Archive for October, 2004

RTC? What the heck are people thinking? Here is another good example why no one should use RTC or LCS exclusively. MS are rumored once again of making noises about disrupting business for their own customers. No surprise here.

Why anyone would tie themselves down to RTC / LCS exclusively is beyond me. reSIProcate, SIMPLE and XCAP are already in-hand. There is no reason for this at all. If you are a customer and you are dealing with an RTC user base you should be looking for an endpoint that is more open standards minded and build some RTC functionality into that product. I can hardly believe I just said that but if you must deal with RTC and LCS then you should at the very least interop with other SIP, SIMPLE and XCAP end points and services. Every customer we have been working with, the biggest in the world, are all bailing out of RTC and LCS because of it’s severe limitations.

Xten will be providing demos of a new version of eyeBeam at VON with support for SIMPLE and XCAP in 2 weeks. The proof is in the pudding.

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Microsoft officials have described LCS 2005 as “a next-generation enterprise instant messaging (IM) and presence-awareness server.”

But Microsoft also will use LCS 2005 as a way to gain a toehold in the voice-over-IP (VOIP) space, according to sources claiming familiarity with the company’s plans.

“Microsoft’s end game is to become a telephony provider and give Vonage, Verizon, etc., a run for their money,” said one source close to the company, who requested anonymity. “They are going SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) in a big way. And because SIP is multi-media capable (start with voice, switch to video, conferencing, etc. in mid stream), it’s a nice protocol for them.”

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More proof that Xten is doing what we set out to in SIP. If you are an EarthLink subscriber you can Download the EarthLink Softphone powered by Xten, Click Here. Sign up for the service here.

EarthLink has peered their new VoIP network with 2 other Free VoIP networks FWD – Free World Dialup and SIPphone. Both of these networks use Xten software.

At Supercomm 2004 Mr. Pulver’s team presented some slides that showed over 42% of the entire FWD endpoints as being Xten’s X-Lite software, not including X-PRO or eyeBeam. This is almost more than all other endpoints combined including Microsoft’s Messenger, Cisco’s IP Phones and ATAs, Pintel softphones and handsets.

—————-NEWS—————-

ATLANTA, October 5, 2004 — EarthLink (NASDAQ: ELNK), one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers (ISP), today announced the launch of EarthLink Free Online Calling, a service which enables EarthLink High Speed access subscribers to make Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls free-of-charge.

This new offering reflects EarthLink’s continuing efforts to be a leader in the deployment of VoIP services. Last year, the company became the first major ISP to offer a comprehensive VoIP solution, EarthLink Unlimited Voice, providing subscribers with a flat-rate, broadband telephony service that includes features to reach wireless or traditional land-based telephones.

“EarthLink Free Online Calling is part of our overall strategy to develop and deploy a full suite of data and voice-based communication applications,” said Tom Andrus, vice president of products and services at EarthLink. “With the debut of EarthLink’s latest VoIP service, our broadband subscribers can call and talk with friends and family over the Internet for free.”

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Cox Communications has released details of its residential and business Voice over IP rollouts.

The cable giant said Tulsa, Okla., has become its second consumer voice market (Roanoke, Va., was the first). By year’s end, it will add Baton Rouge, La., parts of west Texas and southwest Louisiana.

Cox also announced plans to launch its first business VoIP-based offering in Roanoke, Va., later this year.

Amy Cohn, a Cox spokeswoman, said pricing varies by state, but the company’s strategy is to offer phone service for about 10 percent less than the regional telecom carrier.

Besides cable providers, there’s an increasing number of VoIP choices from Baby Bells, long-distance companies and deep-pocketed Internet upstarts.

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Baby Bell Aims to Lure More Dial-up Users to DSL by Offering Speed Bursts

OCTOBER 01, 2004
By Alan Breznick, editor, Cable Datacom News

Beating U.S. cable operators to the punch, BellSouth has started trying out an on-demand broadband service that will let Internet access subscribers temporarily crank up their data transmission speeds whenever they wish.

One of the most innovative players in the broadband business, BellSouth is testing the on-demand concept in up to 750 homes in southeast Florida. As part of the scheduled three-month trial, which started in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area in August, the regional Bell is offering customers an always-on, 56 kilobits per second (kbps) DSL connection with the ability to upgrade to as high as 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) speed at a moment’s notice.

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No sooner had AT&T announced a $5.00 a month cut in its VoIP service effective Friday, than Vonage Holdings dropped its VoIP monthly charge by $5.00, thereby remaining $5.00 below AT&T’s charge.

With the new prices, AT&T’s monthly charge is $29.99, while Vonage’s price is $24.99. Both services are similar, offering local and long-distance service in the U.S. and Canada, in addition to a host of advanced features, such as call forwarding, which can be managed over users’ PCs.

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