A company I am associated with offers free calls to the USA & Israel (including Israeli cellphones) for $99.99 a month. You get an ATA from them plug one side into your router, the other into a phone and thats it.
Like all unlimited plans this is based on statistics of average use with a qualification that if it is abused, they will be disconnected. Although this should be obvious that there is no thing as truly unlimited, especially to cellphones (which range from 10-30 cents a minute outside of the USA) — I still get emails asking me if it is possible to get this plan on a PBX and have the whole company call for $99 a month…
Some people forget that if it is too good to be true, it probably is… But they try anyway!
Tags: General
Luca’s status on Facebook alerted me to the fact that Ribbit, the company that labeled itself as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company”… was bought by the UK’s first phone company.
BT seems to be way ahead of its USA peers in deploying advanced IP communication services. Last year I was chatting on the train with a chap from BT while in Stockholm for VON. He related how BT has 80,000 employees but only 60,000 desks. When an employee reaches a BT office, they go to an empty desk, log into a IP phone with their credentials, plug in their laptop to the network and they have an office!
It will be interesting to see how the outspoken startup from California adjusts to the British way of doing business.
As the English say - Brilliant!
Tags: General
Due to the universal acceptance of email, many predicted the demise of the common fax machine. But, although much easier to use, email has still not replaced the office fax.
The latest announcement from Voxbone that they will be providing fax support on some of their local numbers, made me think again - why is fax still with us? Isn’t it much easier to scan, send and manipulate documents by email?
I think it boils down to the KISS mantra. Sending a fax is simple. Put the paper in the fax machine, dial, press send and that is it. Sending a document by email is clumsy. First you must scan it (but not everyone has a scanner next to their computer..), open up your scanning software, save it, go to email and send. OK, I know that some scanners are integrated with Outlook and do it faster, but the bottom line is that the average person still uses a fax to send their documents.
So I understand why you still send faxes the old way, but why do you receive them on a fax machine? Unlike sending receiving faxes to email, is super simple. All you do is get a dedicated fax to email phone number point it to your email and thats all! The sender doesn’t know the difference! No longer do you have to deal with piles of faxes in the morning, missed faxes because you were out of ink etc. All your faxes arrive automatically in your inbox. You can then forward them, print them or even delete them, just like you would with a regular email!
So simple, that it beats me why anyone would choose to receive their faxes any other way. If you need a fax number in the USA, we would be happy to help you out, just send me an email (or fax :-).
Tags: General
In the mid 80’s Apple stock was tanking, employees were deserting it left and right. Apple had two options, one to “join ‘em” and build IBM clones like everyone else, and the other was to continue developing their proprietary solution. As John Sculley , Apple CEO at the time, relates in “Odyssey” it was a hard decision, stockholders were tightening the screws on him to stop the bleeding, but John believed that taking the IBM path would be the end of Apple as a company. Against common & short term wisdom John made a decision to continue on the independent path.
We all know where Apple & the Mac are today… and IBMs PC business? Long gone.
John had the guts to take the decision as a leader. It was a gamble, he could have lost, but he stood up to the challenge and in the end won.
Yahoo! management unfortunately yesterday decided to go with the short term. The original cataloger of the World Wide Web has sold out to Google. Ok, they will make some advertising fees from Google, but in a few years they will be just another mediocre player if at all.
Some have it - some don’t….
On the same subject read Om’s great analysis of the situation.
Tags: General
My friend Jon Arnold pointed me to a post by Brough Turner (a facebook friend). Brough discusses the compelling vision that drove the development of the SIP standard and where we stand today.
I am not familiar what is going on at the major carriers, but for us little guys, SIP is the great enabler. We can connect customers, provision them with phone numbers worldwide and connect to other carriers in a few minutes. For us SIP as a standard works! What more could we ask?
Tags: General
If you are reading this blog, you are probably aware of the fact that phone numbers no longer represent a geographic setting. The advent of cellphones was the initial factor in changing our understanding of the phone number, the popularity of VoIP together with LNP freedom has completed this change forever.
Unfortunately, we are in a minority, even in the IP world. As Cory Andrews writes Craigslist, the most popular classified web site has decided to combat their spam problems by authenticating advertisers by their phone number.
Using a third party service, they do not accept your ad if they determine it is a VoIP number and not what they call a “fixed line” number.
Maybe a good idea, but it ain’t working. I checked a number of my company’s numbers and wonders of wonders Craig classified them as “fixed lines”. Of course they are not. But here is the problem, LNP enables you to take a number from the “fixed line” world and transfer it anywhere. So at what point does it become a “non-fixed” line??
Craigslist should wake up and realize that a phone number is like an email address, one delivers text, the other voice. Just because I have an email address with a ISP based in NY, do you assume I am in New York? Of course not, well a telephone number is no different. It is just a pointer to a IP address, no more, no less.
The applications are endless, I have a customer who sells Moving and Relocation services in the USA. His office is in another country and when you call his number in New York (or Texas for that matter…) it rings in his office a few thousand miles away. Last weekend he went on a vacation, not wanting to lose business (each sale is thousands of dollars) he called up asking if he can take his IP phone to the Hotel. Of course I told him, just plug it in.
That is just an example, so the next time you call 212, don’t assume that you are calling New York, chances are - you are not.
So what does a number mean then? How long will 212 numbers in NY and 207 numbers in London to mention 2 examples be more sought after than 646 and 203 in the same cities? A year? two? Or maybe a generation will have to pass before their shine wears off?
Tags: General
Although companies like Skype and those riding on their wave have given the general public the impression that voip services should be free, there is evidence to the contrary. My friend Luca writes about how his Sitofono product is profitable and usage is growing.
Why not? Sitofono is a click to call widget that enables your customers to speak to you now. Wouldn’t any business person pay to speak to a “hot lead”?
“Click to call” is just one of the examples of easy to deploy and profitable voip applications. Stay tuned into this channel for more
Tags: General
Well almost anything! Look at this post on one of the forums as an example…
Basically my elderly grandfather constantly sends faxes from his fax machine that are political rants, and he sends them to every political fax number he can find - and its starting to get us in legal trouble…
I’m hoping using asterisk I can somehow solve this problem…
Basically he uses his fax machine handset to make and receive phone calls, I want to leave this intact. What I want to do is make asterisk do one of the following:
1. Send some kind of ‘fax sent’ signal when he initiates a fax, and not actually send it - he never sends real faxes so it can ALWAYS throw out his faxes
2. Send any fax signal to a dedicated fax line ill set up - so i receive the faxes and they dont go to their destination
3. Instead of sending his faxes save them to a file.
Tags: General
I think you will agree with me that we all have multiple identities. A family identity, social, business etc. Nothing new about that. But did you think about that businesses also have multiple identities?
Simple things like more than one business operating in the same office. More complicated situations like setting up a separate entity for a special event or project. For example a major international sport event (Olympics, World Series etc.) comes to town. You have a great business idea related to the event, but it has nothing to do with your current business.
Here is where IP Communications bloom! In a day you can set up a new domain, email, phone number and basic web page. Use your existing offices, warehouse etc, and route incoming calls to the new IVR that you set up for the occasion. Then route the calls to your existing staff, don’t worry the IP system will alert them to answer the calls in the right way.
Just a small example what you can do. All it takes is to think outside of the standard telecom box. Forget about everything you know about phone systems. With IP there are no limits!
Tags: General
April 30th, 2008 · Comments Off
Tags: General
