Archive September 2009
How Skype Plans to Dominate Business Telephony
Interesting article featured recently on Gigaom blog on Skypes plans for domination in the business telephony arena, starting with the recent announcement of Skype for SIP beta programme.
Skype, a division of eBay is likely to announce tomorrow that the beta version of its Skype for SIP offering will interoperate with Cisco Systems’s Unified Communications 500 system. This follows closely similar arrangements struck up by Skype with Shoretel and SIPfoundry’s sipXecs platform. In addition, the company is said to be working with Avaya, a major enterprise telephony equipment provider. These are a few of the many moves made by Skype to expand its business to the corporate market.
Skype for SIP was announced in March 2009 and was criticized by competitors and others for being mostly vaporware and an ill-conveived product. Skype, of course feels otherwise. ”There are a lot of companies that are looking for paid and supported version of Skype,” said CEO Josh Silverman, in a conversation last week. “People are using it for in-enterprise video calling.” The company is working on developing an enterprise version and a enterprise license, Silverman explained.
“We are pretty big on video calling,” Silverman said. The company is putting a lot of resources into building better video conferencing experience, because he believes that person-to-person video calling is going to be as big as video. That absolutely makes sense because today the definition of communication is constantly changing. In the past, the world was all about voice, then instant messages and now video calling. People are sending messages and status updates via Twitter and Facebook. The communications are now multimodal.
While he wouldn’t get into product specifics, Silverman dropped enough hints about Skype’s enterprise future. “We are working to develop an enterprise software product that is built around productivity versus simply cost savings,” he said. This is a very telling statement: at present Skype is only utility is that it is a cheap calling service that can leverage about 480 million subscribers and its ability to buy long distance minutes on the cheap.
One of the reasons why Skype is popular with corporate users is because it is fairly easy to use. It is simple to do face-to-face video calls for free via Skype. As a company, The GigaOM Networks uses Skype to essentially conduct most of our business with members of our team who are in remote locations.
Related: Last week, I had a lengthy conversation with Skye CEO Josh Silverman about his plans for the Skype in the coming years. In the first part of the conversation, Josh discussed his lobbying efforts to get Skype working over 3G networks.
Why no virtual VoIP numbers in Africa?
Seems to be a severe shortage of virtual VoIP DID numbers available for African countries outside of South Africa. Obviously legislation and infrastructure are major constraints restricting this service but surely with recent improvements in both these areas the service should be available soon?
Skype recently announced the availability of DID Skype-In numbers for South Africa, but Skype along with most other VoIP providers don’t offer a virtual number for any other African country. On a recent trawl through google search results only one company, mydivert.com, was found to offer a virtual number for Nairobi Kenya however the service claimed to only work within Kenya and could not be dialled from outside the country… mmh, sounds a little dodgy! Further searching revealed availability of virtual numbers in Botswana but thats where it ends.
So of the 47 countries in Africa only 3-4 countries seems to be able to offer local VoIP DID numbers. This paints a pretty bleak picture of telecoms in Africa and the obvious reluctance for the national telco’s to work with alternative providers.
One would think the easiest way for an international company to look at new markets in Africa would be in a virtual sense but it seems this approach would have limited success until the technology in African countries catches up with the rest of the world.
Skype for SIP Beta
Skype has announced Skype for SIP Beta, a service that allows you to connect your existing standards-based (SIP) communications infrastructure to the Skype community and, at the same time, take advantage of Skype’s competitive global calling rates. Shoretel has become the first IP PBX vendor to be approved by Skype, with Shoretel customers entitled to register for the beta version of Skype for SIP.
Skype for SIP is a simplified version of Skype Asterisk that allows businesses and employees to receive inbound calls through SIP-enabled UC systems from its 400 million-plus users. ShoreTel customers can also use the product to direct outbound calls from devices on ShoreTel’s UC system to landlines and mobile phones at Skype rates. Both SIP products are an effort to build on Skype’s presence in the enterprise, where the company’s success has so far been limited.
Ultimately, one could put Skype for SIP to work in many ways;
* With click-to-call buttons customers can contact you directly from your site or email.
* Customers can call you on a local online number.
* Your business will have a presence within the community of over 440 million registered Skype users.
* Free Skype calls to the office when travelling.
* Business as usual for home workers – the office is one click away.
* Your business will be globally accessible and visible to the Skype community and potential partners.
* Improve long distance business relationships with free inbound calling.
ICASA: Empty promises or a step in the right direction?
Following the release of our recent article on the Interconnect Rate Debate, The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) has today issued a statement on interconnect rates after a meeting between ICASA, Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom, Neotel and the Internet Service Providers Association. “The meeting was necessitated by the ongoing public discussions around the cost of call termination in the country,” ICASA said in a statement.
According to ICASA the meeting resolved to:
1. Embark on the industry led process to reduce termination rates, with ICASA exercising an oversight responsibility
2. Ensure that the process of negotiating a new termination rate regime also takes into account the requirements of the competition law
3. Conclude negotiations between the operators by the end of December 2009, with ICASA proposing an implementation date of 01 February 2010
So its seems like the mounting public pressure has at least got the ball rolling, lets hope ICASA helps the ball along rather than kicking it aside! If ICASA can reduce interconnect costs by early next year it promises some good prospects for general telecoms costs in SA and opportunities for real competition by VoIP providers. To find out more about the implications for VoIP of a drop in the interconnect rates read here
The Interconnect Rate Debate
There has been a huge amount of debate in the media recently about the exhorbitant interconnect rates charged by cell providers and the impact on mobile call costs in South Africa. What exactly does this mean and what are the implications for VoIP in SA should interconnect rates come down?
What are interconnect rates?
Interconnect or termination rates are the charges that one provider charges another for carrying traffic on their network. For example when a MTN user calls a Vodacom user, there is ‘cost’ to Vodacom for carrying the second part of the call to their user. The charge is based on an agreed rate between cell providers on what the associated ‘cost’ is for carrying that traffic. The contentious issue is whether the cell providers claimed cost is accurate or not.
The issue
GSM cellular licences were granted to Vodacom and MTN on 30 September 1993. At this time there were about 2m GSM users in the world, today there are nearly 4bn users worldwide and nearly 40m users in SA. So an interconnect cost worked out in 1993 when cell user estimates were very conservative, compared to the reality today, paints a very biased picture in terms of the interconnect ‘cost’ which has barely changed in this time. The current interconnect rate is R1.25 p/min with little incentive for cell providers to reduce this ‘cost’ and there seems to be no pressure being exerted by ICASA to force any change.
Where to next?
Significant pressure has started to be put on ICASA and government to reduce these interconnect charges in order to increase competition and reduce telecommunication costs. Leading the challenge seems to be local ITSP’s or VoIP Providers who stand to benefit most from reduced interconnect rates as it makes them a real alternative to the incumbant operators. ECN Telecom has been one of the VoIP Providers to lead the charge and has been very outspoken in the media claiming that the true interconnect cost should be somewhere around 25c p/min.
Implications for VoIP termination in SA
Currently the cheapest way for a business to make mobile calls is by using a LCR (least cost router) onsite which terminates calls directly to the GSM operators. There is an industry focussed on offering these traditional LCR services such as Vox Orion, Huge Telecom, Nashua Mobile etc. Should the interconnnect rates eventually drop to the levels suggested above, it would mean that LCR would no longer happen on a customer site but traffic would rather be routed to a VoIP provider who could terminate the call more cost effectively. Any IP enabled PBX could be set up to route calls to a VoIP provider (or multiple providers), alternatively an IP gateway could be used if a PBX is not IP enabled.
Conclusion
The battle may have only just begun but it is inevitable that with mounting pressure interconnect rates will have to come down at some point in South Africa. At this stage the timing or extend of this change is anyone’s guess (including ICASA’s it seems!). It is however certain that when these rates do come down it will enable real competition in the telecoms landscape and make VoIP termination a very appealing alternative for businesses in SA!
Setting up FNB Connect with Asterisk
As strange as it may seem for a bank to be offering a VoIP service, it is all the more strange that they seem to be doing it well! FNB Connect seems to be getting fairly possitive reviews and feedback in the press regarding the quality of service. So, for those FNB customers that want to now take it to the next level and hook up their office Asterisk PBX to an FNB Connect account then you may find the below interesting. The good news is that the FNB client uses IAX (not SIP) with an endpoint of voice.fnbconnect.co.za, making it very easy to incorporate with Asterisk.
The below is a setup documented by Durban technology group Thusa
iax.conf
register => 087
[fnb]
type=peer
host=voice.fnbconnect.co.za
username=087
secret=
[087
type=user
host=dynamic
Now to route some calls out of there
extensions.conf
[local]
exten => 087
[default]
exten => s,1,DIAL(SIP/
[outbound]
exten => _X.,1,DIAL(IAX2/fnb/${EXTEN})
FNB’s calls come in as “s@default” so you need a ‘default’ context to route incoming calls to your local call group or extension.
After publishing this information someone at FNB also pointed out that their cluster supports G729 and trunking. Switching to G729 where available should greatly improve voice quality.
Wideband Telephony? A reality in SA yet?
Wideband Telephony, High Definition voice, HD VoIP… whatever you call it, internationally, its taking the VoIP industry by storm causing a surge of new product and service offerings to hit the market from a variety of powerhouses. All well and good; but what is Wideband Telephony really? And more importantly is the technology applicable to South Africa with its high costs of bandwidth?
What is Wideband Telephony?
Wideband Telephony, also known as industry trademarked terms HD Voice (Polycom), HD VoIP (AudioCodes) and HDSP (Gigaset) , refers to the use of higher quality voice codecs to deliver audio quality far superior to any cellular, PSTN or “traditional” VoIP call. A voice codec (if you’re unfamiliar) is what converts an analog voice signal to a digitally encoded version.
Just how superior is Wideband Telephony to traditional calling? Very. G.722, the most popular and widely used Wideband telephony codec, captures the sound spectrum up to 7,000Hz (7 kHz). This means nothing until you learn that the average cellular or PSTN call only captures the sound spectrum between 300 – 3,300Hz (3.3 kHz). With twice the sound spectrum captured you get exposed to a whole new range of sound that increases the clarity and crispness of the calling experience. Hence all the excitement.
The reality in South Africa
Before you get too excited at the prospects there are a few implications that make Wideband Telephony a challenge in the SA context. Firstly in order to experience a true Wideband call both participants must be using a Wideband codec and Wideband phones. Most people you are likely to call these days aren’t using Wideband Telephony. However as VoIP continues to take market share from land lines and cellular networks move to 4G, Wideband Telephony’s presence will increase.
The other major challenge in SA is obviously bandwidth constraints. The wideband codec G722 uses condsiderably more bandwidth than other codecs. At the moment all local VoIP providers (Vox, ECN, iBurst, MWeb, IS etc) restrict the codec to G.729 because it is the best compromise between low bandwidth and decent quality. There are various bandwidth calculators which help to explain this, nice simple one here…
What do you need for Wideband Telephony?
So it may not quite be a reality in SA yet but what would you need when it is available? Firstly, Wideband Telephony starts at the voice carrier, hopefully we will see some SA providers supporting wideband in the not too distant future. Next you’ll need to ensure that your IP based phone system or VoIP gateway also supports the G.722 codec. As you can tell, capability and support are essential to ensuring a quality Wideband calling experience.
With a Wideband friendly service provider and system in place, the last stop is the desktop. Given the growing support for and adoption of Wideband Telephony, a number of VoIP equipment manufacturers have released desktop IP phones that support Wideband codecs. Led by Polycom and their HD voice line-up, you can find IP phones that support Wideband codecs from many popular manufacturers such as Aastra, AudioCodes and Snom. Snom has been especially active in Wideband with the release of the Snom 820 and Snom 870. Although there are a number of choices available today, expect to pay a premium for them. Over time prices will fall, but for now you will pay a little extra.
Conclusion
Although not an option yet in South Africa, Wideband Telephony holds good promise when bandwidth service and costs improve and HD voice will hopefully help turn around the general negative sentiment in regards to VoIP user experience and call quality issues in South Africa.
source: UBandwidth
Ebay sells Skype
Skype seems to be in the news alot recently, what with Skype SA Inbound numbers being announced and then the subsequent rate increases to SA numbers. Now it has been announced that Ebay will sell its controlling stake in Skype.
Ebay Inc., the company famous for its online marketplace said Tuesday it is selling a 65 percent stake in the business to a group of private investment funds for $1.9 billion in cash and a $125 million note, while retaining a 35 percent stake.
EBay said the deal values the company at $2.75 billion.
EBay said earlier this year that it would spin off Skype, which provides voice and video connections via the Internet, after struggling to justify its 2005 acquisition of the company for $2.6 billion.
EBay hoped buyers and sellers on its auction site would use the service but it never became popular. It took a $900 million write-down on Skype in 2007, tacitly acknowledging it had overvalued the business.
The group of investors buying the stake includes Andreessen Horowitz, the new $300 million fund set up by Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen. Led by the private equity firm Silver Lake, the group also includes Index Ventures and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
EBay expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Shares in the San Jose-based company climbed 44 cents, or 2 percent, to $22.58 in morning trading Tuesday.
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- The new snom M9 review, some nice new upgrades and feature additions http://www.voipblog.co.za/2009/11/the-new-snom-m9-cordless-ip-phone/
- Cheeky move by SA's biggest operators... the interconnect rate debate continues http://tinyurl.com/yjtxfem
- Astricon 2009 announcements and interview with Mark Spencer, CTO Digium http://tinyurl.com/yfqmj5w
- snom now supports TR-069 standard for remote VoIP device management http://tinyurl.com/ygu2g7x
- ICASA: Empty promises or a step in the right direction? http://tinyurl.com/nqnja2