VoIPWatch

David Pogue on Cubic Telecom

David Pogue story on Cubic Telecom is out today in the New York Times. He points out numerous pros and cons to the new service from blogger Pat Phelan. It's not all glowing, and appears very balanced showing me that Pogue really did use the service before writing the review.

This service looks appealing to me for some use cases.

Have You Taken The Telco 2.0 Survey?

If you're a part of the VOIP, Mobile or Telecom economy and have a viewpoint or perspective the Telco 2.0 Survey is one of few the must take surveys around that I endorse.

The folks at STL who put on Telco 2.0 are some of the brightest and most insightful consultants around. Their upcoming event in London is a can't miss event so take the survey and sign up for the Executive Brainstorm too.

Truiphone Shown At DEMO-UPDATED

Its only fitting that in the land of wireless phones and mobile technology, San Diego, the folks at Truphone came to play. And play they did at DEMO showing of a range of new devices that their mobile VoIP technology will be working on in  the future, for that is the essence of DEMO. The big news though has to be the deployment of VoIP on the Apple iPhone, an industry first, as Truphone has figured out how to load in the necessary SIP stack. Oliver Starr at BlogNation has the details.

At their stand at DEMO Truphone showed versions also working on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the new HP Smartphone running Windows 6.0 and another Windows Mobile device that goes by various names like the DASH.

Needless to say, the iPhone version is likely to cause quite a stir.......Since it DOES NOT Involve any SIM unlocking, it is clearly in the spirit of how Apple as a company started, back when they encouraged developers to take their robust DOS called Apple DOS and develop for it.....

Video to follow...

Om Malik weighed in this morning with his perspective. So too has Download Squad, MacWorld's Jonny Evans and Wired's Bryan Gardiner along with Markus Goebel, Tom Keating, Bruce Stewart, Russell Shaw, VoIP Monitor, Mashable,, daily-wireless.org, iPhone Alley, iPhone News Blog, VoIPUser, Luca, A Penguin in The Orchard, Alec Saunders, Tech Nuts, SMS Text News, iphone Best Blog out of the UK, Profy.com, Rob Evans, Garrett Smith on VoIP, PowerBlog, Atmaspheric Endeavors, Into Mobile, TechDigest, Unstrung, InformationWeek, Mac Daily News, Huliq.com, GadgeTell and many others including ilounge, iPhone Hacks, Engadget and even the mighty CrunchGear!!!

Truphone on the Apple iPhone

Demo Has Broadband Baby

As DEMO officially starts this morning I'm overjoyed by the WiFI bandwidth that I'm seeing. This is a conference done right.

Close to six megs down, and over 1.5 megs up...but the key is less than 15% latency for the round trip to the Speakeasy test site in Los Angeles found via speedtest.net

Remember...all broadband is not created equal.

Looking Forward To Spring VON 2008

You read the headline right. I'm looking forward to Spring VON 2008 in San Jose even though 2007 Fall VON in Boston hasn't happened yet.

After catching up with Jeff Pulver over the weekend and hearing his vision and direction for the granddaddy of VoIP conferences it was rewarding to hear the energy and enthusiasm back in his voice. Like most of us Jeff has been looking at the future of where voice, video and social communications (some call it networks or media) all converge.

Jeff is seeing that very clearly and while this upcoming VON will set the stage with the very hot Innovators Unconference Track that Carl Ford has been busily assembling.

All this is setting the stage for the 2008 show, which makes this years Fall VON very exciting. The nexus of communications is rapidly coming together between the various modes, and from Jeff's perspective the jump starts in late October and runs all the way to Spring in San Jose.

James Seng On VoIP

It was nice to see Singapore based blogger James Seng write a post about VoIP even if he basically says nothing is new.

Om Malik riffs on the theme presenting both sides of the coin. He's right in my opinion about the price game. I've said for many years now that its about the apps and features, not the price, since the price is effectively at zero or so close it doesn't matter any more.

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Mig33 Offering Desktop Experience On Mobiles

Its easy to think about Mig33 as VoIP play but after catching up with pal Jim Hudak at DEMO yesterday here in San Diego, I'm realizing there's a lot more going on with the Redpoint backed company that was firing on all cylinders last winter at O'Reilly's eTel.

One of their most recent moves has been to make it possible for low end Java capable mobile phones to function as an email device. That means in emerging nations where GPRS is the standard, that the locals can have access to email and get beyond text.

Vonage Bashing Continues

This morning I woke up and read how a CNET reporter had nothing but a less than exemplary experience with Vonage and switched to Skype.

Yesterday one of my agency team members was pulling her hair out over the frustrations of trying to separate from the New Jersey phone company when she moved, with the experience taking three months and a bill in excess of $80.00 including the $39 dollar termination fee.

It seems Vonage does everything they can to try to keep a customer before letting them go. Unfortunately much of this leads to only more confusion and frustration based on the emails I have been receiving the last few years.

T-Mobile BlackBerry 8320 Adds WiFi and VoIP To Mix

I'm looking forward to seeing the consumer and small business customer markets reaction to the new Blackberry 8320 that offers VoIP and WiFi from T-Mobile. While it will provide much of what I'm getting now with Truphone on my Nokia E61i, my instincts tell me that the single source provider will appeal to the later adopters who don't want to fiddle and diddle. They just want to talk.

For years I have been convinced that it was only a matter of time before the mobile operators entered the VoIP game. With this release, T-Mobile becomes the first real operator to make the push, and they are starting with the largest group of early adopters of cloud based IP based technology in the mobile world. The BlackBerry users.

I've felt this way because the mobile operator already owns the customer out on the road, and now they have the ability really provide the service where the reception has been not always pristine. This will help change that.

I expect to see Sprint follow suit in consort with the cable operators via Pivot once the service gains traction, which it has yet to. Ironically AT&T with CallVantage could have offered this a few years ago, however internal politics, the sell off of AT&T Wireless to Cingular, and now the repurchase has put them behind on this. My gut says AT&T isn't far behind though here in the USA.

What will be interesting to learn is which other operators follow T-Mobile's lead around the world. Orange is having a great deal of success with Unik in France for the consumer market, so the 8320 would be ideal for their business customers.