ooma

2007's top VoIP innovations

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:59:58 -0500

All in all, it was a pretty good year on the VoIP front. Along with rather depressing developments (can anyone say "SunRocket"?), there were many positive steps and great new products.

From Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Ooma's free calling appliance to great IP desk phones fro m Polycom and others, 2007 saw enough moves in the right direction to set up 2008 as a watershed year for VoIP deployment.

Perhaps the most important innovations for business VoIP users were the VoIP call-center systems (which even used Skype for enterprise calling) and the myriad tools that promised to make the transition from POTS to VoIP easier for customers both large and small.

For more:
VoIP-News has the complete list in a feature article here.

Related article:
Analyze the definition of success Report

House gives nod to VoIP E911

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:59:58 -0400

The FCC began levying fees on cable operators for access to E911 systems--now, Congress is ready to tell the telcos they must provide direct access to the E911 backbone for cable companies and other VoIP service providers.

Just out of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, the legislation is intended to make sure all phone customers have equal access to E911, regardless of the technology on which their calls are carried.

There's more to the bill, of course, including a requirement that the 911 Implementation and Coordination Office develop a plan for moving the national 911 infrastructure to an IP-based multi-mode system. The next step for the bill is the Energy and Commerce Committee.

For more:
- eWeek has the complete article here

Related articles:
FCC clarifies e911 accuracy requirements Report
Ooma chief talks with Fierce VoIP Interview

FierceVoIP hooks up an ooma Hub

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:09:02 -0400

FierceVoIP hooked up an ooma Hub over the weekend to check out the device-based VoIP service unveiled over the summer. Device-based VoIP is nothing new, as the folks at PhoneGnome and magicJack generously reminded us when ooma hit the scene with celebrity panache (spokesmodel Ashton Kutcher is ooma's creative director).

Click to view a larger image...

Device-based VoIP promises free domestic calls for the price of the gear, and the price of the gear appears to reflect the packaging. magicJack is a $40 USB device; PhoneGnome a $100 router; and ooma, a $400 designer box with a GUI that a relatively unambitious trade hack can figure out.

The elementary interface is one part of ooma's twofold conceit. The other is presentation. It arrives wrapped like a Tiffany crystal fruit bowl, only more secure. Do not get a manicure before unsheathing the ooma. The black box requires an unladylike amount of prying, shaking and tugging, but that's pretty much the most difficult part of set-up.

Like Dell Computer, the user manual writers at ooma went to the Ikea school of pictography, plus they added primary colors.

The ooma Hub is cabled via Ethernet between the computer and the DSL modem into ports respectively marked "home" and "modem." It takes its own phone line, which involves plugging a splitter into the DSL wall jack and running a line to the Hub connection marked "wall." Plug it into a "power" source and a "phone," and turn on the computer.

I run a Dell 8300 Dimension with too much junk operating in the background, so it took a few minutes for the computer to realize what just happened. I couldn't get an Internet connection at first, even though network access appeared normal. Internet Explorer couldn't find it, and neither could the Hub, which employs a color-coded blinking diagnostic pattern on the aforementioned eight-button GUI. A simple repair command produced the desired result.

The next step involved configuring the answering function via simple prerecorded voice prompts. You record your name and your answer. You don't push a 50-digit secret code to hear it again, indicate your acceptance, select it to be your voice mail answer and then exit the system. Name and answer: That's probably worth $40 right there.

ooma promotes owning your dial tone, but takes the idea a bridge too far with the dial tone itself. It sounds like a canned fanfare that settles into the usual mechanical hum. The first time is kind of different. The second time, annoying. After that, grating. ooma had a few thousand beta testers on this thing. Did they all drink the Kool-Aid? If I wanted a fanfare, I'd hire a dude with a trumpet.

I did encounter one obstacle I'm sure was anomalous. I didn't have a phone number. You need a phone number to access your account online. It also comes in handy for incoming calls. I couldn't find it anywhere. Not on the packing ticket, in the directions, the box, the materials. It wasn't in any of the set-up e-mails. I finally had to call my cell phone to figure it out.

Over all, the ooma does what it says it does--provides phone service. It doesn't take an engineering degree to set it up. The audio transmission seems as good as a land line on both ends. Is it worth $400? (It was originally supposed to launch at $600 and drop to $400 as of next year, but Steve Jobs gooned up that strategy.) The price is subjective to how much time a person spends on the phone and where their talk targets are. A reticent individual with an adequate cell plan probably doesn't need one of these. A telecommuting professional might find it pretty useful.

Related Articles:
Find out what ooma's chief told FierceVoIP
ooma versus PhoneGnome ... Read all about it
PhoneGnome chief talks with FierceVoIP Read it here
VoIP spawns device start-ups Report

ooma Hub image

Mike Dolan — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:06:06 -0400

Here is a larger picture of the ooma Hub:

Click to read the related article...

Vonage settles with Sprint

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:59:58 -0400

Vonage agreed this morning to pay Sprint Nextel $80 million to settle a patent dispute. A federal court in Kansas city awarded Sprint $69.5 million in damages to cover the revenues Vonage generated with the violated patents. The $80 million settlement is said to cover past and future use of the 100 or so patents at issue.

Vonage, based in Holmdel, N.J., denied violating the Sprint patents and said it would appeal the court's ruling. The same strategy in a similar lawsuit with Verizon prompted the judge in that case to prohibit Vonage from signing up new subscribers. The company had to post a $66 million bond to be able to continue to do so. Settling with Sprint eliminates the possibility of a similar situation.

Vonage shares made a 40 percent rebound on the news. The company in the meantime awaits the final verdict on the damages award in the Verizon suit. An appeals court judge recently tossed out one of three lower court rulings in that case and vacated the $58 million award to Verizon. Vonage socked away nearly $197 million for the lawsuits, so the damage awards and legal fees are most likely covered. There just isn't a lot left over for a rainy day. The company has to start making money.

For More:
- CNNMoney is carrying wire reports here

Related Articles
Damages vacated on Verizon v. Vonage appeal Report
Sprint seeks $103 million from Vonage Report
Vonage sued by SunRocket specter Report
Vonage staunches the bleeding Report

FEATURE: ooma VoIP box performs

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:59:48 -0400

Click to view a larger image...

Click here to continue reading this feature...

VoIP spawns device start-ups

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:59:55 -0400

Free domestic phone communications is near, the Los Angeles Times reports. A 1,200-word feature in the city's newspaper of record described how devices like Ooma and MagicJack could allow people to bypass "the local phone and cable TV giants to provide free calls on standard-issue phone handsets."

Ooma is the VoIP router from the eponymous Palo Alto, Calif., startup that has TV celebrity Ashton Kutcher pitching for it. The device was unveiled in beta this summer and should be hitting the commercial market anytime now. It has a one-time cost of $400 (for now) and no subscription voice costs after that for at least three years. MagicJack is a $40 VoIP device with a USB connector that comes with a one-year license for service. YMax Corp., of West Palm Beach, Fla., introduced MagicJack last April.

The article gives good props to both devices, but it fails to emphasize the necessity of a phone line and/or a broadband connection, neither of which are currently free.

For More:
- James Granelli's Los Angeles Times piece is here

Related Article:
Ooma chief talks with FierceVoIP Report

ALSO NOTED: VoIP Inc. grows infrastructure; VoEX is IntelePeer; and much more...

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:59:52 -0400

> VoIP Inc. of Orlando, Fla., said it's doubled the size of its national network. Press Release

> VoEX a VoIP managed services provider in Foster City, Calif., has renamed itself IntelePeer. Press Release

> VoIP device startup ooma, gateway maker Phybridge and Dutch cable provider CAIW have all joined HomePNA, the alliance to develop and certify home networking over coax and copper. Press Release

And Finally…. Calculate your life expectancy with software. here

PhoneGnome answers ooma's call

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:38:25 -0400

Over the summer, a little gizmo dubbed "ooma" was rolled out and promised free VoIP services for the price of the hardware. Industry experts said it resembled a previously introduced product known as "PhoneGnome."

FierceVoIP last week asked ooma founder Andrew Frame how his company's free VoIP device compared to PhoneGnome (Sept. 4, "ooma chief talks with FierceVoIP"). This week, PhoneGnome founder (and co-founder of EarthLink), David Beckemeyer, responds.

FierceVoIP: Tell us a bit about your company….
David Beckemeyer: I founded TelEvolution in 2004 with the mission of removing the barriers holding VoIP migration back. The PhoneGnome global service is our flagship product that lets anyone with a telephone number and Internet service quickly augment their phone experience with next-generation Internet telephony capabilities. It's VoIP for the rest of us.

FierceVoIP: Where is it located and how many folks work there?
DB: The headquarters are located in Danville, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are a typical early stage startup, running very lean and mean. We don't have any Hollywood actors and we don't have a big pile of VC cash to burn. We have less than 10 people working full time, and many, many, terrific folks who work with us, outsourced and under other arrangements to allow us to operate without large capital requirements as we strive to expand and grow organically.

FierceVoIP: Is it privately held, and whom, if any, are the investors?
DB: We are privately held, and many of our investors prefer to remain behind the scenes; however one of our most active investors is Bob Packer, founder of Packeteer.

FierceVoIP: What is PhoneGnome and how does it work?
DB: PhoneGnome is a service attempting to bring VoIP to the mass market. Our objective is to make sophisticated and powerful open standards-based VoIP capabilities available to, and usable by, mainstream consumers.

Beyond that, PhoneGnome is also a VoIP service platform that can be controlled via web APIs. Our telephony web services makes it practical to deliver new Voice 2.0 to traditional, VoIP, or cable phone subscribers worldwide with rapid time to market and low capex, pay-as-you grow economics.

FierceVoIP: Is it more oriented toward tech savvy users who understand how to make a phone call using a SIP address?
DB: In the early days of consumer Internet, there was a choice between user friendly, but closed (AOL, for example), or open, but very difficult to use for regular users. In my days at EarthLink in the mid-1990s, our mission was to bring the advantages of the real open, interoperable Internet to mainstream users, making it as easy as AOL, without forcing proprietary, closed systems upon people.
At TelEvolution, we are trying to do the same thing with PhoneGnome and VoIP. The idea is that PhoneGnome is easy enough for anyone to use, while providing open, standards-based, interoperable, real VoIP at the same time. Users just dial real phone numbers and don't have to download software, learn new handles, nicknames, or new numbers.
At the same time, PhoneGnome does give the sophisticated user the capability of placing a call to a SIP address, for example, but the average user doesn't even need to know that capability exists to use the service.

FierceVoIP: When ooma rolled out, some compared it to PhoneGnome. Last week, we asked ooma chief Andrew Frame to tell his device differed from yours. It's your turn. How does the PhoneGnome stack up against the ooma?
DB: There are some things about the ooma product that we think are good ideas. That's why we introduced them in our PhoneGnome box in 2005--automatic 911 and power-outage cutover, more intelligent voicemail with web and email integration, and consumer-friendly set-up.
We introduced the first completely plug-and-play VoIP device that would automatically configure itself and let users dial regular phone numbers to make free and cheap calls. Users could even make free calls without ever signing up for any service, simply by plugging in the PhoneGnome box.
The key distinguishing aspects of the two products, as we see it, are:

Ooma:
- Prepay for hardware plus a bundle of services/features up front
- Service options defined by ooma
- Proprietary, closed, architecture
- Available to users in the United States
- International calls at ooma rates

PhoneGnome:
- A la carte model, with lower up-front costs
- Customers pay less up front and pay for the services/features they want
- Open, expandable and interconnects with other VoIP services/systems
- Embraces open-standards, interoperability, and industry standards
- Available to users anywhere in the world
- Free software extends PhoneGnome-enabled service to a PC or mobile phone
- PhoneGnome box works with VoIP, cable and landline phone service
- Compatible with a variety of international and domestic plans

FierceVoIP: (Regarding Andrew Frame's discription of PhoneGnome as a "resold Cisco ATA device, not true plug-and-play, no control of the software.")

DB: The existing PhoneGnome box is a customized version of a hardware platform produced by Linksys/Cisco. We see this as an advantage. We have no intention of becoming a premiere hardware manufacturer.
PhoneGnome is fully self-configuring. A buyer can plug in the PhoneGnome box and it will automatically set itself up and be ready to make and receive free calls in a few minutes, just by dialing ordinary phone numbers.
PhoneGnome is fully managed and receives updates and bug-fixes totally automatically and transparently to the user.

FierceVoIP: Does it allow for free domestic VoIP calls to any type of phone?
DB: PhoneGnome includes free calls to everyone with a PhoneGnome box; everyone with a free PhoneGnome account around the world; users on compatible VoIP services, including Gizmoproject, FWD, Earthlink, and many more; IM users on Gtalk, Yahoo!, and MSN; and millions of numbers reachable free through our extensive peering relationships; and software for free calls to Skype users.

FierceVoIP: Does it require a landline?
DB: The PhoneGnome box is for augmenting an existing telephone service with VoIP.

FierceVoIP: How are 911 fees handled?
DB: Since the PhoneGnome service augments an existing service, it automatically works with the 911 service provided by that existing phone service and there are no additional fees - and this applies to emergency services outside the U.S. as well (112, 999, etc.)

FierceVoIP: What do I get from PhoneGnome for $99?
DB: The PhoneGnome service can be used free without the box. The $99 PhoneGnome box augments an existing fixed line service with new capabilities, the three main ones being free calls, cheap calls and cool features, [e.g., voicemail, voice-to-email; call logs; audio files; Skype software, and more.]

FierceVoIP: How many PhoneGnome hardware users are there?
DB: We don't disclose actual sales figures, but the hardware went into beta in 2004 and is in use in over 40 countries worldwide today.

FierceVoIP: How many PhoneGnome software users are there?
DB:We again don't disclose this number, but it is currently growing at 400 percent annually and we are serving customers in over 100 countries worldwide.

FierceVoIP: What handsets are compatible with the PhoneGnome mobile plug-in?
DB: We don't maintain a list because it is just too long. It is a Java app (J2ME MIDP 2.0) and so it should work on just about any phone sold today. However, a data sevice of some kind is required. The application isn't needed to use PhoneGnome service on a mobile, but it provides some cool features and makes some functions more convenient.

FierceVoIP: What, if any, are the future developmental plans for PhoneGnome?
DB: A great deal of marketing dollars have been thrown at VoIP and a lot of investor value has been lost as a result. We have not seen wisdom in spending vast amounts of money to try and rise above that noise. That makes PhoneGnome one of the best kept secrets of the industry.
We have revenue and extremely low customer acquisition costs, meaning that new customers actually add value to the company, rather than take value away.
We've been quietly building a platform and peer technology that is now in use in over 100 countries. ooma coming on the scene has been a blessing for us, helping to raise awareness of our achievements.

PhoneGnome answers ooma's call

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 06:59:58 -0400

Over the summer, a little gizmo dubbed "ooma" was rolled out and promised free VoIP services for the price of the hardware. Industry experts said it resembled a previously introduced product known as "PhoneGnome."

FierceVoIP last week asked ooma founder Andrew Frame how his company's free VoIP device compared to PhoneGnome (Sept. 4, "ooma chief talks with FierceVoIP"). This week, PhoneGnome founder (and co-founder of EarthLink), David Beckemeyer, responds.

FierceVoIP: Tell us a bit about your company….
David Beckemeyer: I founded TelEvolution in 2004 with the mission of removing the barriers holding VoIP migration back. The PhoneGnome global service is our flagship product that lets anyone with a telephone number and Internet service quickly augment their phone experience with next-generation Internet telephony capabilities. It's VoIP for the rest of us.

FierceVoIP: Where is it located and how many folks work there?
DB: The headquarters are located in Danville, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are a typical early stage startup, running very lean and mean. We don't have any Hollywood actors and we don't have a big pile of VC cash to burn. We have less than 10 people working full time, and many, many, terrific folks who work with us, outsourced and under other arrangements to allow us to operate without large capital requirements as we strive to expand and grow organically.

FierceVoIP: Is it privately held, and whom, if any, are the investors?
DB: We are privately held, and many of our investors prefer to remain behind the scenes; however one of our most active investors is Bob Packer, founder of Packeteer.

FierceVoIP: What is PhoneGnome and how does it work?
DB: PhoneGnome is a service attempting to bring VoIP to the mass market. Our objective is to make sophisticated and powerful open standards-based VoIP capabilities available to, and usable by, mainstream consumers...

Click here to continue reading the rest of this interview.