Graves On SOHO VoIP

Earlier today someone started a thread about FWD over at the VoIP Tech Chat forum on http://www.broadbandreports.com. Several forum regulars questioned the status of FWD, which is a fair question as not much has been heard from those involved. Certainly the web site has changed, and a lot of the old resource material seems to have gone away.

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I’ve been traveling a lot lately so the phones around my home office have been idle. Even so, I was a little surprised to find that my snom m3 was not making or receiving calls this morning. Well, it was and it wasn’t. I could dial out and the call appeared to be placed, but I never heard any audio. Once clear of today’s VUC call with Dan Behringer, and lunch with my wife, I was able to investigate this further and get the matter resolved.

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This just in….

Please update the SIP domain for connecting to FWD from fwd.pulver.com to sip.fwdi.net before March 31, 2009.

FWD is moving to a new SIP platform as a part of a focus on HD voice.

The platform offers the present functionality, but we will retain only those features members express interest.

NAT traversal gets addressed automatically, so there is no longer a need for fwdnat2.pulver.com or stun.fwdnet.net.

The transition includes a March 31, 2009 end of life for my.FWD, FWD.Communicator, 800 # access, and the voicemail platform.

Until the new portal gets launched, request additional FWD numbers via numbers@fwdi.net.

Send transition related support requests to transition@fwdi.net.

Regards,

Dan

………………………………..
Daniel Berninger
CEO, FWD

GigaOm has a nice guest post by FWD’s Dan Berninger. Dan describes the benefits of wideband voice encoding, as well as the obstacles to its more widespread acceptance. He rightly points to internet connected devices as being the only way to reap the benefits of wideband voice.

I’m happy to say that in the past year members of VUC have started adopting wideband telephony. From the time when I first reviewed the Polycom IP550 & IP650 to now more and more people are wideband capable, having decided to invest in the hardware themselves. We will soon have access to the Siemens Gigaset range in the US, which include some wideband capable DECT devices. And finally, we have a fully interoperable soft phone in Counterpath’s Eyebeam v1.5 for Windows.

We are making progress toward wideband IP telephony.

Today Jeff Pulver posted a blog entry giving his sense that HDVoice will spark a renaissance in the VoIP world. He feels that carriers will be able to differentiate themselves on the basis of quality and earn customer loyalty. He’s outright enthusiastic about HDVoice.

I find Jeff’s focus in this area encouraging. Jeff has a lot of clout and could help push wideband telephony into the thoughts of people who might otherwise pass it by.

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For quite some time I’ve had a SIP URI of one sort or another. It started with FWD, but I also have Gizmo5 and OnSIP accounts as well. I’ve made some of them public for over three years. I even published one in an article on SmallNetBuilder, which surprised the publisher a little. If you’re looking at the blog on my web site just glance to your right and you’ll find my current SIP URI.

Well Friday, while working in the yard setting up the displays for Halloween, I received a completely out-of-the-blue call from a gentleman in Romania…routed via that SIP URI. This is to my recollection the very first such call that I’ve ever received.

I was at first a little confused as the gentleman was not really trying to reach me, he was testing to see if the call would go through. It did, in fact it was forwarded to my cell phone, which I answered while in the front yard.

I hope that the next call takes a lot less time to come through. I’d like to see people using SIP URIs more and bypassing the PSTN completely. That will position us to see more of the as-yet-unrealized benefits of VoIP.