Apple and Samsung have been locked in legal battles for years, largely over patents related to smartphones. To perhaps oversimplify the matter Apple has been arguing that Samsung has wholesale ripped off the iPhone’s design from day one, and Samsung is countersuing on points of design minutiae that the Korean company argues Apple has stolen. While it seems obvious at first that Apple has the upper hand here, that just about every smartphone is guilty of ripping off the iPhone, when it comes down to it patent law is extremely granular and both sides have support and detraction from their legal claims.
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Will VoIP Taxes Become a Big Issue for IP Telephony?
Price is one of the biggest reasons why individuals and businesses may make the switch from traditional telephony services to IP telephony. Due to its increased scalability and efficiency, among other facts, it’s unlike IP telephony will ever cost as much as equivalent services from traditional telephony providers, yet the price of IP telephony may go up significantly in the future.
IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 3)
Finding companies with the right breadth and depth of experience is an important step in making sure you end up hiring the right hosted PBX provider, and if you choose a company with an impressive and relevant pedigree you’re going to avoid most of the pitfalls the emerging IP telephony market is going to throw your way. But if you want to make sure you end up with a truly great hosted PBX provider then you’re going to need to dig a little deeper and start asking some questions, working out a total evaluation letting you know whether or not they’re the real deal.
How Much Access is Enough Access?
First, you want to make sure they offer the provider can offer you nationwide (and international) access. Even with great hosted PBX providers you might run into a case where they don’t offer coverage for some very remote areas, but overall you want to make sure your new provider is going to offer coverage for major metropolitan areas and anywhere you know your organization is going to need to have phone numbers in.
IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 2)
At a very basic level the age of a hosted PBX provider gives you some sort of hint of their quality. Sure, there are some startups that come out of nowhere and truly revolutionize the field with some radical advance of telephony technology, but most of the months-old companies we’re going to see launch in the world of IP telephony aren’t in the market to innovate- they’re going to launch quick to cash in before quickly burning out, and that’s not the sort of provider you really need on your side keeping your phone lines open. VoIP experience comes with time of doing business and it certainly counts.
IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 1)
We’ve said it before, but it needs to be emphasized- the hosted PBX provider you sign up with will determine how positively you view the technology and your switch to IP telephony. Being picky about who you choose to work with is increasingly important as the hosted PBX market grows. Not only will more organizations find themselves joining the IP telephony movement over the next couple of years, but we’re also going to see a whole lot of new hosted PBX providers jumping into the market in order to meet this demand and, unfortunately, to try and make some quick cash on what’s shaping up to be a truly hot commodity.
A Grad Student Hacks Cisco’s VoIP Tech! Should We All Freak Out?
One of the main arguments against IP telephony revolves around security. More specifically, there are some people out there concerned that IP telephony isn’t as secure as traditional telephony, and as such it isn’t viable to use in serious organizations, including large business or any group working in a highly competitive industry. This concern sounds legitimate at first, but it really doesn’t pan out when thoroughly explored, even when a big news story drops talking about a systemic vulnerability, as just happened when a 5th year grad student researcher at Columbia breached security in a Columbia VoIP phone and managed to record its calls.
First thing’s first, let’s start with the grad student’s achievement to evaluate whether it’s really as significant and ground-breaking as the media wants to make it seem.
A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 2)
Now, let’s say you run into a best-case-scenario when it comes to the dollars-and-cents comparison of your switch to IP telephony. Your current provider continues to sell their services for twice as much as the IP telephony provider you decided to switch to. This is great, but saving a little money for your organization isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially if you aren’t the final decision maker in your department.
Addition, Not Subtraction
Think about it this way- unless your department is already grossly over budget, or unless your department has been explicitly instructed to cut costs, saving money isn’t that big of a deal in-and-of itself. In the absence of immediate budgetary pressure decision makers aren’t looking to spend less. They’re looking to spend more and get more. Service improvements help them meet their ambitions, impress their bosses, and to otherwise get more done than they’re currently accomplishing.
A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 1)
Price is a huge factor when it comes to deciding between sticking with traditional telephony services and making the jump to IP telephony. It’s one of the biggest selling points IP telephony providers use to push their technology, and it’s one of the clearest, firmest, more directly measureable ways decision-makers at an organization can see the benefit of switching over to IP. After all, while organizational flexibility and scalability are great benefits they can seem a little abstract, factors whose potential may be difficult to envision when a business is currently locked into a relatively fixed traditional telephony technology set-up.
Is non-Interconnected VoIP a de-facto “Communications Technology”?
There’s been a debate since the early days of non-interconnected VoIP over whether the technology counted as a bit of communications technology or an information technology. This sounds like a matter of semantics but legally speaking there’s a big difference between the two. Simply put information technology and communications technology are regulated differently and a whole lot of people fear non-interconnected VoIP is going to be named a communications technology and will start to face the same sort of regulation as the incumbent telecom players.
But here’s the thing- non-interconnected VoIP has pretty much already been named a communications technology, making it subject to a whole bunch of regulations that information technology finds itself immune from, some which non-interconnected VoIP has already begun to adopt.
Is Emergency Calling VoIP and Hosted PBX’s Achilles’ Heel?
Everyone’s minds have been locked firmly on the potential for disaster and the necessity of contingency plans in the face of some sort of operationally-debilitating experience. In the wake of recent environmental catastrophes the usefulness of remotely hosted communications systems has become blindingly apparent. VoIP and hosted PBX both make it much, much easier for an organization to regain its operational footing almost immediately after a disaster, even if that disaster lays waste to their offices and/or damage their in-house communications equipment. By remotely locating the guts of an organization’s communication systems VoIP and hosted PBX essentially make an organization’s communication systems as disaster-proof as possible.
However, some experts have raised a really good question when it comes to remote hosting of communications technology, and that’s the fact remote hosting can cause some real problems for emergency services.