iLocus

DSP Group investing in DECT based VoIP

2009-06-24T04:39:44Z

DSP Group is one of very few companies out there that is promoting an alternative to VoIP-over-WiFi. It has significantly enhanced its processor to handle advanced VoIP functionalities. DSP Group DECT VoIP processor will, for instance, enable D-Link to develop features including PBX function, use of Cordless HS for reception, issue VoIP calls, having Wideband audio calls, having data over the cordless etc. DECT is up against VoIP—over-WiFi in the residential market. However DECT admittedly provides better quality, longer stand-by, longer talk time and much better range than WiFi. There are a few new applications where DECT is / will be integrated over the coming year. These include IAD (integration of DSLx with Home routing), eMTA, Infotainment Tablets/Handsets. These new applications will boost again the growth of DECT, which had otherwise seen a steady decline in Europe, its primary market. DECT is also able to compete with WiFi in FMC, according to DSP Group. The company is cooperating with few OEMs and a big operator in a development of CDMA Mobile Handset that has DECT function. This Handset will use DECT in the home and CDMA outside of the home. This solution will surely have an edge in terms of voice quality at home.

Alteva FMC solution goes touch beyond simultaneous ring

2009-06-24T04:22:09Z

Hosted VoIP provider, Alteva, recently started deployment of its in-house developed FMC solution. Most FMC applications hand the call off to a PSTN number such as cell phone. Once the call is answered on this device there is – in majority of the cases - no way to have the call transferred back to the employee corporate phone system. Alteva FMC solution makes a small improvement. A call can be transferred from cell phone to office phone and then back to another extension on the customer’s corporate phone system, enabling a better FMC experience. There is however a little inconvenience. If the user drops desk phone and picks mobile phone, the transfer is done manually. But Alteva us looking to make this feature automatic one day. According to Alteva, it is North America’s largest enterprise hosted VoIP provider, with clients in all 50 US states and 9 countries. The customers come from a variety of different verticals including retail, finance, accounting, broker dealers, private investigation, call centers and more.

Carrier VoIP equipment market shrinks during 1Q09

2009-06-22T10:48:50Z

shipment numbers we have from vendors, there was an appreciable sequential decline from 4Q08 to 1Q09 in the volume of carrier VoIP equipment sales. Softswitch components, which comprise the bulk of carrier VoIP equipment, saw sales decline from $897 million in 4Q08 to $708 million in 1Q09. That represents a Q-o-Q decline of over 21 percent. The worst hit among the softswitch components was the Class 4 softswitch which saw sales declining by over 40 percent. ]]> 6.3 million VoIP subscriber lines were sold in 1Q09, out of which an estimated one million lines were hosted IP Centrex while the remaining 5.3 million lines went towards residential VoIP deployments. There was however growth in SBC and IP Media Server segments owing to a strong performance by Huawei in SBC and Radisys in the media server segments. While Radisys held over 80% market share in independent IP media server category, Huawei inched frighteningly close to Acme Packet during the quarter!!! Huawei had strong SBC traction in APAC and CALA.

GIPS roster of mobile VoIP customers is growing

2009-06-16T11:07:54Z

KT Networks, part of Korea Telecom group, will be adding VoIP features to its Windows Mobile smartphone. The company will be using GIPS voice processing solution which includes HD voice capabilities. GIPS VoiceEngine Mobile for Windows provides support for de facto wideband standard, iSAC and iPCM-wb. Currently GIPS is a supplier of core voice processing for the following mobile VoIP providers: LG-Nortel, Nimbuzz, GreemPacket/Telecom Malaysia, Tencent, Optimobile and Movial. GIPS made a name for itself providing voice processing codecs for unpredictable (wireline) IP networks. VoIP over 3G and 4G adds a few more challenges. Therefore VoIP processing solutions such as the one provided by GIPS will be a crucial component to provide quality voice offering. A bigger challenge according to GIPS will be the education of all divisions within carriers. We wrote about the possible use of 3G-324M standard for VoIP over 3G. GIPS believes that 3G-324M “is an appendix for a dying technology - circuit switch.”

How XCast ties in Skype with its hosted PBX platform

2009-06-10T08:02:35Z

Ever since Skype announced support for IP PBXs, we have seen some interest in how best to tie in Skype in the PBX environment. Integrating Skype can be tricky because Skype is a P2P application. XCast Labs is a hosted VoIP provider that recently announced $2.7 million funding. This is how they tie in Skype: 1. Skype user dials Skype-to-Skype call using Skype username of matrix.us. 2. Call goes to XCast hosted platform, where the company has a gateway that does Skype to SIP translation. 3. XCast then prompts the caller to enter the XCast phone number they wish to call. Thereafter there is an onnet transfer. Pretty much like calling a PBX auto-attendant and entering a long extension number. 4. XCast platform sees the Skype user name that is calling and assigns them permanently an internal XSID (XCast-Skype ID). XCast customers can dial that XSID and XCast platform translates the SIP call into an outbound Skype-to-Skype call to the Skype user name that is linked to the XSID. The XSID is a number that has no possible conflict with any PSTN number. Dialing with a username other than your own is obviously not convenient. Gateway translation, which is how most developers have so far been handling Skype integration, sounds like old days of PC-to-Phone. Assigning unique number to Skype caller sounds like inefficient use of resources. XCast has obviously made a bold attempt to integrate Skype into its platform. I am sure the funding is not for the Skype integration. We have not seen any platform companies that have been able to seamlessly integrate Skype due to its P2P nature. Ideally speaking Skype would have to build PBX features by itself and sell a virtual PBX services package. XCast is a voice+video telephony service provider serving 50,000 voice lines. It carries about 50 million minutes of traffic per month. With the help of recent funding the service provider plans to triple its network capacity to be able to handle 10m minutes per day. The company also plans to target Apple iPhone users with video telephony apps.

Veraz's prepaid wholesale settlement solution

2009-06-10T07:58:50Z

Veraz will be offering a joint prepaid wholesale settlement/billing solution in partnership with Comarch. Prepaid wholesale must be gaining traction given the current economic recession. It becomes a requirement for carriers looking to offer service to those carriers that would not pass the necessary credit checks for a post-paid account. Pre-paid billing is also attractive to the wholesale carrier’s customers as a way to manage their interconnection costs. According to Veraz, there has been a fairly limited deployment of carrier pre-paid billing systems, mainly because of the expense and complexity of traditional IN SCP based solutions. Those are some of the technical challenges that the vendor solves. Veraz is also able to offer the prepaid wholesale billing solution as part of its IPX offering. Veraz’s SBC platform can be deployed as part of this solution. The Veraz Service Broker provides standards compliant SIP and INAP interfaces for integration with VoIP softswitches and legacy PSTN switches. Between the Veraz Service Broker and the Comarch application the interface is DIAMETER. Comarch’s billing application supports relevant OSS/BSS standards and has been deployed in tier one carriers.

Microsoft IPTV platform gets virtualization

2009-06-04T11:02:27Z

A general criticism leveled against Microsoft IPTV solution is that it is too feature rich and therefore requires lots of hardware. Microsoft is solving the issue through virtualization. Microsoft’s Mediaroom will be the first IPTV platform to offer virtualization support. The benefits are as usual. However it is worth pointing out that virtualization can particularly bring benefits when the size of the deployment is small – “actually even when it’s relatively sizable such as serving around 30,000 subscribers in a large town or small city.” According to Microsoft, virtualization will help its IPTV customers speed time to market by up to three weeks. Where large operators are concerned the virtualization can potentially help those looking to extend an existing service into new markets to serve lower density communities that serve up to 30,000 households. Additionally, for deployments of greater than 30,000 subscriber homes, a mix of virtualized and dedicated servers can provide the efficiency benefits. Virtualization support in Mediaroom involves sharing the resources of a physical server – things like memory, disks, CPU cycles, and so on – among several “virtual servers”. This is possible because not all the services required by a Mediaroom deployment need all the hardware resources (CPU, memory, etc) all the time. So, virtualization allows Mediaroom to optimize the use of the available resources. Reservation Telephone Cooperative is likely to be the first service provider to deploy TV services powered by Mediaroom with virtualization. Currently, there are more than 3 million subscribers to Mediaroom-powered TV services worldwide.

Can nextgen SCP solution help port wireline number to wireless

2009-06-03T07:44:12Z

Agnity recently announced deployment of its nextgen SCP and applications such as LNP, Advanced Toll Free, Voice VPN, Account Code, Least Cost Routing, etc at Mexico’s leading telco, Alestra. Agnity has implemented its nextgen SCP solution at various telco networks worldwide. There is certain overlap between nextgen SCP and SCIM. Agnity’s SCP works as an Application Server with SCIM functionality included. SCIM on the other hand provides only the service brokering functionality in IMS environment. The business case for nextgen SCPs has been debated over the years. You have carriers who want to offer IP services across their TDM networks. But you also have those who want to utilize their existing IN applications within the TDM cloud and extend them over to IP networks. Nextgen SCPs and SCIMs are used to achieve that. If the service runs in network agnostic environment, this can result in huge CAPEX and OPEX reduction. There are actually certain applications like LNP that mandate the use of nextgen SCP technology e.g. a carrier looking to offer LNP of a VoIP line/number over to some TDM line and vice versa. LNP is just an example of its kind. Nextgen SCPs are able to migrate most legacy applications to nextgen environment. One SCP feature that we would like to see is to port a consumer wire line number to a wireless phone since it is all IP in 3G. In case of Agnity’s solution, the LNP feature provides the generic application logic and DB implementation. It is the carriers who own and manage the specific deployment aspects. As of now, the LNP DBs of wire line and wireless phone numbers are maintained separately.

Chunghwa Telecom to monetize VoD using BigBand platform

2009-05-25T10:59:25Z

BigBand has won a supplier contract with Chunghwa Telecom for an IPTV advertising platform. BigBand was up against companies like Packetvision. Alcatel-Lucent (IPTV supplier to Chunghwa) also has its own ad platform. Factors leading to BigBand selection include the ability to facilitate a smooth migration path to future personalized SD and HD video services, scalability in media processing in MPEG2, and H.264 format, better interworking with Multimedi-On-Demand (MOD) SD and HD content, close collaboration with the MOD STBs (such as Hwacom STB models), encoders, etc. It is not clear if the BigBand product will provide features like pay-per-click or whether there is any ad insertion available for local businesses. However according to the vendor, “the initial deployment will support Chunghwa’s advertising requirements.” BigBand has implemented over 700 million advertising transactions a year, in more than 60 programming networks. In the IPTV market, besides Chunghwa, BigBand’s IPTV advertising solution is also deployed at LG Powercom, the operator in Korea, and is in trials with North American operators. It has proven to be very difficult to make advertising money on VoD. Especially IPTV VOD since the subscriber numbers are still small. However operators are looking toward a more personalized approach to add greater value and bring in new entrants who thus far did not see the ROI. Targeted and addressable advertising, in addition to other personalized services, support this business imperative. BigBand’s network-based platforms support linear, zoned advertising for geographic targeting, enable addressable advertising based on demographic and/ or behavioral information, and provide reporting and monitoring capabilities for feedback and statistics. Integration with the STB provides viewership information.

Fixing VoIP-over-3G quality issues with 3G-324M

2009-05-25T07:53:47Z

In a recent company announcement Clearsight introduced their latest version of network analysis solution that helps wireless operators test VoIP-over-3G readiness. The solution contains test algorithms based around 3GPP protocol for video telephony – 3G-324M. It is interesting to note that early version of VoIP on wireline networks also leveraged a video telephony protocol, H.323. Clearsight believes that the 3G-324M standard will gain traction popularity among operators looking to add VoIP to their 3G networks. There is already some traction among operators in Japan and Europe. There are usual quality related issues for handling VoIP over 3G: echo and broken speech. VoIP can particularly be problematic in traditional wireless networks – particularly 2G and 2.5G ones. 3G-324M is designed to support conventional two way video telephony in mobile handsets over traditional circuited-based networks but provides for guaranteed fixed-delays. Thus 3G-324M should in theory have acceptable levels of voice quality. While latencies of 80 ms or lower are acceptable, perhaps what is even more important is jitter which is simply a measure of latency variance. 3G-324M has guaranteed fixed-delays – minimizing latency but eliminating jitter. Clearsight develops solutions for wireline networks; specifically Ethernet. The company provides support for 3G-324M so that when those packets enter an Ethernet based (backhaul) network (from the cellular base station back to the central office), Clearsight solution will be able to perform fundamental protocol analysis on these voice packets.

Vopium reviving some interest in mobile VoIP

2009-05-08T09:10:19Z

Voipum, a three year old mobile VoIP startup, has recently geared up its reach. There have been the iPhone and Blackberry announcements recently. And some kind of an award from Frost & Sullivan. Apparently the Vopium war has been going on since 2006 and the startup happens to be listed on Euronext (with over Euro 16m market cap). There was a slight confusion about the Blackberry announcement. I know at least Raketu, Iotum, Eqo etc which are also VoIP clients and work on Blackberry sets. However, as Vopium clarified, it is the world's first mobile VoIP company to have an application on the Blackberry App World. Raketu, Iotum and EQO all have applications for various BlackBerry models - as does Vopium. In fact, Vopium works on more than 500 handsets. Key to Vopium success is the LCR across various calling options including GSM call, a VoWiFi call, a pure Voice over 3G call, and (I imagine) hybrid GSM-VoIP call. According to Vopium, PSTN termination is a sustainable business model. However the company is looking to launch more value added services over the coming months. It is also exploring white label services for MVNOs. Vopium is the world's first mobile VoIP provider to offer mobile backup - a service which allows Vopium customers to store their address book contacts and calendar online. Gartner predicts that half the mobile voice calls will be VoIP in ten years time. Obviously they have a tremendous knowledge of the mobile VoIP market. And if they turn out to be right Vopium could afford to smoke some grass too.

IPTV at ZTE

2009-05-07T14:14:45Z

ZTE signed a major IPTV contract with CANTV recentlly. I talked to Jason Ying at ZTE about the company's perspective of IPTV potential in Latin America. CANTV target subscriber base for their IPTV offering is 1.26 million. We discussed couple of other issues as well .. such as ZTE's R&D investment in IPTV. Apparently ZTE has over 1,000 developers focussed on IPTV.

Tellme enhances its VoIP capabilities

2009-05-06T06:34:21Z

Tellme is mixing its Speech apps capability, Aspect’s contact center solution, and Global Crossing’s carrier VoIP services to offer a turnkey VoIP contact center solution to enterprises. While Tellme integrates with Global Crossing’s network using SIP technology, Tellme customers have a choice: integrating with Global Crossing with either VoIP or TDM interconnections. Transition from TDM to VoIP is possible at a later stage. Since Tellme operates as an on-demand service, the new capabilities are immediately available to enterprises across the company’s platform. Although Tellme has been on the radar of several large VoIP carriers like Level 3 (due to Tellme’s capability to generate voice traffic), it was Microsoft that acquired the company some time back. There are a couple of on-demand (VoIP oriented) speech application platform start-ups in the market. These include Twilio and Ifbyphone. The success of these companies depends upon their ability to serve enterprise customers with complex IVR needs, sometimes with hundreds of toll-free numbers accessing different voice applications for a single client. A typical Tellme customer, for instance, handles over 10 million calls a year on the Tellme platform. On the minutes-of-use side, Tellme will probably not face many problems. Global Crossing has a large carrier grade VoIP network in place. The integration with Global Crossing provides Tellme customers low-cost toll-free service and an opportunity to leverage local service to take per-minute costs out of our telecom spend, which according to Tellme is typically one of the single largest cost in contact center environments. Additionally, the Tellme-Global Crossing solution provides the capability to blind transfer calls to customer contact centers without additional fees. Global Crossing is the first carrier that has been able to offer Tellme an integrated local number DID solution, allowing customers to answer not only toll-free calls on the Tellme platform but local calls as well. Customers with local branches or stores will be able to examine consolidating call traffic from many local numbers to a central voice service on the Tellme platform.

Packet Island introduces $8k test-and-monitoring equipment for SMEs

2009-05-06T05:55:18Z

Packet Island has released the newer version of its VoIP test/monitoring solution for SMEs. The premise based solution costs $8k and runs over a combination of standard Dell hardware and some proprietary boards. Packet Island has been offering the solution as a SaaS-based option as well. Over 30 MSPs use hosted SaaS offering. Packet Island will compete with NetIQ, Fluke Networks, and Apparent Networks. These vendors offer a software-only solution that allows service providers to generate VoIP traffic on customer networks for a short period of time to do a predictive test. According to Packet Island, its solution prolongs the period of test time - spanning a full business day or multiple days. The other differentiating factor that the company points out is that while its competing solutions generate test traffic, they are unable to observe the overall traffic (VoIP + Data) flowing through a network. Apart from the Dell hardware in the solution, the micro-appliances shipped with the server are custom appliances that have been designed for VoIP/video assessment and monitoring. These micro-appliances function as sniffers and double up as VoIP call generators for assessment purposes. The thrust of the solution is to test VoIP readiness. It does so by measuring the RTP-capacity of the networks using SIP to co-ordinate the tests.

Acme Packet should be buying Nortel’s VoIP product line

2009-04-30T14:07:25Z

Acme Packet has made a smart move acquiring enterprise-SBC company, Covergence. (Here is one of my writeups on Covergence). I think a smarter bet would be buying Nortel’s carrier VoIP assets, particularly the MCS platform. Acme Packet needs to become more diversified. It cannot conquer the market with a point solution. The company is focussed on SBCs only. That is both its strength as well as its weakness. It is a weakness because some of the bigger guys have chosen to embed the SBC capability in routers and media gateways. The other bigger players that have not done so will surely come up with their own SBC product in due course. Acquiring a softswitch/feature-server could initially put Acme in competition with some of its main OEM channel partners like Alcatel-Lucent and NSN. This could perhaps lock Acme out of OEM deals. However, as mentioned, these vendors will eventually bring out their own SBC platforms. So Acme will be locked out of OEM deals anyway at some point. It therefore makes sense to be prepared for such a scenario. The company has to therefore diversify. The best opportunity right now is to acquire Nortel’s VoIP assets (assuming Acme Packet can afford the price). Nortel’s VoIP platform is a market leader. It is certainly popular among the cable companies, which means Acme could get its foot inside the cable doors. I think with Nortel VoIP assets acquisition, we can (1) have another major non-legacy VoIP startup besides Sonus in the market, and such as deal will (2) secure the future of Acme Packet as a diversified telecom vendor, which the market badly needs right now. NSN, Huawei and Genband are supposed to have considered acquiring Nortel’s VoIP assets. It does not make sense for Genband to acquire softswithes and feature servers since they have previously offloaded such assets. Huawei certainly won’t gain much in terms of solution capabilities. I think NSN might still be interested because it is aggressively pursuing cable business in North America. Besides that, Nortel is slightly ahead of NSN in terms of SIP capability in its platforms, which is something NSN might benefit from.

Skype should be declared World Heritage

2009-04-30T07:22:28Z

I am glad eBay has decided to spin off Skype. This was also my first choice a year ago. The logic is quite straightforward: there is no reason to beat the dead horse looking for some supernatural synergy with Googles and eBays. Let us give it a rest and recognize Skype in its own right. Besides, Skype should not remain one company’s asset anymore. It belongs to 400 million of us worldwide. It should be declared a World Heritage. Imagine someone like Google or BT acquiring the asset and then killing it like they usually do! Skype is THE company that took VoIP to consumers. While tonnes of VoIP equipment are deployed in carrier networks worldwide, the predominant consumer VoIP interface continues to be Skype. There are no doubt certain weaknesses in the business model of the company. A year ago I would have pointed out the lack of SME offering and bad mobile VoIP strategy. But I think Skype is progressing well along both those fronts. And these offerings should help it generate better margin revenues and not rely on the PSTN termination alone. There also seems to be some lull in the developer activity. Perhaps web friendly APIs and better developer promotion strategies would come in handy. I am copying below a link to one of my papers that contains a section on Skype arguing why Skype should be one of the 10 most influential VoIP companies ever: Click to download paper.

Huawei: Incumbent vendor by 2012?

2009-04-29T14:48:32Z

Following the acquisition of Lucent, and Nortel unlikely to emerge through bankruptcy in one piece, there is a telecom vendor vacuum in North America. It just so happens that Huawei – which has literally started 2009 from zero deployments in the US - is gearing up for a major marketing push in North America following its initial success with the cable companies there. I think the company has a good chance filling the vendor vacuum. I discussed these and other related issues with Huawei’s Ron Raffensperger recently at their Analyst conference in Shenzhen.

Ifbyphone white-labelling Voice 2.0

2009-04-29T07:03:57Z

Ifbyphone is targeting small-mid sized carriers to offer white labelled cloud telephony services. The company has accepted a small number of carriers into its beta program. Ifbyphone has roughly 20 or so telephone automation applications on its platform, ranging from the simple features like voicemail and conference calling, to sophisticated features, like integrated IVR, call center apps, and phone-based store locators. According to Ifbyphone, carriers typically have to spend $250K to get such a platform of features. Hosted PBX providers, who typically offer very basic IVR features, can also be potential customers for Ifbyphone, as the company offers an inexpensive way for them to increase the functionality of or add features to their platforms. These providers can connect to Ifbyphone to offer more advanced IVR features to their customers inexpensively. Although the white labelled services add a sales channel for the company, Ifbyphone has so far chosen to offer services direct to the SMBs. The company just surpassed 80,000 SMB accounts. In order to enable a wide spectrum of VoIP carriers, Ifbyphone will need to deal with the issue of SIP variants. Practically speaking Ifbyphone has to be interoperable with many softswitches.

Q4 far better than Q3 for carrier VoIP equipment

2009-04-02T13:10:12Z

According to the shipment numbers we have from vendors, Q4 seems to have been far better than Q3 for carrier VoIP equipment. In all the major VoIP categories that we track, there was a healthy sequential growth in revenue. VoIP subscriber lines equipment (pure Voice over Broadband) saw a Q-o-Q growth of 66%. Over 8.8 million VoIP subscriber lines were sold in 4Q08. Alcatel-Lucent led the vendors with 20.4% market share. All Alcatel-Lucent VoIP subscriber lines shipped during the quarter were for IMS based VoIP deployments. Out of the 8.8 million VoIP subscriber lines sold in 4Q08, an estimated 1.1 million lines were hosted IP Centrex while the remaining 7.7 million lines went towards residential VoIP deployments. There was also a huge Q-o-Q growth in VoIP hardware as Huawei, ZTE, Genband, and Alcatel-Lucent continued to ramp up their media gateway sales. Acme Packet market share in SBCs sank below 50% for the first time in two years. RadiSys on the other hand further improved its number one market share lead in the IP Media Server category.

GoBackTV’s solution for IPTV-over-Cable

2009-04-02T13:04:23Z

IPTV-over-Cable is supposed to be a big market opportunity. Equipment vendors expect it to be as big as telco deployed IPTV. While the latter might have an edge in terms of interactive services, Cable companies have responded by utilizing the IP bearer channel for VoD and other interactive services. There are two broad approaches for handling IPTV-over-Cable from a technical standpoint. Casa, Cisco, and Arris being CMTS vendors advocate using the traditional architecture i.e. treating IPTV like ordinary data, and sending it through the CMTS core. Motorola (also a CMTS vendor) has proposed a related architecture (DIBA). BigBand and Harmonic are QAM modulator vendors, and have designed systems to leverage an existing DOCSIS 3.0 system. It is unclear whether they can gain maximal efficiency without the cooperation of the CMTS. GoBackTV product is a CMTS-bypass solution for IPTV-over-Cable. CMTS-bypass continues to use the basic DOCSIS infrastructure, but allows the video traffic to bypass the CMTS core, and go directly to the edgeQAM. The edgeQAM is responsible for encapsulating the IP(TV) stream in DOCSIS headers, and packetizing it for QAM modulation. At the subscriber's home, a standard cable modem demodulates the signal, strips off the DOCSIS headers, and passes on the IP(TV) stream on its Ethernet port. The reason for doing this is that video is much higher bandwidth than traditional internet data, but does not require any of the packet-processing features since video comes from trusted sources, has its own conditional access/scrambling, and must receive the highest qos priority. A DOCSIS core is an order of magnitude more expensive than a downstream QAM, and has a limited throughput. So, if you send video through a CMTS core, you quickly eat up its throughput capacity, but leave it underutilized in terms of packet processing, upstream handling, and cable modem management. If you let the video bypass the DOCSIS core, you need fewer cores to handle the system's worth of video. That is a lot of technology on one blog.

Tandberg video phones get Broadsoft features

2009-03-27T06:19:33Z

Tandberg video phones will be able to mashup hosted PBX features of Broadsoft platform through a partnership between the two. The arrangement seems similar to a hosted PBX solution except that the IP phone is being substituted by video phone. Broadsoft features such as call hold, forwarding, transfer and resume are already available on Tandberg video phone. The phone will support enhanced features such as device management in future. One-to-one or point-to-point video calls are already supported. Seen from the other side, this will, to some extent, add video elements to the existing hosted PBX features. For instance this will enable video receptionist capability adding a “virtual” front desk whereby two way video and audio communication takes place between a remote employee and a visitor. The joint solution is obviously for enterprise users. Broadsoft has also made a mark in residential telephony. However there are no plans to tap the residential video telephony market yet. One of the former employees of Broadsoft last year founded Vidtel, a video telephony service company. The standards that Broadsoft platform follows in adding video calling to the PBX environment is H.264, H.263-1998 or H.263-2000. Tandberg is one of the market leaders in business video phones with a global market share of about 40% in video end points and about 45% in the related infrastructure. In the last five years, Tandberg has sold almost a quarter of a million video end-points.

VoIP minutes in 4Q08 touch 428 billion

2009-03-25T12:58:59Z

Growth in local VoIP minutes seems to have slowed down a little. There was a sequential growth of 7% in local VoIP traffic from Q3 to Q4. This is no doubt due to decline in VoIP subscriber growth. We track mostly VoBB minutes and iPAS type traffic in this category. ILD VoIP minutes, on the other hand, saw a negative growth Q-o-Q. This is perhaps due to the overall decline in ILD traffic in 4Q08. The negative growth could also be due to slight bit of consolidation in the service provider segment dealing with ILD wholesale. NLD minutes saw a normal/healthy growth owing to the growing use of IP networks by wireless carriers to transport NLD traffic. Estimated 107. 2 billion local minutes, 298.1 billion NLD minutes, and 22.5 billion ILD minutes were handled by VoIP platforms worldwide in 4Q08.

Impact of Skype integration with SIP PBXs

2009-03-24T12:55:00Z

Skype integration into SIP PBXs is official now although companies like VoSKY and couple others have been at it for a couple of years now. The difference is that (1) Skype now has a configuration module that lets most users behind SIP PBXs to integrate their phone systems with Skype, and (2) The solution is software based while as previous attempts by companies like VoSKY involved a hardware based bridge. There is another little difference: (3) The solution is geared towards SIP PBXs while as previous attempts involved integration of Skype with open source PBX platforms like Asterisk. SIP trunking is a mature market now. With this announcement Skype has positioned itself to tap into that market. What is happening is that the PSTN termination part will be handled by Skype here. As such they are increasing their footprint of handoffs for termination into PSTN. This development will also have an impact on companies like Digium who sell small gateways that handle PSTN termination. And that is because you do not necessarily need a gateway if you are using a softclient off a PC or a Smartphone. Skype softclient takes care of the termination for you. Those PBX vendors that have OEM relationships in place with small gateway manufacturers will find it tempting to pre-integrate Skype capability into to their PBX. Vendors like Cisco, however, may not want to jeopardize their gateway business. That however, holds for PC-to-phone and phone-to-phone applications. For PC-to-PC Skype application, integration of Skype may a competing platform because you will be selling lesser number of end user licenses. There is another factor to consider with the PC-to-PC application: Skype PC-to-PC set up is a Peer-to-Peer application. There is some peer-to-peer push in SIP PBXs but that is in its infancy. Perhaps Skype integration into SIP PBXs will catalyse the move towards peer-to-peer voice communication in the enterprise environment. This development may also some impact on the Freephone numbers. Now a company can put out its Skype Call-me button on site and take the call on its PBX. This integration will also bring Skype add-ons and mashups into the enterprise realm which is always welcome. From Skype point of view, although this will increase its share of PSTN termination business, a better strategy in my view would be to offer Virtual PBX services to small enterprises. Perhaps that is the next step. Having said that, I wonder if anyone out there has integrated Asterisk with Skype, doing a hosted offering based on top of the combined platform?

trixbox had more downloads in 2008 than its ‘parent’ Asterisk

2009-03-22T10:52:42Z

Fonality’s tixbox CE, which is essentially an extension of Asterisk, clocked 2.8 million downloads in 2008 compared to the ‘parent’ open source platform Asterisk which had some 1.5 million downloads during the same period. trixbox CE (Community Edition) is more of a complete application. It provides administrators the tools necessary to deploy a fully-functioning phone system. A good analogy would be Asterisk being an engine and trixbox CE a complete car. There are several extended Asterisk systems available in the market where developers are offering an alternative to licensed IP PBX software. Over 18% of all the IP PBX extensions configured worldwide now run open source IP PBX. On a cumulative basis, trixbox CE has been downloaded about 6 million times. While Digium (Asterisk’s owner) is in the business of selling hardware on the back of their Asterisk ‘channel’, most of Fonality's revenues are generated by PBXtra (a turnkey system for SMBs) and trixbox Pro (software used by Fonality’s indirect reseller and OEM channel to build complete solutions). Trixbox Pro is promoted by large distributors such as Dell Computers. According to industry estimates Asterisk accounts for nearly 85% of all open-source PBX implementations. Out of these, Fonality reckons that trixbox CE makes up around 60% to 75% of all Asterisk-based, open-source deployments. Some of the well known vendors that develop for and/or integrate with Fonality trixbox CE platform include Zoiper, QueueMetrics, Sangoma, Rhino, Aastra, Polycom, CounterPath, Broadsoft, Broadcom, and Pika.

What is VoLGA really about?

2009-03-18T08:34:36Z

As Kineto Wireless points out, for a mobile operator, the assumed technology for providing voice over LTE is IMS. The problem with IMS-based VoLTE is that: (1) The specifications have not been completed. There is no agreed approach. (2) IMS is an all IP technology, and there is no circuit switched connection. Mobile operators on the other hand have circuit switched networks. As such if they go for LTE they would be forced to invest in new/expensive IMS telephony equipment. With VoLGA, mobile operators will be able to re-use their existing MSCs to do VoLTE. LTE transport network supports 8 different priority queues, so mobile operators have the ability to prioritize voice (or other services) at different rates. VoLGA will be just another packet application running over LTE. VoLGA does not dedicate bandwidth to voice. That is part of the LTE radio network. The primary advantages of VoLGA are the ability to reuse the existing voice network for voice services over LTE, the ability to bring voice to LTE from the start.

iPass equipped with 106k Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide

2009-03-18T08:01:19Z

Enterprise hotspot aggregator iPass announced partnership deal with Telmex, which lets it integrate more than 1,300 Telmex Wi-Fi hotspots into the iPass Global Broadband roaming Network. With the Telmex deal, iPass now has 106,638 Wi-Fi locations available in 82 countries. iPass’ core segment is the global enterprise customers. 447 of the Forbes Global 2000 use its roaming services. With such a vast roaming network, an obvious temptation would be to enter VoIP. So far iPass has stayed clear of VoIP services simply because there is no such demand from its customers. With a vast roaming network, perhaps GSMA IPX type services or simple VoIP peering would make sense. However iPass is content with just data roaming services right now. GRIC had a similar business model as iPass several years back. It explored VoIP briefly and then quit the market soon afterwards. When roaming, customers don’t have to worry about charges. Companies are billed centrally and most of them use iPass services at flat rates. However, there are some companies that have elected usage pricing. Today iPass has 119 Wi-Fi operator partnerships world wide.

Mavenir’s relevance in wireless NGN

2009-03-18T07:42:21Z

At the recent GSMA World Congress, Mavenir Systems announced that it has been selected by three Tier1 mobile operators across three different continents. The company named only one Tier1 mobile operator Viettal out of Vietnam. The other customers include one GSM operator in North America and a multi country operator in Europe. The main features of Mavenir’s ICS product include its mapping of features available on the legacy MSCs. Moreover, Mavenir has a few apps of its own that bring in Presence and IM. Mavenir Systems does not tie into subscriber feature servers like those of Broadsoft. Mavenir’s product rather replaces feature servers like Broadsoft. The company is building its platform to offset the gaps that exist in subscriber feature servers like Broadsoft. Although vendors like Broadsoft are trying to cater to both fixed as well as wireless operators using a single underlying feature server, gaps exist because features such as call conferencing, or call waiting work differently in a fixed environment as compared to a wireless set up. As in fixed environment platforms like Broadsoft helped operators bypass the interim stage of packetizing the core, Mavenir lets its mobile operators use their existing MSC (packetized or non-packetized) to offer services to standard SIP or IMS clients over WiFi, WiMAX and LTE. The solution also reduces OPEX of maintaining two overlapping voice cores, as offered by traditional vendors like Ericsson, NSN and Alcatel-Lucent. The vendor proposes an alternative procedure for operators that have not packetized their voice core.

FreeSwitch’s latest release

2009-02-26T18:29:27Z

FreeSwitch, the open source VoIP platform designed for carriers, has announced the latest version. The biggest addition is a telephony abstraction library that normalizes several existing voice protocols into a single API. The main reason FreesSwitch developed module was to get H323 support. According to FreeSwitch, it is also possible to expand the module to support other protocols such as IAX2 and SIP. The open source project has also added the Least Cost Routing module in its latest version. Some of the service providers using FreeSwitch include Teliax, tollfreegateway.com, Truphone, Paetec and a few more that are migrating to FreeSwitch but have not announced it yet. There are three main open source VoIP platforms in use. These include Asterisk, FreeSwitch, and OpenSER. Asterisk is mostly in use in the enterprise environment. FreeSwitch and OpenSER are used by carriers. OpenSER is a proxy that routes SIP packets. FreeSwitch is a b2bua that carries media and interconnects networks. Both work together to form a complete system. FreeSwitch developer community seems to be growing on a regular basis. It’s IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #freeswitch) has close to 200 members in it on a daily basis. There are over a thousand members on the mailing list. Both those numbers have doubled in the last 6 months.

Alvarion gets DR Congo Wimax deal

2009-02-23T09:13:34Z

Alvarion announced that it has been selected by Cielux in DR Congo for a new $45 million Wimax deployment. Alvarion has 60 WiMax deployments in 30 African countries including Telkom SA, MTN Uganda, Kenya Data Networks, Microcom Congo, Mercury Angola and Monarch Nigeria. Cielux will provide voice and broadband services over Wimax. The initial public exhibition of WiMax network is planned for June 2009, with 10,000 subscribers expected on the network by the end of the year. Alvarion has been deploying VoIP over OFDM systems for over 10 ten years and most of its WiMax deployments include commercial VoIP. The new 802.16e complaint product from the vendor is an advanced version of 802.16d, providing better radio performance by increasing both coverage and capacity of the network. In Africa, Alvarion is up against companies like Huawei and ZTE that are making significant inroads into Wimax in the continent. Alvarion claims to have over 70 per cent of the market in Africa.

Sonus announces IPX solution

2009-02-23T06:46:46Z

Sonus announced a GSMA-compliant IPX interconnect solution, Mobile SecurEdge. The IP-peering solution engineered for mobile operators addresses security issues related to international roaming and national peering traffic. Sonus is up against SBC incumbent Acme Packet that sell standalone SBCs, which take care of security issues. In mobile networks, however, Sonus might have the edge having worked on large networks including AT&T Cingular. In these wireless network accounts Sonus has integrated IPX capabilities with MSC elements. IPX services will launch this year. IPX services are supposed to drive down the mobile interconnection charges, thus enabling mobile operators to maintain margins. Carrier charges for roaming international calls is expected to decline significantly. There are several GSMA IPX trials going on worldwide. Sonus has been involved in a number these. One of its customer, Tata Communications, recently concluded the IPX trials. Although Sonus did not reveal the remaining customers trialing its IPX solution, our guess is Belgacom ICS and COLT might be other Sonus customers running IPX trials.