Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Attention WalMart (and Circuit City) customers….
AT&T today announced agreements with Circuit City and Wal-Mart to sell AT&T U-verseSM TV and AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet in more than 600 retail locations beginning this month.
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
I’m getting calls and emails from friends asking me if it’s really true. Finally, the White House makes it official.
Yes, George W. Bush visited the Olmos Soda Fountain yesterday.
Here’s even more proof!
In the midst of several trillion
dollars of lost wealth, he had time to stop by for a malt and visit to
the editorial headquarters for this blog.
Source: www.voip-news.com
NeuStar, Inc. has successfully trialed its SIP-IX VoIP Interconnection Exchange service. The company used four competitive local exchange providers for the trial.
“We’re glad to have been working with NeuStar during this trial,” said Jerry James, CEO of COMPTEL. “Our members that participated in the trial have told us that NeuStar’s VoIP Interconnection Exchange service performed exactly as NeuStar promised it would. We look forward to the next phase of this project.”
FYI:
A detailed panel discussion regarding the benefits and technical aspects of VoIP interconnection will be held on Tuesday, October 7 at 11:00 a.m. at the COMPTEL Plus Fall 2008 Convention & Expo. The COMPTEL event will be held October 5-8 at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida. Tim Cody, NeuStar’s Senior Director of Product Management, who conducted the SIP-IX Interconnection Exchange service trial with the COMPTEL members, will be one of the presenters on this panel.
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
This is not a joke. 
President George W. Bush stopped today to what serves as my editorial offices for this blog.
Read the story from the San Antonio "Express News" here.
My Robot Creative pal, Lara August, called me this morning to have breakfast, but I couldn’t do it because of another meeting.
Then, I hopped over to see PodCast Ready’s Dean McCall for another meeting.
Then, my stomach starts growling and I decide to hop over to Olmos Pharmacy for lunch.
En route down US 281, I am driving by the airport, and see Air Force One taking off.
Arriving to the Pharmacy 20 minutes later, proprietor, Betty Garza,
informs me that our fearless leader of the free world, Secret Service
in tow, stopped by and had a chocolate malt with First Lady, Laura Bush.
I guess when you are the President of the U.S., you can pretty much order up anything you want.
So it really says quite a bit about Betty’s place, where she’s run a tight ship for 35 years.
Over the last 3 years, I’ve been doing lots of breakfast meetings, lots of interviews, and lots of posts at the Pharmacy.
Sorry I missed you, Mr. President.
And thumbs up to Betty for having Mr. Bush pick her place as the place in town (or the world) for a real home made malt.
photo (c) San Antonio Express News
Source: www.voip-news.com
Broadcom Corporation has released a new high-performance VOIP digital signal processor. The processor is intended to simplify equipment design.
“Our carrier access VoIP developments are a natural evolution of the widely used VoIP silicon and software solutions provided by Broadcom in both enterprise and consumer applications,” said Greg Fischer, Vice President & General Manager of Broadcom’s Carrier Access line of business. “Utilizing our high performance and proven DSP technology, the BCM6515 scales nicely in terms of voice and media processing capabilities, and the fact that our customers can leverage their previous software developments will enable them to extend their product portfolio both at low risk and a lower development cost.”
According to Broadcom:
To provide even faster time-to-market for OEM partners, Broadcom also announced today the availability of its BCM96515 high performance voice line termination reference design, which is a joint collaboration between Broadcom and Zarlink Semiconductor Inc. The BCM96515 reference design is based on Broadcom’s BCM6515 DSP and BCM5481 Gigabit Ethernet transceiver chip, and Zarlink’s VoiceEdge(TM) VE792 next generation carrier chipset (NGCC). The Zarlink VoiceEdge VE792 chipset includes an octal subscriber line audio-processing circuit (SLAC) with an integrated carrier-grade line test toolbox, single channel subscriber line interface circuits (SLIC), and a multi-port voice control processor (VCP) that provides real-time call control functions, as well as carrier-grade line testing (when enabled with Zarlink LineCare(TM) software).
“Broadcom and Zarlink have a long established history of jointly bringing the highest quality voice solutions to market,” said Hank Perret, Senior Vice President & General Manager of Communication Products at Zarlink Semiconductor. “This latest joint platform now expands that relationship to carrier markets allowing line card designers to quickly deliver the lowest power consumption, highest density and best performing products with respect to line testing and cyclical redundancy checking within xDSL applications.”
Source: www.voip-news.com
Ramshyam Communications Limited has lowered its prices in hope so drawing more small businesses to take advantage of their call center outsourcing services.
“Ramshyam has lowered its offshore call center fees because we feel strongly about supporting our existing and future clients during these difficult times,” stated Sandeep Periwal, founder and CEO of Ramshyam Communications Limited. “Yes, it will have an effect on our own profits, but the current economic climate in the U.S. requires businesses to take drastic measures to keep their margins intact. That can only be achieved by reducing costs, and that’s where Ramshyam Communications Limited steps in.”
The Mumbai-based company offers a full range of call center services, including phone support, e-mail answering, and live chat support
“Customer service and strong business ethics have always been the cornerstones of Ramshyam Communications Limited’s offshore call center services,” said Periwal. “Lowering our prices to help our clients pull through a recession period is the most obvious way we can make sure our customer service and business ethics are the best in the call center industry. Lowered call center expenses free up our clients’ resources to focus on keeping their businesses viable right now.”
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Last month’s deployment of AT&T’s U-verse Voice in my home represented a fundamental shift in the way I look at my residential telephony service. And now, with today’s introduction of its HomeManager™ product offering, the phone company as we no longer know it, is extending the value chain in helping me integrate and manage all of my IP services in the home.
Read AT&T Press Release here.
Here’s my review, shot in my home, here:
Overview
The AT&T HomeManager consists of three devices: the HomeManager Frame, HomeManager Handset, and HomeManager Base.
The HomeManager Frame is a cordless touch screen device with a vivid 7 inch color display that provides easy access to your address book, as well as your call logs, voice mail, Yellow Pages and White pages, weather, news, email calendar digital photos and videos – and it’s a speaker phone. It has the look and feel of a scaled down tablet PC and could be a hint of form factors to come, especially in light of Intel’s recent announcement of its Urban Max prototype displayed last month.
The HomeManager Handset is what it is- a handset but with the feel of something more like a Cisco, Nortel or Avaya office IP phone you see in the enterprise.
The HomeManager Base which hooks into the Residential Gate way serves as a means to connect to the Frame and Handset.
First Impressions:
It looks really cool. Especially the HomeManager Frame.
It was easy to install.
I was up and going in about 10 minutes. The directions are easy to read and follow.
The HomeManager Frame got me thinking about how I consume and apply information. In the case of Yellow Pages, the HomeManager Frame is a great application – and a better application than having Yellow Pages on U-verse TV. Frankly, Yellow Pages on U-verse TV is slow and cumbersome. But on the HomeManager Frame it’s fast and easy to use. Oh- by the way, I still use the paper version of the Yellow Pages which sits on a shelf in the kitchen.
While you can get your email on the HomeManager Frame, it’s sort of clunky and not as elegant as checking or composing email or texts on my iPhone. The HomeManager Frame also comes with a pen stylus for tapping text instead of using your fingers.
The address book is a good idea, but you are out of luck in trying to sync it if you have an iPhone. If you are a subscriber to the AT&T Mobile Backup Service, you can set your address book to automatically sync with your AT&T mobile phone address book on select phones. (If you have an iPhone, I highly recommend the MobileMe service which syncs your PC/iPhone/and your .Me account in the cloud).
One thing that the HomeManager Frame does display – and can be your screen saver, is the weather. This is a case where this type of device lends itself best for a certain type of information that I want to have at my disposal.
The lesson here is that there is no one device or communications platform that can be all things to all consumers. The other lesson is that slowly but surely, AT&T is helping me build out a small-scale enterprise network in my home with service options that can be deployed on a variety of hardware platforms. At the end of the day, it can be my TV, my PC, my wireless device, or now my Frame.
Pricing:
The basic HomeManager offering is on sale starting today for $299. Additional handsets are available for $69 each. I wonder why AT&T doesn’t offer a $100 rebate if you sign up for U-verse, or at the very least, let you put 10 non-interest payments of $29 per month on your phone bill.
Availability:
You may purchase your HomeManager today in the following major AT&T markets: Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles. I assume others will follow as they roll the product out.
Highly Recommended
Source: www.voip-news.com
There is a great article on TimesOnline of the UK — it’s one of those things that takes all the guesswork out of choosing the right service.
See, after testing out different VoIP services, the TimesOnline named the best VoIP services for a variety of uses. What should you use if use Wi-Fi only? What about for an easy install? How about to use on an iPhone? Totally handy.
Source: www.voip-news.com
BusinessWeek is looking for people who are using mobile VoIP services to interview. Read about it here.
Meanwhile, the folks at VoIP Supply are looking for VoIP users to weigh in on what they should add to their catalog. To get in on the discussion, click here.
How can you know if VoIP is right for your business? RingCentral has a list of questions to help you decide. Read them here.
Source: www.voip-news.com
Digium has announced the keynote speakers for AstriCon ‘08. Brian Aker from Sun Microsystems/MySQL and Stefan Öberg from Skype will keynote the conference for expert developers and Asterisk telephony platform users.
Aker is an open source hacker who is the Director of Architecture for My SQL AB. He will give a speech called The Parallel Evolution of MySQL; One Foot in the Commercial World and the other in the Open Source Community.
Öberg is the Vice President and General Manager for Skype Telecom and Skype for Business. He will speak about VoIP for businesses.
“Digium is dedicated to making AstriCon into the largest, most exciting Asterisk community event,” said Mark Spencer, creator of Asterisk and Digium’s chief technology officer. “Every year we look forward to offering both experts and those new to Asterisk insight to the new frontiers of our application by providing expert speakers and a variety of informative tracks. Plus, I’m always looking forward to late nights at the Code Zone portion of the conference where we get some really great ideas, innovation and code from our developers and users.”
According to Digium:
AstriCon will be held from September 23-25 at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel & Spa in Glendale, Ariz. FierceVoIP and TMCnet will serve as media sponsors and Polycom and Sangoma will be the platinum sponsors for the event. There is a pre-conference tutorial day on September 23rd with various introductory as well as developer tracks. Registration is open at www.astricon.net.
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
Whenever I read about new and emerging technologies such as Ultra High Definition, I really get excited about the next step up in HD.
Sure, I know it may be a couple of years out before brands like Sony or Samsung have them sitting at my local Bjorn’s or Best Buy, but it let’s me plan my upgrade path for new TV’s in the family room, and, budget allowing, other bedrooms.
With all the wonders of having all this great high quality video in my home, common sense begs the question: how will I be able to ship Ultra HD from room to room, especially in the network I am gradually building out in my home.
By the end of this year, AT&T is supposed to be delivering on its vision for what they call Whole Home DVR – giving me the ability to have content on a single DVR device and then view the content in other rooms over my existing wiring scheme.
That’s all fine and good, what about the needed bandwidth to handle this UHTV load? In the next generation of home networking standards, G.hn – which AT&T is supporting - will solve this– and other issues. G.hn will deliver a true gigabit home network – all over existing wires like coax, phone lines – even electrical wires.
There’s also a company called CopperGate (a client I have done PR work for) whose HomePNA chips go in every set top box and residential gateway that AT&T (and other service providers) delivers to your home. They’ve already announced they will have G.hn chips out as early as next year.
Aside from Ultra HD, I know that AT&T is trying to further distinguish it U-verse service from the cable and satellite providers by offer new service offerings in my home. G.hn appears to be the default standard by which service providers like AT&T will shift to in the years to come
Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com
I decided not to fight the crowds after all on Friday.
I did go by the store at the Quarry in San Antonio just to see who was there and who was doing what. I had real work to do and was getting ready to leave town - en route to South Padre Island for the weekend.
I did try to download the updated version of iTunes and like many reported in the media, I too ran into the apparent outage and overall fuck-up where I guess they (Apple / AT&T) did not allow for scale.
Even the day before, I mystery shopped three stores and when I started asking detail questions about the deployment I got a bunch of blank stares, when it went beyond stating the obvious.
I am sure both Apple and AT&T are not going to have a problem selling millions of the devices. What is unforgiving to me is that this is, after all, is the phone company who is supposed to have the most advanced communications network in the world, the biggest backbone, the fastest fiber, the best of the best.
It was not like the scaling issue was going to be a surprise and they did not know that this was going to be in huge demand.
All of this just does make sense, common sense, and just good business sense to me.
