Phones

Reports about VOIP traffic being blocked by network operators are becoming more common in wake of Telmex customers complaining their telephony service is being degraded. In the United Arab Emirates, Internet users are complaining they have been unable to access Skype.com to buy SkypeOut minutes. The culprit seems to be Etisalat, the UAE's only ISP. In the U.S., there have been reports that Vonage's service is being blocked by Clearwire, while Madison River was fined $15K by the FCC after Vonage filed a complaint. In Canada, the major broadband operators...

You know the email spam you get that says, please call this bloke in Africa to send him money to (fill in the appeal here) in the wake of (insert natural or national disaster)? Well Andrew decided to call. Using SkypeOut. Interminably. At odd hours. Tying up the con-man's phone line.

This is exciting for the Linux community, but it should be for device makers and users too. This new capability will open up a whole family of new, useful Skype Products like this. This new embedded market was highlighted by Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom, during his keynote address at the VON Canada Event in Toronto earlier this week.

Watch how Phil Torrone made an actual payphone into a Skype Client. Brilliant!

This reporter’s been covering the Qwest-MCI-Verizon saga for months now. It can get pretty complicated, but USA Today has printed an excellent Q&A on the basics:

For two months, Qwest has been in relentless pursuit of MCI, hoping to break up Verizon's own deal to acquire MCI.

Some of the carriers working with Intel to enable a broad ecosystem around WiMAX include: AT&T* (US), Altitude Telecom* (France), BT* (UK), Brasil Telecom* (Brazil), ETB* (Columbia), Iberbanda* (Spain), Millicom* (Argentina), Qwest* (US), Sify* (India), Speakeasy* (US), Telkom* (South Africa), Telmex* (Mexico), TowerStream* (US), UHT* (Ukraine).

Oh — this is great! Keep reading. The telemarketer that called me today, laid her thoughts on the line. Nextel is in deep trouble with the coming merger. After spending a week with John Gormly, and salivating at his Cingular phone, I finally decided that Nextel is not the wave of my future. The lady I talked to from Nextel today was very candid and said, basically, the same thing. She told me that the future of Nextel is pretty dang blurry, and that she was also looking at other options.

At home I have a Vonage phone line instead of a standard land line. As of lately, I hate it. It is sucking really, really, bad. When I move I'm going to be getting a real phone line and spending $49.95 a month for unlimited long distance instead of the normal $24.95 that I am now. That's how annoyed I am at them right now.

Alexa.com is a great site to use to monitor how much traffic sites get. I noticed recently that Teltel, a company I have written about before in an entry titled: Teltel A Skype Killer? had a huge drop in web traffic from a 3-month average of around 10,000 to a one-day average of 31,381. I didn’t have a chance to ask the company the reason and to be honest it could even be a problem with Alexa causing this drop. Who knows? What I did do was to compare their traffic to Vonage, Skype and Packet8.

Ever since I hooked up my Vonage phone the amount of time I spend on my cell phone has dropped dramatically. Since 1998 my cell carrier has been Sprint PCS. I like the quality of their service and have never had trouble using my phone during the dozens and dozens of trips I have taken in the past seven years. Since I was not using my cell phone as much as I used to I realized I was just throwing money down the drain, continuing to pay $50+/month for 500 minutes. My last three usage statements show I've barely used 200 minutes a month. I figured it was time to call Sprint and change my plan.

Although my reason for doing this involved a broader scope of technologies than just IP telephony, I’d like to share some of the VoIP-related complaints I managed to dig up.

I have liked the Sipura products since they first came out a few years ago. The SPA products are widely used by VoIP service providers (Vonage, etc) for their feature set, flexibility, and low cost. We have been testing out Sipura adapters on the Kuppa…

I have been hearing these stories off and on from people, in them saying Vonage has terrible customer service. The worse part is that it appears they have outsourced their customer service to some foreign country and the sound quality of those calls is real bad. This is not a good start for a company that is supposedly in the VOIP business. [EVHEAD]

I signed up for a VoIP account with Vonage--unlimited calling for $25/month. Vonage promptly sent me a LinkSys router, assigned me a temporary telephone number, set up my 911 emergency service, and started the process of having our existing home telephone number moved from AT&T to Vonage.

There are a couple of things to be aware of when you switch over to VoIP phones. One thing I discovered the other day with mine is that I am unable to call toll free numbers that the Canadian Government use. The only one that does work is the 1-800-O'Canada number. The reason for this is that the majority of the other 1-800 numbers in use are 'regional' 1-800 numbers and the 1-800-O'Canada number is a national 1-800 number. Now my VoIP provider, Vonage ties into the regular telephone system somewhere in toxic central Canada so that when I try and...

"...Panagopolis Pizza uses a regional 1-800 number that doesn't work on the Vonage system but at least they offer a local number so I can still order pizza..."

Anyhow..., near as I can figure the savings alone easily outweigh the minor annoyance. Oh yeah..., Panagopolis Pizza uses a regional 1-800 number that doesn't work on the Vonage system but at least they offer a local number so I can still order pizza. The Government of Canada claim they don't have local numbers, only 1-800 numbers. I think by now we all know how much truth to attach to anything that comes by way of Ottawa.

founder and chief executive officer of Skype, which provides a free downloadable voice over IP software client. “Wi-Fi plays and important part in this.”

Skype is working on VoIP clients that will operate on platforms like Symbian, Windows Mobile and Embedded Linux, he said, adding dual-mode wireless handsets that work on both Wi-Fi networks – originally designed as local-area data networks using the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ 802.11 protocol – and cellular networks.

We are not at a tipping point in how we make and pay for phone calls; we are at a FLIPPING point. The AT&T band, if there still were one, would be playing “The World Turned Upside Down” like General Cornwallis’s band at Yorktown as the British surrendered their arms to the rag-tag colonials. I’m not talking about SBC buying AT&T: that’s just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I’m talking about real change.

Before there was the web, Yahoo or Google, the only search available to the masses was 411. Enough, to inspire colloquialism, “have you done a 411 on so and so?” Well, that boring old search is still generating more dollars than all search companies. In 2010, it is going to be a $11.4 billion business, up 42% from 2005. Makes you wonder, what people are doing with all the free information available on the web. U.S. consumers call 411 an average of 35 times per year, which translates to 6.5 billion directory assistance phone number look-ups,...

"Vonage applauded Qwest for its willingness to put the health and safety of Americans before short-term competitive considerations," Vonage attorney William Wilhelm wrote to the FCC.

In the same letter, Wilhelm implied that SBC hasn’t shown the same eagerness to provide 911 infrastructure access to Vonage that Qwest has.

Well, I laughed at Danielle the other day when the computer that is running Windows XP and Outlook 2003 and is configured to sync with both of our Nokia phones separately (or so I thought), sync’d my Outlook contact information to her phone. She has been waiting patiently for this stupid company to send the Nokia data cable we need to get the data off of her ancient Nokia phone so we can put it on her new 6230. Then she gets all of my info on her phone. Well, I guess she gets the last laugh, because I just noticed that her 10 contacts that...

- Mewes is in the middle of a tourney when we leave, but he’s got a Sprint card that allows him to get online via his cell phone, so he brings his laptop with him in the car. We head deep into the Valley out by the Topanga exit and I swing into Lisa and Greg’s place to say hi and grab my girls while Mewes throws down UB in the car. I carry Harley out, say g’night, and drive us all back to the house.

Verizon now has five days to respond and can boost its offer again or walk away with a nice financial penalty.

The Verizon deal valued MCI at $23.10 per share, though two weeks ago it agreed to pay nearly $26 a share for a 13.4 percent stake in MCI from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. That gambit fueled speculation that Verizon would offer at least that much for the rest of MCI's stock.

I am just hoping this story will go away. It was fun to cover for a while but the molasses-in-July-like back and forth movement is like watching a tennis match in slow motion. I hope Qwest wins this war as I have the consumer's best interests in mind and being the weaker of the two companies, a Qwest merger would mean the market won't be dominated by a single giant in Verizon.

If the story takes one more intestinal twist and Verizon becomes the winner, it will be the consumers who will feel the droppings of this merger on their heads. My suggestion? Wear a hat.

According to this W$J report, Qwest is now offering $30/sh to Verizon's $23.10, announced commitments for 7.25 billion in financing (almost equal to the entire value of Verizon's bid) and tightened up the terms of its bid.

Or is it? At 2.4 million licensed client devices, RIM has barely scratched the surface of the mobile marketplace. In the U.S., leading wireless operator Cingular has over 50 million subscribers with Verizon Wireless running a close second -- nearly 100 million wireless subscribers. According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), there are over 2.4 billion wireless subscribers worldwide, making RIM's BlackBerry licenses appear as small as they really are - one tenth of one percent of overall cellular...

I’ve made some updates to my wp-mail.php hack for Sprint PCS phones. The ChangeLog is below for the last few versions.

* - Yet another fix for Sprint Picture Share emails

* - Allow multiple Sprint pictures at a time to work (jcjones AT ufl DOT edu)

* - Support the new (April 2005) Sprint Picture Share emails (jcjones AT ufl DOT edu)

Verizon has signed a content deal with Starz Entertainment Group as well as content providers represinting roughly 100 television channels.

Under the agreement with Liberty Media Corporation, Verizon can cary Starz' 13 movie channels onthe phone company's IPTV service due out later this year.

And through it all, I am still going to get the Treo 650 from Sprint. The reason being 2 things. One, they have the "New for You" plan that rebates you $150 if you had your phone for 18 months. Two, They still have pretty decent service compare to T-Mobile for my area. I am just going to be smart about it this time and make sure I buy the insurance for the 650 cuz I don't feel like buying a new phone before I am ready for an upgrade. I personally don't like Tro 650 too much because the processor, the hi res screen, and the bluetooth isn't...

In the ongoing debate I think we’ve lost sight of the original issue: separation of connectivity from applications. I’m a great proponent of this. Monopolies and markets above this in the stack concern me a lot less.

So far Skype isn’t particularly wedded to connectivity provision (with one exception). That means we don’t have to seek permission to use something else. Skype is a child of the Stupid Network, and self-centered as it may be we should be happy about this precocious toddler.

Why the videophone service sellers or proposed sellers like cable operators don't bundle in EyeBeam, which I now use a lot for voice calls as well, is simply beyond me. For the cable companies thinking of selling VoIP and the Ojo, if it uses open standards, it would be a true market differentiator that the RBOC's landline service could never offer. If the Ojo isn't using open standards, then it's got less of a chance to survive, because between SIP and SKYPE the standards or proprietary protocols are pretty much already entrenched, and the MSO's...

A number of people make fake phone calls on their cell phones just for the benefit of those around them. Someone who's late for work may enter the office talking to "an important client" to cover her tardiness. Others pretend they get a call when they don't want to talk to someone who's standing right in front of them. Not surprisingly, some of those big deals you hear people negotiate on the phone are just done to impress those within earshot. Men will pretend to be on a call as they walk over to hit on a woman. Women will pretend to be on a call to avoid getting hit on by men.

So now I have to do some research and find out which VoIP service is the best out there. I know everyone out there has heard of Vonage. But I been getting snail mail flyers from another company called SunRocket. SunRocket seems to offer a really good price plan at $199 for a whole year of service. But I got to hold off and do some research on the quality of the service and quality of their customer service before I drop two benjamins on the service.

Much of the discussion about VoIP has been centered around the challenges of port blocking, an increasingly common practice among Internet service providers. For those of us conversent in firewalls and router configuration, it is relatively simple to block VoIP traffic - as long as we know which port that traffic is using. In the U.S., this dialogue has been centered around VoIP provider VONAGE, but VoIP companies like Skype are also susceptible to port blocking. More pernicious is the practice of dropping packets and reducing performance to make VoIP an impractical alternative for enterprise applications.

There is currently no legislation on the books in the United States - or any other country for that matter - that protects VoIP traffic on an Internet connection from a public access provider. This holds true for home office workers using xDSL or cable modems; traveling workers accessing the Internet over a public Wi-Fi hotspot or a hotel broadband connection; and workers using a wide area packet data service like GPRS/EDGE, EV-DO or any other 3G offering.

This one is not just going to go away. Damn… even I am beginning to lose interest. Associated Press reports that Verizon might be contemplating a new bid for MCI, though it might not have to pay as much as $9.75 billion Qwest has offered. Verizon has a five day window to offer a new deal, and if it decides to walk away, it still will get $240 million. Many believe that unless MCI board nodded its approval for Qwest it would found itself on very slippery slope. “We expect MCI to build upon its declaration of superiority with specific acts of support, including expeditiously seeking regulatory approvals of a transaction that it considers superior and in the best interests of its shareowners,” Qwest said in a statement.

So in case you think I’ve gone completely Skype nuts, here’s a few balancing news items.

I had a Skype conference call with a client a few days ago. It was embarassingly bad, mainly because one of the participants was on a flaky hotel Wi-Fi link. In the vertically integrated telco model, this would be the telcos problem. Skype’s layered model tends to push them towards a “not our problem” approach. Mistake! The Skype client needs to be aware of the connectivity quality underneath it. If it can’t deliver, and is disrupting a conf call, then it needs to inform the participant, end the call, or somehow manage...

I’m also having too many Skype calls where I need to re-dial to get a better connection. Plus I’ve had several failed SkypeOut calls (what is a 10040 error, or whatever it was, I don’t know — but that’s not my idea of a great user experience).

Snapcast is a name invented by Jake for a short, quick podcast. I was on Skype this morning and hooked up with Tony Goodson in Australia and Rob Paterson in Canada. Alan Singer (also in Oz) jumped in as our sound engineer. We wanted to discuss Robert Scoble's recent challenge to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer over the company's attitude to some...

BlackBerry Handheld Software v4.0.0.319 is out. It's an upgrade to the existing OS. Some of the highlights of the upgardes includes the addition of a passwork keeper and a HTML Browser!!! Note: The HTML browser that magically appeared on my 7520 after the .319 upgrade was suggested by forum members that what I have is the BES browser and not the HTML browser that Nextel is rolling out on May 16th. How that happen? The Blackberry itself still mystifies me.

Apparantly a LOT of people are saying that they do not get the HTML browser. Many called Nextel and was informed that the HTML browser will be available on May 16th, the offical launch date. While it is only 3 weeks away, I am happy that somehow I was able to get the HTML browser.

Further speculation suggests that the browser I have on my 7520 (see photos in blog below) is the HTML browser available to BES clients and not webclients. see my blog on 'BES and WebClient' for further explanation. Nextel reported that the icon for the May 17th HTML browser (web client) is different than that to what I have...which is the BES one.

I attempted the software uprade and it corrupted by blackberry 7520. Right in the middle of the software upgrade, the upgrade stopped (died) and left my blackberry useless. All attempts to reload the software failed. So I had to go down to a Nextel store and pay $35 to swap out a unit I'd only had for a week.

The City and NYPD are trying to figure out a way for internet phone service providers like Vonage to let their customers tap into the actual 911, versus an ordinary police line, when they call 911. Currently, many internet phone service companies just route their calls to the phone line police officers use to call in sick. There's something terribly twisted about that. The City has asked them not to use that phone as the designated "911," and...

The two sides also have very different perspectives on how digital music stores should work. Verizon, Sprint, and Cingular are expected to charge about $2 for wireless downloads when they introduce their services, or twice the 99 cents per song on iTunes. They figure they can charge a premium for the convenience of getting songs anytime, even though customers most likely won’t be able to listen to those songs anywhere but on their phones, at least initially. One knowledgeable source close to Apple says the operators are simply being unrealistic...

No sooner did I ask… but GOOGLE FIXED the Google::SMS problem with the Treo 650!

I found it odd when I recently went to their site and the ONLY phone they sited that their system DIDN’T work with was the Treo 650. However, I tried it earlier today and it works, AMAZINGLY.

Capellas, 50, became CEO of the struggling WorldCom in 2002, the same year it filed for bankruptcy-court protection in the shadow of expansive accounting fraud. His contract said that when he led the company out of bankruptcy, he was entitled to $12 million in restricted stock and an additional $6 million if the board found his service “exemplary.”

The board also granted the former Compaq Computer president a $5 million bonus for implementing a business transformation plan, listing MCI’s common stock on the Nasdaq and stabilizing the company’s finances, among other accomplishments. His salary was $1.6 million.

MCI has agreed to be acquired by Verizon Communications Inc., which has been engaged in a bidding war with Qwest Communications International Inc. over MCI’s assets.

Just when you thought it was over, well Qwest has come up with another big offer - $30 a share, or a total of $9.75 billion for MCI. That’s a 30% premium to Verizon’s $7.51 billion. I think with this offer. Q has matched the demands of MCI board, leaving them very few options. Q calls this offer its best and final offer. I thought that buying out Carlos Slim’s stake in MCI, Verizon had trumped Qwest at best and bought insurance at worst. MCI shareholders Legg Mason Capital, American Express and Omega Advisors are putting up $800...

So at the end of this bidding war, what is qwest going to be buying? How is bidding war affecting mci’s business currently? Any details on that?

i am not sure how this is affecting their business, but all i can say that qwest is on a very slippery slope right now with this deal. too expensive of a purchase in my opinion.

I think by persisting in the bidding, QWest has pretty clearly signaled that they are worthless on their own. If they don’t win, someone will be buying them up on the cheap in the near future. Maybe Verizon will buy them too, if they win the MCI fight . . .

The launch of Google Maps in the UK this week has coincided with the desire to write some Python code for my Nokia 6630 mobile phone. As Matt Croydon’s PythonForSeries60 shows, there are an increasing number of interesting projects written using the Python SDK for the Nokia phones.

Damn, I wish I had my Nokia phone now…sort of. This is a nice lil cheat that lets you do all kinds of things…from changing your alpha tag (your service provider name, i.e. Alltel, Cingular, AT&T, etc…), your own phone number (sort of), and even a way to get free phone calls (but I wont go into detail on how to do that, figure it out on your own)…here we go…

Let's start from the beginning. I had a phone line through PacBell seven or eight years ago. When I left California, I had the phone turned off, and never thought anything of it until I moved in to this apartment. I tried to get phone service, and they told me that I had a balance remaining from the old line. I couldn't afford to pay it off, so my mom put my phone in her name. Subsequently, when I added DSL and Cingular, they were in her name as well.

So I called Cingular to debate a 63-minute "Oper Asst" call, and although my mother had me authorized on the SBC end of things, Cingular didn't have that authorization, so she wouldn't talk to me. I decided then that since I'm in a better financial position than I was then, I'd go ahead and pay off the old bill and get all this stuff moved back over into my name. After talking to half a dozen people, no one could find the old account at all. So it turns out that I don't owe them anything at all.

Today, I call Cingular back to dispute the 63-minute call, and just conveniently forgot to mention that I'm not my mother. I got a credit on my account for that call. I also found out that the plan I currently have (300 anytime, 1000 nights and weekends) doesn't have mobile-to-mobile. That made me freak a bit, because Shaunta and I have talked a lot on our cell phones, thinking I had the mobile-to-mobile. So, for $10, I upgraded. Now I have 450 anytime, 5000 nights/weekends, rollover, unlimited mobile-to-mobile, free long distance, and free nationwide...

Budget constraints and other factors often keep the education sector behind the technology adoption curve, but migration to phone systems based on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is proving the exception. Read this white paper to learn how VoIP is helping the education market become more efficient while reducing costs.

Recently I replaced my Palm Tungsten T3 and my cheap cellphone with a Treo 650 with SprintPCS service. My wife and I both switched from T-Mobile back to Sprint, because we had terrible signal quality from T-Mobile at our house, and our cell phones are our only phones. The signal was great everywhere else, but not being able to make and receive calls at home was a wee bit inconvenient.

I’ve been very happy with the Treo 650 so far. It’s the first combined PDA/phone that doesn’t feel like a compromise. I’ll write a detailed review later, but here are some impressions after using the Treo for a month:

All in all, I’m very happy with the Treo 650, and with Sprint’s service. This turned out to be a long post, so I’ll save my comments about the Treo’s camera and Internet features for Part II.

Sprint Corp. on Tuesday said it has made Fox news programming available to mobile phone subscribers nationwide.

The Overland Park, Kan., wireless carrier said Fox News Channel Live has been added to the programming available through Sprint TV, which is available to people using Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Phones. Fox has been add at no extra charge to the Sprint TV service, which costs $9.99 a month.

Zander also said that the iTunes phone "will be coming out in the next few months."

The companies announced in July that they would be releasing the phone, but despite repeated promises, a concrete commercial launch date has not been forthcoming.

A Motorola representative confirmed that the phone will be available in the first half of this year.

The delays in the launch of the phone have prompted speculation that some major U.S. carriers are hesitant to stock the phones, which would encourage consumers to buy music on a computer rather than over a phone network.

The Motorola representative denied that was the case, however.

Not long ago, the first pay phone was added to the California State Parks system as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Today California State Parks and SBC Communications are taking it one step further by offering visitors wireless Internet access. In an effort to provide travelers with a way to “keep-in-touch” on vacation, California State Parks will offer high-speed wireless Internet access, also known as Wi-Fi to the picnic tables, RV spaces and cabins of 85 California state parks. San Elijo State...