After much debate Vonage is going public. It will raise $250M initially which pales when compared to the nearly 700M raised as a private company. I beleive that lost nearly $175M last year (I have not confirmed this yet), not exactly the performance potential stockholders would get excited about.
Nonetheless I wish them the best, they continue to educate the public on VoIP and that’s a good thing.
Tom and Andy have some great comments.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website
Ian Bell the VP of marketing over at eqo (like echo) has spearheaded the launch of their new mobile-centric Skype app. It’s orange, it’s Skype-ish, it’s mobile and it’s cool.
In this interview we talk about the fund raising strategy, the history and the innovation that is eqo.
http://sipthat.com/mp3/skype/Skype-loves-eqo.mp3
Too many people are disconnected from their online buddies when they leave the PC behind, said Bill Tam, CEO of EQO Communications, Our goal is to allow the countless number of online communities worldwide to stay connected using mobile handsets and for users to, virtually, take their buddies with them.
Using a combination of a phone-resident J2ME client and a carrier-grade standards-based signaling network, EQO bridges Skype to more than 150 million J2ME-capable mobile phones already in use worldwide. With more than 227 million downloads and tens of millions of active users, Skype is the dominant player in VoIP and Instant Messaging communications services worldwide. While the company has developed its technology to first work with Skype, EQO intends to extend peer-to-peer communications to mobile devices with other high-profile providers in the near future.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteGoogle needs to open up the GTalk beta, its been months and still no one can use this unless you go through the hassle of getting a Gmail account, which is also still in beta?? I think this client has a great deal of promise but I never use it because nobody I know has it.
Speaking of timing, check out IM Federation. It looks to me like Mr. Michael Robertson is making nice with Google and visa versa. Looking closer we can see that the domain is registered to Michael. Gtalk appears to be on the federated IM client track as well as it is listed Pending. I wonder if this means they will create a federated architecture much like Gizmo or if Google will use a third party service to help them federate with other services.
At any rate, federated IM seems to be gaining momentum, which is good for all users.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteA couple of weeks ago a friend of mine told me that he was setting up a new Real Estate company here in Vancouver and already had hired 25 people. He needed a scalable phone system that would grow with him and would cost an arm and a leg in up-front capital costs. If anyone would have asked me 3-5 years ago I would have said there is no such thing. Today its a different story, or is it?
I had met a fellow a couple of years back at VON Canada who was running a very small SMB VoIP company called Shift Networks (traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SHF) . Trent Johnsen struck me as a very capable and professional CEO. We had some great conversations about SIP, VoIP, Softphones, Presence et al. As it turns out Trent had a couple of tickets to the Jays game that night so we continued our conversation at the ball park. I had a blast! How refreshing it was to meet an executive in the industry who is all about business but yet still understands how to enjoy his work.
So when I was sourcing this SMB VoIP offering I right away thought of Trent. I found his company Shift Networks on the web. Shift has their HQ in Calgary and the website mentioned that they would have dial tone in Vancouver around this time. Before talking to Trent I had some good conversations with the sales and technical staff. It was starting to sound like this could be a good solution for my friends new company in Vancouver.
I called my contacts in the SIP feature server and softswitch world and soon found out that it was pretty slim pickings for hosted business-class VoIP here in Vancouver or in Canada for that matter.
I called Trent and we talked for some time about their current offering and where the company was headed. I came to the conclusion that they had done a great job in laying the initial groundwork for what could be the next Covad in Canada. Trent started talking about his plans for IP business applications and that really peaked my interest. From what I heard I would say that Shift is set to be a real contender in the SMB VoIP market giving Bell and Telus a run for their money, which shouldnt be too hard 
Shift already has people on the ground here in Vancouver and one of their first customers here could very well be a new real estate company. With Trent at the wheel you can bet that there will be some great apps coming down the pipe as well.
Shifts offering can grow and move with your company. If you are business owner and you are thinking of a new PBX or phone system take a look at Shift.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteI just tried the AudioMail service which is reminiscent of audioblog.com‘s moblog capability. The big difference being that AudioMail is Java Applet driven and Audioblog.com is Flash driven.
Much like audioblog.com’s moblog feature, with AudioMail the user calls into a phone number (Vancouver only right now) in types in their account number. The user can then record up to a 5 minute clip.
Today AudioMail looks more like a marketing tool for the parent company Clipstream, the record time is too short and the service is not very useful for bloggers. When the recording ends the system sends you the link for your encoded clip. Us bloggers need a media file to point to e.g. MP3, MP4, etc. so our enclosures will pick it up and aggregators will fetch it.
With Audioblog.com you can either produce your media using their tools or upload your own, it costs $5/month. At this point I would have to say that audioblog.com is a better bet.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit WebsiteRich has his radar on and speaks of Google buying Tellme. I was wondering how long it was going to take for them to get bought. For those who do not know, TellMe is the new age of IVR. Speech recognition driven telephony applications. Very cool.
Written by Erik Lagerway - Visit Website
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