Posts Tagged ‘VoIP’
I am in the process of “transferring the flag” from wordpress.com to my own site at http://dougonipcomm.com. As much as I like the ease of use for WordPress.com blog hosting, I can do more in terms of customization and monetization if I’m on a stand-alone site.
If you are a frequent visitor, redo your bookmark now. At somepoint i”m going to take everything down from this location except a pointer to the new site.
There’s been a slew of announcements fluffing a second wave of anonymous-style phone calling via the web. Nobody made money on the first wave, so I’m not sure where the beef, er, green is the second time around.
Three and four years ago, it was all the rage to A) Give away free phone numbers for web usage and B) Provide anonymous phone calling between two parties over the web. Two and three years ago, smaller companies went into the tank while larger companies just ditched the idea of “free.”
Digitrad, making a big push at DEMOfall ’09, seems to be the latest of the guys marching down the old trampled path to doom, offering up a free “multimedia” phone number, a .tel domain name and “free call forwarding” and a flat fee to “free” dialing to locations around the globe.
If your business model is JUST providing voice via the browser, I can kinda sorta get it. C2Call (www.c2call.com) has got a Friendcaller.com app, but then it slips into the “Gee, you can also call phone number for only pennies (well, Euros) per minute” mode… which didn’t end well for very many of the Telecom 2.0/Phone 2.0 wave…
Vivox may have the most interesting play in the space, just having announced its beta launch in Facebook and using a wideband (but not G.722) codec for all of its logged minutes on SecondLife and multi-player games where part of the fun is talking smack in real-time.
Hmm, I’d love to leave short voice messages to certain people in “Mafia Wars”…
Skype gets freedom – now what?
Posted on: September 1, 2009
Skype is now going to be an independent company like it always wanted. Owner eBay “unloaded” Skype for $2 billion in cash, but still holds 35 percent of the company. (Remember this, we’re coming back to it shortly).
The buying consortium is made up of Silver Lake Partners, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. According to word on the street, the purchasers anticipate a 2.75 billion IPO in the next 12-24 months.
Soo, let’s see, eBay gets $2 billion in cash ($1.9 billion now, and a note for the rest by the end of the year; easy enough to pay out of Skype’s cash flow and/or out of the investor’s pockets). It also holds 35% of I-Skype (Independent Skype), so it can get dividends and/or sell off public stock in bits and pieces, so there’s some pretty good upside there as well.
Net-net, eBay will likley come out neutral to black after the IPO and all the smoke clears. Kudos to eBay management for standing firm in the face of shilling by The Media and backdoor lobbying by Skype’s former owners to dump the company and run.
XO’s good news expanding capacity
Posted on: August 27, 2009
XO Communications bragged about its third major nationwide network capacity upgrade last week. Using Infinera equipment, the company has “more than” doubled its inter-city transport network capacity.
According to XO, the upgrade will be completed later this year and is being done to continue to meet the increasing demand for high-capacity network services from its customers, including carriers, service providers, and large enterprise customers. As a part of the upgrade, XO will be offering a “10 Gigs in 10 Days” carrier service guarantee, able to provision high-speed service (from 1 GBps to 40 Gbps, with up to 100 Gbps in the future) between any two points in the network in 10 days or less.
(And I remember when it took weeks to get a T-3 in…)
XO says it has invest more than $450 million to enhance and expand its network infrastructure and its network is now capable of reaching nearly half of all busiensses in the United States. This is a good sign for both IP communications and economic growth in general…
D2 Technologies grows up
Posted on: August 10, 2009
In a sign that life is good, IP communications “stack” provider D2 Technologies has split into two business units.
Doug Makishima, one of the hardest working guys in the biz, has been promoted to COO and will also be acting head of D2′s new Mobile and Personal Communications Business Unit (MPCBU). Asian-based Paul Wu has been promoted to VP of the Fixed Access Business Unit (FABU… yes, there is a joke in here somewhere…)
You can find D2′s software on a bunch of mobile platforms, including Android. Back in May, D2 said its vPort software was processing 40 billion minutes of VoIP traffic per month.
Over at his blog, Andy Abramson is reporting that Gizmo5 is testing a way for its users to make free U.S. outbound calls using Google Voice from any SIP device.
GizmoVoice is the latest mashup service that Gizmo5 has pulled together, leveraging its pieces with other people’s pieces/services for relatively no/low cost. Users of GizmoVoice should be able to have “ANY” SIP device, be it a WiFi phone, ATA, SIP client, or even a PBX node, to make and receive (well, the make part is the key) U.S. calls without a monthly or per minute free.
But as that curmudgeon Jerry Pournelle said oh-so-long-ago, There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL), someone is making a buck off this somewhere; it’s just not clear where at this point. I suspect this is part of Mad Michael Robinson’s latest scheme to work the system to generate more minutes and more users.
Andy goes through all the permutations on how you can use Gizmo to receive Skype calls and pipe calls into GoogleVoice to get free voice mail, voicemail to email and free translation, plus a quick trick to make a call through an Apple iPhone to be IDed as a GoogleVoice number.
Skype can’t be that happy with these tricks. I really wish Skype would just suck it up and support SIP directly/natively out of its client, but if they did, it would break its walled garden concept too much and goodness knows where THAT would leave them.
Avaya and Aastra have made separate moves to get into the Nortel bankruptcy circus. Avaya is offering cash for assets, while Aastra will offer migration incentives (i.e. a sale) to get customers to switch.
In a press release today, Avaya announced it has signed agreements to pick up Nortel’s enterprise solution business for $475 million. The acquisition includes Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions voice, data and government systems businesses, but the transaction awaits clearing a competitive bidding process and approval by bankruptcy courts in Delaware and Ontario.
Avaya gets to scale a bit, expand its channel partner network, and add to its portfolio of products and services. Nortel gets cash to pay off its creditors and some of its employees will land as Avaya employees. Bell Canada and BT praised the move and BT went so far as to say it would “expand” its engagement with Avaya over the next year to offer a full unified communications portfolio.
Aastra’s move is less concrete, more ambulance-chasing. For “a limited time” Aastra says it will offer “extraordinary incentives” to get Nortel large enterprise customers to move to its Clearspan UC solution. Discounts include free unlimited numbers of SIP integration trunks, “significant” discounts on Aastra 67ix SIP phones, free instructor-lead training for admins during the first year of deployment (up to 2 students per class) and free end user, web-based training for an unlimited number of users during the first two years of deployment.
Aastra says that a 3,000 user enterprise deploying 300 SIP integration trunks and 1500 new SIP phones to users can save $500,000.
Billy Mays, you passed too soon, my friend. You could have made some serious coin off someone looking to rob Nortel of its customer base…
As I noted last week, Google Voice is going to make life difficult for Skype — not traditional carriers. Business Week seems to be in line with my general thinking in a piece out this morning — but gets confused on the details.
Where the Business Week “gets it”–
1) Google’s ubiqulity and many many linked-together apps will drag Google Voice into the picture
2) Google will compete with Skype for SMB dollars and long distance dialing dollars.
Where Business Week doesn’t get it–
1) Implying that Google Voice will be more than a SMB alternative to replace Cisco and Microsoft offerings. NOT. SMB hosted is different than the larger enterprise offerings that Cisco and Microsoft have out.
2) Implying that GV – a FMC-esque app if you have multiple numbers all over the place — challenges Truphone and Jajah’s revenue in the mobile VoIP space. Truphone has the whole SIM card play so I think they’re OK. Jajah runs VoIP calling for other companies, so I don’t see them taking a big hit here…
Mitel won’t sue the city of Ottawa over aVoIP contract award that went over to Bell Canada and Cisco, reports the Ottawa Citizen.
Issuing a statement yesterday, the company said “Although Mitel has been advised that there are legal grounds to seek judicial review of the City’s decision, we have concluded that it would not be in the best interests of Mitel, the City, nor its taxpayers to proceed further with this matter.”
Last week, Mitel was threatening to sue the city of Ottawa, but after much review, the city decided to soldier on, advised by its procurement people that Mitel’s protests were not valid and by its lawyers that Bell Canada and Cisco likely had the better case to sue if the procurement process — worth $7 million (CN) – was restarted.
Mitel invested significant time and energy trying to get a do-over for the Ottawa VoIP contract, first offering $2 million (CN) worth of VoIP phones as a “gift” in exchange for getting exclusive rights for it and its partners to supply VoIP services. When that didn’t work, it withdrew the gift and started threatening to sue if the procurement process wasn’t overturned, as it started an extensive lobbying campaign that included hiring the former mayor of Ottawa to talk to city officials.
Forget all this crap about Google Voice being “your next phone company.” It’s Skype that is going to have some issues.
The Goog was brainwashing, showing off its latest Google Voice apps to Om Malik yesterday, with Google Voice service for BlackBerry and Android clients available. Integration with GV and address book, cheap long distance calls, yadda-yadda.
I should have seen the Android client coming; that was a no brain, brothers… but the BlackBerry client should be a wakeup call to a lot of people. Skype’s been working on a BlackBerry phone client for a while, but it ain’t available for download today as a beta. Since Skype wants to collect business dollars and CrackBlackBerry is the de facto favorite of the biz community, there is a serious hole in the portfolio, hmm? Be interesting to hear why all the delays in a Skype for BlackBerry client. Heck, even Agito Networks has a FMC client for BlackBerry!
Now, let’s talk about pre-loading apps on cell phones, shall we? Skype has been fighting with carriers to get its app pre-loaded on phones with mixed success, but the company has been relatively quiet of late in stomping its feet about open networks and net neutrality. If you buy an Android phone, having the mobile GV client included as a part of the load would seem to be a natural fit if the carrier allows — and if it doesn’t, it looks like the first or second app an Android fan boy would download to complement his shiny-new ‘droid phone. True, Skype is preloaded on more cellular platforms around the world these days, but not a Lot More.
Given that Google is more “open” than Skype on software matters and has a MUCH BIGGER market cap than Skype, when Google goes up to lobby about open networks and net neutrality, legislators are likely to pay more attention.
Finally, there’s the whole momentum/integration thing going on, whereas Skype is a one-trick (communications) pony. You have Google, the Search Engine, plus Gmail, plus Google Voice, plus Android, plus all the other beta stuff floating around. Put together gmail, the search engine, and Google Voice, plus the small-but-growing Android installed base and there’s a good chunk of critical mass right there.
Will this displace Skype? Well, not today certainly, but if GV rolls in some quick and dirty Twitter support — and it will, because Google has no problem playing with others when it suits its master plan — one might start to see some cracks in Skype’s walled-garden approach to the world. Software can come off phones and computers (well, just get forgotten) as easily as it can be loaded.
