Open Source IP-PBX Popular in Canada

Toronto is home to world’s largest Asterisk community Canada is known for hockey, poutine, hewing wood and drawing water. But judging from the turnout at a recent Toronto Asterisk Users’ Group (TAUG) meeting, Canada might as well be known for its telephone systems prowess. About 70 people came to the gathering, held the evening of April 4, connected with the VON Canada communications conference, which ran from April 3 to 5. Asterisk is an open-source IP-PBX that is becoming popular, perhaps in part due to the "open source" moniker. Like the granddaddy of open-source operating systems, Linux, Asterisk has captured the attention of technology freedom fighters – people who might argue that computers are a citizen concern, not a commercial endeavour. Asterisk seems to be particularly admired in Canada. "We are the largest Asterisk user group in the world," said Jim Van Meggelan, a TAUG member and the co-author of Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. Two hundred people belong to the group’s email list and usually about 50 people attend the monthly meetings, he said. Judging from comments at the April gathering, people gravitate to Asterisk for various reasons. Van Meggelan discovered it out of frustration. "I was having a bad day with Nortel equipment," he deadpanned. Simon Ditner, TAUG’s co-ordinator, said Asterisk provides the deep level of network control that some people seek. "Vendors are trying to lock you in to solutions. Asterisk gives you access to all sorts of solutions." The meeting included presentations about writing Asterisk applications – one that would disguise a speaker’s voice, for instance. "There’s no real purpose for this program," said the presenter. TAUG’s members list includes some serious Asterisk hobbyists. "I put it together in my basement," said Ian Darwin, who described the sophisticated network he built, connecting to end points as far away as England. The meeting provided an opportunity for newcomers – curious VON Canada attendees for the most part – to ask questions: Does Asterisk work on Windows operating systems? (Yes, but not well.) What’s the difference between Asterisk and its subset, Asterisk @Home? (Asterisk @Home is a full-fledged PBX. Asterisk is more of a development platform.) The tone of the meeting suggested that most Asterisk users are interested in the technology first, and its applicability to business second. But one first-timer said he hopes to turn the hobby into a corporate endeavour. "A buddy and I are thinking about entering the market and providing IP for small and medium businesses," said Chris Coulson, an application developer from Mississauga ON.For more information about TAUG visit http://taug.ca. Skype: More Than a Phone?Ask a Skype user why he likes the VoIP service, and he’ll probably say price is the defining factor. Skype-to-Skype calls are free and Skype-to-PSTN calls are pennies per minute. But if you ask Stefan Oberg what he thinks users should like about Skype, he won’t mention price. Oberg is Skype’s VP of product development. During a keynote speech VON Canada, a technology conference held in Toronto from April 3 to 5, he said Skype means to be "more than a phone." He pointed out that Skype offers presence capabilities, so users can see if their counterparts are available to talk. Skype also offers high sound quality – stereo style – as well as a built-in phone book, making it easy to find anyone in the Skype universe.In the future Skype will be the user’s interface-of-choice for mobile calls, Oberg said. People will install Skype software on their cell phones and use it to interact with friends.In Oberg’s opinion, it’s time for telephone services to move beyond their current state, in which price is the main differentiator among offerings. "We can do more," he said. Skype’s challenges include hardware integration. Oberg’s company has not settled on a specific hardware interface for users. Some subscribers use computer speakers and a separate microphone to make their voices heard, but that can be cumbersome. Other solutions like integrated headphone-microphones have their drawbacks too. Users themselves often decide which hardware is best but it seems Skype wants to be able to make suggestions. "That’s what we need to think of," Oberg said. Skype is disruptive in more ways than one. The technology has helped change the way we look at phone services – should long-distance be free? But it also has some people worried. The technology may or may not be secure – no one is quite sure, although Skype insists that it is – and it’s perhaps best left for consumers to toy with. Nonetheless, many people use Skype for business. The ultra-low price is hard to ignore. The consumer-business user paradox will not disappear soon. Skype doesn’t plan to create corporate-specific products, so business users will have to content themselves with the consumer equipment. Serving the corporate world spells "a whole set of requirements…that we just can’t handle," Oberg said. Bell Under WatchNow that BCE Inc. has decided to roll its East Coast arm Aliant into an income trust with regional networks in Ontario and Quebec, the company is under union scrutiny. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), representing workers at Aliant and other BCE assets, told its members via the Web that it’s watching the proceedings closely. "Both Aliant and Bell are saying it will have no effect in the ‘near term,’" wrote CEP directors in an online notice. "That remains to be seen." They said the CEP is creating an "action plan" to protect union interests. In previous announcements the CEP said it was worried that the income trust plan would hurt job stability. Meanwhile 79 Bell retail operators started a lawsuit in March against BCE for allegedly breaking its promise to turn the stores into an income trust. Contact Centre Growth SlowsCanada’s outsourced contact centre industry is expected to post "notably lethargic" growth through 2010, according to the market watchers at Datamonitor. The sliding US dollar is one culprit, as the shrinking gap between greenbacks and Canuck bucks makes buying contact centre services from Canada less of a bargain for US companies. Plus, US companies seek contact centre agents fluent in English and Spanish. Canada lacks a sufficiently large pool of Spanish speakers to provide that service. And as Canada’s contact centre industry matures, office rents and salaries rise, which makes the whole undertaking that much more expensive. "Some US cities are now less expensive from a commercial rent perspective than some major Canadian centres," said Peter Ryan, a Datamonitor analyst, in a press release. Researchers Marry Wired to WirelessTelecom technology researchers have come up with a new network design that provides both high-speed wireless and wired access from a single fibre-optic cable, so people would be able to source all sorts of network services – HDTV, phone, wireless Web – from one network. "The same services would be provided to customers who would either plug into the wired connection in the wall or access the same information through a wireless system," said Gee-Kung Chang, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech created a way of massaging normal infrared wavelengths on fibre-optic lines so they serve both wired and wireless end points at data rates near 2.5 Gbps. Chang said the system could be commercially available in five to seven years. Nortel Simplifies, Adds to Bad NewsNortel Networks is simplifying its "services" businesses for improved network design, deployment and support. The Toronto-based equipment maker says it’s focusing on multi-vendor interoperability, technology migration and operating expense reduction by organizing its services into five areas: integration, security, managed services, optimization services and maintenance. Customers will be able to mix and match services as required. Nortel has specific commercial services for IPTV integration, VoIP integration, security consulting, hosting (call centres, multimedia), quality-of-experience measurement, and multi-vendor repair and managed spares services. "We have identified services as one of the key strategic areas to drive our business momentum and growth," according to Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski. Meanwhile, Nortel said by press release that it would expand its revenue adjustments even more than previously announced. The firm is performing some financial self-scrutiny – again – after discovering that certain revenue was added to the positive side of the ledger before its time. Aliant Teams with SolutionIncAliant Inc. has started selling SolutionInc Ltd.’s Internet access systems for businesses. SolutionInc’s Solution IP software handles Internet service provisioning, authentication and billing. Combined with Aliant’s high-speed Internet access, Wi-Fi infrastructure and structured cabling, it lets companies offer guest wired or wireless Web access to visitors. As of March 30 Aliant had turned on the service in 19 hotels in Atlantic Canada, so guests can access the Web from their rooms, hotel meeting rooms, business centres or lobbies. Man Receives $218 Trillion Phone BillA Malaysian man said he received a $218 trillion phone bill from Telekom Malaysia, according to Associated Press and other media outlets. Yahaya Wahab said he paid the $23 owing on his deceased father’s account but later received the massive invoice and an order to pay within 10 days or face prosecution. It wasn’t clear if the bill was a mistake or if the recipient’s father’s phone line had been used illegally. A Telekom Malaysia official said the company is aware of the situation and plans to address it. Alcatel Buying SpreeFrance-based network equipment maker Alcatel said last month that it plans to merge with Lucent Technologies. The new entity will have a US$25 billion revenue base. Lucent CEO Patricia Russo will head the combined company. The firm will reduce its global workforce by 10%. At press time Alcatel had not announced a name for its new self, although some websites have dubbed it "Lucatel;" at least one other firm already uses that name. Alcatel also said it plans to acquire Toronto’s VoiceGenie, a voice software supplier. The acquisition would occur via Alcatel’s contact centre-focused subsidiary, Genesys. Alcatel said that according to industry analysis, VoiceGenie is the second most popular voice portal provider behind Genesys. Together the companies will become the decided market frontrunner. Genesys will expand its offerings for service providers, Alcatel said. New Telus Tech for SMBsTelus Corp. took the wraps off its Telus Business One system last month. Designed to meet the needs of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), the platform includes IP-based telecommunications services, conference bridging, high-speed Internet service, email, PC backup, website hosting and virus protection tools. The Burnaby BC carrier is packaging all of the features as a single solution with a single bill. Business One also comes with a single telephone number for technical support, which makes things easy for small companies that lack substantial IT know-how. Telemarketing Scam Charges LaidThe Competition Bureau said in late March that Montreal police had laid criminal charges against four people allegedly involved in a telemarketing scam in Quebec. According to the bureau, con artists would call businesses in Canada and the US claiming to be one of the victims’ regular office suppliers. The scammers would tell the victims that a price increase was imminent, leading the victims to make purchases. The bureau said the fraudsters failed to tell the victims just how much the merchandise would cost, and they failed to describe to the victims the terms and conditions of returning the goods. Charged are Neil Leventhal of Montreal, Pierre Richard of Candiac QC, Rick Aquino of Laval QC and Matthew Grenia of Stanbridge Station QC. Two companies were also charged: Merchant Supply International and International Merchant Supply. The firms are said to have raked in nearly $8 million between 2000 and 2004. The bureau said it received 619 complaints, many of them from the Canadian anti-fraud hotline PhoneBusters. RIM Sales SlipExecutives at Research in Motion Ltd. said during a recent conference call with analysts that while revenue increased at a healthy pace in the last quarter, future sales of the BlackBerry email device will slow as the Waterloo ON company tries to recover from the damage it suffered during the long legal battle with NTP Inc. BlackBerry sales dipped to approximately 40,000 per week, down from 50,000 per week achieved in the previous quarter. Welcome Kurt EbyDecima Reports welcomes Kurt Eby as staff writer. Kurt has worked for a number of Ottawa organizations, including Decima Reports, as a freelance writer since 2004. Prior to that he held the position of business writer at the Television Bureau of Canada in Toronto. Kurt graduated from the Ryerson School of Journalism in 2002. He will be contributing to all five of Decima Reports’ industry journals, including Telemanagement. Letter To The Editor Host Is Not the MostIt’s easy to marshal arguments in favour of hosted IP-based voice sys-tem ("The Case for Hosted Networking," Telemanagement, March 2006), but why has this option had such little market success? Judging from my experience with a business-grade hosted service, this may be in part because this technology has weak points not mentioned in your article.With my hosted service, I experi-enced a persistent problem of gaps – one or several seconds long – in the incoming audio. My supplier’s tech support suspected trouble on my LAN and did long-distance troubleshooting. I spent a lot of time switching out routers, cables, et cetera, and monitoring voice quality metrics on my phone.Meanwhile, I received a succession of notices from the supplier that it was having network issues – coincidentally, brief gaps in the audio. The supplier now says it has resolved the problems.The supplier also had two network outages during this period that I know about, outages long enough that they did not hit five-nines reliability that year, and probably did not hit four.Conclusion: this is not Centrex. That only part of the infrastructure is outsourced (the WAN but not the LAN) encourages finger pointing.Inherent problems in architecture and technology make it hard to deliver PSTN levels of quality and reliability.Many suppliers may meet this challenge with flying colours, but let the buyer beware.— John RiddellAngus Dortmans Associates

Open Source IP-PBX Popular in Canada

News | May 1, 2006

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