Categories
Business business applications UC voip webrtc

How WebRTC will deliver contextual communication and AI in the contact centre

Contextual communication, AI and chatbots are on track to revolutionise the way we communicate, prompting experts to herald the dawn of a major communications revolution. What about the contact centre, and how does WebRTC underpin this shift towards improved customer engagement?

More than just chatbots

Most of us have already grown accustomed to talking more and more with machines. Consumers have been given a taste of this new era of communication with the likes of Siri and Alexa, but we’re starting to see this new technology make its mark in the business world. Some contact centres, for instance, are starting to use chatbots to deal with common queries and complaints based on database suggestions.  We’ve also witnessed a number of councils using a form of AI as a virtual agent to deal with front line requests. As the number of interactions increases, we can expect to see robots like this learning rapidly and becoming more sophisticated.

However, the impact of AI and machine learning is greater than just for improving chatbots. If we look at the bigger story we can see there is another innovation gaining a foothold in the industry: contextual communication. Made possible by open web technologies like WebRTC, it enables context to be added to every communication to make customer interactions more efficient, personalised and engaged. These contextual communications applications mesh together pertinent information in real-time from CRMs and other databases. The end result is the ability to deal with customer enquiries via web video, chat box or through a mobile app.

The value of context

This is where AI can make a dramatic impact. Determining the right information and communication “context” to serve, informed by a wealth of data, leads to better decision making throughout sales or customer service processes. This ultimately leads to a greater customer experience and applies equally to customer-facing chatbots as it does to virtual assistants. Imagine a VA that could recommend the next course of action for a customer service agent or salesperson to take. Then, move it a stage further and consider that cognitive interactions will understand accents, sentiment and context. This will enable even greater personalisation and decision-making capabilities – a far cry from today’s annoying automated services.

This is how the future of enterprise communications is shaping up –  making communication “transparent”, so it’s integral and inherent in applications, and augmenting it with context. What does it mean for ITSPs? We can start with differentiated propositions offering huge productivity and efficiency gains – and a more natural communications experience for customers.

Join us next week to learn more

We’ll be discussing these impacts and more at the ITSPA WebRTC Workshop next Thursday 28th September, Central London. Both Tref and I will be keen to hear your views on contextual communication and how it can drive new revenue opportunities for ITSPs in the coming years. If you are in London and want to come along, register here – it’s free – using the member’s registration.

Other WebRTC content on this blog.

Categories
Business security voip

SBCs – Maintaining Your Network’s VoIP Security

Session Border Controllers (SBCs) can greatly enhance VoIP security, all but eliminating toll fraud while also maintaining voice connectivity.

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week contributor Simon Horton, the Director of Sales, EU for Sangoma.

The term SBC (short for Session Border Controller) is liberally used in the VoIP industry today, but from my travels around the telecom channel it’s clear that there is significant misunderstanding and distrust on the role played by SBCs and when they are required.

The uptake of Enterprise Session Border Controllers or E-SBCs is being driven by the rise of SIP trunking in the UK. The number of ISDN channels (the traditional way of connecting enterprise to the telephone network, using dedicated copper wire) is shrinking at about the same rate as SIP trunking is growing, so assuming that the market size is static my conclusion is that all of the folks leaving ISDN are going to SIP trunking. In addition to the cost benefit, flexibility, and disaster recovery capabilities of SIP trunking, the proliferation of good quality and value connectivity (e.g., leased lines, EFM) is enabling the market growth.

Why SIP is more inherently risky

In the days of legacy TDM connections (Time Division Multiplexing, or the copper wire) phone calls took place on approved equipment connected to private networks run by the telco. Nothing else was connected or could be connected. Contrast this situation with SIP, where the connection could be across a public network or a network shared with data derived from multiple devices. In addition, calls can be placed and terminated across a wide range of devices such as IP-phones, smart phones, desktops, etc.

SIP deconstructed

Before examining how SBCs can help a typical enterprise it’s worth explaining that SIP consists of two main parts. First, there is the SIP protocol that sets up the call and conveys information about that call. Second, there is the media that carries the voice in RTP packets. Both of these streams need to be considered in order to maintain security.

Attacking the SIP protocol could allow a hacker to gain access to passwords and allow an unwanted intruder to spoof calls and allow toll fraud, a hot topic in our industry today. There are other ways that SIP can be disrupted as well. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks can cause packet overload situations where the legitimate SIP messages cannot be processed and hence calls will not progress.

Media can often be tapped into and heard using tools that are readily available on the internet. The media ports can also be subjected to DoS attacks that can disrupt the audio.

The role of the SBC

The E-SBC sits at the edge of the enterprise network and manages all the voice connections made with SIP. SBCs are very feature rich and there is a lot of information out there discussing the many roles and functions that these flexible devices can perform. The SBC will be able to deal with disruptive DoS attacks by dropping packets at the network level before they become a problem. Encryption is also possible so that media and the call setup messages cannot be tracked. In addition, toll fraud is made much harder with the addition of policy control that allows only certain patterns of traffic to proceed as well as only allowing known users and IP addresses to make and receive calls.

Why not a firewall?

Traditional firewalls are great for protecting data networks, but typically they provide inadequate protection for SIP. Firewalls cannot prevent some of the threats identified here as they are not constructed with an intimate knowledge of SIP. Remember those two parts of SIP we discussed earlier? Well, the average firewall cannot tie the two of those together; this is a key component of the SBC so that only the necessary connections are allowed through the edge of the network. A typical firewall also cannot delve deep within the SIP message, ensure its legitimacy, and if necessary drop it quickly before it gets to the IP-PBX and cause damage.

Summary

The recommended best practice is to install an SBC wherever there is a change in SIP network or wherever the WAN connections join the SIP network. A correctly configured SBC can provide piece of mind in that the possibility for toll fraud is eliminated and that voice connectivity will be maintained regardless of whatever else may be happening.

Categories
Business security surveillance & privacy voip

Why are the Major Telcos Afraid of encrypted voip?

A significant disconnect exists between the reality of today’s IP communications and the security concerns and needs of the customer (read encrypted voip).

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Peter Cox, UM Labs Ltd. Founder and CEO.

One of UM Labs’ long-standing customers is using our product to provide encrypted VoIP connections from remote users (mostly home workers) and to encrypt calls they make and receive on their SIP trunk. Their motivation is simple: They are in the USA and their business makes it necessary for them to work closely with federal government, a connection that subjects them to security and compliance requirements. This customer’s view is that applying encryption to all VoIP calls — including those made and received on their SIP trunk — is an essential step towards meeting these requirements. Even if some SIP trunk calls are then relayed in clear text, as is the case for PSTN calls, the encryption applied on the connection to their trunk provider protects their network and ensures the confidentiality of SIP trunk calls on the connection between the service provider and their office. This effort demonstrates that they are taking all reasonable steps to secure the network connections under their own control and is thus a significant step towards meeting the compliance requirements.

Recently, our customer’s existing service provider announced that they were considering discontinuing encrypted SIP trunk connections, and being unable to find an alternative they asked me for some alternative service provider recommendations. I posted the question to the SIP Trunking & Enterprise VoIP LinkedIn group and received a number of helpful replies. My question also sparked some interesting discussion. A number of the participants gave spurious reasons why encryption was too difficult or not needed on a SIP trunk. What surprised me most was that representatives of two very large and well known telcos weighed in against encryption. One claimed that providing an encrypted SIP trunk connection was incompatible with legal intercept requirements, while the other tried to claim that since enterprises trust their data on “private” networks shouldn’t they trust their voice as well?

Addressing the claim that SIP trunk connections are not compatible with legal intercept requirements, I submit that when properly implemented and with the appropriate systems encrypted VoIP does not prevent legal intercept or call recording for compliance purposes. What it does stop is unauthorised call monitoring. The risk of unauthorised call monitoring is not confined to VoIP, as there is a significant risk to calls on cellular networks (see my recent blog at http://tinyurl.com/k38suu3). Encryption also has a role to play in controlling other threats, including call fraud.

Regarding the comment about enterprises trusting their data on private network connections to service providers, this I found even more surprising. I have spent many years in network security and this is the first time I have heard a connection to a 3rd party service provider classified as sufficiently private to trust for data transmission without some form or additional security. While connection to service providers may be more controlled than the open Internet, they are not private. Most enterprises will naturally want to protect their data with a VPN, so it makes sense to do the same for voice.

Part of the problem is that part of the telecoms industry is stuck in the past, back in the days when the phone companies owned and operated the networks. Things have moved on, and a significant proportion of all communications now runs on IP networks, much of it on the Internet. The move to IP has spawned new applications such as presence and IM and is the driving force behind convergence. The use of IP networks, and specifically the Internet for voice and UC, is a big step forward, but we must recognise that a different set of security rules apply. We have the knowledge and technology to address the security issues. Rather than finding reasons to avoid implementing VoIP and UC security technologies, the industry needs to embrace them and promote their implementation.

I won’t name the two telcos, but if you are interested in seeing them incriminate themselves you can follow the full LinkedIn discussion at http://tinyurl.com/ofdqgjy.

This is a VoIP week post on trefor.net. Check out other VoIP themed posts this week:

Why are major telcos afraid of encrypted VoIP? by Peter Cox
Emergency calls and VoIP by Peter Farmer
VoIP, the Bible and own brand chips by Simon Woodhead
Why the desktop VoIP telephone isn’t going away by Jeff Rodman
Small business VoIP setup by Trefor Davies
VoIP fraud-technological-conventionality-achieved  by Colin Duffy

Categories
broadband Business H/W UC voip voip hardware

Why the Desktop VoIP Telephone isn’t Going Away

Major leaps in technology allow business phones — the desktop VoIP telephone — to serve a rapidly growing range of needs.

Trefor.net welcomes “VoIP Week” contributor Jeff Rodman, Polycom‘s Chief Technology Evangelist. Since co-founding the company in 1990 Jeff has been instrumental in the realization of Polycom’s iconic products for voice, video, network communications, and other media.

The death of the desktop telephone has been predicted for decades. Technology has steadily advanced, business processes and communications needs have grown, and it’s actually rather surprising how that stodgy old friend the “desktop phone” has prospered. Look at its challenges: the PalmPilot, mobile phones and the Blackberry first, then on to Skype and other soft clients, unified information systems, mobile iOS, Windows and Android devices, teleworking, personal video calling, open-air workspaces, multiple Unified Communications and Control (UC&C) platforms, and the internet itself. And, of course, an always-growing need for specialised applications and consistent, efficient globalisation.

The desktop device remains firmly in place, though. What has actually happened is something that many didn’t see coming, yet is obvious in hindsight. The question was never really about when the desktop telephone would disappear, but rather how changing work needs and new technologies would shape its evolution.

“Personal transportation” did not disappear when Karl Benz introduced the Motorwagen in 1885, it evolved as technology moved beyond the horse. A broad range of personal transportation solutions emerged, from the motorbike to the motorhome, addressing such specific needs as the sedan, snowmobile, and all-terrain vehicle along the way. Similarly, the phone (which we might describe as a personal desktop live communications device) is not vanishing. It is, rather, becoming even more critical to business success, as it has advanced from its roots. Once merely the “black phone on a desk,” there is now a range of devices to cover an assortment of user needs from a basic desktop VOIP telephone to the rich integration of essential capabilities known as the Business Media Phone.

What is a phone today?

Modern business phones exist in many forms, but the most basic requirements they all share are durability and reliability. They are always on and ready for use, unlike cell phones, which require charged batteries and wireless connectivity. Similarly, soft clients or UC clients running on PCs must be running to accept calls or place calls. A phone is one thing we expect to always work, which is why they have traditionally been built like “brick houses,” never knowing who might slam down the handset, douse them with tea or drop them off of a tall table. Any phone is designed for a tightly defined set of uses, which it flawlessly performs. Whether a particular phone today supports only voice or a full bouquet of functions and applications, it is expected to do those jobs with unblinking confidence. As we will see, any device that might hope to take its place must be measured against this simple but essential standard of absolute reliability and responsiveness, one which we might call the “phone’s prime directive.”

Beyond this, major leaps in technology allow business phones to serve a rapidly growing range of needs. The adaptations to serve these can be broadly categorised in three directions— extensibility, unification, and media. Manageability and reliability, looking at the centralized support model removes the hassles from the end-user who can simply use it and doesn’t have to worry about software updates or configurations.

Extensibility

Whether PSTN, SIP, or some proprietary network, the most basic analogue phone needs only a handset and a phone cable. The underlying vision usually supports a much larger assortment of abilities, though, and different models within the same family will express different combinations. These can take the form of additional interfaces to support Bluetooth, wired, and DECT headsets, memory stick hosting to preserve conference audio, additional Ethernet jacks, “sidecar” accessories to provide one-touch selection of additional lines, and even add-on interactive HD video. Each of these extends the usefulness of a phone, by enabling future enhancement without burdening the initial purchase. The extent to which a phone can support this kind of evolution is one measure of its suitability for an organisation.

Unification

Although the range of abilities, environments, and platforms that might be supported by contemporary phones is much broader than it was just a few years ago, the user still expects them to work together simply and reliably. This means that functions must tie together transparently, and any complexity has to be neatly and efficiently concealed. The functions performed by the desktop phone must be able to connect to a wider set of networks; but more than that, the user’s experience has to remain consistent—a user cannot be confronted with wildly different behaviour just because, for example, SIP dialling and the Microsoft Lync platform are both in use within the organisation. For this reason, one essential requirement of a properly-implemented phone is that it retains compatibility with existing infrastructure. This means that interoperability among different UC and UC&C host platforms and simple, predictable behaviour is essential for a successful phone, whether it is a basic voice phone with enterprise directory access, or a full-fledged Business Media Phone, such as the Polycom range of VVX Business Media Phones.

Media

Today, conversations can take place among almost any combination of styles and environments (i.e., HD or narrowband voice, accompanying charts and presentations, HD video, small-screen video from a handheld device, or even Immersive Telepresence rooms). They can be between two people in only two places, or among a gathering of groups and individuals everywhere (i.e., at airports, desks, homes, workspaces and conference rooms).

Although there is today a growing expectation that participants will join meetings with video, a phone must give its user a clear perception of the meeting and also present its user as a competent, efficient participant in that meeting, whether the user has joined with video or only audio. This means that whether sitting in open spaces or quiet offices, phones must reject surrounding noise while allowing their users to speak clearly. Further, if video capable, they must send a clear, high-fidelity image even if their display is compact. Just as a user does not want to sound like they’re on a muffled Smartphone, they also want to look as if they’re working from a professional HD video system, not shaking and blurry with a precariously- mounted camera.

Conclusion

The desk phone has changed and today it does enormously more than it did in the past, yet it remains a keystone of effective business operation. By providing consistency, reliability, comfort, and an easily managed connection, there are few tools in business that prove their continuing worth as well, or as quickly, as well-built table-top voice or Business Media Phones.

Over the past three years, the tables have turned. Savings that some organisations had expected to gain by leveraging employee BYOD’s have evaporated as enterprises are often now the ones who buy those smartphones for employees, often at considerably higher life-cycle cost than a well-built desk phone. This is one reason that we’re really not entering a “smartphone world,” and why the market for real desktop phones of all descriptions continues to grow. Organisations that experiment with smartphones discover that they’re no panacea, and they return to the purpose-built and IT-friendly desktop phone — and especially to its powerful newer sibling the Business Media Phone — as the tool for doing what they do best, communications without compromise…

The bottom line is that regardless of what the final decision for each employee turns out to be, the first step toward making correct choices is to carefully investigate, taking care to understand what is important to the organisation and to each user, and get the facts about the options available when making a long-term investment such as a phone system.

This is a VoIP week post on trefor.net. Check out other VoIP themed posts this week:

Why are major telcos afraid of encrypted VoIP? by Peter Cox
Emergency calls and VoIP by Peter Farmer
VoIP, the Bible and own brand chips by Simon Woodhead
Why the desktop VoIP telephone isn’t going away by Jeff Rodman
Small business VoIP setup by Trefor Davies
VoIP fraud-technological-conventionality-achieved  by Colin Duffy

Categories
Bad Stuff Business ofcom scams security voip

VoIP Fraud — Technological Conventionality Achieved

VoIP has reached the mainstream. We know because the fraudsters are coming after us.

Trefor.net welcomes VoIP Week guest contributor Colin Duffy, CEO of Voipfone and ITSPA Council member.

VoIP merges two of the largest industries in the world: Telecommunications ($5.0 trillion) and the Internet ($4.2 trillion). It is big business.

Estimates of VoIP market size vary, though they are universally large. For instance, Infotenetics Research estimates the global residential and business VoIP market to be worth $64bn in 2014, growing to $88bn in 2018. Visiongain, on another hand, puts the 2018 value at $76bn. WhichVoIP (Bragg) has it as $82.7bn by 2017, and also claims that VoIP calls account for 34% of global voice traffic – 172bn call minutes. And then there is the United States Federal Communications Commission, which estimates that “In December 2011, there were 107 million end-user switched access lines in service [..in the USA and..] 37 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions.

And with opportunity comes the thief:

ICT Recent Scenarios: VoIP Week: Colin Duffy
(Corporate ICT)

 

(You have to love that New Scotland Yard hack…..)

But it’s not confined to big organisations; perhaps a little closer to home:

“A family-run business says it has ‘nowhere left to turn’ after hackers rigged its telephone system to call premium rate phone numbers — racking up a bill of nearly £6,000. ‘We reported it to the police, but we were told there was very little likelihood of them catching anyone so they wouldn’t be able to investigate’, she added.”                               

— Lancashire Telegraph

The Communications Fraud Control Association publishes a global fraud loss survey, and in 2013 they estimated that the global telecommunication industry loss to fraud was an enormous $46.3bn, which included:

  • VoIP hacking ($3.6bn),
  • PBX hacking ($4.4bn),
  • Premium Rate Services Fraud ($4.7bn),
  • Subscription Fraud ($5.2bn)
  • International Revenue Share Fraud ($1.8).

Over 90% of the telephone companies included in the CFCA’s survey reported that fraud within their company had increased or stayed the same since the last report.

Globally, the top emerging fraud type was identified as Internet Revenue Sharing Fraud, with Premium Rate Service Fraud (both international and domestic) also in the top five. Of the top five emerging fraud methods, PBX Hacking was the most important with VoIP Hacking at number three.

Who’s doing all this is a big and interesting topic, but here’s a starter:

Top Ten Countries where fraud
TERMINATES

Top Ten Countries where fraud
ORIGINATES

*Latvia
Gambia
*Somalia
Guinea
Cuba
East Timor
Lithuania
Taiwan
*UK
USA
India
*UK
Brazil
Philippines
*Latvia
Pakistan
*Somalia
Spain
Bulgaria

CFCA, Global Fraud Loss Survey, 2013

What can be done?

Earlier this year a customer of Voiceflex was hacked to the tune of £35,000 when over 10,000 calls were sent to a Polish Premium Service number over a period of 36 hours. The customer refused to pay, which resulted in a court case that the telco lost. Now the industry is looking to its terms and conditions for protection, but it’s clear that this isn’t enough – the cause needs addressing.

The best approach would be to cut off the money supply – if Telcos could withhold payments for known fraudulent calls, the activity would end. But this solution requires changes to inter-operator agreements and cross-jurisdiction interventions.

“We are currently in discussions with our fellow EU regulators about steps that may be taken to address cross-border [Dial Through] fraud and misuse. It is important that companies using VoIP systems take steps to ensure both the physical and technical security of their equipment in order to avoid becoming an ‘easy target’ for this type of criminal activity […..] We are approaching the NICC and relevant trade associations to ensure their advice is updated to help businesses better protect themselves against newer types of dial-through fraud that have emerged as technology has developed.”

— Ofcom 2013

For once I agree with Ofcom. The industry needs to work harder at target-hardening. We need to be making this industry safer for our customers.

There’s a lot to be done but a good start is to read and apply the guidance issued by ITSPA – the UK trade organisation for Internet Telcos.

I’m taking a close personal interest in VoIP fraud and security, and I invite anyone who has more information or who wishes to discuss this in more detail to contact me at colin@voipfone.co.uk email

A naive user asked me, ‘why can’t you just make safe telephones?’ Well, why can’t we?

Categories
End User internet Legal net neutrality

Consumer Rights and Net Neutrality

Consumer Rights is a far less toxic term than Net Neutrality.

I’ve previously written for Trefor.Net on the subject of Net Neutrality and what it means to members of the VoIP community. And I think it’s high time for an update, but this time considering consumer rights.

After a promising start the European Union went off the rails, passing a first reading of a text that essentially outlawed 4G services. VoLTE requires prioritisation. Hard line elements on the subject of “net neutrality” managed to convince a strange coalition that it was a good idea to promote their ideological definition just before an election. It was spun as a vote winner, this despite that fact that 999 calls would no longer be treated differently. Consumer rights being protected, were they?

Unforeseen consequences at their worse, which is why I believe that net neutrality is now a toxic term and should be avoided. In fact, I’ve worked on briefing documents that are four pages long that completely avoid the term. I also try to avoid “Open Internet” for similar reasons, as both — as I’ve written before — mean different things to different people.

That’s where consumer rights come into play.

What we want is a level playing field. We want a distribution system for content that doesn’t discriminate against certain types of lawful content for vested reasons. Most of all, we don’t want people misled, and we want consumer rights upheld.

If you ask the average consumer on the street whether Skype and YouTube are part of the internet, anyone other than a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia that would no doubt answer “no”. By extension, I defy you to find anyone, other than hardcore employees of EE and Vodafone, who would suggest that internet access does not include access to Skype, YouTube, or similar services.

Remember the outrage when people were buying 15 burgers for 99p and it transpired that those burgers were made from horses? It’s the same thing. It’s a basic principle of consumer law that you don’t mislead at the point of sale; be it overtly or through trickery in the small print. Consumer rights need to be protected.

This is why I was so heartened to see Philip Davies MP (Conservative member of Parliament for Shipley) build upon his great performance sticking it to Ed Richards (Ofcom CEO – 40 minutes into the video on the link) on the subject by tabling an amendment to the latest consumer rights bill. This amendment basically just said that you can’t call something “internet” unless it complies with the spirit of everything I’ve said before. For those who are interested, the amended stated;

A term which has the object or effect of permitting a trader to block, restrict or otherwise hinder the access of a consumer to any lawful Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service on the basis of an unreasonable or unusual definition of “internet access”, “data”, “web access” or similar word or phrase. Nothing in this prohibition shall affect filters for the purpose of child protection.

Electronic Communications Network or Electronic Communications Service shall have the same meaning as in the Communications Act 2003.

tn_own_consumer-rights_tweetPhilip Davies MP is a libertarian Conservative and as a result is one of my favourite MPs. This means he’s often at polar opposites to Her Majesty’s Opposition and an uncomfortable bed fellow with their coalition partners. That makes it even more incredible that the amendment was gladly supported by both the Shadow Minister, Helen Goodman MP and Julian Huppert MP (Liberal Democrat Member for. Cambridge and a good advocate for the technological community). A rare moment of cross party backbench support that, alas, was defeated without Government support, which is still backing the self regulation horse.

All the amendment sought to do was to ensure that the likes of Vodafone and historically EE would be unable to call a spade anything other than a spade and that consumer rights would be upheld. As such, defeat was a great disappointment.

In any event, word on the street is that there may soon be new signatories to the Broadband Stakeholder Group’s Open Internet Code of Conduct. The amendment may get re-tabled in the House of Lords. And The Council of Europe may well get its ducks back in a row.

The battle is one that is very much being fought on three fronts, however the momentum is now behind those of us who just want a level playing field to compete on. Who knows, it might even be over by Christmas.

Categories
broadband Engineer net neutrality voip

VoIP not working over your broadband connection? We may have the explanation.

VoIP over broadband not working? It may be the router.

Routers provided by some major ISPs are preventing their customers from using VOIP services such as Skype.

For some time now members of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association have been keeping a list of routers through which VoIP doesn’t appear to work. The routers themselves include functionality or elements of firmware that are either not user configurable or there are elements of the ISP service that mandate their router without an obvious means of using an alternative. This means that if a customer wants to use Over The Top VoIP services such as those provided by ITSPA members they usually can’t.

Unfortunately whilst this may well not be a deliberate act of anti competitiveness on behalf of the ISP it has the same effect as if VoIP was being blocked in the ISP network – interesting considering that some of these ISPs offer VoIP services of their own.

If you have such a router you probably can’t use Skype or any other VoIP service offered by the 100 or so independent providers in the UK. Whether this is deliberate or not is a moot point. The end result is that the ISP is affecting your ability to use the broadband service you pay for.

Most major ISPs are signatories to the Broadband Stakeholders’ Group Code of Practice and have undertaken to respect what is known as Net Neutrality or the promise not to favour any one type of traffic over another. This is a fundamental principle of how the internet works.

If an ISP provided routers over which 3rd Party VoIP services did not work whilst their own VoIP service continued to work perfectly well they would be flouting these principles. Effectively they would on the one hand be saying they are “good guys” which comes with obvious PR benefits whilst in practice being “bad guys”.

Dan Winfield, CEO of VoIP provider Voxhub says:

“This is an ongoing problem. It can affect customers that work from home at any time even if they have things up and running. A new update is shipped out by an ISP and effectively wipes out their phones. You can see the roll outs happening over a period of time as people call for support. The worse side of this is that customers get angry with us and we cannot do much. We cannot guarantee our service will work on home broadband as a result. When we roll out to offices, we always supply routers to get round the problem but this doesn’t work for home users.”

Not all ISPs are affected. It would be interesting to hear from any reader who has a broadband service but over which VoIP will not work.

Categories
broadband Business business applications internet net neutrality peering voip

Net Neutrality and Telephony

Net neutrality and VoIP telephony – thorny issues the industry needs to negotiate

Trefor.net welcomes “VoIP Week” contributor Rob Pickering, CEO of ipcortex.

Most folks who work in the VoIP industry have at some point been subject to a casual horror story from a new acquaintance about evil VoIP and how they tried it once and that it nearly brought their business to its knees. My heart sinks whenever I realise that this is the direction in which the conversation is going, at which point I usually find myself wishing I’d said that I did something less controversial for a living…like writing computer networking software! I listen, though, nodding politely, already forming a conclusion — after all, it would be unlikely that the problems experienced were due to a fault in their equipment or termination provider, both of which are probably perfectly reliable. No, a lack of a suitable quality of service (QoS) between their premises and termination provider is almost always the culprit in such circumstances.

The UK service provider industry has developed lots of solutions to the QoS problem, and things are far better now than they were just five or ten years ago when the market was in its infancy. The quality and availability of last mile circuits, particularly in metropolitan areas, has massively improved with successive advancements such as LLU, FTTC, FTTP, and cost-effective, high bandwidth Ethernet IAD type circuits. There has also been a trend towards integrated providers delivering the whole service — access circuit, Internet and telephony — as a single package. Behind the scenes, this may or may not translate technically into a full end-to-end in-house QoS-managed solution, depending on the provider and sometimes the geography of the customer. It does, however, assign commercial responsibility for delivering a fit-for-purpose solution to a single party, and this can only produce a better quality outcome for the customer.

ipcortexlogo

Such an approach is certainly not universal. The US market has developed differently, for instance, and most VoIP termination providers don’t get deeply involved in provision of access circuits, instead opting to rely on decent low loss, low jitter transit or peering arrangements, and their customers’ own commodity access circuits. Often they will do a bit of automated “connection testing” as part of their signup process, however in general customers on unsuitable circuits tend to weed themselves out.  This does produce some benefits for customers, including more transparency with regard to costs, as well as a bit less lock-in as there is no commercial linkage between access and over-the-top (OTT) voice service. Today, in fact, several of those US suppliers are entering the UK market with this same business model.

Which brings us on to Net Neutrality. Whenever this subject comes up, we tend to think about its obvious effects on consumer entertainment services. The future development of the telephony industry is, however, intimately linked with this issue. Whilst the raw, per-consumer bandwidth requirements of a VoD service like Netflix is greater, the network characteristics required to deliver a reliable telephony conversation of at least ISDN quality are in some ways more onerous. Though buffering can always be used to counter horrible jitter on the underlying path for a video stream, and content caches are already used to reduce transit requirements, neither of these methods can be used to reduce the pain on a real-time voice conversation. If telephony providers can no longer get good, zero-packet loss, low jitter transit, or peering with many leading access providers, then an entire business model may very well be frozen out.

How do you think the industry will develop? Vertically integrated one-stop shops for network access and telephony, or universal OTT providers? I’d love to know your thoughts.

VoIP Week Posts:

Categories
Business End User ofcom Regs voip

A VoIP Spring

A regular trefor.net contributor, Peter Farmer is the Commercial and Regulatory Manager at Gamma, as well as an ITSPA Council member and Chair of ITSPA Regulatory Committee.  We are pleased to present his “VoIP Week” post.

So, Trefor asked me to approach an article for “VoIP Week” from a commercial perspective as opposed to regulatory…. took me a while, but sunstroked approaching Havant cycling from Esher to Portsmouth, it dawned on me.

We’ve had our VoIP Spring. We just don’t realise it yet.

Last year, there was much furore around Ofcom’s decision (enacting an EC Recommendation) to reduce geographic termination rates to the Long Run Incremental Cost (“LRIC”). These rates were previously calculated using Fully Allocated Cost (“FAC”). Very roughly, FAC is 5x LRIC in this market, so 0.3 became 0.06 pence per minute.

All the views espoused on that subject were valid, especially as we have a diverse industry with many niche interests and many unbalanced portfolios of net termination and origination. In the same market review, however, Ofcom transferred — for BT at least — the foregone common cost (the difference between LRIC and FAC, attributable to costs such as your CEO and Finance and HR teams, etc., and not directly to each incremental unit of what you are selling) in the termination market to the origination market. Granted, this had the perverse effect of reducing the cost (through the Significant Market Power Condition that governs non-geographic out-payments), but what it did to was virtually double the per-minute cost of the origination leg of Carrier Pre-Select and Indirect Access. Granted, again, this nets off against calls to UK geographic and non BT terminating non-geographic (why BT itself is exempt is a very long story that I will tell another day), but means that calls on legacy ISDN30 estates to mobiles and international numbers increased. Markedly. We are now in a situation where the direct cost of getting a call from the Network Terminating Equipment (“NTE”) over the Local Loop to the Digital Local Exchange (“DLE”) is five times that of getting it from the DLE to a mobile in the US of A. Seriously.

If you’re an over-the-top provider, your cost base just went down. You don’t have to worry about that leg from the NTE to the DLE. Your voice traffic is ones and zeroes encoded in packets of data over broadband frequencies, not analogue on narrowband frequencies. The per minute cost of providing the service to any caller has plummeted, relative to an ISDN2 or 30 or even a single WLR line.

And that right there, Ladies and Gentlemen, was our VoIP Spring. Let’s make the most of it.

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VoIP Week Posts:

Categories
Business mobile connectivity ofcom Regs

Orange avoids banana skin – Ts & Cs changed to allow VoIP

EE subsidiary Orange appears to have avoided a slippery situation by amending its terms and condition for mobile internet use

The pic below is a screenshot of a YouTube video ad published by EE on July 31st 2013 to push Orange PAYG mobile. It majors on the fact that you get “a shed load of data” (1GB) when you top up your Orange mobile PAYG sim with £10. It’s an attractive ad.

shed load of data

However this advert was misleading as it explicitly showed the logos of Skype, Whats App, YouTube and  SkySports. Whilst the guy in the ad doesn’t specifically mention these services the impression you get is that you could use your shed load of data to access them.

orangetscs1What the average punter doesn’t know is that the EE t’s & c’s for Orange at the time specifically prohibited the use of these services. Page 45 in issue 12 (September 2013) of EE’s booklet  (EE81006958_0913) ee_page45contains lots of very small print of “legal stuff” – in other words its customer terms and conditions.

Page 45: Internet on your phone/data tethering for consumers

ORANGE DATA (including mobile broadband): Mobile internet browsing or tethering (whether as part of an inclusive allowance or not) is not to be used for other activities (such as non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing).

ee_publication

orangets&cs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In their November brochure the TCs and Cs appear to have been changed and VoIP is now allowed. No mention is made of the other services previously proscribed but presumably this means they are also allowed.

Over the past 12 – 18 months The UK VoIP industry trade body ITSPA has been complaining to regulator Ofcom and others that some mobile networks have been exhibiting anti competitive practices by specifically banning the use of Over The Top VoIP services on their data services with Orange being a specific culprit.

The EE response has been that older networks can’t cope with the levels of data traffic generated by these services and that the restrictions were imposed to protect other users’ traffic.

EE now seems to have relented. I doubt that this was down to any ITSPA pressure though this may well have helped. More likely in my mind is the fact that a lot of Orange’s network traffic will have moved to the newer 4G service which will have freed up some bandwidth on the older 3G network making VoIP more palatable.

The final inset picture is of the latest EE T’s & Cs showing the change in terms. Click on the image for a pdf of the full page. It’s nice to be able to put this episode behind us. Well done folks.EE November brochure

Categories
Business voip

Tickets available for ITSPA Christmas Dinner

The build up for Christmas has begun. Well it starts to build up in our house in January as Anne buys up cheap Christmas cards and wrapping paper in the sales. Nevertheless it really is building up now.

With that in mind ITSPA is for the first time having a Christmas lunch sponsored by Magrathea.

5th December 2013
The Swan at Shakespeare’s Globe, London
12.30pm for 1pm start

Tickets cost £65+VAT per person for ITSPA members and £90+VAT per person for non-members
To register please RSVP to [email protected]

We have a very interesting and highly entertaining guest speaker in Simon Burckhardt, MD of Vonage UK.

Get on down…

Categories
4g broadband Business mobile connectivity voip

4G as fixed broadband replacement? – successful case study

4g broadband can be used as a replacement for a fixed broadband service

Blog reader Mitch left a comment about how he now uses VoIP over a 4G line that has replaced his fixed broadband connection.  His broadband had always been rubbish and 4G is now giving him speeds as fast as fibre broadband. I asked if he would be willing to tell the story. It makes for a very interesting read that many will be able to identify with. It may also give hope to those folk in the “final third” who are the 2nd class citizens of the UK when it comes to connectivity.

Categories
Business voip

Mobile VoIP client is a no brainer when travelling abroad

timico-mobile-clientThis is an out and out advert for mobile VoIP services. If you haven’t already noticed I  am in Helsinki at the moment.

My phone won’t pick up a mobile service. Bit irritating but not the end of the world. I dropped my wife an email letting her know I missed her already but she was probably not going to hear from me and not to worry.

The WiFi is great here, everywhere in the hotel and in the conference room. I’ve been able to carry on working. Then hey presto I remembered I had my Timico mobile client on my Samsung Galaxy S4.

I called home. The call quality was crystal clear. Had a nice chat with Anne and was reassured that everything was ok.

Not only did the call cost nothing, or worst case a local UK call charge, but the quality was much better than a cellular call would have been.

Only problem now is the two hour time shift & coordinating calls when we are both around and available.

Että kaikki ihmiset.

Categories
broadband Business UC

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.

Categories
Business voip

VoIP for small businesses market seems to be on the move

Trefor Davies thumbnail pictureJust 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.

Categories
Archived Business

What’s in an award? Timico is 3x finalist in ISPAs

Earlier this year I spent an appreciable chunk of my life filling out awards entries. Three of them were for the ISPAs. Google it. These awards entries have pretty strict entry criteria and very fixed number of words that you are allowed to use. Not nearly enough space to adequately cover how great you are at what you do.

However you have to put yourself in the position of the judges, whoever they are. They don’t want to have to plough through several editions of War and Peace (Tolstoy) when they are giving of their time free and gratis. So it takes ages to condense War and Peace into 500 words or whatever the number was (war was waged, someone won).

Anyway the upshot is that of the three categories entered by Timico we made it to the shortlist for all three: Managed Service Innovation, Customer Service and VoIP, as I recall. Yay.

This is great news because we are up against a lot of other great companies with great services (what a great novel War and Peace was). Great.

Companies enter these awards because if you win it means you have bragging rights and can show off to customers and prospects and hopefully turn the prospects into new customers. I think you know what I’m talking about. So I’m reasonably chuffed to make it to all three shortlists.

Details here. Wish us luck on the 11th July. If you’re going come and say hello.

Ciao.

Categories
Business voip

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 🙂

Categories
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

Categories
Business security voip

How to make your VoIP secure #fraud

VoIP securityIt’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

Categories
Engineer UC voip

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

Trefor DaviesYesterday 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.

Categories
Engineer mobile connectivity voip voip hardware

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.

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 yurr1.

1 note South Walian accent

Categories
broadband Business media

I could have leant upon that coppice gate – Thomas Hardy and homeworking

early morning sun in December in LincolnshireBroadband for working from home avoids long commute.

Took me an hour and ten minutes to get in to work this morning. That’s twice as long as usual – broken down tanker on the A46. Walking in to the office I felt a bit like the Reggie Perrin of old – “20 minutes late, frozen points at Clapham Junction”.

I went on a very long diversion through the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire countryside. The stark winter beauty reminded me of the Thomas Hardy poem “The Darkling Thush” :

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

It’s one of my all time favourites.  Anyway driving in on this extended albeit pleasant detour made me think about the whole subject of commuting and broadband for working from home. The number of times I have the radio on driving home on a Friday night to hear the UK wide traffic reports – quite often its gridlock on all the major routes around the country.

Makes you wonder how much time and money we really waste travelling to work. Granted there are some jobs where the person absolutely needs to be in the office but equally there are many where a little bit of mix and match (home versus office) would be perfectly acceptable. Phone system vendors often try to model the financial benefits of homeworking as part of their pitch to customers. I don’t think you really need to work out the payback in terms of pounds shillings and pence. It’s bloomin’ obvious.

Quite a number of our customers see this. We have a portal that some of them use to manage estates of hundreds, if not thousands of home worker broadband connections. The portal is integrated with the customer’s HR system and when an employee moves house and change their address the portal automatically informs us to migrate their broadband to another location. For some large organisations this can save a considerable workload on the IT department – managing what is really a tedious and time consuming process that really benefits from automation. Bung in a VoIP account and hey presto, you have a home office just like in the office.

To conclude, my other favourite Thomas Hardy work is “Under The Greenwood Tree”. I don’t get on with most of his novels, they are depressing, but this one  is a nice novel and signals the end of an era in a similar way to the Darkling Thrush. It is also very seasonal and I am now most definitely feeling Christmassy.

That’s all folks…

Categories
Archived Business

Looking for 3rd line VoIP engineer – can you help?

I’m looking for a 3rd line support VoIP engineer based in the Newark NOC. If you know anyone who might be interested or are interested yourself can you please drop me a line?

Ta

Tref

Categories
Business voip

And the winner is… yay Timico #ITSPA Awards

Last night at the House of Commons Timico wasTrefor Davies and Timico VoIP Product Manager Gemma Jankiewicz show off the ITSPA Award for Best ITSP (Enterprise) presented with the ITSPA Award for best ITSP serving the Enterprise market.

This is very exciting. Not only was the HoC a fantastic backdrop for the event but the winning of the Award is a great reward for all the hard work the Timico team has put in over a sustained period of time.

The category we entered was Enterprise. In order to serve customers in this market you can’t just sell them a VoIP service. It requires a whole service wrap that can include broadband, Ethernet, hosting and mobile services. This market also requires a certain scale of operation – for example running an effective 24×7 Network Operations Centre needs a certain size of tech support team.

So the Award for best ITSP is also an award for an overall service set. I’m not going to say anything else other than if you want to know more about our VoIP services check them out here.

PS I know the fashion conscious amongst you will be wondering about my t shirt – it’s the Commons And Lords Rugby Club tour to South Africa for the 2009 British Lions.

Categories
broadband Business UC voip

Broadband Life: No Business Like Snow Business

You are looking at a disappointed man. Wha!  How can this be?  Surely not you Tref I hear you say? Yes yes disappointed 😉 What’s up?  We have had a very light smattering of snow.

I like snow. Snow, for the most part, makes the place look pretty and means I can wrap up cosily in front of a roaring open fire at home and enjoy the real winter. I don’t do the sledging any more – it’s all very well getting a thrill from speeding down that hill but you then have to traipse all the way back to the top dragging a sledge and almost certainly a kid. I still like throwing snowballs mind you. Nothing quite like the satisfaction of catching someone in the back of the neck.

I also quite like the superiority of owning a 4×4 when it snows. Other cars are sliding all over the place or struggling to get up the slightest incline but the Jeep takes it all with total ease.

This snow is not heavy enough for any of any of that. It might well close the golf course tomorrow but that is largely because you can’t see white balls on a white background. That’s the only thing this snow is likely to disrupt this weekend and in all probability I’ll be watching the 6 Nations rugby so not playing golf anyway.

None of the above is why I’m disappointed.

Categories
Business mobile connectivity net neutrality ofcom voip

@EdVaizey reschedules #NetNeutrality Roundtable and ITSPA publishes detailed evidence on Mobile Network Operator bad practice

A Ministerial Roundtable on Net Neutrality had been scheduled for 24th January (ie yesterday) with  Internet Minister Ed Vaizey and the major fixed and mobile operators due to attend. EV is expecting industry to produce a voluntary code of practice in respect of Net Neutrality. In the run up to the meeting and following individual discussions with some of the intended participants the Minister has apparently been unhappy with progress. The Round Table has been postponed until 28th March to allow time for further industry discussion.

Net Neutrality is a very emotional subject. By and large in my view it is something that has been creating more noise than the issue has perhaps merited but I can understand people’s concerns. The issue of transparency is in particular an important one

Categories
Business mobile connectivity Net phones

Roll up, roll up, get yer acronyms here #MAM #MDM #CoIT #BYOD #MPLS #VoIP

Being a progressive high technology company we have a department that is dedicated to coming up with new acronyms. Ok that’s not an entirely fair description of the marketing department – engineering also does it 🙂

We have been upping the ante on mobile products in the last year or so.  The mobile world is rapidly moving on from merely the selling of phones, minutes and handsets (plus BlackBerry of course which has been an added value sell for years).

Unless you have been in a cocoon for the last six months (and you might)

Categories
Business voip

SIP Trunks go mainstream

I went to my first VoIP meeting in (as far as I can remember) the summer of 1999. It was a pulver.com “Executive Retreat” located at the ETSI HQ in Sophia-Antipolis near Cannes in the South of France. It’s a tough life but someone has to live it.

Since then we have been through a couple of recessions and a long hard climb for VoIP technology to become accepted. I knew the day would come but VoIP is now so mainstream that businesses think nothing of installing “VoIP only” voice solutions with no legacy ISDN or analogue lines as backup.

They are doing this because of two things:

Categories
Engineer ofcom Regs voip

Ofcom study into location determining of VoIP callers to emergency Services

Consultants Analysys Mason are conducting a study on behals of Ofcom into determining the location of Voice over IP callers making calls to emergency services. It is is easy to determine the location of a caller is in the old fixed line world because a phone number is recorded based on the location of a piece of copper “plugged” into the local telephone exchange.

This is not the case with VoIP.  A VoIP number could be anywhere on the planet. Anywhere there is a connection to the IP network/internet that is.  Ofcom recognises this and wants to understand whether there is a practical solution.

UK technical standards organisation NICC has published (Jan 2010) a potential solution to the problem though this is complex and also limited to VoIP users using UK ADSL connectivity.

This solution stems really from network architectures familiar to large telcos and my first reaction is that it is very expensive. One might ask what price a life? This is a reasonable question. We all have grannies and nobody wants ours to

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broadband Business UC voip

The View from My Window is All White #uksnow #voip

snowy view from our back window

With snow being today’s theme I thought I’d stick some pictures up.  The header photo (click to enlarge) is the view from my upstairs landing window into our back garden.  The kids were off yesterday and trashed the pristine snow. I was chairing a panel session at the ISPA conference in London.  The show must go on.

The conference was remarkably well attended considering that some people from “up north” were completely snowed in.

The point of this post, much as we like snow when it is at its pretty stage,  is however to show the picture of the Timico car park.  This is normally chock full with cars but we are in one of the areas heavily hit (the Lincoln Christmas Market has been forced to cancel for the first time ever). Not a problem though. Staff have been able to work from home using their VoIP accounts and broadband connections.  Sorted.

There is also an interesting story concerning one of our customers who has just recently installed VoIP in a couple of pilot sites. Because of travel to work problems and staff shortages they have shut a number of offices and wanted call diversions put in place by BT to direct traffic to their open offices. The offices piloting VoIP did this in a matter of seconds.  Those relying on BT to manually perform the divert have been told that it isn’t going to happen due to the huge demand caused by the snow! This certainly shows the right and wrong ways to perform Disaster Recovery.

I don’t normally use this blog to plug Timico but this one was too topically and relevant not to and really I’m just plugging the technology.

Here’s the view from the office window.  It has since started snowing again. The picture right at the bottom is my jeep when I got back to the trains station last night. Snow? Bring it on 🙂

timico carpark in the snow

snow covereed jeep at Newark Northgate railway station last night
snow covered jeep at Newark Northgate railway station last night