Services – Page 45 – Digital-Lifestyles

Vonage & Linksys Connect on VoIP WiFi Router

Vonage Voip Linksys WRT54GP2 Linksys’ consumer and small-business oriented Wireless-G Broadband Router is unusual in the way that it offers four devices in one box: a Wireless-G access point, built-in 3-port switch to connect wired Ethernet devices, router so that multiple users can securely share a single cable or DSL Internet connection, and two standard telephone jacks (each operating independently) for carrying Voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls. It also comes with Vonage’s Internet telephony service, so you can start making high-quality low-cost phone calls over a broadband connection out of the box – even when you’re browsing the Internet.

With the added Vonage service, US-based users should get low domestic and international phone rates, Caller ID, Call Waiting, Voicemail, Call Forwarding, Distinctive Ring, and lots of other available special phone features. You can also choose any free local dialling US area code, regardless of where you live, add a virtual phone number in any area code, or even a US-wide toll-free number. Vonage offers price plans ranging from $15 to $50 a month, depending whether you want primarily local or long distance calls, how many inclusive minutes you want, and whether you are a consumer or business buyer.

“Recognising the need for residents and small businesses to have myriad of options when setting up their networks, Vonage is excited to partner with Linksys to continue to lead the way in transforming how people communicate,” stated Jeffrey A Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage Holdings Corp. “More importantly, the Wireless-G Router bundled with Vonage’s service is the next step in modernising an archaic telecommunications network. No longer will people be stuck in the past and tied down to communications systems that fail to offer true mobility.”

“By providing customers with both the hardware and service they need to make high-quality phone calls over their broadband connection, customers get a better overall value and user experience,” said Mike Wagner, Linksys director of worldwide marketing. “Marketing the product and service together enables us to educate more customers about the benefits and cost savings VoIP can provide.”

Other key features of the Wireless-G Broadband Router (54 Mbps), with the oh-so-catch name of Linksys WRT54GP2, include support for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), along with a range of voice compression algorithms with echo cancellation, DTMF tone detection and generation. It can also handle FSK and DTMF caller ID, and FSK voicemail. There’s also 256-bit encryption and support for both Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and the router can serve as a DHCP server, has a built-in SPI firewall to protect your PCs against intruders and most known Internet attacks, supports VPN pass-through, and can be configured to filter internal users’ access to the Internet.

US buyers will also get a $50 rebate slip that they can use against the Vonage service after their initial 90 days of service.

:SP: Vonage are pushing hard to expand their VoIP offering. They are spending large amount of money on advertising in the US (rumoured to be around $88m), and now, with this tie-up with Linksys, taking it directly to consumers who are buying broadband equipment. The support for both WiFi and SIP leaves the door wide open for expanding in to wire-free calling too.

Vonage Linksys WRT54GP2

VoIP Threatens Traditional Telcos Revenue

It comes as little surprise that a new report from Analysys, global advisers on telecoms, IT and media, reports that over 50 million broadband users in Western Europe could potentially be using private Voice over Internet Protocol Applications (PVAs) by 2008. As a result, the impact on traditional telephony providers’ revenues could reach 6.4 billion euros (~$8.23Bn, ~£4.47Bn) in 2008, representing 13 per cent of the residential fixed-line voice market.

VoIP technology – used in excellent applications such as Skype – works by digitising voice in data packets, sending them over the Internet using TCP/IP networks, and then reconverting them into voice at the destination. As well as offering a ‘free’ alternative for voice conversations compared to traditional fixed lines, you can also compress voice packets, route them, convert them to a new better format, and so on – bypassing the existing PSTN network.

Digital signals are also more noise tolerant than analogue ones – a feature appreciated by users communicating overseas. With VoIP, you can also talk all the time with every person you want (as long as the other person is also connected to Internet at the same time) for no call charges. And, in addition, you can talk with multiple people (conference call) at the same time.

Analysys advises that incumbent public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators are highly vulnerable and should assess the weaker segments of their market and create targeted packages to retain valuable customers. They also advise that service providers should also make subscriptions the core of their service packages.

“The recent rapid take-up of Private Voice Applications (PVAs) using free downloadable software from providers such as Skype raises the possibility of the appearance of a critical mass of PVA users that could unleash a significant structural change in the voice market by the removal of a large proportion of PSTN revenues,” says report co-author Stephen Sale. “In the residential market, PVAs are typically used to make longer calls to friends and family, the core telephony business of fixed-line incumbents. In combination with increased mobile usage, this could render the PSTN subscription worthless for many broadband users. Fixed-line voice would face not only mobile substitution, but PVA substitution as well.”

The report, Voice Communications: From Public Service to Private Application, examines the potential impact of these applications on the residential voice market. It uses new market models to show that, given favourable future regulatory and other conditions, the rapid adoption of PVAs could generate direct revenues of over 3.5 billion euros (~$4.5Bn, ~£2.44Bn), the bulk (about 85 per cent) stemming from subscriptions, not call charges.

This emphasises the huge importance that the subscription element will have in a future multiservice mix and in establishing PVAs in the mass market. Further research from consultancy firm Mercer has suggested that Internet-based phone services could be in use by up to 30 per cent of homes in the UK and the US in the next three years.

The report is available to purchase online at http://research.analysys.com/stor, priced at £1,700 (approximately 2,500 euros).

Broadband BBC – Ashley Highfield

Ashley Highfield, BBC Director of New Media and Technology, outlined the BBC’s plans to harness broadband technology to reduce the digital divide in Britain in a speech to the Broadband Britain Summit in London.

Alluding to Harold Wilson’s prophetic comments over forty years ago where he described a ‘new’ Britain forged from ‘the white heat of technology’, Highfield asks, “Can we move this ‘linear’ digital content leadership into the broadband ‘on demand’ world? Or will the white-heat prove to be nothing but hot air?”

Highfield describes “a new world of media consumption only made possible by a faster always-on connection.” He outlined the corporation’s vision for a broadband Britain, and urged the cooperation of Government and industry to avoid a digital underclass.

It is obviously hoped that the BBC’s interactive media player, iMP, which has just undergone a technical trial, will be a leading protagonist in the unfolding broadband drama. “iMP enables people to download television and radio programmes, choose to record whole series such as EastEnders, catch up on programmes they have missed and watch or listen to them on any device they want – all through peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing on a broadband connection”, explained Highfield.

“iMP is just one of a suite of products in development that makes up our BBC On Demand strategy”, says Highfield, “including the Creative Archive, the Radio Player, and the Broadband Console, with the express aim of finding the right content and services to put the British media industry at the forefront of this technology tidal wave and narrow the digital divide.”

The creation of “Underclasses” are not a healthy development in any environment, including the digital one, and Highfield outlined some proposals that should help to avoid this – the BBC’s planned scheme ‘Music for All’ and a ‘Get Britain Connected’ week.

The ‘Music for All’, will be firmly rooted in broadband. It aims to “transform music education giving children the opportunity to hear live performances, experience master classes in all music genres, create and perform their own pieces and work alongside leading musicians who can help them to develop their musical passions.”

Highfield also floated the idea of FreeBand (in the mode of the BBC’s FreeView and FreeSat). The BBC would supply broadband ready material, “compelling content” in his words, that would be delivered via services providers to UK citizens. Sadly he didn’t go in to any more detail, so it’s not clear how this would differ from services they currently freely deliver, or have spoken about publicly previously. It is perhaps just a new catchy way to label it.

In his speech, Highfield also proposed a ‘Get Britain Connected’ week to happen later next year. He envisaged this as being “a joint initiative with Government, players in the broadband supply chain (both commercial and public sector) and the BBC with its airwaves and cross-promotional opportunities to target those members of society who might find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

Harold Wilson was the first British Prime Minister to successfully use television as a political tool. Hopefully the ‘white heat’ Wilson referred to forty years ago will indeed prove to be more than hot air.

Text of Ashley Highfields speech

BT helps small businesses join the VoIP revolution

BT has seen its fixed-line base erode steadily over the past few years, while tariffs have fallen, making it hard for it to increase revenue. But it looks like BT is grabbing the nettle rather than shying away from it.

That means sniffing around for new market opportunities in a rapidly changing technological landscape. And in the case of BT, instigating the first Internet phone service specifically for UK SMEs, and launching next year the Bluephone, which will allow you to make VoIP, mobile or landline calls from the same handset.

Small businesses across the UK now have access to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), with the launch of BT Business Broadband Voice. Subscribers simply plug BT’s Broadband Voice box into their high-speed Internet connection and then use a standard telephone handset to make calls, rather than having to connect via a computer. This means that Internet calls can be made from anywhere that has a broadband connection, enabling employees to keep the same number, whether they’re working from the office or remotely.

It can’t be easy for a lumbering giant having nimble little gnat-like competitors such as Carphone Warehouse and Centrica’s OneTel snapping at it haunches, especially if you lost about half a million fixed-line customers during the July-to-September quarter to some of those competitors. Only last week, Ofcom said that Carphone Warehouse and Centrica’s OneTel, had expanded their customer base to 4.2 million at the end of September from 3.7 million at the end of June.

BT’s proposed Bluephone acts like a mobile, but it has better reception, better voice quality and is cheaper to use than a mobile, because it operates over BTs fixed line network. When you use it near your home or office, the call is routed using your landline connection, if you are out and about it will use the mobile network, and if you are within a Wi-Fi hotspot it will automatically use VoIP to route the call.

Ofcom reported the number of UK broadband connections passed the 5 million point during September, with around 50,000 new subscriptions added every week. So, while fixed voice telecoms use continues to decline slowly, broadband uptake continues apace, which might start to mean more of a shift rather than a loss in business for telcos who grasp the nettle.

BT Broadbandvoice.

BBC Creative Archive: Pilot to Start in 2005

More details of the BBC’s Creative Archive were revealed at an Royal Television Society, London Centre meeting last night when Paula Le Dieu gave a presentation on the project’s background and recent developments. Following this, an hour-long discussion, chaired by Digital Lifestyles’s own Simon Perry, explored further details [MP3 recording ~14Mb].

Paula is co-director of the Creative Archive (CA), a project to make BBC archived audio and video media available to the UK public so that they can download it and make creative works based upon it.

The BBC is taking this extraordinary step as they believe it will help them give more value to the licence fee payers – one of their core values.

Paula told us that one of the inspirations for the move was the BBC Micro. Released in 1982, the BBC Micro was an open hardware and software platform that ignited public interest and in no small way contributed to the UK’s hugely popular computing and games scenes. Indeed, by encouraging owners to use the BBC Micro platform in whatever way they wished, it helped many people take their first steps into the digital age and helped shape the industry as it stands today. A game of Elite, anyone?

Since then, we’ve seen the rapid growth of the Internet, and this has encouraged users to share content around the world – and the more material that people share, the more there is for them to draw inspiration from.

The BBC, slow on the uptake, came to the realisation that opening up their archive would allow them to present significant value to their public – enabling them to listen, watch, download, share and use materials in any way they wish, under an non-restrictive licence.

The remit of the Creative Archive has changed since the BBC’s previous Director General, Greg Dyke, left – Mark Thompson, the new DG, is completely behind the project and wants to include full programmes from the BBC’s huge media library. Give that some of the material that may be released has not seen the light of day since broadcast, it’s an exciting opportunity to give new life to content that has been sitting on shelves gathering dust for years. The BBC’s archive contains some 1.5 million items of television, equating to 600,000 hours of television – or put another way, 68 years of consecutive viewing. In addition to this is 500,000 audio recordings.

Obviously, that’s a lot of bandwidth – and the more popular the Creative Archive becomes, the more expensive it will be to distribute it. Consequently, the BBC is looking at peer-to-peer (P2P) methods of distribution, so that the public become not just their creative partners, but distribution partners also. The Corporation is also looking to the public for help in metatagging the content, after all people need to find what they need and know what they are looking for. Users of the content will be invited to tag content, and communities of interest will be sought out for their expertise on particular subjects. Paula gave an example of the Archaeological Society, who have already, of their own volition, tagged and catalogued all of the BBC’s archaeological output before the Creative Archive was even announced. Layers of metadata will be encouraged, so that content will be searchable in many different ways – for example, actors present, type of canned laughter – even types of shoes worn in a scene, and each layer will be open to peer review.

We feel this layering of metadata is of huge importance, an idea we have been putting to media owners for a long time. We feel the addition of descriptive metadata will be added to time-coded media with or without the owner blessing – it enables the viewing public to add their knowledge and experience, without limit of depth. It’s very encouraging to find that the BBC is to include this in CA.

New ways of using and accessing material require new licences. The Creative Archive team have looked at a number of alternative licences, and intent to distribute the content under terms based on the well-established Creative Commons (CC) Licence. Key requirements of content users will be that they properly credit the source and creators of the original materials, and that the new work they have produced inherits the same CC licence. All derivative works have to be non-commercial in nature – but of course a new licence can be sought for commercial use if required.

One aspect of the licence that needs work is a requirement that content is not distributed out of the UK. It is far from clear as to how this would be enforceable – web sites can be accessed from around the world, and one file downloaded from a P2P network may be assembled in blocks from a dozen countries. Any clip of interest to anyone will certainly be distributed worldwide within seconds of it becoming available. The provision has been built in because the UK licence fee is paying for the project, but it shows that the BBC is trying to tackle the new distribution problems that the digital age brings.

Because of content licensing within the BBC and the source of much of the materials in the archive, the Creative Archive’s material will be started off with natural history content – music clearance and artist’s rights will have to be tackled later before the rest of the archive is put online.

Andrew Chowns of the Producers Rights Agency raised the question of derogatory treatment of works from the CA. Depending on the content within the CA this could become a problem. Nothing spreads faster than a Friday afternoon joke video clip, and the Creative Archive will no doubt contain many items that regulars to b3ta and similar sites might find too tempting not to load into Premier and misuse. Again, this is an aspect that they will need to work on.

To enable the public to use the content, it will not be distributed with a digital rights management scheme and will be available in a number of formats, probably two proprietary and one open. Le Dieu described DRM as an envelope with a transparent window that only allowed you to see part of the content, without getting access to it.

She also stressed that the Creative Archive is not just about the BBC – they want other content providers and broadcasters to get involved, and want to share what they have learned, and have still to learn, with them. The whole project is very much a learning exercise for the Corporation – scary and exciting in equal measures.

The Creative Archive know that they have a lot of areas that need to be explored and developed and are looking for ways to involve the public in the project. Although there is no fixed start date, a 18-month to two year pilot will begin in 2005. It will not be restricted in the number of people who can access it, only in the amount of material that will be available.

The CA will not be producing a software platform or editing tools as they feel there are already plenty of free and cheap solutions out there. They may however produce an environment for the public to showcase works they have produced using CA content, much like those around Video Nation and One Minute Movies.

The Creative Archive is certainly an exciting project – an experiment in alternative licensing, another legal application for P2P networks and a chance for the UK public to get their hands on some fascinating and important archive materials. As a vehicle for learning about content distribution and consumption in the digital age, we can’t think of a better example.

MP3 recording of the Creative Archive Q&A ~14Mb
BBC Creative Archive
Royal Television Society – London Centre
Producers Rights Agency UPDATE: James Governor’s write up

Keyhole bought by Google for 3D mapping

Moving ever closer to its dream of being able to catalogue almost everything in the world, Google Inc. has just bought digital map-maker, Keyhole Corp.

Google had already recently acquired Picasa, a service that helps manage digital photos, but Keyhole is the first it has acquired since its August initial public offering. All of Keyhole’s 29 employees have joined Google, and its current customer base of about 10,000 come mainly from a coterie of government agencies.

Claiming to be the largest 3D, commercial imagery depository online, Keyhole, founded in 2001, maintains a multi-terabyte database of digital images of geographic locations captured from satellites and aeroplanes. Its 3-D technology provides far-away or close-up views of a region, neighbourhood or specific address. Images can be tilted into different positions, and its image resolution in some areas is as fine as half a foot. We previously saw Keyhole’s 3-D maps being used to zero in on the battlefront on CNN news during the early days of the Iraq war.

Keyhole received its initial financing from Sony Broadband but then raised additional money last year from In-Q-Tel, a venture capital company backed, interestingly, by the CIA.

The Keyhole database includes thousands of cities, and images varying in age from two months to three years. It gets these images from a variety of sources, including the private Colorado satellite companies DigitalGlobe and Space Imaging, while some lower-resolution images come from the U.S. government.

One of the first things Google did after the buyout, was slash the price of Keyhole 2 LT, the basic consumer downloadable software by a whooping 57%, reducing it from $70 (~£38) to $30 (~£16). The more sophisticated Keyhole 2 Pro is priced at $599 (~£327).

Yahoo and MSN already provide online mapping services, enabling users to zoom down to street-level scale, while Mapquest is a popular and established site for directions. Now Google users will no longer have to leave the Google site to avail of this type of service.

We wait with bated breath to see the uses Google put it to.

Keyhole
Google

Google’s Profit Growth Continues

Anyone who was concerned that Internet search giant Google would be hampered by going public in August can breathe easy as Google announces, in its first financial results since floating on the stock market, that its profits have more than doubled.

They have posted third quarter net profits of $52m (£30m), up from $20.4m in the previous year, and its share price has now surged more than 90% since its initial float.

Not bad for a company, which was started in a garage by two students and overtook the established search engine giants Yahoo! and Microsoft to become the most popular search engine in the world. If only so many rock bands who started life in that same auspicious incubator could have done so well.

Many have argued that Google is an advertising company, not a search company. As Google strength as a search tool has surged, so has their income from advertising. Demand for their paid-for search text-ads, where advertisers are increasingly willing to pay high prices to have their site listed along side search results in the knowledge that they only have to pay if a potential customer clicks on their link. The move to putting their advert on many other sites, targeting them closely to the pages content by automatically understanding what the page was about, significantly increasing their reach.

Google hasn’t rested on their advertising laurels, have now moved into email, a core business for its rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft, and it also operates a comparison-shopping search engine called Froogle, which recently launched in the UK. It’s not stop there – it also recently announced a test of a new desktop search product in the US that allows people to search Google using mobile telephone text messages in an ongoing game of chess where they are trying to anticipate what a rival like Microsoft will do.

Personally, I get nervous when ‘the suits’ move in on previously laid-back but remarkably successful technology companies. Google and rival Yahoo each get a significant portion of their revenue from the lucrative Web search advertisements, and while some analysts predict that growth in this area will slow down in coming years, its hard to predict where Google will end up if this potential difficulty is realised.

Google

WiFi – it’s Everywhere … and Now With Voice

My local coffee shop and corporate America have one thing in common – they are adopting wireless. WLAN hotspots today are as exciting as the record store of the 1950’s.

There are lots of players in the market and already some of them are joining forces to increase their chances of success, small operators needing the resources of bigger players. The enterprise community needs wireless for its notebook wielding road warriors, and consultants Frost & Sullivan expects total subscription revenues in the European WLAN hotspots market to rise from around € 18 million (~$22,664,522) in 2002 to in excess of € 1 billion by the end of 2006.

Frost & Sullivan’s study indicates that the key to success lies in selecting the locations most frequented by business travellers, and it would seem that a marriage of convenience between WiFi and VoIP would be very beneficial.

Boingo Wireless, a CA-based Wi-Fi hot spot operator and aggregator, have just done deals with KPN HotSpots in The Netherlands and The Public Network (TPN) in Switzerland, adding 290 Wi-Fi hot spots in key travel locations in these countries to the Boingo Roaming System. With these new additions, Boingo’s worldwide network includes more than 11,000 hot spots with 5,600 locations in Europe.

Boingo have also set up shop with Vonage Holdings Corp., a leading broadband telephony (VoIP) provider in North America, in an effort to simplify voice over Wi-Fi services and make them more accessible to customers. This move is the first phase of their VoIP strategy, whereby mobile travellers using the Xpro from Xten, can access the Vonage service from almost any Internet connected personal computer.

Boingo and Vonage will conduct a trial before the end of the year and the proposed bundle will include a Xpro SoftPhone from Xten and a headset that will allow the user to communicate over the Internet from any of the Boingo hot spots.

Frost & Sullivan
Boingo
Vonage

Ofcom Confirms 056 Numbers for VoIP Services, Begins New Consultation

Ofcom, the UK’s telecoms regulator has confirmed that voice over IP services will use the 056 prefix, first reported here in February.

The new prefix will give all VoIP users a fixed number, so will be able to place calls with subscribers who have signed up for different VoIP services. It will also allow non-VoIP subscribers to make calls to VoIP numbers.

Ofcom are leaving the assignment of numbers down to VoIP providers. 056 numbers will not be geographic, as was originally feared, meaning that subscribers can be contacted wherever they are. Having a geographic VoIP number makes about as much sense as a geographic mobile number, and we’re glad someone saw sense.

Stephen Carter, Ofcom Chief Executive said “Broadband voice services are a new and emerging market. Our first task as regulator is to keep out of the way.” In this spirit, Ofcom has begun a new consultation to receive input on what needs to be done to protect the users of this nascent industry. Traditional telephone companies have number of regulations to comply with before they can offer a service to the public, such as ensuring access to the emergency services, and Ofcom wishes to explore what subset of these obligations should be applied to VoIP providers.

New Voice Services – A Plain English Summary

Orange Launches Europe’s First Advanced Push to Talk Service

Orange have just launched their Talk Now advanced push to talk service, after nine months of trials in the UK and France. The trials were conducted in association with NHS Lothian, as well as more than 400 French businesses.

Push-to-talk technology allows customers to make calls to a group of handsets for the cost of a standard voice call, with instant communication – much like a walkie talkie.

Orange’s implementation of the service is one of the many variations of push-to-talk that are currently in existence, and is based on technology from Kodiak.

Although not standard, the company is keen to stress the advantages Talk Now has over carrier’s offerings. These include knowing when a contact is free or busy, and being able to record a conference call for sending to a colleague later.

The Treo 600 is the first model supported in the UK, though other models are expected to join it shortly.

Orange on Push to Talk