Graves On SOHO Technology

This addition to this series is not like those that have come previously. All of the prior companies profiled are VoIP service providers that provide a degree of connectivity to the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN), often as paid aspect of their service.

SIP Sorcery is very different. SIP Sorcery started out known as “My SIP Switch.” It’s an open source project created by Aaron Clauson, who describes it as a “SIP service aggregator.”

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I just stumbled across this today. It’s a video clip of Michael White from E4 Technologies using the “Magic Button” feature on a PBXact system to voice dial the VoIP Users Conference from an Aastra 6757i CT. That’s pretty cute!

Last week longstanding VoIP blogger and fellow Canuck Alec Saunders penned a nice post on the Calliflower Blog offering a collection of guidance for podcasters called “10 Podcaster Tips!” It’s a good read…not long…you should go read it now…then come back here. I’ll wait.

Over the past few years I’ve listened to a number of Alec’s Squawkbox podcasts, even attended a handful live & in-person. I respect and admire the man.

Taken in the context of the Calliflower conference service Alec’s post provides some sound, well-considered advice. Even so, I find there to be merit recasting it in a broader context and revisiting some of his points.

By “broader context” I mean specifically considering how someone could record a better sounding podcast by bypassing the legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN).

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Gigaset Communications reintroduced their line of SIP/DECT cordless phones into the North American market at CES in January of 2009. It wasn’t until a few months later that I received a couple of sample systems; the A580IP and S675IP. After actually using it for several months I reviewed the entry level A580IP system in July, and we have since been using it as our primary home phone.

One of the great things about the Gigaset phones is the way you can mix a variety of handsets against a single DECT base. The basic systems are complete systems, meaning that each includes one DECT base and one cordless handset. Beyond that you can add up to five more handsets, and they don’t need to be the same model.

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On the VUC call of May14th we were fortunate to be joined by Tony Lewis, CEO of Schmooze Communications, the creators of PBXact. Tony was, to the best of my knowledge, the very first person to join the call using Aastra’s latest uber-desk-phone, the 6739i.

Tony was able to fill us in on some of more details about Aastra’s product line, and specifically their implementation of wideband voice…or as they call it “Hi-Q.”

It was just over a year ago that there was a hint that Aastra has released some firmware for their existing 57 series phones that implemented G.722 wideband capability. However, like snom before them, they were adding wideband voice support to a hardware platform that was not from the outset designed around such capability.

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If you were keeping an eye on the realm of open source PBX offerings you might be lulled into thinking that there is Digium with Asterisk and Switchvox, then everyone else. Where “everyone else” was basically hobbyists and Freeswitch fanatics. Well, that’s easy to understand, but you’d be wrong. I know that I was.

TMC recently posted an interview with Tony Lewis of Schmooze Communications. I know, I know…how do you take a company with a name like that seriously? It’s just one step above Goober Networks..oh,wait…they’re a real player, too! Well, what’s in a name?

Until today Schmooze Communications didn’t mean anything to me. However, I was enlightened by Michael White from E4 Technologies who is distributing  Schmooze Communications‘ product….PBXact.

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