well, which is completely free.

Nokia will find it hard to come out of its successful record sales of over four lakh phones all over India on October 19, the day when Diwali was celebrated in India. This is the highest figure it has sold anywhere in the world.

“Its more than what Nokia has ever sold on any Chinese new year,” says a dealer who has seen an Nokia internal communiqué on the matter.

The Company’s previous single day sales record was about one lakh phones. This is the kind of sales its competitors generally do over the entire year in India.

So, what has driven this buying frenzy? Blame it on Diwali mania but also credit Nokia with a smart product strategy. It has currently 38 models available on the retail shelf of which around 12-13 models can be categorized into the low-end segment.

This is also a reversal of fortunes for the Finnish company. Nokia was not too keen to focus on this area.

Microsoft aims to double the number of mobile phones running its Windows software this year from six million at the end of 2005 and to keep up its rate of growth in coming years.

Microsoft competes in the market for smartphones, which can run software applications such as email, mobile TV and games, with British software maker Symbian, owned by the world’s top producers including Nokia. Nokia has about half the global market for smartphones.

Smartphones also face competition from RIM Blackberry, the world’s largest mobile e-mail device, which has recently launched a new model, the Pearl, with additional camera and music functions. Blackberry users also number a little over six million.