Friends and family

Who among us here have friends and family overseas or at least in places miles away? You may have a close relative who recently moved to another state. Your best friend may have recently moved to another country to study for a few years. Or you may be dating someone from across seas or borders. Most of us are likely to have at least one relative or friend whom we’d like to get in touch with regularly, but fail to...

Philippine VoIP operator faces criminal charges

A small group operating an unlicensed VoIP relay in the Philippines has been arrested in raids conducted by the local police and anti-fraud staff of cellular operator Globe. The group has been found to operate a facility that routs international calls into Globe telecom’s cellular network without passing licensed International Gateway Facilities. This is done through Voice-over-Internet Protocol, and hence the...

VoIP interconnectivity – why not?

Skype is cool. You can call your friends for a fraction of the cost of regular telephone calls. You can even call for free, if you’re calling another computer with a Skype client and account. The same goes with other VoIP networks. You can call others for free as long as they’re on the same network as your own VoIP client. Skype-to-Skype, FWD-to-FWD, Google Talk to Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger-to-Yahoo...

Apple planning a VoIP iPod?

Straight from the rumour mill: is it possible that the next cool Apple product is a VoIP iPod? Well, Apple isn’t known to announce its latest product offerings early—it chooses specific times in a year to make announcements, such as during MacWorld expos and Worldwide Developer Conferences. And its CEO Steve Jobs is known to give out vague statements about “fun” and “cool” products prior to...

Orange going landline!

UK mobile phone provider Orange is going the other way—it plans to offer fixed-line services soon. The company will be merging with internet provider Wanadoo to offer bundled services (both companies are owned by France Telecom). By April, Orange would have rolled out the first of its landlines. The service, dubbed Orange Landline for Business, will run over the existing infrastructure of Cable & Wireless, and...

VoIP – an end to telco dominance?

As with many other Internet applications, Voice-over-Internet Protocol is touted to be what would democratize the telecom industry. Where previously, only the big companies could set up the expensive and bulky telecommunications equipment, now innovative firms could establish their own “telephone” networks, which go through the Internet. What’s great with this setup is that ultimately, the consumers would...

High tech dating with VoIP

A century ago, lovers across oceans and continents sent letters through the mail. It took weeks before the message is received—and several more weeks before the response arrives at the originating party’s end. A few decades ago, long distance telephone calls were the rage. You could talk to your loved one in an instant, but it wasn’t exactly cheap. So calls were usually limited to a few minutes. What kind of...

Foreign telcos blocking free US calls

Remember the SkypeOut hack we wrote about before? It basically involves calling a 1-800 toll-free number to connect to a directory service that then connects your after giving you the listed number. Well, it used to work on non-VoIP solutions. Hence, callers from other countries could also call the toll-free number at no cost from their landlines and mobile phones, as with other 1-800 numbers. However, some telcos...

The future of VoWiFi – convergence

Is VoWiFi the future of wireless telephony? Well, in a way, yes, but not exactly the sole technology that will bring about the next-generation mobile technology. Existing telecom companies are still likely to have a strong position in the market, being the incumbent, and having the broadband infrastructure already in place. As we pondered on before, WiFi, indeed, has an edge over other technologies in the...

The future of VoWiFi – WiFi vs Cellular Technologies

Earlier at the turn of the century, the cellular networks looked to the third-generation (3G) standards as the future of mobile telephony, with its support for high-bandwidth applications such as video-conferencing and multimedia transfers. The then—and now still—prevalent digital cellular network was GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) can only support sub-broadband speeds of 56 kilobits per second,...