Free/cheap web telephony?

Not much time to write on my blog these times, anyway: I found this interesting article on how to make free/cheap calls from web browser and I regret to notice that Sitòfono is not listed there.
But I guess this is due to the "free" model that has been considered: free calls that nobody pay, except the VoIP company holder of the free web telephony product.

BUT this is not a sustainable model, it needs to gather some revenue stream, which is not VC funding!

On the other hand, Sitofono is based on a more realistic revenue model: Sitofono is bought by companies/professionals who want to be reached from the web by various media channels (email, chat, voice call). Caller does not pay for the call, which is offered by the sponsoring company/professional.

Just one more point: one of the disadvantages of web call back model is the possibility of making call tricks or jokes to some victim. In this case, the offender puts the number of the victim in one of the boxes, and starts the call. The offender is not immediately recognizable, unless by asking the VoIP company who started the call.
There is no "perfect" answer to this, but one strategy is better than none :)

Everybody click to call!

Markus Goebel writes a post about click to call applications, this time TringMe is the star.
(BTW, thanks for mentioning Sitòfono, among the similar services)
The curious thing is that Markus is experiencing funny calls from all countries around the world. That is the "power" of real free calling experience, and we have to cope with it.
Whether we filter calls by selecting certain countries or hour ranges, as long as we behave as worldwide reachable people, we need to manage all calls, and to understand that click-to-call buttons are powerful instruments that can shoot in your foot.

Bloggers like me and Markus tend to be online most of the time and happy to answer but, sometimes, things can go in unexpected manners:

I am OK with such calls, but please understand that I can only answer during working hours in my time zone. The rest of the calls goes to the voice mail box. The yesterday's caller didn't even understand that he was talking to an answering machine. He thought that I was on the phone with him but refusing to answer, so he got a little upset.

That is not a big problem for Markus, or for me, but if it were an online shop that could mean "a customer to be managed".
I think we still have to learn how to use our click-to-call. And, perhaps, click-to-call applications need much more than just click-and-speak.

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[Updated] Release Review: "3CX Proves That Soft Is Better Than Hard - When It Comes To Phone Systems" :)

I already talked about 3CX some weeks ago.
It is a dynamic company which produces a Windows based software PBX that could replace the highly expensive hardware ones.
It is also a company with a kind of sense of humor: if "3CX sounds like Free Sex" could be in doubt, their press release title clarifies everything :)

They just delivered version 5 of their 3CX Phone system. From their Press Release:

3CX Proves That Soft Is Better Than Hard - When It Comes To Phone Systems

3CX Phone System allows businesses to completely break free from the shackle of hardware-based, proprietary phone systems. Built on the open SIP standard, 3CX Phone System interoperates with all popular SIP phones, VOIP Gateways and VOIP providers.
Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX said, “We are excited to deliver version 5 of 3CX Phone System at a time when the market is realizing that proprietary, hardware-based PBXs are becoming obsolete. 3CX IP PBX is a modern software based PBX that evolves the communication of businesses to the 21^st century, by delivering mobility, productivity and cost-saving advantages”.

I think they can make 3CX Phone System a real success if:

• They target small offices and business that have branch offices, esp. worldwide.
• They plan to specialize their application on at least one direction. It could be an add-on, so that the general purpose version can still work unaffected for the broader market.
  
• They plan to give phone support, along with online chat and e-mail. You know, if something is not working, it's bad. When it comes to phone systems, it's really bad. If something is not working on your phone and you cannot receive support, it's DOOM!
• Customers are aware that 3CX is not responsible of any service interruption/problem on the data pipe. "If your ADSL is down, your phone is down. Just make sure you have a B plan for your phone system, if you need high availability". Most of offices don't, anyway.

Having said that, I think 3CX new release is really putting a highly competitive challenge among the other players. As usual, 3CX phone system is released as Free and Business editions, and here you can compare them by feature availability.

To me, the Business edition is worth just for these features, among others:

• Call recording
• Bridging with other 3CX servers (branch offices)
• Firewall friendly VOIP client with included mini VPN – ideal for remote users
• Voice mail messages via e-mail

Anyway the have a full fledged set of features, some of them are already present in Sitòfono (like Firewall friendly client, voice mail messages via e-mail, call log...)

What I would like to see in this PBX is some more... "specialization": what about a specialized version for Sales Force Automation? What if the call log could be mashed up with geolocalization and, for instance, SugarCRM? Could you imagine a direct telemarketing firm which builds a "conversion efficiency map" based on call duration, position, and customer acquisition data?

And (obviously for me) what if 3CX-powered companies could put a simple button on their websites and let their visitors call them, for free?
How do you see a synergy/a mashup between 3CX and Sitòfono?

Just one note. Since I still pretend to be a web developer, I've a running copy of Apache HTTPD server on my PC. 3CX tried to install a new one and this produced a conflict (it's the service name registration, I think). Now I need to rename the new HTTPD service in order to access the management console.

Anyway, if 3CX is going to be installed on some kind of windows server, I expect there will already be an Apache installation on it. I'd like to see an installation option like:
"Apache HTTPD detected: would you like to use this version or install a new one?"

Alternatively, I'll put some other lightweight HTTP server in the installation package.


[Update]: I am sorry it wasn't explicit about the fact that 3CX does really take into high consideration their customers. I already knew that, but I haven't written that clearly. What I wanted to write is to suggest is some more immediate, more engaging contact between customers and 3CX, like phone contact, for a company that's so keen on customer relationships.

In facts, few hours after I published this post, I've received an e-mail from the local distributor which offered help to install and to solve my issues.

Moreover, I've been contacted by 3CX PR thanking me about the suggestions given in this post. Regardless of the product's future evolutions, this means that 3CX is strongly oriented to customer feedback and does not leave out any suggestion.
That's what I consider a great customer care job!

iPhone PTT - NikoTalkie

Now iPhone has its VoIP application ready. It's called "nikotalkie" and works like a walkie-talkie or any other PTT (Push To Talk) software.

Now what I am wondering is:

• Is there a plan to make it work on other phones OSes, like Symbian (it makes me think of Nokia E65, for instance)?
• Is there a Utility in walkie talkie feature "as is"? How many people have PTT installed? How many do use it?
  
• Is there some plan to extend the "walkie" function like, uh, ya know, mobile micro-video-blogging?
  
• is it complicated to install the iPhone "installer"? It seems it is not that straight
  

(My source: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/ )

Technorati Tags: cernio, voip, iphone, nikotalkie, push-to-talk

TringMe - Another player in the click-to-call space

TechCrunch announced a week ago a new click-to-call service: TringMe. TringMe differentiates from other services because it adds more flexibility to the traditional "phone-phone" connection:

Callers can ditch their phone and call directly through their Flash widget to your mobile phone, landline, and GTalk (Yahoo and Skype coming soon). All they need is a microphone and one click

Hey, nice job. I haven't tried yet (there is some sort of answering machine) but I assume call quality is excellent and call setup time is nearly instantaneous, isn't it? How do you cope with network bandwidth limitations? After all, it's the consumer pipe the *real* problem: that's why Sitofono (as MyBlueZebra and Jajah) introduced the third party call control, just to avoid any problem with the consumer's crappy ADSL.


Technorati Tags: cernio,
click-to-call, TringMe,

Mashable 30+ VoIP services

Mashable posts a list of the 30 (and more) VoIP services that can be considered as an alternative or a complement to Skype.
I am very happy to see Sitòfono in the list of "Phone Connecting Services".

I think that the Skype outage last week created more disappointment and negative hype than real damage to users. I guess the real damage has be inflicted to Skype credibility.
However, do not forget that all the internet based services are subject to a lot of outages that are different in nature, duration, and entity to be blamed:

• Consumer PC is behaving badly or is misconfigured => Blame the user ;-)
  
• Consumer pipe is down => Blame the service provider or the cable provider
  
• Some networks are reachable, others are not => Blame the interconnection operators or the backbone providers
• All the networks are reachable, but not the one that provides the internet-based service => Blame the service provider for not monitoring its reachability from outside
  
• (VoIP specific) The service seems working, but you cannot make a call => Blame the service provider for not checking periodically that the PSTN termination provider is up and running

Here in Abbeynet we have developed an automated testing toolkit that checks periodically the VoIP overall quality, by measuring the transmitted-received differences in a closed loop phone call.
The toolkit is based on the Abbeyphone VOW SDK, with some customization necessary to intercept the audio statistics.

Technorati Tags: cernio, voip, skype, outage, mashable, Sitofono

2007 Predictions: the crystal ball contains Sitofono

It seems that my hermit state has hit again.
I've just found this news about the top 10 voip predictions for 2007: well, I cannot conceal my happiness to see our product, Sitòfono, as one of the players in this forecast:

I definitely see voice features becoming an integral part of the way customer-service applications, enterprises, and publishers use the Web.
Voice-based communications through a Web trigger or hyperlink is becoming more common and will be even more so in 2007, thanks to aggressive moves by Adobe to add VoIP into Flash, and thanks to upstarts like Sitòfono.
Ted Wallingford, Signal to Noise

Technorati Tags: cernio, Ted Wallingford, voip, googlevoip,

Digital Vs Analog POTS

Markus Göbel wrote an interesting article about the Minute Stealers affair.

Moreover, C|Net published a post about FCC ordering about interconnection agreements, which puts a rule on how businesses between "traditional" local telcos and wholesale (VoIP included) operators should be set up.

VoIP is being acknowledged as a mainstream technology and is undergoing regulations, somehow. The very moment this happens, some telcos are retaining the cheap long distance calls customers with a competitive service.

As previously stated, the minute stealer business is going to close early. Here's Luca Filigheddu post about digital pots

In my opinion, VoIP as a digital POTS will go on being a Big Telco's prerogative in the longer term, without any tangible and enduring business opportunity for other entities. The real value is: Web applications + VoIP + Presence. That's something really different and Big Telcos are still far from that business opportunity.

Technorati Tags: cernio, voip, regulations, Luca Filigheddu,

Where are the Voice2.0 developers? Partying somewhere else, I think

Mr Blog recently published an interesting post about "Where are the Voice 2.0 developers?"

He quotes one of my posts, and I needed to stop and open my dictionary because I didn't know the idioms "Talk the talk, walk the walk".

PhoneGnome has offered a free API for almost a year now. But where are the innovators? We even offered to provide a free PhoneGnome box to those publishing apps to the User Contributed Library.

People say they want this stuff. They can talk the talk, but can they walk the walk?

English language improvements apart :), I want to clarify this point: my company released a "Voice Over Web" SDK in May, 2006 right during the VON Europe conference in Stockholm, and I was happy to see that Phonegnome has been following a well beaten route[1], and that we were heading the same direction.
That is to say, it wasn't my intention to say "I wanna play with that toy".
I was just so delighted that I "placed some bets" after a glance at my crystal ball.

Unfortunately our SDK has been coldly saluted: even if we received praises and some good technical feedback, we haven't seen experiments worth noting -yet.
My opinion is that we came to the party earlier than expected, and the place was nearly deserted. The party people was feasting somewhere else, with widgets, gadgets, del.icio.us ajax scripts and rails, maps, identity and Single Sign On APIs, and so on. Now they finished building their websites, and found themselves in an embarrassing silence. Websites are mute. Websites need Voice.

In fact, during the last two months we've been contacted by a wave of independent developers, entrepreneurs, old friends, all of which are interested in building a "website with Voice in". All of them need to provide a communication tool to their community, all of them need a turnkey solution because they don't want to bother with the "telecommunication matter".


Opening up (or licensing) your technology (or product) to make it as widespread as possible is a strategy that's been historically used to impose well known dominant designs: VHS (over Betamax), Google maps, Intel Centrino (over Transmeta), NTSC in USA and PAL in Europe. It's a combination of open architecture and bandwagon effect.
Everybody wants to ride the tide.

Technorati Tags: cernio, mrblog, voice20, community,