Source: www.voip-news.com

Packet8 hit a service snag this week thanks to a DNS issue. Read about it on VoIP & Gadgets Blog.

The VOIP Weblog is talking about Skydeck.

Nimbuzz won an award. Read about it on VoIP News of the UK.

Andy Abramson is so not impressed by the Verizon Hub. Read about it on VoIP Watch.

Source: www.voip-news.com

8×8, the makers of Packet8, has joined the Internet Society (ISOC) as a Silver Member.

“We are proud to join such an important and influential society which works to ensure there is
not undue pressure exerted over the rights of all individuals to an open Internet, free of
influence by any one corporation or special interest group,” said 8×8 Chief Technology Officer
Marc Petit-Huguenin.

Packet8 will be among the organizational member that participates in the activities of the Internet Society’s Advisory Council.

“8×8 has developed products and services in the past that are designed to be used in any
open, neutral network such as the Internet. As we continue to develop further innovative
platforms, services, and technologies, we need to ensure that the power and potential of the
Internet remains with every end-user and is not usurped by businesses or groups who would
restrict access or employ technologies that are incompatible with this goal.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

The new Packet8/Microsoft Response Point small business phone solution was awarded Best In Show at Technology Marketing Corporation’s INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West 2008, for Best SMB Solution.

To read more about the solution, click here.

“The presence of outstanding companies like 8×8, Inc. with their award winning solutions help to validate ITEXPO’s status as the leading forum for the VoIP and IP communications industry,” said TMC President and Conference Chairman, Rich Tehrani. “Service providers, enterprise buyers, developers, and resellers come to ITEXPO, because they know they’ll find solutions, from innovative companies like 8×8 that can help their businesses today.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

Microsoft and 8×8 Inc. have created an agreement to allow 8×8’s Packet8 to be used for Microsoft’s Response Point small business phone system.

“We are very pleased to provision Packet8’s broadband agnostic VoIP phone service for Microsoft’s innovative Response Point platform,” said 8×8 chairman and CEO Bryan Martin. “Our combined solution will allow small businesses, regardless of location or network configuration, to experience the benefits of advanced IP telephony technology while dramatically reducing recurring monthly phone charges. With accessible and compelling telecommunications alternatives like this, no company should feel forced to settle for inadequate, high priced or overly complex telephony systems from legacy telecom providers.”

The two companies plan to jointly market the solution.

“As a leader in VOIP telephony, 8×8 has been providing small businesses with affordable, easy-to-use voice services that match the needs of Microsoft Response Point customers,” said Xuedong Huang, general manager for Microsoft Response Point. “Businesses choosing the Microsoft Response Point phone system with Packet8 service are assured reliable, high quality, fully compliant phone service provisioned by one of the industry’s most respected VoIP providers.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

Packet8 had an outage this week and Tom Keating at TMC was hot on the story. It’s really interesting to see how the story unfolded in a short time (love the updates). Read it here.

VoIP Watch makes a good point about news that moves a little too fast – Level 3 really had little to do with the outage but got dragged into it by association. That is one of the flaws of the new model for newsflow. Read the VoIP Watch story here.

Checking out this story on The VoIP Weblog is worthwhile – even if it’s only for the artwork. The story points to two good resources to help you get started using VoIP.

Source: www.voip-news.com

8×8 has been busy lately.

The latest? Packet8 Virtual Office hosted PBX small business phone systems are now available on Staples.com.

“We are very pleased to offer Staples customers an opportunity to join the thousands of other small businesses who are saving time and money every month, while increasing worker productivity, by using the Packet8 Virtual Office business phone system,” said 8×8 Vice President of Marketing & Sales Huw Rees. “In this tough economic climate, enterprises of every size are examining their day to day operating expenses and identifying areas where cost savings could be achieved. Switching to Packet8 Virtual Office phone service not only accomplishes this objective, it provides small businesses with a digital quality, feature rich telephony solution that is customizable and scalable as their needs and requirements change.”

The system currently costs $79.99, after a $50 mail-in rebate.

“Staples.com is a central resource that makes it easy for our small business customers to increase their workplace productivity,” said Jessica Forzese-Nichols, product category manager, Staples Business Delivery. “Packet8 Virtual Office phone service is a great addition to the broad range of office products and services Staples offers online.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

8×8, Inc. has new services now that can replace traditional premise-based telephone “key systems” used by companies where employees share common phone lines, regardless of location. The new Packet8 hosted Internet Protocol (IP) telephony features the Packet8 675xi series of IP desktop phones. It also adds shared line appearance services to the Packet8 Virtual Office platform.

“With the introduction of the Packet8 hosted key system solution, 8×8 has expanded its addressable market to include the millions of businesses that require shared line appearance services rather than the PBX functionality offered with our Packet8 Virtual Office hosted iPBX solution,” said 8×8 Vice President of Sales & Marketing Huw Rees. “Our new line of IP phones has enabled us to deploy one of the first hosted key system services in the world, enabling businesses to benefit from the lower costs associated with VoIP while maintaining the familiar key system feature set they are used to. As with all of our other business services, we also maintain the capability of having the IP phones situated at any location anywhere in the world, enabling one of the first distributed, hosted, multi-office/home-office shared line appearance services in the market.”

The system also includes searchable corporate directories, direct intercom paging and shared line appearance functionality.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Got an Apple iPhone? Well, Packet8 MobileTalk international calling service now supports your phone. With international calling rates as low as $0.01 to China, using the service could be a good deal.

The application doesn’t need you to download software, but it does use a custom web-based dialer that uses a data plan or WiFi connection.

“With the tremendous adoption rate of Apple’s first generation iPhone and today’s release of the new 3G version, the potential market for the Packet8 MobileTalk service has increased exponentially,” said 8×8 Vice President of Sales & Marketing Huw Rees. “The iPhone version of MobileTalk is even simpler to install than our version for other smart phones and our beta users were generally thrilled with its ease of use and quality.”

Source: gigaom.com

Source: www.voip-news.com

8×8, Inc. has released Packet8 Virtual Trunking. It is a broadband agnostic IP trunking solution that lets businesses take advantage of VoIP savings while retaining existing phone hardware.

“Many businesses are motivated to migrate to VoIP phone service to take advantage of cost and performance efficiencies, but are reluctant to do so because they already own or are leasing an on-premise business phone system,” said 8×8 Vice President of Marketing & Sales Huw Rees. “The Packet8 Virtual Trunking solution now enables these companies to realize significant savings on their monthly phone bills while using their existing equipment and data network. Unlike other trunking solutions that require a dedicated access line or data connection, Virtual Trunking, as with all Packet8 VoIP services, is broadband agnostic and will operate over any high speed network connection from any location worldwide. These virtual trunks will also provide a conduit for the provision of additional IP services over time, thereby expanding and enhancing the value of customers’ investments in existing phone system equipment.”

It’s ideal for the company with a costly phone system that they don’t want to replace.

“We believe that two-thirds of all U.S. businesses will have some form of VoIP phone service by 2011, whether it’s a hosted PBX service, an IP-PBX switch or a hybrid solution,” said In-Stat Senior Research Analyst David Lemelin.

Source: www.voip-news.com

8×8, Inc. has released Packet8 Virtual Office CTI for Salesforce.com’s AppExchange Marketplace. The Computer Telephony Integration application has enhanced tools including onscreen dialing and contact-driven screen pops along with an integrated phone solution that offers high-quality digital voice and hosted iPBX features.

“We are pleased to offer salesforce.com customers integrated access to the Packet8 Virtual Office hosted iPBX service and to provide our existing Virtual Office subscribers with this new feature at no extra charge,” said 8×8 Chairman & CEO Bryan R. Martin. “Businesses that depend heavily on Salesforce to manage their critical sales and marketing functions will benefit from the efficiency of making, receiving and tracking calls directly from their contact database along with the even greater performance and cost advantages associated with using the Virtual Office business phone solution.”

To try Packet8 Virtual Office CTI, click here.

“Thousands of companies are using the AppExchange to extend the benefits of Software-as-a-Service applications throughout their enterprises,” said Clarence So, chief marketing officer, salesforce.com. “Now small and medium sized businesses can deploy Packet8 via the AppExchange to improve operational efficiency and cut costs.”

Source: goebel.net

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In the last weeks I received many messages from people who want to start a lawsuit against the VoIP company Betamax from Cologne, Germany. They feel betrayed by the mothership of Voipstunt, Voipcheap, Sparvoip, Lowratevoip, Nonoh and other offers. Something must have gone wrong with their billing or they believe that Betamax wrongfully charged too much. Aside from the problem that Betamax themselves are apparently victim of a scam, I can only say that for me everything works flawlessly. But I get the impression that many users don’t understand the company’s Terms of Service. This morning a Betamax user called Robert wrote:

The company I work for happens to be in Moscow so I call them regularly. Why do they suddenly want to charge me for these calls? It doesn’t make any difference whether I call the U.S.A., Italy or Russia. They are all free and perhaps I call Moscow three times a day but perhaps twice a week.

I told him to first look at the website http://backsla.sh/betamax. There you can always see the latest prices and you will realize that with most Betamax companies you can call Russia’s landline phones for free, within a Fair Use Policy (FUP) of 300 minutes per week. This FUP seems very fair to me. I never exceed it, so Betamax’ normally works like a flatrate for me.

In fact I am very surprised about their cheap prices for Russia, because I know that connections outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow are very expensive to buy in wholesale markets. Therefore e. g. Rebtel users have to pay $0.019 Cents to Moscow and St. Petersburg landlines – but $0.079 Cents to other Russian cities. So Betamax’ $0.00 Cent is a great bargain. For the German company it makes a big price difference whether they terminate calls in the U.S.A., Italy or in Russia. Although it might be difficult to explain to the average user like Robert.

Now I see that calls, which were originally free, are now being charged under the ‘fair use policy’. This I don’t understand.

There can be two reasons for that:

1.) Robert calls for more then 300 minutes per week.

2.) He shares his IP number with other users, so that Betamax thinks that it’s only one user. That’s what happened at Voxalot, a virtual internet PBX: All Voxalot users had the same IP number to Betamax. Therefore they jointly exceeded the FUP very fast. Voxalot managed to strike an agreement with Betamax to pass the original IP number, so that every user now has his own FUP.

So, if Betamax charges for actual free calls, there might be a technical problem. Otherwise it seems a great bargain to me to get 1.200 minutes per month from Betamax for just 2.50. (Taking into account that that you have to pay 10 every four months to get the 0.00 to Russian landlines.) People should also consider what user satphoneguy wrote in Voxalot’s forum:

having lived in many parts of the world I think that a lot of what is happening is relate to cultural differences and expectation of customer service. from what i have read the vast majority of complaints are coming from the USA. here in the USA it is somewhat expected that if you are unhappy with a service or feel deceived by misleading marketing that you should be eligible for refund on what you spent. most American companies do indeed give 100% refunds to their customers no questions asked when they complain. i do know from having lived overseas that is not the business etiquette everyplace. there are a number of reasons why many people may feel deceived since the betamax ‘fair use policies’ are not very clear. in particular concerning additional charges for use of SIP devices on some services. it is all exasperated in that americans also feel that every company should have a customer service line where they can call with questions(or complaints) or at very least email support with a quick turnaround to response(same day)

i do have to say though that it seems many people who complain about numerous betamax companies continue to try the others. this is very similar to what i dealt with working for a very large retail company – some of the biggest complainers and returners of products for refunds were also some of the biggest shoppers; i would see them on nearly a daily basis.

i personally have never had a billing issue with betamax. although in recent months my only funded account is nonoh; since the rates are so much less for the mobile destinations that i call than with any of the SIP options and i have unlimited calls to NA and most landlines through another provider.

Many people in Europe accept a lousy service, as long as it’s cheap. But others expect a great service although they pay nearly nothing. That’s just not possible to deliver for a company. Good service always has its price, especially in a country with sky-high wages like Germany. People who want more than just plain phone minutes should subscribe to companies like PhoneGnome, Packet8 or Sipgate which have real hotlines by phone and email for their clients. That’s what I also told Robert, who finally admitted:

I suppose, like most people, I never fully read the ‘Terms of Use’, although in these terms there is no exact reason mentioned and more than that, there is no exact time limit per country or city mentioned where this might be relatively easy as an adder to the price information.

Please always have a look at the small print at the end of every Betamax web page!

* Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days and per unique IP address. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded the normal rates apply. With your FREE DAYS you can call for free to all the destinations listed as free! When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply. You can get extra Freedays by buying credit

They say it very clear that free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week and IP address. That’s not too difficult to understand, isn’t it? What still remains a mistery to me, is the sentence When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply.

What are these normal rates after 300 minutes? I couldn’t find them either.