When do you know an industry is in need of an overhaul? When the top shill of your trade press, Variety no less says its in trouble. Not just fringes, but right down to the core as to why things are going so bad. Link.

An observation from the article –

It’s D-Day for the broadcast networks.

They’ve been living on borrowed time for the better part of two decades, thanks to advertisers willing to toss in more cash each year even as ratings slowly trended ever lower.

But with the economy in a tailspin — and the Big Three auto manufacturers, some of TV’s best advertisers, near ruin — the biz may finally have to pull the emergency cord.

The possible cure? —
More on Progam Licks Picks Stix

The American legal system has been busily rewarding those who patent what they have not invented often at the expense of the inventor and/or early adopter. The problem is rooted in our flawed patent system and the trolls who game it. The courts should function as a quality check on patents, but they have been mostly negligent by not researching the validity of a patent before making a decision.

Verizon had carved out a tidy little profit center in VoIP lawsuits claiming their ownership of some of its fundamental technologies. In their case, the potential of bankrupting a target company in a lengthy court battle functioned like protection racket with out of court settlements being made instead of going to trial. The Darth V legal machine has been using this ploy to roll over one competitor after another until now…

Verizon began suing — and it started with the lame duck in the VoIP space: Vonage. The company has been struggling for a variety of reasons, and a bunch of patent holders swept in to sue the firm that actually made VoIP a viable product in the market. Vonage came under massive pressure from shareholders to get rid of these lawsuits, so it settled rather than deal with a lengthy court room battle.

Verizon interpreted this as a validation of its patents and set off to find others to sue. Its next target was Cox Cable for its digital telephony solution. The plan was clear. After beating Cox, it would turn its legal guns on the big boys like Comcast and Time Warner. Except, it appears the courts have tossed a wrench into those plans by siding with Cox in pointing out that the company doesn’t violate Verizon’s patents. While Verizon will most likely appeal, this should be seen as a pretty big win for Time Warner Cable and Comcast, who may not even have to defend themselves against Verizon’s questionable patent claims at all. (Tech Dirt)

Fonalty the folks that started out as a open source open WiFi supplier have over time added VoIP service to their lineup. Well they just hit on what is a good business practice — help customers in need. Fonalty is sending all their gulf coast customers new devices and assistance to those who need it. Charity? Yes/No. Certainly it is a good gesture and is to be commended. It also at good retention move. But I don’t want to make it sound greedy, it is a good PR, citizen involvement move on their part.

Read the whole thing at the Var Guy blog.

The IEEE’s publication of the 802.11r spec cold have far reaching implications for wireless voice. Aside of the obvious opportunity for device convergence in the corporate campus. there are simply too many opportunities to build a business on the concept to beleive that both fixed and legacy wireless carriers won’t be effected.

The IEEE standards body has officially published the Wi-Fi protocol 802.11r, something that has been in the works since 2004 and was finally approved by the body earlier this year. The new protocol is designed to allow for quick roaming between access points while maintaining security. Handoffs between access points that used to take seconds (and result in dropped calls) can now take place in less than fifty milliseconds. This improves connections between multiple private networks but is particularly beneficial to Wireless VoIP.  (DSL Reports)

And folks I still have a problem with it! Sprint has released its AIRRAVE femtocell device for purchase. This device essentially operates as a mini cell tower with a back link to the Sprint backbone via your broadband connection. Here are some of the features:

• Works with any Sprint phone — up to three users at the same time.¹
  Installs in minutes with your existing broadband Internet access, such as DSL, cable or T1.
• Unlimited incoming and outgoing calls, including nationwide long distance, when using your Sprint phone and initiating your call on the device (requires an AIRAVE unlimited calling plan)

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• Automatically transfers calls to the Sprint Nationwide Network once you leave your home or office.
• Limit access to your AIRAVE by creating a list of up to 50 approved Sprint phone numbers.

Now I think it is kind of nice for Sprint to provide the enduser the ability to lock the unit down. Very nice. But me? I think Sprint’s marketing department out to be fired. Think about it.

Bottom line, the customer is getting ripped in my view. Its usefulness is limited. You don’t get any sort of rebate off of your bill for providing Sprint additional coverage. If you lock it down it becomes a private pop. If you don’t then up to 3 devices can steal your broadband connection to Sprint’s benefit.

But being a tech guy I am excited!! I fully expect to see these going to $50-60 on eBay in a year or so. By then I fully expect that the DD-WRT and Asterisk guys to have written modules for the device. Then we can have a cellular based private pop that connects my cell to anyone VoIP provider of my choice. Sprint won’t be able to do a thing about it either. We live in great times!!

Linky.

PS: I am not ragging on Sprint. I enjoy their ingenuity. But Femtocell with this business model does not make sense. The carriers themselves should be using this in liew of full towers in areas that have shadows.

We may not be in a recession but we are facing tough times, primarily at the gas pump. Families are having to cut back on nonessentials, like entertainment. AT&T, Verizon and now Sony have indications that the consumer has tightened the belt. –

TOKYO: Sony posted a bigger-than-expected 47 percent drop in quarterly profit Tuesday, hurt by losses at its mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson, while Matsushita Electric Industrial reported 86 percent profit growth as a result of rising sales of flat-screen televisions.

Sony raised its forecast for full-year operating profit to reflect a change in its accounting method; Matsushita, which owns the Panasonic brand, reaffirmed its annual outlook, which surpasses market expectations.

By the way Toshiba has been hit as well.

All you broadband providers better listen up, even you wireless guys. If you want to survive this downturn you HAVE to provide a no frills, transport only tier. If you continue to lump yourselves as a ‘entertainment medium’ you are going to lose customers by the fistful. The consumer sits here and looks at all that is before them — cable/FIOS, 500 channel wasteland, pay-per-view, digital phone, cellular phone. Bills running probably up into the $300 a month range. For what?

Many Americans, being forced out of homes by foreclosure are cutting the land line phone for good. Those that are on a solid footing for the housing still have to make choices. So if its a choice between the cell and landline or VoIP they are choosing cellular. They sit there and ask why am I paying $25/mo for premium channels when I don’t have the time to watch them? I am wasting money so out it goes. Besides they could do better with NetFlix or Amazon IPTV. Pay per View the same thing.

So what’s left? Transport, maybe digital phone if one of the breadwinners works out of the house and basic cellular service. That is Basic Fat Pipe. One last angle to consider AT&T, Comcast, Verizon. It is better to assist the consumer with that BFP now. That way you retain a relationship with the customer. When the economy comes back, and it will, that customer will be amenable to adding additional services. If they just cut you off, then you have to compete all over again for their dollars when they get the itch to buy. They just may decide to NOT pick you.

Linky

Garth Freeman of Buzz Broadband has a few choice words about WiMax and none of its good in his experience. He’s using words like Immature, disaster and failure.

In an astonishing tirade to an international WiMAX conference audience in Bangkok yesterday afternoon, CEO Garth Freeman slammed the technology, saying its non-line of sight performance was “non-existent” beyond just 2 kilometres from the base station, indoor performance decayed at just 400m and that latency rates reached as high as 1000 milliseconds. Poor latency and jitter made it unacceptable for many Internet applications and specifically VoIP, which Buzz has employed as the main selling point to induce people to shed their use of incumbent services.

Freeman highlighted his presentation with a warning to delegates, saying “WiMAX may not work.” He said that the technology was still “mired in opportunistic hype,” pointing to the fact most deployments were still in trials, that it was largely used by start-up carriers and was supported by “second-tier vendors”, which he contrasted with HSPA with 154 commercial networks already in operation and support from top tier vendors.

and this….

He did acknowledge at the time that the technology had indoor coverage issues, which he yesterday said had earned him a quick and negative reaction at the time from his supplier, Airspan. Other early WiMAX adopters have also reported issues with indoor coverage: VSNL in India reported indoor loss at just 200m from the base station at an IEEE conference last year.

HORSES FOR COURSES: Freeman says Buzz has now abandoned WiMAX in favour of a “horses for courses” policy. This includes use of the TD-CDMA standard at 1.9GHz—used by operators such as New Zealand’s Woosh Wireless—and a platform he described as wireless DOCSIS– a relatively little known technology that takes HFC plant and extends its capabilities via wireless mesh. He said wireless DOCSIS operates at up to 38Mbps in the 3.5GHz spectrum and its customer premises equipment supported two voice ports for under $A70 while it boasted “huge cell coverage.” He also was employing more conventional wireless mesh platforms at 2.4GHz that support up to 10Mbps with CPE voice ports costing less than A$80.

the odd thing is there are others that seem to be doing ok with the technology –

Internode says an Airspan-supplied network is providing consistent average speeds of 6Mbps at distances up to 30km, with CEO Simon Hackett describing the platform as “proven.”

So lets parse this out.

1. There is no bones that degradation of the signal occurs in interior structures. That was a known quantity from the beginning just based on the frequencies utilized. Its also one reason why operators like Clearwire recommend an external receiver located on the exterior of the home.
2. Latency. I don’t know the internals of their network, but latency in general usually points to factors like backhaul. But at 1000ms I am surprosed that a custom er would get a login in prompt without massive timeout issues.

So I don’t know. Many a good technology has failed based on a poor deployment plan and lack of understanding of the technologies limitations. I would consider the jury still out on these remarks. Especially since both Clearwire and Sprint XOhm are using this as cornerstone technology with success.

Linky
HT: Wired.

Having completed transition from it’s original sponsor, Wengo, popular open source VoIP engine Open Wengo has resumed development as QuteCom With MBDSYS as it’s sponsor.

MBDSYS has five developers working on WengoPhone and its underlying libraries, one full-time and four others on a part-time basis. Because its normal line of business often involves contract and customization work with WengoPhone and its components, Lebedev expects taking on management of the project to have little impact on the company’s time.

Re-starting development

In the short term, Lebedev says to expect a new release shortly after CeBIT, which ran last week. That release will be based on the current 2.2.x-series code, and will consist of primarily bug fixes, but will also introduce peer-to-peer presence management — allowing users to relay their present/away status without passing that information through a SIP server.

More on Open Source VoIP engine Open Wengo reboots as QuteCom

For those with a multicomputer household sometimes prioritizing bandwidth would be a nice trick. But how to do it? Jared Valentine has one solution that he has pulled together in a HOW-TO. His desire was to down throttle all other apps on the pipe while a VoIP call was occurring. Very interesting approach.

There are a few caveats –

• You probably should be using a cheap Linxu box as your NAT/Gateway. (Pssst Clarkconnect.)
• You should have intermediate skills in Linux.
• Assembly is required.

But don’t be disheartened if you don’t want to be on the bleeding edge. Exposure of Mr. Valentines efforts will develop into a easier to deploy toolkit by someone. So hang in there. Otherwise, roll up your sleeves and give it a go. Just backup your box first!!

HT: LifeHacker.

Vonage sucks! When you compete with a monopoly, that last thing you should do is treat customers worse than it does. While I feel that the telco’s lawsuits against Vonage are largely unwarranted, I feel little sympathy for them. I’m truly astonished that a company that continues to use such questionable business practices and downright fraud has managed to remain in business. If you’ve been a long time reader, you may have caught my eluding to having trouble ending service with Vonage. It seems that I am not alone, and things have only gotten worse:

It’s been reported again and again that Vonage makes it difficult for customers to cancel their VoIP service once they’ve signed up. However, recent cases are pointing to the fact that people who don’t even sign up for Vonage service are having difficulties with the company. Russell Shaw at ZDNet has been reporting on just such a case this week in which Vonage managed to assign a Packet8 VoIP customer’s phone number to one of Vonage’s new subscribers. This left the Packet8 subscriber without phone service

Vonage apparently told the customer that Packet8 would need to be responsible for taking the number back. Packet8 hasn’t been particularly helpful in the situation given that they have told the customer that he needs to contact the company that got the number in order to get it back from them. The case is now being handled by attorneys. (from Broadband Reports)

As for myself, I canceled Vonage over 2 years ago, and successfully had the number ported, but they continued to bill me. When I called thay told me service was cancelled I should not be being billed, but it continued, in spite of assurances that it would stop. Every month, I successful contested the credit card charge and every month, the charge was made again. I finally resolved the problem by canceling the credit card account. A few months later, Vonage ported the number back to themselves. Again, I called and got the run around, and started using a different number with my current provider. I’ve recently received a letter form Vonage that my account has been suspended and turned over to collections. The saga continues, and that’s my Vonage commercial - 26 months after leaving Vonage, the are still part of my life! Would anyone care to share their experience with Vonage? Please add your comment.