Archive for January, 2007
As demonstrated by last year’s (alleged) HP corporate espionage scandal, businesses will go to great lengths to get the edge on their competition. It has even been reported that some foreign governments eavesdrop on business communications (phone calls, e-mails) to give domestic companies an advantage.
Aside from the typical benefits of VoIP, including cost savings and flexibility, business VoIP solutions can also provide extra security for phone calls against eavesdropping. High value targets might be calls between top executives, discussions of confidential sales strategies, mergers and acquisitions, or the development or launch of a new product.
Companies should already be requiring employees to use an encrypted VPN (virtual private network) to gain access to the corporate intranet. For enterprise VoIP or other in-house implementations, this makes VoIP security easy: Internet phone calls that your employees make from the road are already protected at least back to your company’s network. This, of course, assumes that you have a secure VPN service running that uses strong encryption, such as AES.
Smaller companies using a hosted VoIP solution should check with their providers. If the company doesn’t have any offers, an add-on such as Phil Zimmermann’s zFone might be useful.
While some argue that Skype 
is a good option because it makes use of encryption, others argue that the encryption is used to protect Skype secrets (it’s not open source) and allow it to pass through filters more easily. Without a professional, independent evaluation of the security features, while Skype offers a good VoIP product, we cannot assume anything about its security.
And don’t forget that phone calls are just one part of the equation. Physical security, shredding documents before discarding them, etc., are as important as ever.
And there are plenty of stories of airline passengers being lucky enough to sit next to a competitor on the way to a sales presentation - a competitor who works with confidential sales materials in plain sight. Listening to Internet phone calls seems like a lot of hassle when presented with this kind of gift!
Post your VoIP security questions below and we’ll answer them in a future story.
Om Malik got the scoop on innovative telephony service provider TalkPlus’ new offering - ShadowNumber. Basically it allows you to add a second line or alter (aka spoof) caller ID on your mobile phone, largely aimed at the "adult" market. Here’s the take at GigaOm:
Despite their self-claimed value propositions, most if not all VoIP start-ups face an uphill battle in terms of mass scale adoption. The desire for anonymity, especially when indulging in naughty activities, might be actually be their savior.
There are many reasons why people might want to keep romantic liaisons anonymous, from the simple (you’re just flirting) to the more complex (use your imagination). There is also a measure of safety in anonyminity, and the desire to keep potential stalkers at a hidden-number distance might well be an attractive service.
It appears that the choice of caller ID numbers available will be limited on this offering; we have previously discussed some of the caller ID spoofing security implications with services that do not limit what can be spoofed.
As reported by Light Reading, IP PBX firm Avaya (NYSE: AV) has made a US$144.8 million cash offer for SIP applications server firm Ubiquity (London: UBQ):
Avaya needs the support of 90 percent of Ubiquity’s shareholders and currently has about 58 percent. It expects the deal to close in about three weeks’ time.
Should the takeover bid be successful, Avaya, which provides IP telephony systems to enterprise users, would land itself a company with a tried and tested SIP services platform, along with extensive telecom partnerships and some some high-profile carrier customers, including BT Group plc (NYSE: BT) and BCE Inc. (Bell Canada) (NYSE/Toronto: BCE).
And with SIP application servers being a critical element in carrier IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)architectures, it would also give Avaya a foothold in one of telecom’s hottest, and most contentious, markets.
According to a new report from technology research firm In-Stat, hosted VoIP service for small businesses (20 to 50 lines) will continue strong growth, with a market size reaching US$2 billion by 2010. Analyst David Lemelin says that small businesses seeking the benefits of VoIP, but that don’t have the capital or technical expertise are find hosted VoIP to be a good solution.
In-Stat predicts 3 million US hosted VoIP "seats" by 2010, citing cost savings as a major factor in the decision, as well as flexibility for multi-location businesses.
BT today announced it had gained more than one million registered consumer customers for its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, BT Broadband Talk and BT Softphone, representing more than a third of BT’s consumer broadband base.
BT has reached this key milestone more than six months earlier than projected, having set out in July 2006 a target of achieving a million VoIP customers within twelve months.
Gavin Patterson, managing director of consumer at BT Retail, welcomed the news: “We now have more than a million customer accounts for our VoIP services – and to achieve this in six months is nothing short of spectacular.
“UK consumers are clearly happy to embrace internet telephony when it is straightforward to use and offers great value, and through BT Total Broadband our customers are getting all the benefits that broadband has to offer.”
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 | Posted in VoIP News | No Comments »
Follow-up to yesterday’s story about the Apple iPhone launch, Cisco Systems is suing Apple over the name iPhone, which a division of the company has held a trademark on since 2000. Cisco is seeking an injunction to prevent Apple from using its iPhone trademark.
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 | Posted in VoIP News | 1 Comment »
Last month Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems lanched it’s iPhone. Today, at CES, Apple’s iPhone was launched (Apple is changing its name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc., by the way):
IPhone, introduced by Jobs during his keynote speech at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, was accompanied by Apple TV, a set-top box that streams video from computers to television. the company is even getting a name change _ from Apple Computer Inc. to just Apple Inc. _ to better reflect its transition to a full-scale consumer electronics manufacturer and retailer.
… IPhone is less than a half-inch thin _ slimmer than almost every other phone on the market. It comes with a built-in, 2-megapixel digital camera, as well as a slot for headphones and a SIM card.
The phone automatically synchs the user’s media _ movies, music, photos _ through iTunes on computers running either Mac OS X or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows. The device also synchs e-mail, Web bookmarks and nearly any type of digital content stored on a PC.
The phone supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology and can detect location from Global Positioning System satellites. It also can send and display e-mail and text messages. Apple is partnering with Yahoo Inc. on Web-based e-mail and Google Inc. on maps.
Apple is going to charge $499 for a 4GB version and $599 for the 8GB one; Cingular will be the exclusive carrier, and it will be released in June. Cisco has held a trademark on "iPhone" since 2000, and isn’t happy about Apple’s infringement.
Seems like a nice phone, but it’s got a pretty hefty pricetag, and the exclusive deal with Cingular will probably limit sales to some extent. No news as to whether it would support VoIP software, but one expects.
Vonage Holdings Corp. 
(NYSE: VG), a leading provider of broadband telephone service, today announced that one of its subsidiaries, Vonage Network Inc., has signed a three-year contract with EarthLink 
(Nasdaq: ELNK) to offer its customers Wi-Fi Internet access in select cities throughout the United States.
Under terms of the agreement, Vonage will buy Internet access on a wholesale basis from EarthLink in all cities where the company will build, own and operate municipal wireless networks. Vonage will then sell its own Wi-Fi Internet service to consumers under the Vonage brand.
EarthLink has become one of the leaders in the emerging municipal Wi-Fi market, having been awarded contracts in Philadelphia; Anaheim, California; Milpitas, California and New Orleans.
But at GigaOm, they’re skeptical:
Reading the press release last night was a head-scratcher moment deluxe: Vonage is getting into the business of selling Wi-Fi? What, they don’t have enough scars from taking on incumbents in voice, now they’re going to butt heads over Internet access as well?
During a Monday morning phone call, we tried to talk some sense into Vonage chairman Jeffrey Citron, but he refused to be dissuaded. Bundling Wi-Fi will make it easier for customers to sign up for Vonage VoIP, he said. And if they are already Vonage customers? Lower acquisition costs, Citron replied.
Maybe it was the fuzzy connection (Citron said he was calling from one of the noisy show-floor booths Vonage has at CES), but we still weren’t convinced that reselling EarthLink’s not-so-fast Wi-Fi would be such a big bonus for Vonage.
This strikes us as a questionable deal, too. Especially given how competitive the fixed WiFi Internet service market is already with existing firms (e.g. t-mobile), let alone the mobile broadband services which are getting better, faster and cheaper (e.g. Verizon, Sprint).
Not VoIP service related, but an article on Slashdot has the details of a government initiative to use Full Disk Encryption (FDE) on all government-owned computers. The mandate came about in the wake of lost or stolen laptops with personal information stored on their hard drives.
We’re posting it to nudge companies in this direction as well - protect the security of your data when your employees are traveling by FDE. We’ve covered VoIP security in the past, and will have more to say in the next week.
Andy Abramson made a good catch on the AT&T - BellSouth merger. One of the so-called concessions that AT&T made to the FCC to get the deal approved was that it would offer DSL service without requiring customers to have a voice line. But, there’s a catch:
AT&T is limiting the downloads to 768kbps which in today’s era, is not very fast. For example I have "naked" cable and have 12 megs down and one meg up in speed.
This comes as no surprise to us - we’ve had the same issue with Verizon, which claims to offer a 6mbps plan without voice service, which mysteriously never seems to be available for installation in our locations. Oddly, they can install a voice + DSL line at lower speeds for a higher monthly fee. Uh, no thanks.
Abramson continues:
In my mind AT&T should offer a DSL + CallVantage bundle, remove the speed cap and let the DSL fly as fast as it can. That is what the Earthlink offering of DSL and Voice provides. They don’t mess around with speed caps, or try to "arm twist" customers into buying a different plan.
