“Vonage has a new patent. It’s for something called “Method and Apparatus for Enhanced Internet Telephony.” According to the company, “The invention, which was filed for patent in 2003, makes it less likely for customers to encounter dropped calls, incomplete attempted calls or other communication problems resulting from typical router function and behavior.”

Does anyone believe this will help them actually turn a profit?? I’m not holding my breath.

Post from: Business Long Distance, Telecom, Voice T1, Business Voip Blog

Vonage Has a New VoIP Patent

So what happened? What clipped the wings of so many VoIP hopefuls can be boiled down to five things:

# Death by Deliberation: The incumbents and cablecos were identified as early targets for the equipment vendors, however their engineers quibbled about curbside protocols and QOS and fiddled with VoIP in the labs, delaying launches by years — far outside of the fundraising cycle of most of the VoIP startups.

# Competition Attrition: The implosion and autopsy of WorldCom signaled to most of the industry that being a competitor in telecom is not a healthy business. Those high prices were largely arbitrary, and as soon as the market pressured incumbents to reduce them, they did.

# Evolution vs. Revolution: Companies like Nortel, Siemens and Ericsson rank among the top VoIP equipment vendors today, not startups. Technologists completely underestimated the sway and leverage that the traditional vendors held over their customers.

# SIP in a Box: SIP might be an open protocol, but networks were built proprietarily and have not been bridged together. Most telecom services still communicate with each other via public switching, meaning that the wonderful possibilities that SIP might enable are limited by the capabilities of the plain old telephone system.

# Landline Decline: Even as networks were evolving, the number of landlines around the globe was shrinking. People found more convenient ways to communicate via wireless, SMS, instant messaging or pervasive email.

VoIP technology has clearly been successful in making inroads into traditional telecom networks, but in doing so, the revolution that SIP in particular, and VoIP in general, enables has been largely cast aside and the entire industry has coalesced in a race to the bottom. With this revolution went the volume of equipment and software sales that could have revitalized the supplier business and stimulated more innovation.

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Who Killed the Voip Revolution

“The hackers can intercept VoIP calls made to the Vonage customers. The shocking revelation may put the VoIP startup into trouble, which is already down with legal controversies.”

Vonage has refused to comment on this new revelation.

So now I ask all Vonage users, still feel good about using them? Actually, most of the people i have spoken with discontinue using Vonage after a few months.

One more tidbit is they only lost 7 million for the 2nd quarter this year.

Hey, it’s progress, compared to the 23 million they lost in same quarter last year.

I won’t even start a rant on their business model. That may be saved for another date.

Post from: Business Long Distance, Telecom, Voice T1, Business Voip Blog

Could Vonage and VOIP Be Under Security Threats?

VoIP essentially allows for a computer network to double as a telephone line. VoIP is typically cheaper than even the best unlimited call plans for digital telephone connections.

For the last few years, it has been expected that with the ever-increasing prevalance of WANs and VoIP networks, MPLS would provide a natural evolution toward even greater and more widespread implemenation of VoIPs.

With the MPLS network’s layer 2 to layer 3 connectivity power, VoIP service providers such as leading provider Vonage, AT&T, Sprint, and so on and so forth can now give the benefit of their core infrastructure over to their business VoIP clients, making their service faster, clearer, more reliable, and more robust than the kind of connection normally achieved by the public Internet.

A lot of businesses that are realizing the growing need for real-time application prioritization and end-to-end connectivity and are using VoIP are seeing how perfectly it work in concert with MPLS.

One business in particular which has already benefitted from MPLS’ convergence with VoIP is the Inheritance Funding Company (IFC).

IFC currently has over 160 telephone in its VoIP system, which it implemented two and a half years ago because “Maintenance and reliability became pressing issues. It was time to consider an alternative” to the status quo business phone system, according to IFC CIO Jim Norman.

By the middle of 2006, IFC tech saw the need to enhance the taxed VoIP with an MPLS network to make calls more robust and reliable so that there weren’t transmission hiccups, dropped calls, echoes in the ear, voices suddenly going distant, and other problems.

Says Norman, “If we wanted to get the quality that we wanted, we had to go with MPLS,” Norman said. “We wanted reliability, convenience and efficiency…From an administrative standpoint, we now have control of the phone system from here for all branches, and from anywhere, really.”

According to Robbie Harrell of Unified Communications, an online company serving IT and business professionals, “MPLS is useful as an enabler for VoIP because it provides Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)-like capabilities with an IP network.

Unlike the expensive ATM links that would be required to support VoIP, MPLS provides guaranteed services utilizing IP quality of service on the carrier’s backbone. This service and the ability to converge VoIP onto the data network present a tremendous opportunity to reduce operational costs and consolidate infrastructures.”

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MPLS and its Role with VoIP

VoIP would ensure enhanced customer service relations by connecting the employees to customers all over the world. As the services are operated over the Internet this also guarantees reduction of costs. It also makes sure that the employee is connected to his customer regardless of place and time.

VoIP not only caters to the Voice based services but also helps all business related programs through advanced facilities such as Video/Audio conferencing and online training programs. This technology can be used for business transactions as it ensures enhanced customer care services and minimum costs at the same time.

By using this technology, you can reduce travel costs as well as telephone costs. It enhances a direct relation between the customer and the employee without any delay or loss of money. VoIP is also flexible in terms of time management, diminishing of distance, and the location of the Call Centre.

The company can be located anywhere in the world without causing any difficulty in its relations with the customers, thereby expanding the business as well as the productivity of the services. This also ensures greater profit for the market as the costs are minimized and transactions are multiplied. This technology will also be helpful for the mobile employees who have to phone the customers as part of their job.

By using the VoIP technology, they can directly communicate with the customers without any intervention from the company in terms of directing the calls or approving the deal. This would also help the mobile employees to make any number of transactions to any number of people as the case may be.

These employees can remain in touch with the company as well as the customer at the same time. This also allows the company to hire more employees from different parts of the world and employ them at different branches of the main office. This technology is useful not just for the company and its employees but also for customers all over the world

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Business Service VoIP

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