Pingtel Open Source VoIP Debuts in Europe 58
jasperbg writes "The Register has an interesting article on open-source VoIP provider Pingtel's debut in Europe. Pingtel is a commercial company which packages and sells products based on code from the SIPfoundry open source community."
Re:w00t Indeed! (Score:5, Informative)
How about this for a summary ...
The rest is just a bit of marketing speak - basically an advert with some generalised statements about where SIP is going and why SIPfoundry is better than Asterisk.
El-Reg put it down to a conflict between a standards group (SIPfoundry) and a "fleet-footed" application development group (Asterisk) ... as we've all seen the standards always win over the latest bells and whistles!
Oh, wait! ...
Re:w00t Indeed! (Score:1)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its finaly nice that VoIP services are comming here in an open source form , i just wonder how they are going to deal with emergency dialing , Since the rulling last week over in the USA i hope they had good sense to deal with it from the groud up , rather than rulling against them forcing them to do a rush job
Re:So? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
The 9xx issue is just a way for the authorities to get their foot in the door of regulating VoIP.
I really feel that education about what exactly VoIP is and isn't would be better than regulation - It is a real shame that it takes death and injury for people to actually pay attention to the limitations of technology.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Two comments:
Vonage, in the US at least,sells their service as an alternative to a land line - with number portablity, LD, etc. How they route the call is irrelevant to what service they are providing. People will expect 911 to work, and it should work just like any other phone.
Vonage, to their credit, does explain that you need to register to get 911 to work. Personally, if I were to use Voip at home I'd still keep a landline for emergencies and backup, at the lifeline rate if possible. Right now, my service is used to call from overseas to the US.
The 9xx issue is just a way for the authorities to get their foot in the door of regulating VoIP.
Actually, it's a way for existing phone companies to drive up the cost of VOIP, slowing it's acceptance, make some $$ on the interconnect, and buying time while they try to decide what to do.
There's a whole body of econmic thought on what regulation really does - starting with a Nobel Prize winning idea that regulation benefits the regulated.
I really feel that education about what exactly VoIP is and isn't would be better than regulation - It is a real shame that it takes death and injury for people to actually pay attention to the limitations of technology.
While education is good, it's largely irrelevant to the issue - VOIP is being sold as phone service, so people will expect it to act like one. If it doesn't, they'll scream. And even tech savvy peopel (suchas a neighbor of mine who happens to be an engineer) buy it because it's cheap, and haven't really thought about what happens when they lose power, their ISP has connection problems, or they dial 911 and don't get right into the emergency call center.
An the existing phone companies would like to regulate low cost VOIP out of business (at least until they decide how to offer it), while using VOIP tech to route calls they carry.
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
VoIP services should be responsible and advertise that their phone service is not as reliable as publically regualted POTS is.
There is no regulation to ensure the reliablity of VoIP but there exists regulations for your POTS lines.
What happens when your DSL or cable goes down? There is not much you can do about it. You can hope your ISP fixes it in a timely fashion. A regulated POTS service, on the other hand, is required to keep a certian very high level of service.
There i
This has been in the making for a while (Score:5, Interesting)
The key to making this work is a combination of SIP and other related technologies, but most of all, VoIP needs a solid business plan to work. Despite good technologies and intentions, without a business plan that is well-designed, the project will be doomed to failure. Pingtel thinks they have the right business model. Time will tell
Package and Sell (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Package and Sell (Score:3, Informative)
Can't resist.... (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Google for open source project
2. Repackage code
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!
Really, as long as they are not violating the license agreement of the OS project, who cares? Lot's of people do it. Some companies (like the morons I work for) insist on spending money on software.
Our "Chief Software Engineer" (some very, very, very old guy who hasn't written software since punchcards went out of style) proclaimed "Open Source software is worthless. If it had any value, it wouldn't be free."
So, someone has to cater to
No crawl/package/sell here; Pingtel wrote it (Score:5, Informative)
So Pingtel is not merely selling something they didn't work hard to create. They made the original corpus of code, though the growing contributions of others will clearly improve it.
And even after these contributions grow in proportion to Pingtel's original source, there's still benefit in providing the same service RedHat does: decide what is ready for "prime time enterprise deployment" and what isn't, and package a release accordingly.
Re:No crawl/package/sell here; Pingtel wrote it (Score:2)
and have read several articles on Open Source PBX software but still looking for a good summary or comparison matrix.
Thanks for any references,
TimJowers
skype... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:skype... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:skype... (Score:1)
Re:skype... (Score:2)
It isn't like Skype is winning because it was forced on consumers. The fact is that VoIP and SIP etc. were around before Skype, and yet Skype has managed to grow huge in less then a year, with zero advertising or large corporate support, while the other technologies are going nowhere.
I'm pretty much as big a supporter of open source and open standards as they come. In fact, Skype
Re:skype... (Score:2)
they take the bandwidth of lusers who have unfirewalled network connections (or who have firewalls but are ignorant enough to open the ports) and use it to route calls of those who are behind even the most restricive firewalls and to keep the networks structure together
basically skype relies on exploiting idiots to allow everyone to have service even if behind a very restrictive firewall.
Re:skype... (Score:1)
just like every government... and most corporations...
What I want that Skype can't provide (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and to the point that Skype's firewall piercing is unique or unacceptable -- it isn't. See an analysis of Skype signaling done at Columbia University. [columbia.edu] Skype appears to use a variant of the STUN/ICE technique currently being worked through in the IETF for use with SIP, too. What isn't acceptable in the corporate environment is the local LAN probing / discovery that Skype does at startup!!!
So I want something that plays well with me, and others.
Re:skype... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pingtel? Pringle? (Score:4, Funny)
And i got all excited over Voice-Over-Pringles-Can for nothing. =(
Re:Pingtel? Pringle? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pingtel? Pringle? (Score:4, Funny)
After some testing, I found out that they don't work particularly well in wireless mode. In fact, wires as such don't work very well either - string is much better, but must not be slack.
However, the whole testing thing has highlighted another problem - I had to suitably dispose of the can contents before the testing could begin, and now that I've popped, I don't think I can stop. I need a cure for this new addiction!
-- Steve
Re:We tried working with VOIP... (Score:3, Interesting)
a sheltered work program for the disabled. light industrial. all the ordinary risks of accident and fire on the shop floor plus 150 clients who may need emergency medical services, advanced life support, at any moment.
Is parent post for real? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is parent post for real? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, pun source (Score:2)
Revenge of the SIP
Star Wars: Asterisk Vs SIPFoundry
You'd swear they were fishing for jobs in the tabloids!
Let's keep some perspective (Score:1, Interesting)
For many "open-source companies", the bulk of the code they ship is code they've written themselves and placed in open-source. For instance, Pingtel with sipX, Digium with Asterisk, Atlassian with JIRA, Ximian with Evolution, etc. OTOH, there's nothing wrong with a company like Red Hat where most of the code they sell they didn't write. But the open-source company is a business model that people haven't been using