August 6, 2005

O'Reilly Network has published an article that takes a close look at the Skype VOIP platform. For those who don't know, Skype allows you to make free telephone calls over the Internet. The article explains how Skype works, looks at many of the extra features like SkypeIn, SkypeOut, and Skype Voicemail, and details some of the limitations of Skype.

June 10, 2005

According to a number of credible blog postings, Yahoo! is currently in acquisition talks with Skype, the VOIP provider. If this deal happens, expect both Google and Microsoft to move fairly quickly into the VOIP market with acquisitions of their own.

May 31, 2005

Tom's Networking has published a detailed comparison and review of the two leading voice over IP (VOIP) calling solutions: Skype and Vonage. The article compares both services in terms of calling features, ease of installation, customer service, international and domestic rates, local number portability, voice quality, and call completion.

May 11, 2005

Geek Gazette has a review of the Sipura SPA-3000, a very unique VOIP adapter that can act as an analog telephone adapter for connecting a regular telephone to a VOIP provider or VOIP PBX, as well as act as a gateway between the regular telephone network (PSTN) and a VOIP provider. The later functionality allows you to dial into the gateway from the regular phone network and connect out through the VOIP network. For users of the open source Asterix PBX, the SPA-3000 can be used to bring a inbound and/or outbound PSTN trunk into the PBX. For more details about this interesting device, please read the review.

May 9, 2005

Tom's Networking has published complete coverage of Interop 2005 show in Las Vegas. The primary focus seemed to be on the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. Some of the products highlighted include the Cisco 800 Series Integrated Services Router and ASA 5500 Adaptive Security Appliance, the 3Com NBX V3000 VOIP PBX platform, other VOIP PBX hardware from Netgear, the ADTRAN NetVanta 1224R and 1224STR routers, the Netgear SC101 NAS storage device, the Lantronix WiBox and SecureBox device servers, new KVM-over-IP switches from Startech, the Maxus MJR-0918 cell phone blocker, the D-Link DWS-1008 AirPremier Wireless Switch, the FVS124G and FVS114 ProSafe VPN firewalls from Netgear, the Cisco 1800, 870 and 850 series of VPN routers, and the Xirrus 8 radio WLAN array.

May 8, 2005

An article over at CNET looks at the options for home Voice over IP and videoconferencing, including iChat AV from Apple, the Ojo from Motorola, the Netphone, the F1000 from Vonage, the CN620 from Motorola, the Broadband Video Phone from Packet8, and D-Link's i2eye Broadband Videophones DVC-1100 and DVC-2000.

May 6, 2005

According to the VOIP Security Alliance and a new government report, Voice Over IP telephone services may be the next target for hackers and criminals. The major threat right now is denial of service, preventing people from using their VOIP phones making or receiving calls. Caller ID spoofing with the aid of VOIP networks is already a vulnerability being used by criminals. Other attacks, such as monitoring of conversations, are also possible since VOIP providers do not encrypt their traffic.

May 1, 2005

ExtremeTech has published two articles, one arguing for using Voice Over IP (VOIP) for your residential phone service, the other arguing against using VOIP. Both articles bring up very valid points and are worth reading for anyone considering making the switch to VOIP.

April 27, 2005

A number of services for faking Caller ID information have sprung up over the past few months. These services allow your phone call to appear to be coming from any number you desire. Because many large companies use Caller ID information for authentication and routing calls, these new Caller ID spoofing services are seen as a big problem. Many credit card companies use Caller ID to allow instant activation of newly issued cards and many voice mail systems allow instant access based on Caller ID information. In addition, criminals are starting to use these services to make their bogus phone calls look like they are coming from legitimate and trustworthy companies. Criminals can even use such services to call large companies and make their calls appear to be coming from within these companies themselves. Companies providing Caller ID spoofing services include Star38, PI Phone, US Tracers, Telespoof, Spooftel, Camophone, and Covert Call.

April 19, 2005

Verizon has announced that it will let existing DSL customers in 13 Northeast states get DSL service without having to pay for telephone service on the DSL line. Customers who have DSL with phone service may drop the phone service and keep the DSL. This would also allow them to get voice over IP (VOIP) over the DSL connection instead, and not have to pay for regular phone service as well.

April 16, 2005

Skype, provider of the free Skype voice over IP (VOIP) software, has announced the availability of SkypeIn inbound PSTN phone number service, as well as voice mail capability. The SkypeIn feature allows customers to have, for a $39 yearly fee, a telephone number for incoming calls from regular phone lines, and is available for Skype users in Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. The SkypeIn feature also gives users free voice mail, which otherwise is priced at $19 per year.

April 7, 2005

America Online has announced the availability of its Internet phone service in more than 40 cities. In an agressive move, the company is charging $13.99 per month to existing AOL subscribers. The monthly rate is for a local calling plan and increases by $5 after three months. Service to non-AOL subscribers and other calling plans are priced similarly to competing VOIP offerings from companies like Vonage and AT&T.

April 4, 2005

According to market research firm IDC, the number of residential voice over IP (VOIP) subscribers in the U.S. will jump to 27 million by 2009, up from an estimated 3 million today.

April 2, 2005

Skype is recruiting third-party developers to create add-on programs for its Voice over IP platform. Over 1,000 programmers have already signed up, and several dozen free and commercial add-on products have already been created.

April 2, 2005

Verizon's chief technology officer has stated that the company may launch a VOIP over EVDO offering in the next three years. The move is intended to compete with VOIP over WiMAX services expected to be launched in the next two years.

March 26, 2005

Tom's Networking put five VOIP providers to the test, including Verizon VoiceWing, AT&T CallVantage, iConnectHere, Vonage, and Packet8. The review compares features, overall quality, pricing, telephone number availability, and more. Their final pick for best current VOIP provider was Packet8.

March 24, 2005

Voice over IP (VOIP) is growing all across Europe, as businesses look to save money and gain new features such as unified messaging and collaboration. Revenue from European customers of VOIP is growing at an explosive rate of 13% per quarter.

March 20, 2005

Identity thieves are taking advantage of VOIP and Caller ID spoofing to commit a variety of identity theft crimes. This is happening because too many large companies are relying on Caller ID as a identity verification mechinism.

March 17, 2005

LinuxDevCenter.com takes a look at the GnomeMeeting project and interviews the developer, Damien Sandras. GnomeMeeting is an open source Voice-over-IP and Video-over-IP application for Linux that uses the standard H.323 protocol. Read the article to see what's new in the recently released GnomeMeeting 1.2 and find out more about how the application was built.

March 15, 2005

Does Skype for PPC live up to the promise of free wireless voice calling from your Pocket PC? In some ways the answer is yes, in other ways the answer is that more work needs to be done. This detailed review at Tom's Hardware gives you the current state of affairs.