Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

July 10, 2008

By Daniel Connor

Welcome to the Vonage VoIP Forum Digest

In the Forums
There's a good thread going on in the forums regarding hooking up Vonage to an IP-PBX. Questions raised include, can he use Vonage with Asterisk, does he need a softphone for the SIP credentials, is there better integration with another IP-PBX, such as Brekeke Software, or do you even need an IP-PBX when Vonage has call forwarding, transfer, voicemail, 3-way calling, etc. Go check out the thread for more.

Is there a danger in using SimulRing? A forum poster writes, "I would like to set SimulRing to ring my personal cell phone, but I think it is dangerous. Here's the problem: If I use my cell phone to call it's own number it thinks of this as a call to voicemail. Verizon phones ask for the VM password, AT&T/Cingular phones just go right on in; no authentication necessary. Here's the problem. If I call home with my cell, SimulRing rings my cell right back. the cell carrier sees a call from my cell coming into my cell, and kicks into cellular voicemail immediately. The net result is I can't call home when Simulring is active. The home phone may actually ring once, but often does not. Here's where it is a danger. If I get in an accident, I cannot call home to ask for help. Even worse an EMT flipping through my phone might use it to call home and not be able to get anyone."

He then explains, "The solution for this is for SimulRing to exclude the incoming number from the ring list. SIMPLE!!! ie. when getting an incoming call from 555-1212 DO NOT Simulring 555-1212 if it is normally on the list." A simple solution indeed - simply exclude your cell phone number -- if only Vonage supported this. The thread offers some other potential solutions like blocking the outbound CallerID, but it sounds like it's a minor feature fix that Vonage needs to add. Hopefully, it's something on Vonage's agenda since Simulring is a useful feature.

In the News
According to eFluxMedia, Comcast is "working on rehabilitating its name and implementing reasonable management techniques through a new partnership with VoIP service provider Vonage." Vonage and Comcast said they will work on ensuring adequate management techniques to avoid network congestion to ensure high quality VoIP services. What's interesting about this news is two fold. One, Comcast offers their own VoIP offering, so Vonage is a competitor, but apparently now they are a partner. Second, Comcast tainted their own reputation when they intentionally degraded P2P traffic, particularly Bittorrent, a notoriously heavy bandwidth application. They were even accused of purposely degrading Vonage's voice quality. Whether conspiracy or not, now Vonage and Comcast stated they will have a direct line of communications between their network operations centers to resolve customer issues. Vonage will also be part of testing the impact of Comcast's network management techniques on its service. Further, the partnership with Vonage is part of Comcast’s March commitment to move to a protocol-agnostic network management approach by the end of 2008. Comcast has announced collaboration with Pando Networks for a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” (BRR) and participation in the P4P Working Group organized by the Distributed Computing Industry Association.

Vonage Stock Report
Today, Vonage is currently trading at $1.50 (+$0.03) and closed Wednesday at $1.47 or 3 cents higher from Wednesday's close.

Vonage VoIP Forum Digest - July 10, 2008