Graves On SOHO Technology

Invoxia’s NVX 610 is a curious device. In some ways it defies description. Is it an iPhone/iPad dock? Is it a desk phone? Or is it a conference phone?

In truth, it’s all of these things. The question is, can it very good at all those functions? Or any of them?

These questions are what prompted me approach Invoxia for an evaluation unit. This review arises from the my experience with that device over the past eight months.

Let’s begin by considering a little bit about the company. Invoxia are a French company with strength in design and engineering. Amongst their team you will find considerable experience in telecom. In the past they have been involved in projects for BT and the French multi-national Thomson, including the SIP/DECT hardware that Comcast rolled out as part of its HomePoint offering.

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The  May 25th VUC call with the teams from RIM and Truphone was interesting. It’s great to hear that RIM is taking audio quality seriously as they go forward. I certainly hope that they get some traction with that strategy. As someone who has trumpeted the merits of HDVoice for a few years, any help to raise awareness of the benefits of improved audio quality is truly appreciated.

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About a week ago Scott Wharton, CEO of Vidtel, penned a blog post asking, “What’s wrong with the video conferencing industry?” Scott goes on to cite the high-cost of video conference end-points devices, considering both older models and some new product introductions.

Scott expresses frustration with the incumbent players “lack of aggressiveness” in driving down the cost of video as a tool for business. His point is well made. The cost of implementing video remains too high for many companies, including my own employer.

Scott says, “It’s unquestionable that video conferencing will be and is becoming the de facto way that people communicate.” While I’d like to agree with this. Heck, I want to agree with this. It’s not been my experience to date.

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In the novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” the legendary science fiction writer Robert Heinlein once wrote, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” This came immediately to mind when I stumbled upon Fee Fighters where I found a post that was a nice explanation of how free conference calling services work.

The author quite rightly points out that Google Voice and Vonage will not place calls to the rural rate centers with the exorbitantly high termination costs that make the free conference service possible.

My preferred ITSP, OnSIP by Junction Networks, charges a uniform per-minute rate for calls to most rates centers in North America and Western Europe. However, when it comes to those rate centers in rural areas that host free conference services their plan changes. If we call such services they charge us “the true market rate” which can be up to 20x the normal rate. They made this abundantly clear back in 2009 when the policy was enacted.

We find no fault with OnSIP and their policy in this regard. In fact, we decided that we saw value in adding an optional private conference bridge to our OnSIP account, even though it costs us $20/month.

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Early in 2010 Polycom introduced an addition to their legendary Soundstation line of conference phones, the Soundstation IP5000. (pictured right) I was lucky enough to get one for review and found it very attractive for the small office and home office user.

While I was on the exhibit floor at ITExpo last month I saw what looked like a Soundstation IP5000 at the Netx booth. However, looking a little closer I found it wasn’t a Soundstation IP5000 at all…it was a new model called the Soundstation Duo.

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Every time you make or receive a phone call it’s for a reason; there’s a point to be made, something to be communicated. Communicating effectively is critically important in business.

Anything that helps to make your message more clearly gives an advantage. Inversely, anything that makes it more difficult to communicate is, in reality, a threat to your business. This principle should be your guide as you select equipment for your small office or home office.

When considering home office telephony the technologically inclined often get bogged down in debate about the use of traditional phone service vs various forms of IP telephony. This is a big issue, with many complexities to be considered. However, there is a simpler issue that can have a dramatic impact on the enhancing your ability to communicate clearly; do you have a good headset?

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