Source: www.voip-news.com
Wi-Fi Planet reports that the iPhone is getting some much-needed updates to improve VoIP service.
The other VoIP News reports that Tesco has launched VoIP service over there. And it’s pretty darn inexpensive.
Zahir’s Blog has the scoop on the lowest long distance rates . . . and they aren’t coming from traditional phone service.
Source: www.voip-news.com
For those who might need to record a VoIP call, there is a new service from CallCopy. CallCopy Essential is a new VoIP call recording solution that can capture and archive both incoming and outgoing calls. It’s intended for use by small businesses to better customer service and increase productivity.
The CallCopy Essential base package includes online storage for more than 34,000 hours of audio, licensing for five concurrent recording channels, remote installation, Web-based training and online support. Essential is powered by a 1U Dell Server. For more information on CallCopy’s call recording solutions, visit www.callcopy.com or call 888-922-5526.
Source: www.voip-news.com
Mac and Linux users can now make computer to phone VoIP calls with Raketu’s RakOut WebPhone. The program is in beta. The service doesn’t require any downloading.
To try the service, go to http://www.raketu.com/rakoutweb.html.
Source: www.voip-news.com
This is all a little spy-movie-esk for me.
Have you ever had a fuzzy VoIP call? Well, it might not be just a bad connection. It could be someone intercepting your call and inserting secret messages into the packet. No, not kidding.
According to New Science Tech:
Wojciech Mazurczyk and Krzysztof Szczypiorski, information scientists at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland, revealed last week that they are developing a “steganographic” system for VoIP networks (www.arxiv.org/abs/0805.2938). Steganography is the art of hiding messages by embedding them in ordinary communications.
A little freaky, no?
Via Slashdot.
Source: www.voip-news.com
Switching to a VoIP call center might be convenient, but you need to make sure you maintain quality control. Having polite, friendly call center reps is important, but so is having the right resources and tracking performance.
According to VoIP News:
Most companies simply don’t have the on-site manpower, expertise and technical resources to keep constant tabs on the ongoing performance of their agents and network. In fact, a recent study by The Taylor Reach Group reported that 60 percent of organizations surveyed said that in the past six months, they experienced at least one month where they failed to meet the standard number of monitors required by their organization.
For a good resource on maintaining quality control at your VoIP call center, check out this article on VoIP News.
Source: voipcentral.org
US-based SunRocket has agreed to make use of DigiLinea Latin American VoIP Network to offer enriched and low cost direct call termination to different regions in Latin America.
DigiLinea is regarded as one of leading VoIP infrastructure and service providers to the US Hispanic and Latin American Markets. Its VoIP network in Latin America ensures proper routs for VoIP call termination to different service providers.
SunRocket always aims at providing customized VoIP services to the customers and reduce termination costs on calls to Latin America. The adoption of DigiLinea Network will not only help the VoIP giant to achieve in its mission to offer customized offerings but also increase revenue and profit per line.
In a statement to the press, DigiLinea CEO and Chairman, Gregory Keough said,
Internet phone service providers recognize that Latinos spend more per month on telecom services then other demographic groups due to their high volume of calling to and from Latin America. We are pleased SunRocket has chosen our next generation platform for call termination to the Latin America market.
Ensuring crystal clear VoIP calls to the customers determines effectiveness of a VoIP service. In this context, SunRockets association with DigiLinea assumes greater significance.
Source: voipcentral.org
One of the greatest disadvantages of VoIP is call failure that disturbs entire communication process. Nearly 3.1 percent of all VoIP calls fail to reach their destination. The rate is merely 0.01 percent in case of traditional telephone services, Business Week Magazine claims.
Taking a remarkable step to ensure cent percent VoIP call completion, Eyeball has developed a software module, AnyFirewall Engine that would work on Smartphones ensuring 100 percent call completions anywhere in the world.
To a large extent, the increasing use of Internet has caused a phenomenal shortage of Internet real estate or IP addresses. To overcome this problem, the service providers often use NAT (Network Address Translation) to conceal many private addresses in a single public address, which hampers VoIP calls.
Chirs Piche, CEO of Eyeball acknowledges,
Until now, firewall and NAT traversal has been the biggest obstacle to VoIP adoption.Eyeball has pioneered VoIP call completion since 2001 and we are delighted to make our innovation available to industry partners worldwide through the release of AnyFirewall Engine.
As of now, Eyeball has reached out an agreement with Smartphone giant Nokia to provide its AnyFirewall technology .It means Nokia users can expect perfect VoIP calls while using Smartphones.
Source: voipcentral.org
In the month of July this year, Brix Networks has reported that nearly 20 percent of all VoIP calls had unacceptable quality. Following the report, the companies are developing new technologies to eradicate the age-old VoIP problem.
According to this source, Canadian VoIP outfit Nortel Networks has come up with a managed VoIP service system that monitors IP telephony networks 24 hours for enriched voice quality and network operation.
Called as Managed VoIP Service with Proactive Voice Quality Management, the newest system facilitates real-time monitoring of voice quality from network to handsets and detects traverse of unwanted traffics in a network.
The Nortel Monitoring System troubleshoots when call quality falls below the standard via techniques like trace routes. It provides solutions to ease the problem.
It is now available at Nortels North America Network Management Center in Raleigh, New York.
Source: voipcentral.org
For the last 15 days, I have been reading the intellectual comments on the finding of the Brix Networks report that tentatively mentioned that VoIP call quality is constantly deteriorating. Figuratively, all most 77 percent of the VoIP calls made by May 2006 were quite unacceptable.
The report has led further research around the VoIP world so that necessary steps would be taken to improve call quality. Finding the cause is perhaps the first step towards solution.
Therefore, NetworkWorlds hard work to find out the factors that affect call quality assumes much significant for the voice world. I have referred NetworkWorlds post on Factors that affect VoIP call quality to add some fact on my previous write-ups on VoIP call quality.
Factors behind the poor VoIP call quality
The first factor is the VoIP CODEC (Coder/Decoder) that is used to turn sound waves into digital packet. It makes VoIP packet to be transmitted through a digital transmission line and then decoded into sound. The CODEC also condenses the packet to get utmost effectiveness from the network.
NetworkWorld says,
How well the CODEC converts speech to digital packets (and back again) is a possible factor which can effect call quality.
Loss or Discard of VoIP packet can be another factor for the poor VoIP call quality. The packet discard is likely to loss a lot of speech when VoIP is highly compressed by the CODEC. The NetworkWorld explains, The more highly compressed the voice packet, the greater the amount of conversation lost when a packet is discarded.
Another factor is the distance between the calling parties. The greater the distance between the caller and receiver, the degree of latency is high.
Jitter as we know is an abrupt and unwanted variation of one or more signal characteristics can be yet another cause for poor VoIP call quality
