Phones

Via Om Malik, SBC will trial naked DSL, but could go with a partially bundled service to protect voice revenues. Follow this Houston Chronicle link. Qwest and Verizon either already offer the service or plan to.

The Treo 650 comes with a very capable mail program for IMAP4 and POP3. However, checking your mail on a regular basis means that you are polling your server. Open connection, log in, check for new mail, download if available, disconnect. That adds up quite some traffic if you are on a metered contract. It also means that you cannot receive mail faster than your polling schedule allows.

TomsNetworking : This article shows the differences btween using SKYPE and Vonage. Which VOIP is good for you?

According to Aswath, there looks to be some evidence that Skype is using some parts of SIP for their PSTN connectivity. Maybe open standards is not totally lost upon them, that is good news.

If you want to add some color to your gadgets to add that extra personal touch, check out SkinIt.com. These guys were at E3 and had a real nice setup that included all their custom made vinyl designs for Mac, PDA, MP3, Cellphones and Game devices. You can even upload your own photos. They were kindly handing out skins to their visitors which was really nice. I got two one pink (because no one else wanted them) for my PSP and one Blue. I am really diggin it! I know some of you have been looking to personalize your RAZR, TREO and even XM Radios, this...

Just arrived in Helsinki with Xavier, I have played with Christian's brand new N90 Carl Zeiss optics (rotating), very nice design, amazing picture quality you can check on Christian's blog (whose TypePad blog design is very cool too).

Eleksen announced a deal with outdoor apparel manufacturer O'Neill to incorporate the fabric in its H2 apparel line, which includes a backpack with a built-in solar panel and coat with a control panel for cell phones or MP3 players. The coat will also contain built-in headphones and microphones, so you won't have to take your coat off to speak or listen to music. A built-in Bluetooth module handles communications and also switches feeds from the MP3 player to the phone and vice versa.

Hmm, wonder if I should be concerned about my favorite VoIP company: Vonage? Om Malik says that they are on a spending tear:

Vonage is spending $21.829 million a month on Internet advertising alone, making it the second biggest money spender online.

Can you feel the excitement?! Only 32 hours before the CRTC decides whether it's going to regulate Internet telephony. Judging by recent analyst reports and news stories, regulating ILECs such as Bell and Telus could destroy their local phone businesses, while making them uncompetitive in the fast-emerging Internet telephony market. It's all a bit dramatic. It's not like Bell and Telus will be unable to offer Internet telephony. It's not like they won't be able to use their strong brands, customer relationships, and ability to offer multi-service...

If there's ever too much of a good thing, the VOIP market is a perfect illustration. With low barriers to entry into a market just starting to emerge, there is plenty of confusion among consumers about which service provider to use. Do you sign up with Vonage because they aggressively advertise and just raised US$200-million in private equity? Or do you go with your cableco because they offer VOIP within an attractive bundle? Stepping into this selection "void" is Whichvoip.com, which offers consumers an easy way to select the best VOIP service provider based on their specific requirements. A particularly nice feature is the Web site's advanced search capability that kicks back service providers that meet a consumer's personalized needs. Whichvoip.com also offers reviews and tools to select a VOIP SP for business users. I'm not sure if there are similar sites to Whichvoip.com but the Seattle-based company deserves kudos for recognizing an opportunity and rolling out a easy to use service.

Now that the CRTC has shackled ILECs when it comes to VOIP, Vonage Canada has decided it's time to crank up its marketing machine. This will see Vonage sponsor two high-profile events in Toronto this summer - the Molson Indy and the Distillery Jazz Festival. From a marketing/advertising perspective, it will be an interesting summer for the VOIP industry as existing players get more aggressive, and Rogers launches its cable telephony service in July. You have to expect Bell Canada will respond by promoting its own VOIP service - Bell Digital Voice...

As expected, Canada's telecom regulator has decided to regulate VOIP. It means ILECs such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. will have to seek pricing approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision to ensure they don't sell Internet telephony service below cost, while cablecos and third-party suppliers such as Vonage and Primus are free to price any way they want. Bell Canada, Sasktel and Telus have already said they will appeal the decision to the federal cabinet, and could pursue legal action. The bottom line is the CRTC...

Not much new here but put it all together and you do have a virtual office with Skype as a center piece.

Millions of people carrying camera cell phones or portable instant messaging devices are being encouraged to share what they see, hear, and think as it happens -- and by Google, no less. Think about that: the owners of the world's largest data storage and retrieval system are gathering audio, video, photos, and text messages from all over. Should we be pleased? Or worried?

Anyone who has heard me gripe about cell phones, (and most people who know me have,) might be surprised at this, but cell phones do come in handy at times. I’m thinking about this because I’m really liking my Nextel phone I got with my new job. The walkie-talkie feature is really pretty handy. Of course, with a company phone, you don’t always get everything you want. Two features I’d love to have are text messaging and a camera. I can see where both would be very handy in the everyday working world, (I’d love to be able to take pictures of broken parts I need to order,) but both my last employer and my new one do not allow them. What are your favorite cell phone features? What new ones would you like to see invented?

This just in - Vonage is spending $21.829 million a month on Internet advertising alone, making it the second biggest money spender online. If you look at the number of customers they are adding - 15,000 a week or 60,000 a month, that makes it about $363 per customer in acquisition costs. Never mind that they are advertising like crazy on television and in the print media. If those figures are taken into account, then we could see final customer acquisition cost of around $400.

Cable companies and a coalition of Texas cities also fought the proposal, which would have allowed SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to get a single statewide franchise for their planned Internet television service instead of negotiating scores of agreements with individual cities, as cable companies do.

Standard & Poor’s claims 4 nationwide wireless operators will serve close to 85% of the US wireless subscriber base. Cingular Wireless has the top spot with 50 mln of the industry’s 180 mln wireless subscribers. Verizon Wireless is #2 with more than 43 mln subscribers, followed by the combined operations of Sprint and Nextel serving approximately 40 mln customers. T-Mobile USA is #4 with more than 17 mln subscribers. AllTel Wireless currently has 10 mln customers and will acquire Western Wireless and US Cellular with their 5 mln...

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PalmOne Treo 650 Hybrid Headset and Stereo Headphones Reviews, PalmOne Treo 650 Hybrid Headset and Stereo Headphones - Product Reviews

So since they didn’t have it we looked at the phones they currently had on display. I still like the Palm Treo 650. But I really want to see the Samsung A800 before making my decision on which phone will replace my Sanyo 8100. We took pictures with a few of them and they all seemed clear on the phone’s display but I want to see it once it’s emailed. The pictures taken with my 8100 look clear on the display too but are pretty lame when emailed. Just check out my MoBlog pics.

Idetics products deliver live tv and video to Sprint and Cingular cell phones, currently available at a low frame rate of 1-2 frame per second rate for most of the video-capable phones now available. Idetic was recently named to the prestigious Red Herring list of 100 Hottest Private Companies in America.

Well, Skype just launched their official blog site, ShareSkype. Have a look at their blog here.

In addition, the company has also added a Voice Mail feature allowing the buddies on the messenger to leave voice messages when the user this side is away from the computer. However, Yahoo! is currently not supporting the normal phone lines like Skype does (for a small fee), but this might just be the beginning of the competition. Yahoo! has the advantage of the user base though Skype itself is not lacking behind on the number of subscribers to their services on the net.

First, thus far hedge funds have been mainly followers. The high profile cases in which hedge funds have - or likely will - played a major role have mostly been cases in which there was an individual activist around whom the hedge funds rallied: Roy Disney and Stanley Gold at Disney, Icahn at Blockbuster, and, possibly coming down the pike, Kerkorian at GM. The leading recent case in which hedge funds tried to affect boardroom deliberations without a rallying figure was MCI, in which the hedge funds (thus far) failed to sway the MCI board from its...

Looks interesting but frankly I would be happy if Nokia and Apple could get their collective act together so that users of popular Nokia phones, such as the Series 40 model 6230, could sync with iCal, Address Book et al. There is a standalone application for Mac OS X, not integrating with iCal etc, that can communicate with 6230. So what goes on?

God, I love my Cingular phone (Siemens sx66). But, they are simply boneheads when it comes to service. I live on an elevation of about 2 miles above my local city, but Cingular can’t figure out how to give me the same service as those in the “valley”. What’s up with that? I can get Nextel service 100%. Is Nextel that much better? Does Nextel’s network take into account the number of folks that MAY live on a hill in the U.S.?

I. hate. stupid. people. I have very little patience with people who don't have common sense, that's one of the reasons I can't stand my SIL. The other big pet peeve I have is people in movie theaters that put their feet on the seats, talk, play on their cell phones, kick your seat, and rattle packages during the whole movie. I actually have contemplated not going to the movies anymore and just waiting for things to come out on dvd because the general public annoys me so much. It all comes back to the common sense.

If you're in the market for a new phone, Cingular has the 5600 for $250 with 2-year contract (online only, I haven't found any stores that have these yet). If you don't want/need a smartphone, they have the silver Motorola RAZR for $199.

Coldplay had hoped to go straight to No. 1 on this Sunday’s British singles chart with its new song, Speed of Sound. But by today, it appeared that Crazy Frog Axel F - which is available for digital download and as a compact disc single in retail stores - would prevail, said Castaldo. The ring tone was expected to replace the Oasis tune Lyla as the No. 1 hit on the list released Sunday by the Official UK Charts Co. The weekly singles chart, which has been released since 1952, is based on the sales of 5,600 retail shops across Britain. While...

I’ve had similar issues (no pun intended) with other companies that were “#1” or otherwise huge. AT&T, Comcast, BellSouth, and SunTrust Bank all come to mind immediately (based on experience) as having obvious organizational problems when it comes to managing customer information. The last time I called Comcast, for example, they said I didn't have an account with them - I wonder who was sending me bills (complete with account number) and providing internet access for me all those years then? I’m sure...

I’ve learned that I could probably live with DSL in lieu of cable. I’m at my parents home, and they’ve gone DSL from dialup. It seems to be just as zippy as our cable connection at home, and it’s a good bit less expensive. If we go with the alternative phone carrier in our area, which we’ve been talking about anyway, we can get our phone service and DSL for something like $50 a month, plus long distance (at only 5 cents a minute). And, Verizon is only about $10 more per month than that. Hmmm…

Reading the email, voicemail, comments to the blogs (Steven's site & the MoBlog), and seeing the visitors that stopped by our hospital room made the last few days a little less stressful and were a nice distraction from Thursday and Friday. I can't tell you how nice it was to have my Treo 650 camera phone that could send/receive email and take short movies.

But there are any number of problems with the service. The voice quality of SkypeIn and SkypeOut is poor - much of it strikes me as mobile phone quality where transcoding is taking place. There have been an increasing number of service problems recently. Second attempts have always worked, but it is clearly an issue.

All the other grandparents live locally, see the kids a LOT more than I do and have ongoing relationships. I don’t call very often because I’m frugal with my money, and I don’t have a cell phone with unlimited minutes and free long distance and all that stuff. I did suggest that my kids look into Skype, an online free internet phone system, so that I could call them more often. No one said they would. (I do call every now and again, just not very...

The standard for VDSL2 was ratified today, which means Bellsouth should be rolling out in approximately 80 years or so.

Recently, Vonage has released two different packaged plans in the UK this week. Vonage's main competitor in the VoIP market is BT, which could be forced to overlook their pay plans due to Vonage's entrance into the scene. When tested, the overall quality of the Vonage product was good but suffered from latency and a slow internet connection. Overall I believe that Vonage is very well capable of grabbing a large international market due to their marketing plans and price plans. According to VNUNet:

But much of the regulatory power in Europe remains on the national level, and the situation differs dramatically among the 25 EU countries. Some national regulators have welcomed VOIP - Britain and the Nordic countries are most often mentioned. Others seem to see their role as protectors - of both consumers and incumbent phone companies - as more important.

Check out the prices of verizon fiber service! Of course, they probably should get their existing infrastructure up to snuff first. I’m not even CLOSE to being a rural customer and I can’t even get DSL. Not cool. Of course unless they’re planning on just running fiber to my house, in that case my wallet is wide open baby!

Of course the ultimate in convergence here would be a cell phone (in particular a smartphone) which would also be able to use one of these internet telephony services, and thereby avoid some of the pricing weirdness of mobile phone plans. Microsoft has built in VOIP over Wifi functionality into their newest Windows Mobile 5. Vonage, probably the best known and perhaps oldest VOIP provider already offers a version of their software that works with Windows Mobile devices, including smartphones. Skype has also has a version for Windows Mobile Devices....

It had to happen some day. I’ve got my first Skype authorisation spam. I won’t grace the perpetrator with publicising their ID or URL, but here’s the text from their profile:

I wonder if the Skype API will make this problem worse? Much easier to build a spambot that way.

After a few months of testing, Skype is now out of beta with PayPal as a means of payment.

I really think we will see a cottage industry spring up around Skype, much like eBay has already seen.

Friday's WSJ ran a front-page story on how difficult it may turn for new companies to make money in WiFi. Why? he quickness of the market dominant tech companies to respond.In the prior high-tech cycles, the entrenched tech leaders were often overtaken by the little furry mammal companies. This time the entrenched leaders have stolen from the VC playbook and quickly jumped into the WiFi arena. Cisco bought two leading compaes, Aeronet (Clarity) and Linksys, and dominates the access-point market. Intel is commoditizing WiFi chips so rapidly...

The nation's leading cell phone service providers have adopted the first set of guidelines for mobile marketing, according to a report by AdAge.com.

This is what I call doing things the smart and right way. Cablevision is upgrading their customers and making them VoIP ready.

Then there is the issue of third world country broadband connections. If VoIP has an Achilles heel it is that it relies on broadband providers. Eventually service providers will provide better broadband service but in the mean time companies need to protect themselves by having redundant systems in place so when there is an internet problem with one connection, switching over to another is seamless.

Forbes believes that the E911 VoIP mandate is a clear entry barrier and instance of raising rivals' costs.

I purchase the 7960G from VoIPSupply.com about a week ago, and just got time to mess around with it yesterday. Ironically the system comes with zero documentation, either hardcopy or a pdf on a CD. Zip, nil, notta, nothing… not even a CD period.