The coming week promises to be very interesting. It’ll be the first full week spent in my office in a couple of months. Thank goodness. I’m tired of all the travel. Also, I have a bunch of new VOIP hardware either awaiting installation or on its way.
I started writing this blog just over six months ago. It was largely a reaction to the fact that I saw a lot of people in various places asking the same questions over and over again. How do I make the best of VOIP in my home or home office? What is QoS? How do I ensure call quality?
I’ve been involved with VOIP in one fashion or another since 1997. Back then I lived in Toronto and was engaged to my lovely wife, who lived in Texas. Back then dial-up was the primary means of internet access and long distance calling was costly. We used software from Vocaltech to stay in touch over 1800 miles apart.
OK, so maybe I consider myself a Telecom Junky these days. I've been listening to these podcasts from The Voice Report for a while. They're mostly aimed at enterprise concerns beyond SOHO scale but the most recent one on disaster…
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.