What is a Branch Office?

By on February 22, 2012 in Telecom

One of my favorite things about the telecom industry is the clear terminology we use. Muggles can hardly determine the topic when overhearing our conversations at crowded restaurants. For example, VAR, drop, POTs, DTMF, call forking, SIP, and many more terms make telecom a second language. We use casual terms as if everyone agrees on definition – but realistically very few do (a language of one).

Terms such as unified communications, PBX, HD, channel, are frequently used, yet there’s little agreement on exact meaning. Of course, that doesn’t make the terms any less popular – slight literary confusion and disorientation are the marks of a telecom professional.

Today’s word of the day is BRANCH – as in branch office. The classical branch office is a bank branch. We think of a small friendly office connected via wide area network connections to some mega HQ operation. Pretty simple, a small neighborhood branch is rarely confused with a world headquarters location in a downtown skyscraper.

Or is it? Continue Reading →

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Parlez-vous L33t?

By on February 21, 2012 in Random

You are most likely familiar with numbers being used to implicate letters, phrases or even symbols. In SMS (txting) shortcuts, for instance, 2 can also be used for “to”, 4 can mean “for” and the 8 spells “eat” in gr8, meaning great. This is called SMSish or textese or simply SMS language.

When numbers instead of letters are used to spell a whole word it is called leet – which, in leet, is written as 1337. Another example is n00b, a term for newbie. Andsoforth.

Leet originated in the 1980s in relay chat services and on bulletin boards. If you look at it for the first time it might seem difficult to understand but you’ll be surprised how quickly you will catch it. Train your brain with this example of leet:

7H15 M3554G3
53RV35 7O PR0V3
H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N
D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!
1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!
1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG
17 WA5 H4RD BU7
N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3
Y0UR M1ND 1S
R34D1NG 17
4U70M471C4LLY
W17H 0U7 3V3N
7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,
B3 PROUD! 0NLY
C3R741N P30PL3 C4N
R3AD 7H15.

Glad you caught that! As you’ve noticed, you can also combine the use of leet, textese and normal spelling or even morph it. It isn’t a bad way to come up with some creative pa55w0rd5 either.

5p34k1ng 0f wh1ch, a1s0 c: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch

Source.

See: Numbers as letters

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Can You Hear Me Now?

By on February 20, 2012 in Telecom

For two years I struggled with AT&T on my iPhone. So bad was the service that my voice mail message stated:

“Thanks for calling. If this is the first time you reached this message, please hang up and call me back. Often, AT&T doesn’t even ring my phone the first time it is called. If this is the second time you received this recording, then please leave me a message and I’ll call you back. But note that it can be an hour or more before AT&T notifies me that I have a Voice Mail message.”

I listened to AT&T talk about how only 3% of calls on their network are dropped. I don’t know how they did that measurement, but my personal estimate was a third or more of my calls were dropped. Even now, when the other party drops a call I usually ask “You are on AT&T, aren’t you?” Yep.

What are we, a third world country?

Last fall I switched to a Verizon iPhone. I have never had a dropped call on Verizon. My experiences are not unique.

This got me to thinking: Why is AT&T’s network so bad? Continue Reading →

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Cisco Calls the Skype Kettle Black

By on February 17, 2012 in Telecom

I didn’t see this one coming – but it makes perfect sense.

Cisco communicates to the EU that Microsoft and Skype together may not be such a good thing for the industry, and thus appealed the approval of the merger to the EU. That isn’t in itself too surprising until you consider that the EU and the US have already approved the deal, and that the EU and US has already heard Cisco’s concerns. There is a very good chance that the decision won’t be changed. But there is also the chance some detail gets revised. There are two issues here: why did Cisco do this and is it a reasonable claim?

Why they did it largely falls into the nothing to lose category. It’s like challenging a referee’s call. There might be a small price, and it might be futile, but the call isn’t likely to come back any worse and there is a chance the outcome gets changed. But even if the EU makes no change in their decision, it slows down the merger. At the current rate of change, delaying things a few months is eternity. A lot can happen.

Consider how much has happened just since Microsoft announced the acquisition: Continue Reading →

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Nest and HoneyWell

By on February 15, 2012 in Random

Nest hit a nerve.

Thermostats are not the most popular topic for high-tech and Internet blogs – but Nest hit a nerve.

Nest offers a thermostat for the home. Probably because it’s a San Francisco start-up, possibly because it has some leadership that once worked at Apple, or possibly because it has a nifty display – it became an instant darling of the high-tech blogosphere. It became the most boring got-to-have item in consumer tech. I love high tech gadgets, including thermostats, and have more than my share in my current home – more on that below. I found the Nest thermostat interesting, but hardly worth blogging about (initially).  It took several characteristics of high-end thermostats and made it round and used a clever digital round display. I don’t believe it has any unique features compared to whats available on the market. This post lists several alternatives available.

I’ve heard people excitedly talk about the Nest thermostat. Continue Reading →

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Family Plans are Best – For Shareholders

By on February 13, 2012 in rant, Telecom

Remember when carriers charged for what you used?

Both Verizon and AT&T are expected to announce shared data plans shortly. Heralded as a boon for consumers, careful thought reveals it is more of a boondoggle. Shared use plans allow you to buy a block of data and then use that block across all of your devices. What’s wrong with that, right?

Shared or family plans are based upon the business model of forcing you to purchase a data plan that is way too big, and then having to use up the super-sized block by sharing it with all of your other devices. The benefit for the carriers is that you get locked into a single carrier. Continue Reading →

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ITExpo Miami Best of Show

By on February 9, 2012 in Telecom

Last week was ITExpo in Miami – generally a good conference.

There was lots of news this year. I think the biggest story was Digium’s new phones (see here and here). I don’t think most people realize how impact-full these (well not these, but the next few versions) phones will be. The vast majority of the industry is heading toward standards compliant SIP phones and Digium (which started with standards compliant SIP phones) is moving toward proprietary SIP compliant phones. There is more to this story. The other big story is Shoretel acquiring hosted voice provider M5 – this one really did surprise me. I’m putting my thoughts together and will post shortly.

There was actually a lot of news coming out of Miami last week. I can’t cover it all, but wanted to recognize the best of show winners. This time, TMC awarded 11 Best of Show champions (at the last conference, TMC awarded 20 Best of Show Winners). This year’s winners are:

  • Best Service Provider Solution – Intercity Networks
  • Best Enterprise Solution – Infinias
  • Best SMB Solution – Surf Comunications
  • Best Contact Center Solution – Hold-Free Networks
  • Best of Open Source – Xorcom
  • Best Wireless/Mobile Solution - AudioCodes
  • Best Cloud Solution– APEX VoiceCommunicatons
  • Most Innovative Product – Plantronics
  • Best On-site launch - XKL
  • Best Development Tool – Inventive Labs
  • Editors Choice Award – ABP Technologies (for Totus Solutions)

Congratulations to the winners. I am familiar with most, but not all but will certainly be looking into them.

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Google Voice Offline

By on February 7, 2012 in Telecom

Evidently at least one of the engineers at Google Voice woke up and came up with a new feature…Offline Texting.

It was announced with the following blog post:

Sometimes the times that we’re offline can be our most productive times. However, whether on a plane or out of range of coverage, it’d still be nice to be able to draft text messages. With this new app, you can now compose new messages (single recipients for now) while offline and the app will automatically queue them and send them out when you’re connected again.

We hope you enjoy this new feature.

Posted by Yong Hoon Choi, Software Engineer

This is a tremendous revolutionary feature (in 2009). In 2012, the question is What else you got? When I receive a message will it say “You have mail!” ? Anything new in fax or Telex integration?

 

The new app has an Ice Cream Sandwich Look – of course few people know that look as few devices exist with it.

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Is the Stylus Retro?

By on February 7, 2012 in Telecom

The Samsung Note is a smartphone tablet thing. It is either the largest smartphone or smallest tablet depending on your point of view. I saw it at CES, and it was advertised on national television during the Superbowl. The ad poked fun at the hipsters waiting in line at (presumably) the Apple Store to buy the iDujour – at least until they spot someone with a Samsung Note. But the reaction noticed on Twitter wasn’t the praise Samsung expected – many people felt there is no way that the next big thing could have a stylus – too 90s.

I disagree. It’s the way technology works – and once again everything old becomes new again. Just like the web is turning our desktops into thin terminals again and evidently Amazon is considering opening physical stores.  Continue Reading →

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TalkingPointz Uber TeleNewsfeed

By on February 3, 2012 in TalkingPointz Research, Telecom

One place to view all the news.

On this blog, Twitter, and Facebook, TalkingPointz is regularly posting news feeds from across the VoIP, UC, telecom industry. This is a work in progress and please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Current sources include:

I also add posts from TalkingPointz as well as interesting news items I come across.

Viewing this feed can keep you posted on what’s hot. I have not added vendor blogs, but open to it. The basic requirement is the content needs to be focused on business communications. That’s tricky – I’ve skipped or removed several feeds that don’t follow that rule. That’s why TMC is missing – complaints about political posts. Politics, wine, and most commonly general IT keeps a feed off the list.

Links are unedited and refer directly to the source. I plan to keep adding more, please send suggestions.

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