FreeSWITCH, an open source telephone soft-switch, reached a new milestone this week by combining three revolutionary VoIP features into one application.


In early April the project first announced interoperability with the GoogleTalk voice chat client making it possible to gateway calls to SIP or the public phone network. Three months later, the software made big news with successful switching of calls at 16 kilohertz. Traditionally, VoIP calls operate at 8 kilohertz (about 1/5 the detail in CD quality).


With this improvement in detail, voices have more richness and clarity improving the overall experience of a phone call. This week the software has brought the first two elements together and topped it off with a new capability that may change the way we interface to our phones.


GoogleTalk has recently released a new version of their client capable of transmitting audio at 16 kilohertz making it possible to call FreeSWITCH and interact in a conference bridge or listen to a text-to-speech engine read you your favorite news story all in high definition audio.


Now for the twist, not only can you interact with the system on the phone by listening to the audio and dialing a few digits, now you can send and receive text messages with the system at the same time.


Imagine being asked out loud for your account information and being asked to type your name into the chat box and actually have the other end of the call able to intercept the information and react accordingly. This may break the paradigm of the auto-attendant altogether.


Related Articles: Cell Phone & VoIP Marriage Looks Imminent | Skype Goes for Broke | The Business Guide to Implementing VoIP

Over at GigaOm, they’re saying EarthLink will sell Wi-Fi-only VoIP phones in fourth quarter: For $10 to $25 per month, the voice plan will include calling and exclude data.



They’re testing phones right now for deployment, Katie Fehrenbacher writes, and expect the phones to work in transit—she reports their VP of VoIP says the testing shows current models work at up to 40 mph. Wi-Fi operators and aggregators have been settling on a much lower rate, such as the Boingo/Skype mash-up (still in beta after many moons and with hard-to-find, out-of-date copy) that offers unlimited service for $7.95 per month.



The biggest problem appears to be the cost of these phones—EarthLink will have to subsidize the phones for a while, and Fehrenbacher quotes VP Steve Howe saying,

“this business will get really interesting when the phones get down to the $40 range.”

It’s true. A new Linksys phone has all the right bells and whistles for using Wi-Fi on arbitrary networks, including a micro-browser for authentication and gateway page clicking, but it’s nearly $400.


Source: WiFi Networking News


Related Articles: Cell Phone & VoIP Marriage Looks Imminent | VoIP Phones for EarthLink Wi-Fi Networks?

Former UK telecoms monopoly BT Group will this week announce reduced tariffs for most of its customers following the lifting of price controls by industry regulator Ofcom, the Sunday Telegraph reported.


The paper said BT will unveil a series of cheaper call packages and may also reduce line rental charges. The company is also expected to start heavily promoting its Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, which enables customers to speak to each other over the internet at a fraction of the cost of a regular call.


The report follows Ofcom's decision last week to scrap price controls on BT's landline calls and line rental that were first imposed in the run-up to the company's privatisation in 1984. The price controls disappear at the end of this month.

Question:

We're looking at upgrading to ADSL2 bundled with iiNet's Phone Advantage and VoIP package. But we'd only like to use one of our phones. We just bought a new Panasonic cordless phone system with three handsets but one base-station (and hence one physical connection to the phone line). Our other two phones are corded and we're hoping not to have to use them.


Additionally, we want to keep our current phone number, which will become the hard-line supplied by iiNet, and we'll have a second number for the VoIP line. Obviously, we'd like to call out as much as possible from the VoIP line because call costs are lower that way. But we'd like to receive calls through the land-line because everyone has that number and switching it over is a lot of hassle. And we'd like to do this with one phone (base-station).


Is there a device available that I can plug our phone into so that all incoming calls to both lines will make the handsets ring, and that also ensures I only ever call out from the VoIP line?
It's not strictly necessarily that the phones must ring when we receive a call on the VoIP line (though that'd be nice), but they must ring when the land-line is called. And we don't want to call out from the land-line at all.

Is this possible?

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The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), passed in 1994, has powered its way back onto the front page this summer, and if you 1) live in the US and 2) pay taxes, you might soon be paying to implement it. And if you're a drug-dealing mobster, you might soon be experiencing it.


The FBI wants the ability to tap VoIP calls. To do this, the agency also wants access to all of your network traffic—and it looks like it's on the way to getting it. Following a long set of legal battles, the US Court of Appeals in June upheld 2-1 a newer and broader definition of CALEA's scope that could affect every university and library in the country.


While the case may not be fully settled until the Supreme Court hears it, the Justice Department has announced plans to cut the legs out from beneath it. The DoJ proposed a series of amendments to the original legislation which explicitly give the FBI the authority it seeks. Unfortunately for network operators, these amendments could be costly—and the government has no plans to help them foot the bill. If either 1) the amendments pass or 2) the courts uphold the FCC decision, CALEA will open the floodgates for easy government surveillance of Internet activity, and it could cost taxpayers a bundle.


What's included in the amendments, and how might they affect you? Let's take a look.

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