The snom ONE plus is scalable from 20 to 150 extensions and comes pre-installed and configured as a plug-and-play hardware appliance for deployment with nearly all of the company’s IP phones.  

Two versions are [...]]]>

It was inevitable. Snom (www.snom.com) has put the company’s snom ONE IP PBX software into a rack-mountable package. 

The snom ONE plus is scalable from 20 to 150 extensions and comes pre-installed and configured as a plug-and-play hardware appliance for deployment with nearly all of the company’s IP phones.  

Two versions are available, corresponding to the two software versions of snom; Yellow is good for up to 20 extensions while Blue goes up to 150 extensions.  Starting price on yellow, depending on config, is $2131 suggested MSRP while blue can go up to $3921, with choices of ISDN, FXO, FXS, and T1 and E1.

Snom resellers will likely eat the ONE plus up because they don’t have to install software or futz with configuring hardware.

The software-only IP PBX is available immediately through snom distributors and VARs and comes in three flavors. A free [...]]]>

Snom (www.snom.com) has gone official with its IP PBX offering. “Tightly integrated” with the company’s desktop IP phones, snom ONE’s introduction is likely to make its resellers happy and perhaps Digium (www.digium.com) a little annoyed.

The software-only IP PBX is available immediately through snom distributors and VARs and comes in three flavors. A free downloadable version is available for up to 10 extensions; snom ONE yellow handles up to 20 extensions while snom ONE blue has an “unlimited” number of extensions and multi-tenant capabilities for up to five companies.

All versions offer a full feature set, including hunt and ACD groups, mailbox, auto attendant, conference rooms and paging, and are designed to take full advantage of the hardware features of snom’s suite of desktop phones and endpoints. snom ONE blue also allows up to five separate corporate tenants, supporting multiple organizations to operate using a single IP PBX.

Other features include what you’d expect from an IP PBX with simultaneous ringing of desktop and cell phone, multiple extension aliases, centralized address book, hot desking, voice mail, shared line emulation and a web interface for provisioning and management. The snom ONE is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac environments and is equipped with robust web security through HTTPS and call security through TLS and SRTP. snom ONE supports mixed IPv4/IPv6 LAN and WAN environments and comes with an automatic blacklisting feature that makes it possible to expose public IP addresses.

Up until recently, snom was pretty tight with Digium.  Rolling out a “free” PBX at the low-end (under 10 users) and an unlimited turn-key version capable of running run multi-tenant suggests snom and its resellers aren’t seeing the sort of support and features out of Asterisk they need.

AudioCodes is definitely expansion-minded, betting [...]]]>

Perhaps the biggest surprise/trend in LA this week was the move by established IP communications companies to start widening their playing fields, abet for different reasons.  Both AudioCodes (www.audiocodes.com) and snom (www.snom.com) rolled out new products that suggest better and better possibilities for growth in the months to come.

AudioCodes is definitely expansion-minded, betting that its backing of HD voice (HDVoIP, if you prefer) and hardware integration skills will give it a foot into the door of the ever-crowded consumer CPE space.  The company’s move – more fully documented over at HD Voice News (ITEXPO: AudioCodes announces all-in-one multimedia home gateway, bundle with mobile software) – follows a path started last year, when it started making IP phones for the enterprise space to complement its line of media gateways.

At least one service provider has signed up for AudioCodes MediaPack 252 Multimedia Home Gateway, which integrates an ADSL2+ router, WiFi, a DECT/CAT-iq radio, Bluetooth and the kitchen sink into a single box.  If that’s not enough, AudioCodes will also bundle the 252 with its mobile softphone client so you can get the whole wireless-wireline/over-the-top tie-in that seems to be the rage.

Ultimately, it appears AudioCodes wants/will be providing HD voice-enabled gear from edge to core in the consumer and enterprise. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company roll out more consumer and business CPE in 2011, so long as it A) Has a phone of some sort and B) Supports HD voice.

Snom’s move outside of phones and into IP PBX software appears to be more pragmatic.  The company wants to have offering for SMBs so dealers can do a one-stop-shop/integration free sale of phones and a PBX.  The 10 user version of the snom IP PBX is free, 20 phones will cost you, and 30 or more phones (up to around 150) version to cost some more.

Snom tends to run pretty light, so for the company to add a software-based IP PBX solution into the line up most likely means A) Long-time partner Digium and/or the Asterisk-based IP PBX offering just isn’t cutting it like it had in the past and/or B) There’s easy money to be made in the SMB IP PBX space of 20-150 users.

The lowest [...]]]>

One of the missing pieces out of the HD Communications puzzle is standards — yes, plural.  There are plenty of codec standards, mind you, but what defines an HD phone call, really?  The telecommunications industry may have to borrow from a page from the TV world at some point down the road.

The lowest common denominator (LCD) for wideband codecs seems to be the almost archaic G.722 — but longevity and a little tweaking over the past couple of years isn’t a bad thing, mind you.    Manufacturers have embraced and incorporated the codec into their hardware and it has become a part of the DECT CAT-iq cordless home phone effort — and DECT CAT-iq is the HD/cordless standard for the cable industry.

Companies onboard with G.722 in handsets include VTECH, Siemens Gigaset, ooma in the consumer world and Avaya, Cisco, Polycom, and snom in the business arena.

Going into the wireless world, the standard with the most traction is AMR-WB, also known as G.722.2.  Spectral efficiency is the name of the game, so there’s a different manipulation of the media stream to conserve bandwidth and this segways into transcoding.

Can you do better than the two existing LCDs? A number of parties believe they can for various reasons, including bandwidth efficiency, CPU optimization/trade-offs, and the like.  Skype’s SILK codec is probably the best/most publicized effort for Yet-A-Better (YAB) wideband codec for speech applications.

What if you want to go beyond the LCD and get the very best experience, period?  There’s no definition yet for that in the HD phone call world which puts us slipping towards the Digital TV world to borrow some concepts.   Under this to-be-defined-framework (Hello? HD Connect? Hello?), a PSTN call would be “standard definition” and the baseline service when HD wasn’t available.  The next step up would be in the G.722 and AMR-WB frameworks — the equal of the 720p in the wireless and wireline worlds.

Finally, at the top of the heap would be a 1080i/1080p standard, for the very very very best in sound quality.   Is this something akin to CD quality? Or do you go higher and provoke a fight with audiophiles and embrace DVD Audio or something equally challenging?

Be interesting to see what Jeff Pulver thinks about this framework.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone [...]]]>

If you don’t feel like plowing through all of the HD Communications Summit pieces, here’s a recap of what went on.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone call hasn’t changed since 1937 or so – unlike everything else in the modern world.

3)       Pulver plans an FCC petition this fall to upgrade PSTN to HD;  digital TV provides a case justification to move to a new technology.

4)       Frequency range for a PSTN call is 300-3000 Hz

5)       AudioCodes Google Search on “HD Voice/VoIP” – Past 10 years, 190,000 hits. Past 12 months, 82,000 hits, so the trend line is going up and to the right.

6)       Depending on who’s talking, HD audio would use a range between 100-7000 Hz. Diminishing returns after 7000 Hz delivery.

7)       The tighter PSTN clips consonants.

8)       FM radio sounds better than a PSTN call.

9)       HD Connect is the working name of the HD Communications trade association Pulver is starting because a) Polycomm has a trademark on HD Voice and b) AudioCodes has a trademark on HD VoIP

10)    Everyone wants a “HD Connect” logo to put on their boxes

11)    When HD voice (generic) happens [in North America], it will happen really really fast, predicts everyone.

12)    But right now, [North American] service providers are on the fence waiting to see who jumps first.

13)    Nobody can agree on a single HD codec, but most agree we need fewer codecs and there seems to be sufficient codecs out there

14)    More codecs = more part cost, more support costs, so the fewer, the better

15)    Ain’t no such thing as a “free” codec. Support costs and potential indemnification issues lurk.

16)    Wireless and wireline will likely use different codecs because the cellular carriers need to get the most out of their leased spectrum (i.e. spectral efficiency)

17)    Transcoding will be necessary to move between HD codecs; AudioCodes is happy.

18)    North American cable companies are getting ready for HD, but until the business case is clear (i.e. “Show me the money”), they aren’t in any rush.

19)    Cable may have a leg up by locking in DECT CAT-iq as a standard so service providers can provide an end-to-end experience without transcoding or other tweaking.

20)    The Europeans are ahead of us (again).  BT, France Telecom, T-Mobile are all deploying HD today in their respective territories.

21)    France Telecom expects to be able to exchange HD voice calls with other carriers by the end of the year.

22)    Enterprises are likely to be the earliest adopters of HD. They control their own infrastructure, are deploying VoIP, HD gets rolled out as “just another app” onto the existing infrastructure.

23)    Avaya has incorporated wideband codecs in all of its phones; Polycom is adding wideband codecs to all of its phones.

24)    HD is a “killer app” when it comes to talking to a non-native language speaker and you can’t understand his/her accent.  The broader range means you can understand what someone is saying rather than having to work at interpreting (i.e. filling in the blanks) as to what they are really saying.

25)    HD on cell phones is happening – in Europe.  France Telecom is (once again) leading the way with mobile HD.

26)    Truphone says it is working with HD in the lab and is ready to roll when the time is right.

27)    Qualcomm has done demos/field trials of HD on cellular.

28)    In the trials, Qualcomm used the Swiss-army-knife of IP telephony – Digium’s Asterisk – to transcode between its 4GV-WB codec and G.722.

29)    Qualcomm is still trying to fight the EVDO/LTE battle.

Earlier pieces on the HD Communications Summit

HD Communications Summit: Pulver announces HD marketing association, FCC petition, fall event

HD Communications Summit: Codec convergence, “HD” logo take center stage

HD Communications Summit: Cable bides its time

HD Communications Summit: Islands of HD, trending upward

HD Communications Summit: HD Cellular is happening

HD Communications Summit: Analysis – Will international needs bootstrap HD voice?

Presentations at the HD Communications Summit – pictures

HD Communications Summit – A PR/marketing view

Handset manufacturers Polycom [...]]]>

At yesterday’s HD Communications Summit, most equipment manufacturers said they would like to see fewer HD codecs and an “HD voice” logo to slap on to their boxes and gear.  Discussion also took place on the relative virtues of a “free” codec and the intellectual property issues associated with free codecs.

Handset manufacturers Polycom and Snom expressed a belief that more is less with fewer codecs. Existing HD codecs are “good enough,” said Polycom’s Chalan Aras, but there needs to be “convergence” with fewer selections “Fax has one standard and look where it’s gone,” Aras stated.

Despite advances in more memory and faster processing speed, every codec added to the stack of must-support features adds cost, even if it is “free.”  Each codec consumes memory and therefore requires more resources and more resources bump up the expense of the parts put into a desktop handset.

More codecs also increase the complexity of support in having to transcode between one codec to another one and having to transcode between different codecs can introduces various artifacts and degrade voice quality, noted Polycom CTO Jeff Rodman — not something you want to do with HD voice.  In an ideal world, the same codec would be used from end-to-end, negating the overhead and potential issues with transcoding.  Rodman would like to see the industry downselect to two or three HD codecs.

Finally, so-called “free” codecs still require verification testing and support, not to mention the cloud of potential intellectual property liabilities for developers; GIPS made sure to underscore the latter point.  Ryan Heidari, Director Technical and Product Marketing for Qualcomm, said carriers tend to shy away from proprietary but free offerings; they want to open source, fully published C code to verify what is under the hood and to enable the codec to be adopted by multiple manufacturers.

Summit sponsor AudioCodes was more prosaic about transcoding, believing that as long different industries picked different HD codecs, there would always be a need for an appliance in the middle of the communications stream to conduct transcoding between different carrier “islands.”

One of the challenges the HD Voice world faces is the divergent needs of wireless and wireline carriers.  Qualcomm’s Heidari stated wireless carriers want spectral efficiency due to their relative limitations in bandwidth relative to other service providers.

Snom founder and CEO Christian Stredicke found plenty of support in a call for a standard “HD Voice” logo that could be put on the side of a box.  Another speaker noted that a standardized “HD voice” certification or logo would provide a differentator in the marketplace.