leo's blog

Today marks the 134th birthday of the telephone. On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell shouted into the phone mouthpiece, “Mr. Watson - come here - I want to see you,” [source]. After which, assistant Thomas Watson walked to Alexander and said he heard him.

One hundred and thirty four years is a pretty long time. In the early 1970’s, the cell phone was invented, but didn’t hit the market until 1983 [source]. In the same year, the “first networking protocol used on the ARPANET was the Network Control Program” [source]. However, both the cell phone and the internet didn’t hit mainstream until the early 1990’s.

The telephone was a revolutionary invention in 1876, an accomplishment that will not be forgotten. But, Mr. Reader, come here – I want to show you: If you were using the same transportation system in 1876, you might be driving this:

Our point? Telephone on the Plain Old Telephone Network as we know it is a technology Grandpa. Respect him, but don’t use his gadgets!

Service outages happen. Sometimes it’s the result of something you did, but more often than not it’s caused by factors completely out of your control. If you’re in the business of providing a hosted service over the Internet, then chances are that this unfortunate situation will happen to you at one point or another. We would all love to say that it has been XX months or X years since we’ve had any problems, but the fact of the matter is that when something like this happens (and it most likely will), what’s most important is how you deal with it.

Now we don’t know exactly what occurred but from what we’ve heard and read (there’s quite a bit of chatter on Twitter from actual packet8 customers), it seems like Packet8’s customer service/response during the outage was a bit iffy.

We had a little outage ourselves last year and we dealt with it by putting up multiple posts on our blog, posting regular updates to keep our customers informed on Twitter, and responding quickly to any questions. It was vital for us to keep up a constant stream of communication with our customers to let them know that we were doing everything in our power to get things back up and running. In this day and age, there’s little to no excuse for leaving your customers high and dry, especially when they need you the most.

After our outage, we put up an explanation of exactly what happened and everything we were going to do to prevent it from ever happening again. Industry analyst Gary Kim specifically mentioned us on his blog in a post entitled, ‘The Way to Deal with an Outage'.

I’m not going to sit here and tell all the Packet8 customers reading this that we’re going to be outage-free for the next 10 years. We can’t promise that. No provider can.

What I will say is that as a company, we’ve always prided ourselves on our customer service and that will remain the same, whether everything’s running at 100% or not.

It's the time of year for giving! This year, the OnSIP team is getting into the holiday spirit by hosting our first holiday giveaway.

Enter on Twitter and you could be one of the lucky ones starting 2010 with a brand new Netbook. Tweet us an interesting story about your business phone or phone system and you'll double your chances of winning.

For more information and the full contest rules, visit our contest page. Good luck!

The team here at Junction Networks is proud to say OnSIP has recently become one of Polycom’s VoIP Field Verified (VFV) Partners. Polycom’s VFV Program “enables call control providers who have successfully integrated with Polycom’s VOIP family of phones to complete certification and resell Polycom phones.”

We’re very excited about this partnership. In our experience, Polycom phones have always been top notch and we are honored to be working with Polycom. Over the years, we have had consistent feedback from customers telling us that Polycom is a top choice vendor of IP phones.

Businesses can expect a superior experience when using Polycom phones with OnSIP. And to further OnSIP’s support of Polycom hardware, we recently released our new boot server to make provisioning phones and updating firmware easier for our customers.

Shortly, our customers will be able to buy Polycom phones preconfigured from trusted IP telephony vendors essentially eliminating the time and work required to provision phones.

Polycom was one of the first manufacturers committed to bringing wideband audio support to the IP telephony industry with their ‘HD Voice’ offerings. In accordance with our dedication to seeing wideband audio widely implemented, today, OnSIP customers can call one another for free in full HD. Furthermore, the OnSIP team will soon be rolling out greater ‘HD’ support. Be sure to look for our HD conference bridges in the near future.

You should use Site Specific Browsers. Here's why.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, the Internet is changing. HTML5 and Javascript performance improvements, among other things, are allowing the web browser to do things that used to be only possible with software that you ran on your desktop. Sites like Gmail, Pandora, the upcoming Google Wave, and dare I say it, my.Onsip, are doing things that exhibit the potential of the new Internet web browser, and hopefully its just the tip of the iceberg.

But if you’re like me, and you somehow find yourself with 25 open tabs, running all of these sites in the same browser might turn into a problem. Let’s say a nasty popup somehow makes it through and screws everything up, or my browser suddenly stops responding for whatever reason. Well then I’m kind of out of luck. I have to reload everything and hope that everything got saved.

That’s where site-specific browsers(SSBs) like Prism and Fluid come in. Prism (Link updated 11/12/09) by Mozilla Labs allows users to take web applications and run them directly from the desktop like any downloaded application. Prism also allows you to make shortcuts for web applications on your desktop, in your start menu, and even in your quick launch bar. It’s great for My.OnSIP because I never have to scroll through my tabs looking for the web app when I get a work IM. I also never accidentally sign myself out by pressing the "back" button in the browser navigation bar anymore.

Fluid is a very similar application for Mac OS X Leopard. It’s inspired by Prism, and has a lot of the same goodies. One thing we found particularly cool was that it allows you to make "MenuExtra SSBs" – a mini browser that's basically an icon in your OS X System Status bar along with other MenuExtras like the Clock and Calculator. We’ve found that this is fantastic for sites that we regularly check like Twitter or Analytics.

Some people might say, “Well all these apps are doing is loading sites like desktop applications and creating a shortcut here and there. What’s the big deal?” Currently, I’m running Google Docs, My.OnSIP, Pandora, and my Job email on SSBs and I got them all up and running with a few clicks of my mouse. I’m using my Internet browser for just that; browsing. It’s an extremely convenient combination, and in a working environment where I’m constantly juggling things, convenience makes all the difference.

New Javascript performance improvements and HTML5 are allowing web applications to do things that used to be only possible with desktop software. Unfortunately, IE, which is still the most widely-used browser, really isn’t up to speed, meaning that a lot of developers will probably have to devote a huge portion of their time making sure their apps are IE compatible instead of actually developing. The Junction Networks team is certainly no stranger to the woes of running outdated versions of IE.

IE currently runs Javascript much slower than other browsers and lacks sufficient HTML 5 support. Furthermore, each version of IE seems to have its own set of CSS rules, which gives our developers more headaches than they need.

Maybe that is why we’re relieved that someone is stepping up, even if it’s not Microsoft. Google’s recently announced Google Chrome Frame is essentially an open source plug-in that brings HTML5 and other open web technologies to IE. Maybe this will mean that my.OnSIP will actually run in IE6 when the plug-in is downloaded.

'VoIP’s Best Week Ever’ is a segment of our blog dedicated to fresh and interesting links to all things VoIP, from unified communications news to VoIP phone releases. If you want to know what stories have the Junction Networks team buzzing, then be sure to check in every week for updates.

Apple, AT&T, Google, and Vonage

Does anybody else remember the Apple commercial back in 1984 in which the woman throws a sledgehammer at a giant screen of a man talking down to his mindless minions? Besides being a really well done commercial, it delivered a strong message against the evil monopolies and ‘anti-competitive’ monsters dominating the markets at the time. Well, it seems a lot of people are viewing Apple quite differently now that it’s at the top of the food chain.

The recent rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app has left a lot of people scratching their heads, especially since very similar applications already exist in the App store, according to Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

Both Apple and AT&T have responded to the FCC’s request for information about the rejection of the Google Voice App and other third party applications for the iPhone. AT&T has acknowledged that Apple and AT&T have an agreement to block VoIP apps from using AT&T’s cellular networks, but maintains that VoIP apps which use Wi-Fi are okay. Meanwhile, Apple denied that they rejected the Google Voice application, and then described how the Google Voice application hurts “the iPhone’s distinctive user experience.” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington had some very choice words to say about Apple’s response. Lets just say he didn’t buy it.

Apple itself is taking this issue very seriously as it could potentially be a PR nightmare, and has dedicated a section of their homepage to answering questions. Click here to go there now.

In other related news, Vonage stock has shot up over 300 percent over the past week. Why the sudden jump? It might be because Vonage has also submitted a mobile app to support its services on the iPhone. Seems like all the surrounding publicity breathed new life into the company. Today the stock has dipped 25%, and is now trading at around $1.50.

'VoIP’s Best Week Ever’ is a segment of our blog dedicated to fresh and interesting links to all things VoIP, from unified communications news to VoIP phone releases. If you want to know what stories have the Junction Networks team buzzing, then be sure to check in every week for updates.

The down economy good for managed services

Forrester Research, Inc recently released their latest Enterprise And SMB Networks and Telecommunications Survey, a report that incorporates over 2,300 IT executives and technology decision-makers across North America and Europe. The findings are good for managed services like hosted VoIP! According to the survey, more small and medium-size businesses are switching not only for the cost savings and features, but also because hosted services allow companies to focus on their ‘core business competencies’. The survey also revealed that unified communications, and desktop VoIP are all gaining traction. See the press release here.

Mobile VoIP coming whether operators like it or not, according to Unstrung

“Mobile VoIP: A Disruptive Service Goes Mainstream”, a new research report, finds that pricing pressures, new entrants, and technology changes are causing a shift to packet-based services, whether operators like it or not. The report’s author, John Blau, writes that mobile VoIP is an “unstoppable train” due to both consumer demand for less expensive mobile services, and enterprise demand for fixed/mobile convergence. For more information, and links to some of the players, visit Unstrung.

Nortel close to auctioning off VoIP assets

Nortel is reportedly getting closer and closer to auctioning off its VoIP applications business for an $800 million ‘stalking horse’ bid. The company, which is currently going through a sale process under bankruptcy protection, has already auctioned off most of its wireless assets. The company’s enterprise networks unit will soon follow, according to Canada’s Financial Post.

And finally…

OnSIP Team Reviews launched!

Junction Networks has just recently launched our own OnSIP Team Reviews, where you’ll soon be able to find independent reviews of VoIP phones, SIP clients, IM clients, and more. The first three reviews for the Polycom Soundpoint IP 331, the Linksys SPA942 IP phone, and the Snom 320 VoIP phone are already up!

‘VoIP’s Best Week Ever’ is a segment of our blog dedicated to fresh and interesting links to all things VoIP, from unified communications news to VoIP phone releases. If you want to know what stories have the Junction Networks team buzzing, then be sure to check in every week for updates.

It’s earnings season!

Sure the GDP shrank and consumer spending fell more than expected, but it could be worse, right? In fact, companies which offer VoIP services may have reason to be optimistic. In "A look at VoIP earnings and sub growth", Pete Wylie from FierceVoIP compiled subscriber and revenue numbers for several major telecommunications companies and VoIP providers. The numbers weren’t too shabby, either. Major Telcos like AT&T and Sprint reported positive growth in their VoIP related services while VoIP service provider 8x8 reported a healthy net profit.

Legal troubles for Skype

In March, Skype, which is now owned by eBay, filed a lawsuit against founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who now own Joltid. The founders then tried to terminate their licensing agreement and brought on a counterclaim alleging Skype of violating Joltid’s copyright by misappropriating their code. Unfortunately for eBay, this whole mess will be sorted out in trial in June 2010, around the same time it had intended for Skype to go public. In the meantime, Skype has begun writing its own alternative code, which may or may not be as successful as what they were licensing. It seems to us like this could be a golden opportunity for Google Voice to take center stage.

Read the full story at Eweek.

And finally…

We know this wasn’t first announced this week, but we’re still excited about the Snom870. Wideband audio, Hi-def TFT color display, touch screen, AND an XML browser for applications? Let’s just say that we can’t wait to get our hands on one of these.