Crave

Soon enough, you will be able to voice chat using instant messenger on an iPhone.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

Global IP Solutions, a company well recognized for its media-processing expertise in IP communications, announced on Monday its SDK, which enables Voice over IP applications to be made for Apple's iPhone.

This means that developers can now use GIPS' VoiceEngine Mobile, to create real-time VoIP applications, such as games, social-networking applications, and, of course, applications for making calls to regular phone lines over the Internet. Soon enough, you will be able to use instant messenger to voice chat with friends on the iPhone, just like you've been doing on your computer for ages now.

Though this is exciting news indeed, GIPS VoiceEngine Mobile will only work with iPhone's Wi-Fi connection and will not take advantage of the new iPhone's 3G connection. This is because Apple has always blocked the use of VoIP on the carriers' data connection; and AT&T, understandably, wouldn't be too happy about supporting something that potentially costs them long distance phone business. We can only hope this will change in the future. For now, in my experience, AT&T's 3G coverage is still too patchy and unreliable to be a platform for VoIP calls, anyway.

Being the inventors of the popular iLBC codec standard (which got approved by IETF in late 2004 and is currently implemented in the iPhone), GIPS' decision today seems a natural move, considering the popularity of the iPhone. According to Apple, more than one million iPhone 3Gs were purchased over the launch weekend; and exactly one month later--today--you can still find people waiting in line outside some Apple stores for the device.

So far, GIPS claims that its voice engines have been downloaded and used more widely than any other voice engine worldwide. GIPS' voice engines enable consumers and businesses to enjoy affordable, high-quality, IP-based communications, even under adverse network conditions.

T-Mobile USA plans to announce Wednesday that its new @Home voice service will be available nationwide starting July 2.

The cell phone operator has been testing the new Internet telephony service since February in Dallas and Seattle. And now the new service, which is meant to replace traditional home phones, will be offered to any T-Mobile cell phone customer.

Subscribers will be able to connect any regular home telephone to a T-Mobile router that will send calls over the Internet much the same way as services like Vonage operate. The service costs $10 a month plus taxes and fees for unlimited domestic local and long-distance calls.

Only T-Mobile wireless customers who subscribe to at least a $39.99 individual calling plan or families subscribing to at least the $49.99 monthly T-Mobile calling plan can get the service. The @Home service also requires that users subscribe to a separate broadband service from a cable operator or telecom provider. And they are required to use a special T-Mobile router, which also provides Wi-Fi Internet access throughout the home.

This router can also be used to provide T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home phone service. This service, launched last year, allows T-Mobile subscribers to use dual-mode cellular and Wi-Fi phones that switch between both networks. When subscribers are near their home Wi-Fi hot spot, they use the broadband network to make unlimited domestic calls. And when they are outside the home, the phone seamlessly switches to T-Mobile's cellular network.

The service, which also costs $10 extra per month, serves two purposes. It helps provide better in-home cell phone coverage and also helps reduce the number of minutes used on the T-Mobile cellular network.

Britt Wehrman, director of product development for T-Mobile says the service, which launched a little over a year ago, has been a big success. The company hasn't disclosed subscriber numbers for the service, but Wehrman said that 45 percent of the hot-spot customers are leaving competitors to get the T-Mobile service. T-Mobile currently has eight dual-mode handsets that work with the service, two of which were announced earlier this week. And it has four more to announce by the end of the year, bringing the total to 12 dual-mode handsets.

The @Home VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service is meant to work with the hot-spot phone service, Wehrman said. When the hot-spot service was first introduced, the company found that families were interested in the plan. But they weren't willing to cut the cord on their home phones.

"The hot-spot service offers parents a good way to limit overage charges, because the kids can talk on their cell phones while they're at home without eating up minutes," he said. "But we found that many families didn't want to get rid of their traditional phones. They still wanted one phone in the house for the whole family."

So the @Home VoIP service was created to give families who don't want to get rid of their traditional landlines a low-cost option for retaining that line while still using the hot-spot service. To ensure that E911 service works with the VoIP service, T-Mobile is requiring all users to register their home address before service can be activated.

But because it is an Internet-based phone service that is dependent upon a broadband modem for connectivity, families will still have to consider the risks of power outages and Internet interruptions that will make the VoIP service and E911 unavailable during those outages. But Wehrman said that the fact that T-Mobile requires that subscribers of the @Home service also have a T-Mobile cell phone subscription limits the safety concerns.

Start-up IP telephony providers Jajah and Jangl are teaming up to take on the competition, the companies said Thursday.

The companies are part of a new generation of voice-over IP providers that have crept up recently hoping to replicate the success story of Skype, which was bought by eBay two years ago for $2.6 billion. The market is already crowded with dozens of these small players. Typically at this stage of the game, start-ups are too busy duking it out against each to forge partnerships, but executives at Jajah and Jangl say it makes sense for them to partner even though some of their products may overlap.

"It is rare to see companies at this stage do something like this," said Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl. "But it's such a confusing market out there and the press and VCs often lump all VoIP providers together. But our strategies and technologies are really very different. And when we sat down together, we realized they're actually complementary."

Jajah is focused on providing low-cost international calling. Already it has the ability to terminate calls or transfer calls from the Internet to the local telephone network in more than 122 countries around the world. Earlier this year it received funding from the German phone company Deutsche Telekom. And it has ambitions to grow into a major telecommunications platform provider in the future.

Jangl, on the other hand, is focused on providing secure phone calling for social-networking and dating Web sites. The service essentially provides alternative local phone numbers that can mask a person's actual phone number, so that they don't have to give out a personal telephone number to strangers.

But while their focuses may be different, Cerda and Frederik Hermann, director of global marketing for Jajah, say they see benefits in working together for both companies. For example, Jajah is about to launch an in-call advertising platform. The way it works is when a user is being connected to a call, he has the option of listening to a short 10-second advertisement. As a reward for listening to the commercial, the user earns credit, which can be used to defray the cost of making future calls over the Jajah network.

Jangl, which claims to be on some 40 million social-networking profiles on sites such as Match.com, says it brings an important target audience to advertisers because its service is already integrated into the media-rich social-networking world.

"Jajah brings the ads and we bring the customers," Cerda said.

Also as part of the deal, Jangl will be able to terminate calls onto the regular phone network from the Internet in all of Jajah's 122 countries. Today Jangl only offers termination service in 32 countries.

"Over the past two years, we've built a huge back-end system for terminating calls all over the world," Hermann said. "So we're able to allow Jangl to use that resource and we recover a small margin on that."

But Jajah and Jangl's main competitor Jaxtr says the companies are merely running scared. "I see it simply as the weak banding together," said Konstantin Guericke, CEO of Jaxtr.

One thing is for certain, partnerships are tough to manage no matter the size or stage of growth of the companies involved. But who knows? Maybe this partnership will be a prelude to a merger. Executives from Jajah and Jangl haven't ruled out the possibility, but they each say it's not on the table right now.

"Merging the two companies might make sense at some other juncture in the future," Cerda said. "But both companies are still so young. And they have something they want to be when they grow up. And we have something we want to be when we grow up."

Skype's service appears to be up and running again for the most part, after software issues Thursday prevented millions of Skype users from signing on to the IP telephony application.

Skype officials say the outage was not due to a cyberattack or network upgrades. Instead they attributed the issue to "a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network."

As of 11 a.m. GMT Friday, the company said that the software had started to stabilize. Some users have reported spotty service, but when I tried the service earlier today, it worked just fine.

Pundits and bloggers are already lining up to take swipes at Skype, which is owned by eBay. Some say the service hiccup could hurt the company's reputation and potentially cost them users.

But I disagree. It was one outage that lasted less than 24 hours. I'm sure it inconvenienced some people. But I'm guessing that most of the 220 million registered Skype users didn't even notice. Why? Well for one, most of them don't rely on Skype as their only form of voice communications.

And the reason is simple. Skype or any other PC-based voice over IP application still isn't as reliable or convenient to use as a traditional landline phone or a cell phone. And most people get that. Skype augments their other communications. It doesn't replace it.

Take me as an example. I'm an avid Skype user. I use the service mostly to chat with my friends in Europe. I have a regular phone line at home, a work phone and a cell phone. So Skype isn't the only means by which I can make phone calls. I use it mostly because it's cheap to make international calls. And if I'm on my computer, it's convenient./p>

But I've noticed that even when Skype isn't having a widescale issue with its software algorithms, I often have to call and then disconnect two or three times before I get a clear connection. While I'll admit this can get annoying, it doesn't bother me too much for two reasons. One, when the call does connect, the call quality is often way better than I get on my cell phone.

And secondly, most of the Skype calls I make are to other people using the Skype application, so it's free. And I have a different tolerance for quality and reliability when something is free. (On the other hand, I get really annoyed when I can't get a cell phone signal or my signal drops, because I'm paying $50 a month for the service.)

I don't think I'm the only person who feels this way. Skype has never marketed itself as a replacement phone service. And that seems to have been a smart strategy. Because Skype doesn't encourage people to disconnect their existing phone lines or quit their current wireless service, the company knows that people won't have to rely on its service. That is one of the main reasons the company doesn't have to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's E-911 mandates. In general, the expectation for Skype and other PC-based telephony services is lower.

By contrast, Vonage, the other big name in VoIP, set the bar high in terms of expectations. The company marketed itself as a replacement to existing home phones. And as a result, it had to deal with all the headaches of complying with E-911 and other FCC requirements.

A quick look at the subscriber numbers helps paint a picture of which strategy seems to be working. Vonage, which is in a legal tussle with Verizon over patents, has been losing customers with its most recent total at about 2.45 million monthly subscribers. Skype says it has 220 million registered users worldwide.

I think the fact that the Skype outage even stirred a buzz is a testament to the success of the application. And I find it really hard to believe that some 220 million folks are going to delete the Skype application from their desktops just because of one service outage. Then again, I also didn't believe that millions of corporate BlackBerry users would ditch Research in Motion's service when the company experienced an overnight outage just a few months ago.

What do Ashton Kutcher and voice over IP technology have in common?

Kutcher, best known for his role on That '70s Show and MTV's reality show Punk'd, is "creative director" for a Silicon Valley start-up called Ooma, which has developed a device that will allow users to make free VoIP calls to any phone in the U.S.

The company, which has $27 million in funding, officially announced itself Thursday.

Unlike Vonage, which requires users pay a monthly flat rate for domestic calling, or Skype, which charges users a low-cost fee to make or accept calls from regular phones, Ooma charges a one-time fee of $399 for the Ooma device. After that, all domestic local and long distance calling is free.

Exactly what Kutcher knows about Internet telephony or the communications market in general is a mystery to me. But apparently, the actor/husband of Demi Moore helped design the company's logo and the viral marketing campaign called "White Rabbit," which the company will launch this fall. As part of the campaign, Ooma will give away roughly 2,000 Ooma boxes to participants, who will then be able to invite three friends to also get a free Ooma box in exchange for deploying the box and trying the service.

The viral campaign is designed to create buzz for the product, but it's also necessary in order to ensure the service actually works. Ooma relies on a peer-to-peer network, much like the PC-to-PC calling service available through Skype. And it needs to seed the market with devices.

Through this model calls are connected directly to customers rather than through a central server owned and operated by a service provider. Ooma uses this peer-to-peer network to avoid paying phone companies for terminating calls when Ooma users make long distance calls to non-Ooma users. So if I'm an Ooma user in New York City, and I call my dad in Delaware, who is not an Ooma user, the Ooma network will find an Ooma user in my dad's local calling area and mooch off that stranger's local phone line to complete the phone call between my dad and me.

Andrew Frame, CEO of the company, claims that with strategically placed Ooma devices, the company can cover 95 percent of the population. (Of course, this also requires that most Ooma users also keep their regular phone lines so that calls can connect to the public switched telephone network.) And for regions where there is no Ooma box, Frame said the company will eat the cost of interconnecting to the local telephone network.

I have to admit I'm skeptical that Ooma will actually get enough people to buy one of these devices, which looks like an answering machine. The $399 price tag is not trivial, especially when you consider that Ooma may not be around very long. Several other pure play VoIP providers are struggling to stay afloat. Earlier this week, SunRocket closed its doors, leaving some 200,000 subscribers in the lurch. And Vonage, saddled with a huge headache of a lawsuit from Verizon, is also bleeding subscribers.

The service also has a few catches. For one, international calling is not free. Frame said the rates will be similar to other VoIP services like Skype or Vonage. What's more, the Ooma box provides one jack per phone. If users want to hook up additional phones, they'll have to buy a separate adapter called a Scout for each phone at a cost of $39 a pop.

And the final catch is that, like many other VoIP offerings, Ooma doesn't fully comply with enhanced 911, which means if you want the fire department or ambulance driver to actually find your house when you call 911 then you'd better keep your $20 a month regular phone line.

I'm sure some users will find the Ooma device economical and very useful. But I doubt it will take the telephony world by storm. Of course that could change, if a phone company like AT&T or Verizon were to buy Ooma or partner with the company to deploy the device in their traditional telephony markets. But if history is any indication, I don't see the stodgy U.S. operators touching Ooma with a 10-foot pole.