Graves On SOHO VoIP

Here’s the headline:

Zoiper is the First 3rd Party Softphone to Support Skype’s SILK, Polycom’s SIREN and the Broadvoice Codecs

How does that sound? Pretty major, right? Wanna know more? Here are the details.

Given that ZoIPer Communicator is available in web, Windows, Mac & Linux flavors this could jump them to the head of the class for HDVoice support in a soft phone. And of course, ZoIPer Communicator has long supported both SIP and IAX protocols. Yes, you have options. Very nice.

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Last week I suggested Skype as an easy way to get started with wideband VoIP. Michael Robertson’s Gizmo5 is a great alternative to Skype.

Whereas Skype is a relatively closed network using proprietary protocols and codecs, Gizmo5 is based on SIP, a global open standard. A Gizmo5 account can be used from the Gizmo5 soft phone client or any SIP compliant device. That means that the myriad of SIP phones (hardware & software varieties) can be used with Gizmo5.

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In the post-roll after last weeks VUC call with Michael Iedema of Askozia Project I took a little time to join the call using the PhonerLite soft phone. I didn’t tell people right away, but some later commented that I sounded like I was back to narrowband (G.711) During the formal portion of the call I was on the bridge using Eyebeam in wideband (G.722)

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If you make enough noise about looking for something eventually you’ll get some tips about where to find it. So it seems to be with my search for a wideband capable soft phone. Just in case you’re new around here, let me reiterate that by “wideband capable” I mean specifically G.722 capable allowing interoperability with my Polycom hard phones.

Not long ago I received tip about PhonerLite,  a freeware soft phone for Windows that is in fact G.722 capable. The availability of a working, G.722 capable release of Eyebeam has taken the pressure of somewhat so it took a little time to get around to trying PhonerLite. I finally gave it a try this past weekend.

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A viable G.722 capable soft phone for the Mac is one of the key pieces missing in driving further adoption of wideband telephony. I single out the G.722 codec specifically as that is key to integration with existing hard phones and conference systems or services.

Earlier today Randulo did a little experiment and discovered that two of the Counterpath soft phone clients, Eyebeam & X-Lite, work on Apple systems. He ran them using Parallels & Windows XP on OSX.

This may not seem like big news, but it does help further wideband cause considerably. Sources close to Counterpath report that they remain very interested in an updated native Mac soft phone client, but it’s not currently one of their top priorities.

This past weekend it happens that I spent a day at Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital. The why is a long story and not especially important for the moment. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the facility has an open guest Wifi network. That allowed me to do some work, blogging, etc while I was there.

A little later in the day we were moved to a room without a TV. Since we were going to be waiting a while I pulled out the Mini 2140 and logged into Hulu so that we could watch some TV. We watched last weeks episode of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Read the rest of this entry »

A short while ago I was informed that Counterpath had issued a new release of their Eyebeam soft phone for Windows. This release, v1.5.19.4 Build 51814 available from their support forum, was supposed to address the interoperability issues I encountered last fall when passing G.722 calls between Eyebeam and a Polycom hard phone.

I downloaded the program and took it with me on a business trip the following week. Upon initial installation I found that the program overwrote the version that I had been issued by ZipDX. I suppose this makes sense as both were in the v1.5 branch. However, the license key that ZipDX had provided would not enable the new release. I contacted Counterpath and they very quickly provided me a license key to enable the new release.

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Jason Fischl, CTO of long time-VoIP leader Counterpath, contacted me by email to advise that they have released a new version of Eyebeam for Windows that is supposed to address the G.722 interoperability issue reported last fall. The release is available in their support forums. Licensed users can update their installations now. I’ve downloaded the release and will be trying it out over the next couple of days.

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