Category: VoIP
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T-Mobile Rolling Out HD Voice (Wideband) In US Mobile Network
Continue Reading: T-Mobile Rolling Out HD Voice (Wideband) In US Mobile NetworkMarking a huge step toward moving beyond the limitations of the legacy phone networks, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Las Vegas T-Mobile announced that HD Voice is now available nationwide on its US network. This will give people the richer, fuller voice experience similar to what many of us have gotten used to experiencing while making Skype calls.There is, of course, the caveat that HD voice (also called “wideband audio”) is only available using specific smartphones:
To experience HD Voice, both parties on the call must use capable T-Mobile 4G smartphones such as the HTC One™ S, Nokia Astound and Samsung Galaxy S® III
TheNextWeb also suggests that the iPhone 5 should support HD Voice when T-Mobile makes it available on their network sometime this year.
Over on AnandTech, Brian Klug dives into a bit more detail about T-Mobile’s HD Voice, specifically naming the AMR-WB codec, and relays some of his own testing that confirmed that it is live now.
This is an excellent step forward, even with the caveat that it only works on T-Mobile’s 4G network and only with specific smartphones. As more and more people get used to the richer and better…
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Facebook Rolls Out VoIP In Canada on iOS!
Continue Reading: Facebook Rolls Out VoIP In Canada on iOS!Today, Facebook apparently began testing of true voice-over-IP (VoIP) calling from its iOS app for all Facebook users in Canada. If you have an iPhone and are in Canada, you can update to the latest version of the Facebook Messenger app and start making free phone calls to your friends on Facebook. Two articles have more details:- The Verge: Facebook tests free voice calling in Messenger app
- iPhone Hacks: Facebook Testing Messenger-Based VoIP in Canada (And it’s Amazing)
I was alerted to this by (appropriately) a Facebook post from Tris Hussey, author of the iPhone Hacks article.
Since I’m not in Canada, I can’t test it myself… an update to the Messenger app for me will only get me the ability to leave “voice notes”. But I’m looking forward to learning more from my friends in Canada.
If this rolls out to users outside of Canada, this has the potential to be huge and a major disruption to telecom. Yes, there is Skype on mobile phones, and a dozen other apps like Viber and Voxer, but…
… Facebook has the directory and the eyeballs!
You have your friend connections already in Facebook. Plus, people are already spending a significant amount…
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The Fascinating Interest in Using Google Voice With SIP Addresses
Continue Reading: The Fascinating Interest in Using Google Voice With SIP AddressesWhy are so many people interested in using Google Voice with SIP? Is this a sign that people really want to use SIP-based services for VoIP? Is this all hobbyists or people looking to play around with Google Voice? Or is it people trying to solve real interconnection issues? What are people trying to do with Google Voice and SIP?All these questions came to my mind today when I dipped into Google Analytics and noticed that for the month to date in November 2012, my old (March 2011) post about Google Voice and SIP addresses continues to receive a large amount of traffic:
Slightly over 3,000 pageviews in the first 13 days of November – and if I go back a bit I see over 71,000 pageviews since January 1, 2012. In fact, it’s had about 232K pageviews since I wrote it over 1.5 years ago, and has accounted for almost 25% of all traffic to this site in that time.
And this particular article was just one in a series of articles I wound up writing about Google Voice and SIP as we all collectively tried to figure out what was going on.
Digging into the traffic sources…
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Today’s VUC Call – Setting Up A Cellular Network In The Desert For Burning Man
Continue Reading: Today’s VUC Call – Setting Up A Cellular Network In The Desert For Burning ManToday’s VoIP Users Conference (VUC) call at 12:00 noon US Eastern should be quite an interesting one. Tim Panton from Voxeo Labs and Tropo will be joining the call to talk about his experience setting up a mobile network in the middle of the desert for this year’s Burning Man event.Tim recently described the experience in a guest post at TechCrunch: “What We Learned Running A Mobile Network At Burning Man” and on the VUC call will talk more about what he did. The FAQ from the Papa Legba camp at Burning Man makes for quite an interesting read. I’m looking forward to hearing more from Tim… and the call is open for anyone to join in.
You can join the live call via SIP, Skype or the regular old PSTN. There is also an IRC backchannel that gets heavy usage during the call. It will be recorded so you can always listen later.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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Slides: How The Hidden Secret of TCP/IP Affects Real-time Communications
Continue Reading: Slides: How The Hidden Secret of TCP/IP Affects Real-time CommunicationsRecently at Voip2day + ElastixWorld in Madrid 2012, Olle E Johansson gave a great presentation outlining where we are at with telecom and VoIP in 2012 – and where we need to go! Olle is a long-time, passionate and tireless advocate for the open Internet, IPv6, SIP and standards and interoperability. I’ve known Olle for years via Asterisk-related issues, via the VUC calls and via work on SIP over IPv6.This presentation (slides available) really hits a number of key points about where we are at now:
The secret of TCP/IP and how it affects your PBX from Olle E Johansson
In particular I was struck by his slides 24-28 that strike the same theme I’ve been writing about across multiple blogs, namely the way we are reversing the “open Internet” trend and retreating back inside walled gardens of messaging:
He goes on to walk through what happened with SIP and how the protocol evolved – and evolved away from interoperability. His conclusion is that we as customers need to take back control, avoid vendor lock-in and demand interoperability.
He also points people over to his “SIP…
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Video: What Is WebRTC/RTCWeb All About? How Does WebRTC Work?
Continue Reading: Video: What Is WebRTC/RTCWeb All About? How Does WebRTC Work?Do you want to understand what WebRTC / RTCWEB is all about and why so many people are passionate about its potential for extending real-time communications (voice, video, chat, data-sharing, etc.) into web browsers?I recently wrote about some of the larger issues of how WebRTC will disrupt telecom, but in this video, “RTCWeb Explained“, Cullen Jennings, one of the co-chairs of the IETF’s RTCWEB working group, dives down into the technical details to explain how it all works and what the various different components of of the solution are. I particularly like how Cullen covered some areas like “identity” that I haven’t seen stressed as much in other pieces about WebRTC. The video comes in at about 39 minutes and is well worth viewing:
For more information, I’ve put together a page about the broader WebRTC / RTCWEB initiative with links to relevant resources.
If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:
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How WebRTC Will Fundamentally Disrupt Telecom (And Change The Internet)
Continue Reading: How WebRTC Will Fundamentally Disrupt Telecom (And Change The Internet)If we step back to before 1993, publishing and finding content on the Internet was a somewhat obscure, geeky thing that a very few people cared about and very few knew how to do. It involved gopher servers, ftp sites, archie, veronica, WAIS, USENET newsgroups, etc., and this "World-Wide Web" service primarily demonstrated via the server at info.cern.ch. It was an amazing period of time for those of us who were there, but the number of users was quite small.
Then NCSA released Mosaic in 1993 … and suddenly everything changed.
Anyone could create a web page that "regular" people could see on their computers. Anyone could download Mosaic and use it. Anyone could share their sites with the installation of server software.
The Web was truly born into public consciousness… the creation of Web-based content was democratized so that anyone could do it… the creativity of developers was unleashed… a zillion new business models were thought of… and the Internet fundamentally changed.
Fast-forward to today…
… and the "Web" is still predominantly a document-based system. You make HTTP queries to retrieve pages and send HTML and XML documents back and forth between web…
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Today’s VUC Call All About The “FreeSWITCH Cookbook” – Noon US Eastern
Continue Reading: Today’s VUC Call All About The “FreeSWITCH Cookbook” – Noon US EasternToday at noon US Eastern on the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) Call for Friday, April 27th, the group will discuss the brand new “FreeSWITCH Cookbook“[1] published by PACKT Publishing. The four authors of the book, who are also leaders of the FreeSWITCH project, will apparently be joining the call.
While Asterisk generally gets most of the “open source VoIP” buzz, the folks at the FreeSWITCH project have been working away on their own solution. As they will say, FreeSWITCH performs a different role than Asterisk and is used in different contexts.
FreeSWITCH has become quite a powerful platform and I’m looking forward to learning more about what is going on with the project right now.
You can join the live call via SIP, Skype or the regular old PSTN. There is also an IRC backchannel that gets heavy usage during the call. It will be recorded so you can always listen later.
As noted on the VUC page for today’s call, the show will also be simulcast in video using Google+ video and YouTube. If you are interested in joining the video side of the call, please follow the instructions on…
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WebRTC (real-time VoIP in web browsers) On April 13th VUC Call – Join In!
Continue Reading: WebRTC (real-time VoIP in web browsers) On April 13th VUC Call – Join In!Want to learn about how voice and video calls will take place right in your web browser? WITHOUT a Flash or Java plugin?
The “WebRTC” initiative is making this a reality through efforts of the major browser vendors, VoIP industry companies and standards working groups within both the IETF and W3C. On the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) Call on Friday, April 13th, the group will have a discussion of what exactly is happening with WebRTC… and then some live demos from the Voxeo Labs and Phono teams who have been working on this topic for some time now.
This is, to me, an incredibly important area of work as we have the opportunity to really bake real-time communications (RTC) into the fabric of the tools we use every day to work with the Internet.
I’m looking forward to the VUC call (“tomorrow” as I write this, but probably “today” when most of you read it) and would encourage you to join in to listen and/or participate in the conversation.
You can join the live call via SIP, Skype or the regular old PSTN. There is also an IRC backchannel that gets heavy usage during the call.…
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Are They Crazy? Digium Enters The Phone Game With Asterisk IP Phones
Continue Reading: Are They Crazy? Digium Enters The Phone Game With Asterisk IP PhonesWhen I first saw the news today, my immediate reaction was:Seriously? Digium is coming out with phones???
In a rather fascinating move in an already extremely crowded market, Digium announced today that they will be producing “Digium Phones“, a new line of IP phones specifically targeted at users of Asterisk and Switchvox (both Digium products). They tout among the benefits:- Crystal clear HD Voice
- Simple setup and installation
- Tightest integration with Asterisk
- Built-in & custom applications
- A built-in “app engine” JavaScript API
There will be three models available:
- D40—An entry-level HD IP phone with 2-line keys. Priced at $149.
- D50—A mid-level HD IP phone with 4-line keys and 10 quick dial/BLF keys with paper labels. Priced at $179.
- D70—An executive-level HD IP phone with 6-line keys and 10 quick dial/BLF keys on an additional LCD screen. Priced at $279
The news release indicates they will be available in April and are currently on display at ITEXPO this week down in Miami. A datasheet is available
Application Platform
What is perhaps most interesting to me is the “app engine” included in the phone. From the news release:
Digium phones include an app engine with a simple yet powerful JavaScript API…