VoIP forces Telcos to slash price

Customers always want the best deals for the money they pay.. So it is not surprising to understand why VoIP that offers a method of calling practically anywhere in the world at much cheaper rates is catching on like wild fire. While there are lobbies that argue on the possible success or failure of VoIP in the days ahead one undenyable fact is that more users are switching to VoIP phones purely to tap into the cost benefits.

According to Henry Gomez, general manager of Skype, "People are going to look at voice communications as something they expect to get for free," Forcing the VoIP industry in that direction Skype is eliminating the charges that a US subscriber pays to make calls within the US and in Canada. In the process, Skype is not only making it very competitive within the VoIP market but also making it harder for companies to charge anything for a basic home phone line on its own. It is expected that by 2010 a quarter of the telephone users globally would have shifted to VoIP based phones.

Telecom companies are finding themselves with fewer options other than slashing their call charges if they intend to hold on to the their customer base. New York Times recently reported that Verizon and AT&T recently dropped phone service and long distance prices by significant percentages (in some cases close to 40%) to battle unprecedented competition in those areas.

The competition is also forcing certain telecom companies to lobby in Congress to set up a tiered network. Companies are proposing that in this tiered structure, companies offering faster, higher quality connections to companies and web entities can make their revenues by charging for the service provided. It is suggested that VoIP service providers should fall into this category.

Given the fact that the falling prices for phone service because it costs lesser to deliver voice communications over the Internet than over the traditional phone network, VoIP has a definite advantage. If any the prices will only fall further. It remains to be seen how far the telecom companies are willing to bend. Bend they might Break will they?? Lets watch !

Telefonica banks on Lucent to better Performance Management

Telefónica de España has decided to bank on Lucent Technologies to better its management of its global network. According to Olegario Méndez, corporate network operations manager at Telefónica de España "We chose Lucent's VitalSuite Application Performance Management software to significantly increase our overall network and application performance," .

Lucent will assist Telefónica Sistemas, the European telecom's IT department, which is responsible for managing Telefonica's worldwide network with requisite tools to monitor key applications and system resources.Additionally Lucent will also provide Telefónica with requisite amount of consultation and network integration services to enable Telefónica successfully deploy Lucent's VitalSuite into their network.

VitalSuite® Application Performance Management software provides top-to-bottom visibility into-and end-to-end control over-the entire infrastructure. VitalSuite is ideal where monitoring monitor multi vendor equipment in networks is esential. It is the winner of the NetworkWorld "World Class Award" for best performance management system and it also provides real-time visibility for tracking, analyzing and predicting the behavior of all business-critical IP-based applications enterprise-wide - including monitoring every user transaction from the desktop to the network to the destination server and back.

Telefónica de España had earlier this month, announced it sought the help from French technology provider Alcatel to offer high bandwidth interactive services to its residential and corporate subscribers. Lucent on the other hand is backed by Bell laboratories and has its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers.

Fusion Telecom to Launch VoIP service

Skype is no doubt a name to reckon with in the VoIP industry. Competition has been there and now another company called Fusion Telecommunication is set to launch its brand of VoIP services. New York based, Fusion Telecom believes with the launch of its Efonica service, it will have an edge over Skype.

Efonica will introduce the world's first worldwide Internet Area Code (10), which is dialed ahead of your standard phone number. This is to be used instead of a new number or user name when connecting via the VoIP service. With voice processing technology that can withstand up to 30% packet losses, Efonica should prove to be a better solution for use in countries where broadband is not so prevalent. The company also claims that it took more than 5 years to develop a new IP telephony architecture termed DSP technology (Directed SIP Peer-to-Peer). According to the company sources this can "substantially improves upon current methods of delivering VoIP calls" Unlike Skype that eats into much of the users machine resources and bandwidth, Efonica will leverage more on Fusion's carrier-class network and back-office infrastructure.

The company's website also claims that with DSP, it will greatly reduce exposing a subscribers computer to allow it to be used as temporary transit points thereby making it relatively safer -"This not only uses the computer and network resources without the explicit knowledge of the subscriber, but also creates an enormous network security risk for enterprise networks".

The company plans to focus its attention in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean where use of broadband is rather low. To start with Efonica services will be available in 3 forms - Efonica FREE, Efonica PLUS a paid service, and Efonica PRO for business users.
Efonica no doubt promises the best and with Call Waiting, Caller ID with Name, Call Hold, Call Transfer, Call Forwarding, and Do Not Disturb. All for free! It remains to be seen if they will definitely have the edge over Skype and if they will deliver.

Toshiba set to sell Strata range of VoIP equipment in Mexico

Mexico seems to be virgin territory for VoIP penetration according to top management at Toshiba. Wanting to be the first major player to tap the most of this market Toshiba has recently set up a division Toshiba de Mexico Digital Solutions - to make its VoIP solutions - mostly the Strata SIX range - widely and readily available for the Mexican small to medium sized businesses (SMB) market.

Mexico seems to be an ideal place to set up such a facility plainly because of of a large number of SMBs eager to start using the technology. The improved network infrastructure is also coming in place to aid the rapidly
growing market potential. A study conducted by Toshiba indicated that nearly roughly 54 percent of Mexico-based companies plan to upgrade their communications systems and nearly 80 percent plan to switch to IP telephony.

According to Brian Metherell, vice president and general manager of Toshiba’s Telecommunication Systems Division “With the launch of its new Toshiba de Mexico Digital Solutions Division, Toshiba is now bringing its Strata CIX family of IP business communications solutions to Mexico; Toshiba’s Strata CIX family allows users to embrace the expanded reach and mobility capabilities of IP-based telephony systems, with Toshiba quality, reliability and durability.”

The Strata CIX is designed for SMBs wanting to make a smooth transition to IP based communications. Additionally the FeatureFlex software that accompanies the equipment is powerful enough to lets developers rapidly and easily add new telephone system features such as call control capabilities and voice processing capabilities. The fact that it can handle a mix of analog, digital and IP telephones is a additional plus point.

However one issue that may degrade the performance after having made the switch is the fear that the network operators like Telmex ,who have already been accused of blocking VoIP signals across its network, will block or degrade VoIP signals to the point where having made the switch may seem worthless. While this is a problem for now, it is hoped that things will improve in the days ahead as the competition from other players entering the Mexican market rises.

Does anyone own the patent to make calls over the net?

Well, in a Internet Phone industry that’s waiting to explode uncontrollably, who owns the Patent to the Internet Phone can be literally a Million Dollar question - or is it a Billion Dollar question? While we can debate about the uncertainties of the size of the market, what is certain is that Net2Phone has dragged Ebay for apparently infringing its patent for placing calls over the net.

Ebay owns Skype the popular brand name in the VoIP world - thats growing more popular by the day. The lawsuit alleges that Ebay infringed Net2 Phone patent under US Patent Class 704 that broadly covers data processing encompassing speech signal processing, linguistics, language translation, and audio compression/decompression.

Net2Phone is seeking damages and an injunction against further infringement. That means it would like to see use of Skype shut down completely. Its surprising then that Net2Phone waited this long for Skype to grow this popular before it was dragged to court. Does it mean until now Net2Phone was not bothered over its patent rights or was it so careless or perhaps blissfully ignorant?

If this is allowed I wonder who is going to be the next to sue whom on the same grounds quoting infringement of data processing patents over the internet? Would it be Microsoft suing others like Yahoo and Google for copying its Emailing Idea (considering MSN Hotmail was the webs first Free Email system) or would it be the US Defence department itself suing the rest of the world for using the Internet that it originally designed and developed for its own use?

But do MSN Hotmail and the US Defence Department hold patents for any of these they claim their own? Now that I suppose would really be a multi trillion dollar question.