Two New Gadgets/Services Hit the Market

Corner 1: Verizon Hub

Corner 2: T-Mobile at Home

Battle: Both aim to extinguish landlines.

Outcome: Verizon wins for families or those wanting another fun technological gadget, but T-Mobile triumphs for those in their 20’s or 30’s; an extremely practical service.

As a person who is always looking for the next cool gadget, I was intrigued by the new services debuting from both T-Mobile and Verizon. Now let me first state that I am a Verizon subscriber currently, so initially thought I would choose the Verizon Hub over T-Mobile at Home. Then I realized though that the services were completely different; both use VoIP technology but their features are completely different.

The Hub acts as an at home command center and comes with a 7-inch touch screen and portable phone. You can connect an Ethernet cable or use Wi-Fi. If you don’t already have a router, Verizon will sell you one for $70. Extra handsets cost $80. As a phone, the Hub excels. It’s packed with useful calling features: visual voice mail, anonymous-call rejection, call rerouting to a designated backup number and more. And, unlike rival Internet phones, it’s also meant to complement the cellphones in your Verizon Wireless network. So if you subscribe to Verizon’s Chaperone family-finder service, you can use the Hub to locate your kid’s Verizon phone on a map. If you subscribe to the VZ Navigator location-based service, you can find an address on the Hub via convenient on-screen directories and send it to a Verizon cell from which you get turn-by-turn directions.

However, be warned, this cordless single line of VoIP service is not a true computer substitute. Why do I say this? Although you can look at the time or weather and access traffic, watch movie trailers and buy tickets, in addition to watching videos via Verizon’s V Cast, covering news, entertainment and kids fare, you can’t browse the web or check your e-mail.

And while the Hub is sleek, and the touch screen impressive, this little command center will set you back about $249.99 before a $50.00 rebate. This is in addition to the $35.00 a month hub service plan you also need to purchase, which goes on top of your existing broadband service fee.

Now for the T-Mobile@home: this product lets you use Wi-Fi instead of your cell net-work inside of your home. First things first, this service is an additional $9.99 a month, on top of your mobile plan. It seems to make the most sense for those who have bad cell service in their houses/apartments. The service provides “seamless handover” between cellular and WiFi networks via UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology. T-Mobile claims the hand-off is so smooth that users can’t tell when they’ve been switched to a different network.

The advantage of the service for subscribers is that it lets you conserve your cell phone minutes and make free mobile calls anywhere in the U.S over wifi. Another advantage for you is that once you are in a hot spot, you gain access to a higher speed network which allows you to download mobile content including Web pages, music files, video files and games - much faster than you could from a 2G, or even 3G wireless network.

What’s cool–T-Mobile’s UMA network enables a dual mode phone to automatically detect a hot spot and switch over to WiFi mode as soon as it comes in range (i.e. as soon as the signal is strong enough). Then, it automatically switches back to cellular when the user exits the hot spot. T-Mobile is the first to give “seamless handoff” capabilities, with public hot spots that can be used by any of its subscribers.

Issues—how will billing take place? If you make a long distance call from a WiFi network but then roam outdoors and switch over to a cellular network, what are you billed for? And then, what happens if you initiate a call on a cellular network and then enter a hot spot? Are you charged “cellular rates” for all the minutes of that call – or does the call become “free” mid-way in the session? It seems like that would be the case but some more clarity would be appreciated.

Biggest benefits—1 phone, 1 voice mail box, 1 address book –seems worthwhile.

Final Word: Both new services are innovative and are definitely the forefront in phone technology. What we are seeing is the marriage of various technology services into one portal. If you have some extra pocket cash, the Verizon Hub is a great new tool, and a fun thing to show off to friends. If you are a college student hoping to save money, T-Mobile Hotspot service will save you money on calls if you get a low monthly usage plan, and are on a campus that is WiFi enabled. These new options are equally impressive; it’s up to you to decide which would make more sense for you.

Thanks Alltop!

A big thank you to @GuyKawasaki and the whole Alltop team for including us on Voip.alltop.com! We’ve been loyal followers of their feeds for a long time and it’s great to be included on their site. Also a big THANK YOU to the twitter community and all our followers who helped us out!

Five Steps to Choosing a VoIP Provider

If you are ready to switch to the cost saving telephony option of VoIP, here are five steps for choosing the right provider and getting started:

Step One: Figure out which provider has the best service and rates for your company.

Estimate how many phones you’ll need and how much your employees will be talking on them. Some providers charge a flat fee for each seat no matter how many calls are placed or received. Other VoIP providers charge a lower flat fee for a certain number of minutes, then charge extra for every minute over the flat rate. This may work for firms with extremely low call volume, though generally we recommend the unlimited plans. After all, you have better things to do with your time than comb over every charge on your phone bill.

Similarly, for a toll-free number, some providers charge a low monthly fee, then charge an additional per-minute rate for all calls. Other companies charge a flat fee for unlimited calls to the toll-free number. Bottom line: If you have more than 1,000 minutes of toll-free usage a month, or more than 30 minutes a day, an unlimited number is more economical. Also, as we said before, unlimited plans are just easier.

Step Two: Evaluate equipment.

With VoIP, the primary piece of equipment is the actual phone. Figure out what kind of phone you want before choosing a provider. (Some providers require customers to use proprietary phones, while some work with a wide variety of phones.) Here are important points to consider:
• How much do you use speaker phone? If you use it a lot, pay for a phone with high-quality speaker sound. Phones with a full duplex speaker have good quality. We like the Polycom phones for their speaker phone clarity.
• You probably want a secondary Ethernet port in your phones. Most offices have just one Internet connection per desk. If that is the case at your office, you’ll want phones with a dual Ethernet port, so that you can plug your computer into your phone for shared Ethernet connectivity.
• The cordless/wireless options. Cordless phones are available and often appeal to people who work from home. Cordless phones cost roughly $150-$200 more than regular phones. There also are wireless (or wi-fi) phones available, but we don’t recommend them for business use, as there is a higher likelihood of packet loss and poor call quality.
• You probably don’t want power-over-Ethernet. These phones get their power from the Internet, so you don’t have to plug a separate cord into an electrical outlet. This is meant to reduce clutter and to keep the phones going during a power outage.

For more information, check out our Phones 101 section, where we’ve graded the top VoIP phones on the market.

Step Three: Investigate providers’ customer service capabilities.

Important questions:
• Ask about average customer service hold times.
• Ask whether customer service is in-house or outsourced to a third party in another country. In our opinion you are better off with in-house customer service workers who understand the product and speak fluent English.
• Check out how much information is online. Ideally, you can easily access information, and solve your own problems.

Step Four: Decide which features you want—and investigate which providers offer those features and at what price.

While the list of possible features may be long and impressive, it is important to figure out what you will actually use. Below are some that we think are useful for most small businesses, as well as a few that are probably not worth the money.

First, the features we like:
• Auto Attendant
• Extension-to-extension dialing. (You can forward a call to a colleague.)
• Voicemail to e-mail. (You can receive voicemails as email attachments.)
• Call forwarding.
• Simultaneous ring. (You can have your cell phone and desk phone ring at the same time, so you don’t miss any calls.)
• Outlook integration (You can click on a person in your Outlook address book and your phone will dial that person’s number.)
• Fax solution. (A feature that allows fax to e-mail and e-mail to fax, so that you don’t have to keep a separate fax provider.)

A few features that are probably not worth paying for:
• Instant Messaging. (You probably already have IM, and if not, you can get it for free.)
• Video Conferencing. (Again, you can get it through Skype for free)
• Unlimited calls to Europe or parts of Asia. (Most small businesses don’t make enough global calls to justify the expense.)

Step Five: Figure out how much bandwidth you need—and test it.

 As a general rule, you need 100Kbps of bandwidth per user. That way, everyone can be talking on the phone and be online simultaneously. 1 Mbps equals 1,000 Kbps, which is enough for 10 users. Going down to 30Kbps per person may work (depending on what your company does), but we don’t recommend anything below that.

Also, make sure you have a T1 line. A residential cable or DSL line is not high-powered enough for a business using VoIP. Also, we recommend testing the bandwidth, instead of relying on your ISP’s word. 8×8’s Packet8 provides an online test.

Related: As you negotiate with providers, remember that VoIP companies (like the rest of us) are dealing with the effects of a recession. You may be able to get a good deal. Consider these tips from VOIP-News.

The Skype is the limit

Skype has seen consistant user growth, and with the new release of the application for Google’s Android phone, it is only set to become more popular. The new application requires neither wifi nor 3g, and if the quality is good will be very likely to vastly reduce the cost of calls in most situations.  This graph from the Skype Journal shows just how consistant the growth of Skype usership has been:

With rumors for a skype app slated for the iphone as well, there isn’t an end in sight for skypes current rate of growth.

Packet 8 Failover FAIL

Packet 8 has failed a lot of their customers today, with a major service interruption that disrupted service for much of their customer base. In July of this year the VoIP provider had a major outage that largely affected their residential customers.  During the summer outage the company was able to fail over all their business customers to another server, but residential customers weren’t as fortunate. After speaking with a customer support rep at Packet 8 today, I learned that today’s outage affected all inbound and outbound calls for residential and business customers. This comes just a day after salesforce.com had a similar outage that brought down all of their servers. Trust.salesforce.com has never appeared red across the board as pictured below, in all the years that I’ve been checking it. These outages are especially unfortunate at a time when keeping a positive service presence is so important for so many businesses in the economic state of the country.

Pictured below, the twitter community responds to Packet8 outage, trust.salesforce.com January 6 screenshot (click to enlarge)

   

VoIP Now and in the Future

 With the year drawing to an end everyone wants to know how the world of VoIP has changed over the past twelve months and where it is headed in 2009.  With new technology constantly being released and new companies popping up left and right it can be a daunting task to find the top quality providers of both equipment and service.  Garrett Smith’s ongoing interview series with some of the major players in the VoIP world is helping to clarify the opinions and ideas of those at the heart of the industry.  Interviewees range from high level executives at providers such as M5 Networks and Mobivox, to those who monitor VoIP networks for quality control and are directly involved with technology development. While the series doesn’t focus on one particular sector of VoIP, i.e. businesses vs. residential, they do capture a feel for the industry as a whole with the hopes of shedding some light on the future of VoIP. 

 Perhaps the most common theme of interview responses is the strong feeling in the VoIP industry that Unified Communications (UC) will be the epicenter of new innovation. Unified Communications is an umbrella term for the total integration of all functions available from a service, i.e. automatic away-from-desk messages, voicemail to email, all without the user having to actively change settings.  David Schenkel, CTO of Objectworld, predicts the earliest adopters of UC will be companies like Microsoft and SAP, who have an intimate and high level knowledge of the technology at work. From the interviews it becomes clear that there is a lot of development still required before Unified Communications becomes refined and efficient enough for implementation in the work place.  Once this trend sets in however, it is touted to totally reshape the means by which various forms of communications are delivered. 

 Steve Wong’s interview is particularly noteworthy for his insightful predictions for the Voip industry in ‘09. Wong is the VP of Marketing for ClearSight Networks, a company which analyzes and monitors the quality of service that various providers maintain on their networks.  Drawing on his extensive background in VoIP Wong makes these predictions for the upcoming year:

1. The small business segment will be the first and fastest to start purchasing VoIP services in 2009 despite the state of the economy.
2. Industry consolidation is inevitable with the large number of fledgling providers, hopefully reducing customer confusion in the decision making process.
3. That Ebay will sell SKYPE; their core competencies do not necessarily align which is holding SKYPE down.

The entire interview series provises a helpful look inside the current and future state of Voip and is a good resource for those currently in the market for a Voip provider, or who are simply interested in the state of the industry. The series is ongoing and is recommended reading for those looking to keep their finger on the pulse of the coming trends for the New Year.

Battle of the Voip CEO’s

A couple of weeks ago Packet8 put out a press release that was essentially an advertisement about a discount on service charges for the month of December. Andy Abramson at Voipwatch jumped on them for their advertising efforts, criticizing the company for misusing the press release format. He went on to compare the discount price to the standard cost of a competitor, Junction Network, concluding that even with the discount Packet8’s cost was still higher. 

 His post, which wasn’t overly inflammatory nevertheless set off a wave of reactions at the highest level of the Voip industry.  The CEO of Packet 8 Bryan Martin posted a rebuttal (Dec. 9 ‘08) on his blog, giving an “apples to apples” break down of a single seat cost of Packet8 vs. OnSIP with Junction network. His argument concluded that a single seat cost was lower, but also contained a number of blurry references to case by case discounts that were available “if you ask.”  This prompted Junction Networks CEO Robert Walpov to respond, with a clear and articulate breakdown of costs, that revealed that Junction Network was in fact less expensive than Packet8.

  Involvement at this level is very impressive, and is a credit to both companies for the direct involvement of the upper level management. It’s also an interesting reflection of how a CEO’s attitudes can trickle down to the rest of the company. Walpov comes off as a straight shooter in his writing, which is evident in the company’s straightforward pricing scheme. Martin on the other hand tends to be a bit more vague, which is also apparent in the way the sales process seems to work, at least from his own account, in that discounts for different items will be considered on a case by case basis on a customer’s request. In the end it’s up to the consumer to decide, but these posts provide another informative resource for deciding which Voip provider to choose.

SKYPE Thanksgiving

A colleague of mine told me an amusing story about his Thanksgiving experience involving Voip that I thought would be interesting to share. His family used skype in an unusual way during the holiday, incorporating Voip into the family meal. His sister is currently living in London, while the rest of the family lives in New York. Work schedule conflicts prevented his sister from returning home for the holiday, and rather than miss out on the experience and limit the holiday contact to a mere voice phone call, the family used Skype’s video chat to include her in the whole meal. They set up a computer screen at the table, where she would have sat, with a webcam pointed at the rest of the family. With their daughter on screen the family talked with her and interacted while she ate her own meal as if she were in her seat, and not thousands of miles away. My colleague tells me that the opportunity arose for some fun “pass the salt” moments, but other than that, it was as if she was really there! They all spoke with her throughout the hour long meal, conversing with her as if she was at the table, but when the meal was over, instead of trekking thousands of miles back across the pond, she merely logged off and was able to return to work.

To Block or Not to Block, the EU and Bangladesh take on VOIP

The International Herald Tribune reports that the European Union is investigating several unnamed mobile carriers to determine whether they are blocking the functionality of Voip applications on their mobile phones. 

Some mobile carriers have blocked services that use voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, which allows users to make calls over the Web. Companies may be seeking to stop customers from accessing applications, like eBay’s Skype, to defend voice revenue from the less expensive Internet services, Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, the research company, said.

The European Commission, the EU antitrust authority, has sent questionnaires to phone companies asking what “tools” they use to “control, manage, block, slow down or otherwise restrict or filter” Internet-based voice calls.

The EU deadline for responding to the survey was Tuesday. The questionnaire, obtained by Bloomberg News, does not identify any companies. Read more.

The EU’s efforts to protect the consumer comes in stark contrast to recent developments in Bangladesh, where the Daily Star reports that the government, which owns the telephone companies, has been cracking down on illegal Voip providers.

The BTRC decision came at a time when the telecom watchdog detected some ISPs’ involvement in illegal international call termination business through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology.

Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued three IGW (international gateway) licences to private sector companies in February this year for routing international incoming and outgoing calls to stop illegal VoIP business.

But the grey market’s VoIP operators have restored their business as the three private IGW operators are not still equipped enough to terminate all calls generated everyday to and from Bangladesh, industry insiders said.

“BTRC will not spare anyone involved in illegal VoIP business,” said an official of the commission. “ISPs should be confined to their business.” Read More.

The fear that Voip will take away from voice service minutes is the driving force behind both actions. While it isn’t this site’s place to make any moral or ethical judgements, it seems fair to say that Voip is seen as a far more inexpensive option than traditional phone service by both Bangladesh and the EU.

Voice Over Internet Protocol

The newest and best way to make affordable phone calls.