Archive for April, 2006
Note: This is the second in a series of articles discussing business VoIP decisions.
Voice over IP (VoIP) service can be extremely demanding on your company’s network. If you network designers had foresight and installed significant excess capacity, making the switch to a business VoIP solution will be easy. But it already takes you five minutes to download an e-mail, VoIP is probably not for you.
VoIP service places heavy demands on your network infrastructure. High quality voice conversations require the transmission and receipt of large volumes of Internet traffic. If your company has a dozen salespeople working the phones most of the day, this is going to be a major tax on your network.
Unlike other Internet applications, such as data transfer or Web browsing, VoIP traffic is live, extremely time sensitive and unforgiving. Minor packet loss and retransmission is unlikely to cause much disruption in most business applications, however it can have severely negative affects on VoIP phone call quality.
When considering a business VoIP solution, ask the following questions:
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Is there sufficient free capacity on our Internet connection?
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What is the status of the network infrastructure inside the firm: capacity and capabilities of routers, switches, cabling to and from computers (both the rated capacity and condition of the cables - cables degrade over time)?
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Are there high-throughput demanding applications being run on the network currently?
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At times when there is heavy VoIP service traffic, are there any mission-critical Internet applications that will be affected?
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Can the IT staff support a VoIP system?
When you’re in this stage of the process of considering a business VoIP solution, start out by taking a full inventory of your network, then rate it against the questions above. You may find some areas of your network that need work even if you don’t make the switch to VoIP service.
A new phishing scheme using VoIP service has been uncovered. Typical of bank phishing scheme, mass e-mails are sent out telling people that they have to contact their bank about some issue regarding their account.
The VoIP service twist here is that instead of providing a link to a phony Web site, the e-mails provide a phone number that goes to a VoIP phone service. If people call it it sounds just like their bank’s automated voicemail system and collects account information. VoIP phone numbers are much more difficult to trace and can easily be set up from abroad, meaning scamsters have lower odds of being caught.
Consumers are advised to only call the number printed on the back of their credit, ATM or debit cards.
Seems like VoIP service providers are going to be stuck in this export-restriction game that we played out a while back with Phil Zimmermann and company. Trying to prevent the export of software that can be downloaded by anyone on the Internet seems futile:
WASHINGTON–After spending the last decade denouncing Cold War-era laws against overseas shipments of data-scrambling encryption products, technology firms thought they were off the hook when President Clinton finally eased the rules in 1999.
Well, not quite. The White House’s decision seven years ago merely relaxed encryption rules in a few areas–and thousands of pages of export regulations remain on the law books today.
Now some of these obscure export regulations are troubling companies that manufacture or support voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products capable of draping a theoretically impenetrable cloak of encryption around every conversation.
During a meeting convened by the U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday, industry members of a federal technical committee expressed concern that export regulations never intended to cover VoIP may complicate selling enterprise-grade network gear abroad.
At issue is an awkwardly worded definition buried deep in section 740 of the export control regulations. It restricts the export of products that can support "concurrent encrypted data tunnels or channels exceeding 250" connections at once.
Michael Angelo, a committee member who works for network management firm NetIQ, said 250 conversations is an unreasonably low threshold given the capacity of modern networking gear. It’s "a very small number," he said.
As large corporations switch to VoIP to trim costs, manufacturers have begun to offer products that can handle thousands of simultaneous users. Cisco Systems’ Unified CallManager, for instance, is software that works with the company’s hardware products to handle up to 30,000 individual users per server cluster.
One open question is whether the federal government’s definition of "concurrent encrypted data tunnels" would apply to software products like Cisco’s CallManager as well as hardware. Erik Oliver, a Commerce committee member from chipmaker Rambus, said he thought the regulations were meant to apply to routers and switches, not to CallManager.
Sunday, April 30th, 2006 | Posted in Vonage | 1 Comment »
Interesting article from the UK on Vonage’s mobile VoIP service offering:
You’ve gotten rid of the wire that connects your phone to the world. Perhaps you’re also paying a flat monthly fee for unlimited VoIP calls from your home or office. Now, if a move by Vonage UK becomes popular, you’ll be able to make unlimited calls from your mobile phone as well.
U.S.-based Internet-phone company Vonage announced Wednesday that it is teaming up with The Cloud, a provider of wireless broadband, to offer a mobile-phone service that will rely on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to let users make calls through Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK.
According to Vonage, there will be no cumbersome log-on to connect through a VoIP hotspot. Users near a hotspot will simply make their calls. But if those using the service move outside a hotspot’s range, the call will be cut off and the user will have to revert to a conventional cellular network to make and receive calls — complete with traditional per-minute rates.
Bringing It Together
The service is expected to begin in May in the UK. "This kind of service will probably not be available to American consumers until the first half of 2007," said Leif-Olof Wallin, an analyst at Gartner, "when there will be more cell phones with dual-mode [capabilities], such as GSM/Wi-Fi or CDMA/Wi-Fi."
GSM and CDMA are standards used by conventional mobile-phone networks, while Wi-Fi is the most popular wireless standard for accessing the Internet from home or through coffeehouse networks. Dual-mode phones will allow users to move between VoIP and conventional mobile-phone networks without changing handsets.
In late 2005, Hurricane Wilma placed S&H Solutions in a difficult business operating situation. The S&H Solutions corporate headquarters building, in Delray Beach, Florida, was temporarily condemned. The building had experienced extensive water-damage and other hurricane-induced issues. To ensure minimal risk of losing expensive technology and resources, S&H Solutions had to temporarily relocate business to a new building location.
As the 2006 Hurricane Season approaches (beginning June 1st, 2006), S&H Solutions has spent the last several months preparing its operations in order that weather events do not compromise daily operations. One critical business service, sometimes overlooked in business operations, is telephone services. When faced with any abrupt and unplanned relocation or temporary offsite operations move, it is necessary to find the quickest, most cost-effective way to restore or temporarily move telephone service.
As S&H Solutions had learned from last year’s hurricane season, changes in landline phone service — including the ability to provide temporary services — can be cumbersome, slow, and inflexible when switching hundreds of corporate numbers. S&H Solutions is now well prepared for extreme conditions. After surveying its provider options, S&H Solutions has selected TelCove to provide VoIP phone services. "TelCove was local, flexible, and very enthusiastic about helping us. They are able to provide a variety of temporary service supports, as well as providing us with immediate VoIP service. This is exactly what we need," stated Steve Ritacco, CTO, S&H Solutions.
Mr. Ritacco continued, "S&H Solutions’ TelCove VoIP phone service has also added flexibility and has reduced unnecessary internal costs and complications. In fact, when the need arose for additional redundant high speed connectivity, S&H Solutions again chose TelCove. As new connectivity needs arise, S&H now considers TelCove a preferred provider."
Press release
Jeff Pulver is running a "Save the Net" campaign in support of Internet neutrality legislation. Here’s a snippet:
But, where is the voice and message of the Internet community — the Internet innovators, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts — in this world-changing discussion? We are primarily sitting out the battle, or perhaps comfortably blogging and Monday-morning quarterbacking on the sidelines. Sure, we’ll be able to point to our blogs and do a big "I-told-you-so" if the rules ultimately prove to undermine the promise of the Internet. But, we will not be justified in our criticism if we don’t at least try to affect a positive result.
Rules have to be written to enable us. If we do not participate in the debate, if we do not transform the messaging, the rules will not be written with our best interests at heart. And, frankly, we will have no one to blame but ourselves. We have to take over the messaging, both within the corridors of power and within the public zeitgeist.
We’ve previously posted about Congress’s cool response to net neutrality, so if you’re a creative type, submit an entry into the contest!
Here is an interesting case study on a business VoIP implementation that allows for secure communication between offices around the world.
Burt Hill’s 500 employees are spread out among seven North American and international locations. Its architects and customer-support teams work at building sites and client premises frequently, but need to be able to access all data and communicate easily and quickly with colleagues and partners.
While many companies are moving to VoIP as a replacement for traditional phone systems within the enterprise, Burt Hill has deployed VoIP for communication both inside and outside the firewall. The company saw this as another way to leverage its SSL VPN solution. Using the VoIP solution with the SSL VPN gives employees a “virtual secure office” for all data and voice applications.
“Our ultimate vision as a company is to create one contiguous organization and share resources fluidly across the entire organization, irrespective of location or geography, which required strong standards and communication capabilities,” said Mark Dietrick, Burt Hill CIO, in the Communication News article.
The worldwide mobile phone market showed continued strength in the first quarter of 2006 with total shipments of 226.7 million units, representing 26.0% growth over the same quarter in 2005, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Although the market experienced a sequential decline of 7.3% when compared to the record fourth quarter of 2005, much of this was due to expected seasonality.
"The year-over-year increase indicates that consumer demand in mature markets is still high enough to drive replacement handset purchases. At the same time, continued growth in developing markets around the world is being fueled by both new subscriptions and replacement purchases," said Ramon Llamas, research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Markets group. "The fact that the market is starting the year above the two hundred million unit mark in the historically slower first quarter is a good indicator of where the market may be by the end of the year. It also gives vendors some early indications of consumer preferences, which will need to be translated into feature sets and form factors."
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 | Posted in VoIP News | 1 Comment »
Visit Business Week for a chart that goes along with this:
Internet-based calling is set to soar in 2006. As carriers aim to reduce the cost of sending phone calls and subscribers aim for lower phone bills, the number of people subscribing to Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, services will almost double this year, to 47.3 million, according to consultancy Infonetics.
Oracle becomes the latest major corporation to try to get into the business VoIP market, announcing today a "roadmap" for a telecommunications "service delivery platform" (SDP).
The new Oracle(r) SDP is being designed to enable communication service providers, network operators and system integrators to evolve current silo-based network investments into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and shrink the time and cost to deploy new voice data and integrated multimedia services on existing and next-generation communication Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Enterprises are expected to be able to extend their communication infrastructures with the Oracle SDP, providing a strong foundation for new Voice-over-IP (VoIP), mobile, and real-time applications.
The Oracle SDP plans to embrace the convergence of IT and network technologies to deliver a scalable platform with carrier-grade reliability, real-time performance, connectivity to traditional and next-generation IP-based networks and interfaces to operational and business support systems (OSS/BSS).
"IT-standards-based service delivery platforms offer compelling value to operators as the basis for developing interactive, media-rich, next generation data services," said Philip Marshall, director of Wireless/Mobile Technologies, Yankee Group. "Service delivery platforms that enable immediate ROI through out-of-the-box services and integration with OSS/BSS systems through standard interfaces are likely to be particularly compelling. Vendors who are able to provide a broad portfolio of products that are stable, mature and carrier-grade will have a definite edge over the competition."
