End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

OnSIP & Android 2.3 (a.k.a Gingerbread)

Earlier this week the Android development team released some news about Android v2.3, aka Gingerbread. This has a lot of people more than a bit excited as one of the new features is a built-in SIP stack.

Some point to this as being a major step toward the integration of Google Voice and Android devices. With a SIP stack included in the OS it will be much easier for people to develop soft phones that leverage the hardware and the data side of Android handsets.

The built-in SIP stack will work with any SIP service provider, giving users tremendous flexibility in choosing who gets their business. It also means that close integration with an IP-PBX will be easier than ever before.

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How To: HDVoice In PBX-In-A-Flash

I recently received an email from someone asking about enabling HDVoice in PBX-In-A-Flash.

I’m about to implement a PBXact for our small company, and I have a nicely running PBX in a Flash in my home. I’m wondering if I can HD-Audio-ize the home rig.

Here’s why I ask. We currently run a SIPX PBX in my company. Everything in that box, all the sound files, are all HD. When you talk to it with an HD endpoint, everything just talks HD. It’s a no brainer.

In my home PIAF/FreePBX/Asterisk, nothing is HD. How do I go about HD-izing it? I have the G.722 codecs all turned on, but I’m wondering if there is an easy way to make all HD-capable endpoints automatically talk HD to each other, and to talk HD to the PBX itself.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,

Joe
Fort Collins, Colorado

Since PBX-In-A-Flash is built upon Asterisk there’s a a good chance that this is possible, but its way outside of my scope. Given my employers migration to the OnSIP Hosted PBX I haven’t run Asterisk seriously for some time.

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Reader Voice Comments Officially Launched

You may have noticed the widget that I added to the sidebar about a week ago. Inspired by hearing about Voxeo’s Phono on a recent VUC call I decided that I’d like to provide a mechanism for readers to leave comments in the form of a voice message.

This seemed like it would be really easy, even though I’m not a developer. I was particularly happy to see that there is a WordPress plugin called WordPhone that makes this practical for the complete newby.

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Answering One More Question About HDVoice

Picking up where I left off some time ago, there was one more question arising from the earlier thread in the VoIP Forum at Broadband Reports. PX Eliezer asks:

4) G.722 is royalty-free. That being the case, and if it is not a bandwidth hog, and if it sounds great, then why do so many Voip providers, and so many manufacturers, not support it? In other words, why has adoption been so slow?

There are many factors that have contrived to slow the progress in implementing HDVoice on a broad scale. So many in fact that just pondering them has delayed my response to your question. I didn’t want to drift around a range to topics and make the matter appear utterly insurmountable.

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Counterpath’s Bria For Android On A T-Mobile G2

A few weeks ago Counterpath released a version of their Bria SIP soft phone specifically for the Android platform. This was one of the factors that influenced my purchase of a T-Mobile G2. I’ve had the G2 for a few weeks and have been mostly very pleased with the device. My twitter stream has reflected various experiments using it during recent travels.

Counterpath was good enough to provide a licence for their Bria SIP soft phone which dovetails nicely with my employers OnSIP hosted PBX. As I have been travelling a bit these past few weeks I’ve not made much use of Bria until very recently.

For an in depth look at Bria on Android you should look at the OnSIP site as the staff over there have posted a nicely detailed review. They report some crashing of the application, which has not been my experience but I expect that the user experience varies with hardware platform.

Around my home office, and on my local Wifi, I find that Bria Android Edition is stable and reliable. It seems to handle calling extensions local and remote without any NAT issues.

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VUC 2010 Holiday Gigaset Giveaway

As we approach the US Thanksgiving holiday we are given pause to reflect upon our many blessings. While many of us exist in a wideband realm where clarity of voice leads to universal understanding, there remain a great many who…

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