Category: UC

Unified Communications

USA market for VoIP 3 years ahead of the UK #8×8

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 7 October, 2013
No Comments on USA market for VoIP 3 years ahead of the UK #8×8

Availability of high speed broadband has driven the market for hosted VoIP telephony in the USA which is 3 years ahead of the UK.

Had dinner last week with Huw Rees, VP Business Development of 8×8. If you don’t know them, 8×8 are the largest provider of Over The Top VoIP services in the USA with over half a million subscribers. That’s almost as big as the whole UK market.

What’s more 8×8 are putting on subscribers at a terrific rate – over a thousand new businesses a quarter at approximately 18 seats per business. This is all public domain stuff. 8×8 is a publicly quoted company that turns over around $120m and with a Market Cap of $800m. Overall gross margin is 71% with GM on services up at 80% which is how they can achieve the market valuation.

This business performance is achieved in two ways. Firstly all 8×8’s technology was developed in house. They don’t have large licenses and royalties to fork out. In fact 8×8 owns a lot of patents. Secondly everything is low touch, automated and web based including the marketing. They do have an inbound sales team because business customers like to talk to a real person before committing to this kind of technology.

The final interesting point to make is that 8×8 saw a trigger point that stimulated business growth and this was the availability of high speed broadband – better quality and more reliable broadband connectivity. The USA went through this milestone around 3 or maybe four years ago. We are only now seeing it happen with the BT rollout of FTTC.

Since we started to sell FTTC at Timico we have seen it become a lot easier to sell VoIP seats. Reliability of the serviced is much better. VoIP even becomes a lever to sell people FTTC – they call in for one and we sell ’em both.

Our model as a one stop shop is different to that of 8×8 who pass on the connectivity and hosting revenues. The 8×8 success in the USA does bode well for the rest of us over in Blighty.

Tags 8x8, market, USA, voip

Business UC voip

The next few days – Convergence Summit South @SandownPark

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 1 October, 2013
No Comments on The next few days – Convergence Summit South @SandownPark

Off to Sandown Park for the Convergence Summit South over the next few days. Swing by and see me – and the NewNet stand at the trade show.

Tags Convergence, Park, Sandown, South, summit

broadband Business voip

VoIP for a home office

VoIP for home office suddenly got better with superfast broadband.

I find it very productive to work from home occasionally. I have an Avaya phone in the conservatory – hangs off our Genband A2 SIP platform. I guess not every conservatory is Cat5 cabled. My patch panel and switch are in the attic but I won’t win any prizes for the quality of the cabling (it’s a good job I don’t do the cabling for Timico).

What really makes it work is the FTTC connection. VoIP is rock solid over FTTC as I may have mentioned. Last week I had a conference call with a journalist called Jessica Twentyman (@jtwentyman). Her profile says she lives in Portugal but her CLI was an 0207. I didn’t think anything of it but at the end of the chat I asked her whether she was actually working out of London.

Turns out she was using Skype-in and still very much in Portugal. The call quality was astonishingly good considering I’ve had a few quite tinny Skype calls in my time¹. The difference is that she has a fibre connection where she lives. This just goes to show what a difference the quality of the underlying bearer connection makes. I’ve had other calls with journos where they have been using their mobile phone and it doesn’t always make for an easy conversation – you are straining to hear what the person is saying rather than focussing on what to say.

As FTTC/FTTP gets more into people’s homes and businesses it can only be a matter of time before we all upgrade to using better quality voice codecs such as G722. If the bandwidth is there we might as well use it. Of course the call quality may well improve but the quality of what is said will still be down to you 🙂

Ciao…

¹ I even heard John Humphrys once on Radio4 talking to someone in New Zealand using Skype and the call disappeared completely half way through the interview.

Business Cloud datacentre social networking

First #bloggade a big success

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 22 August, 2013
No Comments on First #bloggade a big success

We held the first #bloggade at the Timico datacentre in Newark yesterday. A bloggade is as you may know the collective noun for a group of bloggers.

This first event was highly successful covering a range of blog related subjects:

1 The type of infrastructure used to host blogs (led by Timico hosting tech guru Michael Green) followrd by a guided tour of the Tiico NOC and datacenre.
2 A lengthy discussion on Search Engine Optimisation for your blog conducted by @phil_kelsey of Spiral Media and @mattdrussell of WebbHostingBuzz.
3 A general discussion about plug ins and which ones worked for people.

There was a great level of audience participation and a definite interest in holding another event, sometime in the run up to Christmas perhaps.

For a bit of fun we decided to have a go and see if we could get #bloggade to trend on twitter. Despite our intensive efforts it didn’t seem to be working. Then one of the bloggers suggested that if we tweeted that members of the currently in the news boy band “One Direction” had turned uo for #bloggade it might go viral. We did this and at the latest count have had a grand total of two retweets from (pre-pubescent?) OD fans. 🙂

Gotta say I’d never heard of em before this week!!!

Big thanks to all who came especially @mattdrussell whose original idea this was together with @phil_kelsey @jangles and @AndrewGrill for their major contributions.

All in all considering we organised this from scratch to execution in 4 weeks I have to say it was a great success.

Catch ya later.

PS this post was typed by thumb on my Galaxy s4 en route to a customer meeting in London. I’d be amazed if the formatting is spot on – I’ll make any necessary adjustments when I get back to laptop land.

Tags bloggade, Cloud, Timico

End User internet social networking

Google Author Ranking

Acting on advice I recently signed up for Google Author Ranking. Google is apparently changing the way it rates content for SEO purposes by looking for quality original content. One of the ways Google determines original content is by linking that content with a specific author.

Having gone through what appeared to be a hit and miss process in establishing the “Authorship” (you will notice a Google+ link at the bottom right of the main page of this blog) I’ve suddenly started to get a lot more Google Alerts highlighting mentions of my name. These links can be quite old but that doesn’t matter. It’s a sign that the Google system knows it’s me being mentioned in online articles.

So it does, at a very cursory glance, seem that getting signed up for Google Author Ranking is worthwhile. There is a long dialogue going on about what Google is trying to achieve in evolving its methods of search ratings. Not the least of the debating points is the idea that Google is trying to increase monetisation of its search product at the expense of traditional PR Agencies – check out this ZDNet article here.

Now I am a Google fan. I use a lot of the company’s products. However this does make you wonder whether the company is using its significant market power in an anti competitive way. Google is certainly being very clever.

One the one hand who can argue with changes that improve the quality of your search results. On the other hand tying people more and more to the Google ecosystem is in the long run likely to lead to less choice and a more costly product. The market is too complicated and global for anyone to regulate against this as we did in the UK for example with the old BT monopoly of the communications market (we also seem slowly to be regressing to the old monopolistic state in the UK).

I’m not sure anyone would be able to articulate how you would make changes to a Google monopoly in any case. In the meantime I think we just have to get on and figure out how best we live in the Google world. What are we going to do? Stop trying to get online visibility just because we think Google is trying to make even more money out of us?

That’s all folks.

Cloud datacentre End User social networking

We interrupt this vacation with a public service blog #bloggade

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 6 August, 2013
1 Comment on We interrupt this vacation with a public service blog #bloggade

Trefor Davies (@tref/Timico/trefor.net), Matt Russell (@mattdrussell/WebHostingBuzz), Neville Hobson (@jangles/Neville Hobson/For Immediate Release) and Andrew Grill (@AndrewGrill/Kred) cordially invite you to Bloggade, Newark, 21st August.

Bloggade, the collective noun for a gathering of bloggers, is a meeting of minds where you will learn tips and tricks about blogging and WordPress.

The focus of this first Bloggade is on the underlying technology that powers many WordPress blogs. You’ll experience a tour of Timico’s £5m Midlands datacentre that opened in 2012, and see at first hand the technology that powers the web including many WordPress blogs hosted with WebHostingBuzz at the datacentre.

We have round table discussions planned on WordPress hosting, hardware, search engine optimization and more, all addressing the topics from a non-technical perspective, but in the true round table spirit – anything and everything to do with WordPress is up for discussion.

Bring your questions, comments and experiences!

After the discussion, we’ll migrate to a top class local pub where light snacks and drinks will be provided courtesy of Timico. We hope to continue the WordPress-oriented discussion and share tips/success stories/ideas.

Agenda:

12.30 Arrive at the Timico Newark Datacentre – intros & coffee

13.00 Blogger round table – hardware, servers, hosting and more including a look at the latest WordPress release 3.6

14.00 Data centre tour

14.30 Blogger round table – SEO and how to your WordPress blog a highly effective business tool

15.15 Panel discussion – experiences and best practices for getting the most from the WordPress content management system

16.00 Migrate to pub for light refreshments (pub name/location tbc)

18.00 Refreshments finish, event ends.

Tickets, which are totally free of charge, can be found here

Travel Guidelines

The event is being held at the Timico Datacentre in Newark, NG24 2AG. If you are driving then you should come directly to that location where there is ample secure parking. If you are coming by train – Timico’s HQ (NG24 2TN) in Newark is a 15 minute walk from Newark Northgate railway station (1hr 20mins from Kings X). This is an easy walk alogn a footpath that runs parallel to the railway line or a 2 minute taxi ride. The Datacentre and HQ buildings are next to each other.

There are trains every half hour or so from Kings Cross – the 11.08 will get you in at 12.30 which should be perfect timing unless you wanted to get there earlier and take in a little of “Historic Newark” beforehand.

Tags bloggade

End User internet security voip

How to tell if a phone call is going to be a scammer

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 23 July, 2013
3 Comments on How to tell if a phone call is going to be a scammer

Most people have picked up scam phone call at sometime in their recent short lives. I’ve noticed that they all have similar characteristics in that when you pick up the phone there is always a second or two of silence followed by a foreign voice saying “can I speak to Mr Davies please?” (replace Davies with your own name obv). It’s down to the latency over the internet.

It’s also because they are using some cheapo poor quality VoIP service. Thinking about it, their conversion rate would be much higher if they spent a bit more cash on better quality comms. The quality of their internet access is particularly important although in their case it might not make that much difference as I suspect the packets are traversing the internet for most of their journey. A good quality VoIP provider will hardly touch the internet, if at all.

I’ve adopted the practice, upon hearing the noisy silence before the attempt at a con, of being very familiar “I thought it was you. I wondered when you were going to call”. This tends to confuse them momentarily. All these scammers sound the same to me anyway. It’s probably the bad line but it might always be the same person. Would explain how they always seem to know my name.

That’s how you tell it’s a scammer. It’s all about the noisy silence before they realise you’ve answered the phone.

A public service blog post from trefor.net

Tags call, how, phone, scam, scammer, tell, to

Engineer peering Regs voip

A Day In The Life #ITSPA #Lonap

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 4 July, 2013
1 Comment on A Day In The Life #ITSPA #Lonap

I read the news today oh boy. Andy Murray through to semi-finals. I saw the last hour or so on the TV when I got home from work last night. Goo’on Andy!

Today I’m off to the big smoke on the 07.20 for a full day of industrialising.

This morning I have and ITSPA council meeting. After lunch it’s the ITSPA AGM followed by the Summer Forum we have, every summer, natch. These ITSPA workshops are always most informative. We have an update of how the market is going by Matt Townend of Illume. The market for VoIP services is on the up.

Then Pete Farmer of Gamma is going to discuss what’s going on in the industry from a regulatory perspective. There’s lots to consider: Draft Communications Data Bill, Narrowband Market Review, Non Geographic Calls Services and more.

Then after the break yours truly is going to chair a panel discussion entitled “Federated Communications and Call Terminations – Is free the way forward?” Should be an interesting debate. Bear in mind when considering the “free” bit that we will all still want to get paid.

After a short reception I then shoot off to a dinner being thrown by Lonap where I will be chairing a debate on the merits of connecting to overseas POPs. This dinner is restricted to CTOs and Chief Technical Architects of network operators and should be a most useful and informative evening.

Then tomorrow morning I have a breakfast meeting, but tomorrow is another day…

I read the news today oh boy. Four thousand POPs in Blackburn Lancashire. You probably need to be of an age to understand that one!!!

Tags ITSPA, LONAP

broadband Engineer UC voip

VoIP Conversation Snippet from the Corridor

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 18 June, 2013
No Comments on VoIP Conversation Snippet from the Corridor

Just chatting with one of our telephone sales guys. He told me about a customer who had been thinking about buying a FTTC broadband connection with a couple of VoIP seats but had been worried about the cost. Their previous method of communication had been through two analogue lines into an office of fourteen staff!

The package that customer ended up with costs them around £300 a month – far more than a FTTC and two VoIP seats. The beauty is that now that all fourteen people have their own VoIP phone line they are spending a lot more time talking to customers and the new business they are taking dwarfs the cost of the comms.

It makes you feel good. Simples 🙂

Engineer UC voip

Integration

Last week we integrated the Redwood brand into Timico. Redwood was a specialist Unified Communications business we acquired last year.

There are two different ways of integrating another business. You can do it well or you can do it badly. There are also two different speeds. I recall that Cisco, a company that has made many acquisitions in its time, has a defined process with dedicated teams to do the job. On day one they change the acquired brand to Cisco and then there are well rehearsed steps over a period of three months or so until all aspects of the old brand are erased. No doubt a few people get erased at the same time although companies like Cisco are known to buy small technology businesses just to acquire the talent.

It’s no different in our game really. We bought Redwood for a combination of channel to market and the talent of their people. However the nature of our business is different to a product manufacturer such as Cisco. Our customers largely buy services from us and they buy them on a recurring basis. Every month. The other thing to note is that the services they buy from us are by and large mission critical to their business.

We love all our customers. They pay our wages. We do our best to keep them happy so that they want to keep on paying our wages. The last thing we want to do is upset them. Now in the networking game the time of greatest risk is when something changes. A small config change here can have big ramifications there. A kind of butterfly effect for business. So we want to be very careful when we make changes.

The same applies when you change a brand. When integrating company not only are you changing the look of a business but you are potentially changing the way it feels to do business with you. People don’t like change so you have to do it carefully.

When integrating Redwood we want Redwood’s customers to feel as if things are working just as well as they were in the good old days when they were dealing with Redwood as opposed to this new company called Timico that they might never have heard of. We might in our ever so optimistic dreams dare to hope that Redwood customers will think things are even better than they were before though we would settle for them thinking things were just same. “Name change? Oh ok that’s fine” is the reaction we want.

What we don’t want is “What’s gone wrong with my bill. Why have you charged me twice? Where has Fred gone? Fred always used to sort out my problem. It was never like this when it was Redwood”.

That’s why we like to take time over the integration of an acquisition. We want to make sure it goes well. The telecommunications industry abounds with stories of market consolidation and company acquisitions that have gone wrong. We love it actually because it generates churn in a company’s customer base and someone else’s churn is our sales opportunity. I even heard of one highly acquisitive business whose business plan assumed a 30% churn in customers post acquisition. That’s not how we like to work.

If my memory serves me right we have bought seven companies in nearly ten years of doing business. We have learnt a few lessons along the way but our general principle is that we want to build a business of real value to all our stakeholders. That means real value to shareholders, staff and of course customers. We want to keep every single customer. That’s a difficult objective in a highly competitive market where competitors sometimes not only drop their pants to win a deal but run naked down a customer’s drive shouting “I won’t put my clothes back on until you give me the business”.

I’m pleased to say the integration of Redwood has gone very well. Customers have had time to get used to the idea and all were contacted well in advance to let them know about the new name. It’s felt like business as usual throughout the whole process.

That isn’t to say there wasn’t a huge amount of work going on in the background. Integration of CRM and billing systems for example. Lots of testing before D Day. We had a few IT glitches along the way but nothing that was customer affecting and the team worked really hard to get it all sorted.

Funnily enough when I asked the one of the Redwood team how it went the answer was “boringly not much to say really.” That’s a great answer. The right answer.

Winning new customers is just about the hardest thing to do in our game. It’s a lot easier to sell to someone with who you already have a trusted relationship. Now Redwood Timico Unified Communications has a whole new existing customer base to sell to. Customers who already trust Timico with their mission critical services. Exciting really. Welcome aboard guys. We appreciate you and value your contribution 🙂

PS sorry if I come across very emulsional there. It happens sometimes 🙂

Tags acquisition, integration, Redwood, Timico

Business voip

VoIP for small businesses market seems to be on the move

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 10 June, 2013
2 Comments on VoIP for small businesses market seems to be on the move

Just been on my periodic stroll round the business. You know how it goes. Checking up on everyone. Making sure backs are bent, brows sweaty and I can hear the scratching of quill pens telling me they are all scribbling away working hard.

We give some of the staff telephones and computers because some of our customers expect it. These staff are then able to relate to what the customer is talking about and you never know, maybe get the deal. The business needs to move on.

Being serious about it one of the areas that has been a real success and seen real growth of late is in VoIP for small businesses.

Tags Business, SMB, support, voip, webchat

Business UC voip

We are the champions :)

We are the champions. Yay. Last night Timico together with VoIP infrastructure partners Genband triumphed winning the Global Telecoms Business Award for Innovation. In the telecoms world this doesn’t come any better. Folk had flown in from all over the world although because everyone was in a penguin suit the only way you could tell was from their faces. Had everyone been wearing national costume it would have been interesting:)

The event took place at the Park Lane Hotel. If you’ve never been it’s worth a visit. Terrific venue, especially when you win. Champagne corks popped and a wonderful time was had by all.

Our award was for our Unified Communications Solution / mobility for business. This is our SIP service with Android and iPhone clients. If you haven’t tried it it is definitely worth a go. More details here.

The only downside to last night was that they didn’t give you time to do a speech. However because I can write what I like on this blog I thought I’d do it here instead:

“It is a great honour to receive this Award on behalf of Timico in front of such a large and distinguished audience. I’m not going to say much but there are a few thank yous I do need to make. First of all thanks to all the staff at Timico. Couldn’t have done it without you and I’m just sorry that it isn’t practical for everyone to be here up on the stage and to drink Genband’s champagne in this lovely art deco ballroom.

Then of course there are Genband themselves whose technology has made it all possible and who are great supporters of the trefor.net Xmas bash every year (12th Dec 2013 – make a note in your diaries now). I’m really pleased to be here with David Hiscock the Genband VP for EMEA who is a very good guy.

Next up are mum and dad and my Aunty Mair who has been in hospital but is hopefully now on the full road to recovery. Thanks mum and dad for everything you have done for me. Looking for ward to seeing you in the summer.

I also promised the kids I’d give them a mention so hello to Tom, Hannah, Joe and John. Don’t stay up too late now and make sure you do your homework.

And finally I can’t come up on this stage without saving the biggest thank you of all to my wife Anne who has had to put up with me for 25 years come this August. This trophy is for you although I’m sorry we can’t keep it on the mantelpiece because it will have to go with all the other silverware in the display cabinet in reception in Newark.

None of it is really silver but I’m sure you know what I mean. It’s all high quality crystalware or perspex or some similar material that looks very nice when lit up on display. It is getting quite crammed mind but hey. We don’t want to stop winning awards do we?

I think that’s it. I’ve covered everyone. Oh no and thanks to Global Telecoms Business for being such a great publication and for putting on this wonderful evening. This award makes all the hard work and effort worthwhile.

So thanks again and hope to see you all next year.”

There we go. That would have been my speech. Short and sweet eh? The photo below is of me (on the right) with David Hiscock (left) was taken by Debbie Rowe of Global Telecoms Business. If you click on it you get another photo showing Debbie herself taking the photo of me and Dave.

Timico cha cha cha.

Tags awards, Business, GenBand, Global, hotel, innovation, Lane, Park, Telecoms, Timico

Business mobile connectivity UC

Working from home

It can be a joy to work at home. The sun filters through the canopy of sycamore trees that line the garden above the beech hedge. A gentle breeze occasionally nudges the conservatory doors, opened wide to take advantage of the absolute delight that is the peak of the British spring. Fresh garden smells mingle with happy birdsong.

It is natural on a day like this to want to work in comfortable clothing and my rugby shorts and very old Mitel VoIP tshirt fit the bill. Wouldn’t fit in with the office but that is ok. I’m at home this morning.

I’m off after lunch to Laandan to the Global Telecoms Business Awards where we are finalists with Genband in the Innovation category. It’s all about mobility. I have my Timico mobile VoIP client running on my Samsung Galaxy S4 on one side of the desk and a high quality business handset one the other. It is plugged in to one of the two Cat5 ports in the conservatory. I have Cat5 in all the rooms downstairs though I rarely use them other than to plug in a phone.

When my phone rings I normally answer the desktop handset. However the beauty of having the mobile client is that I can wander off to make a cup of tea in the kitchen and if the phone rings I answer it on the mobile instead of having to rush back to the conservatory.

I also use the mobile client when I’m out and about. It genuinely is useful, especially when I’m roaming overseas. The hotel (garret – cat swinging will cause injury to both parties) I’m staying at in town has free wifi. I’ll be able to use my work extension there and I’m pretty sure that the Park Lane Hotel where the bash is tonight also has free wifi though I doubt I will be able to hear the phone ring amongst all the noise of champagne cork popping and celebrations. You know what it’s like.

That’s all for now. Gotta go. Things to do & penguin suit to dig out.

Tags home, homework, working

Apps Engineer video voip

Thunderbirds are Go for Raspberry Pi

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 29 May, 2013
1 Comment on Thunderbirds are Go for Raspberry Pi

Pal Dean Elwood sent me this video. He set up embedded VoIP app developer Voxygen which is going from strength to strength. They developed the call control APIs for Telefonica’s Blue Via platform.

The video shows a mockup Thunderbird video screen just like they had in real life. The app is powered by Voxygen software running on a Raspberry Pi and talks to Blue Via for the call control and conferencing.

State information from Blue Via feeds through to the flashing eyes to say when a call is coming in or has been answered. The RaspberryPi manages another LED to say who is speaking at any given point in time.

When they recorded the Thunderbirds series the technology was of course all purely imaginary. Now it is pure simplicity.

Hardware was simply

Raspberry Pi
The ‘slice of PI/O’ board, to interface to 10 LEDs and 5 switches
5 push-buttons with integrated LED
5 pairs of White-LED ‘eyes’
A small amplifier and speaker for sound effects
Power supply and a few ancillary electronic components

Software was

Standard Pi Debian wheezy operating system
Application code, written in PHP 5
Some interfacing code in C that allows switching of LEDs and sensing of switches

Marvellous innit? Now watch the vid. Thunderbirds are go!

Tags Blue Via, Raspberry Pi, Thunderbirds, Voxygen

End User social networking

happy birthday to me – blog is 5 today & I celebrate with a Twitter story

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Sunday, 19 May, 2013
4 Comments on happy birthday to me – blog is 5 today & I celebrate with a Twitter story

Hard to believe but exactly five years ago today I posted my first blog piece on trefor.net. It coincides very closely with my fifth anniversary on Twitter. Since then I’ve written 1,616 posts – also hard to believe. 30,517 tweets in that time. I’m not going to dwell on the interim five years. The world has changed.

Even though it is the sabbath I’m going to celebrate with a nice Twitter story:

This weekend I’m staying with me dear old mam and dad in the Isle of Man. On Saturday morning I wandered down into a drizzling Peel and made for The Harbour Lights Café. It’s one of my faves. A classic seaside café with a quality product and a very relaxing atmosphere. It’s the sort of place to go when it’s raining out and there isn’t that much else to do. You can almost picture the scene: the occasional umbrella walks past the window, the raindrops saunter down the glass, every now and then a car whooshes by, a pot of tea and a plate of crumpets arrive at your table.

On this occasion the Harbour Lights was closed. You can’t imagine my disappointment. A real wave of emotion came over me. I looked in through the windows and walked around the outside of the building. It took me a while to realise that I was early. It opened at 10am. The time was exactly 10am and it being, as you know, one of my fave caffs I was quite prepared to give it some leeway, forgiveness. As I crossed the road to the promenade a car pulled up and a girl got out and proceeded to unlock the front door.

I walked off and crossed to Fenella Beach and the breakwater. Not many people around. It was classic Manx weather. The day before had been beautifully sunny. Today we were back to mists and white topped seas. I was comfortable with this. At the beach there were some kids kitted out in safety gear clambering over the rocks with an instructor type. I wandered on to the breakwater and climbed the steps to look out over the water.

On other occasions I’ve been able to spot a basking shark from that position. Not today. Even the basking sharks were staying away. A couple of bikers, helmets in hand, walked around the castle and a bloke in an old Rover sat there smoking with the engine on. Turn it off man!

A fisherman was lowering scallop dredging kit onto his boat. I stopped for a chat. There are only two weeks left of the season. It starts again on November 1^st. When you think about it the sea floor needs time to recover and for the creatures to bring on the next generation. A good haul is twenty bags on a trip but at this time of year you are lucky to come in with ten.

The rain spotted the lenses of my specs and I figured it was time to move on and back to the Harbour Lights. I got there at the same time as a young couple and sat at a table looking out onto the promenade. Tea and crumpets ordered I settled in to Twitter availing myself of the caff’s free WiFi.

At this point I’ll let my tweets tell the story:

@tref: Live tweeting from @harbour_lights cafe on the prom in Peel using their free wifi. Crumpets & tea for brunch

@tref: @harbour_lights is one of my fave caffs.nice sitting here in the window watching the rain run down the glass

@tref: Listening to beegees muzak @harbour_lights – almost nodding off

@tref: Just seen the size of @harbour_lights special breakfast-huge. (I should be on commission here) 🙂

That one was retweeted by @harbour_lights which was nice – I felt that the café was reaching out and engaging with me its customer. The young couple who had arrived at the same time as me were tucking into huge plate of “full Manx” – the Harbour Lights special.

@tref: There is no rush

@tref: This reminds me of my student days – sitting around all day drinking tea

At this point the waitress came and asked me if everything was ok and did I want some more hot water in my tea pot. I declined and said she could bring the bill whenever she was ready. A short while later she came back and said that the bill had been taken care of. The boss had rung up and said it was all on the house having seen my tweets.

@tref: Thanks @harbour_lights for brightening up a dank day & thanks for the tea and crumpets )

I left the café with a smile on may face. That was a great experience. My suggestion of commission was a bit of fun – tongue in cheek. @harbour_lights is a good business. They understand how to build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The smile stayed on my face all the way home through the rain.

It’s amazing the effect that a smile has you know. I passed one woman who smiled back at me. As I got towards the White House pub there was a bloke stood outside in his work gear having a cigarette. He smiled back at me. Not normally the sort of thing a grown bloke does to another bloke he doesn’t know.

In a nutshell that is how the world has changed since I started to write this blog.

Tags Twitter

Engineer webrtc

ITSPA WebRTC workshop at Google Campus

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 15 May, 2013
2 Comments on ITSPA WebRTC workshop at Google Campus

itspa logo Chaired the ITSPA WebRTC workshop at Google Campus yesterday. It had a great turnout so there is obviously an appetite to find out a bit more about WebRTC.

I’ve written about WebRTC several times before including here. The workshop comprised of presentations about the technology from Rob Pickering of IPCortex and Peter Dunkley of Crocodile Rich Communications Systems (they need an acronym methinks 🙂 ) followed by some demos (IPCortex, Crocodile and Drum).

In one sense these demos are not very interesting. They are just showing video calling – no different to skype or google talk et al. The biggest difference is that with WebRTC the “client” is embedded in the web page that you are visiting. No need to download anything to run on your PC or phone. In theory therefore WebRTC could make for far more ubiquitous online real time communications.

WebRTC should facilitate communities of interest. For example if I have a WebRTC service in this blog then it would be easy to set up conference calls and discussions around specific posts – a big enhancement on the current commenting system. It should even be possible to record such discussions and embed them for others to listen to later.

You always hear about the next big thing that is going to kill off the good (?) old fashioned PSTN and WebRTC was mentioned as a contributor to this yesterday. The PSTN is eventually going to die but not for a long time yet. The WebRTC model, like the original Skype is not about minutes.

In any case, the PSTN is slowly moving away from a minutes based model to a fixed price all you can eat one which makes the death or otherwise of the PSTN a moot point.

WebRTC is potentially very interesting though but there is still a lot of work to be done. The standards are far from complete, even to the point of discussion as to which video codec to use. Half the industry wants to use H264 which is an existing and well bedded in codec. Unfortunately this half is also the half that owns all the patents for H264.

The other half supports Google’s push to use its own VP8 codec which it is making available royalty free. Of course the H264 camp doesn’t like this and Nokia has apparently said that it owns some codecs that are applicable to VP8 in an attempt to stop it being “free”. You could take the view that Nokia won’t be around for much longer but you can’t base the codec decision on that and in any event someone would probably maintain ownership the patents.

For the moment most of us will have to get on making real money with existing products. SIP trunk anyone?

Tags Campus, google, ITSPA, webrtc

Engineer internet ofcom social networking

The speed of obsolescence & the increase in the speed of light

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 8 May, 2013
No Comments on The speed of obsolescence & the increase in the speed of light

We do live in very interesting times. Last night the twitter stream told me that the internet in Syria had stopped working, or at least the traffic in and out of the country had died off which is the same thing. This morning it was included by the Guardian in their Boot Up links. I thought to myself last night that once it had hit twitter the news would be everywhere. I saw a couple more references to it on twitter this morning and thought to myself “they’re a bit behind the game – that was last night’s news”. I figured it was too old and publicly available to write a blog about it & I wouldn’t really have been able to add anything anyway.

Then this morning I saw someone retweet a link to a post by @TheRealRevK about how Ofcom was about to screw the voip market in the UK by, amongst other things (in it’s 500 page consultation). If you know Adrian (the reverend himself) you will know how passionate he is about these things. I had thought about writing a post about this subject myself – it came up at dinner last week at Convergence Summit North. I didn’t have the time as I was out of the office for much of the week. I’m not going to do one now as I can’t add to Adrian’s post.

The world is changing so quickly. It’s daft that I don’t feel able to write about something that hit the headlines only a few hours ago and it certainly makes you think about what you do write. Google has been giving this a lot of thought with its Google Authorship Ranking (Google it). When I did the pigeon v rural broadband race a couple of years ago it was covered by the BBC and as far as I could see scraped by approx 32,000 websites around the world. That’s them taking someone else’s news in the hope that it would make their own site interesting.

Google Authorship is designed to give credit to the originator of the news. I’ve added links to my Google+ profile from both trefor.net and philosopherontap.com and linked back from the profile to the sites. In theory over time my Google+ profile will be linked to my many sites as I write guest posts for them (ok maybe it won’t) and this will increase the level of credibility given to me as an author and originator of content.

This doesn’t take away the fact that I will still have to find original stuff to write about which ain’t necessarily easy in this world where the speed of light and information distribution is constantly increasing – you heard it first on trefor.net.

PS the speed of light bit is entirely made up as an attention grabbing bit of sensationalism – had I not made this admission I know many of you would otherwise take it as read from such a creditable source! 🙂

Tags Authorship, google

Apps Business media video

Google+ Hangout live stream broadcasts – wowsers

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 3 May, 2013
3 Comments on Google+ Hangout live stream broadcasts – wowsers

You will have been staying with your auntie on another planet if you are a regular visitor to this blog and not have noticed that I’m having a book launch on May8th (see here for details). I’ve been spamming my social media channels about it (sorry to those followers that remain 🙂 ) and I’m expecting a packed house.

Recognising that most people in the world won’t be able to come as all flights and hotels will be full (etc) together with the fact that the Morning Star will only take 100 people at a push I thought I’d stream the gig live online.

Up until recently I had intended to do this using babuser.com, that being the only streaming facility I’ve used. However I was pointed in the direction of Google+ Hangout Live Stream broadcasts and boy oh boy is that a cool service.

Your Google+ account is linked to your YouTube account and at the click of a button your hangout is streamed live both in your Google+ stream and YouTube. What’s more you can embed the stream in your own website and Google records the broadcast for reuse afterwards. You can thereafter chose to make it public or private.

The beauty of this is the level of engagement you can achieve on the various social media sites – comments/discussions and shares can abound. I looked at it for my book launch but clearly this is something that businesses can use that takes a Webex style presentation session to a more powerful and public level.

You can watch my efforts in the video embedded below. It is only me playing about and the fact that I had two laptops open side by side means lots of echoey feedback. The lighting isn’t great either so the audio and the quality of the video is something you need to work on.

The nice thing about the Google setup is that you can invite several friends to participate using their phones and at anytime select their video feed to be the main one in the broadcast. You have the basic setup for a professional studio or outside broadcast, albeit a simple one. The only shame is that the Android app doesn’t have the buttons for setting up the broadcast from a handset. You seem to need to use the desktop version.

I’m going to need a volunteer or two for next Wednesday and will be testing this on site over the Bank Holiday weekend. Lemme know if you want to hook up in a hangout. I’m [email protected]. Ciao baby.

Tags Book, broadcasts, google, hangout, live, Philosopherontap, stream, trefor

Business UC voip

SIP trunks Ferraris and motorbikes

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 1 May, 2013
1 Comment on SIP trunks Ferraris and motorbikes

I’m at Convergence Summit North. I have to say I think I prefer it to Convergence Summit South for what it’s worth. It’s in Manchester and I’ve also decided I like Manchester, again for what it’s worth. Travel and tourism piece over:)

I tend to think long and hard about whether to visit a trade show these days. In our industry the stands all tend to have the same products and the same pitch. It’s difficult to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

The good thing about this one in Manchester is that it is small enough to be intimate and friendly and because I’ve been in the business a while it’s full of people I know. It is therefore a good place to find stuff out, if I can put it like that.

At this show the organisers, Comms Business magazine, had invested in an audience reaction system. Questions were put up on the screen and you pressed the relevant button on your “clicker” to submit your answer and the aggregated answers for the whole audience were displayed.

We had a bit of fun with this but one specific question stood out for me. That was “Is your company recruiting right now?” 29% of the audience said no they weren’t but a staggering 65% said they were recruiting and a further 5% said they had plans to¹. That’s 70% of business in the communications market taking on new staff.

That has to be a good thing. Where is the recession we keep hearing about? It is an extremely tough market out there but in the technology game there is always opportunity because technology is always changing.

On the technology front you will be interested to hear that only 10% of the audience (of IT and voice reseller types) had deployed Microsoft Lync with voice although a larger 29% had deployed Lync without voice. It’s very difficult to see how well Microsoft are doing in the voice game because all their Enterprise licenses are shipped with Lync so they always quote a very high number of deployments. It’s relevant because the theory goes that Microsoft is after the PBX market and their model doesn’t involve much if any revenue for traditional PBX resellers.

We also heard that although the market for hosted VoIP slowed down last year the SIP trunk sector continues to shoot up with a 25% growth in the second half of 2012. Over half the audience were selling SIP trunks and half said they were selling more SIP than ISDN which I believe may well be the case at Timico now. Those that don’t sell SIP need to take a hard look in the mirror. There is going to come a time where ISDN isn’t around.

Note in bandying these acronyms around I’m assuming that you know what I’m talking about. I’m not about to give a tutorial on what they all mean.

The inset photos are all of me playing with the different attractions that companies were using to get people to their stands. I have to say I don’t think I’ll be buying a Ferrari anyday soon. There is no room in them and the seat won’t go down low enough for me to be able to see out properly. I wouldn’t mind a motorbike. I like the image. I’m obviously a natural – look no hands. Unfortunately I think they’re far too dangerous:)

As a little footnote I was there with our wholesale subsidiary NewNet who are a great bunch of guys and I think picked up some nice leads from the show.

I’m doing two round tables on 4G at 12.30 and 1.30 if anyone wants to come along.

¹ OK I know it doesn’t add up to 100% but don’t nitpick.

Tags Ferrari, motorbike, SIP, trunks

Business voip

Dinner debate on future of VoIP – Manchester

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 26 April, 2013
No Comments on Dinner debate on future of VoIP – Manchester

I’m in Manchester on Monday night hosting a dinner for our wholesale subsidiary Newnet. I have room for a couple more resellers who may be attending the Convergence Summit North event the next day. If you fancy coming along it’s in a nice restaurant natch and should be an informative debate. I don’t have a theme other than what’s going on in the Comms world and where’s it all going/threats/opportunities etc

It’s a 6 – 7 ish meet for drinks at the Manchester Restaurant Bar & Grill and sit down at 7.30. Lemme know if you want to come. No freeloading competitors, just good honest hardworking resellers please 🙂

Tags debate, Dinner, Manchester, voip

Engineer webrtc

Web RTC workshop – get yer tickets ere

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 23 April, 2013
No Comments on Web RTC workshop – get yer tickets ere

If you work in the Unified Communications industry you need to know about Web RTC. You can either Google it or come along to ITSPA’s Web RTC workshop at the Google Campus on 14th May to find out more.

This workshop is intended to provide a fairly detailed drill down into the workings of WebRTC and is suitable for the VoIP tech community. It includes an introduction to the technology and presentations and demos from a number of companies involved in the area. We will also be having a few beers afterwards, natch.

These events are seriously worthwhile attending. More details below – the event is open to non ITSPA members so git on down.

Tuesday, 14^th May 2013, 14:00-17:30
Google Campus, 3^rd Floor
4-5 Bonhill Street, EC2A 4BX London

Part 1: Technical background and introduction
Presentation from John Parr (Crocodile Rich Communications Systems) and Rob Pickering (IPCortex)

Part 2: Demos and real-life implementation: products, services, and more
Speakers TBC – Google, Drum, IPCortex, Crocodile Rich Communications Systems, Voxhub

Part 3: Roundtable discussion/panel and audience Q&A
Discussion moderated by Trefor Davies on the impact of WebRTC:
What are the challenges, opportunities, and threats – to software phones, video market, fixed infrastructure and more?

Reserve tickets here: http://itspawebrtc.eventbrite.co.uk/

Tags Campus, google, ITSPA, Web RTC, workshop

Engineer nuisance calls and messages ofcom voip

Nuisance calls

At last week’s ITSPA Council meeting we discussed nuisance calls. This post on on the subject was written by Pete Farmer, writing in a personal capacity. Pete is the Commercial and Regulatory Manager for Gamma a wholesale supplier of telecoms services. Pete is a colleague on the ITSPA Council and chairs their Regulatory Committee. His contact details can be found via his LinkedIn profile.

Nuisance Calls

No-one doubts for a second that silent or abandoned calls – the current focus of Ofcom’s attentions whereby predictive diallers make more calls than they have agents for- are a pain. It is even worse for a vulnerable person to receive a prank call at 3am let alone one where the content is potentially violent or sexual. These are often criminal acts that require decisive action from law enforcement.

What people don’t talk about so much though, is the effect such calls have on businesses. The economic harm as well as the effect on the staff can be commensurate with that suffered in a residential setting.

A business can of course be pseudo-domestic; by which I mean that a plumber, electrician or window cleaner procures their telephony services much as they would at home

Tags calls, Gamma, ITSPA, nuisance, Pete Farmer, SPIT, voip

Business obsolescence UC

Voicemail is for the dead – discuss

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Friday, 1 March, 2013
12 Comments on Voicemail is for the dead – discuss

I had a meeting with some guys yesterday afternoon to discuss their use of Microsoft Lync in different businesses. More of that anon but one thing that stuck in my mind was a quote by Paul Hardy of Informa:

“Voicemail is for the dead”

He is right. Why use voicemail then you have so many other direct means of communication. My daughter hates voicemail because it means she has to call up to retrieve it. We have been trained never to leave her voicemails. Instead I usually resort to sending an sms or more likely an IM on Facebook. She usually then replies with her availability. I do find it funny that I have to schedule telephone calls with my daughter buy hey, we all have busy lives:)

We don’t let our customer care teams at Timico have voicemail – customers need to speak to someone, not a mailbox.

As I write I have remembered I need to change my own mobile voicemail from the “vacation alert” it currently has. I am no longer on holiday you see 🙂 . Might think about switching it off…

Whaddaya think?

Tags dead, Timico, voicemail

End User social networking

twitter follower building strategies

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Monday, 28 January, 2013
2 Comments on twitter follower building strategies

fwiw I have at the time of writing 2,271 followers and am followed by 1,388. The reason that I have more followers than I follow is that I only follow back real people with something to say or a business that is in my area of interest where I think I might learn something. I also follow back businesses local to where I live unless their tweets just focus on saying “buy my left handed widget” on a repetitive basis. I’ve blogged all this before so nothing new here for regular readers.

Last week I was sat at my desk trying to upgrade to Widows8 and whilst the machine was doing its stuff I gave our IT guy Jared a driving lesson on Twitter. I had a new follower! Oo 🙂

Looking at this follower I noted that he had 9,000 followers but only followed less than 1,000 himself (actually it wasn’t a he it was a company). This was very suspicious. I could understand if it was a celebrity account. I had never heard of this company before, had no reason to engage with them but they had followed me. I was unlikely that they were particularly interested in me. Their intent was almost certainly for me to follow then back and very likely, having gained a new follower, proceed to unfollow me. That could be the only reason they had a 9:1 ratio of followers to follows.

As an experiment I followed them back and made a note to check on Monday (today) whether they were still following me. Lo and behold, surprise surprise, knock me down with a feather they weren’t.

I have now unfollowed them – there is no reason for me to stay with them because they aren’t interested in me as a person. They just want me to be interested in them. There is something wrong somewhere with that business model. How can a business succeed if it just wants to take and not give anything back.

Anyway that’s my missive for a Monday morning. Gotta go. Awards entries to write and customer meetings to prepare for.

Ciao

Tags strategy, Twitter

Business security voip

How to make your VoIP secure #fraud

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Thursday, 24 January, 2013
2 Comments on How to make your VoIP secure #fraud

It’s a pretty simple process to set up your own VoIP phone system. Google “free VoIP server” and you will find links to 3CX or Asterisk. Download their free software and install it on a computer in your office. Sign up for a few SIP trunks from an Internet Telephony Service Provider (eg Timico) and you can be up and running making VoIP phone calls from your Local Area Network in an afternoon. You don’t even need to buy phones. You can download free soft phones that will run on a PC or a smart phone that will work perfectly well over WiFi. The cost is minimal. It’s as simple as that.

Except it isn’t. Now google “VoIP fraud” and

Tags hack, security, SIP, voip

Engineer UC voip

S3 SBC, rhymes with VoIP, Securitee – Session Border Controller @Genband @Timico

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Wednesday, 9 January, 2013
No Comments on S3 SBC, rhymes with VoIP, Securitee – Session Border Controller @Genband @Timico

Yesterday I wrote about our new mobile VoIP App for the iPhone. This included a link to a press release issued by Genband, our VoIP infrastructure partner.

That release covered more than just the mobile VoIP iPhone App. It is a bit of an overall solution release but an important bit covers our acquisition of the Genband S3 Session Border Controller.

The SBC has been a bit of a controversial beast in the world of purist VoIP engineering. It’s purpose is to manage VoIP sessions across different networks. In its earliest incarnation it was used to convert VoIP signalling from the old H323 video conferencing protocol (also used for just voice in older VoIP services) to the more modern and up and coming SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) or perhaps to a variant of MGCP (Media Gateway Control Protocol). As a “border controller” it also grew in functionality as a device used to manage the security of a network.

The conceptual problem of the SBC amongst the early VoIP pioneers was that it operated as a “back to back user agent”. In other words it effectively terminated a signalling stream on input and started it up again on output. This meant that in the “open internet” it would not necessarily be possible to trace a VoIP signalling packet from end to end as you might be able to do with other non-voice packets using tools such as tracert, the outcome being that it would be harder to debug problematic services.

This was at a time when the theory stated that all VoIP calls would be free heralding the end of the telco and paid phone calls as we know it. This Utopian scenario was underwritten by companies such as Skype who appeared to offer free phone calls to all. Of course to be confirmed and adopted by the general scientific base, theories need proving in practice and even the virulently successful Skype ended up demonstrating that it has to pay for its infrastructure somehow by starting to charge for some of its services.

The growth of the VoIP market¹ has also stimulated the growth of a VoIP security sector. There was initially an element of playing on the fears of people entering uncharted technical territories. The fact that VoIP is designed to operate on the DNS based internet² and functions in a similar way to email and web browsing opens up opportunities for fraudulent activity in the same way that we have become accustomed to such happenings in our general web use. Email SPAM is replaced with VoIP SPIT (computer generated SPAM for Internet Telephony bombarding the world with automated sales messages). The use of a crawler ploughing through blocks of IP addresses looking for open networks to penetrate is replaced with a search for exposed network based iPBXs that can be exploited for financial gain.

There are many precautions that can be taken to remove vulnerabilities from a VoIP network but if you are serious at security you will want to use a Session Border controller.

A VoIP network, at least if it is to be usable by business, needs managing to maintain its quality and reliability and the SBC plays an integral role in this. The SBC today, far from being the object of criticism of the VoIP network engineer, is the demesne of the grown up Internet Telephony Service Provider. Think of it as a super security tool that secures your network and cements the quality of the service it supports.

Looking at it parochially I’ve been wanting an SBC “to play with” for years, ever since we started our hosted VoIP service. We put a lot of effort into the management of security of our VoIP users but the Genband S3 SBC, covered in the press release, allows us to take this to new heights.

The Genband S3 effectively acts as a VoIP firewall. It manages network access using real-time and aggregated admission control policies. It can, for example, spot and prevent the SPIT attacks referred to earlier. It will also help Timico as a service provider to control the quality of the VoIP service with capabilities such as the automatic monitoring of network bandwidth rates and capacity.

From Timico’s perspective as a voice carrier the Genband S3 will allow us to hook up with many more interconnect partners because as a border controller it allows us to manage interoperability with different carrier’s kit. The SBC will also provide us with the flexibility to fine tune routes based on both cost effectiveness and quality. For example if a specific route begins to suffer from poor call completion rates the S3 will detect this and intelligently reroute traffic to that destination via a different interconnect partner. The S3 is also hugely compatible with our Genband A2 VoIP platform and will scale to 25,000 concurrent calls that effectively supports a subscriber base of over 250,000 users.

The S3 is relatively new to Genband. It came with the acquisition of NexTone, one of the market’s original and leading SBC vendors. This has brought with it a maturity and pedigree of user base that is not only reflected in its functionality but will quickly help Timico cement our position as one of the leading VoIP providers to the business market. Bit of marketing blurb there but it is actually based on solid engineering principles.

If anyone wants to chat more about our new S3 SBC drop me a line, call or hook up with me via @tref on Twitter.

Ciao.

¹ note there will come a time when we don’t talk about it as a VoIP market. It won’t be long before we have to simply describe the world as a communications market which contains a subset known as the old fashioned telecommunications network as championed by the ITU (another story in itself).

² It still doesn’t fully merge with the domain name system as this would rely on every ISP supporting VoIP on its DNS servers. The principle of domain based routing is still the same for VoIP as for regular web traffic.

Tags GenBand, S3, SBC, security, Session Border Controller, Timico, voip

Engineer mobile connectivity voip voip hardware

Timico mobile VoIP app now available on Apple App Store

Post author By Trefor Davies
Post date Tuesday, 8 January, 2013
4 Comments on Timico mobile VoIP app now available on Apple App Store

I started to look at mobile VoIP clients a good 8 or 9 years ago. At the time the handsets were near enough useless – battery life was rubbish and the processors lacked the oomph to properly run a SIP user agent.

The advent of the modern day smart phone has changed all this, together with years of development effort put in to improve the soft clients themselves.

Now, most of us have a VoIP client on our phone – almost certainly Skype, maybe 3CX, Bria or Eyebeam. I stopped counting the number of low cost VoIP calling services that you might use as the target for the mobile VoIP client.

Many desktop VoIP clients are not supported on mobile. So if you use MSN or Facebook or Google+ or Lync even their mobile clients almost certainly do not support voice but are just used for presence and Instant Messaging.

The dwindling list of vendors of Unified Comms equipment offer their own mobile VoIP clients, which necessarily have better functionality than those I’ve just mentioned from the major platforms. Ask Avaya or Mitel about it and they will proudly show off their solution. These vendor specific solutions usually use a third party soft client tailored to their specific need. Bria from Counterpath is one and MobileMax is another.

I am very proud to announce that Timico has introduced its own mobile VoIP client . There are some clear differentiators from the generic soft phones mentioned earlier and used with hosted solutions.

landline use Timico VoIP phone app for iPhone available from Apple App Store

Timico VoIP phone app for iPhone available from Apple App Store

First of all the user’s account is tied to the employer’s VoIP subscription, so the desktop extension and DDI is the same as the mobile. The user interface is also similar to that of the soft client running on the desktop and is controlled using the same familiar portal. Mobile users can not only speak and do video calls with other users of the network, but are able the see the availability of others

There is more to the technology that goes in to making a successful mobile VoIP client than is at first apparent. A little technology primer might serve a useful purpose here. When you speak into a telephone you are using an analogue broadcast service, i.e. your voice. In order to get to the telephone at the far end this analogue signal is converted into data packets (i.e. digitised) and then transmitted using computer networking technology, in our case Internet Protocol and the layers of networking technologies that come under its umbrella.

The sent packets have to traverse a number of hurdles in the guise of different networks and routers before arriving at their intended destination (next door, Australia – anywhere connected to the internet). Voice is very time sensitive. You really notice the difference if there is a delay between the person at the other end speaking and you hearing it, and vice versa. Slow or poor quality hops in the network can affect the quality of the user experience.

Use of mobile networks for VoIP transmission comes with its own specific issues. 3G is a notoriously latency ridden data service and a number of mobile operators actually block VoIP services (although they are far from transparent in their approach to this). It is too early to assess the practical usability of 4G because there is only one service provider in the market and that network will be only lightly used. The issue of cost of bandwidth over a mobile carrier network has also historically made VoIP impracticable in many cases.

WiFi is the sensible alternative. Although even WiFi comes with its own issues with Ethernet style best efforts transmission. Packets that collide with other packets don’t arrive at their destination. The busier the local WiFi network, the more likely you are to suffer from poor quality voice.

In practical terms this is likely to mean if you are sitting in an office with many hot desks where WiFi is the principal means of connecting to corporate resources, then that network is likely to become congested. This congestion may not be particularly noticeable to laptop users just doing emails or general web use.

A congested WiFi network that is ok for most uses might not be good for VoIP. In an office environment this can be engineered around, by creating more cells/hotspots each with fewer users. At home there is far less likely to be a problem although VoIP packets in this scenario are more likely to be using the open internet for transmission.

A VoIP phone is actually a computer that looks like a phone. Fortunately the lost packet compensation and packet processing techniques used in modern mobile VoIP clients (smart phones/computers) are able to overcome many “noisy” environmental scenarios, or at least go a long way towards mitigating their effects.

Timico’s announcement today comes after some time working with partners (Genband) to develop the soft-client. The app is available on the Apple App Store to existing (and new!) Timico VoIP customers and is a piece of cake to install – use of our Mobile Endpoint Provisioning (MEP) portal means all the user has to do is enter a username and password and they are up and running.

The MEP is worth further mention. With the MEP comes the ability to change mobile client settings on-the-fly which provides the Timico operations team with a critical tool for managing your mobile VoIP solution in near real time. There are over 200+ settings that the MEP controls, including default codec selection, NAT traversal settings and the keep-alive timer value.

There are often deployments where we might initially need to make adjustments to these settings to suit the environment in which you use the service. We can do this transparently and without requiring interaction with the end-users.

Another feature to our service that is designed to provide the optimum user experience is our Client QOS notification. The mobile client analyses the RTCP statistics in real time. Should these stats fall below predefined thresholds then the user will receive a notification informing them of ‘network quality issues’.

I’ve been around polling some of the early users and got the following comments:

“I’ve ditched my deskphone and now just use the iPhone app”
“Connects very quickly”
“I was sat in Starbucks in Canada and used it to call the office”

I’m sure that I will have previously mentioned that last year we won the ITSPA Award for the best Enterprise Unified Comms service. This mobile client adds nicely to that existing feature-rich service set. It’s going to be a terrific tool for people who need to make calls out of the office but don’t want to pay extortionate roaming charges or use their own phones.

Because the VoIP service is tied to their company’s business account then all calls just appear on the standard monthly bill. Calls to other internal VoIP users are of course free.

So there we have it. The mobile VoIP client has finally come into the world of reliable, serious business strength communications. If you want to try the service check it out here . Press release yurr^1.

¹ note South Walian accent

Tags App, Apple, iphone, mobile connectivity, Store, Timico, voip