500K Fines a possibility for Canuck VOIP offerings….
February 22, 2005
"Officers and directors of telecom service providers could face fines as high as $500,000 or up to five years in prison if their companies fail to comply with wiretapping rules being considered by the federal government, the Toronto Star has learned.
A service provider that violates or is likely to violate the proposed rules could also be hit with a court order to shut down certain operations.
"There will be some people in the industry who argue this takes it a little too far," said Kirsten Embree, a lawyer with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP's communications law practice."
What does this mean for VOIP/Asterisk in Canada I wonder?
Read the rest: Telecoms feel heat on wiretaps
first SPIM arrest..
February 22, 2005
"An 18-year-old in the US has become the first person to be charged for sending out unsolicited instant messages, otherwise known as "spim". The New York man is accused of sending out an estimated 1.5 million instant messages advertising porn and mortgage deals to users of US networking site MySpace.com."
read more: here
Motorola releases wifi voip phone for skype
February 18, 2005
"Motorola, a leading maker of mobile phones, and Skype, a leading Internet telephony company, said this week at 3GSM World Congress that Motorola would launch a lineup of products that are dubbed “Skype Ready”, including cell phones and handsets."
read more here: click to read more
Traffic Cops?
February 14, 2005
There has recently been a lot of press surrounding Vonage and it's disputes with many service providers blocking their traffic.
Why? Are you surprised this is happening?
I for one am not at all surprised that such tactics are taking place. Just wait until (yes, I'm more than speculating here) Wal-Mart gets in on it and hires 700 illegal immigrants to packet your phone network. If I was Ma-Bell, I wouldn't want the new kid on the block stealing a piece of my overly large, full of saturated fat pie either.
While I do not agree with this practice, as it is essentially 'cutting out' the little guy, I don't think it's any bit surprising that it's happening, and will keep happening.
This only fuels my theory that the likes of Vonage are going to slowly die out unless they begin new offerings that the large competitors can't or will not do.
I love VOIP, and all of the technology surrounding it, but I definately think that there are big changes are on the horizon. Both here in Canada, and in the US of A.
To read more about vonage's problems: click this link
kinda old but cool – voip gateways expected to reach near 1B by 2009
February 12, 2005
"The global service provider voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) gateway market at $165.3 million in 2003 is expected to reach 985.7 million dollars in the year 2009. The market is anticipated to grow at a steady positive rate over the years. The growth is brought by replacement of digital proprietary voice switching systems with systems that do manage to put voice over the Internet reliably and clearly. "
New SMS tool for Asterisk
February 10, 2005
Bayham's Asterisk SMS Gateway product is a worldwide solution for SMS messaging on the Asterisk PBX. It is a replacement for the outbound SMS functionality provided in the standard Asterisk build, delivering an efficient and low-cost way of sending text messages from an Asterisk PBX to mobile phones in 154 countries. Applications include voicemail notifications, missed call alerts, automated text receipts for callers (e.g. call reference number), system alerts, and a multitude of other uses.
In a nutshell the key features are:
- Worldwide SMS capability
- Dynamically set Sender ID to anything you like (including alphabetical strings!)
- High message throughput
- Internet based (doesn't use any valuable PRI resources)
check it out here: Asterisk SMS
New addon for asterisk – AstFax
February 9, 2005
Taken from the asterisk-users mailing list...
"Greetings all!
astfax v1.0 has been released, and is now available at our website.
You can check out the package at AstFax
Astfax allows you to create an email to fax gateway.
It processes incoming emails with attached fax images, and sends
them outbound via the txfax module. Asterisk's outgoing call queue is used to initiate the fax call and transfer. The call file generated for the outgoing call queue is in template form, and can easily be updated for any system's configuration. We currently use astfax with qmail, asterisk, spandsp, and eps to create an email/fax gateway.
Ken Jones
http://www.inter7.com"
