Archive for October, 2006
InformationWeek has an article on Jahjah, a company that offers low cost calling services, but without connecting through a user’s computer, like VoIP service. Users enter the number they want to call in a box on Jahjah’s Web site and their phone starts ringing. When they pick up, the other end is already ringing to the number they want to call.
The firm’s rates range from free (for calls to other members) to 2.5 cents per minute for US, Japan and Western Europe, and also the latter rate for conference calls.
InfoWeek says:
Phone companies are losing about 2% of their customers every quarter to mobile carriers and VoIP providers like Skype
.
That 2% stat is probably the most interesting part of the article.
Consider Jajah the un-Skype, because unlike that service or Vonage
, its customers don’t need a Net-connected phone or headset to use its VoIP service. … Jajah’s on pace to surpass a million users by the end of the year, and Scharf hopes it will become everybody’s "second phone company."
Nothing new here, really. Calling cards offering cheap rates from phone providers who route the calls over the Internet have been around for a decade now. Jahjah’s million user mark is interesting, however. Though one must always consider how active those users are.
Definitely one of the more sleek VoIP handsets - it looks just like an iPod Nano. And since it uses almost the same name, one has to think that Apple will be knocking on their door soon.
- USB 2.0 support , Support Skype, MSN, Easy to use like mobile phone
- 16 bit USB sound card inside, no USB driver needed for Win XP/ MCE
- Hand free talking function, LCD display (Multi-language display)
- Keypad driver for Windows operation system
- Echo cancellation, noise reduction, full duplex communication
- Adjustable volume for handset talking, Ultra slim and Human design
- PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone operation
Photos: http://www.amexdigital.com/Press_Release-E_IT-N501.htm
"Wireless world" seems to be a misnomer here, it seems they’re talking more about the Internet-connected world instead:
Canada’s spies risk going "deaf and blind" from the explosion of new wireless and other Internet advances that make it increasingly difficult to intercept terrorist communications, the country’s spymaster warned Friday.
The fast pace of technological advancement, particularly in telecommunications, is harming the ability of national security agents and police to conduct court-approved electronic eavesdropping on suspected terrorists, said Jim Judd, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
"We increasingly risk going deaf and blind in an environment where telecommunication providers regularly change their systems in the interests of improving service but in the process can literally leave us out of the loop on intercepts," he told a Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies conference in Ottawa.
Judd said the situation will only worsen with the availability of more and more wireless Internet access and Internet-driven phone systems (Voice-over Internet Protocol or VoIP), which are increasingly popular with terrorists who believe those transmissions are more technically difficult to tap.
The creators of VoIP service provider Skype and peer-to-peer service Kazaa are set to announce their "Venice Project" - a video over Internet protocol venture. Details are still unclear:
Codenamed ‘The Venice Project,’ it is claimed to combine the best things about television with the social power of the internet.
Fredrik de Wahl, the chief executive of The Venice Project, is among the keynote speakers at the Future of Television Forum in New York. He will give the first exclusive presentation of the project at the conference.
The Venice Project has been developed in stealth mode and is currently in a limited beta test. The team says it will redefine the way people think about television, but states that it is not a file-sharing application or a video download service.
The main backers of the project are Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who were both responsible for the Kazaa file-sharing system and the Skype peer-to-peer phone network.
Janus Friis has said that they are creating a streaming peer-to-peer platform for television. It is understood to be a video streaming layer built on top of the global index technology that provides the foundation for Skype.
Here’s an in-depth review of the Netgear SPH101
Skype WiFI VoIP Phone from TechWorld:
- Smooth design
- Short battery life, can’t be used at hotspots, expensive, log-in not persistent
- It’s a well-made package, but given the cost of this handset and Skype’s not-specially competitive position in Internet telephony, we can’t imagine this appealing to anyone but a gadget freak.
Full review
These folks argue that "net neutrality" regulations aren’t necessary to have a free and competitive Internet:
If you doubt the effectiveness of simple slogans, the current debate over “net neutrality” should change your mind. As the heat of the rhetoric rises, the quality of the information has declined.
On examination, however, one truth is clear: While both sides are prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, net neutrality enthusiasts are also just plain wrong. And the error is dangerous. If the net neutrality proponents prevail, it is less likely the phone and cable companies that operate most of the Internet pipes will have sufficient economic incentives to build needed new capacity.
Net neutrality enthusiasts believe that if Internet service providers (ISPs) are allowed to charge content providers like Google and CNN.com, the ISPs will block Web sites for their own private gain, thus crippling the Internet. Those opposing net neutrality assert the opposite: that pricing freedom is the key to Internet innovation and deployment of the expanded networks needed to handle rapidly growing Internet traffic.
The fact is pricing freedom is a key to the success of the Internet. And existing government oversight, including antitrust authority, is sufficient to rein in any potential anti-competitive behavior in those unlikely circumstances where market forces fail.
Dialing Elsewhere For Dollars:
Telecom stocks sizzled over the summer, even as the overall stock market hit a rough patch.
But don’t be fooled by the relative good fortune. The competitive landscape for most phone companies still looks scary.
Prices are still falling for plain-old voice services. Phone companies have slashed fees for speedy Internet access.
And revenue growth in the wireless market — one of the few bright spots — has started to slow.
So why did investors snap up telecom shares this summer? Mainly to cloister themselves in the safe haven of defensive stocks.
Phone companies big and small pay attractive dividends. Their hefty free cash flow has fueled stock buybacks.
"This is a cash-flow generating industry," said Todd Rosenbluth, analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
To sustain that cash flow, phone companies are cutting costs. They’re also trying to stem the loss of residential customers to wireless and cable TV rivals.
Discusses AT&T, Verizon 
, BellSouth, Qwest, and VoIP providers like Vonage , SunRocket
, CableVision and Comcast.
Saturday, October 21st, 2006 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | 2 Comments »
Barablu, the free calls community, demonstrated the world’s first free calls between several Symbian Series 60 based Nokia GSM mobiles and Microsoft Windows Mobile based GSM mobiles. Barablu’s announcement extends VoIP interoperability to two of the largest and fastest growing categories of Wi-Fi enabled mobiles. Using its small footprint download, Barablu also enables IM sessions, video calls and conference calling all for free within the Barablu community.
Any Barablu enabled device (PC, PDA or Mobile) can also be used to make Barablu Out calls outside of the Barablu network at rates competitive to Skype.
The company believes that the benefits of interoperability, mobility and presence awareness will drive greater traffic to the network that first offers it as a complete package. The combination of free mobile-to-mobile cross-platform calls, free chat, and a unique PC-to-mobile instant messaging service, delivers Barablu a substantial competitive advantage. Barablu plans to drive growth by strategically linking with Wi-Fi network providers, manufacturers, mobile operators and PC and IP phone[1] manufacturers to offer more choice, therefore appealing to the widest audience.
Barablu CEO, Pascal Isbell, says "Millions of people globally now benefit from free PC-to-PC calls via VoIP. Now they want to add mobility to this facility. Barablu is the first company to provide consumers with this technology interoperably in the mobile arena by offering free mobile-to-mobile cross-platform calls, utilising VoIP, via a Wi-FI standard."
The Philippine National Telecommunications Commission has approved two more VoIP service providers to sell IP phone services in the Philippines: BC Net, Inc. and Broadband2Go Communications. The licenses are valid until October, 2007.
Thursday, October 19th, 2006 | Posted in VoIP News | 5 Comments »
While Internet phones were already illegal in many states in the Persian Gulf, with Bahrain being the notable exception, things are going from bad to worse in that region of the world.
Starting this summer, the United Arab Emirates began blocking VoIP phone traffic, arguing that companies such as Skype weren’t licensed to sell phone service.
To many, this appears to be an attempt to improve the bottom line at Etisalat, the regulatory organization and principal telecom provider in the Emirates. So far, revenues appear to be up by 30% - so the ban seems to be working. Rather than paying about US 2 cents per minute for calls using Skype, Etisalat charges as much as 75 cents per minute for calls to the US.
Also this week, Iran has banned broadband Internet access, limiting users to 128kbs speeds maximum. This is seen as the next step in an attempt to clamp down on the influence of foreign culture in Iran, as well as to decrease people’s ability to communicate both inside and outside of the country.
While these two cases have different root causes - profit in one case, public control in the other - they are both worrisome trends in a part of the world that was already too closed off in the first place.
For more on the specific cases: UAE, Iran
