VoIP World News
Customers Continue To Switch To Nortel For Data Network Performance And Economics
"Customers are increasingly selecting Nortel as they look to replace their legacy, proprietary data networks that are expensive and offer performance ill-suited to support the move to unified communications" Momentum Toward Unified Communications Drives Nortel's Enterprise Business TORONTO - Enterprise customers moving toward unified communications are increasingly recognizing the competitive benefits of Nortel's* ... via WebWire Read more…
VoodooVox Announces All-Star Line-up at Fist Annual In-Call Media Summit
"In-Call Media is an exciting channel for new media advertisers due to its engagement, reach, and targeting capabilities" New York, NY - New speakers have been added to the first annual In-Call Media Summit sponsored by VoodooVox, in conjunction with Jones Media and Softbank Partners on May 6th, 2008 in New York City. via Wireless Developer Network Read more…
What Would Have Been Your Choice Before Guitar Hero: Aerosmith?
Why some of us may get very jazzed up about the upcoming release -- next month! -- of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I just have to think how many other great guitar players and bands might have taken their spot in the queue ... What do you think? Guitar Hero: Hendrix or Guitar Hero: Clapton or Guitar Hero: Van Halen? Me thinks I could go on and on ... Tags: Clapton, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Hendrix, Van Halen Related Entries Read more…
Shoretel Rumors
I'm reticent to spread rumors about a VoIP company's demise - I certainly don't want to be be the Valleywag of VoIP blogs. However, Rich Tehrani, my boss, has been hearing rumors about ShoreTel and it doesn't sound good. It goes without saying that Rich Tehrani has his "ear to the ground" in the VoIP industry perhaps more than anyone - myself included. Rich heard things about TMC's main competitor long before the story broke out in the blogosphere, but both Rich and the TMC team took the "high road" and chose not to write damaging stories about our competitor. With this in mind, Rich wrote in his blog, "I have never heard the kind of rumors about a vendor that I am hearing about Shoretel. Reports of unhappiness in the ranks of the workers and management problems persist in the industry." Rich adds, "I normally hate to talk about rumors without doing more research than this but in my experience this level of negativity is unusual for any company and for it to come out of the blue and unsolicited from multiple sources means there could likely be fire causing the smoke." Greg Galitzine also weighs in when he writes, "In my opinion these guys were once the truest darlings of the VoIP world. Maybe I was simply a sucker for a great desk set (and they had some nice hardware, I tell you) but in the wake of all the sour news in the VoIP world I have to wonder if the old adage “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” applies." Greg adds, "Shoretel stock (SHOR) was down 10.10 percent on Wednesday, but appeared to be making a huge run in aftermarket trading, bouncing back about 8.5% at 6:50 pm ET." ShoreTel is one of the early IP-PBX pioneers and they have some really great technology. I for one would be sad to hear if the rumors of their demise are indeed true. While it could be fun for me to speculate that pressure from low-cost IP-PBX solutions, especially Asterisk, the open source IP-PBX is affecting ShoreTel, I don't think this is the case. The last time I looked at ShoreTel, their technology was more scalable than any of the Asterisk-based solutions out there. Asterisk's sweet-spot is really under 80 seats (some exceptions excluded) where as ShoreTel's sweet spot is 80 seats and up. ShoreTel competes more with Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya. So why is ShoreTel having problems? As Rich wrote in July 2007, "ShoreTel hit it big with an IPO which jumped 27.5% on it’s opening day. The IPO was derailed last week as a result of a lawsuit filed by Mitel. The company closed the day at $12.15, after the company priced 7.9 million shares at $9.50 a share." So perhaps Mitel's lawsuit against ShoreTel took the steam out of ShoreTel? Perhaps all the recent lawsuits against various VoIP companies, including Vonage, which has lawsuits filed against them by Verizon, Sprint Nextel, Nortel, and even me over my cold pizza has stymied ShoreTel? Tags: Asterisk, Cisco, Greg Galitzine, IP-PBX, Mitel, open source, Rich Tehrani, ShoreTel, VoIP Related Entries Mitel sues ShoreTel - What does it mean? - Jun 28, 2007 Asterisk 1.6.0 beta5 - Mar 06, 2008 Digium launches Switchvox Free Edition - Oct 31, 2007 Avaya #1 VoIP PBX Vendor? - Aug 21, 2007 Predictive Dialing on Asterisk? - Jun 13, 2007 Digium - The Showstopper! - May 18, 2007 pbxnsip IP-PBX Review - Feb 21, 2007 Digium podcast of Mark Spencer's new role - Jan 30, 2007 Rev B of Astfin's BRI (ISDN) Asterisk Appliance Arrives - Apr 29, 2008 Hulk Smash Asterisk 1.6! - Apr 16, 2008 Read more…
TringMe Now Works with AOL/AIM
Well, it certainly didn't take long for someone to leverage AOL's Open Voice APIs featuring full SIP support. TringMe is apparently the 'first' out of the gate announcing support to millions of AIM call-out users to make calls directly from TringMe. AIM users can use TringPhone - TringMe's fully web-based SIP phone to make calls directly from the browser. According to TringMe, "with TringMe’s MobileVoIP solution, AOL/AIM users can use a mobile device (e.g. Symbian devices) to make VoIP calls from a mobile device. If they desire to use Gtalk to make VoIP calls over this service, that’s supported too. In general, AOL/AIM users can use any of TringMe’s supported originating devices to make calls (say Gtalk)." Apparently it's pretty easy to setup. You just login to your TringMe account, enter your AIM or AOL screen-name (AOLScreenName@aol.com or AIMScreenName@aim.com) and SIP password in the TringPhone settings. Make sure to specify “AOL” in the Domain or Proxy setting as well. That’s it! Now you can use TringPhone for making calls through your AIM call-out account. Via TringMe blog Update: 11pm. Figured it was worth sharing some thoughts from around the VoIP blogosphere on the AOL Open Voice API news. Obviously, the main gist of the news is that you can now use any SIP-based device and register it with the AOL SIP registrar. TringMe was first to promote succesfully doing this. I thought about trying to register one of my spare Aastra phones or an X-Lite client, but Dan beat me to do it by getting X-Lite to register on AOL. http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2008/04/aol-launches-op.html Dan York gives some good details on how the AOL Open Voice APIs allow you to use any SIP client, such as X-Lite. He also writes "Does accepting SIP connections at your SIP proxy constitute an "API"? Does providing SIP termination services to the PSTN constitute an "API"?" He has a valid point. I thought about that myself, but assumed there was an API in addition to the SIP support, which again TringMe was so quick to leverage. Alec Saunders has a Squawk Box on the news and also emails fellow VoIP bloggers hinting the news is a non-event, while simultaneously discussing AOL's starts & stops in the VoIP space which directly affected Alec's company. http://saunderslog.com/2008/04/30/squawk-box-april-30-trust/ Mr. Blog responds, "I agree that it is not an API, by any stretch. But I disagree that it is a non-event" http://mrblog.org/2008/04/30/aol-open-voice-program-works-with-phonegnome/ One last thought on my end... I'm glad AOL is opening up their network to allow any SIP device to connect. I wish Skype would be so open. Heck, I wish Vonage, which is SIP-based would allow you to have open SIP credentials and use any SIP device. Whether this is enough to get people to switch from using SkypeOut minutes to AOL's PSTN termination remains to be seen. In theory, I can configure an Asterisk server to use AOL as an ITSP. But then AOL just comes another SIP termination service provider, which are a dime-a-dozen these days. Tags: AIM, AOL, SIP, tringme, TringPhone, VoIP Related Entries AOL Launches Open Voice APIs - Apr 29, 2008 TringMe opens platform API to developers - Apr 16, 2008 tringme TringPhone Flash VoIP App Launches - Dec 03, 2007 AIM Call Out Update - Oct 29, 2007 AIM Call Out Launches - Oct 26, 2007 Voxeo Adds VoIP Party Line App to Facebook - Apr 22, 2008 Microsoft Response Point Announces SIP Trunking Service Providers - Apr 18, 2008 PhoneFromHere.com & Digium Ink 5 Year Deal - Apr 09, 2008 C2Call - New browser-based Java VoIP app - Apr 03, 2008 JAJAH Mobile VoIP client for the iPhone - Apr 02, 2008 Comments on this Entry: (Jack on Apr 30, 2008 6:51 PM) Yes it defenitely did not take very long for tringme to provide support for AIM Call Out. I just made an International call & it works great. Thanks for that update tom. http://journals.aol.com/opensip/aol-open-voice-platform (Randell Jesup on May 1, 2008 5:49 PM) This is far from an open SIP server - no registration, no direct IP calls, no inbound calls at all. It is, simply, an (open) outbound gateway, and users need to have AOL/AIM accounts with money. Useful, but not exciting. Read more…