How successful is your use of VoIP/IPT?
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Have your say Reader Poll IP telephony (IPT) solutions have been in the market for quite a while and our research indicates continued and growing activity in this area. However, the issue of service and call quality is still frequently mentioned in the press, with references to small businesses in particular ripping out their VoIP/IPT solutions and going back to analogue telephony. Sounds a bit drastic, so we thought we would check this out further.â¦
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BEDMINSTER, NJ - In a move its IP voice services forward, AT&amp;T announced Tuesday (Sept. 21) that is has formed an Innovation and Interoperability Program to foster development of applications and systems for its voice-over-IP (VoIP) network.
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(InfoWorld) - On Monday evening, my wife reached me on my mobile phone. She was spending a long weekend with her family in Maine. "I've called our home phone several times," she said. "And I keep getting a busy signal." That night, I didn't think twice about the phone problem. We have been VoIP customers for more than a year, and flaky service has been standard operating procedure. I reset my VoIP converter box and crossed my fingers. Then, on Tuesday, when the problems persisted, I called my VoIP provider, SunRocket, and got the message that the company was no longer taking tech support and sales calls. That's not good. Many free-market analysts and large telecom providers have hailed this as a new era of competition. It's a wonderful new world where your VoIP provider can cut off your home phone service without warning. This week, SunRocket went belly up without any communication to its 200,000 customers. SunRocket had been providing both my home and my home office phone service. I could charitably say that phone service since Monday evening has been intermittent. In reality, phone service has been mostly dead with occasional spurts of dial tone. Now, when business associates try to call my home office, they get either a busy signal, or they get one ring and a hang-up. I'm trying to switch my home and office numbers to Vonage, but they say it could take up to 10 days for the switch to happen. When I first heard about SunRocket more than a year ago, it seemed like a good solution to large monthly telephone bills. The local incumbent phone service was charging about $60 a month for unlimited local and long distance. SunRocket offered unlimited local andÂ long distance and even some international calling for $199 a year. The company also offered a second out-of-area-code phone number at no cost. That feature caught my eye because my home office is in suburban Maryland, but most of the people who call me are located in Washington, D.C. My wife and I looked at a savings of more than $500 a year and decided it was time to check out VoIP. The switch was not without problems. Voice quality was spotty at best, particularly when we were talking to someone on a mobile phone. For months, we had problems with frequently dropped calls. We soon became quite familiar with the "not-my-fault" phenomenon. SunRocket blamed the problems on Comcast, our broadband provider. Comcast, of course, blamed SunRocket. (Comcast: We can't guarantee quality of service for third-party applications. By the way, why don't you switch to our voice over IP service -- it only costs double what you're paying now.) After months of experimenting with equipment configuration, we finally got most of the problems ironed out. When it came time to renew our annual subscription, we had mixed feelings, but SunRocket was still significantly cheaper that most alternatives. We paid $199 for a year of service in March. In late June, in a sign of things to come, SunRocket laid off about a quarter of its workforce. The way I look at it, someone owes us about nine months of phone service, but we're not holding our breath. Now, in some ways, this is just a story about a couple hundred thousand VoIP customers who saw their phone service go dead without warning. But there's a larger context here. During the last couple of years, some telecom analysts, free-market think tanks, and telecom carriers have trumpeted a new era of competition. Their argument: Old, monopoly-style regulations aren't needed any more because there's all kinds of competition out there. They say that telecom carriers shouldn't have to share their networks with competitors and broadband providers shouldn't be prohibited from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors because there's all kinds of competition out there. Meanwhile, SunRocket, the second largest independent VoIP provider, has shut down. Vonage, the largest independent VoIP provider, has faced a patent infringement lawsuit from giant competitor Verizon, and its future is uncertain. Verizon contends it owns the patent to the technology that translates VoIP calls and allows them to connect to traditional telephone networks. Wireless phone carriers provide some competition, but the largest two wireless carriers are owned by the two giant telecom carriers. I'm not sure that counts as competition. In the broadband space, there are some indications that one or two new competitors are on the way, but it could take years. Right now, well over 90 percent of the U.S. has at most two broadband providers, the cable company or the telecom carrier. The telecom carriers are fighting against auction rules that would encourage a new broadband provider when a chunk of television spectrum is freed up in early 2009. Elsewhere, broadband customers in other countries, such as Japan and South Korea, pay less for faster service. Japanese customers pay about one-seventh what U.S. customers do per megabit of bandwidth. But few people in D.C. want to talk about the real reasons for this. It's not free-market competition; instead, telecom services in many other countries are highly regulated and subsidized by the government. For some of us, the promise of telecom competition seems a long way off. And, by the way, if you want to find me during the next week, your best bet is probably e-mail.
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The voice-over-IP market is growing, and by next year, 50% of all lines installed in the U.S. are expected to rely on VoIP technology -- despite continuing concerns that installations can be costly.
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By Rhodri Marsden  Same here, Sarah - until last weekend, when I successfully tested a mobile video call on the 3 network to an unsuspecting friend of mine sitting at home a few miles away. We pretended we were in the film Blade Runner for a minute or so. Cost, 50p.
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'Unique' converged offering Orange today followed BT's lead in trying to flog a converged VoIP via Wi-Fi and mobile device to a so far non-plussed public.â¦
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Sept. 27, 2004 -- VoIP, Inc. (OTCBB:VOII) today announced that it plans to help cable companies capture a share of the Internet phone services business.
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VoIP moves out of the 'PC peripheral' era Review The concept of the PC-free Skype-supporting DECT phone went straight to the top of our How Did We Survive Without One? list on the first day we used such a device, the Netgear SPH200D - reviewed here. Now, from Singapore-based Aztech, we have the V500DS-S1, another all-singing, all-dancing, Skype'n'DECT phone capable of making calls via either a run-of-the-mill landline or VoiP.â¦
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A VoIP expert at a national voice and data carrier draws on his experience to help you smooth the transition.
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Meta Group senior analyst David Willis said that he doesn&#39;t expect the Baby Bells to bow down just yet. &quot;I don&#39;t think VoIP is going to remain entirely unregulated over the next several years,&quot; Willis said.
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Vonage, an Internet phone service provider, and emergency telecom specialist Intrado say together they&#39;ve conducted successful trials of an advanced means of making emergency phone calls using the Internet.
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(InfoWorld) - Consumers who know nothing about new Internet telephone technologies but don't want to miss out on the action could be interested in this development: Manufacturers of cordless digital telephones plan to add IP (Internet Protocol) capability to a new generation of home communication and entertainment devices. Suppliers of DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication) phones, represented through their industry association the DECT Forum, have agreed to build new phones that can easily connect to broadband IP networks and offer services such as VOIP (voice over IP), Web-based phone directories and audio streaming, the association said Tuesday at the Telecom World conference and exhibition in Hong Kong. The DECT Form will be in charge of certifying the new generation of phones, called CAT-iq, which stands for Cordless Advanced Technology-internet and quality. Although the phones are IP-enabled, they are not designed for Web surfing, according to DECT Forum Chairman Erich Kamperschroer. "You'll continue using your PC for surfing, but in the future, instead of booting up your computer to check an online phone directory or listen to Internet radio, you'll use your CAT-iq phone instead," he said. The first line of products, expected in the third quarter of 2007, will provide VOIP-capability. By mid-2008, manufacturers intend to add audio streaming, with additional features planned through the end of the decade. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is expected to approve a new release of the CAT-iq standard early next year, according to Kamperschroer. The CAT-iq work group has also cooperated with the Home Gateway Initiative to ensure interoperability between phones and residential gateways. The new IP-enabled phones will use the same frequency band already allocated to DECT and have the same range of around 300 meters. Telecom World, which is organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency, runs through Friday.
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A VoIP supplier goes in search of something better than FTP.
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NEW YORK - Traditional phone systems may be going the way of the Pony Express. Voice-over-Internet Protocol, technology that allows users to make and receive phone calls using the Internet, is giving the old circuit-switched system a run for its money.
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I see no ships 3GSM Mobile VoIP (voice over internet protocol) will not hit mobile telephony revenues, but will have more of an impact on fixed line services, according to T-Mobile International AG chief executive Hamid Akhavan.â¦
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Voice over IP calls are getting cheaper - Vonage and AT&amp;T both announced lower monthly charges late last week. AT&amp;T said it would reduce its monthly charge by five dollars to $30 a month for unlimited local and long distance calls in Canada and the US.
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In the name of developing simpler voice over IP solutions, Vonage Holdings has teamed with Boingo Wireless. Initially, the companies will target business travelers with Boingo&#39;s Wi-Fi service and Vonage&#39;s SoftPhone service.