TelecomHelp

Wow, yet another SIP soft Pbx! Snom are now chasing the pretty busy SME Pbx market with their Snom One offering.  This entry level software phone system is free for a 10 user system, however it will only work with ‘pricey’ Snom phones.

It’s too soon for me to say whether Snom One will offer anything new to the consumer (or even me the Reseller) as a proper evaluation will be needed with test sites. My guess is it will offer a solution more geared towards the ‘DIY’ phone system user (ie customers will have a go at it themselves as it’s free). I’m interested to see which type and brand of PSTN gateway devices will work properly with it – this will be the key to it’s longevity and ultimate success.

Time will tell. Andy

This week we’ve been evaluating 3CX’s new video calling feature for version 9 software.  It works really well and is worlds apart from the ‘hit but mostly miss’ quality offering from Skype and GMail.

It’s pretty simple to test it out as long as you’ve a 3CX phone system installed with adequate spare broadband bandwidth (at each end of the call). You can download the two simultaneous call working version of 3CX for free here.

Our favourite alternate video device is Yealink’s IP Video Phone (the VP-2009P). Again these devices work ‘straight out the box’ with 3CX, but you’ll need about 250k of spare bandwidth for a decent call. If I’m honest the Yealinks don’t have the sleek look of the Polycom VVX units, but being roughly one third of the cost our small business customers couldn’t really care. The beauty of SIP Video must surely be the scrapping of expensive dedicated ISDN lines.

Google are really stepping up their innovation onslaught in the US.  They bought GrandCentral in 2007, a small US player offering ‘number for life’ routing (similar to the 07000 service in the UK) and have now developed a new freebie – GVoice.

Only available  in the US at this time, it is a SIP based voice routing service that allows you to bind all your phones to a new Google issued number.  GVoice has an application that works with your Blackberry (or next generation Android software) mobile phone, allowing you to make calls via the Internet from your handset.  This means the Carrier does not carry the phone call but simply offers an Internet gateway to enable Google to carry the call.  No call revenues?  It’s no wonder Apple and AT&T have blocked this service to protect their revenues ie iPhones won’t support it.  It is likely the FCC (the US Telecom Regulator) will demand they allow this competition.

This is the future for mobile phones and mirrors the development and coming of age for Least Cost Routing and VoIP (Voice over the Internet).  The technology is astounding, voicemails are converted to text and added to the GoogleMail archive – hence you can search saved conversations & voicemails just like old emails.

What do Google get out of it?  They make a profit carrying the calls and interestingly have a US patent on technology that allows marketing to be ‘inserted’ within the service.  How would you feel if you put a client on hold and they were played an advert by Google for another company?  The US has become used to these marketing ploys in their various forms but this seems to be unpalatable if the forums are to be believed.

Personally I welcome this innovation and can’t wait for GVoice UK to arrive.

Britain’s biggest ISP and the BPI are locked in a bitter battle of words over the treatment of alleged illegal file sharers.

The music industry group launched a scathing attack on BT in the national press over the weekend, with BPI chief Geoff Taylor branding BT “shameless” for failing to tackle file sharers. The BPI claims it has identified more than 100,000 incidences of illegal file sharing on BT’s network since February, but that BT has “failed to act on a single one of those”.

BT has reacted angrily the accusations. The ISP claims it agreed to send out warning letters to just 1,000 alleged file sharers under a memorandum of understanding signed at the beginning of the year. However, BT claims the BPI deluged it with more than twenty times the agreed figure, many of which were inaccurate.

“During this period, the BPI sent us around 21,000 alleged cases, but less than two-thirds proved to be properly matched to an IP address of a BT customer and not a duplicate, so this could indicate that the true extent of this activity is much lower than the 100,000 number the BPI claim since February,” BT claims in a statement.

“In addition, since none of the customers we wrote to during the trial were subsequently taken to court by the BPI, we don’t know whether they were actually guilty of infringement.”

[Edited]

BT says it can’t tell how much of the traffic passing over its network is illegal. “We definitely do not know the extent of illegal file sharing on our network,” it claims.

“Many peer to peer applications are perfectly legal, such as World of Warcraft, BBC iPlayer and Skype. To investigate the exact nature of each peer-to-peer packet would involve an intrusive level of inspection of people’s traffic and customers would rightly complain about BT infringing their privacy where we to do it.”

Wow, what a mad panic to bin 0870 numbers now we’ve hit OfCom’s Aug 1st deadline. A lot of businesses will be hurt financially when they get their next Telco statement and it dawns on them;

1. No more lovely revenue share. Say goodbye to £1000′s a year….
2. They now get charged around 2p per min when their customers call them on their 0870 number.

We’ve seen remarkable interest and take-up with the new 0844 number range. So much so that the numbers are nearly exhausted and a new range of 0843 numbers has been added!

About time too!

BT doubles footprint for next generation broadband & cuts wholesale prices
24 September, 2009 – 12:07

BT Wholesale has stated its intention to significantly expand the availability of next generation copper broadband – offering customers speeds of up to 24Mbps – by saying it intends to almost double the current footprint for the service – bringing it within reach of 20 million homes and businesses by Spring 2011.

The company also revealed substantial reductions for the price it charges communications providers in order to encourage the take up of next generation broadband.

Wholesale Broadband Connect is the service that will be offered to communications providers. Running over BT’s 21st Century Network, Wholesale Broadband Connect offers CPs the option to provide broadband customers with greater control, choice and flexibility as well as higher speeds of up to 24Mbps. These higher speeds help meet the growing need for high speed access to a range of concurrent online services, including television and gaming online.