Our readers will know we always have an eye for something a little bit unusual or slightly off the wall as sometimes our industry can be a little bit predictable to say the least. Well during the last few days we have seen some press that there is a new mobile provider in the UK.
Normally an announcement like this is big news – it seems that UK01 has announced itself as the latest operator having been the winner of U.K. regulator Ofcom’s recent spectrum auction where it acquired frequencies in the 1800MHz band. However their licence is limited as only allows it to deploy a low power network with very limited coverage so users of the service will need to be very close to a base station to make a call.
In an attempt to get its service up and running quickly UK01 has signed a deal with WiFi hotspot operator Spectrum Interactive which will enable UK01′s GSM base stations to be installed in the latter’s phone kiosks. Normal dual mode GSM handsets will be able to access the UK01 network but users will have to manually select UK01.
This service reminds us of the good old Rabbit phone that was provided by Hutchison who later went on to become Orange but that service failed as it was an outgoing call only and the base stations were limited.
We hope they can find a niche in the market to exploit.
We are all aware of SIP – actually not everybody is !!! but we assume that those reading our blog will be but I guess most of us think that SIP is a voice only protocol but it is not and we are glad to see some new products emerging to support Video over SIP.
ZyXEL Communications Inc has recently announced the ZyXEL V750W an industry first IP camera that enables video monitoring via Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology. Recognizing the increased importance for residential and business users to monitor their loved ones, property and assets remotely, the ZyXEL V750W allows users to contact the camera’s phone number from anywhere in the world using their computer activating real-time video and two-way audio services.
Each ZyXEL V750W SIP camera is embedded with its own phone number. Remote users simply dial into the camera and control the viewing angle with the numeric keys installed on their computers. The motorized pan, tilt and digital zoom actions give users the convenience of flexible remote monitoring. The V750W can also be set to call a pre-defined phone number (such as the user’s cell phone or police) when an intrusion is detected at their home or business.
We always love the way a business can use a particular hot topic to help promote sales, and right now saving the planet is a real leading news item so a lot of companies have latched onto this to help promote sales.
The part we particularly like is the different angle companies are taking on this depending on their products – lets look at a few different examples on this.
Mitel are promoting their green credentials based on the fact that VoIP and Unified Comms means less travel and more home working and of course less travel is good for reduced carbon emmissions. Mitel states ‘Consider that a roundtrip from New York to Chicago produces 0.35 tons of carbon and flying the U.S. coast to coast accounts for one ton of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases per person. In this regard, teleworking helps spare the environment 3.6 tons of pollutants per teleworker per year.’
OnRelay states that the 25 million IP desktop handsets projected to be purchased in 2008 will consume 1.6 billion Watts of power. They say replacing the majority of those IP desk phones with mobile phones should result in a 74 percent savings in power costs. On Relay also state it is also important to note, that the business transition to mobile phones does not increase the total amount of energy used by mobile phones, because most business people already carry at least one mobile device. Indeed, OnRelay MBX’s ability to separate personal and business in the same mobile device can serve to reduce the number of mobiles carried and charged.
Finally we have Citel who manufacture a legacy desk phone to IP PBX gateway and they say this is a more eco-friendly solution than ripping out old handsets and cabling to install new Cat 5 and more expensive IP phones.
For us here at Iridiacom anything that reduces emissions and waste has got to be a good thing but we leave it for you to decide who is making the best arguements.
Category GSM/3G, VoIP | 
Author admin | 
13 June, 2008 11:51 am | 
Comments (1)
Tagged with: carbon emissions, citel, green, GSM/3G, ippbx, mitel, onrelay, unified comms, Unified Communications, Voice over IP, VoIP
Well an interesting twist for the PBX market – you can now go to costco.com for your IP PBX. The warehouse wholesaler who is better known for its discount prices and free food samples will now be selling Quanta Computer’s Syspine Digital Operator Phone System which is based on Microsoft’s Response Point phone system software.
It is interesting to see such a system sold on line without direct technical backup, but Microsoft seems confident enough that the product is easy to setup. If a small business does need help, Microsoft is more than happy to point out their list of Response Point specialists is available on line.
The Syspine includes a base unit appliance with a four analogue trunk lines, four desktop phones and Response Point software that provides features such as Auto Attendant and Voice Mail. The system supports up to 50 Syspine IP310 business phones to create a complete small business phone solution without additional license fees (these are bought on line in packs of 2)
This announcement will grab headlines but in reality it is just an on line reseller who sells many hi-tech products adding to their range an IP PBX which these days is not so new, earlier in the year we saw that Fonality partnered with Dell to make Fonality’s Small Office software available in an IP PBX bundle on Dell hardware.