VoIP-Point

Speakeasy, a Seattle based voice over ip services provider has announced a new ‘integrated’ offering which appears to allow the connection of existing telephony infrastructure (analog & digital) including PBXs to their network.

The advantage of the concept is that keeping your old hardware in place and just hooking it up to Speakeasy’s SIP based network will save significant expenditure on hardware procurement. It’s not a particularly new approach to the problem of voip deployment in the sense that analog to voip converters have been around since the first days of voip but the offering of an integrated product with support for fairly-large existing PBXs certainly is.

That’s all assuming I understood their press release correctly

Speakeasy press release: http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr030209b.php

It is being reported here, there and everywhere that Orange & O2 are having a bit of a strop about Nokia’s integrating Skype with their new N97 smartphone handset.

It seems that the two operators are worried that the bundling of a voice-over-ip application with a smartphone would lose them voice-call revenue on their networks. The supposition being that users would opt for ‘cheap’ ‘unlimited’ data plans. From where I stand, ‘cheap’ ‘unlimited’ data plans are rather ‘invisible’ and I can’t really see voip being a lot cheaper in most cases except where the phone could be used with a non-network WiFi connection. Perhaps this is what actually worries O2 and Orange.

The cost of data plans also vary from country to country and both Orange and O2 are international operators so presumably there must be markets where their data plans are currently particularly cheap.

Naturally, if O2 and Orange choose to block the use of the N97 or it’s voice over ip abilities, they risk upsetting their customer base who may move to other operators such as T-Mobile who are said to be more ‘voip-friendly’.

EUROJUST has deleted their previous press release which suggested they were actively persuing voice over IP bugging methods and technologies in the light of a request from Italian judicial authorities.

In a new press release dated the 25th February which again mentions Skype directly, EUROJUST state their position as having had their first strategic meeting on internet telephony in 2006 which had included Skype SA as participants.

“There was a positive message from the Skype representatives during the meeting, showing their commitment to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities in the fight against serious, cross-border organised crime. The participants took into consideration that new VoIP technologies could offer a possible communication channel to criminals and criminal networks.”

Whether Skype’s level of co-opertation extends to handing over the encryption keys to their proprietary voip protocol is a good question. As with most proprietary systems, it is usually impossible for the end-user to tell whether there are any back-doors built-in by the manufacturer.

It may also mean that EUROJUST wants to avoid frightening off the fledgling European Voice over IP industry which, in the current recession, could prove extremely valuable to the European economy.

Cisco Press has released a new book entitled “Voice Over IP Security”. The publication deals with the implications of fast-growing voip networks and how they effect the security of business and enterprise networks.

“Voice over IP Security gives you everything you need to understand the latest security threats and design solutions to protect your VoIP network from fraud and security incidents.”

The book, written by Patrick Park, is part of the Cisco Press Networking Technology Series and is available now priced at $49.50

ISBN: 1587054698

According to gamesindustry.biz, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is discontinuing their Go! Messenger Voice over IP service for the Playstation Portable (PSP) due to lack of users.

We reported the launch of the Go! Messenger service for PSP just last year. In conjunction with BT, the service allowed VoIP communication between users at Openzone hotspots across the UK.

It is worth bearing in mind though that thus far, the only confirmation of the cancellation is a now-missing post on a Sony Europe message board. The message reported that the service would end on March 31st 2009.

I will attempt to verify the statement and update here.