Disruptive Telephony

If any of you reading this will be attending VoiceCon out in San Francisco, August 20-23, please do drop me a note. I'll be there from August 20-22 and am looking forward to connecting with a range of people from around the industry.

FYI, if you are a Facebook user and are attending, there is a Facebook event for VoiceCon to which you can add yourself to facilitate networking with other FB users at the show.

Okay, so how many IM clients are you now running? Looking down at my laptop, I see 5 at the moment: MSN/WLM, Skype, GoogleTalk, Psi(Jabber) plus Mitel's own product.  I also sometimes have Gizmo and FWD running and use Miranda from time to time as well.  I do have Yahoo!Messenger and AIM accounts, although I don't honestly use them all that often. On my Blackberry I have IM+ and iSkoot...  let's call it 11or 12 of the consumer products that I normally have available.  Per the list of 90+ IM tools out from Mashable yesterday, that still leaves me with around 80 or so to try. :-)

What's your count?

 Since I have written here about the new Skype clients for the Blackberry, such as iSkoot and IM+, and questioned the security of those clients, I feel compelled to note that Jim Courtney over at Skype Journal, who also writes a good bit about Blackberries as well as Skype, has posted his response to the issue on Friday:  "Security, Skype and the Blackberry".

I still suffer a lingering uncertainty, but I'll admit that Jim's digging does seem rather persuasive.

Is "the coming VoIP war" to be fought out between Microsoft and Cisco?  So asks a column "The Coming VoIP War" by Larry Hooper in today's issue of CRN.  On one level, the debate isn't as interesting to me as the venue... "CRN" is "Computer Reseller News" and has been around the industry for many years.[1]  At various times I've personally had a subscription to the print version or at least had it around the office to read.[2] Supported by advertising and theoretically sent to a targeted profile of subscribers, I've always seen it as one of the more "established' newsmagazines of the information technology space... and one obviously targeted at resellers of such technology. So to me it is interesting that the question is being discussed within CRN's print and web pages.

As to the larger question of whether "the coming VoIP war" will be between Microsoft and Cisco, one can't ignore that these two companies are giants in the overall IT industry with extremely significant resources and yes, the point is valid that as the interests of the two companies have converged in this merger of communication that many call "unified communications", they are now definitely going to be competing head-to-head.  All I can say is that the time ahead in this industry shall very definitely be quite an interesting one!

P.S. In full disclosure, my employer, Mitel, has had a partnership with Microsoft for several years now. A lot of Mitel equipment also gets deployed on a Cisco infrastructure and I communicate with a number of Cisco folks on standards issues.

[1] I would love to find out when CRN started, but the CRN.com site seems to have no info about its history and there's no Wikipedia article on it yet.
[2] At the current time, I do have a subscription to CRN.  Sometimes my subscription has lapsed when I've forgotten to annually fill out their subscription form.

Being a long-time fan of Tom Keating's great "VoIP and Gadget Blog", I had to smile when my day started off this morning scanning feeds and encountering Tom's post on Friday "Top 10 Reasons Why I love Asterisk".  Tom first takes us (by way of a link) back down memory lane a bit with a piece he wrote in November 2001 called "In Search of a Linux-based PBX" that outlines many of the folks involved then with "open source telephony" and makes for interesting reading (his picture also looks a wee bit younger! ;-).  His piece on Friday revisits that list a bit and talks about Asterisk and how it has risen to be clearly the leader of open source telephony solutions.

It also clearly shows Tom's passion, and that is to me one of the fun and wonderful things about this thing we call the blogosphere.... writers do show more of their passion and we very often do get to learn more about the people behind the names.... and that makes it a whole lot more interesting than just dry and blase "factual" articles.

So kudos to Tom for telling us why he loves Asterisk...

Why does my voice change in audio quality about half-way through the new Telecom Junkies podcast?  Here's the story.

A few minutes ago I posted to both the Voice of VoIPSA weblog and also the Blue Box podcast site a note about the new Telecom Junkies podcast that features an interview with Robert Moore, one of the two people involved with the large VoIP fraud cast last year.  About mid-way through my connection dies and you hear Jason saying "Oh, we lost Dan!" and then I'm back, but with a much softer voice.

Since it says something about telephony - and since I'm also interested in relaying lessons for podcasting - here's what happened.

In the hotel I was staying at in Florida, I was getting pretty poor connections using my AT&T GSM phone (the replacement Blackberry had not yet arrived).  I'd noticed that when calling people from my room, even if I went out onto the balcony, calls would still drop out sometimes - even when I was sitting still.  Now I don't know if this was because I was on the 20th floor (room 2048, what a great geek number!) or because I was at just a particular angle for the GSM towers or what.  The phone seemed to indicate that I had great connection strength.  All I knew was that connections were dropping. 

Needless to say, I was a bit concerned going into the Telecom Junkies podcast recording.  Jason Huffman records his shows by having everyone call into a hosted conference service.  When the recording is done, he gets an email with a WAV file, slaps on the musical intro/outro, potentially does some minimal editing and posts the show to their website.  As Blue Box listeners know, I'm always looking to get the best audio quality possible so I was a bit concerned.

Given that cell phone coverage was problematic, I decided to try using a softphone over the hotel Internet.  Unfortunately, I am on a trial system for Mitel's softphone (using the latest development versions) and I had received the notice that I need to upgrade to a new trial load to keep using it - and hadn't yet downloaded the new version.  So I thought I'd use Skype instead.  However, I also had the dilemma (for either softphone) that because of space considerations I had left my nice new USB headset at home.  Given that I've had reasonable success with Skype's new 3.5 and no headset, I figured I would give it a try anyway.

So I actually first called into the conf bridge using Skype/SkypeOut and spoke with Jason briefly to ask about the sound quality.  He said I sounded a bit quiet and rough (keep in mind that I'm talking to the mic on my Dell laptop), so I called back in on my cell phone.  However, I didn't disconnect the Skype connection, but instead muted the microphone and plugged in a set of headphones so I didn't hear it.

Mid-way through the call, my cell-phone connection did die.  What I did next was put the PC headphones on and un-mute the Skype microphone... ta da... I was back in the conf call, albeit at a lower volume level.  So when you listen to the recording, the first part is via cell phone (and includes an audio cut-out or two) and the second part is via Skype without a headset microphone.

I thought there were a couple of interesting points here:

1. I have got to find a really small headset that I can carry with me when traveling.
2. VoIP can beat cell phones in availability (not that any of us in North America will even remotely dispute this!)
3. It's good to have backups when doing interviews remotely.
4. It never even occurred to me to use the hotel landline!

Let's think about that last point for a minute.  I had, sitting right there on my desk next to my computer, a perfectly functional phone tied into the hotel's PBX.  And yet, it never even remotely occurred to me to use it!  In fact, outside of calling within a hotel I can't think of the last time that I've actually ever used a hotel phone for an external call.  It's been probably... years!  I guess I've gotten too used to the typically-extortionist rates charged by hotels for phone usage that I just don't even consider it.  (Well, and every other time my cell phone has worked well!)

In any event... that's the story behind the story...  :-)

Replying to my last post about the new Blackberry 8830, Jim Courtney of Skype Journal left a comment clueing me into one minor little detail about the 8830's GSM support - it only works outside of North America!

Indeed, the GSM side of the 8830 operates at 900 and 1800 MHz which are used for GSM throughout the rest of the world, but it does not work at 850 and 1900 MHz, which are the frequencies used by GSM in North America.  The disappointment for me is that when I drive to Ottawa, there are patches of road in Ontario where there just isn't all that great CDMA... and it would be great if the 8830 would flip over to GSM to get the stronger signal.  However, that doesn't look like it will happen.

One wonders why not.  When RIM was creating the 8830, why didn't they include support for all 4 bands?  Is it perhaps because Verizon and other North American CDMA carriers want to keep people on CDMA in North America?  (You could see the case where in a particular NA city the GSM signal might be stronger in an area.  If the phone switches to that stronger GSM signal instead of staying on the weaker CDMA signal, the CDMA carrier would need to pay the GSM carrier.)

As a customer, I would really like the phone to switch to the strongest signal, regardless of whose network that is.

Jim Courtney offered his own view back in April: "Shouldn't Blackberry's Pure GSM Phones be the Real 'World Edition'?"

Just out yesterday, TMC.Net published an interview with me titled, "Security and Disaster Recovery for IP Telephony Systems", by Mae Kowalke, where I talk about general VoIP security issues and then get into specifics about Mitel solutions.  Given that the author nicely gave me the chance to review the text and offer feedback before she published it, I have to say I'm pleased with how it came out. :-)

(And yes, I normally blog about VoIP security over on the Voice of VOIPSA weblog, but I just field weird about posting something like this over on that site.)

Today I received my new Blackberry "8830 World Edition" and I thought I'd record some initial reactions.  As past readers know, I live in Vermont where we don't really have decent GSM coverage (and can't get the iPhone) and are, in fact, likely to have even less GSM coverage now that Verizon will be purchasing GSM provider Unicel and, per Engadget and others, will be converting all GSM users over to CDMA.

This is obviously not a good thing for those of us who need to travel outside of North America. 

My previous CDMA-only Blackberry 7290 became essentially an extremely expensive paperweight the moment I left these shores.  Because I do travel, I have had a "backup phone" that is a Cingular GSM phone (with a New York number) that I used when outside of NA.  However, it's rather a pain because: 1) it's a different phone interface than I'm used to; 2) it's a different number than people know and I have to get into forwarding; 3) it doesn't always seem to work abroad; 4) Mitel has been paying two separate monthly fees for me;  and perhaps most importantly to me 5) I don't get my email on the phone!

A few weeks ago I saw that Verizon would be offering this new "8830" Blackberry that claimed to work anywhere in the world and so I dropped a note to our Corporate IT group to see if this would solve my two phone issue and let me get my email wherever I travel. They were looking into it and, in light of my recent brilliant move, decided to go ahead with it.  It arrived today and after the brief activation process with both Verizon and Mitel's Blackberry Enterprise Server, I was up and running again.

Some initial thoughts (note that I am comparing the 8830 to an older 7290 - if you have a newer Blackberry, you may already have some of these changes):

• The 8830 is a nice, sleek, sharp-looking unit. Smaller and thinner than the 7290 but seems to have a higher screen resolution and brighter screen.
• The thumbwheel on the side is gone and instead there's a trackball in the center.  This will undoubtedly take some getting used to after so much use of the thumbwheel.  You push in the trackball just as you did the thumbwheel to execute a command or make a choice.  As a bonus, the trackball lights up, too.
• The keys are closer together, but yet they have ridges/indentations on them that seem, so far, to make it as easy to "thumb-type" on them as the previous keys.  (Hmmm... in fact, because the keys are closer together will there be less thumb fatigue?)
• Two more keys were added in the keypad.  The "0" key is now on its own key to the left of the spacebar and there is a separate Shift key.  On the right-side of the spacebar there is a "Sym" key that brings up various symbols.
• Next to the trackball, on the outside, Rim added the green and red "call" and "end" buttons that are common on most all cell phones these days. This is different from the 7290 where this was all done with the thumbwheel.
• Immediately adjacent to the trackball are two keys: "Menu" on the left and "Esc" on the right.  The Esc keys does what the button on the side of the 7290 below the thumbwheel did, which is that it cancels whatever you are doing and takes you "back" to a previous screen.  The "Menu" button pops up whatever menu is appropriate in the context. 
• An interesting aspect of this change is that you have more granularity of control than you did with the 7290 where the thumbwheel and button were overloaded with multiple functions.  For instance, when you are in an app, the "Esc" button will now bring you back to the previous screen but leave you still with the app open (previously it would usually exit the app).  Exiting the app is done through either the red "end" button or through the Menu button and choosing Close.
• On the left side of the 8830 there is a "Convenience Button" that you can set to launch some app.  By default it is set to the "Voice Dial" app but, for instance, I changed mine to "Messages" so that all I have to do is push that button to get to my email.  Easy to configure and change in the "Options" application
• The leather holster with the magnetic closure is a much nicer way to hold it than the plastic bracket from which the 7290 often slipped out.
• The "other apps" that I had on my previous BB like Gmail, Google Maps and iSkoot all installed without any hitches.
• Installing the GSM SIM card that was labeled "Verizon" and "Vodafone" was a painless and simple exercise - but let's hope you never need to get it back out!  Just to see the card again I tried to remove it and found it basically impossible to do.  I'm not sure that I'd really ever want to do so, but if I did, I think I'd need needle-nose pliers to do so!
• The phone will work on CDMA or on GSM on either 900 or 1800 Mhz.  The default setting is for the phone to automagically detect whether CDMA or GSM is stronger and switch if necessary.  I'll be interested to monitor this when I next drive up to Ottawa and go through areas of Ontario with extremely limited CDMA coverage.  You can also force the phone to stick with either CDMA or GSM.
• Underneath the back cover, there is also a slot for a "mini-SD" card so that apparently you can store music or videos on that extra memory (At first I thought it was for the SIM card but it was too small.)
• Audio quality was fine in the few calls I've made with it so far.
• It has a speakerphone!

Those are some initial thoughts - I'm sure as I use it more I'll have some different opinions.  It will be interesting to see how I rapidly I adjust to the nuanced changes in button functions.  I've noticed myself pushing the wrong buttons some times already.

Now... I just need a trip into GSM-land to try out the transition...  (stay tuned)

Russell Shaw has the details:  "Did you ever REALLY think Vonage stock would go below $2 a share?"

I've not written here much about Vonage or the many other "consumer VoIP" players.  Partly because I guess at the end of the day I just don't find their proposition all that compelling.  Partly because the lack of voice security in so many of the consumer VoIP players just really offends me.  Partly because I don't see them really as all that "disruptive" because their positioning really seems to be "We are cheaper than the other guys".  Yaawwwwwwwn. 

Note to Vonage and friends:  Someone will always be cheaper.