The day of the traditional land line phone service is almost over. In today’s mobile phone-driven world, many people have stopped using “land line” phones entirely. However, a cheaper land line, equivalent to cell phones, has arrived a few years ago using voice over internet protocol technology and known to many simply as VoIP.

What is so special about VoIP? In order to understand the answer let’s first look at the evolution of the traditional phone and telephone service. The telephone has actually been around longer than power grids—which is why traditional land-line phones still work when the power is out. Aside from major breakthroughs every 30 years or so, phone service and those who provided it changed relatively little until the 1980s  when the US government broke up the monopolies controlling the phone system. That’s when things started changing fast.

Take a look at this infograph to see what we mean (click image):

 So, the telephone was invented in 1876. Because of patent laws at the time, Alexander Graham Bell owned the concept of the phone, not just his design. Poor Elisha Gray lost out entirely while Bell perfected his phone and figured out how to produce it affordably. Between 1900 and 1910, the number of phones went from thousands to millions, and by 1915 people could call across the continent. But the phone itself did not change much—just the number of phones.

Rotary-dial telephones came out in 1919—the biggest advance in phone technology since their invention in 1876. They enabled switching systems to be installed that made the process of phoning someone a little more automatic. By 1946, commercial mobile phones were available, though they were not exactly what we would call mobile. Direct long distance calling came in 1951 to completely automate the process of making a call. Still, the phone itself did not change.

In 1963, the touch-tone telephone was introduced. Its technology made the infamous automated phone menus possible, but mostly improved the dialing speed and did nothing to improve sound quality over its predecessor. Phones still could not transmit high or low pitches, leaving people straining to hear sounds that simply weren’t there. That’s why ‘pear’ and ‘tear’ sound the same on a traditional phone. The traditional phone cannot hear the difference, so therefore you can’t.

The Advent of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol

The big breakthrough came in the mid-90s with the launch of the World Wide Web. At the time, engineers at traditional phone companies and computer networking companies argued that voice would never be able to travel on packet networks such as the Internet. Nevertheless, a small company in Israel named VocalTec Communications (disclaimer: Phone.com EVP & CTO Alon Cohen is VocalTec’s co- founder and Ari Rabban Phone.com’s CEO was a senior executive for VocalTec during the industries formative years) released its “Internet Phone” VoIP product in  February 1995—the same year that Yahoo was launched. Businesses quickly started adopting the new type of phone service because of its flexibility and major cost reductions for long distance and overseas calls.

Digital cellular networks also appeared—in 1993 to be precise. But they ran into spectrum limitations that kept them from improving their sound quality. Thus, cell phones still had the same or worse sound quality as a regular phone but offered mostly the advantage of portability over traditional phones. There was still a need for a type of phone with clearer sound.

The Cutting Edge of Communication Technology

Soon, software makers were figuring out how to harness the processing power of computers and broadband data network proliferation to improve sound quality. The big game-changer was Skype, which came out in 2003. Skype initially gave computers the ability to place calls over the Internet with twice the sound spectrum of a regular phone, and later even added video. This was huge in improving sound quality, and it set a new standard for communication! It was interesting that the main problem solved by Skype was not related to the transport of the audio, which were solved by VocalTec, but rather to punching holes in the newly installed firewalls at every home and router which incorporated technology Skype adopted from the file sharing business.

The key innovation in the newly formed VoIP protocols was their ability to adopt new standards for voice quality while traditional telephony was (and still is) limited to one or two worldwide standards that only provide “toll quality” which is lower audio quality than AM radio.

Skype demonstrated that “wideband audio” which covers twice the range of the “toll quality” voice and has huge advantages. In other words, HD Voice phones capture and reproduce most of the sounds you can hear at near FM radio quality! HD Voice technology minimizes phone-caused communication difficulties. Mishearing a caller due to the technology is far less likely. VoIP technology was created to take advantage of those new audio qualities and is only now beginning to be realized.

HD VoIP depends on two things—the wide data bandwidth of modern Internet systems and better sound equipment. With an HD phone, you can make phone calls with better sound quality than traditional telephony. You are able to hear everything the other person says clearly, and they understand you perfectly. The days of trying to interpret half a sound are over. All you need is an HD phone and high-speed Internet and a counterpart that has the same. It is interesting to note that HD Voice does not consume more data bandwidth from the network than Toll Quality voice, but to work, it requires more than the slow dial-up connections used by early Internet users.

Better yet, with the newly offered data rates by cellular networks, you can get HD VoIP on your smart phone today. Instead of using your smart phone’s regular narrowband call feature, you can download a wideband-capable software application compatible with Phone.com. You will then be able to understand every word of every phone call. Say goodbye to uncertainty and hello to true clear communication!

This industry transition is by no means complete, and this blog post is too short to include many other developments in the industry and in related industries (as well as regulatory changes) that will lead to a complete revolution.  One thing is certain. It is not going to take 100 plus years. Most likely less than 20 but you can expect constant change as our industry evolves!

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Recently someone brought to my attention something world changing.  It’s not like asteroids are falling to earth world changing but it could change the many peoples lives.  Let me just get right to it.  M.I.T. the world renowned university in Massachusetts is going to start offering approximately 2,100 courses for free under the name M.I.T.x.  This may not mean much to some people but to others it’s an opportunity to get the knowledge of going to one of the best schools in the world and getting to do it for free.  

This doesn’t directly relate to Phone.com or telecommunications but I thought that there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there reading this blog that might like to take a few additional courses.  Maybe offer their employees the time off to take some classes to help them in the office.  I for one am going to check out their course catalog and will probably brush up on some topics.  

Bear in mind you can’t get a degree from this but if you pay a nominal fee (at least compared to M.I.T. tuition) you can get a certificate.  This may not mean a lot to some collage graduates but if you never got the opportunity to go to collage this could change your entire life.  It doesn’t look as good as a degree on the wall but I sure wouldn’t be ashamed to put a certificate from M.I.T. up in my office.  

This won’t launch until the Spring but keep you’re eyes open if you’re interested and good luck if you take some classes.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

In fact, follow me can now follow you anywhere in the world where there is phone service. In many cases the cost is zero from Phone.com, which offers calls to landlines in many countries as part of the basic monthly charge for service. Calls to cell phones generally will cost, but at bargain rates compared to traditional “phone company” rates.

But the issue I’m concerned with right now isn’t the cost – it’s the time.

I’m writing this blog nine time zones away from my home base. What that means is somebody who calls me at the reasonable hour (to them) of 5 P.M. and has their call forwarded, via ‘follow me,’ to my current location will reach me at 2 A.M.

Put simply, I’d love to chat, but not now please.

The solution, though, is simple. I programmed my home and office phone to forward to either my local overseas cell phone number or my wife’s. I’m using a menu – press 1 for me, 2 for my wife – for two reasons. The first is that way annoying automated calls are effectively screened out rather than forwarded, and the second is that both my U.S. cell phone and my wife’s are now set to forward to our home office phone, effectively unifying our phone service.

Step two is using the scheduling feature in Phone.com to set up a second routine that intercepts calls during the hours I don’t won’t my phone to ring – late at night and early morning – and sends them to voice mail.

And that’s all there is to it! It probably took me longer to decide on the exact wording I wanted on the message telling callers to choose a number, or explaining why they are being sent to voice mail, then it did to actually set up the program using Phone.com’s dashboard. Oh, and I didn’t even bother to record the message, I simply used the Phone.com text-to-voice feature to create my announcements.

As a sidelight, it took a good half hour to get my U.S. cell phones to forward to my home office. That’s because I procrastinated a bit, and didn’t try to do it until I was sitting on the plane at JFK Airport. Yes, you allegedly can set up forwarding directly from your cell phone, but when you’ve never done it before it’s a bit tough when sitting squished in what passes for a seat on today’s airplanes (a center seat, no less). So I called AT&T customer service – and it took their guy a half hour to figure out how to forward a call – which was at least six times as long as it took me to set up my entire Phone.com time warp system.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

The energy of the Internet voice and video industry is unbelievable! Phone.com recognized the potential more than four years ago, and with the help of our friends, employees, partners, and most importantly, our customers, we have prospered despite the global economic downturns. At the IT Expo conference in Miami on Thursday, February 2, 2012, we will have a chance to “give back” to the community by sponsoring the StartUp Camps 5 Comms Edition (http://itexpo.tmcnet.com/east12/collocated-event/e12-startupcamp-communications.htm).

This program spotlights early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators in communication technology. Industry leaders, investors, developers, and media will all be present to network with one another, listen to five preselected presentations and validate entrepreneurial pitches in this energetic, unique setting. The audience actually gets to vote as to which presentations it felt had the greatest (or least!) merit.

The keynote speaker for this entertaining and informative session is Sir Terry Matthews, serial entrepreneur, financier, and most well-known for founding Mitel and Newbridge Networks.

Sponsoring this program demonstrates to the audience of 500 to 1000 people that Phone.com remembers our early days and welcomes the opportunity to support a program that has previously and will likely again bring some innovative and exciting organizations to our attention! If you are in Miami on February 2, we would love to see you at this session!

Ari Rabban, Phone.com CEO will participate in panel discussion featuring key industry executives titled: “Taking Your Communications on the Road“.

About this panel: “The massive growth of smartphone and tablet use by businesses and the rapid adoption of cloud services are revolutionizing the way companies operate on a daily basis.

IDC predicts that 75 percent of U.S. workers will be mobile by 2013. A recent survey by Broadsoft suggests that 44 percent of enterprises already have onequarter of their workforces operating solely by mobile devices.  This means only that more and more businesses will require mobility features as part of their communications solutions, enabling their mobile workers to remain as effective on the road as their colleagues in corporate facilities.

This session will discuss the very real mobile requirements of today’s businesses, and offer insight into how cloudbased communications platforms can help deliver on the promise of true mobile business communications.”

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About 5 years ago he set up a PBX system that cost over $14,000, he built a dedicated room for the server with air conditioners and a fire prevention system.  Sounds like a bit much for a company of 14 people back then and under 30 now.  Even back then that was overkill. After dinner he told me his new office space across the street doesn’t have any phones hooked up because it would cost an arm and a leg to wire it and deploy what he wants.

Being the biggest Phone.com fan (in my opinion) you can guess what I suggested.  He asked a bunch of questions like, Do I really get unlimited extensions?  
Does Phone.com manage all the server side responsibilities?  
Do I need to run telephone wires from one office to the other?  

I answered all his questions.  Yes you get unlimited extensions (so new employees get their own extension).  Yes we take care of all the server “stuff”.  Lastly NO you don’t have to run any telephone wire.  

I explained each desktop phone would just need to be plugged into the ethernet.  He is ecstatic about having a cloud telephone service so he doesn’t have to hire a contractor to come and service his PBX system anytime there’s a problem.  He also did some quick math and it would be more cost efficient to migrate over to Phone.com then to even continue with just the upkeep of his self hosted PBX system.  

We have another new customer coming our way but the moral of the story is that keeping your old phone system may cost more then upgrading to a brand new phone service.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

What probably isn’t clear to most folks is the implications of Sprint’s actions for those who use VoIP phone service, and particular for those who use or will soon be using mobile VoIP, whether they know it or not. With its planned abandonment of WiMAX, Sprint has now handed LTE a clean sweep of all major cellular carriers in the U.S., a sweep that matches what’s happening pretty much all over the world.

The key is that LTE is tailored for mobile VoIP, whereas no previous digital cellular technology really did a good job. In fact there are predications that cellular carriers will soon start carrying their own customers’ calls using VoIP technology. All that’s missing is some standards work, which is well under way.

The implications for users of phone services such as Phone.com are huge. Certainly until now there have been applications such as mobile office and the iPhone VoIP app. But typically while such applications can be used for data-based tasks ranging using the dashboard to control VoIP business phone service to setting up calls, in the end the calls themselves have been carried using legacy cellular technology. That’s because current cellular wireless data technologies simply don’t have the required latency, and other technical specifications, needed for good VoIP telephony. The only exception has been when WiFi is available to carry a true VoIP call – but that isn’t cellular technology.

The implications also extend to laptop computers that are LTE-enabled, and perhaps even more so to the emerging class of tablet computers, which with Bluetooth can easily serve as phones. Imagine running your mobile office app on a tablet, instead of the relatively tiny screen on a cellphone. Indeed it will be a cinch to control your entire small office phone system from the tablet, from anywhere in the world that you can get an LTE signal.

What’s going to become really interesting in the end is the competition between cellular carriers and today’s VoIP providers. That’s going to mirror the competition between traditional landline carriers and VoIP providers – and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the business community is choosing VoIP carriers, with landline companies’ role morphing into one of providing IP bandwidth, rather than telephony. Cellular carriers, thanks to LTE, may soon find them in the same position – earning their living providing wireless bandwidth, rather than voice service.

By the way, if anyone is interested in my provocative statements about WiMAX and 4G, here’s the scoop: What was to have been WiMAX was a failed technology that was never completed. Instead the WiMAX community bought rights to rename a technology called HiperMan (High Performance Radio Metropolitan Area Network) that had been developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). HiperMan was never really crafted for cellular telephony, but no matter – Sprint, whose business was faltering, grabbed onto it as a way of getting a jump on the higher-speed cellular data market. For that marketing reason, it called what became WiMAX a 4G technology, but truth be told it isn’t because 4G was envisioned as a 100MB/s plus technology. WiMAX at most can do a third of that. But nobody ever formally set specs to define 4G, so Sprint had a field day. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, in defense, started calling their own sub-30 MB/s technologies 4G, further confusing the market. All this should soon go away, as all of the players move to LTE, which has been tested as capable of delivering well over 100 MB/s – theoretically enough for the entire VoIP-based business phone service for a moderate sized company to operate over a single LTE connection.

Stuart Zipper is currently a contributing editor to Communications Technology, a high tech business journalism consultant and freelancer, and the past Senior Editor of TelecomWeb news break.

“If your site is identified as hosting copyrighted material, you’d find your online advertising networks like AdWords disabled, payment facilitators like PayPal would be banned from doing business with you, and search engines would be ordered to take down links to your site (can you feel the SEO earth shaking beneath your feet?). Internet service providers would block access to your site and your domain name would be taken down with DNS blocking –you know, the thing they use for the Great Firewall of China?      

Now before this, there was the Safe Harbor provision as part of the DMCA of 1998, which basically prevented sites from being held accountable for the content users post. It’s why YouTube can still exist today – if a user posts infringing content, it’s the user’s fault, not YouTube. But SOPA and PIPA would change that.”

(From B2C) Read more here.

This is what Wikipedia and Google, among other leading sites, looked like today:

Wikipedia:

Google:

For starters it’s a 4G device meaning it should provide F.A.S.T. internet.  It does and it does it well.  Sitting here in my office in Long Beach, Ca I’m pulling down over 20Mb/s and sending up over 7Mb/s.  This to me is a dream come true for any road warriors or anybody who wants mobile internet.  The device feels good in my hand, it’s rubberized at both ends and on the bottom and the top is clear plastic.  It looks pretty sleek and seems rugged.  The screen is easy to read and understand what’s going on.  My single favorite thing about it is that I can make pure VOIP calls from my iPhone using the Phone.com Mobile VOIP app.  It doesn’t use any of my cellular minutes on my iPhone and just pulls from my bucket of Phone.com minutes (unless you have an unlimited extension).  This means that anywhere the Elevate is working on a 4G signal (obviously this isn’t absolute, your results may vary) I’m able to make Phone.com calls showing my work number instead of my very personal cellular number.  

These benefits are huge to me, I no longer need to find a coffee shop to use my wifi only iPad when I’m out of the office, let alone my laptop.  I can sit in a proper restaurant and eat lunch while keeping up with news and email by just connecting to the Elevate for internet.  Plus my kids can connect their wifi devices to the Elevate when we’re out and about or in the car.  

Funny story, the night I came home from CES my home internet went down.  So I whipped out the Elevate to put it to the most important test, can my wife stream TV over it.  The answer was yes and the Elevate kept me from having to call my ISP and wait on hold for 30min.  

For transparency sake…  My amazing AT&T contact offered me the Elevate for review purposes.  It’s not a gift and no I won’t keep it.

–

Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

I was equipped with an iPhone, an Android Phone, a BlackBerry and a Nokia phone and every single device had connectivity issues. I think a lot of it had to do with AT&T the provider on 3 of the 4 devices.  There were just to many people using to much of the network and bandwidth in to small an area for AT&T to be able to keep up.  The interesting thing was that the 1 phone that wasn’t on AT&T worked a tad better.  It was able to make/receive calls and receive email.  It’s a Tru sim on T-Mobile.  

All that being said, I still had to communicate with my wife and peers.  The only thing I could use was SMS and it was by no means reliable but it did work and it was better then nothing.  The issue was, what number do I use?  I don’t like using my personal cell phone for business and the Tru number I don’t even know.  My best option was using Phone.com (which I use all the time anyways).  Because data wasn’t working I didn’t think I could use our app so I decided to take advantage of one of our SMS feature.  Whenever I get an SMS on my Phone.com number it’s sent via SMS to my personal number.  I see who texte’d me and I’m able to just respond to that SMS and the recipient sees my Phone.com number, not my personal number.  This wasn’t perfect because I didn’t know how to initiate a first SMS to a person but it was far better then the alternative, which was no contact at all.  

I’m really glad that Phone.com kept me connected and that I was able to communicate with the people I needed to.  It was the only way I was able to reschedule some meetings and change locations of others.  Plus I was able to keep in contact with my wife.  All in all Phone.com saved me, as usual.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager

Ari and Alon our CEO and CTO were interviewed by m.o. recently.  Ari talked about our Home Phone Plus and our Virtual Office services.  Explaining that Phone.com is geared for the very small to the small/medium businesses, some being in offices but many are home based companies.  

Ari explained that Alon Cohen our CTO is one of the founders of VOIP,  he helped create “many of the formative innovations and standards in the industry”.  He also briefly mentioned our “many online tutorials and videos and a 24/7 customer support team“.  

Here’s a link to the m.o. interview.  It’s a nice read and if you’re interested in Phone.com service but you have questions make sure to ask us, it’s part of our job to help you.  We’re on Twitter, Facebook and I can always be reached at Jeb@Phone.com.

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Jeb Brilliant

Phone.com

Community Manager