Graves On SOHO Technology

Ok, you’re here, so that makes you something of a geek. Perhaps you have another telephony geek in your life, or your family are asking for a Christmas list. Whatever the case, a good USB speakerphone is really handy and makes nice present.

I’ve used a number of these things over the years. For the past few months I’ve had a Jabra SPEAK 410 on the corner of my desk.

Little round-and-loud has proven to be a solid performer. I’ve used it to participate in Google Hangouts, with Skype and GotoMeeting as well as various SIP soft phones. You might have seen me show it in a recent VUC call with Logitech. Whatever the client software, in every case it worked well. It sounds great to my ear and conveys my voice clearly to the far end.

The microphone is omni-directional, effective to about one yard. That makes the SPEAK 410 ideal for desk use, even if you have a person on either side of the desk.

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Earlier today Hardcoresecurity tweeted about a funny little thing. He noticed that the home page for VoIP Supply now proclaims that “VoIP Specialists are available in High Definition…”

Looks like @VoIPSupply figured out HD Voice over the PSTN – Website says, “…available in HD 8:30am–9pm weekdays. — Toll Free: 1-800…”

That’s novel, right? The thing is that they offer only a toll free PSTN number as a contact method. Here’s a screen shot of a portion of their home page.

I expect that at present it’s very unlikely that you could actually have an HDVoice call with anyone at VoIP Supply. It’s not impossible, but unlikely.

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There’s just way too much interesting gear out there for me to try all of it. That’s at least part of the reason why I was happy to read Ruben’s review of the Citel C-4100 IP phone. Back in May he won the phone in a contest on the VoIP Supply blog.

I hope that he makes good on his intention to use the phone to join a VUC call in G.722. At $99 it just might be a good low-end solution to providing a basic wideband capable desk phone. That is, if the handset truly delivers the call quality.

Beyond merely a wideband codec the physical device matters. It needs to be solidly build, with high-quality transducers. I guess we’ll see, or should I say hear, next week.

Some time back the folks over at VoIP Supply posted something about a collection of new SIP Wifi handsets. Whereas in the past that would make me take notice, even catch my interest, I found myself completely disinterested. In fact, it was surprising how little appeal these gadgets had.

Over the years I’ve tried various SIP Wifi handsets and come to a very simple conclusion. That is, for my home office application they have no merit at all. The fact that I have a solid cordless SIP solution eliminates the possible interest that any of these new products might have.

In everything experiment that I’ve ever tried DECT/CATiq products soundly beat any dedicated SIP Wifi handset. Now that there are affordable SIP/DECT products from sources like Gigaset and Snom dedicated VoWifi handsets just don’t measure up for many applications.

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VoIP Supply’s Garrett Smith has an interesting post the other day. Actually, we can cross reference a couple of posts to follow his line of thinking. Firstly, he offers some advice on selecting an analog gateway in a post titled, “Four Keys To A Successful Voip Gateway Purchase.” It’s a good basic overview on VoIP gateways for the beginner.

I’ve made my thoughts on gateway/ATA devices well known in the past (here, here and here). I see them as relics of a prior era of VoIP, and to be avoided if at all possible. However, some people feel that they are truly necessary. Whatever floats your boat.

A little later on over at VoIP Supply’s VoIP Insider Blog Garrett poses the question, “Where Are The Open Source VoIP Gateways?” That is a fine question and one the deserves an answer. It also needs to be broken down a bit to get to a clear answer.

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Just a few days ago VoIP Supply announced a new desk phone that’s capable of both SIP and IAX2. Not much has been forthcoming in the way of IAX2 capable end-points, even though the protocol has wound its way through a lengthy standards process. Digium has dropped the little IAXy (aka S101i)  ATA device a while back. Last year Zeeek tried the Allnet 7960 which is IAX2 capable but lacking in some ways. So it seems that to date there just haven’t been any truly business class IAX2 phones to be had.

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