Judging from today's post-recording VUC call Randy (aka Randulo) seems quite taken by his new Siemens S675IP SIP-DECT system. He's written about it a couple of places including the VUC Ning site and over on his HUB Pages psuedo-blog. Between…
While doing some admin tasks today I stumbled upon a recent post by Mike Oeth at the Junction Networks blog. He says:
As long as the video is using the SIP standard, we at Junction Networks are all for it. Our OnSIP Hosted PBX already supports video codecs using the SIP standards. Today, any customer with a video phone can make video calls.
He further states:
Oddly, however, I have the capability and most of us here at Junction Networks have video cameras, but I do not make it a habit to make video calls for business. My kids call the grandparents on the video phone every now and then, but as a business tool, at least here, it has not caught on. Does anyone have an industry where they use the video phone all the time? If so, I would love to hear about it.
Amen. That about sums up the state of video phones in general.
Normally I try not to post simple opinions on the statements of others. I’m no guru. There are others more qualified to comment than I. And I do find the blogosphere to be a lot like an old plate reverb from my past days in recording studios. One drum shot into the box and the sound goes on for days. So much commentary on someones commentary. But I’ll set that aside for now.
Andy Abramson was recently highlighted by some major press as being a mighty fine read, and correct in much of his opinion. I always find his posts interesting, with a well balanced perspective on all things telecom. Recently he posted a brief piece highlighting the fact that there’s much work to be done in VOIP beyond cheap calls. I couldn’t agree more.
Remember ISDN? It was the 1980s digital connect methodology that was going to bring us everything digitally. In truth, ISDN (a.k.a. BRI) is the “little brother” of T-1 (a.k.a. PRI). PRI is actually the signaling scheme, but the relationship is accurate. Whereas a T-1 is 24 x 64kbps voice channels and signaling an ISDN circuit can be 2 x 64 kbps channels (Bearer or B channels) and signalling (a D channel).
In Europe ISDN is quite common, having been a valid alternative to analog POTS lines for many years. In the US it never caught on the same way. It’s common in certain vertical market niches. For example, just about every significant recording studio used ISDN as a means of transferring audio across country in real-time. It’s a channel with assured bandwidth. The two B channels could be bonded yielding a solid 128 kpbs. Throughout the 1990s voice-over talent working from home studios (Hi Alison!) almost always used this sort of a setup.
Part 1 of this article is now online right here. This part describes the reasons for adding a cellular trunk, potential benefits, and walks through selecting the gateway device. Part 2 is in progress and will describe the setup and…
The first part of the article about GSM the gateway is off to the publisher at www.smallnetbuilder.com. The first part covers my motivation for adding a cellular trunk. It also describes the differences between ITSPs addressing the broad residential voice-over-broadband…