Categories
End User voip

Bang Bang you're alive VoIP shootout

In case anyone is interested we are doing a VoIP shootout at Comms Business’ Convergence Summit North in Manchester tomorrow. This is a high speed high pressure job where you turn up, plug your kit in and expect it to work first time making phone calls.

It’s actually quite good fun, if somewhat pressure filled – the last time they did it two out of six contestants didn’t manage to get a call up and running. 

Anyone interested in watching should turn up at 14.45.  You will need to be quick on the draw to get a good seat.  Details can be found here.

Note it’s quite unusual to get a VoIP installation that doesn’t go fairly smoothly these days. Service Providers have got their act together, especially when it comes to understanding which bits of kit (routers, firewalls etc) can cause problems.  There is always the exception to the rule of course but as long as the installer knows what he is doing it is rarely anything that can’t be sorted.

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity voip

What are ISPs doing about Voice?

The question is being asked “what are ISPs doing about voice?” This is particularly relevant as the market consolidates and B2B ISPs not only seek economies of scale but additional sources of revenues.

Timico was founded as a fully converged ISP from the outset. Early on we had to decide whether to simply white label services from other ISPs and ITSPs or do “get into manufacturing” and do it all ourselves.

At the outset there were no real white label VoIP options. You had to do it yourself. However there were plenty of ISPs providing Virtual ISP services.

Categories
broadband Business ofcom voip

VONGA – POTS Lite

It’s been quite an amusing afternoon at BT Central in Newgate Street. After the ITSPA council meeting I stayed to moderate the Technical Workshop which covered VONGA and Number Porting.

More on Number Porting anon but VONGA, or Voice over Next Generation Access, was an interesting session. BT is, as we all know, rolling out Fibre To The Cabinet and then Fibre To The Premises (anyone wanting the service please get in touch).

The FTTP product from Openreach is going to have an option to take voice services that will replicate WLR3 – the standard analogue line Plain Old Telephony Service or POTS.

There are I think several drivers for this within BT. Firstly BT either appears to be obligated to, or has decided to only provide fibre services to new Greenfield site builds rather than any copper based connectivity. They still however have an Universal Service Obligation to provide telephony services to anyone that want them.

Enter VONGA stage left. VONGA allows end users to plug an old fashioned telephone handset into an Analogue Telephone Adapter socket on their “broadband” router to make phone calls.

VONGA is also part of BT’s long term preparatory work before they turn off the old fashioned PSTN and move over to 21CN voice – 2020 at the earliest as reported here.

When I first heard of VONGA I kind of got excited. ITSPs around the country were asking all about it. In fact they were worried that BT might be trying to eat their still meagre lunch.

Don’t worry lads (and lasses). There is an alternative called CPCA that allows you to provide your own telephony services from the ATA sockets in the BT kit although it wasn’t totally clear to me whether anyone could do this completely independently of paying something to BT for the privilege. BT seems to think they are the only ones able to provide the PATS level service and point to a battery in the router that will keep the service alive for up to 4 hours in the event of a power cut (all subject to spec confirmation). Ofcom and most ITSPs would disagree here.

Despite what I’m sure are Openreach’s best efforts to corner the WLR3 futures market it will be possible for Communications Providers to sell users the FTTP connection and then sell their own services overlaid onto and through the Ethernet ports in the router – just like they do now. In fact this is effectively the naked DSL currently unavailable in the UK, albeit using turbo DSL.

VONGA does notionally provide Quality of Service for voice running over a separate VLAN tied to each ATA socket. However this QoS will also almost certainly be available to users just taking FTTP.

There are several disappointing facts associated with VONGA. Firstly trial dates stretch well into 2011 and then there is no firm date for production so this isn’t likely to happen before 2012.

Secondly VONGA, initially at least, strives only to replicate what is currently already there – so expect only boring old fashioned G711 voice services. This is a shame really considering that G711 will occupy only 100kbps or so out of the 100Mbps available over the fibre so could provide a higher quality product taking up just a little more bandwidth.

I think BT is boringly missing a trick by just trying to reinvent an old fashioned service but then again I realise that this is part of the long term goal to replicate and then remove the boring old 20CN network.

The third and final disappointing fact, which is more of an amusing one really, is the that VONGA uses SIP as a signaling protocol. SIP enables the internet’s version of old fashioned telephony but takes it on to another level by providing features such as Video. Presence and Instant Messaging.

SIP however doesn’t support all the legacy features of the PSTN – it’s moved on from there. You don’t need ringback for example if you can see when someone is off the phone.

The Alcatel Lucent SIP softswitch being used by BT (one of at least four different VoIP platforms being used across the BT empire) therefore doesn’t support all the features of the Plain Old Fashioned Telephone System.

This means that whilst you might expect a broadband VoIP service to offer more than POTS in this case it actually offers less – POTS Lite if you like. Who’d have thought such a thing was possible!

Sorry about the continued abundance of acronyms!

PS we were sat in the pub after the meeting thinking up titles for this post. Kinda fonda VONGA didn’t sound true, VONGA Ponga was a bit childish so VONGA – POTS Lite got it.

Categories
Engineer internet UC voip

VoIP QoS monitoring stuff

VoIP QoS should not be an issue if the network is managed correctly.  This means the LAN, the WAN link and the core network of the service provider.

If the WAN link is an ADSL then it can be susceptible to congestion at the exchange though in my experience this very rarely happens, even at times of extreme network usage such as the Olympics or last summer’s cricket. Problems here typically stem from underprovisioning of bandwidth.  An Internet Telephony Service Provider should also be operating an uncongested core network and a properly designed LAN should never give problems.

Problems do still occur but if you have the right tools these should be straightforward to detect and sort out.  One of the ways we manage our network is by using probes embedded at key point in the network.

The diagram below shows the output of one such probe earlier this morning.  We are looking at connection downtime, lost packets or packets arriving in the wrong order, jitter and latency or delay. It can be seen that latency is almost the only measurable effect.  All the other numbers are too low to count. Even the worst case latency figure seen here of around 46ms is not going to be noticed by the human ear and most of the calls are below 20ms.

This is a very useful tool for IT managers having to run multiple services over a multi-site Wide Area Network and allows them to spot problems before anyone notices and starts to complain.

VoIP QoS network monitoring screenshot

Categories
Business voip

Date set for end of Nortel era

Nortel has set February 25th as the date for the auction of CVAS, the jewel in its crown. The acronym stands for Carrier VoIP Applications Solutions and is basically the world leading Nortel carrier division.

The current bid in from GENBAND is a low US$282 million.  This however is just a starter with the end point expected to be much higher by the end of the bidding process. There are apparently 6 or 7 runners with three of them being serious.

This will either be the end of the beginning, beginning of the end or some other combination of beginnings and ends that will bring the bankruptcy process to a close. I’m not sure what happens to the Nortel brand name – Avaya seem to be continuing to use it in conjunction with the Enterprise PBX division they bought in a similar auction process. What I do hope is that the name CVAS is immediately dispensed with.  Presumably the name was the last act of someone who has subsequently left the company.

Categories
Engineer voip

VoIP MOS test results are at least as good as PSTN – it’s official

The official ITSPA Awards test results make for very interesting reading. All entrants for the Best ITSP, consumer and SMB categories had their services independently tested by Epitiro.

There were 16 entrants for these two categories. On average Epitiro made 400 calls per company and then took over 50,000 technical measurements. Calls were all made over the same broadband connection.

All bar one company tested reached the ITU-T P.862 PESQ MOS Quality rating in excess of 4.0 thus meeting the ITU-T P.800 subjective rating of ‘Excellent’. The one that didn’t met the subjective rating of “Good”.

Consumer VoIP MOS downstream average = 4.3
Consumer VoIP MOS upstream average = 4.25

Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS downstream average = 4.25
Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS upstream average = 4.25

There is no real reason why there should be a difference between consumer and business downstream MOS.

Packet Loss was very minimal. Only three companies experienced any packet loss (minimal – 1.3% was the highest loss)

Call set up times were in general on a par to the PSTN standard of 2.5 seconds and better than mobiles.. The customer would experience no difference.

These are great results and are a serious independent endorsement of VoIP as a mainstream communications technology that can replace traditional PSTN services.

PS MOS = Mean Opinion Score and represents perceived quality of a telephone call.

Categories
Engineer voip

VoIP MOS test results are at least as good as PSTN – it's official

The official ITSPA Awards test results make for very interesting reading. All entrants for the Best ITSP, consumer and SMB categories had their services independently tested by Epitiro.

There were 16 entrants for these two categories. On average Epitiro made 400 calls per company and then took over 50,000 technical measurements. Calls were all made over the same broadband connection.

All bar one company tested reached the ITU-T P.862 PESQ MOS Quality rating in excess of 4.0 thus meeting the ITU-T P.800 subjective rating of ‘Excellent’. The one that didn’t met the subjective rating of “Good”.

Consumer VoIP MOS downstream average = 4.3
Consumer VoIP MOS upstream average = 4.25

Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS downstream average = 4.25
Business ITSP (SMEs) MOS upstream average = 4.25

There is no real reason why there should be a difference between consumer and business downstream MOS.

Packet Loss was very minimal. Only three companies experienced any packet loss (minimal – 1.3% was the highest loss)

Call set up times were in general on a par to the PSTN standard of 2.5 seconds and better than mobiles.. The customer would experience no difference.

These are great results and are a serious independent endorsement of VoIP as a mainstream communications technology that can replace traditional PSTN services.

PS MOS = Mean Opinion Score and represents perceived quality of a telephone call.

Categories
Business voip

ISDN problem & what to do about it

I love it when our ISDN line develops a fault, as it seems to do once a year with the month chosen at random. It’s happened to day. The reason I love it of course is we also have SIP trunks coming into the office so normal service doesn’t have to be resumed – it doesn’t stop in the first place. Hooray for ISDN faults 🙂  (hooray for SIP trunks).

I don’t have access to the numbers but it would be interesting to see the BT Openreach figures for exchange line faults. As reported last week the equipment is getting fairly mature.

Categories
Business voip

ISDN problem & what to do about it

I love it when our ISDN line develops a fault, as it seems to do once a year with the month chosen at random. It’s happened to day. The reason I love it of course is we also have SIP trunks coming into the office so normal service doesn’t have to be resumed – it doesn’t stop in the first place. Hooray for ISDN faults 🙂  (hooray for SIP trunks).

I don’t have access to the numbers but it would be interesting to see the BT Openreach figures for exchange line faults. As reported last week the equipment is getting fairly mature.

Categories
broadband End User internet voip

FTTC Broadband 10Meg Up Install

We did our first FTTC broadband 10Mbps uplink trial installation yesterday in Muswell Hill in North London. The customer is very happy with the performance. It will take 10 days to bed down but I’ll take a look after then and report back on speeds.

The installation itself, once the Openreach modem has been put in, is simplicity itself and takes only five minutes. We are using the Thomson Gateway TG789vn kit in our trials and have to say are very impressed with what you can get in a small piece of plastic these days.

I’ll be looking at productising some homeworker services using our VoIP platform, based potentially on the Thomson range. We have been very impressed with their responsiveness as a supplier.

Categories
Business voip

Timico is double ITSPA Awards Finalist

I’m pleased to tell the world that Timico has been shortlisted as a finalist in the ITSPA Awards again this year.  Last year we won the Unified Comms category. 

This year we don’t have that category but we are down to the last few in both the Best Business ITSP (SME) and Best Business ITSP (Enterprise) slots.  The awards are being presented at the House of Commons on Thursday 10th December.

Last year it was actually a great evening.  Parliament itself provides an exciting backdrop for the event which attracts a high number of attendees. Afterwards many of us adjourned to the nearest hostelry to celebrate.  I had to carry the award around with me which made me paranoind about losing it.  I felt a little like that FA Cup team way back when they went out to celebrate and took the cup with them and dented it in the process.

Our ITSPA trophy now rests in pride of place in our reception in Newark, hopefully to be joined by others – wish us luck.

ITSPA Awards Finalist Best ITSP (Enterprise) logo
ITSPA Awards Finalist Best ITSP (Enterprise) logo
ITSPA Finalist Best Business ITSP (SME) logo
ITSPA Finalist Best Business ITSP (SME) logo

Categories
Business voip

Project Pathfinder – 21CN voice by 2020

Spent this morning at the BT (Post Office) Tower in London being briefed about the plans for migration of old 20CN voice circuits to 21CN.

The BT Pathfinder Project has been running in two telephone exchanges in Cardiff since July 2008. Pathfinder is the test bed for running traditional voice services over BT’s 21CN network.

The current project has seen 75,000 POTS (Plain Old Telephony Service) circuits moved from their old Digital Local Exchange (DLE) connections to 21CN Multi Service Access Nodes (MSANs). The process isn’t straightforward.

In the first instance BT has had to conduct large scale testing (£150m worth) on hundreds of different bits of customer premises equipment that connect to phone lines – phone systems, alarm systems etc. 

Kit that doesn’t work on MSANs has to be identified so that customer lines that have this kit plugged in at the other end do not get migrated to 21CN. The rule of thumb is apparently that 10% of exchange lines will not be migrated to 21CN because of it.

The trial has been slow going.  The pace is being stepped up with a further 275,000 lines planned for migration between June 2010 and January 2011. This will give BT the experience of switching over whole telephone exchanges in one go.

The next step will then be to extend the trial to the migration of ISDN circuits as well as POTS in the Thamesmead and Redditch areas. There are no timescales for this at the moment.

Why so slow you ask? Due to economic circumstances BT has taken a strategic decision to delay the full implementation of 21CN until 2020! I guess I can understand this especially when you consider that the migration will offer no perceived benefit to the customer.  A phone line on 21CN will look identical to one on 20CN.

The delay in spending the money on the rollout does come with risks.  What BT doesn’t know is when the current estate of SystemX and AXE10 exchanges will start becoming unreliable.  Electronic equipment follows what is known as the bathtub curve of reliability. If a bit of kit is going to fail it does so either early on in its deployment or after a very long time in use.

The carrier is watching its reliability statistics on a month by month basis to check for signs of the network climbing the sides of the bath again.

If this starts to happen then BT can rush through a programme of exchange migrations – hence the Pathfinder Project. There is a scenario where specific exchanges could be moved over to 21CN in order to provide spares for the rest of the 20CN network.

In the meantime we will be getting in touch with customers in the Cardiff area to let them know what’s coming and to check out their equipment compatibility.

Readers should not get the wrong idea about 21CN.  There are plenty of services that are based on it – ADSL2+, FTTC,FTTP, EFM, metro Ethernet to name but a few – you will have to Google the acronyms if you don’t know what they stand for. The mobile networks are also apparently using the 21CN infrastructure for backhaul to the tune of £750m a year.

Because I know you’re interested the photo below is of a   JT47 Transfer Connection Point (TCP) Shoe used to make bulk migrations to 21CN voice easier in the exchange 🙂 .

JT47 Transfer Connection Point (TCP) Shoe
JT47 Transfer Connection Point (TCP) Shoe
Categories
Apps Engineer voip

Strictly Come X Factor needs British Talent – bring on the Media Resource Broker

It’s a fair bet that most punters enthusiastically ringing in to cast their votes on popular game shows don’t think about the network capacity problems they are creating! Typical Joe Public eh?

When someone dials in to one of these shows they make use of Media Servers in the telecommunications network. Typically Media Servers are boxes especially designed for a single purpose. There are a number of such types of server used by Telcos (and I count Timico amongst them) for specialist applications such as the aforementioned IVR based voting system and business services such as conference bridges.

The problem is that the kit used for voting is different to the kit used for conference calls and meetings. This means that expensive bits of kit lie idle in a network for much of the time. Conference bridges are used during working hours and TV Game Shows are on in the evenings (apparently 🙂 ). The surges in network demand prompted by game shows also results in sometimes between 10 and 100 times overprovisioning of capacity compared to the average state of affairs which exacerbates the costliness!

This is all about to change – watch out for the virtual network!

On Friday I met with Chris Boulton of NS Technologies at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport. Chris used to work in the Office of the CTO at Ubiquity Software, a Terry Matthews SIP company that was bought by Avaya couple of years or so ago and has a blue chip heritage in designing advanced IP communications networks infrastructure.

Chis is currently working on the Media Resource Broker. We are all used to the idea of running different applications on a PC or handheld device, or even games on a gaming box. Telecoms networks though have always been built using dedicated kit. The MRB changes this by allowing telcos to build networks that use standard platforms targetable at different applications according to demand at any given time.

So a box that is used as a conference bridge in the day can be used for voting out contestants in the evening. This will not only save huge amounts of money but also result in a flexible and scalable network architecture that can then quickly be applied to other functions, many of which will not even have been thought of yet.

We talk about doing things in the cloud but it is interesting to see that even infrastructure is moving in this direction.

The whole world is moving towards becoming virtualised. I can even see the day when the typical household will have a box under the stairs next to the gas and electricity meter that will be its network processing resource. This will bring with it huge opportunities in business.

It will also of course heighten our reliance on such resources and the Domesday scenario of when it all goes wrong becomes even more of an issue. But there again even that represents an opportunity…

Categories
Business voip

Job vacancy for VoIP network operations engineer – please retweet

I’m looking for a VoIP network engineer to join our expanding VoIP team.  The job entails assisting with the running of our Nortel A2E SIP platform, the development of new services, interoperability testing with vendors and other service providers, 3rd line support and, I’m sure, a plethora of other interesting and challenging tasks as we think of them.

VoIP is an important string to the communications bow these days. Timico is a VoIP operator rather than a White Label service provider reselling soneone else’s proposition. We probably don’t lead with VoIP in a large percentage of deals but the ability to provide VoIP services is becoming an important part of winning corporate Wide Area Network business.

For example it is fairly typical for a company to outsource the management of a few hundred sites’ connectivity to us.  They will then take advantage of the fact that  they now have an MPLS network and run VoIP between sites and to all their homeworkers.

If you want to join a company that is going placesdrop me a line with your CV or take a look at the Timico website.

PS it is always a risk posting a job ad on the blog – I get inundated with calls and emails from recruitment organisations! It is the cheapest way to advertise though.  Please retweet 🙂

Categories
Business voip

SNOM out of the box plug and play

SNOM is a German manufacturer of SIP  telephony handsets and iPBXs. They were an early entrant into the SIP phone market. SNOM software was always good but in the early days their plastic let them down.

I met with the Sales team from SNOM today to take a look at their phones. I am looking at new ranges for the Small and Medium sized Business market.

What I saw was very impressive. The phone was plugged into the Power over Ethernet socket in one of our meeting rooms. I connected to it’s IP address using my laptop, plugged in my SIP credentials and I was making calls.  OK it took me two goes to get the format of the credentials right so that the phone would register but the onboard logs showed me where I had been going wrong and a simple tweak made it work.

I then set up my voicemail alert (the light that comes up on the phone when I have a voicemail) and a busy lamp field for one of the engineers. It took seconds. In those seconds I basically provisioned something that a SMB would regard as a useful telephone key system.

Gone are the days when setting up a phone would have been a complicated affair. Actually our customers don’t need to set up their IP phones – they come preconfigured.    My point is that this was a totally strange phone to that I got working in no time whatsoever without it being preconfigured.  This is a long way from where it was in the early days of the technology and of SNOM.

This is a serious case study of the power of open standards, in this case SIP.  Well done to SNOM.

Categories
broadband Business internet voip

Digital Britain FTTC Broadband – The Truth

I spent this afternoon at the Muswell Hill telephone exchange! I’d not been into one before and it must be said it felt like walking into an old high school. A pre-war building that echoed to my footsteps…The most noticeable thing walking in was a constant clicking sound. TDM switching still alive and kicking!! Eerie.

The purpose of my visit was to test the FTTC broadband line. I had a gaggle of BT engineers in tow to watch. I don’t think I was the first in but I was certainly an early adopter.

The results were exciting. We used a number of speed test engines and saw between 22Mbps and 42Mbps download speed. There was also a 172Mbps which was clearly an aberration. I’ll not name the website that gave us that one! The BT Wholesale line checker suggested that we should be able to get a speed of 38.5Mbps.

The uplink was a consistent 1.8Mbps or so – we were clearly not running off the 5Meg version.

I performed a number of tests including video streaming and Voice over IP. Both were stunningly successful. I didn’t expect any problems – the VoIP had plenty of bandwidth and was clear as a bell.

For the video I ran a couple of iPlayer sessions in parallel. The full screen performance was great. With hindsight I should have seen how many I could run to determine the maximum – a consumer household simulation.

The photos below show two video streams running plus a full screen shot of a BBC wildlife programme. Excuse the caption – I had some photos of me making VoIP calls over FTTC but they mucked up the formatting of the post so I deleted them.

Few points in finishing off:
The current BT Openreach strategy is to provide the VDSL2 modem for the Communications Provider to hook up to with an Ethernet Router. This should ensure better interoperability with the MSAN – an issue with different routers in the regular ADSL game.

Speeds will get better during the course of the 10 day training period. BT has seen 30 – 35Meg reasonably consistently after this period though there is not enough trial data to yet be able to quote a “typical” speed. It will be dependent on average distance from the exchange.

Note our range of 22 – 42 Mbps was based on being 4 feet from the cabinet – so there is definitely some bedding down to do there.

I make no apologies for the size of the images – they were just screenprints – I resized them but left them unoptimised for the web so if some of them take a little time to load that’s why.

Note also that whilst FTTC broadband is still a trial apparently the local BT shop in Muswell Hill is selling connections as if there was no tomorrow.  Hopefully they are making their customers aware that it is a trial 🙂

two video streams running off BBC iPlayer over FTTC
two video streams running off BBC iPlayer over FTTC

insect screenprint off BBC iPlayer over FTTC

Categories
Business UC video voip

Unified Communications and how it made my day

I’ve just had one of those life enriching experiences. I’m currently looking at back-up and storage options to enhance our own SAAS capabilities. i365, “a Seagate company”, looked as if it would fit the bill so I called them.

As I was calling I realised it was one of the numbers provided by Timico on our VoIP platform and indeed when the Michelle receptionist answered the phone her name appeared on my screen. She transferred me to Sean O’Reilly and his name also came up.

The video then kicked in and we had a video call. Sean was using our own PC Client software and we began exchanging Instant Messages.  Sean is an intensive user of the PC Client because it allows him to keep his hands free to type. His praise of the service was fullsome and it made my day.

This really is the way forward. It was a totally adhoc video call with someone I didn’t know, had never spoken to before but that will be the norm in times to come.

Categories
Business voip

Hosted VoIP shootout at Convergence Summit South

I’m off shooting next week. At least I’m off to a hosted VoIP shootout at Comms Business Magazine’s Hosted Telephony Shootout.  Held at Sandown Park Racecourse on Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th this promises to be quite an exciting event.

When I originally said yes to the invite I thought it was just a VoIP demo like every other VoIP demo, of which I have done hundreds. Having just read the spiel (well in advance I hasten to add – you have to go into these things well prepared) I realise now that I am actually demoing the whole set up and provisioning process.

I haven’t really had to do that for a good four years – since we grew big enough to have a team dedicated to this type of thing. However fear not!  It is actually so easy to provision an user on our VoIP platform that I could almost do it blindfold.  Note I am not offering to do that as part of the Shootout.  Dramatic effects are one thing but blindfolds are usually only worn when you are facing a firing squad.

Anyway if you are at the Convergence Summit South next week come and see me set up a couple of VoIP phones and also demoing our online customer portal.

Categories
Business voip

2009 ITSPA Awards – get yer entries in

The first Annual ITSPA Awards bash last year was a huge success, not least because Timico won the Best Unified Communications provider award!  The event was held in the House of Lords Members Dining Room and had a fantastic turnout. We ended up in a few bars around Westminster and succeeded in not losing the trophy.

This year we are doing the same again and hopefully will have another great turnout.  If you are reading this and are in the VoIP business you should think about entering. There are categories for both Service Providers and equipment/solution vendors, details of which can be found here. This year’s entrants are also going to be subject to expert testing by Epitiro.

The winners will be announced in the House of Commons Strangers Dining Room where the ITSPA Awards will take place on 10th December 2009. I look forward to seeing you there. Come and tap me on the shoulder to say hello.

Categories
Engineer voip

Thus pulls out of VoIP and leaves customers to fend for themselves

Had this link sent to me via the industry grapevine today.  Basically Thus  is closing its “Pipecall” voip service and appears to be leaving customers to their own devices.  This isn’t just a case of people going off and finding an alternative provider.  They need to be able to port their numbers. Typically only BT has porting agreements with absolutely everyone so in this case  Thus’ beleaguered customer base is probably stuck with whatever solution (and pricing) BT might be able to offer them. And it might not be a VoIP solution.

Thus is particularly a special case as the company likely hosted its own numbers on its own interconnect to the BT network.  THUS is not a member of industry trade body ITSPA and does not therefore adhere to the ITSPA Code of Practice in which members endeavour to offer porting to other members.  

The Pipecall user base would almost certainly have had more choice had they been dealing with an ITSPA member company.  Many ITSPA members use wholesale partners to host their numbers and interconnects to what is after all a declining network (ie the PSTN – it doesn’t make sense to invest in “old fashioned” network infrastructure). Thus (not very good pun intended) migration between Communications Providers on a wholesale platform is a lot easier.

As it stands Pipecall customers probably now need help with their comms. If anyone wants to get in touch for advice feel free to contact me  directly. I’ve pasted below the content from the Thus/Demon website on this subject for ease of reading. Oh and by the way Timico is just investing in a major VoIP platform infrastructure upgrade.  Watch this space.  We are in it for the long run.

Why is my account being cancelled?
THUS has made the decision to close the platform which carries the service you are currently using.

Why are you putting an end to the service?
The platform has reached the end of its serviceable life. It is not possible for THUS to effectively maintain it and deliver acceptable levels of reliability, performance and security and as such, the decision has been taken to close it.

What are you putting in place or what are you offering to do with our numbers?
There will not be a directly comparable Voice Over Broadband service available from THUS. See below on how to port your numbers to an alternative provider.

What is being done with my details that are held in your database / system?
These will be deleted.

How do I port my numbers?
Customers wishing to port their numbers should contact BT. If they select an appropriate product from them, BT will port the numbers over themselves when the service goes live.

What will happen to the personalised IVR on my service?
As the service is closed all IVR functionality will be lost. Customers will need to replicate what they had with their preferred new service provider.

What will happen to my stored faxes etc on the control panel?
This functionality will be lost with the service termination.

Will my hardware work with any provider?
We can’t guarantee that it will. However the Voice over Broadband service was built using industry standards, so should your new service also be SIP based, your hardware should still function.

What if I need to collect previous CDR data or invoices post the closure date?
These will be available for 3 months afterwards.

When will the system close?
The system is due to close at the end of September.

I’ve heard about the cease of service but I haven’t received my letter of notice?
The letters were all sent out to our customers registered addresses at the end of August.

While the numbers are being ported, will that cause any downtime to my service?
No. Should your new provider follow the correct procedure there should be no downtime.

Will support still be available after the closure date?
As the service will no longer be operational support will not be available.

I am still within my 12 month contract, will that cease also?
Yes

I am in credit on my account, will that be paid to me in full?
Yes – Please contact Customer Services by email via [email protected] or via telephone on 0845 009 0080 (Contactable between 9am-5:30pm Mon-Fri) so that we can arrange for any outstanding payments to be made to you.

How long does it take to port a number?
You will need to speak to your new provider to find out the timescales.
The minimum lead time is 5 working days but your new provider may take longer.

Categories
Business voip

Skype Sold

In what must be eBay’s biggest ever sale it looks like the online auctioneer has got out of jail free with Skype which it sold yesterday to a consortium of private investors. The deal valued Skype at $2.75 billion.  eBay gets $1.9 billion cash, a $125 million note and retains a 35% stake in the company.

It wasn’t long after eBay originally paid around $3 billion for Skype that the strategic value of the investment was being questioned. This eventually appeared to be acknowledged by the company with a $900 million write-off. This latest deal will likely now show as a profit on the eBay’s books and considering the hit that markets have had over the last year must be considered to be a serious result.

Skype turned over $551million in 2008 and says it will hit sales of $1Bn by 2011. Other VoIP service providers will be interested in the valuation. Assuming an even growth between now and 2011 this suggests that it will do around $700 million in 2009 which represents a multiplier of 4.14 times sales.

Skype still very much has issues that will need sorting out. It is currently facing a legal battle with its original founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis over the rights to use the Intellectual Property that underpins the whole service.

The only real option the company has is to strike a deal to continue to have access to the technology. The alternative would be a wholesale change to SIP which would involve a huge global investment and a logistical nightmare when it came to the switchover.

Nevertheless Skype does now look to be a better bet than other high profile VoIP plays such as Vonage who also became embroiled in patent litigation and ended up paying a fortune to wriggle free.

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Business datacentre voip

Discussing VoIP Strategy and Solutions

We were discussing VoIP strategy today.  Timico supplies a mix of hosted VoIP and in-premises equipment based on what is best for the specific customer need. In looking at PBXs it occurred to me that there should be a standard platform that will run anyone’s PBX software just like it is in the PC world.

Then I realised that this is where the world has been for some time now and that platform is actually the PC. With the advent of SIP trunks replacing the need for analogue or ISDN line cards all you need is a PC running a PBX software application plugged into your network somewhere (or at one of our datacentres).

I’m sorry if this is stating the blooming obvious to most of you but the fact is it has crept up on us to the point that most PBXs are now really just PCs and the vendors are trying to exit the hardeware game.  No longer do you need the specialised modules that handle conversion of IP traffic to outmoded devices and services.

The vision that came with SIP when I first started working with the protocol almost ten years ago has finally come to fruition.  You can now buy an off the shelf piece of hardware (ie the PC), run a wide variety of PBXs on it – take your pick, the choice is yours – and choose from hundreds of different handset  types at all sorts of price points and feature sets.

The problem now is that actually at the moment this choice still introduces a level of complexity to the game that will take some time to go away.  It still doesn’t make sense for a service provider such as Timico to offer a huge range of PBXs and handsets to our business customers.

When they go wrong, and this they are certainly going to do, you out there running your businesses and concentrating on what you do best need us to come and fix the problem. Or at least to send a replacement PDQ so that you can get on with life.  Nobody can do this if they have a hundred telephone handsets in their product range.

I’ll keep you posted on my exploration through different handsets and solutions. It is where I started in this game  and is a fun part of the job.

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Business internet net neutrality voip

Net neutrality, Skype and Commissioner Reding

Continuing with the theme of reports I’ve been reading the EuroISPA report that comes across my desk every month. Like it or not when the EC magisterially waves its authoritative hand we do feel the ripples in the UK.

This month in response to a parliamentary question on T-Mobile blocking Skype over broadband networks in Germany, Commissioner Reding, interestingly, referred to the provision of the Universal Directive, namely art. 2(3), whereby National Regulatory Authorities are empowered to intervene by setting minimum quality of service requirements for network transmission services, “as an additional safeguard in instances where competitive forces alone, are not enough to safeguard the openness of the Internet”.

If you’re like me your mind goes blank when you read all this regulatory jargon.  However with this one we need to note that in the pursuit of net neutrality, which as a consumer I’m all for, setting minimum quality of service levels requirements on ISPs is going to cost money. Skype should not be blocked by anyone but neither should ISPs be obliged to prioritise Skype traffic without someone footing the bill.

By the way you can use Skype to your heart’s content on the Timico network though most of our business VoIP customers chose to use our own VoIP service.

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Business ofcom Regs voip

Ofcom today published its annual Communications Market Report

Ofcom today published its annual Communications Market Report. At 334 pages long it is a bit of a read but actually, at least if you are in the industry, it is very much worth ploughing through it.  It usually produces lots of interesting material to comment about so I’m probably going to pick and chose a few subjects dear to my heart over the next few days.

Last year the industry had cause to complain big time regarding Ofcom’s measurement of the growth of the VoIP market. In fact I met with the regulator to discuss this very subject earlier in the summer.

This year the report highlights the increasing popularity of VoIP, with evidence showing a growing awareness and take up of the service. According to the research, the number of UK adults using VoIP in Q1 2009 has risen to 12% and 60% of UK adults claim to know about VoIP.

The report does accept that most UK adults do not use the service citing reasons such as insufficient understanding on how it’s used, quality of service issues and competition from low-priced fixed and mobile telecoms services. However Ofcom stresses that many users are unlikely to realise that they are using VoIP technology, e.g. the BT home hub phone, and therefore usage is likely to be higher than the report suggests.

The reports also highlights a decline in the total number of UK fixed lines which is attributed to greater availability of alternative forms of communication including VoIP. The use of VoIP was also one reason attributed to the growth in business voice call volumes by 2.1% in 2008 to 89.1 billion minutes.

It is clear from the report that Ofcom are still unable to obtain genuine statistics of VoIP take-up from their current market research but at least it is progress over last year.

More when the day job allows.

Categories
Business ofcom voip

Ofcom market research

Had an interesting meeting with the Ofcom market research team.  This is the team responsible for the Annual Communications Market Report which is a must read if you are in our game.

The meeting was arranged by Ofcom’s Chris Rowsell because the VoIP service provider  industry, via trade body ITSPA, had expressed concern that the VoIP content of last year’s report showed a decline in consumer use of the technology.  This was not the actual experience of the ITSPA membership so this year we wanted to try and help make sure that the research that was conducted was more accurate.

After the meeting I did come away with a certain degree of sympathy for Ofcom.  It is very difficult to come up with an easy definition for VoIP that can be understood by the general public so that accurate research can be conducted. 

It didn’t really help that some of the example service providers used by Ofcom in the research questionnaire were of services that no one in the room had ever heard of. If industry experts could not answer what chance Joe Public?

Another interesting part of the mix is that the only bit of the Annual Report that Ofcom is required to cover under statute is the TV market. This means that the mobile/fixed line telephony/internet bit is optional and the regulator is only interested in covering bits that might affect the legislative decision making process. So consumer VoIP is of interest to them but not business VoIP.

As a Business to Business VoIP provider Timico, along with most ITSPs in the UK is only interested in the business market numbers. This is somewhat disappointing to the industry which is left without a particularly accurate metric of its size.

We left the meeting with a some positive actions. Ofcom is quite happy to take on board suggestions from ITSPA as to how the research can be improved and although there isn’t much time this year to get it done, this is something we will take onboard. Secondly, in the absence of their own data, Ofcom appears to be willing to publish the numbers collected by ITSPA member and Communications Consultancy Illume which gathers basic industry subscriber numbers on a quarterly basis.

Hopefully we will be able to help improve  the VoIP aspect of the report this year.

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Business ofcom voip

Update on 999 location information for VoIP

Ofcom is waiting to see what the forthcoming amendments to the European Universal Services Directive look like before deciding what to do about VoIP location information.  There has been some pressure to make VoIP providers provide the ability to record location information based on the IP address of the caller.

This, whilst technically doable, is very complex and likely to be hugely expensive. What’s more most VoIP providers are not ISPs and therefore do not have access to an ISP’s core network and customer database to be able to facilitate this.  Those ISPs providing services to customers wanting to run VoIP therefore have no incentive to spend the cash.

More on this in due course but probably not until towards the end of the year.

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Business ofcom voip

Ofcom will point to huge VoIP growth in 2009 market review

What is the difference between VoIP and Voice over Broadband? In last year’s Review of the Communications Market in the UK Ofcom specified VoIP as largely PC to PC based services and VoB as a service that looked like a traditional phone line.

The regulator did this because it wanted to characterize the space and understand whether the likes of BT continues to wield Significant Market Power in a fixed line market that is rapidly being replaced by VoIP technology. Fair enough.

The biggest problem was that the market research wasn’t adequately specified and the results suggested that the VoIP market in the UK was going backwards. This is patently rubbish and helps nobody, especially when trying to justify capital expenditure budgets.

In all fairness to Ofcom they recognize that they got their specs wrong and are now keen to remedy this. Yesterday they suggested a get together with ITSPA next month to thrash out ways of better assessing the market size. In the first instance a direct survey of all ITSPA members should cover a large percentage of the numbers.

The next report should therefore suggest a huge, recession busting increase in the number of VoIP users. This is because in the first instance the market will have grown significantly but also the numbers will be compared with an artificially reduced figure the last time round.

In fact it is understandable that the VoIP market should grow in these uncertain economic times. One of the selling points of the technology is cost saving, whether that is by a direct reduction in costs or an improvement in productivity.

What is also interesting is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between a service that is overtly not a traditional phone look alike service and one that is. Skype, for example, sells itself as an IP application and therefore claims to be beyond the law when it comes to having to support 999 access to the emergency services. However Skype can now be used from a handset which looks and feels like a normal phone.

How Ofcom determine which camp Skype fits into will be interesting to see.

Categories
Business ofcom voip

Meeting between ITSPA and Ofcom

Had a very interesting and constructive meeting with Chris Rowsell of Ofcom yesterday.  We covered 999 access for VoIP, the Ofcom Communications Market Review and Number Portability. A couple of posts will follow this morning.

Categories
Business voip

Newark Telephone Exchange Loss of Service

The Newark telephone exchange suffered an outage today and quite a number of analog lines and ADSLs were down as a result. Fortunately Timico has a network strategy that incorporates multiple types of connectivity specifically to provide resilience when outages like this happen.

It did prompt me to check out how often BT has problems at an exchange and I found that in the last seven days there were nineteen major service outages. Anywhere  technology is involved is bound to lead to things going wrong.  If you extrapolate the last week’s outages to a whole year then you get a figure of nine hundred and eighty eight which says that approximately one in six of the UK’s telephone exchanges has a problem in any given year.

Whilst this is not a definitive number in my mind it is good enough to tell me that a business needs to have a disaster recovery/contingency plan to cater for network outages.  We mustr be unlucky in Newark because last summer we had another outage.  That time our ISDN lines were down for the afternoon.  Allegedly some equipment was switched off to prevent the exchange from over heating on a hot day!

Categories
Business internet mobile connectivity ofcom voip

Ofcom advice on use of mobiles abroad

Picked this up on my travels.  It’s a YouTube video posted by Ofcom giving advice on how to minimise your phone bills whilst abroad. You might wonder why, as a mobile service provider, I am pointing you towards a site that will help you to cut your mobile bills.

Actually the philosophy at Timico is that our relationship with customers is a long term one and is based on mutual trust.  This includes making sure that the customer gets the best value out of the services we provide.  Ad over – enjoy the video.

PS if anyone does want advice on cutting communications costs whilst travelling abroad please do get in touch.  Our customers also use their VoIP accounts from their hotel rooms which makes calling home cheap and allows them to keep in touch with their business (spouses permitting).

PPS it is good to see Ofcom embracing this modern internet/YouTube thing .