VoIP: How Free Can It Be?

VoIP initially promised free calls everywhere, but somebody has to write the software, run the servers and pay the telcos to complete calls to landlines and mobiles, while users need to pay for a phone or a laptop and broadband.

Still, there are many providers of free PC-to-PC calls — Skype, obviously, is the best-known — and they keep coming up with new ways to get users closer to that holy grail of VoIP: free calling. There are enough services that allow free calling at least some of the time — whether via laptop, landline or mobile — that an energetic user should be able to duck paying for a phone call for months by switching services as those services’ restrictions dictate.

Ccube Inc. allows you to make and receive calls without anyone knowing your number. Post a Ccube widget or username on your Facebook, LinkedIn or other social-networking page, viewers click it, your phone rings, their phone rings and you’re connected — all without the caller knowing your phone number or whereabouts, since their Caller ID shows you only as a Ccube number. Ccube also promises 60 minutes of free nationwide (U.S. and Canada) calls per month and an additional 30 minutes for each person you refer to Ccube. This referral business is important to Ccube, which is primarily in the social-networking business. The service matches you with other people based on your (and their) stated preferences, and allows you to meet one another via VoIP. This also means that Ccube lets you block callers and edit feedback that others post about you, to prevent abuses.

15 Greatest Enemies of Net Neutrality

While it suffers routinely from the usual ebb and flow of the news cycles, net neutralityhas once again flared up to levels of heated debate with the recent FCC vote to begin a process that could lead to its eventuality. Because of this, the issue of net neutrality has never been so hotly contested or emergent as it is now. While nearly everyone in this modern, connected world have a stake in the outcome of this battle, there are parties involved with especially potent opinions. These are 15 names of gravitas that have aligned themselves against the push for net neutrality. Some are the very corporations that maintain the Web as we know it, some helped invent the Web in the first place, and others simply have vested interest for political gain. When it's all said and done, though, it's ultimately a fight over something that hasn't happened yet. See who's against it, then do some reading and decide for yourself.

How Consultants Help SMBs Choose VoIP Systems

Buying phone systems is getting more complicated for SMBs (small- to medium-sized businesses). Partly that's because the systems are becoming more complex, and partly it's due to the fact that smaller companies have started expecting more from the systems they choose. For these reasons, such companies are depending more on consultants to help them make the right choices. Consultants are likewise depending on SMBs for a greater percentage of their income.

Hard Evidence

A recent study by The Brookside Group LLC of Mendham, N.J. tells the story. The firm's "2008 State of the Market Study" surveyed the activities of independent telecom consultants not affiliated with vendors. It analyzed the responses of 342 consultants and the updated professional profiles of 1,750.

The resulting data indicated that 54 percent of the consultants' clients are now SMBs, defined as between six and 999 employees. Enterprises of 1,000 employees and above account for 46 percent. That's up from 45 percent SMB, 55 percent enterprise in 2001, and a 49/51 split in 2005. The growth in SMB clients has particularly accelerated over the past three years, the report found. The majority of those clients fall in the medium-sized category, which the report defines as between 100 and 999

iPhone VoIP Comes with Trade-Offs

The iPhone has certainly been at the center of the news recently. Apple Inc. introduced the new iPhone 3G model and sold more than 1 million of the devices the first weekend that they were available. And through its online App Store, Apple for the first time began to offer third-party applications that can run on both new and earlier iPhone models (the latter requires users to upgrade to version 2.0 of the operating system). For many cost-conscious users, the most important iPhone apps will involve VoIP, which will let them avoid the high cost of calling overseas from a mobile phone. But as is the case with all mobile VoIP solutions, iPhone VoIP will come with trade-offs

Truphone's VoIP App

Truphone was the first company out of the gate with a new iPhone VoIP app. Software downloaded to the iPhone lets Truphone's app make calls over the company's VoIP backbone network from wifi hotspots. But the app doesn't allow users to connect to the VoIP network via cellular voice links, as they can with Truphone Anywhere, a service that the company introduced in May 2008. If it did, iPhone users could make their cheap overseas calls even when they weren't near hotspots, paying only for local cellular minutes plus Truphone's low international VoIP rates.