Smith On VoIP

For those of you who are regular followers, you might have noticed that I have not been posting much of late and that when I do it is usually thoughts about events that happened days or weeks before.
Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast when it comes to blogging as a secondary effort.
I was […]

Even though they always seem to be nipping at one another’s heels, at a recent FreePBX.org open source telephony training session, representatives from Digium, Sangoma and Rhino Equipment put down their guns to pose for a picture (and educate participants on the benefits of open source telephony).
Is there finally peace on planet Open Source? I’m […]

What a difference a year makes.
Last year at this time of the year, I was lucky to see one or two 200+ seat phone system deals a month come across my desk. Now they are flowing in once or twice a day. Over the last two days I have seen three 200 seat plus deals […]

There is quite the discussion arising over Andy Abramson’s comments on a Ribbit Vs Lypp API comparison post that was authored by Erik Lagerway, Lypp’s CEO and Founder.
Let me preface my thoughts by saying that Erik is a highly talented, extremely gifted programmer and telephony entrepreneur who I respect (I have a feeling his post […]

Why do service providers and the industry at large insist on calling a phone line delivered over an IP network a “SIP Trunk”?
Customers do not want SIP trunks, they want business phone lines delivered via IP.
It is funny that no one outside of the industry knows what the heck a SIP trunk is, yet every […]

I know that Buffalo is not exactly the epic center for technology, but while walking through the Atlanta airport yesterday, I saw something that I had never seen before: an iPod vending machine.

Is this something new or are they common place elsewhere and we really are a “technological backwoods” in Buffalo?

Russell Shaw asked, in a post tonight, why has Vonage stopped selling WiFi Phones.
Russell, I have the answer:
They suck.
It is not really the WiFi phone, or the manufacturers behind them, it is the mere fact that the increased number of “moving pieces” creates a customer service and quality of service nightmare for Vonage. As a […]