VOIP News

Intuitive Voice Technology brought a little good news to the small business guy today. They rolled out a souped-up version of their Evolution PBX software, which now includes 100+ new features that were previously not available to small businesses. At a very reasonable $499 price tag, it is designed to “seamlessly integrate VOIP and standard phone lines. One of the more significant features added was Internet access of voicemail. This is a must-have feature for business travelers or personnel that work in multiple locations. Also included are demand recording, advanced intercom functions, and paging.”

Iintrigued? Intuitive is offering a free 30-day trial of the software, which can be downloaded here (a CD version is also available). Look out Goliath, David’s catching up.

TerraSip, a VOIP company in Spain, is now offering its customers another feature - text messaging. Customers log onto TerraSip’s website, type their message (up to 160 characters), enter the cell phone number of the desired recipient, click send and they’re done. Yeah, just like e-mail, only not. A bargain at 4.9 Eurocents a message.

The whole TerraSip premise is interesting. They offer “free internet telephony for TerraSip community members using international SIP standards.” Talk to whoever you want, for as long as you want, all completely free, as long as they’re part of the TerraSip community. Calls to numbers outside of their network are billed at very inexpensive rates.

A newly funded startup, TalkPlus, has announced today that venture capital firm Menlo Ventures has provided first round funding that will assist it to bring ‘next generation’ phone services to mobile phones.

The US$5.5 million investment comes after TalkPlus spent the past two years developing patent pending technologies that bring advanced call services to mobile phones.

“We are excited to partner with a top tier firm like Menlo Ventures,” said Jeff Black, CEO, TalkPlus. “They understand the vision and potential of our next generation services to mobile users, and are key to our expansion plans.”

Billed as ‘Voice 2.0′ calling services TalkPlus offers mobile phones users advanced calling services generally unavailable from carriers. Services such as multiple virtual numbers, international numbers and call management and contact management which take advantage of the true benefits of IP Telephony.

“TalkPlus is an early leader for new, innovative telephony services that focus on privacy, identity and presence,” said Shawn Carolan, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures. “They have a world class team, a breakthrough technology, great intellectual property protection, and a significant launch partner in the consumer Internet space. Menlo Ventures is thrilled to be participating in such an exciting opportunity.”

The identity of the “significant partner in the consumer Internet space” was not revealed in the announcement. Other online reports, however, suggest that the partner may be an online ‘top-tier’ dating site .

The full gamut of services from TalkPlus will take several months to be realised, but the company is coming to market with an initial service that offers a second phone number for your mobile phone which should attract certain sectors of the community, says the company.

“We are very excited to unveil our new offerings, which will expand what people can do with their phones,” said Black who is founder and CEO.

“TalkPlus has invested a significant amount of time and thought into creating robust solutions that meet people’s needs for greater flexibility and privacy in their mobile lives.”

The company is actually hoping that the first consumers that will hook up with the system are online daters who need a phone number they can pass out without giving away their real details. The second phone number service may also be of interest to professionals such as Doctors and Lawyers, small business owners and others who don’t want to be plagues with after hours calls.

By having a separate number to both place and receive calls on the same phone, subscribers get greater convenience and flexibility, as well as the benefit of an additional layer of privacy, says the company.

In addition to the second number, the service will come with an online management center which subscribers can use to activate advanced call screening, voicemail, and contact management features.

As more service roll out over the next six months or so, TalkPlus plans to offer the ability to attach multiple numbers to the phone for even greater control. For example, a traveling sales rep could have mobile numbers for business locations in each region.

Dial-out numbers that will allow subscribers to add other phones are also on the cards. These numbers might be for standard landline phones which could not have their dial in number reassigned. With this service it would be possible for say a general practitioner to call their patients but still show their regular office Caller ID.

TalkPlus will also allow subscribers to add an international number to their phone, so that they can both give the impression of international presence as well as have in-country callers contact them for very low cost.

Other touted features include the ability to maintain not only multiple virtual phone numbers on the account but to manage them via multiple personalities on the Internet using a standard web browser and through the phone’s own dialpad.

This will allow subscribers to do things such as specify who can call them and when. These profiles can be either activated manually or be set to activate at a certain time of day.

You can also store all your telephone numbers on the TalkPlus server to facilitate “click-to-call” functionality. The company also plans to offer access for this service via Outlook and other contact managers in the future.

The service will work with any JAVA, BREW or even WAP capable phone and is said to be network agnostic so that it will work regardless of your existing carrier.

According to reports , the TalkPlus people have also been working to reverse engineer the Skype system. With this technology TalkPlus would be able to allow users to view the presence of their Skype contacts, initiate or even receive a Skype call or chat session, if the company decides to bring such a service to market.

www.talkplus.com.

First it was the 511 service that they started offering customers to assist them with their traffic tie-ups; now Vonage customers can dial 811 to find out if it is safe to dig before embarking on a project on their property. Whether customers want to build a new deck in their backyard or just want to install a french drain, Vonage will be able to tell them if it is okay to dig in a particular area.

Vonage’s President, Michael Tribolet, said in a statement, “Vonage is pleased to offer its customers the convenience of 811 dialing to help ensure their excavation will be safe. This is just another example of Vonage answering its customer’s needs.”

Once the call is placed, it goes through their network to a local call center, similar to how 911 and 511 service works. From there, the customers’ local utility company picks up the baton and advises the Vonage customer whether or not is it safe to proceed.

Now if only they could arrange Chinese take-out delivery…

By most calendars, it’s a little early to be making a list and checking it twice. I’m not worried about Christmas; it’s the Fierce 15 that’s keeping me up.

In truth, the fine folks at Fierce Central have been tugging at my sleeve for the list. We’re unveiling it first next Tuesday night at our wVoIP 2006 conference in San Francisco, with everyone else finding out the results in a special-edition newsletter the following day. So if you want the first word–not to mention a terrific couple of days of inside skinny on wireless VoIP–you should register. (Entering the promo code “Dan” will save you $300, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

So what’s taking so long? I’m having fun with it. There’s been so much activity this year that I want to be sure I’m covering it all, and I want to make sure there are representatives from the world of applications, enterprise, big iron, wireless–the whole deal.

And if I can find a couple of companies you’ve never heard of before, I’m all the happier. I’m getting close, I can feel it.

But for now, I’d better get back to my legal pads and pencils; the bosses here get grumpy when editors miss their deadlines, not to mention the deadlines after that.

Hope to see you in San Fran! -Dan

Coming out of hiding this week is TalkPlus, which a “VoIP 2.0″ (who decided that we’ve rev-ed voice? I can’t find the e-mail anywhere) service that lets you put a “virtual number” on your mobile phone. You download a small app to your cell phone and hand around your virtual number, which TalkPlus forwards to your cell phone. Similarly, you can make calls on your mobile using either your “real” number or your “virtual” number, allowing you to separate your business and personal lives. The virtual number allows voicemail and call management online, presumably with an Internet interface. The company just closed $5.5 million in funding, and expects to launch a beta next month.

For more information about TalkPlus:

- read this article from GigaOM

I have no idea how consultants made a living before Dan Bricklin invented the computerized spreadsheet. The compound annual growth rate certainly existed, but hardly anyone besides accounting students and McKinsey consultants ever heard much about it. Though it’s not quite as bad as it was during the Internet boom, scarcely a day goes by without someone wielding a fancy Excel-enhanced CAGR number to describe an emerging market. Now it’s VoIP’s turn. The consultants iSuppli say the VoIP market will expand at 24.7 percent each year until 2010, arriving at global equipment sales of $11.9 billion. Of the three segments–PBX/enterprise, residential and infrastructure–the greatest growth was expected to be in the residential arena, and the slowest in enterprises.

For more information about the iSuppli study:

- read this article in Digitimes

More about CAGR. The boxcounters at IDC expect that competition will slow revenue growth in the Australian VoIP and IP-PBX markets for the next five years. The news isn’t all bad: IDC expects annual growth of 14.49 percent, and says hosted VoIP and IP Centrex will grow at 39 percent a year through 2010. IDC analysts suggest that providing services to specific vertical industries, and not simply selling equipment, is the way to maximize revenues.

For more information about the Australian VoIP market:

- read article in IT News

Balancing accessibility and security is the neat trick for any network, VoIP perhaps more than some. The British Computer Weekly has a very nice article about just that balancing act, throwing in the question of proprietary systems vs. open standards. Supernodes, peer-to-peers, VPNs, the concept of isolating voice and data LANs and even copyright issues revolving around voice calls are all discussed as security issues in a piece that’s remarkable for its span and sobriety. You may not learn a lot of new stuff, but it’s a fine collection point for a lot of important ideas.

For more information about VoIP security:

- read this article from Computer Weekly

NetworkWorld is also worried about VoIP, but its coverage of the InfoSecurity conference focuses on all sorts of threats to critical IP infrastructure. One expert professes concern that technology is moving faster than laws–it seems that New York State has no anti-hacking statute (or a “we’ve-been-hacked” disclosure law) until one goes into effect at the end of this year. And emergency managers are looking everywhere but VoIP for disaster communications. They say putting up a wireless IP infrastructure in a disaster zone is just harder and more complicated than traditional radios or mobile phones–even if access to computer networks would be a good thing.

For more information about VoIP and government:

- read this article from Network World