Skype

Microsoft Live Messenger VoIP now available in South America

Pete Wylie — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:37:40 -0400

Microsoft officially announced it has chosen Telefonica, the largest telecommunications provider in Latin America, to distribute its Microsoft Live Messenger VoIP client in seven South American countries. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela will now have access to the PC -based phone service, called Voype, which was announced for U.S. users Oct. 3.

The Voype service is priced under Skype's rates; $0.014 a minute for Voype calls to the U.S. compared to $0.021 for Skype. Skype's clear advantage is the ability to answer calls on SkypeIn, as Telefonica said that feature will not be available until a later release date.

Telefonica also plans an eventual rollout in Latin America.

For more:
- see the CNET blog post here

SPOTLIGHT: Skype like WiMAX

Doug Mohney — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:06:42 -0400

Skype COO Scott Durchslag said the company is looking to extend its business operations from PCs to mobile devices (OK, with 3 and an Java-based mobile client, no big secret there), with WiMAX as one technology where Skype services might have potential.
While in Taiwan, Durchslag said WiMAX was a "different case," since it was just another application across a data-loving network; on cellular networks, it competes with cell dollars. Durchslag was visiting Taiwan to seek opportunities between Skype and Taiwanese makers of handsets and mobile devices.

For more:
- DIGITIMES stalks Skype COO in Taiwan. Post.

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3 Mobile and Skype collaborate on VoIP phone

SPOTLIGHT: Skype's Libertelli likes Levin for FCC Chairman, current policy not so much

Pete Wylie — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:30:39 -0400

Paying a visit to the Fierce offices last week, Skype's senior director of government and regulatory affairs for North America Christopher Libertelli said former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief of staffer Blair Levin would look good as FCC Chairman while he'd like to see much more openness and net neutrality at carriers.

"Levin would make an excellent FCC chairman," said Libertelli. Currently a managing director at Stifel Nicolaus, Levin often pops up on a short list of potential chairman candidates in the speculation game should Senator Barak Obama win the White House this fall. Levin served as chief of staff to FCC Chairman and Obama contributor/advisor Reed Hundt from December 1993 through October 1997. He is credited with overseeing the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform act, the development of digital TV standards, the first spectrum auctions, and the FCC's Internet initiative.

Turning to openness and net neutrality issues, Libertelli noted that Skype's current initiative via letter to get wireless carriers to freely allow third-party applications onto their networks is part of a broader concern for the company. A recent FCC ruling against Comcast interfering with video peer-to-peer traffic is equally applicable to Skype's offerings in the broader scheme of things.

For more:
- see a copy of the letter Skype sent to the FCC

Gizmo5 adds free conference calls

Doug Mohney — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:59:18 -0400

SIP/VoIP provider Gizmo5, home of SIPphone, has added free conference calling for its customers.

The company sent an email announcement about the new service over the weekend, reports Om Malik. Om is a bit skeptical of the service, having run into voice quality problems with Gizmo5 in the past, but he says he was able to get a room number with ease and a conference call number "surprisingly smoothly." Each conference room can handle up to 10 people, and it's easy enough to "tape" conversations for archival purposes.

Observers of entrepreneur/mad genius Michael Robinson might interpret this as an opportunistic move to snap users who liked Skype's free, but now dropped, conferencing service.

For more:
- Om blogs about Gizmo5 new conference call service at Web Worker Daily

Three wishes for Digium

Doug Mohney — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:01:49 -0400

As the afterglow from AstriCon fades, I think there are three areas where Digium could do a better job telling its story. To set the stage, I need to turn the clock back to June and NXTcomm with a conversation at the Heart Bar in Las Vegas

I was hanging out, ah, meeting, with Seamus Hourihan of Acme Packet, and the discussion turned to the subject of awards and customer wins and how they relate to companies and their lifecycle of announcements in building a reputation. Since Acme Packet currently has around half of the SBC market, I figure Seamus might have a clue here. [Apologies in advance to Seamus if I misquote him; it was late and there was a lot of smoke in the bar]

"When [start-up] companies start out, first they talk about awards, because that's all they have. So they talk about that," he said. "Then, they make smaller customer announcements, because that's who they get. Finally, they make large customer announcements and rack those up."

Applying the Hourihan evolutionary scale, Digium is somewhere between steps two and three. It really doesn't need awards per say; the open source community of developers embracing Asterisk is far more valuable than any sort of award you could purchase. Still, there's a laundry list of accolades (if not a PowerPoint race car logo slide) from eWeek, TMC, Linux Magazine, InfoWorld and VoIP-News, not to mention FierceVoIP.

In lieu of customer announcements, Digium has its Innovation Awards to recognize what people are doing with Asterisk. You have to dig a bit, but users include health care (Emdeon Business Services) and call center applications (Aheeva). NTT software is currently conducting a big time trial of Asterisk and adoption by a large carrier brand name would do a lot to dispel the prevailing mythology that "Asterisk doesn't scale."

(Another PowerPoint race car slide with customers/users would be a good thing as well - and I'm a guy who's snarky about race car slides).

But - at first glance, the Skype/Digium deal sounds good, but it's not Paris Hilton hot. Having access to over 300 million users on the biggest non-carrier carrier is a big deal, but the devil is in the details. Skype needs help breaking into the business market and an Asterisk box providing call routing capability to a bunch of independent desktop clients is just what the telephony doctor ordered. I'm sure Digium will sell more software, and Skype will be able to get its foot in the (product/service overcrowded, certainly cruising for a right-sizing) SMB market with Asterisk.

In my opinion, what Digium needs is to 1) better tell/communicate the stories about the customers and users it already has, 2) have a few clear big installation customer/user stories to both a) lend credibility to the company and b) dispel once and for all the "Asterisk doesn't scale" myth, and 3) Get one or two big corporate/IT endorsements.

We're starting to see work on 3) with the current announcements with Skype and BroadSoft on the partnership side, but my wish for 2009 would be to see someone like IBM embrace Asterisk. IBM has a big love for open source, is progressive enough to actually think "out of the box" to do this, and has both carrier telephony and UC/enterprise presence. I've been told that IBM would likely prefer to remain neutral since it is so entrenched dealing with proprietary/legacy hardware.

- Doug

Mobile VoIP's latest thumbs-up

Doug Mohney — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:05:58 -0400

Mobile VoIP advances get a big thumbs up for the ability to cut costs by routing calls through the Internet. Enthusiasm for mobile VoIP is being fed by a proliferation of options on a large variety of phones.

A Dial-a-Phone blog post states that mobile VoIP's best days are yet to come with a tightening economy and people going into penny-pinch mode. Mobile VoIP delivers the option for free and/or low-cost calling between cell phones and from cell phones to landlines.

The new 802.11r standard may help proliferate mobile VoIP on the enterprise side; 802.11r allows for a standardized way to quickly transfer calls between access points without dropping them. Unfortunately, there isn't a discussion on how some companies have decided to live with call dropping and have already moved forward with FMC solutions.

Nokia and Skype also earn mentions. Nokia's issue with supporting VoIP on the N series of phones is chewed on again while Skype's beta of a mobile Java-based app wins good brownie points.

For more:
- Check out the mobile VoIP piece on the Dial-a-Phone website

Skype responds to security breach

Pete Wylie — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:55:58 -0400

Josh Silverman, president of Skype, responded in his blog Thursday to media reports about unauthorized storage of text messages and user data by Skype's Chinese partner TOM Online. Silverman explains that Skype considered the possibility of texts not going through because of Chinese censorship standards that TOM had to meet in order to operate in the country. He stressed that TOM had to ensure Chinese government access to the communications to operate at all, but that Skype leadership was assured any "offensive" communications would simply be deleted.

"Breaching Trust," the report that sparked Silverman's response, found a security breach on the servers where "offensive" communications are stored that enabled public access to the information. Silverman assured Skype users that TOM remedied the security breach after Skype made them aware of it. He also noted that Skype was working with TOM on the storage of the "offensive" text conversations and accompanying user data.

Silverman also stressed that the compromised communications only affected text conversations in which at least one of the users was using TOM, and that Skype-Skype communications are completely secure and safe.

For more:
- see Silverman's blog post here

Microsoft Live Messenger VoIP arrives (again)

Pete Wylie — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:30:43 -0400

Microsoft has re-introduced VoIP functionality to Windows Live Messenger, after removing the feature earlier this year.

Outbound calls can now be made through the messenger with Telefonica's Voype service. Microsoft had previous agreements with Verizon and Net2Phone for VoIP service on the Live Messenger. Telefonica is offering the dial-out service for $0.014 cents a minute, compared with $0.021 cents a minute for SkypeOut. However, Telefonica does not have a comparable offering to SkypeIn, so that could be one barrier to widespread use of the voice feature.

For more:
- see the tmc.com blog post

Is China monitoring Skype calls?

Pete Wylie — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:50:20 -0400

"Breaching Trust," a 16-page report released yesterday by Nart Villenveuve of the University of Toronto Citizen Lab, has unearthed disturbing monitoring practices of TOM Online, Skype's partner in China.

Text messages and call logs of communications on the TOM-Skype network are being stored on poorly secured public servers along with the encryption codes for the transmissions, according to the report. Text messages are filtered for keywords that trigger logging of the message, namely, messages mentioning dissidents, Taiwan, Falun Gong, or independence. These texts are not delivered to the intended recipient; instead, the full text of these messages is stored on the publicly-accessible servers, which the study's author was able to access and decode. Also, many texts were filtered and stored that did not contain any of the flagged words on the file the report's author was able to access. This, according to the report, insinuates that individual users of the software could be flagged for surveillance of all communications, once a banned word has been found in messages of voice transmissions.

The findings of the report suggest that TOM Online and perhaps Skype itself are much more complicit with the Chinese government than they will admit. Skype has denied cooperation with the Chinese in call and text monitoring numerous times, and responded to the author of the survey asserting that records of texts were discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere, according to the report. But Villenveneuve was able to find records of IP addresses, usernames and other identifying information on the servers dating to August 2007. Skype representatives attribute the security issues to TOM's practices, not Skype's, but the evidence is rather damning that they at least had to be somewhat aware of the volume and sensitivity of data being stored by the Chinese.

For more:
- see the full report "Breaching Trust" here

FORD: Skype Me, Asterisk Us

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:53:42 -0400

by Carl Ford

Mark Spencer had been working on projects delivering drivers and writing code that was specific to boards. Being part of the open source experience, he saw that his work could be built into something bigger that would allow the extraction of call control into an open source project that could be used for anything.

When you ask people about Asterisk, the label of "PBX" is placed on it. But that is not accurate, since it's an open source system that has call control ability. Most developers I know use the Asterisk system as a PBX in their homes as a hobby and use it as an application platform at work for their carrier employers. While at Astricon, I met people who use the system as an IP-PBX, and others who use it specifically for its ability to enhance call centers.

With Skype, like Asterisk, the starting premise is not about connecting to the PSTN, but creating something new. Using the same peer-to-peer model that is in Kazaa, Skype proceeded to deliver a new model of call control that was self organizing and used Instant Messaging as the signaling method to communicate.

This brings us to Skype's main impact. The soft client can be used to connect to people on social networks, blogs and web sites. Regardless of your connection to Skype, you can connect to people on Skype. Some people say it is like having an 800 number for the Internet.

Now the same functionality will be available to connect through to call centers using Asterisk. Since Asterisk is capable of being more than just a PBX, it can be used as an Automatic Call Distributor or just as a gateway to support the "trunk/lines" coming in from Skype.

Want to have global reach? Skype with Asterisk allows a lot of new incoming calls -- calls that may require call center staff to develop new talents. I have a friend who teaches for American Accent who has taught me how to better understand people when they speak English with accents, which may become standard training as Skype with Asterisk is deployed in call centers.

Best of all, from my perspective, is the lack of the PSTN in this model. At a time when regulators are trying to see everything VoIP as a taxable item, I would like to think that the public good is seen in the ability to drive worldwide commerce to a business near you.

Carl Ford is Strategic Adviser and Community Developer for FierceMarkets. His words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net.

New features, new thoughts

Doug Mohney — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:08:27 -0400

FYI, America's Network has been merged with FierceTelecom. You can read more about it here.

If you are an America's Network reader just discovering FierceVoIP, I welcome you to stop by the FierceVoIP website as well as to check out the other Fierce Telecom publications (IPTV, Online Video, all the Wireless pubs).

If you're a frequent website visitor to the Fierce Telecom family, you may have noticed that all of the websites have been revised into a new layout. Stories now get a date stamp, you can get a quick page to get stories indexed by author, and you can find lists of articles from some of our sister publications - like some of you just requested in the FierceVoIP reader's survey - at the bottom of the home page. We're looking at implementing some other mods in a week or two.

One of our less-publicized features - and also mentioned as a "Nice to have..." in the FierceVoIP reader's survey - is a mobile reader to access Fierce newsletters through your phone. You can go to the bottom of the home page to find it, or take a look at the application here; the app will allow you access to all Fierce publications and there's support for Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, and Windows Mobile platforms with iPhone support coming soon (but then again, if you have an iPhone, you could just read us in a web browser).

I'm still recovering from last week's road trip. Carl Ford has some interesting opinions on the Skype/Digium announcement and I'll likely say something about the deal next week. As I ponder the many, many angles, I'm not as gung-ho as Carl is. I'm not saying that the deal is bad, but there aren't going to be 338 million Skype users suddenly embedded into the Asterisk community.

One of the other things in-queue for posting is an interview with Digium CEO Danny Windham. He was kind enough to spend a rather considerable chunk of time discussing how Digium looks at the world and some of the harder decisions it has made moving forward. Look for it on Friday, assuming I can get the other 18 must-dos off the punch list over the next two days.

- Doug

Groping Skype's new beta

Doug Mohney — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:49:44 -0400

Skype's second beta for Version 4 is out on the streets and reviewers are giving it a hands-on workout.

Skype 4.0 beta 2 has undergone several changes to the user interface and fixed some bugs. Beta 1 had a much larger main window to make features more accessible and to provide video calls with a larger initial image. Testers didn't like the new interface taking up so much space on the desktop, so the new window went on SlimFast, combining the contact list and conversation windows and allowing users to resize more parts of a window. Notifications have also gone through some tweaking.

"Extras" and Skype Me functionality is still not available in the new beta and there's no ability to host video calls with more than two participants.

For more:
- PC Magazine's hands-on review of Skype 4.0 beta 2. Article.

AstriCon 2008: Our show wrap-up

Doug Mohney — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:27:23 -0400

If you didn't make it to AstriCon, FierceVoIP has the next best thing with our news and pictures from the conference.

News

AstriCon 2008: Working through the Digium/Skype Announcement

AstriCon 2008 - Skype/Asterisk partnership announcement

SPOTLIGHT: Digium/Skype, Deja Switchvox

AstriCon 2008: Digium & Skype announce interoperability collaboration

AstriCon 2008 - Future Asterisk Delivery and Support

AstriCon 2008 - A chat with FreeSWITCH, PIKA

Slideshows

Visiting AstriCon 2008 - Slideshow Feature - FierceVoIP

AstriCon 2008: Our last call slideshow

SPOTLIGHT: Digium/Skype, Deja Switchvox

Doug Mohney — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:28:49 -0400

Attendees of the last two AstriCons may have had a little sense of déjà vu over the way Digium/Skype booth logos suddenly appeared on the exhibit floor Thursday, as such quick switches have happened before at AstriCon after major announcements.

Last year, Swtichvox was back-to-back with the Digium booth on the first day of exhibits. After announcing the purchase of Switchvox on the second day of the conference, much of Switchvox's display signage morphed into Digium form. However, the overnight transformation didn't extend to vendorwear; Digium employees had to loan shirts to their new Switchvox brothers and sisters.

Thursday's feature switch-a-roo featured the overnight appearance of a Skype booth (Skype for Business, to be precise) on the show floor shortly after the 9:30 AM local time announcement of the Digium/Skype partnership.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of a rabbit Digum pulls out of its orange hat at AstriCon 2009.

AstriCon 2008: Working through the Digium/Skype Announcement

Doug Mohney — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:56:26 -0400

Digium CEO Danny Windham and Skype VP Stefan Oberg met with FierceVoIP to discuss the hows and whys of the interoperability announcement Thursday. There's a little something for everyone - including customers and channel partners.

Windham said small businesses will be able to use the Skype for Asterisk connector to enable a presence on the Skype network while getting all the functionality of a PBX. A general Skype login name could be routed into a PBX for call processing and delivery to the next available person in a calling queue; a single Skype ID could be used for sales, technical support or other types of customer service queues.

"Asterisk does least-cost call routing," said Windham. "Calls from a standard handset could be routed through SkypeOut... You can save a lot of money both on inbound and outbound calls. It's easy to get access to the Skype network now."

Digium's benefits are more ethereal. The Skype for Asterisk connector will work on any Asterisk 1.4 or 1.6 release, including third-party releases. "It will work with Trixbox," Windham stated. "Any third party [project] is a candidate." He expects the enthusiasm involved will drive use of the product and "some revenue."

For Skype, the advantages are clear. "A lot of people are using [Skype] in businesses already," said Oberg. Skype's business customers want a way to distribute call queues, a better way to handle voice mail, better call logging and a way to tie Skype in with SIP-based mobile phones. "They're basically asking for a PBX. That is what this solution will give them."

While the two companies have had on-and-off discussions over the years on how they could work together, a serious effort crystallized at a June meeting at Digium's HQ in Huntsville, Ala. "We went from zero to high priority following that meeting," said Windham. A room full of people from both companies discussed alternatives, while Digium CTO Mark Spencer sat to the side writing code. As discussions went on, Spencer produced a rough hack of what a Digium/Skype solution would look like within three days.

Since the initial hack, Digium's software engineers have worked to refine the solution, making it more robust and suitable for a formal beta, but neither Windham nor Oberg would commit to a firm shipping date for a number of reasons.

On Digium's side, it is a matter of further polishing and testing the software. "As soon as we get happy that the quality is good," stated Windham. Pricing also needs to be set for the module.

Skype has broader concerns. "We want to polish our go-to-market strategy," said Oberg. Pricing needs to be set and there's a new mindset involved, since Skype has been available in a simple self-serve mode. One new area for Skype is a revenue share with channel partners on the number of minutes used. It's the first time Skype has engaged in revenue sharing with channel partners.

"We haven't had a partner strategy at all," said Oberg. "Going to business is a whole new thing for us... we're starting with Digium and we'll see how it goes... We're focusing on SMBs, Digium and Asterisk is the perfect partnership."

AstriCon 2008: Digium & Skype announce interoperability collaboration

Doug Mohney — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:22:16 -0400

PHOENIX, Ariz. - Digium and Skype have announced a "collaboration" between the two companies to bring together the Asterisk telephony platform and Skype's service.

Delivering this morning's keynote address at the conference, Skype VP Stefan Oberg said business users utilizing Skype want a PBX to route their calls. The Skype on Asterisk solution will allow PBX users to make calls using Skype names or via normal phone numbers.

The partnership is being touted as bringing together the 338 million worldwide Skype users to the tens of millions of Asterisk users. Since about 30 percent of Skype users are business users, there's a lot of potential to introduce more businesses to Digium and Asterisk.

Currently, the solution is being tested in a private beta; people can apply to participate at www.astricon.net/skype.

Connectivity will be delivered through a channel driver. Licensing will be done on a per channel basis and the software will be a commercial, not open source, license. Pricing will be announced at the time of official release of the product.

On the Skype side, Oberg said businesses will be able to purchase a package to provide some extra support, calling credits and some "additional value-added things." The exact details on how the packaging will work are not yet fully defined. "The details we'll work out together."

The Skype-Asterisk channel driver will support Skype's wideband codec, and Asterisk will have the capability to transcode between Skype's native codecs and other codecs. It will allow users to register as multiple Skype users, so a particular extension can ring to a Skype name. Multiple calls per user are also supported.

Video will not initially be supported, but video in Skype "may encourage" Asterisk to incorporate video support faster, said Digium CTO Mark Spencer.

Channel partners will have built-in discounts for the Skype Asterisk solution, giving them an opportunity to make margin on the piece. Oberg also noted that channel partners will also have the opportunity for a revenue share on Skype calls.

AstriCon 2008 - Skype/Asterisk partnership announcement

Doug Mohney — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:49:18 -0400

Phoenix, Arizona - Digium and Skype have announced a partnership to enable the Asterisk telephony platform to seamlessly access Skype's service via a channel driver.

The solution is currently in a private beta and will enable business owners to make phone calls through an Asterisk IP PBX through the Skype service, including the use of Skype names for dialing. Support for Skype's wideband codec should be available when it goes into general release, with support for video to be incorporated down the road. Switchvox, Digium's turnkey IP PBX for SMBs, is also expected to incorporate support for Skype in a future release.

Further coverage of the Digium/Skype announcement by FierceVoIP will be delivered later in the day. A brief slideshow of the announcement can be found here.

Euro VoIP revenue, lines growing fast

Pete Wylie — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:47:06 -0400

A new TeleGeography report shows rapid uptake of VoIP in Western Europe, with revenues projected to top $5.7 billion in 2008, up from $4.2 billion in 2007. While market penetration in individual countries varies greatly, overall customers continue to flock to VoIP services. 25.3 million consumer VoIP lines were in service by the end of 2007, almost 10 million more than were in service just a year before, which equates to roughly 17 percent household adoption across Western Europe.

France leads the way in adoption of VoIP, as TeleGeography estimates that 42 percent of the population has a VoIP line, whereas Spain's VoIP uptake is only 2 percent.

All adoption statistics are based on fixed-line replacement VoIP installation, excluding VoIP soft clients like Skype.

Expect continued strong growth in VoIP revenue in Europe, as there are several large markets with low penetration currently, namely Austria and Spain.

For more:
- see the TeleGeography report
- the tmc.com article provides some more useful information. Article

Skype: VoIP is dead

Doug Mohney — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:48:50 -0400

Skype's GM of audio and video has declared VoIP dead. Wonder what that does to SkypeIn and SkypeOut?

Speaking at IT Expo in Los Angeles earlier this week, GM Jonathan Christensen declared VoIP morte as he walked through the history of Internet telephony, noting the benefits of lower cost, a who-cares attitude toward geographic number plans, and the irrelevance of long-distance calling in an IP world.

Christensen said unbundling is steering voice technologies in an unexpected direction and making them less important. As a result, IM and its support system become much more critical. IM, presence and chat are all much more important, and Skype should get its due for putting together IM, voice, video, NAT and peer-to-peer technology.

Moving forward, there are three pillars "beyond VoIP." Skype and other services require an "agreed relationship" where both parties agree to communicate. Secondly, new audio tech, including wideband audio, will improve communications. Finally, higher resolution video will make video conferencing "more real."

For more:
- TMCnet blogs Christensen calling VoIP dead

Taliban VoIP calls

Pete Wylie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:33:28 -0400

Days after the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., British intelligence reported that the Taliban is using Skype to coordinate its military operations because the VoIP calls are heavily encrypted and difficult to decode. Previously, the British military and the U.S. military had intercepted Taliban communications with relative ease, because they used satellite or normal mobile phones easily traceable by British observation planes and U.S. intelligence resources.

The Skype algorithm is reportedly proving to be quite difficult to crack. British military officials have tried to introduce legislation into their Parliament requiring ISPs to track data, but the proposal raised the usual questions about privacy and government snooping on individual civilians.

Coordinated attacks based on VoIP calls are part of the Taliban's more aggressive strategy and reorganization. British officials are reportedly were working overtime with American counterparts to crack Skype encryption on suspected terrorist communications. But, as reported July 25, 2008, Austrian officials implied that Skype calls were quite easy to intercept. If that's the case, British officials need to have a chat with Vienna sooner rather than later.

For more:
- see the computerweekly.com article

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