VoIP

Breaking News - Avaya to IPO

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:19:30 +0100

For the third* time in 16 years, Avaya will be going public to sell $1 billion worth of the company (how much of the company that represents is not clear) as announced in a press release earlier this afternoon. Avaya is not the same company you might recall in recent times. It is the combined entity of Avaya and Nortel Enterprise with a much larger sales footprint in North America channels, managed services including telepresence professional services and the recently announced discontinued BCM (...

Stop the Presses! Avaya Enables Connections to Carrier!

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:30:03 +0100

What? Avaya announced yesterday with some attempted fanfare that they've signed some kind of strategic agreement to interconnect their products with the global telephone company, Skype. Yawn. Isn't that what IP PBXes are supposed to do?Next. Thankfully, I was being briefed by a few really innovative companies and missed the all hands on deck presentations. Instead, I spent my time reviewing features that very few companies are doing - not wasted listening to the trivial feature described as ext...

WHAT? Cisco Wants to Buy Skype?

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:05:54 +0100

I almost fell out my chair today. I heard from a friend (incidentally over Skype) that Cisco was planning to pre-empt Skype's IPO and wanted to acquire the service provider for as much as $5 billion. Then, I read about it on the Wall Street Journal, and over at CNet. What a joke. I am down on this initiative for a couple reasons: Cisco-Skype would be competing with Cisco's biggest channels and customers, who have been loyally purchasing Cisco's margin-rich routers and switches for years. Those c...

Skype Statistics 1H2010

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:16:53 +0100

Further to Paul's note about the upcoming Skype IPO, here's the statistics update as of June 30, 2010.

Hyped up on Skype!

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:53:06 +0100

If you haven't heard, Skype is going public. It's Initial Public Offering is expect to be about $100 million dollars and represents only about 5% of the company's equity. Given that the company is worth something like $2 billion (based on the eBay divestiture), and is generating tons of cash, creating a market for Skype shares seems like a sound proposition. Skype is the internet app company that enables Internet calls computer-to-computer including video calls, for free. It makes 90% of its mo...

Weirdest WSJ Article?

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:23:29 +0100

The Wall Street Journal is not generally known for flaky reporting, so whenever that happens, I think it's newsworthy - especially when it's about telecom or communications or topics that we're interested in. This article, Firms Hope Deal will Shape Net-Neutrality Law, in the reporter's defense, does say "Details are scarce." Apparently, Verizon and Google, who already partner on mobile devices and mobile search, have reached some kind of agreement to allow application-based network management (...

Broadview Networks

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:39:06 +0100

I had a briefing last month with Russell Fordyce, Managing Director of Marketing for Broadview Networks, the acquirer of [[CLEC]]s now operating in 47 states, but primarily in the Northeast from Maine through Virginia. They have 3,000 route miles of fiber, offer a complete suite of carrier and hosted services for enterprises including MPLS services. Rollups are an efficient method for aggregating small operations in like businesses into a larger scale competitor. They have been particularly suc...

Is Google Voice Ready for Business?

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:32:10 +0100

Google Voice is going to define what [[unified communications]] means for millions of consumers. Although in limited trials for about the past year (maybe longer but my memory of these things is a little weak), as of June 2010 it is available throughout the US. It's looking to kick Skype in the teeth. I suppose that with its extensive features, incredibly low price (nothing) and marketing muscle that is all things Google, we should expect to see millions of subscribers in no time. But, my quest...

Sangoma Introduces New Appliance - Transcoder

Mon, 31 May 2010 18:08:58 +0100

I had a briefing with Frederic Dickey, the Montreal-based Director of PLM for Sangoma, last week where we discussed the company's new products and focus going forward. This session was triggered by VoiceCon (now EnterpriseConnect), which took place earlier in May. Sangoma, has been a fast growing publicly traded (TSXV:STC) manufacturer of communications interface cards and software with standard computer form factors. Products are typically deployed in IP PBX, IVR select IP routers and other t...

Adtran Takes Step Forward With ObjectWorld Deal

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:09:29 +0100

ADTRAN, the $500 million Huntsville Alabama manufacturer of over 1,700 products, acquired in September 2009 the Ottawa Canada Microsoft-focused unified communications company, ObjectWorld. More recently, ADTRAN announced the Netvanta UC portfolio, which incorporates the rebranded ObjectWorld offering. The Netvanta portfolio includes a wide range of busines-oriented communications products including SIP trunking gateways for hosted service providers (Netvanta 6000 series gateways), gateways for C...

Avaya Announces New UC Roadmap

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:11:04 +0100

Today, on the same day as the Massachusetts special election for the US Senate (Go Scott Brown), Avaya announces its roadmap for the Avaya-Nortel integration. Wes Durow, the Global Marketing VP mentions that this is only 30 days after the completion of the transaction. Key points: No to Rip'n'Replace. Yes to Plug'n'Play. Plug Aura on top of your Nortel or Avaya-branded IP PBX, plug communications-enabled business applications into Aura. Since Aura is SIP-driven, it will reduce telecom costs,...

IT Expo: Sangoma Introduces NetBorder Express Gateway

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:47:34 +0100

After winding down from my trip to Los Angeles and IT Expo the other week, I had a telephone briefing with Serge Forest, the VP Marketing at Sangoma, the publicly-traded Canadian card designer and card manufacturer because our calendars couldn't align at the event. I've been watching Sangoma for some time as they are a major partner of a friend of mine serving the Caribbean and Latin American markets as an open source distributor, and I met the CEO, David Mandelstam, at IT Expo East. Sangoma ha...

ITExpo: Ooma.com - A Different Approach To Home Phone

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:03:33 +0100

The home phone is not dead. Richard Buchanan gave me a 30-minute overview of one of the most interesting companies that I met at ITExpo last week. The CMO of the 5-year-old startup talked about the company's current operation and plans for an upcoming release. Founded in 2004 and shipping product late in 2007, the company offers a SIP gateway appliance and a network service that attaches to the broadband network for a one-time $240 retail price. The consumer takes the appliance home from BestBu...

Skype Goes Private

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:48:58 +0100

eBay announced this morning that they'll be selling a majority stake (65%) of Skype to Silver Lake Partners and others for $1.9 billion. The deal values the world's largest international phone company (by revenue and minutes) at $2.92 billion, a 12% premium over the company's original acquisition price of $2.6 billion, although a much higher premium over eBay's valuation on the balance sheet. Note that Skype's goodwill was written down by $900 million (35%) in October 2007. Silver Lake Partners...

Skype Statistics in Q1 2009

Fri, 08 May 2009 14:24:30 +0100

With the upcoming IPO, Skype is out marketing itself and its capabilities as a growing enterprise. GigaOm presented a nice candlestick graph showing growth in revenue - now producing $153 million/quarter up some 21% over first quarter 2008. With 445 million subscribers, there really aren't too many clubs that are as large as this, except maybe Catholicism or Google neither of which keeps track of your password. Interesting Skype minute statistics: 23.6 billion skype-to-skype minut...

All-in-One Doesn't Impress

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:33:05 +0100

While attending VoiceCon Orlando last week, I met up with Rich Chin and Brad Herrington, two product marketing managers from Interactive Intelligence, the successful Windows-based IP PBX, contact center and voicemail solution provider. With 3,600 installations in 88 countries, the company earns 20% of its revenues through a direct sales organization with the remainder coming from a global network of resellers and systems integrators. The applications have been Windows since inception and SIP-enab...

Skype-SIP Gateway Service

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:38:51 +0100

Expanding its existing Skype for Business dashboard, Skype for Asterisk, the latest capability called Skype for SIP, is a new service that allows Skype users to communicate with any SIP-supported enterprise extension. The application writeup in NetworkWorld really lacked an realistic usecase. My view of the implementation is that the service allows Skype to be the softphone for the enterprise to complement the company's relationship with VoSky and their Skype gateway which is...

Alteva - Hosted Unified Communications

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:36:52 +0100

VoIP services for consumers has been a tough market because of the broad scope of services required, the burdensome regulatory requirements, and the fickleness of consumer preferences. Just ask Vonage whose prospects are looking worse even as both AT&T and Verizon cancel their IP-equivalent services. Note that Comcast is now the nation's 3rd largest residential phone service provider. So, competition for residential dialtone services isn't just from VoIP, it's from cablecos a...

WideBand Codec Wars?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:49:51 +0100

According to Doug Mohney of FierceVoIP, Skype will announce today (no press release on Skype.com at 2:33 pm EST (GMT-5)) a royalty-free access to the SILK wideband codec used by Skype, with the goal of 'unlocking one of the major obstacles in the migration from narrowband, ' per Skype GM Jonathan Christensen. The software to be published is an Internet-specific speech codec available in C (so it can be easily compiled for any OS) and is able to sample at 24 kHz, work at variable bi...

Voype Enters The US VoIP Market

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:23:32 +0100

While at ITExpo in Miami Beach earlier this month, I came across an offer from Telefonica, the Spanish telco that over the years I have admired a great deal. In the 1990s, as the diverstiture craze swept Brazil and Argentina and Chile and Colombia, Telefonica dominated the auctions for pieces of the South American telcos and mobile operators. The natural ties between Europe and South America haven't been particularly friendly in the 20th century since Simon Bolivar led revolutions throughout ...