Category: VoIP
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Wire Launches WebRTC Voice/Chat Web App For Windows, Linux, more – Includes High TLS Security
Continue Reading: Wire Launches WebRTC Voice/Chat Web App For Windows, Linux, more – Includes High TLS SecurityYesterday the team over at Wire launched a new WebRTC-based “Wire for Web” app that lets people on Windows, Linux or any other platform now communicate with people using Wire on iOS, Android or OS X. You can get to it simply at:https://app.wire.com/
If you already have an account you simply sign in with your credentials. If you don’t have an account you can easily create one.I’ve been running both the native Mac OS X client and the web client for a bit now (I was part of web beta program for Wire) and it is truly amazing how well the team has made the web experience to be seamless between the web and native client. Here’s a screenshot showing both side by side (click/tap for a larger image):
In the web view on the right you have the browser bars at the top and one of the images did not go the full width of the column, but otherwise the experience and visual display has been essentially identical between the two platforms. The synchronization between the two is nearly instantaneous and all the features work really, really well.
Notifications in the web browser (if you allow…
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WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!
Continue Reading: WhatsApp Calling Arrives on iOS – More Telecom Disruption Ahead!As I checked my AppStore updates on my iPhone this week I was surprised but pleased to see that WhatsApp now includes “WhatsApp Calling”. As it says:“Call your friends and family using WhatsApp for free, even if they’re in another country. WhatsApp calls use your phone’s Internet connection rather than your cellular plan’s voice minutes. Data charges may apply.
How many ways can you spell “disruption”?
(Hint: w – h – a – t – s – a – p – p)Sure, there have been a zillion mobile apps providing Over-The-Top (OTT) voice services, many of which I’ve written about here on this site.
But this is WhatsApp!
This is the application that just passed 800 million monthly active users! (Techmeme link) With projections to hit 1 billion monthly active users by the end of the year.
Oh, and it’s owned by Facebook! 🙂
Now, I personally don’t use WhatsApp that much right now. The people who I want to message are primarily using iMessage, Facebook Messenger or Wire. (And every once in a great while I’ll fire up Skype on my iPhone.)
But obviously there are 800 million people who do use WhatsApp each month… and…
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Congrats to the Jitsi Team On Their Acquistion By Atlassian
Continue Reading: Congrats to the Jitsi Team On Their Acquistion By AtlassianCongratulations to Emil Ivov and the whole team behind Jitsi for their acquisition by Atlassian! As they say on the Jitsi news page:
The Jitsi Community just got a lot stronger! BlueJimp, founder of Jitsi, is now part of Atlasssian! The plan is to keep Jitsi at the cutting edge of innovation by keeping it open and in the hands of those who created it in the first place: the open source community.
The news is outlined in an article on TechCrunch and explained in more detail in a HipChat blog post.
To be clear, Atlassian is acquiring the company BlueJimp that employed the founders of Jitsi, but in the process they are also effectively getting the open source Jitsi project. It’s great to read in their blog post, though, that they intend to continue to support and invest in the project.
I’ve been a big fan of Jitsi for quite some time as it was one of the earliest VoIP clients to support both IPv6 and DNSSEC. I wrote about this support both here and also over on the Deploy360 blog and recorded this video interview with Emil Ivov:
Previously I’d also written about Jitsi’s support for DNSSEC as…
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Jim Courtney Discussing His “Experience Skype To The Max” Book on March 27 on VUC at Noon US EDT
Continue Reading: Jim Courtney Discussing His “Experience Skype To The Max” Book on March 27 on VUC at Noon US EDTWant to learn more about what’s up with Skype right now? Tomorrow, March 27, 2015, at 12 noon US Eastern, my friend Jim Courtney is going to be discussing the new second edition of his “Experience Skype to the Max” on episode 534 of the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) podcast.
As noted on the VUC page, Jim will be talking about:
- New features over the past three years and why they don’t have the “buzz” impact that new features used to have. Are we becoming calloused to anything new?
- The challenge of innovating with a product that has built up a legacy and familiarity
- The challenge of educating users about features beyond free voice and video calling (and it’s also a challenge for smartphones – to make users realize there is value in all those applications available beyond voice calls and SMS messages).
- The feature set to consider when evaluating other alternatives
- The directory issue
- Skype vs Skype for Business
- Asynchronous vs real time comms (migrating to IM backend has allowed more “persistence” with chat messaging, for instance)
- Anytime communications Rooms
It should be a good session. I’ve known Jim for many years through his blogging about VoIP and he…
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Seeing IP Phones In Hotels, Banks, Offices…
Continue Reading: Seeing IP Phones In Hotels, Banks, Offices…“Hey, that’s a Mitel IP phone… I remember when that handset was introduced. It was very different from the previous one but had better ‘shoulderability’ … it created a bit of a stir among customers, though. Hmmm… I wonder what model IP phone that is……”
All of this was running through my head during a routine visit to my bank this morning while waiting at a counter talking to someone. He had to call another office so there I was looking at his desk phone.
It happens to me all the time!
Even though I left Mitel way back in 2007… and really left IP telephony when I left Voxeo in 2011… IP telephony hasn’t left me!
I’ll be at a hotel… and I am checking out their phone system. A bank… an office… Wherever! There’s a Cisco IP phone… there’s an Avaya… there’s a Mitel… a snow… a I-have-no-clue…
I guess it’s just an occupational hazard of having been a product manager for IP phones during my time at Mitel… or maybe just the 6 years I spent there learning about IP telephony… but I just always see the IP phones. 🙂
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Aswath Rao Says I’m Wrong About VoIP In India
Continue Reading: Aswath Rao Says I’m Wrong About VoIP In IndiaAs a follow-up to my post yesterday about how Indian telcos are complaining to the the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) about WhatsApp’s plans to launch VoIP, long-time VoIP blogger Aswath Rao took issue on Twitter with one particular sentence in my article:India has NOT been a very friendly place for VoIP historically, and so we’ll have to see what happens here…
In a series of tweets Aswath pointed out that the TRAI has in fact been very supportive of IP-to-IP VoIP services and has left them unregulated. The regulation has all been around VoIP services interconnecting to the Indian PSTN. Aswath’s tweets: https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548681349344034818
You are mistaken when you say “India has NOT been a very friendly place for VoIP historically”. And I have pted it out many times.
https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548681697227980800From the get go, TRAI has regulated only IP to Indian PSTN. IP/IP & IP to foreign PSTN have been unregulated
https://twitter.com/aswath/status/548687939862290432My point is that TRAI has been very enlightened in its ruling. Even after 11/26 attack & pressure it has not reg IP/IP
Given that Aswath has been very involved in VoIP in India for many years, I’ll defer to his opinion on this one.
Thanks,…
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To No Surprise, Indian Telcos Want to Block WhatsApp OTT VoIP
Continue Reading: To No Surprise, Indian Telcos Want to Block WhatsApp OTT VoIPTo the surprise of absolutely no one, telcos in India are objecting to plans for WhatsApp to launch VoIP and complaining about it to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). So reports The Hindu Business Line that includes this glorious quote from a representative of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI):“Allowing the use of VoIP/ Internet telephony at such massive scale without licensing regime would lead to a significant disruption in the existing business of TSPs and can substantially derail their investment capability”
Gee… allowing a new innovative entrant into the market would lead to “significant disruption in the existing business” of the existing telcos.
Yes. Exactly.
And the representative further pointed out that this could lead to a “significant loss of revenues” for the government in the form of taxes.
Yes. Exactly.
This is the nature of Over-The-Top (OTT) applications and services. In providing better services for customers they very often DO cause “significant disruption” to existing businesses.
This is the nature of innovation.
This is the value of the “permissionless innovation” that has made the Internet the amazing tool for communication, collaboration and creation that it is today.
The folks at WhatsApp don’t need to…
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Congrats to the Wire Team for TNW Apps of The Year Selection
Continue Reading: Congrats to the Wire Team for TNW Apps of The Year SelectionCongratulations to the Wire.com team for having Wire be selected as one of The Next Web’s “Apps of the Year”!TNW’s Napier Lopez talks about how beautiful Wire is and how much it is a platform that he wants to use… and suddenly he is the one asking people to join him.
Many of comments mirror my own opinion of how much I enjoy using the app. It’s just a pleasure to use for communication.
Napier Lopez does, though, hit Wire’s real challenge:
Still, I mentioned earlier that I started using other messaging platforms because my friends made me, and therein lies the crux with Wire, or any new messaging platofrm, really: you need to get users on the platform.
This is indeed the “user directory problem” that I wrote about at great length. And I, too, hope that the Wire team – and we all as Wire users – can find ways to help bring people to the platform.
Meanwhile, congrats to the Wire team for this recognition – and I look forward to seeing what may be coming up next in the app!
P.S. I notice a version 1.2 for iOS just appeared in the AppStore and it…
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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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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…
