Category: Telecom Industry
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Want to join an emerging communications/tech dinner in San Francisco Wednesday night?
Continue Reading: Want to join an emerging communications/tech dinner in San Francisco Wednesday night?If you are in the San Francisco area (perhaps for VoiceCon?) and are interested in “emerging communications” or “emerging technology”, would you like to join a group of similar folks at a dinner Wednesday night (Nov 12, 2008)?Lee Dryburgh, the organizer of the eComm Emerging Communications conference, is hosting a private dinner in conjunction with Thomas Howe at the San Francisco Airport Marriott (Burlingame). There are currently some 50+ folks attending and some seats left and if you are tracking or pushing things forwards in the communications space you may like to try and reserve a seat (75.00 USD) by emailing Lee.
I’ll be there, naturally, along with Thomas Howe, Eric Burger, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker and many others who are involved in the space. If you do want to join us, please email Lee very soon.
Technorati Tags: ecomm, ecomm2009, voip, san francisco
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Verizon allows month-to-month contracts… and the connection of any CDMA device
Continue Reading: Verizon allows month-to-month contracts… and the connection of any CDMA deviceGiven my ongoing interest in potentially using Verizon for a wireless data provider, it was interesting to see Verizon’s announcement that they will now allow ‘month-to-month’ contracts. I called the media contact on the news release and verified that this does also apply to wireless data plans, which is my personal interest. I can’t seem to find that information yet on the Verizon Wireless web site, but perhaps these plans have not yet made their way to Keene, NH.Now, being an advocate for a more “open” mobile Internet, I was pleased to see this:
Verizon Wireless’ new Month-to-Month agreement gives customers the freedom to purchase new devices at full-retail price, or use their own CDMA devices without the commitment of a one- or two-year contract. Additionally customers can terminate their agreement at the end of any month without paying an Early Termination Fee.
Not the “full-retail price”, naturally, but the ability to simply end the agreement at the end of the month and to use any CDMA device.
The caveat to the ability to “bring your own phone” is that while it is good to see from a “freedom/choice” point-of-view, the reality is that really the only CDMA carriers in…
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Google’s Android and the future of the (open?) mobile Internet
Continue Reading: Google’s Android and the future of the (open?) mobile InternetIn just a few minutes, at 10:30am US Eastern time, Google and T-Mobile will be in New York City to announce the launch of the first Android handset.Predictably, the blogosphere is buzzing with posts and articles.
I expect, quite honestly, to be a bit underwhelmed by the initial launch… after all, Android is still evolving. We’ll see – the fact that stories are out that Amazon is launching a DRM-free music service along with the Android phone is certainly an interesting dynamic.
Today’s launch aside, the launch of Android is really the next step in the ongoing discussion about what the future of the mobile Internet looks like. Will it be controlled by only the carriers? Or will we as consumers have the freedom and choice to use the apps we want? Android holds out that potential – if the carriers let it be used that way. This morning I recorded a short video on the subject:
If you would like, please do join us on today’s Squawk Box at 11am US Eastern time to discuss what all this means. Undoubtedly I’ll be writing more on this here as will others across the VoIP blogosphere in…
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Skype and SIP interop – the two sides of the issue raised by Michael Robertson
Continue Reading: Skype and SIP interop – the two sides of the issue raised by Michael RobertsonShould Skype open up it’s network to other users? to other networks? Should Skype stop preaching about “openness” when it’s network remains closed?In the middle of last week, there was quite a little storm raised in the VoIP corner of the blogosphere after Andy Abramson published a letter from Gizmo Project founder Michael Robertson critical of Skype’s openness after Skype continued to call upon the FCC to open the wireless network to applications. (See also here and this Skype blog post (and this one) for background.) Being at ITEXPO last week, I didn’t have the chance to blog about this at the length I felt it deserved until today.
First, for some context, here are some of the blog posts last week:
- Andy in VoIPWatch: Gizmo Project’s Michael Robertson Sounds Off
- Phil Wolff asks some pointed questions (of Michael) at Skype Journal: Michael Robertson says Skype should open to Gizmo Project
- Phil posts: Michael Robertson Responds where Michael responds to Phil’s questions
- Andy responds: For the Record, Gizmo vs. Skype
- Alec Saunders had a whole cast of characters on Friday’s SquawkBox, including Andy, Michael Robertson, Jim Courtney (Skype Journal) and a good number of others.
- Phil posts: A few…
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Skype’s 5 years of disruption… (Happy Birthday, Skype!)
Continue Reading: Skype’s 5 years of disruption… (Happy Birthday, Skype!)Five years ago today, the first public beta of Skype launched, and in a blog post today new Skype CEO Josh Silverman celebrates with “Five Years of Wow“. It’s a bit of the “Ra-Ra” celebratory kind of post I would expect from a CEO but ends nicely with this:So, as we celebrate the first five years of Skype, let’s raise a toast to the human desire to connect.
Indeed!
Skype has done a great amount to help people easily connect to each other. It’s also caused a heck of a lot of disruption within the telecommunications industry. I use Skype daily (Skype ID: danyork) and it has indeed become a significant part of both my business workflow and personal life.
A PERSONAL REMINDER
I had a personal reminder of that the other day when I wound up in a video chat with one of my closest friends who was my best man at my wedding 12 years ago. Although we have spoken in the intervening years, we had not actually seen each other in probably most of 10 years due to living far apart. He and his wife emailed a group of folks that they now had a Skype…
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Bell Canada: “Users will NEVER need more than 10Mbps to the home”
Continue Reading: Bell Canada: “Users will NEVER need more than 10Mbps to the home”This piece in Canada’s Globe and Mail truly defies belief. Bell Canada is trying to offer some type of justification for why they are slowing down on rolling out fiber to the home. Well, I should say… they are trying to offer some justification other than the fact that they are now $30 billion in debt due to the recent buyout to take the company private. Anyway, along the way, they provide this gem:Mr. Crull said rivals cannot guarantee those high speeds and their service deteriorates depending on traffic volume. Furthermore, he said, the majority of customers have no use for speeds above 10 Mbps.
Wow.Obviously Bell Canada executives missed the memo about people getting more and more of their video across the Internet… and wanting to stream HD video, etc. And maybe they missed the memo about Asian countries that are now delivering 100 Mbps into homes.
And then there’s this little detail of how we are evolving more and more of our services “into the cloud”… and for that we need big, fat, dumb pipes.
I guess the good news is that if you are in Canada and are a Rogers shareholder, odds are pretty good that…
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Want to learn more about Voxeo? Join Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor appearing on Squawk Box conf call tomorrow
Continue Reading: Want to learn more about Voxeo? Join Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor appearing on Squawk Box conf call tomorrowAre you are available tomorrow, Tuesday, August 26th, at 11am US Eastern time? If so, you are invited to join in to Alec Saunders’ daily “Squawk Box” conference call / podcast where Alec will be interviewing Voxeo CEO Jonathan Taylor about all the recent news about Voxeo, including:- Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion
- Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support
- Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies
- Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine
The call will take place using Alec’s company Iotum’s “Calliflower” conferencing/collaboration application. To join in to the call, you simply need to go to either of the following links to “join” the call and receive a PIN and call-in number for the call:
- Calliflower Facebook application – If you are a Facebook user, simply go to:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/calliflower/conf/show/37402
You will be prompted to add the Calliflower Facebook application and then will receive the call-in information.
- Calliflower.com site – If you are not a Facebook user or just don’t want to add another Facebook application, you can go to the Calliflower.com site at this URL:
http://apps.calliflower.com/conf/show/37402
You will be prompted to create a free Calliflower.com user account if you have…
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An extraordinary week for Voxeo…
Continue Reading: An extraordinary week for Voxeo…Last week was a truly extraordinary week for my employer, Voxeo. Here’s a bit of what went on:Voxeo announced record growth and global expansion – In these economic times, it’s incredible to be part of a company putting out information like this.
Voxeo announced a new product release with new SIP APIs, Mac OS X and Linux support – To our knowledge, this is first commercial telephony voice application platform to be available on Mac OS X (as well as Linux and Windows). While our customers might not deploy production servers on Mac OS X, this means that their developers using Macs can now even more easily run our application server. Additionally, we’ve developed some new graphical management interfaces that are pretty incredible (and useful, too).
Voxeo acquired Micromethod Technologies – With this acquisition of a company based in Beijing and San Jose, we’ve added a strong SIP Servlet (JSR 116/289) platform into our portfolio and we’ve already started integrating that into our core platform. Developers will now have even more ways to build VoIP applications on top of our platform.
Voxeo named 2008 Market Leader by Speech Technology Magazine – We received an award at SpeechTEK last week…