Category: Telecom Industry
-
/
Jajah to provide PSTN connectivity for Yahoo!Voice!
Continue Reading: Jajah to provide PSTN connectivity for Yahoo!Voice!Yahoo! announced today that they are outsourcing all PSTN connectivity services for Yahoo!Messenger over to the startup Jajah. This is a huge win for Jajah who also announced today that it has hit over 10 million users in two years. Congrats to the Jajah team for the win!Two parts of the release explain a bit about what is going on:
The “Phone In” and “Phone Out” service will enable consumers to make high-quality, low-cost PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC voice calls over the JAJAH network to more than 200 countries using Yahoo! Messenger, the leading instant messenger application in the United States with nearly 97 million users worldwide (comScore, February 2008).
and:
Since 2006, Yahoo! Messenger users have been able to use “Phone In” and “Phone Out” to make and receive voice calls on their PC to and from landline and mobile phones. With low rates and premium voice quality, users can talk for hours and save on their phone bill. This deal means JAJAH will take over the provision of the telephony infrastructure, payment processing, and customer care for Yahoo!’s premium voice users who make and receive voice calls through Yahoo! Messenger.
So essentially Yahoo is centralizing all the PSTN interconnection for Yahoo!Voice…
-
/
Skype further commoditizes voice with their “unlimited” subscription plans…
Continue Reading: Skype further commoditizes voice with their “unlimited” subscription plans…Today’s buzz in the VoIP space is certainly Skype’s announcement of new “unlimited” subscription plans. No contracts. No connection fees. No per-minute fees. Just a single flat, monthly fee.The Global Difference
Now on the one hand, this isn’t really new to those of us here in North America. We had an “unlimited” plan for all of NA that was good up until several months back when Skype dropped the plan and required everyone to move onto “Skype Pro”. However, the big difference this time around is simple:
The unlimited plan is global!
Well, at least “global” in the sense that the 34 countries to which the plan pertains are indeed spread out all around the globe:
Regardless, it’s an impressive list and, as Skype’s news release reminds us, means you have “unlimited” calling to about a third of the world’s population. (This statistic is, of course, hugely helped by the fact that the plan includes China!) So now with your PC, or 3 Skypephone over in Europe, you can now make an “unlimited” number of calls to regular old PSTN phone numbers in those countries.
Goodbye international calling plans!
Given that here in the USA, we’ve seen most all…
-
/
Squawk Box: Is the Mobile Web Dead?
Continue Reading: Squawk Box: Is the Mobile Web Dead?Yesterday we had a fascinating conversation on Alec Saunders’ Squawk Box podcast/conf call about “Is the Mobile Web Dead?” This all came about because of Russell Beattie’s piece (and the resulting conversation) about shutting down Mowser and declaring that “the mobile web” is dead in light of new phones like the iPhone that allow users to see the web through a “regular” browser. Mowser was a company that existed to help companies make their websites work better on mobile devices/phones and he ultimately found that the market never really appeared.The discussion was a good one although I think the truth is that we are all violently in agreement that at the end of the day there is just “the Web” these days and there is no need for a separate “mobile” web as the devices we use continue to evolve. We also spent a chunk of time talking about the iPhone SDK, fring and the long-term prospects for apps that use the Jailbreak installer.
All in all I think you’ll find it an enjoyable conversation – give it a listen! And note that you are always welcome to join into the calls that happen most weekday mornings at…
-
/
If you missed eComm 2008, the presentations are now online…
Continue Reading: If you missed eComm 2008, the presentations are now online…If, like me, you missed out on eComm 2008 last month you can at least now view (or download) almost all of the eComm 2008 presentations via SlideShare. You can view all the different presentations and download them as well.eComm organizer Lee Dryburgh also said that he’s working on getting the audio recordings of the presentations up online as podcasts which will be great to have, too. (As I wrote about on a Voxeo blog, you really need audio to understand many of the slide decks (which I actually view as a good thing!).)
Kudos to Lee for getting all the presentations up there – there’s 58 right now and it’s good to see the range of presentations given. As a longtime fan of SlideShare, it’s also nice to see it being used for a conference like this.
Technorati Tags: eComm, eComm2008, presentations, slideshare, voip, telephony, telecommunications, communication
-
/
The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…
Continue Reading: The EComm 2008 Interview with Skype’s Jonathan Christensen should be required reading…As we enter into the final month before eComm 2008, I would suggest that the interview with Jonathan Christensen, Skype’s general manager of audio and video, should be required reading for anyone seriously interested in this space. Why? Well, in part because Jonathan Christensen does provide some good information about what Skype has done and is doing but also because it provides some good insight into what one of the people driving Skype’s agenda is thinking about this space. Take one of the final paragraphs where he answered Lee Dryburgh’s question about what he saw as the the future of communications (bold emphasis added by me):Well, a big question I guess and, having worked on the space for quite a while, I think that it’s only going to get more interesting over the coming years since, well, like this open spectrum for example. You know, I just have to reiterate, I think that anybody who has not figured out that the Internet is the platform and that there isn’t any such thing as walled gardens that will survive, or sub-networks [such as AOL tried] that are going to survive, those people are doomed. The intersection of these worlds is going…
-
/
Mobile World – Alec Saunders previews the new Nokia handsets
Continue Reading: Mobile World – Alec Saunders previews the new Nokia handsetsOver on his Saunderslog site, Alec Saunders previews the new phones announced by Nokia today over at the Mobile World Congress (formerly “3GSM”) in Barcelona:When you think of companies who really understand mobility and mobility use cases, there’s only one contender, and it’s Nokia. Even Apple’s iPhone, as pretty as it is, is a sophisticated expression of ideas that others pioneered first. If you want to know where mobile is going, the company to watch is Nokia.
So it was with a great deal of anticipation that I accepted the invitation to sit down with a few of Nokia’s product managers to preview their announcements for today – the Nokia 6210 Navigator, 6220 Classic, and the newest members of their multimedia computer line, the N78 and N96. These products are at the confluence of the two major mobile trends today – social networking and multimedia. They represent, in my opinion, both the future of mobility and the next logical expression of many trends that have been emerging for the last several years.
Alec goes on at some length explaining the new features of the various handsets and the new applications that are coming out along with the handsets.
Alec also…
-
/
Skype says “No” to VoIP interoperability – *because customers aren’t asking for it!* – Well, I am!
Continue Reading: Skype says “No” to VoIP interoperability – *because customers aren’t asking for it!* – Well, I am!So Skype says that they have no plans for interoperability with other VoIP systems because their customers aren’t asking for it??
By way of Dameon Welch-Abernathy today I learned of Phil Wolff’s post back in December about ZDNet’s interview (Got all that? 😉 with Skype’s VP of telecoms, Stefan Oberg. The article was primarily about Skype’s London phone number debacle, but this was the part that most irritated me:
Another issue which may concern business users of VoIP is the Enum registry, which aims to unite not only the various VoIP providers — referred to by some as “islands” due to their lack of interconnection with each other — but the entire VoIP and traditional telephony worlds.
Asked whether Skype had considered opening up its famously closed communications protocols, Oberg claimed that there had been no customer demand for interconnection. “[Customers] are not saying they would love to call a VoIP provider on a different network,” he said. “Customers are asking for better video and better conference calling. If it is something that customers really ask for, we would consider it, but it is very easy for anyone to get on the island.”
Well, Mr. Oberg, here is one paying customer of Skype…
-
/
Another print pub bites the dust… say goodbye to “Business Communications Review” / BCR
Continue Reading: Another print pub bites the dust… say goodbye to “Business Communications Review” / BCRIn learning about the new “NoJitter.com” blog recently, I also learned from Eric Krapf that Business Communications Review, commonly known simply as “BCR”, was joining the ongoing exodus from the print publication business. Effective January 1, it will no longer be published in print form and, in fact, the name will retired for publishing purposes. They will continue to use the name for their training business, which is apparently going very well. The publishing focus for the BCR team will apparently be this new NoJitter blog, which I mentioned in my last post.
Personally, I’m sorry to see them go. I definitely do understand that the economics of print publishing today are quite difficult, but I did value the work that BCR did, particularly in their comparisons of products and services. It will be interesting to see, too, how well their current readership makes the switch with them. I know personally that once InfoWorld folded its print edition, I know longer paid as much attention to their writing as I once did… except when it randomly came up in searches. I’m not currently a BCR subscriber, so if anything this move may mean that I see more of their writing.…
-
/
So the real question is – who is NOT suing Vonage? (Nortel sues Vonage)
Continue Reading: So the real question is – who is NOT suing Vonage? (Nortel sues Vonage)Over at ZDNet, Russell Shaw reports that Nortel is suing Vonage over patent infringement. The real question these days seems to be – who is not suing Vonage? Seems like there is blood in the water and the patent lawyers are circling…Technorati Tags: nortel, intellectual property, vonage, lawsuits
-
/
Verizon Business to roll out hosted VoIP (“Managed IP PBX”) based on Nortel gear
Continue Reading: Verizon Business to roll out hosted VoIP (“Managed IP PBX”) based on Nortel gearWhen I think of “disruptive” actions in our industry, I personally don’t ever tend to think of Verizon (well, I do think of them in terms of disrupting GSM service in Vermont, but that’s a different post I need to write). But yesterday, Verizon issued a news release that I think bears reading: “Verizon Business Adds New Option to Simplify Move to IP“. Essentially it amounts to the fact that Verizon will be offering “large-business” and government customers the option of having their IP-PBX hosted in Verizon’s cloud. From a technical point of view, it’s basically a hosted offering of Nortel’s recent products:The Nortel-based offerings, leveraging the Nortel Communication Server 1000 IP-PBX, Business Communications Manager and CallPilot platforms, enable advanced voice applications such as “find me, follow me,” and integrated communications that allow for multimedia collaboration. They also help companies move to a unified communications platform to simplify and integrate a variety of business communications functions such as voice mail, e-mail and instant messaging. For example, end-users can see who is online, or they can prompt the system to prioritize incoming messages and send alerts to end-user devices. Verizon Business’ support for the offering includes full implementation, as…