Grandstream’s GXP1400 IP Phone and GXP1405 IP Phone offers cutting edge VoIP telephony features to small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with or without an IP PBX, at a revolutionary price-point. Phone users have access to an extensive set of best-in-class audio, visual, security, provisioning, and business features that allow the GXP1400/1405 to create a class of its own in the affordability segment of the IP phone market. The GXP1400/1405 features built-in TLS/SRTP security, secondary SIP server, best-inclass HD audio including an acoustically redesigned HD handset, improved double-talk performance, Acoustical Echo Cancellation on its full-duplex HD speakerphone, easy automated provisioning with TR-
069 or HTTPS, advanced XML customization and more.

The GXV3500 is a first-of-its-kind security, surveillance and facility management solution for SMBs that want to preserve their investment in traditional CCTV analog cameras while adding the capability to remotely display live video on a TV, or use the device as a voice/video public announcement system (PAS) over an IP network. The GXV3500 IP Video Encoder+Decoder+PAS is a 3-in-1 combo device that combines advanced single channel H.264 real time video compression or decompression functions at up to D1 resolution and up to 30fps in a single box. It also features two-way audio paging and video streaming using SIP/VoIP, integrated PoE (Power over Ethernet), serial port for PTZ camera control, microphone input, audio/video output, alarm inputs & outputs, pre- and post-event recording buffer, as well as advanced encryption for security protection.

The GXV3500 can also uniquely function as both a voice and video PAS for office floors, lobbies, shopping malls, warehouses, waiting rooms, supermarkets, public transportation stations, etc. Users can speak from an attached external microphone, or call into the device from a SIP IP phone to make voice announcements or supply digital background music to public areas through an external loudspeaker (with integrated power amplifier), or call into the device from a SIP video phone to make live video announcement or video advertisement on a TV connected with the GXV3500 from anywhere in the world.

“I am happy to grant Grandstream with two Product of the Year Awards. The editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY have verified that the GXP1400 HD IP phone and GXV3500 IP Video
Encoder/Decoder/PAS display quality and innovation plus satisfy real needs in the marketplace,” stated Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “I would like to congratulate the entire team at Grandstream for their
commitment to advancing IP communication technologies.”

ITEXPO EAST, MIAMI, FL Booth 517 (February 1, 2012) – Grandstream Networks, the leading manufacturer of IP voice/video telephony and video surveillance solutions, today announced the release of the HT701 a new 1-port Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). The HT701 Analog Adapter is designed for single line analog phone users – residential, small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) and telecommuters – needing a compact, inexpensive ATA that converts legacy analog telephones, fax machines, conference telephones and other analog devices to access Internet-based telephone services. ATAs allow businesses and consumers to extend the value of their investment in analog devices while migrating to richer, less costly, and multimedia IP services at their own pace.

The HT701 is the newest addition to Grandstream’s HandyTone ATA/IAD series of VoIP access devices that offer a range of SIP standard-based ATAs for mixed VoIP applications. Its feature highlights include:

• Ultra compact design (.98in H x 2.6in W x 3.38in L) and extremely affordable cost
• Support 5 REN over up to 1km on 24 AWG line
• Advanced telephony features including Caller ID for various countries, call waiting, do-no-disturb,
  3-way conference, transfer, forward, message waiting, T.38 fax, flexible dial plan, multi-language
  voice prompt, etc.
• Comprehensive voice codecs including G.711 with Annex I/II, G.729A/B, G.723.1, iLBC, G.726
• Strong security protection of voice/data privacy using TLS/SRTP/HTTPS, secure and automated provisioning using TR069, HTTP/HTTPS/TFTP and AES encryption

Currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary in the VoIP marketplace, Grandstream was founded in 2002 selling initially an ATA and IP phone model. Since then, Grandstream has rapidly grown to be a globally recognized provider of a comprehensive portfolio of VoIP communications devices including IP phones, gateways, ATAs, video phones, and video cameras.

“We are excited to announce the new HT701 ATA for the residential Internet telephony service provider and small business market,” said David Li, CEO of Grandstream Networks. “The HT701 is the culmination of our 10 years’ experience developing award-winning advanced VoIP products. Its ultra-compact design, rich feature set, and unbeatable price point will make it a very popular product in the marketplace quickly.”

The Grandstream HT701 will be on display this week at Grandstream’s booth at ITEXPO East Miami, Booth 517.

ITEXPO, Booth 901 (Miami)-February 1, 2012-Digium®, Inc., the Asterisk® Company, today introduced a new family of high-definition Digium IP phones. They are the first that are engineered to fully leverage the power of Asterisk, the world’s most widely adopted open source communications software, and Switchvox. With Digium technology on both the server and the phone, users will benefit from the best possible performance, unprecedented integration and a uniquely customizable phone system.

“Digium’s new phones mark the launch of the next chapter in our history of innovation,” said Danny Windham, president and CEO of Digium. “These are the first phones designed specifically for Asterisk-with the tightest integration possible between the phones and Asterisk. The success of Asterisk began with the transfer of power from the hands of the proprietary phone vendors to the hands of end users and administrators of phone systems. And now we’ve done it again by bringing control to the desk phone. These phones are absolutely the easiest to install, integrate, provision and use with both Asterisk and Switchvox. And best of all, we’ve done all of this at a very competitive price point, providing our customers with the best value in business phone systems.”

Asterisk has always been about flexibility, allowing integrators and developers to create highly customized solutions. Likewise, Digium phones include an app engine with a simple yet powerful JavaScript API that lets programmers create custom apps that run on the phones. They aren’t simply XML pages; Digium phone apps can interface directly with core phone features.

“The app engine is a game-changing feature that will allow developers to write their own apps that run on the phones,” explained Mark Spencer, founder and chief technology officer for Digium. “We have a community of more than 80,000 users and developers who create amazing things with Asterisk. I look forward to seeing the cool apps they will create with these innovative phones. As usual, we’re enabling developers to create solutions limited only by their imaginations.”

Digium has leveraged this unique programming interface of the phones to create a suite of productivity applications that work with both Asterisk and Switchvox. Switchvox includes a unique web interface called Switchboard that gives each system user control of their personal communications environment. Digium has extended the capabilities of the Switchboard to the phone, putting advanced features like presence management, searchable contact directory, queue monitoring, recording and voicemail control, all at the user’s fingertips.

“We’ve had the opportunity to work with the phones early on, and for the first time, we’re using phones truly designed for Asterisk,” said Chris Green of Bema Information Technology. “Digium has delivered phones that simplify the most time-consuming portion of a system deployment-installation and provisioning. The phones automatically locate the server and assign the correct users, making our deployments faster than ever before. Additionally, the tight integration with Switchvox offers our customers an awesome user experience that’s just not possible with other phones.”

The Digium phones include the following models:

• The Digium D40 IP Phone -An entry-level HD IP phone with 2-line keys. This is Digium’s best value phone, designed for any employee in the company.
• The Digium D50 IP Phone -A mid-level HD IP phone with 4-line keys and 10 rapid dial/busy lamp field (BLF) keys with an easy to print paper label strip for the user’s most important contacts. This model is perfect for users who spend a lot of time on the phone.
• The Digium D70 IP Phone -An executive-level HD IP phone with 6-line keys and 10 rapid dial/busy lamp field (BLF) keys and real-time status information displayed on an additional LCD screen, allowing users to quickly navigate through up to 100 of their most important contacts. Designed for administrators or executives, the D70 offers top-of-the-line features.

The VXi UC ProSet is a step up in style and comfort, making it perfect for use in contact centers, at-home offices and other business settings. Designed to be lightweight and deliver crisp, natural audio, the UC ProSet also blocks 87 percent of all background noise.

said President and CEO Michael Ferguson of VXi Corporation.

VXi also state

Here are some of the main features that are available in the VXi UC ProSet headsets.

Features

• Wideband audio for clearer conversations and greater productivity.
• Superior noise canceling eliminates background noise and improves communication.
• UC-ready to fit right into your Unified Communications strategy.
• Lightweight, attractive design is easy and comfortable to wear, all day long.
• High-quality durability stands up to all-day, every-day use.
• Interchangeability with other headset brands lets you maximize your existing equipment investment.
• Two models to choose from, binaural (two speakers) and monaural (one speaker).

The VXi UC ProSet delivers a host of real-world business benefits.

• More productive conversations. Wideband audio and advanced noise canceling provide consistently clear, natural sound.
• More focused users. Smart, ergonomic design is comfortable and stays put, so users spend time working, not constantly adjusting their headsets.
• More efficient communications. Leading-edge technology maximizes Unified Communications potential.
• Better all-around value. High quality materials and construction means it’s built to last and last, even when used all day, every day.
• Best possible return on your investment. Compatibility with VXi, Plantronics and GN Netcom®/Jabra equipment means you can keep on using your existing amplifiers and direct connect cords.

The Rules
1. Only votes made by registered readers of Comms Business Magazine will be valid for the three reader vote categories.
2. Only one vote per reader will be counted for each category with up to five votes from any one company.
3. Please note that votes for nominated companies by their own staff will not be counted.

According to Comms Business, your vote should be based upon your own experience of working with the companies nominated. Consider the service, products and support offered by them to you or your company.

Voting will be open until 14th May 2010.

Vote for VoIPon in the Comms Business Awards 2010 today.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with David Rowe from the Free Telephony Project, based out of Australia, and Elektra Aichele from Freifunk.net Wireless Community Network in Germany.

Elektra and David came together about eight months ago to work on the Village Telco Project, a project to give low cost, Wi-Fi based telephony to people in the developing world.

They’ve been working as a team to develop one component of the project, called the Mesh Potato. The Mesh Potato is a Wi-Fi router with telephony that does mesh networking.

Elektra is the project’s Mesh Networking Guru and David is the telephony hardware person and actually Elektra is actually used the Mesh Potato to speak with us.

Listen to the podcast or read a summary of our call, below:

[VoIPon]: VoIPon has a great admiration and respect for open source projects. What’s particularly interesting about the Free Telephony Project is that it is not only based on open source software but the hardware is also entirely open, making the entire solution Free (as in speech). What made you start this project and what would you say was the most challenging part of it?

[David Rowe]: Well, I started the project back in 2005. The main reason was, just like a lot of projects, I had an itch I wanted to scratch. I was fascinated by the idea of doing embedded Asterisk device, a telephony product, that didn’t need a computer to make it run that would run standalone like an appliance. It had been an idea kicking around in my head for a few years, and I came across a chip the analog devices Blackfin, that was perfect for the job and I started working on the thing, evenings and nights, and eventually it turned into a full time occupation.

The idea of open hardware was, well I guess, I started as closed hardware/open software project, but I just felt like doing something a little different and um, the idea of open hardware got put into my head, through the Blackfin community. The CPU I’m using had released some open hardware designs and I thought, well let’s try to do the whole PBX system open hardware and see where it leads. I really like experimenting and playing with new ideas, and that’s just made it so much more fun and rewarding, making it open hardware.

In terms of challenging, to be honest, looking back it’s been nothing but fun. [Laughs] There’s been some hardware and software and people-ware issues, like any other project but the only thing that’d I’d say I haven’t done that I’ve found really challenging, that I really have a desire to use this project to help people in the developing world. And, um, with the Free Telephony Project hardware, the IPO4, the IPO1, etc., while they’ve been a big hit in the first world, I haven’t been able to use them to help thousands and thousands of people in the developing world and that’s a desire I still wish to fulfill, which is why I’m working on the Village Telco Project, in particular, the Mesh Potato.

[VoIPon]: Can you tell us anything more about the Free Telephony Project and what new hardware we might expect to see over the coming months?

[David Rowe]: Main my main activities have been over the last 13 months, have been developing the Mesh Potato. And we’re going to take that from Beta into a full production unit. Something that can run outdoors, it’s being made robust against environmental and human damage type conditions. So that will be the next big release.

That of course is a project I’m collaborating with other people. It’s being funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation and we’re working with a company called Atcom for the hardware manufacture. Um, in terms of the VoIP hardware coming out of the Free Telephony Project, that’s really taken on a life of its own, and I don’t have a lot to do with developing VoIP projects on a day-to-day basis. Um, but to be honest, I think that’s how it should be. I kicked off the project, I injected these free designs into the open source community and now people are running with them. There must be 20 or 25 derivative designs that have been released now from the small start we made four or five years ago. And that’s very satisfying for me.

My current interests for the free telephony project are addressing ease of use issues. We developed a great little hardware platform, that’s very low cost, but it’s still as hard to use as a full size Asterisk box. And, unless you’ve got Asterisk and Linux skills, that can be quite difficult to set up. So, I’m playing with this theme of ease of use. Can we make an Asterisk box as easy to set up as say a Wi-Fi router? So it’s software that I’m playing with at the moment, in particular, the ease of use idea.

[VoIPon]: If creating an entirely open based PBX was not enough we and a number of VoIPon customers are very impressed with the OSLEC open source high performance line echo canceller you have put together. What made you start this project and what were the main difficulties you experienced when developing OSLEC?

[David Rowe]: Well thank you. I’m very happy with the way OSLEC has turned out. The reason I started it was that I needed an echo canceller that would work with the IPO4, that’s the open hardware PBX that I played a part in developing. Asterisk, for many, many years had a big problem with software echo cancellation. And to be fair, echo cancellers are quite difficult to develop. You need some fairly specialized skills. So I decided to try an open source approach to developing an echo canceller.

As background, I have education in digital signal processing or DSP, so I understood the basics of echo cancellation. I, myself, had tried to build one several times over the past 15 years and had failed, so I realized what a challenge it would be.

So I tried something different. I set up a way, so a prototype echo canceller could be tested in live Asterisk boxes. And that I could sample all the signals flowing to and from the echo canceller and get those samples emailed back to me in the form of wave files.

Now what this let me do, was access many, many alpha and beta testers. Then take the results of their tests and feed them back into my development system here. So it was just like I had the ability to fly to Canada, and make a phone call on a Canadian phone line. Find out something that had failed, then take it back here and tested.

This was a real open source process that could never have happened in a closed source organization. The results were predictably, very fast development, very high quality code, and it’s currently in use by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people around the world with very few problems with those that are using it.

[VoIPon]: Can you tell us a little about the Mesh Potato Project, what it is and who should be using it and how viable it is?

[Elektra Aichele]: Well the background is I actually met David in 2008 at a workshop in Capetown organized by the Shuttleworth Foundation 2008. I also met Steve Song who is directing this project. The idea is telephony for the developing world, and together with Wi-Fi, so we don’t have infrastructure, and a quick way to roll out infrastructure is to use wireless technology. And probably Mesh Technology, I bet you’re not familiar with the term.

Mesh Technology is: the Wi-Fi devices, some of them, they can operate in multi-point to multi-point peer to peer mode, so they can form a mesh and that way every node, every device acts as a relay station for all of the others in order to extend the range and the coverage of the network.

And the Mesh Potato is a wireless ATA. It’s the first wireless ATA on the market that can do Mesh Networking. So it’s intended to be placed on roofs in the developing worlds. It’s organizing itself, organizing a wireless network. And give good coverage by repeating the signal from station to station if necessary. And it features Asterisk as well.

David, you can jump in if you’d like to see some additions.

[David Rowe]: You’re doing a fine job, Elektra.

[VoIPon]: How do you guys see the market developing for these projects?

[David Rowe]: Perhaps, I’ll go first Elektra. The primary aim of the Village Telco and the Mesh Potato is to help people get low cost telephony in the developing world. So we’re looking at entering very high volume manufacture over the next 6 – 24 months.

There’s also some possibilities for the product in the first world. What we’ve got with the Mesh Potato and the Village Telco System is a way to roll out telephone networks based on Wi-Fi and very, very quickly. Um, you can switch on a Mesh Potato, tell it what its phone number is and be making phone calls within a minute.

So imagine a disaster situation like Haiti. You can deploy 1000 of these, set them up with a small battery and solar panel and you can have instant IP telephony connectivity across a disaster area. So we see quite a strong first world market as well.

Plus, there are a lot of people who really are interested in the community telephony aspect of Village Telco and Mesh Potato—the idea that you don’t need to rely on a phone company or even an ISP for your internet connectivity. I have people in my neighbourhood who’d like to use this to get around the existing phone companies if they could.

So there are quite a few different markets in both the first and the third world for the Village Telco and the Mesh Potato.

[VoIPon]: So Elektra, is there anything you’d like to add?

[Elektra Aichele]: I think we tried to do something like the OPC project did for the education of kids. Mesh Potato is a device that could help people build and deploy wireless infrastructure everywhere on the planet, and in particular areas with rough environment. We have spent a considerable amount of effort to make this, as robust as possible.

Last week, VoIPon attended CeBIT and had the opportunity to interview a selection of industry leaders to learn about new products and any product developments they were launching at the show.

VoIPon Interviews Sangoma @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: Hello, My name is Alexis Argent, I’m the sales manager for VoIPon Solutions in the United Kindgom and I’m joined here with David Mandelstam, CEO and Founder of Sangoma Technologies and I just want to ask how you’re getting on with the show?

David: Thank you very much Alexis. Um. The show is great for us. Here at CeBIT we’re showing our range of cards. As a new product, we’re showing this transcoding card, which is not quite released yet. It’s a card that will do up to 480 channels of audio transcoding, that’s G.711 or G.722, G.723 any of the audio codecs. It will about 140 video codecs – video becoming much more important these days. And that will do the translation from codec to codec without any load on a PC. We’re releasing this probably in a month’s time. It’s part of our commitment to total quality that we’re providing for the open source community in particular.

We are beginning to supply our cards with our own commercial control and signalling stack, rather than using the open source stacks, because we believe that even on an open source system, where we’re responsible for the TDM gateway, we need to take responsibility for all parts of the system, including the signalling stack. So, one can continue to use the open source signalling stacks, that’s fine, but you can use a professional stack when you use our cards, simply because we feel that we owe it to our customers.

Alexis: Fantastic. When did you say was the release date for the transcoding card?

David: Somewhere from around one month to six weeks time. Not all the video codecs will be supported by that time, but all the audio codecs will be supported.

We also have a bigger card which will do up to 2600 simultaneous audio transcodings or 800 video transcodings. So this should be quite useful in the gateway market for people who are building SS7 gateways, SS7 to sip gateways, or PRI to SIP gateways, quite often people need large numbers of transcoding sessions.

With our Sangoma A108 in a standard size PC gateways of that type will handle 960 calls. So being able to handle about half of that in video transcoding is about right, which is one of these cards. If you need more, then you just put in two. They are fairly inexpensive compared with competitive products.

Alexis: Fantastic. Thanks ever so much for taking my interview today. It’s been a pleasure.

David: Thank you.

Alexis: Cheers!

VoIPon Interviews AVM @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: My name is Alexis. I’m a sales manager for VoIPon Solutions, United Kingdom. I’m joined here with Matt Tyler out of Germany. We’re here at CeBIT 2010. How are you finding the show?

Matt Tyler: Hey Alexis, good to see you and VoIPon. It’s very nice to have you here. The show is going good. We’ve got a lot of international customers here today. Telecoms, internet service providers, some resellers, and a lot of fans, as you see here at the stand. It’s one of the fullest stands at the CeBIT.

Alexis: Well, I know, it’s a very popular stand. The AVM is always extremely popular and crowded.

Matt: We’re on our home turf here. Hopefully we’ll have a similar experience there in the UK at the upcoming UC show.

Alexis: Are there any new products to talk about?

Matt: Yeah. One of the things that AVM tries to do at the CeBIT and at shows like this is to really show working new products. We’re an innovative company. And we’ve got things like the wireless LAN with 3×3 MIMO, as an idea, that we’re showing. It’s up to 450mbps, as the speeds on this, as the theoretical speeds of the wireless LAN.

Dual concurrent wireless access points, two access points, on one router. We’ve got a Docsis 3 cable router that we’re showing today. And this is also an integrated access device. Meaning it’s got wireless LAN; it’s got cable or DSL modem integrated, VoIP in a micro PBX, USB host for sharing, mass storage, using a 3g mobile stick, or connecting your printer and making that available to the network.

Alexis: So there are stacks of applications associated with all these technologies?

Matt: Software is making a difference here. What we’re putting into it. Sometimes you’re finding similar hardware chips. What we’re doing all the software on this ourselves. Making it very usable for the customers, bringing these new technologies like VoIP or IP TV to the average customer.

Alexis: Oh fantastic. I’m glad to hear you guys are doing well and we’re happy to represent the product.

Matt: I appreciate that. One more thing I’ll go on about here real quick is DECT—the idea of handsets. It’s an old technology to use. We’re integrating DECT with something called CAT IQ, which is the next standard for DECT/CAT. It’s interesting because you have more data bandwidth and you can do internet applications, like RSS feeds.

Alexis: Uh ha

Matt: So you come to AVM FRITZ!Box, you put the web address of your RSS feed and you’ll see that on your DECT handset.

Alexis: Yeah

Matt: Or podcasts or web radio or streaming mp3s from your own network or storages. So fun stuff like that, but also good applications for business as well.

Alexis: Well that’s great, I’m glad to hear that AVM is still kicking butt then!

Matt: Yeah

Alexis: Fantastic!

Matt: Yeah, yeah we’re on top of it!

Alexis: Thanks very much for the interview.

Matt: It’s very good to see you.

Alexis: Cheers.

VoIPon Interviews Pika Technologies @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: Hello. My name’s Alexis, I’m from VoIPon Solutions. I’m a sales manager. I’m joined here with Maarten Kronenburg from Pika Technologies who is the managing director. Yeah, and I’m happy to be here. How are you finding the show?

Maarten: Well, we are very happy to be on the CeBIT show in 2010. CeBIT looks to be a really good show. The first day was a bit slow. The second and third day are really good. The weather was terrible, it’s cold here, we had snow yesterday, but the people are very warm, and they’re very interested in Pika WARP.

Alexis: Oh excellent! So you you’re having fun?

Maarten: We’re having fun. Oh absolutely!

Alexis: That’s great. I hear you have a new GSM module that’s coming out very soon.

Maarten: Well, in fact, Alexis, it’s good that you bring that up. As the people that are watching this video may know, we are offering this WARP appliance already for a good year now, and so far it’s been focussing on fixed line telephony and we’ve had a fair degree of success offering this device as a PBX with Asterisk. However, we also saw a market for wireless communication and wireless connectivity. So we have a new GSM module that you already alluded to, it uses GSM.

I’ll open up this device and here is the GSM module. As you can see, the device has two connectors for to connect to an antenna. Here you can put a SIM card in from the outside, and here are two more spots for two more SIM cards, that will be supported in the near future. These ones already are supported, ah so you can sort of switch between SIM cards. So per module you can connect two antennas and in a WARP you can put two modules, so that means the math is you can put four GSM calls in a single WARP.

Alexis: Fantastic. And what kind of release date do you got for these?

Maarten: The current release date is somewhere in the month of April and we are currently beta testing it. And as the watchers of this video maybe know, it’s early March now. We’re still holding our beta trials. Things are looking good. We can place calls. In fact we do have a demo here at the CeBIT show where you can ring a German number and it rings this telephone, so it’s working. There is a number of small little items that we need to iron out, but I do believe that it’s minor.

Alexis: So you’ll be ready then? Fantastic. Well thanks ever so much for the interview Maarten. Cheers.

Maarten: Thank you. And watchers of this video buy the module at VoIPon!

Alexis: Cheers.

VoIPon Interviews Patton Inalp Electronics @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: Hello, My name is Alexis Argent, I’m the sales manager for VoIPon Solutions in the UK. I’m here with Doug Hill who is president of sales for the UK and Europe and I just want to see how you’re getting on at CeBIT 2010?

Doug: It’s a good show, again. It’s still one of the premier shows in Western Europe. And you’ve got a full plethora of IT companies here showing their wares and everything. And obviously we’re here and we’re very excited to be here again this year. And it’s been a good show for us.

Alexis: So you’ve got a new product to show us?

Doug: Yeah, we’ve got one new product that I’d really like to tell you about. Basically, what it is, it’s a session border controller router. Now, typically, if you look at Voice over IP networks, a session border controller will sit on the network edge. And it will service 300-400 customers. And some of the functionality: there is transcoding, disaster recovery, VPN tunnelling, quality of service, etc.

What we’ve seen at Patton Inalp, that there is a real requirement to move that functionality out to the customer premise. So in light of that, what we’ve done is we’ve come up with two new products, a SmartNode 5200 and a SmartNode 5400 session border controller routers. And what these devices do is that they move the session border functionality to the customer premise, instead of the edge of the network. Because if you take a look at almost all VoIP networks, the bottleneck is typically at the customer premise, it’s not at the edge of the network. So by moving this functionality out, what we can provide at the customer premise now is transcoding. To take one codec that it is high bandwidth, transcode it into a lower codec to go across a wide area network connection, broadband connection, where you might have limited bandwidth.

We can do quality of service. We’re one of the only companies in the market that I’m aware of that does what we call downstream quality of service. We can actually monitor traffic, slow down the downstream traffic and make sure that you have a very high quality voice connection for the end user. Then we can offer things like VPN connection, disaster recovery. Uh, one of the transcoding features we offer is the ability to transcode from G.711 fax to T.38 fax. So all this functionality moves out to the customer premise to where it should be, and now we actually work all these different functions at the customer premise where the bottle neck is, instead of sending everything across that bottleneck and performing those functions at the edge of the core network. So we’re very excited about this product.

Alexis: Oh very interesting. What’s the availability? Did you say it’s available yet?

Doug: The product is available right now, okay: the SmartNode 5200 and the 5400. The 5400 does transcoding. The 5200 does not do transcoding, but it has all of the other session border controller functionality that I mentioned.

Alexis: Oh fantastic. Well thanks very much for the interview. I really appreciate it.

Doug: It’s my pleasure

Alexis: Cheers

Doug: Cheers.

VoIPon Interviews snom technology @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: Hello my name is Alexis, I’m a sales manager at VoIPon Solutions in the United Kingdom and I’m joined here with Christian Baier, from snom technology, and we’re here at CeBIT 2010. Thanks so much for taking this interview.

Christian: Hi Alexis.

Alexis: How are you finding the show?

Christian: It’s great. It’s a great resonance here in terms of our new products. The snom M9 for example, the new SIP DECT phone, the snom Vision which is the extension module for the eight series, and our new paging system which is called, snom PA1, and general interest is very high in terms of the snom Microsoft OCS edition, so this is also very high resonance here.

Alexis: What are the main differences between the snom M3 and the M9? I understand that you own sort of more of this technology and you have more control over the hardware and the firmware, and the OCS wasn’t available on the M3 but it is on the M9.

Christian: This is true yes. In fact, we made the software on the M9 on our own. So the few changes are that you can now connect up to nine handsets to one base station instead of eight to one base station like the M3. You can make up to four concurrent phone calls, instead of three like. The M9 is also IPv6 ready and it’s meant as well to be OCS version 6 ready, to be connected natively to the Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007.

Alexis: And the availability of the M9?

Christian: Will be something after summer.

Alexis: After summer sometime?

Christian: Yes, after summertime.

Alexis: Oh fantastic. What about the expansion module you have. It works with the 8 series, does it?

Christian: Not just works only with the 8 series.

Alexis: What is the name of it again?

Christian: It’s the snom Vision. It will be available as well in summertime. It not just works with the 8 series. It’s thought to be some kind of extension module that can be placed to the 8 series. But in fact it’s a standalone device that’s connected on Power over Ethernet. And you can make some extension lines from your colleagues for example there and dial them directly. You can make some video stream via middleware, and of course yeah, write your own application for the snom Vision and benefit of the open source technology of the snom Vision.

VoIPon Interviews Grandstream Networks @ CeBIT 2010

VoIPon: My name is Alexis, I’m a sales manager for VoIPon Solutions in the United Kingdom and I’m here with Grandstream, Vytas, who is a Sales Manager for Europe. Thanks for taking the interview.

Vytas: Absolutely, my pleasure.

Alexis: How are you finding the show?

Vytas: Very good so far. It’s been the third day, very busy. A lot of resellers, distributors a lot of new potential clients. I actually feel much better about the show this year than the last year. So much more opportunities, so I’m looking forward for the next couple of days.

Alexis: Oh fantastic. Do you have any new product developments that you can talk to us about?

Vytas: Absolutely. We brought our new video surveillance line, first time, to the CeBIT. We released quite a few products during the year. On the surveillance side, we have up to five cameras at this moment, high definition and low light as well. A couple of the cube cameras and standard cameras. We have all the cameras running on the POE, it runs on H.264 codec. Also some of them have a built in microphone so it’s a lot of potential and also the entire solution is compatible with our PBX system. And we have a couple of encoders: one port all the way up to four ports, so it converts analogue signal into IP.

Alexis: I see. So the surveillance market is obviously a new market for Grandstream. The availability of those products – what are they looking like? Are they available?

Vytas: The products are available right now, actually, we just introduced a newer line, our dome camera, a few weeks ago and we’re working developing on a new product, that we’re going to announce, a couple of them, on IFSEC, unified, a show in Birmingham sometime in May. So we’re working on that side of it, and so on the VoIP side, we’re releasing a couple of new products, new living products, and also many new applications allow a new video phone.

Alexis: Oh fantastic. It sounds like you’ve got quite a full roadmap there.

Vytas: It’s a lot busy. A lot of potential in the roadmap. You know, company’s growing. We’re growing. We’re adding a lot of new distribution channels.

Alexis: Yeah.

Vytas: Things are looking good so far.

Alexis: That’s great. Well thanks again for your time.

Vytas: Well absolutely. My pleasure.

Alexis: Cheers.

3CX and Beronet have recently announced a strategic partnership to provide a complete IP PBX solution. Joining us today is Nick Galea CEO of 3CX and Gürsel Kücük, one of the founders of Beronet.

Below is a summary of our call.

VoIPon: Nick, last time we spoke, you mentioned you’d like to explain to us a little more about 3CX and how it works with the various VoIP gateways on the market. Why don’t you tell us a little more about your various interoperability partners?

[Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX] Yes, so 3CX is an open standard solution. We support SIP standard. So we can work with a broad range of SIP devices, including, of course, various VoIP gateways and also IP phones. This is very important for a customer, because they won’t get tied down to a particular brand.

At the same time, we want to of course give an end-to-end user experience and make it easy for a customer to configure 3CX phone with all the different SIP devices. So, what we’ve done is included auto configuration for all the popular VoIP gateways and IP phones that we support, we also have configuration guides, and we also have end to end technical support for supported VoIP gateways, which include Patton Gateways, Beronet Gateways, and of course, Sangoma Gateways & Grandstream Gateways. So we can support various VoIP gateways from different manufacturers, so partners and customers can choose what’s best for them. Plus, we can still provide end to end support, both in the software, as well as through technical support with the customers, so they can be sure they will have a complete working solution.

VoIPon: So Nick, maybe you can tell me, what is so great about the Berofix range?

[Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX] Well, it’s available as a card and as a separate device—so resellers can deploy the same device either in a server or as a separate box, based on customer wishes. It’s priced well too with an E1 gateway well under 1000 Euros. Furthermore, the solution will be available with GSM modules too in the future, which means customers can use the same gateway for both ISDN and GSM, should the need arise.

VoIPon:  Gürsel, is there anything you’d like to add?

[Gürsel Kücük, Co-Founder of Beronet] Due to the modular concept, Berofix is a hybrid solution. Currently, you can mix PRI and BRI modules on one card or even in a box. We are currently working on analog modules (FXS and FXO) as well as on GSM modules. As soon as they are ready, the scope of combinations will be more and more attractive.

VoIPon: Gürsel, what makes Berofix cards different?

[Gürsel Kücük, Co-Founder of Beronet] In comparison to other Media Gateways, Berofix has a very attractive cost-performance ratio. And in comparison to other card solutions, Berofix has a lot more features, for instance T.38 and Codec translation. Berofix is a gateway card and this makes it very unique.

VoIPon: Nick, how about from your perspective, what makes these cards different?

[Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX] Even though they are cards and can be deployed in a server, they are not dependent on the OS, meaning they don’t require drivers and can be addressed via IP. This makes it possible to use the cards in a virtualized environment.

VoIPon: Why bundle 3CX with Berofix?

[Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX] A great thing about 3CX is that you can support both VoIP providers and existing PSTN lines at the same time. This allows a gradual migration and you can keep using your existing ISDN lines as long as you want.

WIth the 3CX/Berofix bundle, customers can buy a total solution and migrate it very cost effectively, whilst being assured of single vendor support. 3CX will support this solution end to end.

Gürsel, Why is Beronet happy to be able to offer this bundle in combination with 3CX?

[Gürsel Kücük, Co-Founder of Beronet] 3CX is one of the leading Software IP PBX vendors for Windows systems and we are happy to assist them with our Berofix solution. 3CX has been rapidly gaining market share because the software is Windows based and easy to manage. The market has been demanding such a solution, and the combination with our Berofix cards makes even more easy to install and to manage an end to end PBX solution.

Please visit the VoIPon website for the 3CX/ Beronet-Berofix bundle promotion.

The Highlights
Installation: 5
Documentation: 4
Features: 4.5
Overall: A-

What is the V-114?
- 4 ports of Analog FXO for connecting trunk lines
- Asterisk Integrated on the card
- 1 port of FXS for connecting a phone or a fax machine

Who is the market for this card?
Resellers — because it’s 100% SIP based there is no API to learn.

Installation:
No driver required. It works with Windows, Linux, etc., and simply installs as an Ethernet network adapter into any PCI slot.  You can simply send SIP traffic to the card and it will do SIP to TDM conversion or SIP trunking, making it a simple plug n’ play VoIP gateway.

Operational Testing:

• On an extension to extension test call, the “voice quality was perfect.”  TMC reports.
• They also tested the two built in conference bridges and each performed well with excellent echo cancellation.
• Full console access to the Linux Operating System by SSHing into the card, where you can peruse and modify the important Asterisk Config files.
• Can use a web admin tool to make the changes; however, it is not clear changes need to be saved before they are applied, TMC reports.

Conclusion
The 256MB of permanent and NAND Flash memory is enough for most users. It would be nice to have a larger 512MB option in case power Asterisk developers wish to load large custom applications. It’s easy to order, versatile, and easy to manage. Overall, the reviewer recommended that VoIP developers check out the Postitron Telecom “Asterisk-on-a-card” solutions.

Check out TMC Labs’ full review.

The ITSPA is the UK’s industry body for Internet Telephony Service Providers. Founded in 2004 with over 60 members that range from the largest Tier one operators to the newest entrants, members provide services to millions of consumers and businesses.

We want to offer our congratulations to all the ITSPA Award Winners.

Polycom VVX1500

We want to especially congratulate Polycom, who took home the award for Best VoIP hardware for its Polycom VVX1500.   We’ll cover this product in more detail in an upcoming VoIP Uncovered podcast.

A structured address book ensures each caller can be quickly identified. Because the beautifully German-designed phone has such a large screen, there is more space for displaying information, such as company name, e-mail and other items. Plus, the phone is designed for active call handling, so the correct contact is selected, even in multiple call situations.

In addition to the exceptional call quality that customers expect, there is even an integrated XML mini browser that provides a wide range of additional applications—such as to control an external USB device or access the latest share price—there is loads of space for extras.

Even security is important in the Snom 870. Features like secure VPN, TLS and SRTP are integrated into the 870′s firmware and a secure connection via VPN, TLS and SRTP prevents the unwanted recording of data.

All in all it’s a very interesting product and one that is worth checking out the next time you’re in the market for IP phones. You can read more on the technical specifications on the snom 870 phone on the VoIPon website.