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VoIP News & Information

Archive for August, 2008

5 Reasons to Love VoIP

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

So VoIP is pretty mainstream now with all the major cable carriers offering a voice over IP service.  Here are a number of reasons why people are loving VoIP!

1.  Low Cost! –   VoIP tends to be 15-35% less expensive then traditional telephone service plans especially with nation wide and international calling plans.

2.  Added Features – With most VoIP plans you get many more added services for no additional cost such as voicemail, three way calling, conference calling, call waiting and video conferencing.

3.  Online Billing – Almost all VoIP providers provide online billing and account management

4.  Online Voicemail – The ability to check you voicemail for free online from anywhere is super convenient.

5.   Complete Portability – Bring your usb phone with you where ever you go and make calls from any Internet connection.

VOIP on an Aircell equipped American Airlines flight

Monday, August 25th, 2008

I am officially online in the sky. Boy, does it feel good. As soon as I got the go ahead from the American Airlines’ flight attendants with the “use of electronic devices are now permitted” announcement, I fired up my Lenovo x200.

Below are updates from my experience of using Aircell’s Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service on an American Airlines from San Fransisco to New York’s JFK. The newest updates are on bottom and are listed in EST time. The video is at the very bottom.

7:15 p.m: Vista’s Network Center is telling me that there are “available networks.” Listed is a network with SSID  “gogoinflight.” I am connected to the network in less than 30 seconds. I have a full signal!

read the whole encouter here at laptop magazine

To learn more about voip check out the products on our main voip page

CallCopy Introduces New VoIP Call Recording Solution

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

CallCopy, Inc., a leading provider of call recording and quality monitoring software, today announced the availability of CallCopy Essential, the company’s new VoIP call recording solution that will help small businesses to quickly and easily capture and archive inbound and outbound calls. CallCopy Essential was developed specifically for the small office to help companies improve customer service, increase productivity and meet compliance regulations.

“Call recording has become ‘essential’ for many businesses, as they try to improve their customer service, protect their brand and business, and meet industry and government compliance standards,” said Ray Bohac, president and chief executive officer of CallCopy, Inc. “CallCopy Essential is an affordable, reliable and user-friendly solution that was truly designed with smaller businesses in mind, and is focused on filling their immediate call recording needs. Because of our experience and success in the call center industry, we understand the importance of reliable and high-quality call recordings, and we have integrated this experience and knowledge into CallCopy Essential.”

Vision for Voice Contest from Texas Instruments

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Texas Instruments has announced its 2008 Vision for Voice contest. Tell them your idea for the biggest breakthrough for innovation for voice technology for the future, upload a video to their site and be entered to win a TI DLPTV with home theater system.

Texas Instruments is doing more than just building calculators these days. They are an innovator in voice technology. They are working toward making every IP connected devise voice enabled and the capability of speech recognition to control voice-enabled devices.

911 Operators Warn Those Using Internet Phones

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Your location when you make a call to 911 is one of the most important details the operator needs. The technology is set-up to automatically pull the address from which you’re calling. However, 911 dispatchers are warning that VoIP Internet Phones are making that information hard to pull.

The main reason? People don’t update accounts like Vonage when they move. So if your account originally showed an Albuquerque address, and you now live in Atlanta, and you never updated your address- emergency responders while have a harder time finding you- if they do at all.

New Skype Phones

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Mobile network 3 just dropped it’s the latest model of their internet-friendly phone, bringing VoIP calls, instant messaging, social networking at the internet to your pocket.

As well as Skype calls, it’ll play nicely with Facebook, Bebo and Windows Live Messenger, as well as sucking up RSS feeds from any website you like.

There’s also a brand new interface, using a carousel to select the service you want, with a special ‘switcher’ key on the side of the phone to flick quickly between functions without diving back into the main menu.

More info

The attraction of Vo-Fi is clear

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Companies that worried about loading down their WLANs with the overhead of voice over Wi-Fi are seeing the equation change as 802.11n enters the mainstream. The attraction of Vo-Fi is clear: By integrating voice over IP, cellular telephony, and Wi-Fi, a new age of mobile voice and data services becomes reality. So what’s the holdup?

According to our most recent InformationWeek Analytics reader poll on voice-over-Wi-Fi adoption, the No. 1 perceived barrier to deployment is a concern that reliability will not measure up to a traditional wired phone system. IT realizes that users will accept some network downtime and e-mail unavailability as normal, but let the phones go down and there’s panic in the lunchroom. Also high on the list of worries are security, high systems cost, and a foggy ROI picture that is unlikely to clear until the legacy TDM PBX reaches the end of its life.

Still, it’s not as if the status quo is any better. VoIP systems work well on wired networks, where quality of service can be provisioned with relative ease, but they also tie users to their desks. Cellular carriers do a much better job of enabling mobility, but the cost is high, data capacity is limited, and service availability inside buildings is often problematic.

more information here

Turn Your PC into a VoIP Phone

Friday, August 15th, 2008

So Intel is producing four mother boards that will have Remote Wake, an improved version of the Wake-on-LAN or Wake-on-WAN technology.  This technology has been around for a while but security concerns have kept it with a low profile.  Now Intel has teamed up with JaJah, a California-based voice over IP start-up, to allow JaJah users to receive calls on their PCs when their computers are in “sleep mode.”

Intel’s remote wakeup chip could finally turn personal computers into phones.  The problem with Skype and other similar services is that they do not work when you computer is in sleep mode causing you to leave your PC on all the time.

Intel has invested $20mil in JahJah.

Skype for PSP

Friday, August 15th, 2008
With Skype on the PSP you can make and receive Skype calls and make SkypeOut calls when you’re connected to an internet connection via WiFi — I can see it as a good way to talk to the friends you play networked games against on the PSP, so it’s easier to set up game.
Skype on PSP

Skype on PSP

It’s important to note that Skype will only work on the PSP Slim & Lite (PSP-2000) version of the PSP and not the original, because the newer PSP has more RAM. You’ll also need either a Go! Cam or a headset and corded remote (which are currently sold seperately but will soon be bundled together) so you’ll have a microphone to input your voice.

More info here, here and here

New Chip Promises Better PC as Voip Option

Friday, August 15th, 2008

Intel’s remote wake-up chip could finally turn PCs into phones.

One of the biggest drawbacks of current PC-based Internet phone services like Skype, which allow people to make phone calls from their computers over the Internet for free or for reduced fees, is that you can’t receive calls when the computer is turned off. But that is changing with a new chipset introduced by Intel Thursday that allows computers to wake from “sleep” to accept calls and do other tasks like accept downloaded content.

Intel has teamed up with JaJah, a California-based voice over IP start-up, to allow JaJah users to receive calls on their PCs when their computers are in “sleep mode.”

Full story here


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