IP phones

SPOTLIGHT: Hate and lust over an IP phone prototype

Doug Mohney — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:57:42 -0400

A lot of geek tech sites are frothing over the Tatung VoIP phone prototype. The design has won the 2008 IF, IDEA, and Red Dot design awards... whatever that means. Techno-bloggers seem to be torn between degrading it as an "electronic lollipop," and loving it so much they want to "lick one" the more they look at it.

We'll point out that the creator of the phone -- e-Nova design -- also picked up an award for the TATUNG iHaloo VOIP Webcam Phone, so there should be some very pretty pieces of plastic in the production pipeline.

For more:
- Gizmodo has pretty pictures and conflicting tastes. Blog
- Visit e-Nova design. Website

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IDC: VoIP Strong, UC Hype, Cisco Gains

Doug Mohney — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:30:16 -0400

IP telephony continues to grow despite--not because--of hype building around unified communications (UC) solutions. IDC's latest study says that 30.9 million IP telephony lines shipped in 2007.

Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens were the leading vendors in the IP PBX market, based upon results for end-user revenue in 2007. In the IP PBX market, Cisco has gained the most market share while Alcatel-Lucent lost the most as compared to 2006. Other vendors had "nominal" changes in market share year over year.

Cisco also maintained its dominance as the leading vendor of IP phones, both in terms of hardware desktop sets shipped and end-user revenue. Again, Alcatel-Lucent was the biggest loser.

IDC research says potential threats to the IP PBX market include desktop collaborative environments, open source IP PBX and hosted VoIP solutions with UC mobility solutions the primary threat to desktop IP phones. The firm recommends IP PBX vendors get tight with Microsoft and IBM as well as build a software developer ecosystem for apps development on their platforms. IP phone vendors are advised to watch how UC software clients affect the importance of the desktop phone and look at how they can incorporate/integrated with videoconferencing and telepresence capabilities.

For more:
- IDC's findings on IP Telephony and UC hype

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OnRelay Picks the Green Fight

Doug Mohney — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:17:46 -0400

Not to be confused with purple minutes, mobile PBX innovator OnRelay joins other telecommunications vendors reaching for the big green energy-savings stick.

Research conducted by OnRelay has found that the 25 million IP desktop handsets projected to be purchased in 2008 will consume 1.6 billion Watts of power--or more power than the needs of Oxford and Cambridge, England combined. An earlier study found that IP desk phones sold in 2008 will generate 47 million kilograms of ewaste.

Replacing the majority of those IP desk phones with mobile phones (maybe a cool 3G Apple iPhone?) should result in a 74 percent savings in power costs. Less switches, less PoE gear, less power. Moving to mobile phones shouldn't increase the total amount of energy consumed because everyone already carries around at least one mobile device. OnRelay is happy to point out that businesses can save more energy and expense for the corporate bottom line, because its MBX solution can virtually map the office PBX functionality to a personal phone; no BlackBerry or PDA involved.

Other telecommunications companies have also been preaching the virtues of green. With the price of gasoline above $4, it's hard not to consider telecommuting as an option. Citel has pitched their legacy-phone-to-IP PBX box as being a more eco-friendly solution than ripping out old handsets and cabling to install new Cat-5 and more expensive IP phones. At InterOp, Nortel was beating Cisco over the head with its Energy Tax campaign, noting their switches consume 50 percent less power.

For more:
- OnRelay's Green Mobile PBX pitch

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SPOTLIGHT: Dessert Cart Ruins VoIP Phone

Doug Mohney — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:25:46 -0400

Nortel Unified Communications Summit, Grapevine, Texas--Add "Dessert is mightier than the IP phone" to your list of technology clichés.

Pierre-Eric Belzile is the Executive Director for ICT for the "Club de Hockey Canadien, Inc."--in English, the legendary Montreal Canadians. Speaking for the wonders of hypertechnology and Nortel products, Belzile noted not all technological solutions are surefire winners. Sophisticated video replay products didn't catch on in the executive "Skybox" suites and a fancy IP phone with touch-screen was a non-starter before the puck hit the ice.

"They're saying, ‘Look, you have a menu [on the screen], you can order dessert on the phone,'" Belzile commented. "People aren't going to order dessert on the phone. You have the dessert cart, you have these huge cakes, they wheel it in, you have the kids running around the cart ... it's an experience you're not going to get on the phone. Maybe we'll do IP phones in the future [in the executive skyboxes], but we'll do it when it makes sense."

Related issues/events:
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ShoreTel shouts more UC, new switches

Doug Mohney — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:29:18 -0400

ShoreTel has announced release 8.0 of its unified communications system and two new voice switches. The release was mailed to reporters in a round tube rigged with a ringing and speaking gizmo on one end just to make sure we didn't miss it.

Release 8.0 offers more intuitive access to integrated voice, IM, email and video and takes advantage of scalable video coding (SVC) to provide high quality video to every desktop. A new user interface offers tabbed windows to access voicemail, call history, directories, and the speed dial list while the new ShoreWare Professional Call Manager supports 640x480 by 30 frames per second video as well as the usual suspects (presence, consolidated IM, built-in soft phone). The new UC system now also includes built-in support for SIP endpoints, devices, and applications that comply with RFC 3261.

ShoreTel's new ShoreGear 30 voice switch can support up to 30 IP phones or to support SIP trunks or devices. The ShoreGear 24A is designed for the legacy world and provides 24 analog ports and can be configured to support multi-party conference calls. Both switches use less power, require less cooling, and take up less space.

For more:
- Read the (un-noisy) ShoreTel UC release

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Bank of America Deploys 100,000 Cisco IP Phones

Doug Mohney — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:14:08 -0400

EDS and Bank of America have announced the deployment of 100,000 Cisco IP phones throughout the bank's network infrastructure. The deployment effort has so far spanned more than 4,000 Bank of America retail banking centers, branch, and remote offices and features Cisco UC and network system software and hardware. Cisco says this is the largest enterprise VoIP deployment worldwide.

Bank of America is replacing multiple legacy voice systems with the VoIP/UC rollout and the deployment is one component of a multi-year systems integration and services agreement with EDS. The two companies have been working together since 2003 to consolidate, upgrade, and "transform" the bank's voice and data network infrastructure. EDS features a "converged communications network" for financial services, and can provide IP telephony and unified messaging.

More IP phones will likely be added to the total in the future. Bank of America has more than 6,100 retail banking offices in the United States and serves clients in 175 countries.

For more:
- Read the press release on EDS deploying 100,000 Cisco Unified IP Phones for Bank of America
- HP Buys EDS; does this make HP a bigger VoIP player?

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