Brough Turner, founder of Netblazr which he describes as "a radically new form of wireless ISP." 358: Brough Turner of Netblazr by VoIP Users Conference

A while back, I berated and lambasted a woman for wasting my professional consulting time and not wanting to trade her professional graphics time in return. Well, Karen, you're still a cheapskate! However, when it comes to dealing with phone companies, I am a huge cheapskate. I hate paying for services I don't use and paying too much for the ones I do use.

When Free, one of the large French Internet triple-play operators in France came out with their sexy new Freebox v6 Revolution, I pored over the documentation and reviews as much as I used to do with the sci-fi articles in Playboy Asimov's Magazine. It seemed too good to be true. So far we've had excellent luck, and here's a summary if you'd like to see why I was lured to leave a company we liked a lot.

Internet: DSL 22Mb/s - someday Free will also do fiber in our street. Apparently they will also be a mobile operator within a year or so.

The modem/router box is literally plug and play (and works for both DSL and FFTH) and it's IPv6 compatible.

The same box includes a DECT base. That means if you already have DECT phones like the Siemens Gigaset, they can work with it out of the box. Otherwise, you just plug your phone into a jack on the back.

The modem/router talks over the power line to a "set top box", the FreePlayer. The units are pre-paired so there's no configuration to do.

The player brings flawless HD TV (morte than 56 channels with nothin' on) and a 250 gigabyte NAS unit. The Netwark Attached Storage appears as an external mounted drive on both Windows and Mac computers. You can move your video collection over to it and watch then using the remote. You can also attach several kinds of external drives to the player and the router.

The whole thing was designed by Philippe Starck, which is a big deal for some, tarte à la crême (means the lastest bullshit) for others, and not of interest to me. In fact the remote would have been better designed by Apple, Logitech or Sony, but whatever. The buttons are mushy, but it mostly works.

Back to my cheapness. What grabbed my attention initially was not Free's unlimited calling to 118 countries, including every single one I've ever needed to call in my life, China, Argentina included. No, it was the unlimited mobile calling to all French operators. Because receiving a call is free on mobiles in Europe, calling one is very expensive, usually around $0.20 per minute. Now, voilà, it's included in the monthly payment. For mobile, I've been testing a no-contract option for Internet on the iPhone. Here's the montly run down:

PAYG (Mobicarte) $16 / month - includes few calls, but sufficient Internet (EDGE/3G) to use maps, Gmail, apps and the web.

DSL/phone/TV     $52 / month - includes "unlimited" mobile and long distance, over 100 TV channels (90 are crap, but hey) and very respectable DSL speeds

So, for $68,  less than most people pay for their iPhone contract on ATT, we have all these services, a cheapskate's dream.

 

 

This is calculated from visits to a  web site.

All the pundits got a big laugh, but the funny name hasn't squelched enthusiasm, adoption of the iPad continues to rise significantly. It'll be very interesting to see when competitive tables come out how they compare.

The BlackBerry Torch hasn't been out long enough to guess whether it matters, but the continued dropping of the BB market share seems an established trend.

What caused the little upward spurt on the iPhone in October?

Symbian has dropped from almost no one to 1 user this month. Are there many Symbian-powered phones that surf the web well?

• The iPad continues its impressive climb.
• The iPhone continues to progress, but slower than the iPad.In fact, in Sept, iPhone lost a few.
• Android has begun to move up.
• BlackBerry keeps falling.
• Symbian is barely perceptible

Methodology

Only logged in members of the site are counted. The user_agent for the above device families are counted and regardless of the number of pages viewed, each member device is counted only once. Next step would be to count how many pages each device is looking at. Stay tuned.

Demographics

The sample site is used by people mostly over 45 years of age with a strong discretionary budget. This is particularly interesting in light of the iPad's dramatic progression and the BlackBerry's steady fall. Let's see what happens with BlackBerry's new and exciting models in the next few months.

 

Measured on a subscription site (not IP-based, individual user-based).
iPad is the fastest growing device. Still some iPhone growth.
BlackBerry stagnating.
Symbian and Android still minimal.

Last week: people came and went during eight hours of VoIP Users Conference

This week: we had the largest simultaneous turnout on ZipDX.com wideband bridge, htting the limit of 50 participants. I've been on several Talkshoe conferences that had one hundred or more simultaneous conferences, but our average of the two bridges combined, Talkshoe and ZipDX is about 35-50. There were about 55 simultaneous callers on the two bridges last night.

Why this matters

We used to do this kind of thing in the 70's in Los Angeles on ham radio repeaters. We also used to get together for drinks and even parties and picnics, but that was easy since we were all in the same area. The gathering of people for the VUC is made of of callers from several continents: Countries include most of Eastern and Western Europe, North America, Africa, Australia, China, the Carribean...

I'm impressed that people take the time, their time, to come share ideas, knowledge, rumors and facts live each week. Subjects range from uber-geeky to why everyone picks on AT&T or a comparison of mobile handsets by those who own them. Authors, project leaders, programmers and hobbyists come together for the event and we look forward to occasions where we can meet in person. One of those was Astricon, last October. There's one coming up in Europe (AstriEurope, Paris in April) that I look forward to attending.

Community is everything

I've tried to make this kind of event happen in the world of wine, but I haven't been able to get the critical mass needed to keep it going. The VUC community is definitely sustainable and still growing. If you have any interest at all in telephony and other internet technologies, join us some time. Visit http://vuc.me/next for the next session, shown in your own time zone, or go to http://vuc.me for all the info on how to call in using VoIP, regular phone or Skype.

The VoIP Users Conference is Fridays at 12 noon ET: http://VUC.me

Thanks to our friends at Digium and PhoneFromHere.com you can now join our live VoIP Users Conference free from anywhere in the world using Skype.

How can we count the ways (to listen or talk)?

Widget: http://phonefromhere.com/vuc/

Or call Skype:vuc.me (g711->ZipDX) or

Call Skype:ld.vuc.me (g729->Talkshoe)

 

If you run a successful Talkshoe conference or podcast, you might be interested in arranging this service.

Thilo Salmon, co-founder and CEO of Sipgate.com was out guest last  Friday on The Voip Users Conference. Even if you are not a telephony  geek, you will appreciate several aspects of this story.
 
Sipgate has been around for several years, first in Germany then in the UK. They provide free phone numbers which we VoIP junkies refer to as DID, or Direct Inward Dialing. For example, if you know how to play with SIP, you can direct these free numbers to your own pbx or to a SIP phone. Here's how this matters to you, geek or not.
 
First, it's interesting how I happened to reach Thilo (pronounced "Tee-low", a thousand pardons to him for my pronouncing it wrong and thanks to John Todd for correcting me). I just happened to see "Sipgate" on Twitter. Although I don't know who that was (surely it
 wasn't Thilo Tweeting, was it?) with the exchange of about 300 characters, we had an appointment to speak live on our conference on Friday. So, interesting point number one, meeting Sipgate on Twitter was like being introduced to Sipgate's co-founder and CEO at a party, only no trees died to create business cards. I have never had a business card, by the way.
 
Second, the Sipgate people have done their homework. They have been around longer than Google Voice and longer than Grand Central which was the small outfit that became Google Voice. They offer, like GV, a free incoming phone number in the USA. Like GV, they say they may be looking into other areas of the world... someday. Also like GV, you can forward the number to one or more other numbers so your one phone number will ring both your cell and your home number, for example.
 
What Google doesn't do without some messing about, is allow an easy hookup to the wonderful world of a nice SIP phone. A SIP phone is a telephone that, rather than plugging in to a phone line, is connected to the Internet. They can have multiple lines so they can be connected to multiple services. Mine has six lines, connected to Sipgate, Gizmo/Google, OnSIP.com hosted pbx and toll free number, our French hosted pbx and a colleague's SIP phone in the UK. What that means is that I can get calls on an 800 number in the USA, several French numbers (main number, my direct line), my Sipgate number, etc.
 
The "pbx" adds things like voicemail, open hours, fax if you still live in the 90's and lots of other features.
 
It isn't the "free" part that I care about, or even the low rates of OnSIP or Sipgate, it's the flexibility. There's only one thing missing
 in telephony today, and that's total mobility without roaming charges. In other words, a single, international number that anyone can call for a nominal rate (equivalent to a local call) and reach you where ever you are in the developed world. It would ring your cell and any other phone you'd care to.

Typical Polycom SIP phone.

 

If you are interested in finding out more about SIP or VoIP or anything telephony related and how it can make a difference to your business or your life, join us some Friday and say hello live: http://vuc.me