MyVoIPnews

Harshing on Vonage online

MRS. DIGBY told me that when she lived in London with her sister Mrs. Brooke, they were, every now and then, honoured by the visits of Dr. Samuel Johnson. He called on them one day, soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Among other topics of praise, they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. 'What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?’ said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary.                                 

             -- “Personal and literary memorials,” Henry Digby Beste

While trolling the internet for all things VoIP, i came across a 2004 entry by a Hyperorg.com blogger loving all over this wacky new product called Vonage. Among reader responses was a tart comment from one Alex Gregory; this tale of woe tells of six hours devoted to dealing with Vonage tech support, concluding that “Ultimately, this company is rude and irresponsible and if it is any indication, guess who own www.vonagesucks.com? That’s right, Vonage.”

Hilariously enough, it’s true. Go to VonageSucks.com and you’ll be greeted with offers to “SAVE up to $300 per year” and to “Try Vonage 1 Month FREE!” and promises that “Vonage Is Easy!” Vonage also owns www.iHateVonage.com and www.VonageReallySucks.com. Good news for willing detractors, though: www.VonageBites.com and www.VonageReallyReallySucks.com are still available: “This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com,” informs the friendly Daddy.

Still searching for anti-Vonage propaganda for no good reason other than to see if it exists in any viable form, a legitimate watchdog blog appeared to have been sighted at www.vonageblows.com, where a ‘page entitled “Vonage Blows: When a good idea becomes a bad service” runs. Or ran.

Disappointingly, the blog has just one post a month from January 2006 to April 2006. When this blogger should be commenting now, on the Verizon vs. Vonage court case, he/she is nowhere to be found. Ah, the illusory nature of the blog world…

Finally, there’s www.wehatevonage.com, a site devoted to posting commentary and complaints about you know what. The introduction goes something like this: “I used to think Vonage was pretty cool. Then I realized it was the technology VoIP that was cool. Vonage on the other hand was just a company reaping the rewards of VoIP while screwing their customers by providing Terrible Support, Poor Quality, and Horrible Service.” After frustration led to quitting, “I decided to start this website. Incidentally, the first name that came to mind was www.IhateVonage.com but it was already registered. Guess by who? Yep! Vonage Holdings. Guess they know they suck after all (they also own www.VonageSucks.com).”

VoIPing in Sherwood Forest

Under the slightly naughty headline “BT VoIP plays doctors and nurses,” Silicon.com reports that personnel “in the Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are ditching the traditional phone and pager for a voice over IP system from BT.”

Some 1,200 medical staff in Nottinghamshire now tote Vocera VoIP devices, a little tool Silicon.com had compared to Star Trek communicators in a previous piece.

Vocera VoIP has also been deployed in the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust and in some Minnesota hospitals.

Putting the privacy in VoIP

For followers of privacy issues in VoIP, check out the must-read interview with Phil Zimmerman at Dean Takahashi’s “Tech Talk Blog.”

Zimmermann is known as the creator of email encryption program Pretty Good Privacy (hilarious name – 9.5 out of ten on the My VoIP News Excellent Name Scale). According to Takahashi, Zimmermann envisioned PGP as a “tool to protect human rights,” figuring that “encryption was a way for people in totalitarian countries to escape government spying.” The freeware attracted the attention of the U.S. government, whose restrictions on strong encryption protected its own government spying efforts.

Abbreviating the wikipedia entry tells us that the feds undertook “criminal investigation of Zimmermann for allegedly violating the Arms Export Control Act. The US Government has long regarded cryptographic software as a munition, and thus subject to arms trafficking export controls. … The investigation lasted three years, but was finally dropped without filing charges.”

Zimmermann is now focused on encryption of voice over the internet phone calls in a project called Zfone; the beta version of the program is now available for beta testing. The Z. tells Takahashi that “I did [VoIP encryption] ten years ago with PGP phone. But at that time, the Internet wasn’t ready. Nobody had broadband and there were no VOIP standards. But today, it’s time to do it again.”

The idea behind Zfone is that VoIP calls are encrypted “with a protocol that does not depend on the phone company to help you negotiate the keys. It is something that leaves the phone company out of it.” Specifically, Zimmermann is seeking to address the problem of phone companies cooperating with the National Security Agency to tap calls.

Just one tidbit from Takahashi’s excellent and thorough piece, if you will. Zimmermann provides an interesting angle on the biggest issue in VoIP privacy: “I think the biggest threat to privacy is Moore’s Law. The human population is not doubling every 18 months. But the ability of computers to keep track of us is. Before 9/11, the threat to privacy from Moore’s Law was a blind force of nature. Now, after 9/11, we have Moore’s Law being applied to invading privacy by optimizing surveillance. Now there are deliberate attempts to fuse surveillance data from many different sources…”

M5 blows into Windy City

IP phone system providers M5 Networks today announced its expansion to the Chicago metropolitan area, allowing the firm to provide its industry-leading hosted VoIP phone system to Chicago-based small- and mid-sized businesses. The Chicago office will be the firm’s second, after the New York location first opened in 2001.

“The Chicago market is ripe for a boom in business-class VoIP services. We’ve seen demand for reliable VoIP services from many Chicago-area businesses in the planning and early deployment phases,” said Illinois IT Association president Fred Hoch.

One Chicago-based organization that has heretofore implemented M5’s hosted VoIP phone system is the Royal Danish Consulate, part of a network of officers in sixty-five countries under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. RapidApp, a North American IT infrastructure consulting firm with headquarters in Chicago, also uses M5’s service.

Alongside the announcement of the new location came M5 Networks’ statistics, which showed the company undergoing a whopping 4,445 percent growth in revenues over the last five years. In 2006, M5 Networks secured the first round of venture capital funding in the company’s history, to fuel its expansion to Chicago and “other metropolitan area markets.” The company currently has over 500 clients based in the New York area.

Avaya preps link to Google

Avaya representatives announced on Thursday that the company would develop communications solutions for small business that combine Google’s updated Apps Premier Edition suite of web applications with its own IP telephony technology.

Avaya plans to link its IP Office product to Google Apps Premiere Edition. The combined solutions, which Avaya will sell through its network of resellers and distributors, are expected to be available by the end of 2007.

Google Apps Premier is the premium version of Google Apps for Your Domain released by Google yesterday. The software includes word processing and spreadsheet applications, calendar, e-mail, instant messaging, IT management tools, and technical support.

Tpad gives free SIP

Internet telephone provider Tpad is giving away a valuable freebie these days indeed: a unique incoming SIP number to every customer.

“That’s right!” as they proclaim in ads. “While most telephony companies charge an annual free for this service, Tpad offers it ab-so-lute-ly free! Tpad are offering this service for free! And will provide as many as the customer wants at no extra charge!”

Steven Johns, Marketing Manager for Tpad, said: “We believe that it is unfair to charge people just for a number to receive calls - that’s why we give all our customers a free number.” Well, it’s nice that he takes a moral stand about things.

The Dragon comes to Miami

Atlantic-ACM and Stealth Communications have announced the “The Dragon Market: VoIP Opportunities in China 2007-2011” session at the Voice Peering Forum Spring 2007. The session will be held on Wednesday March 7th at 5:15pm in the Miami Beach Resort & Spa.

Based on the Atlantic-ACM report of the same name, “The Dragon Market” session promises to cover forecasts for several different types of VoIP, the underling drivers of VoIP adoption, the regulatory landscape, key statistics about the telecom market, and discussion about wireline, wireless, 3G and other telecom services in China.

In “The Dragon Market: VoIP in China 2007-2011,” Atlantic-ACM analysts forecast that the total number of Chinese broadband subscribers will be 144 million by 2011, and “paid VoIP services adoption will dovetail with broadband growth.”

The Atlantic-ACM “Dragon” forecasts calculates that for calls either initiating or terminating via VoIP endpoints, the total number of subscribers will rapidly grow to 70 million, “provided that China, as is expected this year, eases its restrictions on VoIP termination to the public switched telephone network.” Adding the asterisk there is Charlie Reed, Atlantic-ACM analyst covering the VoIP sector.

“The Dragon Market: VoIP in China 2007-2011” includes market sizing and forecasts for wireline, mobile and several different types of VoIP, backgrounders and key statistics about the telecom market in China, drivers of VoIP adoption, case studies with financial, traffic, subscriber data for the major Chinese telecom companies and conclusions.

The Voice Peering Forum Spring 2007 is organized by Stealth Communications, Inc. and will be held in Miami Beach, Florida, March 7-9. For information on this session and/or to register, at the forum website.

Boston-based Atlantic-ACM is a provider of strategic research and consulting services serving the telecommunications and information industries.

Talkin’ VoIP in Missouri

This week in Missouri, there’s lively debate (well, as lively as things get in Missouri) regarding telecom regulation. The Missouri legislature is bearing witness to the state’s public service commission and its proposed regulations for VoIP technology.

Dallas, Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation, meanwhile, has come out against the Missouri Public Service Commission, claiming “The Commission is also splitting hairs to draw distinctions among providers – aiming to put different, heavier regulation on the facilities-based IP voice technology such as that offered by network owners, than on VoIP offered by nonfacilities-based providers such as Vonage.”

The Institute for Policy Innovation is a think tank with offices in Dallas and Washington, DC. IPI experts have testified before state legislatures across the country on “the vital importance of free-market policies in the telecom sector.”

Claim IPI researchers, “Missouri is bucking a national trend to encourage investment and innovation in new technologies.”

Earlier this month, J. Scott Christianson of the hometown Columbia Daily Tribune (which is cited here thanks to an assist from BroadbandReports.com) surely correctly opined that the telecom bill “has something in it for every large telecommunications company: reducing public oversight, eliminating local control, cherry-picking high-profit customers and protection from prying public auditors. It would be wonderful - if it weren’t such a complete betrayal of the public trust…”

Karl (really?) of BroadbandReports.com kicks in: “broadband on a stick,” a.k.a. “support our policies or we won’t deploy,” has long been an effective lobbying tactic.”

Word.

Cisco ♥ Apple

One news story is fittest to print across the industry today, in international outlets announcing in headline English that megacompanies Cisco and Apple “make nice” or “bury the hatchet” or even (giggle) “smoke peace pipe on iPhone.”*

Specifically, the news now playing in some form on at least 564 websites as of this writing, is the following.

“Cisco and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the ‘iPhone’ trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the ‘iPhone’ trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. In addition, Cisco and Apple will explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, and consumer and enterprise communications. Other terms of the agreement are confidential.”

And so, it would seem, ends the long saga of the iPhone dispute. The iPhone name has been owned by Cisco since 1996 in the category of “computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerised global information networks.” Cisco subsidiary Linksys is already producing and selling a product called iPhone.

Now that Apple and Cisco have kissed and made up (ah, there’s one metaphor that wasn’t used…), My VoIP News supposes they’ll declare mutual war on VoIP provider Comwave, which holds the iPhone trademark in Canada. After all, the Toronto-based Comwave actually has an “iPhone mobile” already on the Canadian market, and has owned the rights to the name in Canada since at least 2004.

Comwave president/CEO Yuval Barzakay was quoted back in January as saying “there's no reason for [Comwave Canada] to change its plans just because the two big U.S. technology companies happen to want to use iPhone for their products as well.”

One wonders what Barzakay makes of the lawsuit; though he gets into Canadian coverage of the settlement at – where else? – Canada.com, Comwave and its iPhone (Canadian version) is waiting and seeing.

*Warning: Not a recommended use for Cisco or Apple iPhone. Please keep all flammable items away from your iPhone.

Vonage: For Whom the Bell Tolls

A court case that began in New Jersey yesterday is attracting headlines from industry media as far away as India. And with two biggies like these going mano e mano, why not?

Reportage bearing apocalyptic gloom-and-doom headlines like “Vonage fate hangs on lawsuit verdict” and “A struggling Vonage goes to court this week…” tells the story of the Vonage vs. Verizon court case. The crying of “The End (For Vonage) Is Near” seems to have begun in USA Today, which stated that, due to a request for injunction order filed by Verizon legal representation, Vonage could shut down altogether should they lose the case.

The lawsuit was originally filed back in June 2006, with Verizon suing Vonage for patent infringement, alleging that Vonage is using some seven Verizon-owned patents in its VoIP technology. Filed in a U.S. district court in Virginia, the claim has it that Vonage “infringed on patents held by Verizon that given technology for completing phone calls between VoIP users and traditional phone services used by people, validating VoIP callers accounts, fraud protection, using Wi-Fi handsets with VoIP services and monitor VoIP caller use.”

At that time, ZDNet’s UK outlet reported on the lawsuit in connection with Vonage’s stock market debut, which saw it dump thirty percent of value in the first week of trading: “The Internet telephony provider has also been gearing up to defend itself against several investor lawsuits. Shareholders allege that the company misled them and created artificial demand for the stock.” Oops.

Vonage stock has been on a decline virtually ever since its release onto the stock market. Last Thursday had company representatives release fourth-quarter 2006 earnings figures which were “highlighted” by reported expectations of a $170 million loss in 2007. Incredibly, this negative figure was presented despite a reported 90.7 percent increase in net sales in the quarter and an increase in revenue per line. Said the sage investing Motley Fool at that time: “The great majority of Motley Fool CAPS players think VG is a stinker.”

In light of the poor numbers and legal troubles, blame is being assessed and moves made. Vonage’s slowing subscriber growth is seen as the major problem at that company, and much speculation is about that Vonage will be diversifying its business by selling dual-mode handsets and/or even its own mobile virtual network. And, interestingly enough, ZDNet reported that “Despite its heavy marketing spend, many of Vonage’s advertisements, designed to create more brand awareness, had been a flop, company executives have acknowledged.”

Now the “company executives” may be on to something there. The Vonage commercials are range from just not funny to not funny and vaguely disturbing to generic dry UK variety. Even the parody YouTube videos duplicating the Vonage ad format are creepy (even if spot on).

Meanwhile, Vonage is keeping up a brave, sober front. That front is represented by Brooke Schulz mostly from the oft-quoted USA Today piece. For the record Schulz states that “This is about Verizon trying to stifle competition” and that “We have not infringed on their patents, period,” or rather “we don’t think we have violated any of Verizon’s patents,” “But if the court finds that we do, we will come up with a solution. And we won’t have to shut off service to our customers,” or it’s “highly unlikely that service would be interrupted for Vonage’s roughly 2 million customers,” anyway. Plus, in case the patent infringement holds, “We’re working on a redesign plan.”