Month: September 2014
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Talko Looks Very Cool, But Needed A Firewall Change To Work
Continue Reading: Talko Looks Very Cool, But Needed A Firewall Change To WorkThe big telecom story today certainly seems to the be launch of Ray Ozzie’s new “Talko” application for iOS. Tons of attention in the tech media, and many of my friends on social media have been trying it out. There’s a brilliant article posted on Medium about the “Brave New Phone Call” along with a great blog post from Ray Ozzie about how this new app will revolutionize the voice experience.I think Talko has great potential to do so, particularly after using it.
But…
… I had to change my firewall rules in order to make Talko work. 🙁
And I don’t know how long it will continue to work.
Perhaps worse than that… it wasn’t clear initially that I had a firewall problem. Frequent testing partner Jim Courtney sent me a message and after installing the Talko app on my iPhone I tried to talk to him, but all I seemed to be able to do was send him a voice message or a text message.
Subsequently I tried connecting to Tim Panton and again could only send voice messages. It made for a very asynchronous “walkie-talkie” style of communication that clearly seemed to not be what…
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Three Years At The Internet Society
Continue Reading: Three Years At The Internet SocietyToday marks three truly amazing years at the Internet Society. It was September 19, 2011, when I visited the main office in Reston, Virginia, and began this wonderful journey. I wrote back then about why I was taking this job to fight for the open Internet – and in truth the reasons haven’t changed.
If anything, the situation has only gotten worse.
There are now far more threats to what I’ve taken to calling the “Internet of Opportunity” … the kind of Internet we have today where anyone can start any kind of service or publish any kind of information.
Within the Internet Society (or “ISOC” as we are often called) we call this “permissionless innovation“, not needing to ask permission of anyone to innovate. If you have a new idea or a new service or product… you can just do it. You don’t have to plead with a “gatekeeper” or pay someone in order to launch your service out onto the Internet.
But that could change.
Some of the legacy telecommunications companies who have lost out on revenue as everyone has moved away from phone calls would really like their revenue back. Some of the entertainment and traditional media companies…
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Watch Live TODAY (Sept 19) – CITI State of Telecom 2014
Continue Reading: Watch Live TODAY (Sept 19) – CITI State of Telecom 2014What is the future of telecommunications and the Internet? As more entertainment moves to being over the Internet, what are the implications for the media and for the technology?Today, September 19, 2014, there is an interesting set of presentations happening at the Columbia Club in New York City, organized by the Columbia (University) Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) called the “CITI State of Telecom 2014”. Subtitled, “From the Internet of Science to The Internet of Next Generation Entertainment Implications for Content, Technology and Industry Consolidation“, the session description states:
The goal of the early Internet was to connect research institutions. Yet today 71% of all Internet traffic consists of video, games, and music, and that number is growing. This transition raises issues for media content, technology, industry consolidation, business strategy, and regulatory policy. Media companies, academics, policy makers, and technologists must think ahead.
You can watch it all live at:
http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/citisot14
The sessions are being recorded, too, and are available at that address.
The session agenda and list of all the speakers is available on the CITI event page. The quick summary is:
- 9:00am Welcome and Introduction of Topic
- 9:15am Session 1- Technology and business drivers of the transformation of…
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How Do We Define ‘SIP’ For Telecom In 2014?
Continue Reading: How Do We Define ‘SIP’ For Telecom In 2014?“What is a minimum set of specifications that a vendor must implement to be able to say that it is SIP-compliant?”A friend asked me that question and my response was:
It depends.
and even more unfortunately:
I don’t know.
It turns out to be a challenging question to answer… and it led me to ask:
- How do we define what “SIP” is for telecommunications in 2014?
- How do we help vendors move their products/services to be based on SIP?
- As we talk about “turning off the PSTN” and “moving all telecom to IP”, how can we make it easier for companies to switch to using SIP?
The reality is that being “SIP-compliant” does turn out to depend upon where in the larger SIP interconnection ecosystem the vendor is located.
Is the vendor:
- a SIP client, in terms of a “hard” phone, a softphone, or other application that is seeking to connect to a SIP server?
- a SIP server seeking to connect to a SIP “service provider” to have connectivity out to the PSTN and other SIP networks?
- a SIP service provider seeking to interconnect with other SIP service providers and to the PSTN?
- a middlebox such as a firewall…
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Walk-Through: Skype 5.4 For iPhone Lets You Host Audio Conference Calls
Continue Reading: Walk-Through: Skype 5.4 For iPhone Lets You Host Audio Conference CallsSkype released a new version 5.4 of it’s iPhone app that includes an interesting ability to host “group audio calls”. In a post on Skype’s “Garage & Updates” blog today, Skype’s Gary Wong writes that the goal of this release is “to make it easy for you to host a group audio call with just one tap.” They did that… and I’ll show that below in a series of images walking through the process.A couple of caveats and thoughts from the testing:
- As Gary Wong noted in his blog post this first release is limited to four people in a group audio call.
- It seems from the testing described below that the “group audio call” is limited to Skype users. I couldn’t find a way to add in a call to an external phone number.
- It also seems to be limited to the iPhone and is not yet available on the iPad.
- Image sharing isn’t seamless between Skype for iPhone users and Skype desktop users.
- The user interface was a bit troubling when switching between parts of the group call.
With that in mind, here are more details…
An Architecture Change For Audio Conferencing
What’s interesting is that this…