isac – Graves On SOHO Technology

Making Use of Wideband Voice Right Now!: Vonage Mobile

VonageMobileDevices Some time ago I was a Vonage customer. We had a Vonage line for my home office to compliment the POTS line that service the house. Our only internet access was via DSL over that POTS line.

We haven’t had a POTS line here since 2004.

While Vonage was a pioneer in what we now call-over-the-top internet telephony, for most of its existence the companies primary means of delivering service was by way of an “analog telephony adapter” or ATA. An ATA provides the RJ-11 connection required to connect to a traditional telephone.

Service providers using ATAs are essentially emulating the PSTN. It makes perfect sense since they want to offer an easy, drop-in replacement for traditional phone service. The advantage that they sell is simply that they’re cheaper. Most care little for esoterica like HDVoice.

Citrix GotoMeeting Trialing HD, But Not Where It Counts

June 1, 2011
Michael Graves
VoIP, Wideband

GotoMeeting-Hates-HDVoice I’ve been a customer of GotoMeeting for many years. I’ve used the service largely as a means to gain remote access to customers systems for the purpose of remote maintenance and diagnostics. I was driven to its use by the ABC group of stations, whose corporate network is seriously locked down. Since then my employer has become an avid user of their GotoAssist product, which is actually better suited to our activities.

We have also used GotoMeeting for its more traditional purpose of making online presentations. Since our staff are distributed around the US and UK it’s been a handy platform for giving presentations. At $50/mo the cost/benefit balance of the service is very good. It lets use do more while travelling less, which is a win/win combination.

Early in our use of GotoMeeting we tried to use the voice conferencing facet of the service. However, at that time we found it wanting. Call quality was extremely variable, never very good. Thus we adopted the habit of using GotoMeeting for the presentation/desktop sharing, but a separate conference bridge to handle voice calls.

Wideband Audio In Gizmo5

October 16, 2008
Michael Graves
VoIP

The past couple of days I’ve been playing around with the Gizmo5 client on my desktop. It’s actually pretty slick. I wanted to see if I could pass a wideband call to/from Gizmo5 from my Polycom 650s or Eyebeam. So far no joy. There seems to be a problem completing a call from Gizmo5 to OnSIP via SIP URI. The call rings on the IP650 but cannot be answered. Not certain if its an issue with Polycom firmware or both devices being behind the same NAT and trying to connect directly. I’ll try and work that out when I’m back at home.