Google VoIP App Draws Petition

Information Week

Users of Google Voice call for the release of a voice-over-IP desktop client for Mac, Windows, and Linux PCs.

 

 

Thousands of Google Voice users have signed an online petition asking the search engine to release a desktop application that would enable them to make telephone calls over the Internet.

The petition, posted over the July 4th holiday weekend, was started after the blog TechCrunch reported that the company was testing a voice-over-IP desktop app internally. The site, however, reported that Google may scrap the project because founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin want all applications from the company to work from inside a browser.

The petitioners are asking Google to release the desktop app while deciding whether to pursue browser-based applications. "This petition is brought forth to show you the overwhelming demand for such an application for (Mac) OS X, Windows, and Linux PCs, and possibly an Android app," the document says.

Google was not immediately available for comment.

As of Tuesday morning, the petition had almost 2,600 signatures. Speculation that Google could develop a home and business VoIP app similar to the popular Skype service started in November 2009 when Google acquired Gizmo5. The company announced the purchase of the Internet-based calling service the same day Google agreed to buy mobile advertising network AdMob for $750 million.

Gizmo5 made software that offered Internet telephony on a computer or mobile phone. However, Google has never said why it bought the company.

In fact, the month before the announcement, Google told the Federal Communications Commission that Google Voice should not be subject to the same rules as traditional telephone companies because, among other reasons, the service is not a business VoIP service under FCC rules. If Google was to launch a VoIP service, than its argument to the FCC may be weakened.

Google Voice today primarily offers call forwarding, voicemail, and a voicemail-to-e-mail transcription service. The service, which is available at no charge, was made generally available last month and has more than a million active users.

In acquiring Gizmo5, Google suspended new signups for the service and said existing users would no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.

MagicJack Harnesses Femtocell For VoIP

PC World

MagicJack is demonstrating a device near the International Consumer Electronics Show this week that it claims will let consumers make VoIP calls using any GSM phone.

The company already sells a MagicJack made for use with conventional, analog desk phones. In the new product, coming in the second quarter of this year, it will replace the phone jack with a miniature GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) base station, or femtocell. Any GSM phone from any carrier will be able to connect with the femtocell to make VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada, MagicJack founder Dan Borislow said.

Like other home or voip business services providers, MagicJack sends calls over an IP network instead of the standard public telephone network, so it can sell phone service for less. The company charges US$40 for the MagicJack and includes one free year of service, then charges $20 per year for subsequent years. That covers calls to other MagicJack users as well as to conventional phones. The pricing will remain the same for the new femtocell.

The current MagicJack is a device about the size of a matchbox with a USB connection and a phone jack. The USB connector plugs into the user's computer, loads software onto it, and uses the computer's power, processor and broadband connection. The femtocell will also use the PC, but it will let users make calls with their cell phones instead of wired phones.

Many carriers are already exploring the use of femtocells to improve coverage inside subscribers' homes and ease the strain on their own networks. A femtocell is designed to work like a cellular base station, but only within a home, and to carry calls over the subscriber's own broadband connection instead of the carrier's wired backhaul network.

MagicJack's femtocell lets users bypass mobile operators altogether. It can be used with any GSM  or VoIP phones on any band, including locked phones and the Apple iPhone, Borislow said. He expects most customers to make the calls with old phones that they haven't been using. The femtocell's range is wide enough to cover a 3,000-square-foot (278-square-meter) home, he said. Borislow said he didn't want to disclose how the femtocell can work with locked phones.

MagicJack, a subsidiary of a private company called YMax, launched its product two years ago and so far has sold 5 million MagicJack devices, Borislow said. The MagicJack is sold in retail stores including Best Buy, Walmart and RadioShack. He claims the service operates with 99.9 percent reliability and better call quality than Skype. Ymax, based in Palm Beach, Florida, had revenue of about $30 million in 2008 and $110 million in 2009 and is profitable, he said. Borislow said the service is so successful that the company doesn't have to charge for calls to phones on the public telephone network.

Also in the second quarter, the company plans to introduce a softphone application that will allow consumers to use the service through their PCs, without a MagicJack device. That service will also cost $20 per year, Borislow said.

The MagicJack is set to be demonstrated on Thursday night next to the ShowStoppers product showcase, which is being held on the sidelines of CES in Las Vegas.

Customers Across U.S. Affected By T-Mobile Outage

Atlanta Business News

T-Mobile said Wednesday it's fixed the technical problems that caused about 5 percent of its customers in the U.S. to lose phone, text-messaging and Internet service Tuesday night.

Now, the mobile carrier is moving on to find the root cause of the problem, the company said in a statement.

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers," the company said in a statement.

T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, is the nation's fourth-largest cell carrier but lags significantly behind the big three of AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel.

A representative of the company reached by phone on Tuesday said there were outages, but technicians are working on a solution. She could not provide more technical detail. Not all customers were affected by the outage.

"We’re making good progress restoring messaging and business voip service to affected customers. At this time (9 p.m. Tuesday), approximately 5 percent of T-Mobile customers are experiencing service disruptions. Issues began at approximately 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. Our rapid response team is working continuously to fully resolve this disruption. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused our customers," a T-Mobile spokesperson said in a press release.

T-Mobile also had trouble in early October when Sidekick phone users were unable to connect to the Internet or use their contact list for about two weeks.

Those still experiencing problems should contact T-Mobile. A forum has been set up for those affected by the outage.

Cellphone Users in U.S., Canada, Spain Pay Most

Story by The Wall Street Journal

Consumers in the U.S., Canada and Spain have among the highest mobile phone bills in the world, according to an OECD report, which also reveals that people are increasingly ditching land lines in favor of using only cellphones.

The new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which surveyed its 30 member countries, says that revenue for business voip services and mobile-phones is on the rise, despite the global recession.

Mobile phones are steadily becoming cheaper to use, and service is more readily available. Still, there are glaring differences in prices and usage around the world. In Europe, mobile phone service is generally cheaper than in the U.S. Users in northern Europe, especially Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, pay the least for their mobile phones, and are therefore increasingly substituting their land lines with cellphones.

One of the reasons Canada and the U.S. are such expensive markets for mobile users is that, unlike in Europe, consumers in North America often pay to receive calls.

One European country that bucks the low-price trend is Spain. Buying a phone or a SIM card aren't particularly pricey, but usage is very expensive.

It is very difficult to compare the different types of plans in different countries.

Mexico, one of the fastest-growing mobile markets in the countries surveyed, still has the second-lowest mobile market penetration rate on the list. Slightly more than 60 out of every 100 people in Mexico own a cellphone. The lowest mobile-phone penetration of any OECD country is Canada.

Italy is the country where the most mobile phones are used, with 150 mobile subscribers for every 100 residents. People have multiple accounts, multiple SIM cards, and multiple phones.

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Is Hosted VoIP Ready For Enterprise Customers?

Story from TMC Net

Hosted VoIP solutions fall broadly into two categories:

a) Basic (SIP) trunking with minimal features

b) Full-featured hosted PBX phone systems or hosted Centrex.

According to AMI Partners, these services have grown quite significantly over the past few years with the number of seats deployed increasing from 394,000 seats in 2006 to 3,000,000 seats by 2010. However, virtually all of these seats are deployed in small or medium sized businesses. To a large extent, enterprise customers have not adopted hosted VoIP services. Why is this, and is the time right for them to do so now?

There are a number of reasons why larger enterprise customers have not adopted hosted VoIP to the same extent as the SMBs. First, there is an inherent inertia inside a large business driven by the mindset that only PSTN trunks can provide the kind of quality and reliability demanded by the users (and most importantly the CEO). The fear of the unknown and resistance to change is palpable; no one is going to get fired for installing a new AT&T PRI trunk, but they might get fired if they install a new (unknown and scary) hosted VoIP service! Secondly there are some genuine concerns about the real availability of the services, the end to end QOS and even the viability of some of the new service providers.

So, has the time come for enterprise to move to hosted business VoIP services?

Clearly, times have changed from just a year ago. We are in the depths of a deep, worldwide recession and almost all businesses, especially large enterprises, are feeling significant pain. No longer can they accept the status quo; they must look for ways to cut costs and become more efficient. For hosted VoIP providers, this is an opportunity that had not previously been afforded. But just cutting costs is not going to win an enterprise contract as the genuine concerns outlined above must be addressed. Let’s look at these in more detail:

a) Scalability. Is the system scalable for large enterprise? How can this be shown? Are simulated results good enough or is an enterprise deployment needed before you can win one (chicken and the egg problem)?
b) Availability and reliability. Does an enterprise really need five 9’s? Is four 9’s sufficient based upon the reduced costs and the ability to route calls elsewhere in the instance of an IP network failure issue, for example?

c) Manageability. Is the system manageable for many thousands of extensions? For example, the interface to manage 100 extensions may not be adequate for managing 10,000 extensions.
d) Quality. Most enterprises are probably not going to rely on a single IP connection for both voice and data (though with the availability of MPLS circuits and guarantees of QOS from the access provider and the VoIP service provider, there is certainly no reason not to finally merge the two), so the VoIP service provider needs to guarantee some level of QOS based upon a Layer 2 or private peered arrangement with the access provider (assuming they are not one and the same). Voice quality can actually be improved over the PSTN with the deployment of wide-band codecs or “HD voice” as it is sometimes referred to.

e) Security. Are security-conscious enterprises going to allow un-encrypted voice over a public Internet phone system? Probably not, so a plan for encrypted authentication and encrypted voice will likely be needed in any enterprise proposal.
f) Viability. Is a $100B (or maybe $10B nowadays) enterprise going to trust its mission critical phone services to an unprofitable, cash poor service provider? Any smaller service provider will have to make a case that it is just as viable (or even more so) as the customer’s previous vendors. With the recent bankruptcy of Nortel, perhaps this case isn’t so hard to make?

In conclusion, the time is ripe for service providers with products and services that can meet the criteria described above to market to enterprise customers. In all likelihood, SIP trunking will make the first inroads, as this is the least disruptive to the enterprise and any installation can be quickly reversed if problems are encountered. But enterprise is also ready for penetration by hosted PBX and hosted IP Centrex, especially if they have not already invested in an enterprise IP-PBX or are looking for integration with multiple smaller branch offices. The cloud of recession could indeed have a silver lining for our industry. IT

AT&T And Apple Handcuffing Skype Users

Story from PC World

If you've been an InfoWorld reader for more than two years or so, you no doubt remember that we used to be a magazine. Now we're online-only and doing rather well, thank you. But it's been a wrenching change, and many other publications, particularly newspapers, have not done nearly as well.

The Internet is a source of what historian Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction, bringing with it enormous benefits along with the collapse of old business models. And now that wireless technology is well on the road to convergence with the Internet, even more business models are being challenged. Indeed, the technology itself is being pushed as consumers and businesses demand ever more complex services.

Which brings us to the latest episode of this story: Skype versus AT&T and Apple, a duopoly I like to call Ma iPhone. Since Skype put its app on the App Store, more than 2 million downloads have been recorded because people want to make cheap Skype calls with their iPhones. Go right ahead, says Ma iPhone, but you can only make those calls via Wi-Fi, not 3G.

Apple implemented the policy at AT&T's behest.

The high-speed Skype internet phone ban has touched off a wave of protests, including calls for Congress and the FCC to get involved, if not directly, via regulation that would clarify the issue of Net neutrality and wireless services once and for all. It's an important debate that speaks to issues that we in the IT community should be thinking about.

As you may have guessed, I'm on the side of the consumer. I don't buy Ma iPhone's arguments that it can't afford to give Skype, which it considers a competitor, a leg up. And I don't believe the claim made by pro-corporate bloggers that the iSkype would be a bandwidth-hogging problem child.

Just whose network is it?

Ma iPhone's argument was well summed up during an interview with USA Today. Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top public policy executive, says AT&T has "every right" not to promote the services of a wireless rival. "We absolutely expect our vendors" -- Apple, in this case -- "not to facilitate the services of our competitors," he says. "Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile," he says, adding, Skype "has no obligation to market AT&T services. Why should the reverse be true?"

On the surface, the argument has some appeal. Why help a competitor? But we're not talking about a widget maker. There is a well-established set of legal and regulatory principles regulating telecommunications networks. They must be open. AT&T can't pick and choose what services customers can use on their landlines. And it appears that the law also leans in the direction of opening the less-regulated wireless networks. "Telecommunications networks are there to provide access for everybody. If not, they [the carriers] are breaking the bargain inherent to communications," says Chris Riley, policy counsel of Free Press, a nonpartisian advocacy group that is pushing the FCC to act.

"Wireless broadband networks cannot become a safe haven for discrimination," he says. "The Internet in your pocket should be just as free and open as the Internet in your home. The FCC must make it crystal clear that a closed Internet will not be tolerated on any platform."

AT&T argues that it can't afford to deliver services to a competitor. I don't believe it. There's a lot more money to be made selling wireless services than there is in the moribund landline business. Just as InfoWorld had to change its model to live in the age of digital publishing, AT&T has to accept that its business model has to change. Like it or not, the old ways of doing business no longer work.

There's plenty of bandwidth

Riley, who sports a doctorate in computer science as well as a law degree, makes short work of the argument that Skype calls will slow down the network. "VoIP calls are low-latency, but also relatively low in bandwidth usage," he says. Indeed, AT&T, unlike some in the blogosphere, doesn't even make that bandwidth argument about Skype. But it has made the bandwidth argument about streaming video services. Several weeks ago, AT&T briefly changed its terms of service to ban certain third-party streaming video from the iPhone. It quickly backed off that position, but it's worth noting that -- while claiming streaming movies, television programs, and so on would clog the network -- the company continued to offer similar services over the same network. It even has a YouTube button on the iPhone, notes Riley. "AT&T wants to have its cake and eat it, too," he says.

I don't mean to argue that the bandwidth is unlimited. There are real issues here, and I'd encourage you to read a special report InfoWorld published on the subject late last year. Still, I think Ma iPhone is way off base in its treatment of Skype, and I urge you to defend the principle of Net neutrality, whether it be wired or wireless. But don't do so in a knee-jerk way: The destruction of business models by new technology is of great importance to those of us who make our living in media and information technology, and I'd urge you to give it real thought.

Ensuring VoIP E911 Quality

Story from TMCNet

Despite the Federal mandate that all VoIP providers provide E911 services to their subscribers — as one would only deem reasonable, given the fundamental theory that VoIP is superior to PSTN voice services, thanks to its cost savings and features — the application is not as easy as one might think. Perhaps the most widely publicized E911 failure happened last year in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where a service provider routed an emergency call to a family’s previous residence in Mississauga, Ontario, resulting in a fatal delay in the proper dispatch of emergency personnel.


At its heart, according to Firdaus Aryana, product manager, VoIP Technologies, at TCS (Telecommunication Systems), E911 really boils down to call routing, which is one of the areas in which Aryana says TCS excels, routing VoIP calls to the appropriate PSAPs.


When I spoke to Aryana at NTCS’ Cable Show in Washington, D.C., he explained that, regardless of the VoIP provider, TCS does ensures its part in the process is flawless, not only using proven routing technology, but also verifying that both routing and location information is available.


TCS pushes GIS and provisioning data to the providers, using multiple data sets from GIS data providers to create a superset, ensuring greater accuracy when comparing with the available data from the providers and their subscribers.


Aryana conceded that the single greatest challenge still remains subscriber data input when moving between locations with their IP phones, and even the most effective routing and management systems cannot overcome incorrect data.


“Our GIS data is updates as updated as providers update their databases, but our data can only be as good as what the user provides,” he noted.


One of the ways TCS helps ensure subscriber data accuracy is through its VoIP Verify service, which provides, as its name suggests, verification of E911 routing availability immediately upon provisioning. By dialing 9-3-3 (or some other designated 911 variant in most cases), the subscriber hears a recorded message explaining the availability of E911 services and routing availability, including the subscriber’s location. The idea is to provide a semi-automated — the subscriber still has to initiate the verification call — process to increase the quality if data used to route call and dispatch first responders.


Another recent development is the availability of TCS’ VoIP Blotter — a map that shows the precise location of all E911 calls routed through a system, from a national level all the way down to a street-level view for local providers. The graphical depiction not only can help track emergency calls in any area, but also could be used to help verify location, if necessary.


In addition to its work with current ITSPs, including cablecos, WiFi (News - Alert) positioning provider Skyhook Wireless, and vehicle positioning service OnStar, TCS is ready to assist nearly any wireless provider — including WiMAX providers WiFi hotspot operators, with their E911 capabilities. In fact, Aryana says the software platform is ready for nearly any VoIP service implementation:

Business VoIP Services
Hosted Call Centers
Hosted PBX Phone Systems
Internet Phone

The idea, explains Aryana, is that TCS’ software platform has been designed to stay ahead of the curve, so that the routing capabilities are available as providers roll out services, with a single routing engine capable of handling all communications, including SMS messages sent to E911 dispatch centers from business VoIP services. In fact, he says that TCS handles more emergency-related SMS messages than any other E911 provider, and has focused on that capability, with the understanding that there may be many circumstances where callers are unable to speak, but can text message.


Ultimately, Aryana says that TCS is built to accommodate all forms of emergency calls, noting that, “a platform should be flexible enough to adapt and meet different needs.”