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Buy your telephone system at Costco ?
2008-06-03 11:27:00
Well an interesting twist for the PBX market - you can now go to costco.com for your IP PBX. The warehouse wholesaler who is better known for its discount prices and free food samples will now be selling Quanta Computer’s Syspine Digital Operator Phone System which is based on Microsoft’s Response Point phone system ...
More About: Telephone , Costco

Trixbox moves away from FreePBX
2008-05-23 16:42:00
We like to try and keep an eye on what happens in the Asterisk community and we have always liked the Trixbox CE product, well it seems there is a real spat going on with Trixbox. Trixbox began life as Asterisk@Home, and was later rebranded as Trixbox. Asterisk in it’s early life did not have a ...
More About: Moves

SIP is SIP ???
2008-05-19 11:04:00
We have been working with the SIP protocol for a few years now and we are big fans of it and how it has moved the VoIP industry forward together as one without the need for larger manufacturers or developers using their size to ‘force’ standards forward. So what do we mean when we say SIP ...

FMC is dead long live?.???
2008-05-07 11:05:00
We are starting to see reports now that Fixed Mobile Convergence is dead and the new King in town is Mobile Unified Communications (MUC ???) So what does that mean ? - there has been a lot written about FMC and what it can or cannot do, essentially FMC brings the mobile user into the business ...
More About: Live , Dead , Long

Ringing Signals
2008-03-31 23:44:00
In this modern world of voice over IP and data signals we recently had a need to source some information on different Rinback signals used on analogue trunks. Ringback is the the actual bursts of ringing we hear when we call somebody. Each country has a different variation of timings used - in our particular ...
More About: General

iPhone goes open
2008-03-11 12:17:00
We see Apple have announced that they are now supporting third party applications for the iPhone including WiFi based VoIP. As mentioned in a previous blog Truphone have already released a demonstration model late last year, they have confirmed their interest here and indicated they would be developing a fully fledged application. Not only have Apple opened the iPhone up ...
More About: Iphone , Open

Femtocells Set to Take Off ?
2008-02-26 17:31:00
We are seeing these mentioned in the press a lot so decided to do some research so lets ask and answer a few questions about them What is a Femtocell?A Femtocell was originally known as an Access Point Base Station and is a small cellular base station, typically designed for use in the home or small business environments (SOHO). ...

Security Issue on Snom Phones
2008-02-15 10:54:00
We talk a lot about VoIP Security not because we want to sell you products but because it is an important and interesting subject. We see that a public hacking warning group has found a large security flaw in the web interface of Snom VoIP phones. The Snom phone is very popular with IP telephony business users and has a web interface to enable users to make calls and manage their phone. gnucitizen.org highlights some of the easy to do breaches. These include makiing arbitary calls via the Web interface, stealing the phone history from the logs,  poisoning the address book and the most serious flaw, monitoring the victim by making a phone call to the attacker’s number (at their expense). The gnucitizen.org group are a responsible group and they are publishing methods of how to make your Snom phone more secure and contacting Snom and their distributors to explain the flaws. While this article highlights Snom phones it is entirely possible that many other phones have similar ...
More About: Phones , Issue

BT are Dropping Fusion
2008-02-07 12:46:00
We see that BT have taken a decision to drop their Fusion FMC Solution, it was first launched in 2005 and was a really innovative offering for a Telco however BT has now dropped the Fusion FMC solution. The company had initially stated that it expected Fusion would generate around £1 billion from new mobile and convergence services ...

As We Suspected VoIP is no Joke :-)
2008-02-01 10:49:00
We saw an interesting article over on the Inquirer stating that VoIP calls struggle to convey humour. The problem is the range of frequencies used by regular land line telephones is far wider beacause VoIP calls use compression such as G729. The top and bottom end of the spectrums are cut off, and there is far less variation in tone available ...
More About: Skype , Joke , Voip

Dell Chooses Fonality Open Source
2008-01-25 16:11:00
We see that Dell has decided to offer the Fonality software as a bundled option on their servers - this is a real catch for Fonality as there are many other Asterisk based solutions that Dell could have chosen. This is a bold move by Dell but I guess we should not be surprised as it ...
More About: Open Source , Open , Source , Open-Source

RIP Netscape
2008-01-07 10:54:00
This post does not really have anything to do with VoIP but it caught our eye. It seems Time Warner AOL has announced that Netscape the internet browser will no longer be supported, they are instead recommending users move to the Open Source Firefox. We remember back when Netscape were fighting real hard against Microsoft who had ...
More About: General

Asterisk hits one Millionth Download
2008-01-02 12:46:00
Happy New Year to all our readers. Towards the end of December Digium announced the one millionth download of the Aster isk Open Source PBX- whatever you think of open source that is a pretty significant milestone and shows that this approach to PBX systems has to be seen now as a mainstream one. There are many ...
More About: Download , Hits

VoIP on the iPod Touch
2007-12-21 22:31:00
We love innovation here at Iridiacom and especially when it stretches a product to do something it was not originally designed for. Have a look over at http://touchmods.blog.com/ where a group calling themselves the iPod Touch Mods are about to release a SIP VoIP application for the Apple iPod Touch - they have had to overcome the limitation ...
More About: Ipod , Voip

Wireless VoIP or DECT ?
2007-12-19 17:59:00
Many users who are looking at implementing on site wireless communications naturally look at VoIP over wireless, but it seems a lot of companies are concerned about the security and reliability implications on Wireless . A survey from SAS Group of 100 IT and Telecoms Managers, revealed a lack of in house skills to support VoIP technology, ...
More About: Nokia , Voip

Is the SIP Protocol Too Open ?
2007-12-10 16:26:00
We regularly talk about Security issues on VoIP systems and we have seen a report over on lightreading.com that is saying as SIP is such an open protocol it is also open to security problems. With a loosely defined standard like SIP, interoperability issues occur, So whatever security measures might apply to one SIP implementation ...
More About: Open , Protocol , Proto

Are GSM Gateways Legal to Use ?
2007-12-01 18:38:00
We distribute a range of GSM Gateways (often called FCT - Fixed Cellular Terminals or Premicells - an old Nokia trade name) and we are often asked if they are legal to use or not.  The short answer is yes, OFCOM who are the industry regulator have confimed is is legal under UK law for organisations ...
More About: Legal

3Com to Sell an Asterisk Solution
2007-11-26 11:09:00
We see that 3Com have recently announced they are going to resell a version of Aster isk from Digium.  Designed for five to 30 phone users, it delivers plug-and-play operation right out of the box backed by 3Com’s warranty, service and support. The 3Com Asterisk Appliance works with 3Com’s full line of telephone handsets. This is a ...
More About: Sell , 3com , Solution

Is VoIP Next on the List for the Dreaded Spammers ???
2007-11-22 14:58:00
So here we go the dreaded Spammers are looking for other ways to hit us with their unwanted content. It has been reported that Hackers have attacked Columbia University, ironically this is the university where the co-author of the VoIP protocol resides. The hackers left marketing SPIT (spam over internet telephony) on multiple phone extensions at the ...
More About: Voip , List , The List

Nokia Makes SIP Support More Flexible
2007-11-13 15:20:00
We know that firms like Nokia have a difficult balancing act with their product capabilities, on one hand they have to please their large Network Provider customers who have to make profits from traffic on their expensive to run GSM and 3G networks and their are the end users who are demanding more flexibility from handsets ...
More About: Support , Flexible , Lexi

If You Can?t Beat Them?.Join Them
2007-11-05 13:36:00
We see that Mobile provider 3 has launched a handset that allows Skype calls over their 3G service. But while people using Skype on their computers are able to make cheap global calls to any phone number, this will not be possible via the new 3 handset, so Skype Out minutes will not be supported. This is ...
More About: Join , Beat

The PBX is Dead - Long Live the PBX?..!!!
2007-10-30 18:16:00
Those of us who are long in the tooth have heared this so many times that the PBX is dead. First of all the advent of server based systems meant no one would need a PBX and then when Asterisk Open Source was produced we were told that no one would buy ‘tin’any more so ...
More About: Microsoft , Live , Dead , Long

Call Forwarding Using SMS ?
2007-10-24 17:31:00
Regular readers will know we love unusual solutions to problems that we did not know exisisted, well here we have a hosted VoIP provider who has come up with a really neat feature. If you are away from the office and you need to forward your calls to where you are then just send an SMS ...
More About: Call , Forward , Forwarding

Phones Have Ears??.
2007-10-16 10:56:00
We picked this one up on a few VoIP security websites. It seems that an exploit has been found on a Grandstream VoIP phone that it could be forced to go off hook even when the handset is down so that the exploiter could be listening in plus this acts as a Denial of Service ...
More About: Phones , Ears

VoIP on the iPhone
2007-10-10 22:09:00
We see that Truphone have announced a demonstration of VoIP on the iPhone, this really flies in the face of the iPhone concept that has been locked to single Mobile Operators in the US (AT&T) and in the UK (O2). All of the Apple PR talks about the WiFi support but any mention of VoIP was ...
More About: Iphone , Voip

How to Open the SIP Client on a Nokia N95
2007-10-04 23:24:00
One of our team has upgraded to a Nokia N95 from Orange and they wanted to use the VoIP (Internet Telephony) but it was blocked. After some research we discovered that this has been done on N95 phones supplied by Orange (as well as some other Operators) so we looked at ways to overcome this, ...
More About: Open , Nokia N95 , Client

Could UMA be the Making of Dual Mode Phones ?
2007-09-26 00:19:00
We have seen that Nokia have announced the release of the new 6301 handset and it uses UMA (unlicensed mobile access) to make use of wireless hot spots for calls. However the killer feature is that it will hand a live GSM call over to a WiFi network if it is detected.  Besides saving minutes on a mobile ...
More About: Phones , Mode , Dual

Security Still Being Ignored.
2007-09-15 22:01:00
Regular readers will know that VoIP security is a hot issue with us and we saw an interesting Press Release on the National Computing Centre website, the NCC is a very well respected organisation. They have undertaken a survey that shows that only 15% of companies have any VoIP security on their networks. The survey was more ...
More About: Security