The Technoverse Blog

For Skype customers and just about anyone else who’s every typed phone numbers into a virtual dial pad, Gmail video and voice chat, even with its new ability to make free calls to cell and landlines, may warrant a big whoop. I had the dubious pleasure of retrieving voice mail through my email at some point in the late 1990s, so some of this telephony novelty has worn thin.

The biggest difference between the ancient branches on the email-voice evolutionary tree and the latest VoIP creations from Google, Skype and others is the Web and mobile calling, coupled with improved codecs. In other words, the overall technology has evolved in steps, not with a giant leap forward. It is slowly but surely achieving greatness.

There are already tens of million of existing Gmail users to talk and video chat with in direct computer-to-computer fashion. Google’s announcement last week to unite Google Voice (the service that rings all your phones) with Gmail and to throw in free outbound calls will probably add millions more. Most significantly, this service, is or will soon be available on Android phones as well.

Over the weekend, I tried Gmail’s existing video chat and made a free landline call. Conclusion: the new and improved Gmail service is a big deal for a number of reasons. Read more …

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Glad I’m not the only curmudgeon who’s troubled by the state of 21^st century audio! The lower quality of digitally compressed MP3 (compared to CD ) made the front page of yesterday’s New York Times. Economics and convenience are to blame for the lossy, lower-sampled recording formats that are used to cram more tunes into our portable devices.

So why are our cell phone conversations still stuck with a slice of audio spectrum that dates to the 1930s? I’ve written about a newer wide band codec (G.722 standard) that could deliver a far broader 7kHz of sound. Unfortunately, you’re more likely to experience that on station-to-station calls in a large corporate environment (courtesy of Avaya, Cisco, and other enterprise players).

Outside of the confines of an office park, we’re all struggling to make ourselves heard over a skinny, tinny sounding 3.3kHz swath. I found some of the answers as to why this is the case from a presentation given at this year’s eComm event. Read more …

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I was captivated by the CTIA’s comment  filed recently in response to the FCC Notice of Inquiry (or NOI) on Wireless Competition. In this factoid filled ex parte presentation, the wireless industry’s leading trade group was crowing about the robust device market, citing the news that Apple now allows VoIP applications—read Skype and iCall— on the iPhone.  It’s practically a case study for Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Not! Read more …

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As we all know, Verizon went public on Tuesday with its agreement to allow Skype’s VoIP application to run on its network. There are still a few gotchas for Verizon subscribers who want the service, but in the world of telecom this is momentous. Faced with the FCC’s proposed rules for net neutrality and a new fifth principle of non-discrimination, Verizon (along with AT&T) has relented.

Read more ...

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Skype is taking its time with a VoIP app that exploits the recently unlocked 3G data channel on the iPhone. But they have a pretty good reason. They’re working on adding their own SILK wideband audio codec to  a 3G version of their Apple App Store software. The SILK codec reproduces audio within a 8- 12 kHz bandwidth,  far better than the stingy spectrum slice we experience on our landline and mobile phones.

Is wideband audio worth the trouble? Read more …

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Will Skype be assumed into Avayatel? Or will it stand on its own in the Silver Lake portfolio and transform into an IPO butterfly? Bloomberg.com writers Edward Robinson and Joseph Galente think the latter is more likely. They have a  story worthy of a Hollywood treatment: the two Skype founders, Niklas ‘Mr. Spock’ Zennstrom and Janus Friis built the company into a major VoIP service (over 50 million subscribers), lost the company, and then fought their way back to regain some control.

Now the new owners of Skype, private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen (yup, the same) Horowitz LLC, have plans to extend Skype to the world of corporate voice. Can rebellious, Web 2.0-ish Skype take over calls that were once ruled by PBXs? Read more …

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AT&T reversed  course and decided to allow Sling Media’s iPhone app to run on its network.   The app was previously viewed as a congestion hog, but  Sling  (under the supervision of AT&T) tweaked its software to lower bandwidth consumption.  iCall, Fring, Skype, and now Sling.  It appears that AT&T is lowering the drawbridge. Read more …

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