Pal and fellow blogger Moshe Maeir’s Flat Planet Phone Company has deployed a VoIP Phone System for the Democratic party. The the Call center system was used by Indiana Democrats in Tuesday’s primaries.

According to Indiana Democratic party, Flat Planet’s solution lowered telephone costs by 50 percent and allows every telephone in the system to be used as an extension for headquarters set up in New York.

An Israeli company, providing a phone system to the Democratic party; the world really is flat!

One of the companies that has caught my eye as of late is IFBYPHONE. they are quickly emerging as one to watch in the voice software as a service space.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry….I’ll give you a quick background.

Ifbyphone is a hosted telephone application platform that provides small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) an easy means to increase their customer conversations and drive sales — without the high cost and complexity typically associated with building interactive voice response systems.

In a nutshell, they have created an extremely easy to use and cost effective platform for “the rest of us” to create simple Click-to-Call links on Web pages and e-mail to sophisticated call-routing and interactive-marketing solutions-transforming telephones into powerful tools to increase leads, improve sales and enhance customer experience.

Today they announced their latest application built off their hosted telephony application platform, “Verify-Me-Now.” Verify-me-now uses automated telephone verification to instantly identify fraudulent account applications.

Now this is a much needed and valuable service, but what i like most about IFBYPHONE is the way that they are going about marketing their platform. They are doing something that most folks don’t; actually using the platform to create “real-life” examples of what can be done with it.

That folks, is a job well done.

[This is a guest post by Tsahi Levent-Levi. Tsahi is a Product Manager at RADVISION and writer at VoIP Survivor. Tsahi was formerly the IMTC 3G-324M Activity Group co-chairman up until recently, when he moved to chair the IMTC IMS Activity Group.]

Several years ago, when we took the decision at RADVISION to develop our 3G-324M stack, we assumed a five year window of opportunity, after which a VoIP-based technology (SIP/IMS) will replace it. Now, more than five years later, the end of 3G-324M is nowhere to be seen. The reasons for this stem from the differences between 3G-324M and SIP – between circuit switching and packet-based communication technologies.

3G-324M

3G-324M is a circuit switched-based protocol. It runs on a bidirectional 64kbps circuit switched connection, and on top of it, 3G-324M multiplexes different logical channels – audio, video and control.

The main aspects associated to 3G-324M as a protocol are:

• The bandwidth available is always the same – 64kbps.
• The latency will usually be around 800 milliseconds for a roundtrip, though it may fluctuate or change depending on the operator, the cell, time of day and the color of the sky.
• The protocol is a p2p protocol. You have two sides communicating with each other. There are no proxies or registrars along the way. No third parties.
• It is deployed… almost every 3G handset out there has it embedded into it.

SIP

SIP is an IP-based protocol. It is also used in IMS. It sends packets over a network that doesn’t guarantee quality of service or any bandwidth (you can argue that it does, but that is done using higher level protocols). SIP can be used for a myriad of communication purposes, one of which can be video telephony.

The main aspects associated to SIP when taken for mobile video telephony are:

• The bandwidth available may vary during the call and cannot be guaranteed, unless all-IP and full policy function (PCRF) will be in place.
• Latency is a real issue due to the use of an IP-based network. A round trip of less than 2 seconds will be viewed as an achievement.
• The protocol is distributed with different network entities – user agents, proxies, registrars, etc.
• Few commercial deployments by operators exist, and even these are not large ones. There are trials and there are “underground” solutions you can install independently on your handset, piggybacking the operator’s network.

SIP has its advantages and they are many – support for different resolutions, bandwidths and frame rates, support for non video telephony services like instant messaging, presence, voice only calls, mobility, nomadity and much more. This is also what causes the delay – more features = complexity.

3G-324M is a lot easier for an operator to digest in today’s networks. It can do simple billing, it can use existing UMTS networks, and it works – no need for upgrades, it can use existing handsets. SIP, however, is not that easy for an operator. It’s much more open, which leads to issues of billing, management and owning the network and its data. It doesn’t exist in handsets in a way that is easy to deploy and it is definitely not as interoperable as 3G-324M.

SIP has two ways to become important in mobile handsets:

1. Operators will take the decision to plunge head-on into the world of IMS, where SIP is used in the mobile handsets.
2. Internet companies will find a way to have enough handsets and utilize the mobile operators’ data networks to deploy a video telephony service.

I must admit I believe the first option is a lot more realistic, but it will take time. At least 2-3 more years if not more.

Jimmy Atkinson over at VoIPNow.org has put together a pretty nice list of the Top 100 Telecommunications Blogs.

I was lucky enough to make the list (twice) for my work here at Smith On VoIP and for our corporate blog, VoIP Insider.

What is interesting is that I was listed in the “corporate” blog category whilst many of my peers who also hold high positions within their respective companies were in the general “VoIP” category.

I never fancied myself a suit, but maybe my friends are right and I have become too “white collar.”

This just came through on my Twitter feed.

Seems fellow blogger and Voice 2.0 entrepreneur Pat Phelan has partner with a number of other companies to release TwitterFone a speak to text service that allows Twitters to “speak their Tweets”. According to the press release issued today,

“Twitterfone improves upon Twitter by allowing us to make a voice call which is turned into text and sent out to our network of friends. This only costs the price of a local call, no matter how many it is sent to.”

Not only is this a great service for die hard Twitters around the world, I believe that this service will make Twitter a more usable service for the mainstream, since making a call is a more common way that folks communicate with one another. In addition, this is another awesome example of why platform providers should be offering API’s up to third party developers.

TwitterFone is a win for Twitter, those who use it as well as Pat and company. Man, voice enabling these social platforms is becoming serious business.

Update: Seems that TwitterFone has received over 500 sign-ups in the first 30 minutes of the launch.

Update 2: I got my invite from Pat, take a listen to my first TwitterFone tweet.

I have been thinking about whether or not to write the post ever since I heard the tragic news that a toddler had died due to his parents ill-advised or lack of regard for the proper administration of a VoIP line. After some recent side chatter amongst friends, I felt it necessary to voice my feelings on this.

First off, I feel for the family. The death of a toddler has to be one of the worst things a family can go through.

But on the other hand, VoIP is not to blame here. Nor is the service provider. At the core, it is the parents of the toddler. As Andy Abramson writes, “The unfortunate death of a toddler in Canada is making VoIP out to be the culprit when in reality technology kills the same way as a gun. It comes down to people.”

Yes VoIP service providers need to do a better job of educating consumers that when you move locations, you need to update your location via your account management portal (or leverage heartbeat technology), but at the core, it comes to down to user, the parents, to make sure that they are educated as to the positives and negatives of VoIP.

Think about this. If a toddler dies as a result of drowning in a pool (unsupervised, feel in, etc), does it make pools evil? Is the pool to blame? Is the company that installed the pool to blame for the death? Pools come with warning stickers (as does VoIP service) for a reason - bad things could happen if the pool is not properly utilized. If you choose to ignore those warnings or do not fully intend to abide by them, then if the worst occurs, you have no one to blame but yourself.

I know I come across as insensitive here, but the reality is that with anything in life, at the end of the day, you are responsible for the outcomes, not technology or the companies providing it.

One of the phone systems that I have been playing with over the last few months is Windows based 3CX phone system from the UK based company of the same name.

I have known about the 3CX system for quite sometime, having first come across the company while doing some searches on YouTube. Now, I come across a ton of products every week. My office and home are litter with them. However, most do not hold my attention for more than a few days, like the 3CX system has.

The reason?

It is windows based and very easy to use.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of the review, let me preface this by saying that will I can be dangerous with code if given the chance, I am not a programmer and very much do not want to be one, so I am biased towards systems that are built for the average technologist (or employee).

3CX Overview

3CX Phone System for Windows is a software-based IP PBX based on Windows. From the get-go this is one of the most important differentiators of the product as it “feels” like any other windows product that millions of business users are use to. In addition, because the phone system is software, it can run on an existing PC (if you are a small company) or you can run it on a dedicated Windows server.

The 3CX phone system comes in three different flavors:

• Small Business Edition - From $595
• Pro Edition - From $995
• Enterprise Edition - From $1650

Each of the three versions contains a standard, yet robust feature set including auto-attendant, call forwarding, call parking, call pick-up, called id, voicemail, voicemail to email, ring groups, hunt groups, Outlook and SalesForce.com integration, support for most SIP based ip phones and the popular voice codecs.

3CX Pros

It was one of, if not the easiest install and configuration I have done to date (as it relates to phone systems). From the initial download on the website, install and configuration, consisting of having two ip phones registered, a basic auto attendant and a VoIP provider set-up, it took all of 40 minutes. That is fast.

What made the install so easy was that it was Windows based (so I could download it right to my PC) and with their intuitive web based interface setting up extensions, provisioning phones, creating an auto-attendant was painless. Although I did not set-up a POTS line or integrate the system with Outlook, I did spend some time “playing around” with those configuration settings and they were straight forward as well.

For many, simple isn’t sexy, but when you don’t care to spend days (or weeks) configuring a phone system it sure is!

3CX Cons

The 3CX systems greatest Pro is also one of it’s downfalls (depending on who you are). Since it is built to be simply and easy, it does not have a ton of bells and whistles. Certain must haves such as find-me-follow-me and call queues (available with paid version only) are not currently available.

Although I did not integrate the system with an analog gateway for PSTN connectivity, I can tell you (based on previous experience) that configuring an analog gateway isn’t always easy. This has the potential to be a pain point for those who are less than savvy (Unless you are using a Patton gateway, in which 3CX automatically creates configuration files
which can be uploaded to the gateways. This makes configuration of gateways with 3Cx a snap). In addition, because it is Windows based, there are not any PCI cards that I know of that can be used as an alternative to an external gateway.

Overall Impressions of the 3CX Phone System

Honestly, it was tough to find much wrong with the software. It is easy and simple to set-up and maintain, it has a pretty robust feature set, supports a wide variety of hardware and is very affordable. Software aside, 3CX provides excellent support and the organization is very visible and accessible. Furthermore, their forum provides a wealth of knowledge.Now, if you are an enterprise looking for a phone system, this isn’t for you, but if you are an SMB without an IT staff (or one that is not VoIP/Linux savvy) this is an excellent solution for you.