What Paris Hilton and Walmart Have to Do with Voip

November 30, 2007 Friday 11:00 - ? AM CST
What: Voip Users Live Conference/Podcast

Description: http://VoipUsersConference.org VOIP allows you to do almost anything with incoming and outgoing telephone lines. You can use the open source pbx asterisk in conjunction with hardware to control normal phone lines or with SIP or IAX providers to have worldwide pay-as-you-go service with no monthly charges. You can connect toll free numbers in multiple countries, invent new telephone services, be your own telco!
Hosted by randulo

Each of the past 3 Fridays, I've logged into the Voip Users Live Conference Podcast using Talkshoe. I always mute the mike because I have to keep working while listening. Today I was only able to listen from 11:03 AM - 11:30 AM CST, but I did take notes because several of our vendors, customers, and friends with voIP interest asked me to blog on it.

We were entertained at the beginning with the host sharing some of his recent VoIP poll results. He mentioned the preferred phones participants would want if stranded on a desert island. I only heard SNOM and Shoretel but there were others. (I wouldn't laugh at the Shoretel choice because it might have been a consumer who perhaps is using Shoretel voip service.) Poll participants gave their short bios. One said he is married to 2 girls, another is a self-made millionaire, and another typed he was an IP magician. The speaker sharing this information thought this was cool except that "magician" was spelled wrong. That's ten points extra credit toward his grade since I taught English for 16 years. At the same time, inventive spelling is fun to read if you're like me and love foreign languages. (I still am guilty of errors in grammar, spelling, and other mechanics, sometimes on purpose and most of the time by mistake.)

Next, we listened to a brainstorming of Asterisk problems. I quote as closely as I possible can. I don't have time to link all possible keywords to relevant websites.

"It's all in how you implement Asterisk."

"Asterisk 1.2 had one thread handling every piece of audio for every phone call. It would block and sit there, buffer and exhibit audio droppage."

"1.0 had no jitter buffer or maybe it wasn't usable in trunking but eventually used SIP over IAX," says one participant. "But 1.2 definitely has it."

"IAX was so unreliable two years ago during 1.2's era, that it had to be dropped."

"I like the IAX phones because of the single port thing. I have a couple of phones that do IAX. They are each about the size of a CDROM carrier. As long as there is an ethernet connection available to me, I can use them."

"If the protocol is becoming more standardized, will more and more third party firmware become available?"

"Someone uses Grandstream. Good luck using them?"

"They are using same chips as the PA 1688. The same manufacturer makes both."

"Do the Chinese manufacturers care at all if the devices work seamlessly with Asterisk? Remember Farphone (could be misspelled) from Wasim on IRC? He was the first one we've heard of to do such a thing, but it never was completed. What happened on it?"

"Freshtel's Firefly softphone pretty cool... not written by Freshtel. It's a branded phone. Someone will look it up."

"Firefly was Virbiage."

"Freshtel is the provider. They have a box 3010 ATA, fits in the palm of your hand, Internet telephone adapter, supports most codecs, does IAX not SIP. Made by Freshtel's company Verbiage."

"$88 price shipped from Australia..."

Check out http://www.virbiage.com

We were all checking out Virbiage's cubix.php softphone on preorder... and someone noted that they (or maybe another company) offered preorder forever on a product that never seemed to materialize.

Which led to...

"Someone may do a softphone that looks like the IPhone."

"Yes, Open Noko is available."

"What about the new Google Android phone: like Iphone but is vendor-independent (agnostic maybe?), you can write your apps in Java, and anyone can start testing with it."

"So can Open Noko. It's all open source. Problem, you can get a development unit, but you can't make a call with it."

"But the Google phone appears cooler. Anyone can make a device for it. Since it uses Java, it will work with anything."

"Google will have an easier time with it because they are not dependent on one software. They get more attention from potential developers."

"Google PC is for sale at Walmart for $200. Login from any computer to access your PC server. It's a secure server, stores data, and uses a specific MD5 key. You can login with your user name, login, and see the general settings of how you want your desktop to appear anywhere, even at perhaps the public library.

"Let's say that no matter where I am in the world, there is be a universal number that hooks me to my data, giving me access to all my extensions. Maybe something like Pingtel phone where you tell the phone where you want to login to."

"No, Pingtel, it's like Paris Hilton. Nice to look at but you really don't want to use it. Not user friendly. Someone bought one on eBay, beast to configure, and tough to use."

11:30 AM CST

I, Suzanne Bowen, agree that the notes I took above and are sharing with you, the reader, may not be the exact words spoken by the participants in today's VoIP Users Conference, but it is my best effort to do so. I stopped at 11:30 AM CST because I needed to use my IP Phone (model IPR 320 and made in Taiwan, configured in Pensacola, Florida by me) to conduct some teleconferences with our company's suppliers, customers, colleagues and voIP industry friends (who all rock and are not digitally smug.) I'm 27 minutes behind in my "work" today, but about 26 of those minutes were worth it.