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Business internet mobile connectivity voip

Orange HD voice – when will the whole world go HD?

Mobile operator Orange has hit the headlines today with the launch of its HD voice service. Trials for this service, which uses the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband codec (AMR-WB – otherwise known as  G722.2), began in June this year in the south of England.

The service is initially only for Orange HD handset to Orange HD handset.  This is quite easy to do as “on-net” HD calls using the same codec don’t require transcoding and also do not therefore enter into the black art world of interoperability. 

HD voice has been the subject of discussion amongst the VoIP community in the UK this year.  A fair few vendors

Categories
Business internet video

Polycom Telepresence impresses ITSPA

I’ve only seen a single screen telepresence demo before and that was on a noisy exhibition floor.  At Polycom’s City Executive Briefing Centre yesterday I was treated the to a full blown demo and boy was it impressive.  The quality was astounding.

Attendees at the ITSPA Summer Forum sat on one side of an oval conference table that was mirrored on 4 large screens in front of us. A Polycom representative (sorry didn’t catch his name) did the spiel from the other room located in Slough.

It was as if he was in the same room and he could even hear the side conversations going on on our side of the table.

Categories
Business ofcom voip

Mobile operators wreaking havoc with pricing

At the ITSPA Summer Forum, held yesterday at Polycom’s City offices  there was a panel of VoIP wholesalers debating the health of the market. The panel consisted of representatives from BT, Gamma, X-Connect, Magrathea and Timico (ie moi).

The market it turns out is very healthy with everyone reporting growth in VoIP minutes over and above old fashioned TDM minutes. We also debated number porting – a large subject in its own right that has already featured on this blog but is going to be a lot more visible over the next few months.

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Business voip

ITSPA AGM and Summer Forum at the v plush Polycom offices in the City

Just stepped into the Polycom offices at 69 Old Broad Street in the City. I am here for the ITSPA council meeting, AGM and Summer Workshop.

The offices are super plush and impressively I didn’t have to sign in at reception. The receptionist pushed a button on a panel and a lift door opened to take me directly to the 16th floor. There were no buttons inside the lift to press other than “door open” and “alarm”.

I was whisked straight to the 16th floor and the lift door opened. The receptionist on the 16th floor said “welcome Mr Davies” and showed me to the coffee lounge.

Categories
Business voip

ITSPA event just two weeks to go #VoIP #polycom #microsoft

It’s only two weeks to the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association (ITSPA) Summer Forum due to take place on Tuesday 13th July at the Polycom offices, Old Broad Street, London.

These events, chaired by yours truly, have become “must attend” occasions for ITSPs in the UK. On this occasion we have a Keynote Speech from Microsoft, an update from BT Openreach on their NGN VoIP plans, a talk from Polycom and a panel discussion on “Wholesale “VoIP. There is also an update from Matt Townend from Illume on the “State of the Union” in the VoIP market.

The wholesale panel has representation from the leading wholesalers in this space: Gamma, Magrathea, BT IP Exchange and X-Connect.

If you want to come there are still some places left though these things usually sell out nearer to the day so you need to be quick. Email [email protected] for more info.

Categories
Business video voip

WWF, VC, HD @wembley

You might ask yourself what WWF has to do with VC and HD? In fact you are probably wondering what the acronyms actually stand for and what have they got to do with Wembley.

 

We are talking World Wide Fund for nature, Video Conferencing and High Definition. (I knew that do I hear you say 🙂 ) and all three were being discussed at a Polycom seminar held looking down at the magnificence that is  the pitch at Wembley Stadium.

 

WWF is launching a programme to help businesses cut the number of flights by 1 in 5 and as a leader in the VC game Polycom found it expedient to have representatives along to make a presentation.

 

Obviously Polycom is using Global Warming and the need to reduce carbon footprints as a sales tool for its VC systems but the cynics amongst you should not poo poo this as it is a perfectly valid/nay sensible thing to do. VC does help cut down on business travel and thus helps save the planet as well as reducing costs.

 

One of the reasons I attended was to hear what Polycom was doing with Microsoft on OCS. Turns out they make some of the handsets and are producing a couple of VC products (HDX4000 and HDX8000) that integrate with OCS (more details anon I’m sure).

 

What really interested we was the fact that Microsoft has 11,000 staff working on rich media collaboration, apparently more than the rest of the industry put together. One of the OCS phones doesn’t even have a keypad. Microsoft is saying that you only need your desktop. The Polycom perspective on this is that businesses haven’t gone for desktop VC because of the difficulty of maintaining dispersed resources. It’s hard to see Microsoft getting this wrong.

 

A number of OCS case studies were presented. Gibson guitars reduced calling costs by 75% using OCS.  Prodavka reduced phone costs by 50%

 

There were lots of other interesting facts being bandied around:

 

  • China is the second biggest market for VC behind the USA
  • The biggest issue facing adoption of VC is the ability to reserve resources. ie room booking
  • The average HD system cost is $8k cf $200k for telepresence.
  • In 2008 there will be 1500 telepresence systems sold worldwide. By 2012 this is expected to grow to 17,000.
  • Interoperability between different vendor systems is still an issue
  • 1 long haul flight is equivalent of 12 months driving from a carbon footprint perspective
  • Air travel is the fastest growing contributor of CO2 – 3% today, 25% by 2030
  • The fastest ways of reducing CO2 generation include power saving data centres, extending networks to home workers and increased usage of collaboration and content sharing tools (video and voice conferencing) as alternative to travel.
  • The M4 motorway at Slough is operating at 150% capacity
  • The average traffic speed in London is 8 mph – no increase since the horse and cart !
  • PWC avoided 1.1 million miles of travel through use of VC resulting in the saving of 198kg of CO2
  • BT has claimed £238m benefit to their business by use of VC – £100m based on travel cost benefits and the rest based on productivity improvements including reduced staff sickness
  • Nortel has saved $60k a week on travel due to telepresence with 10 systems worldwide
  • A Yougov survey in 2007 said 37% of face to face meetings were deemed unnecessary
  • If European companies cut travel by 20% there would be a saving of 22m tons of CO2 a year

Finally Polycom played some impressive videos including http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4H0BR_8wy8