Iridiacom Blog - VoIP, GSM and much more

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 enterprise by offering single-number access, dual mode phone (GSM/WiFi), VoIP calls on WiFi within the enterprise to reduce the cost of calls. We can compare this with UC that relies on Femtocell technology that extends the reach of the mobile cellular network within the home by using a special mini base station plugged into a home broadband connection, this has the advantage that a regular GSM handset is used.

It will be interesting to see which flavour emerges as the strongest - many FMC applications and handsets are starting to be implemented but we see this is heavily driven by businesses in the enterprise sector on the other side of the coin the Femtocell technology is now being trialled heavily and we see this being driven more by the cellular providers as a method to protect future revenues.

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 problem we were having compatibility problems with some equipment designed for the German market being used in the UK.

The german ringback tone is 1 Second on and 4 Seconds off - in the UK it is 0.4 Seconds on 0.2 seconds off 0.4 Seconds on and 2.0 Seconds off - the compatibility issue was the UK equipment did not expect a maximum of a 4 second gap.

We always like to come back and do some good old telephony work

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 to external developers but they have also announced a $100 million developer fund from its VC partners called KPCB’s iFund™. There is now an SDK available for developers that allows applications to be tested on a regular iMAC before they are used on the iPhone. You can see it here

We are looking forward to see what external developers produce espescially in the VoIP area and many observers are waiting to see what happens with Skype and what applications they will surely produce.

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). It is designed to connect to the service provider’s network via broadband (usually DSL), the current designs under development will support 2 to 5 mobile phones in a residential setting.

A Femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors, especially where access could otherwise be limited or unavailable. The Femtocell incorporates the functionality of a typical base station but extends it to allow a simpler, self contained deployment.

What are the Advantages of a Femtocell?

Femtocells are an another way to deliver the benefits of Fixed Mobile Convergence. The main difference is that most FMC architectures require a dual-mode (GSM/3G and WiFi) handset, while a femtocell-based deployment will work with the users current mobile handsets. The cellular operator also benefits from the improved capacity and coverage but also can reduce both capital expenditure and operating expense.  There could also be an opportunity for new services and reduced costs.

When can we Expect to See Them in Use?

A lot of the carriers here in the UK and around the world are testing units and/or running trials - there are a lot of technical challenges facing the service providers as they will have to operate their networks in a completely different way plus it is vital that the Femtocells are pllug and play so users can buy them and simply plug them in at home.

For more information visit the Femtocell Forum http://www.femtoforum.org/femto/index.php

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 problems so watch this space.

Read their post here

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 within five years, instead only around 45,000 people have subscribed to date (not the millions expected) and the company has now stopped promoting the service.

The solution was designed so that users could make cheap or free calls using the Fusion handset at home over BT broadband, and switch to the Vodafone network or BT’s WiFi hotspots outside. However, the concept seems to have proven too challenging for potential users to grasp.

This is a real shame as this service really promoted the FMC concept but I guess domestic users really did not grasp the benefits offered.

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 on Internet Telephony systems.

The variation in vocal tones gives human communication its many nuances. You can call someone a fool, but make it sound like you’re joking, by raising the pitch of your voice. When we joke, we go to a higher pitch and the human voice has a frequency spectrum from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz, with Voice over IP compression a lot of that range is lost.

So if you try even the most harmless dig at your colleague on an IP telephony call, all human warmth is lost, and you end up delivering the gravest insult possible, in a flat sneery sarcastic tone. So there you have it - Internet telephony is bad for communications

View the article here

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 is just another application that will help them sell servers but for Fonality it will mean they have many more customers that they will be able to cross-sell their other products to. It certainly brings Asterisk solutions more mainstream.

See the report over on TMC NET here

Visit Fonality here and Dell here

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 bundled Internet Explorer into Windows and the various lawsuits that followed.

Shame really but time moves on and things change…

Happy New Year to all our readers.

Towards the end of December Digium announced the one millionth download of the Asterisk 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 of the smaller PBX manufacturers in the marketplace who dream about such numbers.

We have seen various other ‘flavours’ of Asterisk develop such as trixbox from Fonality and it is interesting to see how the ‘open source’ software is used to fuel other commercial endeavours such as hardware sales or commercially supported software versions.

 Have a look at the press release over here