Attending Proto.in - Jan 18 & 19, 2008 in Chennai, India
I'll be in Chennai on Jan 18 & 19, 2008 attending Proto.in - will be scouting for companies to partner with my employer for the enterprise market. You can get more info on Proto here. Vijay Anand and team at The Knowledge Foundation have been working real hard on making Proto a success - I look forward to seeing this latest version play out this week. Here are Vijay's posts on the subject on the Proto.in blog: The Business Track The Technology Track The Proto Jingle The Speakers - including my friend Gokul Gopalakrishnan!Gokul's question on the legality of 3pcc VoIP calls in India
I missed this earlier, Gokul had a question up on his blog asking:Question on legality of 3pcc VoIP call in India « Gokul Blog — A conversation on VoIP, IMS, Cisco and Just about AnythingBasically, let’s say that I have a Soft PBX making calls to two mobile endpoints and then connecting them ( A typical 3pcc call). Is this legal in India? The reasoning behind banning the VoIP termination on TDM was that the existing licensed vendors were loosing out which would make sense in this case as well. So is there a legal section that bans this as well?I think the legality of the calls depend on where and how the Soft PBX hooks into the PSTN/GSM/CDMA world. If the Soft PBX has one gateway each in two different cities/zones (or circle in Indian telecom parlance) and establishes a call connecting the two mobile endpoints across these gateways then it would definitely be illegal. If its in the same circle and the connections are being made through a sufficiently legitimate method like an E1 from a particular operator instead of using a GSM VoIP Gateway with slots for SIMs, then there would probably be enough of a gray area for it to be argued as legal. Either way, the service isn't gonna be free - the thing about voice is someone has to pay for the call. In this case its the guys providing this Soft PBX service who would have to establish two outgoing calls to connect the two endpoints - that alone might make such a service unviable in India unless they negotiate heavily for minutes.
Technorati Tags: VoIP in India, Soft PBX, 3pcc
Telecom Professionals Group June 2007 meeting
The second meeting of the newly formed (i.e. May 2007) Telecom Professionals Group was held on Friday (June 22, 2007) at Park Sheraton in Chennai. Gokul has documented the minutes of meeting here. Outside the official agenda of administrative issues with organizing the group, discussion topics were quite varied, a lot of discussions centered around VoIP and SIP - I even joked that the group is quite VoIP heavy :) Chandra wanted to make sure he was photographed! So here is a photo of the 7 who attended: From left: Chandra, Mahesh, me, Sharma, Venkat, Gokul and Vivek
Hilarious info on EuroTelcoblog
James Enck of EuroTelcoblog has touched on this hilarious tidbit: The floorspace occupied by VoIP, IPTV and telco triple play industry events exceeded the total surface area of Canada for the first time in history, and the delegates to these shows, marched side-by-side into the sea, would form a neverending columnThe hype and craze for IPTV and triple play seems to have reached a crescendo this year. I remember the days at work a year and a half back when I had to explain the concept to customers. Now they are clamoring for it!SBC & AT&T to merge
SBC and AT&T have announced their merger today.
SBC To Acquire AT&T; Creates Premier, Global Provider for New Era of Communications (Press Release)
Transaction is valued at $16 Billion. This puts together a strong combination of SBC's wireline business with AT&T's strengths in VoIP and business services.
More on GigaBeam
Stealth Communications, an NYC internet gateway and VoIP service provider, will use GigaBeam’s wireless GigE technology.
Light Reading coverage on this topic: GigaBeam, Stealth Expand VOIP Services
Om Malik writes about it: Stealth, GigaBeam team on VoIP
It appears the primary reason for choosing GigaBeam is the advantage of bypassing local infrastructure and its significantly lower levels of network access latency (expected to reduce by as much as 30% with this network).
I last mentioned GigaBeam here: GigE Network in the air over Manhattan
Followup to last week's Covad-VoIP-PSTN discussions
Here's some relevant information on this same topic: VoIP is NOT VoIP is NOT VoIP from the Broadband Blog by Aswath Rao.
Covad to trial converged network
It appears Covad will be running trial converged DSL+VoIP networks in Atlanta, Denver and san Jose using equipment from Nokia and Zhone. [Press Release] In such a network, customers would have absolutely no idea they are actually using a VoIP phone, as all the standard functionality of POTS is maintained. At the point where the customer's phone line enters the telco's network, it connects to a Broadband Loop Carrier that can service DSL and POTS and connects to an all-IP infrastructure. All voice traffic is carried back to the telco's VoIP infrastructure (soft switches, media gateways, etc). In the long run, if Covad were to deploy such a network throughout the US, their current investments and operating expenses in offering wholesale DSL services would be similar to the expense of operating this new network - without the hassles of handling voice with legacy TDM or ATM equipment. On further reading of their press release, I notice that Covad actually sees an opportunity to increase the number of customers they can service: "Unlike DSL broadband service, line-powered voice access is not distance sensitive. That means Covad's nationwide network will, in the future, be able to serve 40 percent more customers with basic voice services in the current Covad footprint." Other coverage on this topic: Covad Launches: I Can't Believe It's Not POTS VoIPAbout Me
Ram ViswanathanApple customer & fan, intrapreneur, @ramhv on twitter. Create and drive go-to-market initiatives for a major systems engineering & integration company headquartered in India with a presence in South Asia, Middle East, Africa, UK & Europe & North America.
