CNet Blogger Matt Asay on VoIP: "..it’s all rubbish."

July 17, 2008 by Garrett Smith

Matt Asay, member of the CNet Blog Network and OSS technology pundit, weighs in on VoIP.

Voice-over-IP (VOIP) has long promised to significantly disrupt the telecommunications market. And so it has. Never before have so many people paid so little for technology that doesn’t work.

Yes, I know. You probably have a VOIP provider that works. All the time. Guess what? I don’t believe you. I’ve used Skype, Comcast Digital Voice, Vonage, a commercial service my company uses, and it’s all rubbish.

The problems vary, but one thing is clear: Plain old telephone service (POTS) may be pricey, but at least it works. All the time. It’s amazing how much pain we’ll endure to save a few pennies. I’m switching back to POTS.

Back in 2006, Asay praised Matrix Partners’ $13.8 Million dollar investment in Digium, a prominent player in the VoIP space.

As recently as July 4th, 2007 Asay trumpeted the business benefits of VoIP and declared Skype: The Ultimate Collaboration Tool

From Asay’s July 4th, 2008 CNet post regarding his firm’s positive experiences with Skype:

Being a company with employees spread across the United States and Europe, Alfresco has long used Skype to cut phone costs and as our common instant messaging platform. But with a recent update from Skype, “public chats” have been enabled, giving us one more tool.

Fact: Not much decentralized group collaboration, cost savings or “public chats” happening on POTS Matt…

More from Asay’s July 4th, 2008 CNet post regarding Skype usage:

We now have group chats for the management team, for the solutions engineering team, for support, and so on. Often these chats will rest silent, but when a good conversation gets moving, it’s invaluable to team cohesion and productivity.

Equally confusing, the mercurial Asay stated in September of 2007:

Today I’m eating crow, and it tastes great. Why? Because Vonage has been complete rubbish for me, whereas Skype is increasingly approaching perfection. I dropped my traditional phone service for Vonage. I’m now about to drop my traditionally awful Vonage for Skype.

Odd how one can go from Skype fanboy to declaring the technology “rubbish” in the space of 13 days.

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Video Capture Card (DVR Card)

by Garrett Smith

Video Capture Card (DVR Card)= Computer cards that you can install on the motherboard of your own computer to create your own DVR. Avermedia and Geovision are two examples of Video Capture Card manufacturers.

Ask Mr. Andrews: What Are My Options for Paging with trixbox?

by Garrett Smith

Dear Mr. Andrews:

I run a manufacturing facility and we recently implemented trixbox to replace our legacy phone system. We have a four-zone analog paging system that was integrated with our previous phone system. What are my options for paging with trixbox?

Ask Mr. Andrews

“Desktop” paging, whereby you dial a number and all the phones in the dialed call group pick up automatically, go into hands free, and play through their speaker what the caller is saying, is supported on trixbox using a number of IP phones. Snom phones, Grandstream GXP Series Phones, Aastra 480i and 9133i, and Polycom phones all support desktop paging.

A note about setting up desktop paging with Polycom phones:

You MUST provision the phone from a FTP server to
load the Polycom config files, then edit sip.cfg, search for
“alertInfo” and set “voIpProt.SIP.alertInfo.1.value” to equal “Ring
Answer.” Now reboot your phone to load the new config option.

For overhead paging, you can make an Asterisk Extension go to the sound card, and wire its output to a traditional external paging system. You can also get boxes to interface a phone FXO or FXS port directly to a sound system. Examples:

Valcom V-2001A
- connects to an FXO port, so more suitable for interface with PBX or other phone system
Viking CPA-7B Paging/Loud Ringing Amplifier
- Has both FXS and FXO ports.
- Can connect to a normal ATA FXS port in place of a phone
- Example: Ethernet – SIP ATA – Viking CPA-7B – paging speakers
- Other models available with multi-zone paging, etc.
Radio Design Labs ST-TC1 Telephone System Coupler
- Also sold as: Smarthome Product
- connects to an FXO port, so more suitable for interface with PBX or other phone system

A third option for paging is to use an overhead, SIP-enabled speaker manufacturer by Cyberdata. Cyberdata offers a recess mounted, SIP enabled speaker that is PoE powered, and can be setup like a normal extension off your Trixbox system. In this scenario, you could place four speakers in your current paging zones, and assign each zone an extension. You could also group these extensions into a “page all” call group. Cyberdata also makes an amplified version of their speaker system for noisier industrial environments.

Product Spotlight: Linksys SPA3102

July 16, 2008 by Garrett Smith

Many of you may know that Linksys manufacturers a solid, well used and liked Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA) product line. The product line consists of the SPA2102, PAP2T, and SPA3102. For this blog we will focus on the SPA3102 and its “added” capabilities.

On the analog side of things, the SPA3102 can act as a fully functional one- port FXO gateway since it contains an FXO line port. The FXO port can also act as a PSTN failover capability in case the Ethernet network ever fails or drops. It also contains an FXS phone port to connect an analog telephone into. Service providers often times will utilize this device providing their VOIP service to the phone port, and still allow users to use their traditional PSTN or POTS service through the failover capabilities. This is an all around great solution for the home user who would like to leverage VOIP calling through a provider, but still needs the reliability and functionality to their existing, much more expensive, but most reliable PSTN landline network.

On the digital side of things, you will notice that the SPA3102 has two Ethernet ports, a WAN or LAN or Ethernet/Internet ports. This device has built in router capabilities, which can interface both with your public internet service provider as well as your LAN. The device also has the capabilities to act as a DHCP server and “hand out” LAN addresses to your internal LAN equipment. The only downside is you will most likely need a LAN switch to extend, and service network equipment since the SPA3102 only has one LAN port.

Linksys ATA

So what are the added benefits of this $64.99 device you may ask? Home users have been known to take advantage of the FXO port in a most cost-saving effective manner. Let’s describe a quick scenario first and where the gateway aspect of the SPA3102 comes into play. A home user has two locations a great distance apart, let’s say NYC and Alaska (since I’ve always desired to travel there). I am constantly making calls from my Alaskan location to the location in NYC, and to all my buds in the NYC area (local Telco calls) Traditionally, I would pick up my PSTN phone in Alaska and call my friends or location in NYC and incur heavy long distance charges from my telephone provider. In come VOIP and the SPA3102. I simply purchased (2) SPA3102’s and placed them at each location. I then plugged an analog telephone in each of the unit’s phone ports and assigned a VOIP extension, (100 for Alaska and 200 for NYC). Now I can simply pick a phone at any location and call the other for FREE all through VOIP, using NO VOIP provider whatsoever. Next I plugged my telephone line into each of the unit’s FXO ports at both locations. Keep in mind I am still paying for my traditional telephone service at each location. Now, when I pick up my phone in Alaska, I can call into the SPA3102, gain access to my local telephone service in NYC and call as many contacts as I wish in NYC for FREE.

The reason is that when my call comes into the NYC SPA3102, it traverses the VOIP network from Alaska to NYC, (where my Telco whacks me with long distance fees), and when I gain access to the local Telco in NYC, my call from Alaska “looks” local to the NYC Telco provider and I incur no long distance fees whatsoever. This whole process of “extending local dial-tone” has been a blessing in disguise to home users who frequently pay high long distance fees from their telephone. If it makes you feel better, you’re tricking your phone company, and even better, this scenario will work at virtually any location where you have broadband internet access, so you can pick up and move virtually anywhere in the world.

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Varifocal Lens

by Garrett Smith

Varifocal Lens = A camera lens in which the focus is not fixed. It can be manually or automatically adjusted.

Nimbuzz Leveraging Asterisk, OpenSER and other OSS Technologies

by Garrett Smith

According to an iLocus interview of Nimbuzz CEO EJ Lugt, the Nimbuzz platform makes use of Asterisk, OpenSER and other open source software.

What about the underlying VoIP platform you use? Do you also use open source components? Yes, we use a lot of open source components such as Asterisk and OpenSER. We also use open source components for IM like Jabber and Open Fire. And of course we have built a lot of proprietary technology around it.

If you are not familiar with Nimbuzz, Kyle Brocious wrote a review of their service here in May.

TruPhone for iPhone – Review Redux

July 15, 2008 by Garrett Smith

Set about writing up a TruPhone review earlier this morning, and ran into a snag.

Impressively, TruPhone helf desk manager Katie Brimble responded to my initial post this morning with an apology and a few troubleshooting suggestions.

We are sorry that we have been unable to get round to your email as of yet, we are very busy at the moment. Do you have your reference number to hand which you would have received in our automated response?

We recommend the following to resolve this issue;
1. Reboot your iPhone and try this again. If you still experience this issue please check the following…
2. Do you have mobile/cell reception/signal when you initiate the validation call?
3. Do you have sufficient mobile/cell credit to receive a call – if you pay to receive calls (US Customers)
4. Are you able to receive international calls to your mobile/cell number?

5. Once you enter a Security Pin in the sign up screen and the validation call-back starts to initiate, try pressing the square key (Main menu button) on the iPhone.

Regards
The Truphone Support team

#5 did the trick for me. If you are installing TruPhone you may need to do the same thing at the moment in order to get your phone to accept the inbound verification call from TruPhone.

Once installed, the TruPhone client basically mimics the native iPhone dialing application in terms of look and feel. There are (5) distinct tabs:

1 – Favourites – where you can store numbers/contacts you call most frequently.
2 – Recents – shows your TruPhone call history
3 – Contacts – TruPhone automatically grabs your existing iPhone contacts database
4 – Keypad – in order to dial telephone numbers
5 – Topup – redirects to the TruPhone website where you can administer your account and add prepaid
calling credit.

TruPhone hooks you up with $4.00 in call credit for free with your account setup, which was sufficient for me to make a few test calls. Even with the spotty WiFi coverage in my office the call quality on my test calls was indistinguishable from normal mobile calls.

TruPhone also has grouped many of their international call terminations into a single rate scheduled, called Tru Zone.

I am sure TruPhone is inundated with new customer signups since the release of Apple’s AppStore. I was thoroughly impressed with their personal response to my support issue. I highly recommend TruPhone to anyone who owns an iPhone and is looking to save money on international calls….money better spent on gasoline. TruPhone scores a Tom Cruise thumbs up…not an easy feat!

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Vandal Resistant

by Garrett Smith

Vandal Resistant = Cameras and other devices that are “vandal resistant” or “vandal-proof” have been manufactured in such a fashion as to make them difficult or nearly impossible to disable or disassemble.

Truphone for iPhone Non Review

by Garrett Smith

Having recently endured the painful process of updating my 1st generation iPhone to Apple’s 2.0 firmware revision, I was excited to test out a native VoIP client.

I downloaded TruPhone’s free client from the appstore, and installed it. Setup was as simple as filling our a short form on the phone. Note: Don’t misstype your mobile number in the setup form….TruPhone does not give you the opportunity to modify it if you enter it incorrectly. In this case, I fat fingered one of the digits, but there was no way for me to go back and correct it. I had to uninstall the TruPhone client and then resync/reinstall it.

The final step in activating the TruPhone service on your iPhone is to authenticate your account by receiving an inbound verification call from TruPhone, and entering a 4-digit PIN number that you chose during the original client setup.

This is where I hit a brick wall. For some reason, I am unable to receive the verification call from TruPhone. When I attempt to initiate the verification call from TruPhone, after about a minute, I get a message that reads “Sorry, we could not detect your security PIN. Did your voicemail answer the call?”

My voicemail did indeed answer the call, as for some reason the TruPhone verification calls will not ring through on my iPhone. They go directly into my voicemail. I have no issues receiving inbound calls from any other originating numbers, and they ring through fine.

I filled out a support request ticket and am waiting to hear back from TruPhone.

Anyone having a positive experience using TruPhone’s mobile VoIP client on their iPhone?

CNet Blogger Matt Asay on VoIP: "..it’s all rubbish."

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Video Capture Card (DVR Card)

Ask Mr. Andrews: What Are My Options for Paging with trixbox?

Product Spotlight: Linksys SPA3102

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Varifocal Lens

Nimbuzz Leveraging Asterisk, OpenSER and other OSS Technologies

TruPhone for iPhone – Review Redux

IPCS Word(s) of the Day: Vandal Resistant

We’re Here to Help

Truphone for iPhone Non Review

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