VoIPWatch

SightSpeaker of the House Caught Using SightSpeed

Yes that was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi using SightSpeed

More and more government officials are realizing the value of video conferencing as it earns its place in reducing carbon emissions and enables more face to face interaction both near and far.

Looks Like AOL PhoneLine Is Really Gone?

Based on what I'm hearing all the third party apps are now gone.......

AT&T To Include VoIP in UVerse

What is not any kind of surprise, AT&T is utilizing what is the core of CallVantage, their stand alone VoIP platform within the converged next generation UVerse platform that features IPTV and Wireless services. That's if you belive Network World's account.

But my sources tell me that AT&T is not repackaging CallVantage as a U-verse product, and that it is a different product, something the NWW post stops short of saying that they are the same.

Remember CallVantage is a "best-effort"(i.e. Vonage) voice application that uses any Internet service. U-verse Voice is a fully-managed offering over the AT&T U-verse IP platform and IMS.

CallVantage will continue to be offered as a standalone product, but then again so will PSTN....

I guess this gives a new meaning to triple-play?

Update-- The UVERSE VoIP service is based upon a Lucent IMS core...not even close to the home grown CallVantage which uses a combination of Lucent, Nortel, Sonus and Sylantro, plus lots of AT&T Labs smarts...

VON Camp Webinar Tomorrow

Here's a cool way to hear about what you can expect at VONCamp, the unconference portion of VON that long time friend Carl Ford is organizing.

Two of my close friends and clients are on the panel tomorrow, Alec Saunders and Thomas Howe. Both are at the cutting edge of Voice 2.0 and Web 2.0, and along with Brough Turner and Carl you'll get a very good idea of what's ahead and in store for the attendees and participants.

T-Mobile Grows in USA Without A 3G Play

If you want to see why a Fixed Mobile Convergence play is a good thing, just look at T-Mobile here in the USA. Their numbers continue to look good, they keep growing and they continually emphasize how well the fledgling T-Mobile @ Home service is doing.

As a user of it, I'm thrilled with its performance to date. It works perfectly, even with all the different routers and networks running in my house. When I travel, I'm able to connect most of the time over my travel router, as long as the hotel's networks aren't all double NAT'd or run in some silly way.

What's more is there's no change in how I make calls...anywhere. Since it always is using my USA number I just dial from the contact directory, giving me the feeling that I'm home, no matter how far away I may be.

From the What Will They Think Of Next Department

Buffalo has added a handset to a keyboard...that means one less USB port being tied up. I like the idea...

Verizon Sees Things Rise on Next Gen Tech

Wireless and FIOS are driving Verizon's growth. Traditional land lines are "holding them back."

Personally, if I lived in a FIOS neighborhood regardless of the cutting of the copper, I'd have it in a heartbeat. From all accounts I hear the service just rocks. I'm not sure that AT&T's Uverse can make the same claim, but I'm going to add it at some point when it really becomes available in my community.

Mig33 Raises More Money

Congrats to the folks at Mig33. They just raised another boatload of cash, this time something north of 13million dollars or so.

12 Million or so seems to be the new number that VC's are giving to second round companies, with 5-6 million being the usual A round from what I've seen of late.

Yawn--In the World Of Me To, Me Also Here Comes TokTumi

I was really expecting more from TokTumi after hearing so much from folks leading up to Demo. Now that I read Rafe's review I'm yawning....bored, and really not interested. Candidly, I'm bummed. I think the world of Peter Sisson, especially after what he did with his last startup, Teleo, selling it to Microsoft.

So why am I yawning...well... nothing really looks NEW. Instead I get the impression that Toktumi is just a few things packaged up and sold with a pretty bow around it. So based on what Rafe wrote here's my initial impressions.

1) Dongle makes me think of MagicJack.

2) PBX On The Cloud Concept is very much like a former client, Telephony2's Call Butler (note to Jim and Mike at Telephony2 please check patent filings to see if any infringement is here. You could be the next AT&T, Verizon or Sprint if so)

3) Appears to do a lot of things client PhoneGnome does (note to David Beckemeyer see number 2)

4) Toktumi sounds like Tokbox...

I'll check it out today at DEMO, after I get done yawning....

Facebook Email Is Killing Me

It's 640 AM on the west coast. I have spent the last 50 minutes doing nothing but reading, replying and deleting emails.

Many are simple Google notifications, some of which lead to blog posts. Some Google alerts are related to clients. Other emails, many Facebook notifications are simply junk.

I use multiple email accounts as filters (i.e use different accounts for different purposes) but we can't do that with FaceBook. As a result all the FaceBook spam that comes my way goes to my primary account. So while I'd like the important notifications from real and trusted friends to come to me there, I really don't want the invites from people I don't know, notifications about new apps I could care less about coming there.

This is one of the big issues with FaceBook. It has a simple binary nature to it. It's either on, or off. There's no middle ground. If Facebook doesn't get a handle on this, my guess more people will turn it off.