Last chance to win a FREE wireless VoIP phone

April 10, 2009 by Garrett Smith

Last week Friday we launched a contest for readers giving the a chance to win a wireless VoIP phone for answering the question:

“What’s important in a business VoIP service? (Full post here)

Well today is the last day to get in on the action as we will be picking one comment at random to win the QuickPhones QA-342 at 5pm today.

So if you’ve got thoughts on what makes a business VoIP service great take a minute to leave a comment and earn your chance to win that FREE wireless VoIP phone.

Polycom KIRK 2010

April 9, 2009 by Garrett Smith

Polycom has announced the latest addition to their DECT product family, the KIRK 2010.

The Polycom KIRK 2010 is a DECT based wireless VoIP phone. At the surface it looks just like another slick wireless VoIP phone, but the most important aspect of the KIRK 2010 might the targeted customer:

The SMB.

If you’re familiar with the Polycom KIRK line of wireless VoIP phones you know that they’re excellent – with the exception that they are typically “outside the reach” of small medium businesses.

In the KIRK 2010, it seems that Polycom has constructed a simple, basic wireless VoIP phone that will allow the small medium business leverage the benefits that come with mobility. This simple and basic theme can be seen in the KIRK 2010’s feature set:

Black & white LCD screen (3 lines of text/icons)
Internal/external ring pattern, volume control and silent modes
Telephone book with room for 40 numbers
Speech/stand by time > 12/150 hours
Weight incl. battery: 120g
Size (LxWxH): 124x47x31mm

There’s no word yet on what the price tag of this unit will be or when it will be available, but we will keep you updated.

Adding Telephony to iPhone Applications

by Garrett Smith

One of the great things about the iPhone is the ability to add a variety of different applications. But outside of the applications for mobile VoIP providers, there aren’t too many iPhone applications that feature telephony capabilities.

Now this is likely due to the fact that iPhone developers have no clue when it comes to telephony. That’s why I thought it would be great to share a session Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro put on at the recent ecomm conference.

Entitled, “How to build an Ifbyphone-to-iPhone app” the session shows iPhone developers how to use Ifbyphone’s cloud telephony capabilites to add voice to their applications. What’s even better is that the examples and advice come from Ifbyphone’s own experience.
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Digium Releases Switchvox 4.0 (Finally!)

April 8, 2009 by Garrett Smith

Switchvox SMB release 4.0 shipped yesterday….we upgraded our SMB plant here last night without any real hiccups. With the release of SMB 4.0, a great IP communications platform just got better in many ways.

1 – Switchvox SMB now supports “Presence” across multiple sites (server instances). This was an issue with our own deployment in the past, and it is great now that you can unify multiple, geographically dispersed Switchvox SMB systems with a “global” Switchboard, showing you the status of all users and allowing you to control calls across multiple sites.

2 – Fax! Switchvox SMB 4.0 now supports outbound fax and fax-to-email. I have not had a chance to test this personally but am looking forward to accidentally knocking our finicky analog fax machine off the desk soon.

3 – More API goodness! Digium/Switchvox are wisely investing dev cycles in their API Call Control, unlocking more and more flexibility and integration abilities.

4 – Jabber/Chat capabilities with Switchboard. Perhaps soon I can ditch Windows Live Messenger and AIM in favor of unified IM/Chat within Switchboard.

5 – More / Better Microsoft Outlook integration!

6 – Improved system diagnostics and schedule reports.

There’s more to love in Switchvox SMB release 4.0 beyond the features I’ve mentioned here. If you are considering Switchvox or have any questions about this product, feel free to contact one of our product specialists at 800.398.8647!

Polycom Releases New SIP 3.1.2 Firmware for SoundPoint IP Phones

April 7, 2009 by Garrett Smith

Polycom has just released new SIP firmware version 3.1.2, and it can be found here. This release is identical to the SIP 3.1.2 release with the addition of software and configuration parameters applicable to the VVX 1500 phone.

Here are a few of the highlights:

SIP 3.1.2 includes GA level support for SoundStation IP 7000 integration with Polycom HDX video systems. This feature requires that the SoundStation IP 7000 is running BootROM 4.1.2 or newer software.
The SoundPoint IP/SoundStation IP XML API feature is now formally supported in this release. This feature was designated as a Beta in the SIP 3.1.0 and SIP 3.1.1 releases.
SoundPoint IP 550, 560, 650 and 670 products require BootROM 4.1.0 or newer in order to load SIP firmware release 3.1.2

If you are considering upgrading, make sure you have the correct bootrom, depending upon the Polycom SoundPoint model you own, as follows:

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Linksys WIP310-G1 Wireless Phone Back in Stock!

by Garrett Smith

Just a heads up we’ve received a few hundred Linksys WIP310-G1 WiFi SIP Handsets into stock and they are going quickly. If you have been waiting for one of these, now’s your chance!

Digium Adds PSTN Faxing Support to Open Source Asterisk

April 6, 2009 by Garrett Smith

Fresh off their announcement of revamped, comprehensive support package offerings for open source Asterisk, Digium today has released Fax for Asterisk .

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—April 6, 2009—Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today announced Fax For Asterisk, a complete, cost-effective platform for the development of fax solutions. The offering provides Asterisk users and integrators a suite of user-friendly applications and a licensed version of the industry-leading fax modem software from Commetrex. To meet the demanding requirements of business users, Fax For Asterisk provides reliable faxing across the Internet and public switched telephone network (PSTN).

Asterisk is the most widely used open source telephony platform. The software is available free of charge and has been downloaded millions of times for use by individual developers and systems integrators creating custom telephony solutions for businesses. Asterisk is also available as the professional-grade and commercially supported Asterisk Business Edition.

“Asterisk users, developers and integrators now have a toolkit allowing them to integrate fax with their phone systems,” said Bill Miller, vice president of product management at Digium. “With Fax For Asterisk, Digium offers a reliable and fully supported fax solution.”

Fax For Asterisk interoperates with standards-compliant fax machines connected to Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 on x86 Linux systems. It provides low-speed PSTN faxing via DAHDI-compatible telephony interface cards as well as VoIP faxing to T.38-compatible SIP end points and service providers. Fax For Asterisk operates at speeds up to 14.4kbps and supports V.17, V.27 and V.29 fax modems.

Fax For Asterisk is available free of charge from the Digium webstore at http://store.digium.com/ for one concurrent fax session. Multi-session licenses are available for a one-time fee of $38.50 per channel. Fax For Asterisk is available immediately. Fax capabilities for Digium’s Switchvox IP PBX were announced in February of this year and are based on this solution. For more details, visit www.digium.com.

Fax solutions for Asterisk are not new (Hylafax, SpanDSP, etc) but direct support from Digium for faxing is, and this plugs another hole in open source Asterisk making it an even more compelling option that has the Shoretel’s of the world looking in their rearview mirror.

The six month VoIP system ROI

by Garrett Smith

This morning Doug Mohney at FierceVoIP dropped some great observations from last weeks VoiceCon show. The one observation that struck a cord here at VoIP Supply was the six month ROI (Return on Investment) businesses want on the purchase of a VoIP system.

A year ago businesses were happy with an 18 month ROI. With new financial pressures (thanks to the economy) an 18 month ROI is no longer realistic for them.

But is a six month ROI realistic either?

Well, let’s take a look.
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Digium Woos SMBs/Enterprises with Support Packages for Open Source Asterisk

by Garrett Smith

OSS Telephony leader Digium recently fired another shot across the bow of traditional proprietary Tier 1 vendors including Cisco, 3Com and Avaya.

In the enterprise space, one of the traditional arguments against open source has been the lack of available support. There are plenty of VARs out there these days helping enterprises of all different shapes and sizes deploy open IP Comms platforms like Asterisk, but nobody will argue that Asterisk’ support ecosystem is as reliable and robust as the likes of Cisco.

Digium is looking to change the perception that Asterisk can’t compete for enterprise customers in several ways. First, they are heavily promoting their DCAP (Digium Certified Asterisk Professional) curriculum to incubate a future army of open source VoIP technicians. Second, Digium is shoring up their own internal support offerings, and recently announced several tiers of paid support for open source Asterisk ranging from 1-3 year increments.

Components that are covered under the new Digium plans includes Asterisk Open Source 1.4, Asterisk Open Source 1.6, Asterisk GUI, G.729 Codec, HPEC, Lumenvox Speech Recognition for Asterisk and Cepstral Text-to-Speech for Asterisk.

Digium is also promising 24X7 availability, Web Case Management, Remote Troubleshooting, Advanced Hardware Replacement, Scheduled Upgrade Assistance, Configuration Review, Performance Review and AGI Script Application Review.

More from: Asterisk Garrett Smith digium

Google voice and voice based search

by Garrett Smith

Ever since Google relaunched GrandCentral as Google voice a few weeks ago I’ve been thinking about what Google voice’s true purpose and future might entail. Many have over-hyped the launch as the death of hardware based phone systems, while others have ho-hummed Google’s efforts as half-baked.

Personally I think that Google voice is merely a feature of greater service offering Google is trying to put together. But what that greater service offering might be is still to be determined.

A hint as to what Google may looking to do with Google voice was uncovered in a BBC story late last week. The story, entitled “Google see voice search as core” speaks to Google’s ambition to dominate the mobile search space through voice activated search.

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Last chance to win a FREE wireless VoIP phone

Polycom KIRK 2010

Adding Telephony to iPhone Applications

Digium Releases Switchvox 4.0 (Finally!)

Polycom Releases New SIP 3.1.2 Firmware for SoundPoint IP Phones

Linksys WIP310-G1 Wireless Phone Back in Stock!

Digium Adds PSTN Faxing Support to Open Source Asterisk

The six month VoIP system ROI

Digium Woos SMBs/Enterprises with Support Packages for Open Source Asterisk

Google voice and voice based search

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