The Dbottino Weblog

Gas rates are flying and this is making company cash holdings are spread short more than previously. With an economy lumbers along slowly and new cash stays scarce, wise businesses see that redundant costs should slashed. Executives everywhere must make a few weighty choices to lower expenses. Perhaps the easier way to reduce department expenditures is to make slashes in frivolous travel allocations, and the secret is web conference calling.

Online conferencing grant you to communicate with stakeholders electronically in a meeting in a distant metropolis, on a distant coast or even more significantly in an overseas country. Most web conferencing employ state of the art streaming components. Because that they done through standard high-speed Internet connections, they just utilize no additional company resources. Only by using web video conferencing, can a business person have a overseas conference from almost any place offering web access. Its more than just everywhere, it can save travel costs more than five digits.

Advancements in digital technology make Internet conference calls possible for executives to give and receive presentations and information seamlessly. Conference participants can see and hear as if they are virtually there, even if they are thousands of miles across the planet. The look and sound of the audio, video and presentation can be crystal clear through the top in network communications.

Dont miss how almost any business would save money by switching to web conferencing in place of blowing thousands sending an employee on a expensive trip. Your company won’t throw away money on hotels, meals or even transportation. These savings quickly add up. Any dollar saved is increased productivity for your organization. It’s not surprising that some companies are choosing online conferencing calls to slash expenses on low-priority sales travel.

The next few weeks are going to be rather hectic for me. For various birthdays, anniversaries and the like I am being dragged around the length and breadth of the UK visiting various family members and old friends.

Wonderful as it will be to catch up with some people I haven’t seen in a long time I am not a fan of traveling at all, and so I am dreading all these trips.

On the plus side I have got myself a new toy from mobile.broadbandgenie.co.uk that should help at least make these things a bit more bearable. I have got my hands on one of those mobile broadband dongles. This means I will have access to broadband Internet no matter where I am in the country.

Rather useful I am sure you will agree. It means I can get some work done whilst I am away and whilst I am traveling. It means I can also continue to blog without having to queue up large amounts of blog posts in advance, something I hope you guys appreciate as much as me!

So I’ll let you know how this mobile Internet thing goes, but I have to say I am very excited; I won

Voice Over IP (VoIP) is the new phone system technology. It’s valued for cheap prices and cost effectiveness. It offers many of the same calling features as regular landline services at typically no extra cost. VoIP allows users the freedom to use their high-speed Internet connection to integrate their phone, audio, video, and web browsing capabilities into one application. Because of these new trends, VoIP providers are adding new products and services daily.

Here is a list and details of the top 7 VoIP providers with costs:

1. Skype (Ebay – New Owner)

Skype is famous VoIP provider with the slogan, “The Whole World can Talk for Free”. Skype is a free download and users can make free calls via, Skype to Skype. For a fee, you can advance your Skype to Skype Out and make calls to landline phones. Skype In will let your choose your area code and phone number. This way, friends and relatives can call you locally, if you select the same area code. Skype is compatible with the leading operations systems – Windows, Linux, Macs and Pocket PCs.

2. Broadvox Direct

Broadvox Direct VoIP providers offers small business and residential services. Their residential services include the Residential Choice Plus plan for $10.00 per month. The Residential Choice Plus plan includes 100 outbound minutes and unlimited incoming minutes. Their Residential Unlimited Plan costs $30.00 a month and includes unlimited calling anywhere in the US and Canada. The Small Business (SOHO) Regional Plan costs $35.00 per month and includes 1500 monthly minutes in the US and in Canada. The SoHo Small Business Unlimited Plan costs $45 per month and includes unlimited calls in the US and Canada and also includes a free fax line and Yellow Page listing.

3. Vonage

Probably the most well known VoIP providers, you may be surprised to discover that Vonage is also one of the more expensive providers. Vonage offers two plans, residential and small business. Residential users may choose between the Basic 500 plan and Unlimited. The Basic 500 plan offers 500 minutes of talk time for $15.00 a month. The Premium Unlimited residential plan costs $25.00 per month.

The SOHO Basic plan costs $40.00 per month and allows 1500 minutes. The Small Business Unlimited plan costs $50.00 a month and provides unlimited calls throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

4. Dialpad

Yahoo and Dialpad have merged services. There is trend amongst VoIP providers to consolidate their services. Currently, Dialpad offers 3 service plans: Dialpad Monthly 300, Dialpad Monthly 500, and Dialpad USA. The cost for Dialpad Monthly 300 is $7.50, Dialpad Monthly 500 costs $10 and Dialpad USA costs about $12.00/month.

5. Galaxy Voice

Galaxy Voice offers two plans, Residential and Business. Their residential plan costs about $20.00 a month and includes unlimited calling, Voicemail, Caller Id, Call Waiting, Call Return, Three Way Calling, and Call Forwarding. Their business plan costs $40.00 per month and includes unlimited calling, Free Voice Mail, Free Call Transfer, Free Call Forwarding, Free Repeat Dialling, and Free Caller ID block.

6. Packet 8

Packet 8 offers phone and videophone plans. One of the few VoIP providers to offer both services. Their residential plans are the Freedom International and Freedom Unlimited. Both of these plans cost $19/month. Their business plans consists of three different plans. These are the Virtual Office service plans, the Virtual Attendant Service plans, and the Business Phone Service plans. The Virtual office phone plan costs $19 per month, the Virtual Attendant service plan costs $14 per month, and the Business plan costs $35.00 per month.

7. VoIP American

VoIP American one of the biggest VoIP providers and has 3 different plans. These are the VoIP American PBX plan, the VoIP Voice and bVoice plans. The VoIP American PBX plan cost $19.00 a month for a private line and $44.00 a month for unlimited calling. The VoIP Voice Residential Basic plan costs $14.00/month and Residential Unlimited plan costs $29.00/month.

VoIP providers are increasing in number with growing competition amongst the various VoIP providers prices will start to come down even further. The quality of the voice calls is getting better and now video calls is becoming the standard offering by the VoIP Providers. Talk will be cheap!

To the telephony novice, the world of modern communication can be an intimidating place. In a world so acronym-laden and thick with trade-jargon, it can be tough to know just what it is that you’re reading about in the first place. If you’re a small business-person, it’s even worse (and let’s face it, who else is reading this?): not only are you supposed to be familiar with these technologies, you’re expected to be able to make informed decisions regarding their use and implementation.

Faced with the daunting array of telecommunications options, you’ve turned to that trusted informant and advisor of the contemporary techno-savvy citizen, the Internet. A quick search for ‘IP Telephony’ or ‘VoIP’ will reveal that it’s easy to find virtual heaps of “information” about VoIP or IP phones (try it now!), but it will also present as many problems as it solves. On the one hand you’ve got the technical articles that immediately lose the reader in thick forests of acronyms that only the technologically initiated can sift through, and on the other (in much greater abundance) you’ll get hundreds of thousands of matches (seriously, try it) which at best are links to places to buy something and at worst are thinly veiled advertisements, clumsily disguised as informative articles.

On the Internet, as in the rest of life, nothing is free. The problem is that every company would love for you to believe that the “quality” content they churn out is an act of pure altruism for the benefit of the consumer at large. I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending that I don’t have an ulterior motive. But today, friends, is your lucky Internet-browsing day! That fact that I’m not pitching any particular brand of anything gives me the rare opportunity to furnish information that I think you might actually find useful. Now that I’ve gained your trust, let me proceed.

So what exactly is IP Telephony, and how is it differentiated from VoIP? If you refer back to your hypothetical search, you’ll find that most companies simply don’t distinguish between the two – it’s just another synonym that their copywriters can use to avoid using the term “VoIP” too often. But there is a difference. IP Telephony, in it’s strictest sense, refers to the use of VoIP, likely in conjunction with other products and services, in a company’s communications network.

Let me put it another way. If a company is advertising VoIP and raving about what it can do for your business, take a good look at what it is they’re offering to sell you. All that VoIP means by itself is the capability to send voice data over digital lines. This could be as simple as a media gateway, or an IP enabled phone. IP Telephony depends upon VoIP, but VoIP is not IP Telephony.

Don’t get me wrong – this is a powerful tool, but by itself it is by no means the business revolution that is so often billed. If all you’re looking for is a way to cut down long-term telephone costs a little, that maybe all you need. Most companies, however, are looking for something a little more useful.

All the fancy extras that you’ll hear about – vemail, virtual call centers, mobile technology integration, and so on – are actually facets of an IP Telephony platform. IP Telephony refers to the actual service – the package deal from a provider including software, hardware, and knowledge that gives you something more than an advanced phone or a specialized router. When you really think about it, the idea of a company offering to sell you VoIP is an absurd one. That would be like a company advertising TCP/IP or trying to sell the concept of packet switching.

Most websites advertising VoIP are simply trying to capitalize of off a trendy buzzword. It is rare to find an actual IP Telephony platform for sale other than the industry standard (which for reference is Avaya IP Office), though they do exist. One such is a small business-oriented virtual call center affair by the company GotVMail called VirtualOne.

But of course, it’s not that simple. There is no standard differentiation in the terms observed by all technology providers (there seem to be few standards on the Internet at all), and this will inevitably lead to confusion. Many companies are as already noted simply trying to sell you an expensive phone by impressing you with the word VoIP, but some more legitimate businesses simply refer to their entire IP Telephony platform as “VoIP service.” Frustrating. It would be nice if we could trust companies to be honest with us, but it’s simply not the case. In the end, the burden of research falls squarely upon the consumer. Good luck.

David Roberts is a telecommunications and technology writer for voip-avaya.com where he struggles to make informed buyers out of the mindless masses of online consumers.

When the Internet is used for communications by voice, facsimile, or video conferencing the process is called Internet telephony. Known as voice over the Internet VoI or voice over IP, VoIP, in this system, sound is converted into digital packets that are then transmitted over the internet to the receiver where it is once again converted into sound or text.

All one needs is a multimedia computer, a high speed Internet connection, a sound card, speakers, and a microphone. Since it reduces telecommunication costs significantly, many individuals and businesses are adopting this system. The charges of internet telephony are not dependant on the distance but just a flat fixed rate for use of bandwidth. The only thing is that both you and the person you are calling will need to have the same or compatible software.

First introduced in 1995 the PC-to-PC telephony is set to grow from US$ 1.96 billion in 2003 to US$9.08 billion in 2007. Industry experts predict that over half the phone traffic in the world will be based on IP protocol.

To use the VoIP system, all you need is a regular phone, an adapter, broadband Internet service, and a subscription to a VoIP service. All your offices on a LAN or WAN can benefit from a common phone system with extension dialing, seamless call transfers, voice mail, caller ID, conference calls, music-on-hold, free phone calls, as well as ability to transfer data.

Even while making or receiving calls, you can surf the web or use other web based applications. You will also be able to retain your existing PSTN phone number if the provider you use has this facility. A VoIP provider is a telecommunications company that will handle the technical aspects of the calls and provide the interconnection between VoIP and PSTN networks. Internal calls are transmitted as data on your company network while external calls are transmitted through the network to a gateway which in turn connects to a public telephone network.

The advantages of Internet telephony are numerous the first being cost effectiveness. With a high speed internet connection phone calls can be made all over the world for almost free. By signing up with a VoIP provider you can get unlimited calls within the country at very low costs. The system is portable and you can take the headset or internet phone along with you when traveling. When plugged in to an internet connection anywhere in the world you can both make and receive calls at no extra costs. Wonderful features like call waiting, call forwarding, voice mail, caller ID, and three -way calling are all included with the Internet telephone connection at no extra cost.

The system is flexible and you will be able to send documents as well as pictures over the system while you are talking on the phone. The problems you are likely to encounter are: inability to call emergency services, loss of service during power outages, problems with clarity of sound, and scrambling of data. These are however being addressed on a war footing and problems small or big should be ironed out quickly.

VoIP is all set to be the industry standard for telephone communication in the future and is all set to change communications forever.

Paul Wilson is a freelance writer for http://www.1866Voip.com, the premier website to find help on Voip including topics on online voip, voip phone, voip service providers, voip solutions, business voip, internet telephony voip and more. He also freelances for the premier Ringtones site http://www.1888Ringtones.com.

The 6080 is a little uninspiring compared to other products produced by Nokia. With this mobile phone Nokia have built something which is quite well featured for the price. Like other similarly priced models from Nokia the design is quite cutting edge and would appeal to a broad range of users.

The 6080 has Polyphonic (24 channels), MP3, Monophonic, True Tones ring tones enabled as well as a vibrating alert. Colour wise this mobile handset can be bought in, Black and Gold. Compared to competitors phones currently available the Nokia 6080 is neat and compact. This mobile handset weighs just 91 g. The screen is a TFT, 65K colors. The 6080 is compatible with 2G GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900 – US version . The 6080 is fitted with a VGA, 640×480 pixels, video (subQCif) camera. For mobile Internet users as WAP 2.0/xHTML browser is included. On to battery cell duration the Nokia 6080 has 1:30 talk time and 300 hours standby time. The Nokia 6080 is supplied with a Li-Ion 820 mAh (BL-5B) battery cell. The 6080 also has:

This is now quite an old mobile phone, but still does a great job. If you are offered one, in end of line clearance you may be able to get a very good buy. Because there are now so many online stores it has never been easier or as cost competitive to purchase a mobile. Ordering online can allow you to take advantage of significant cost savings, surprisingly, it is possible to get a free mobile for 12 months on the Nokia 6080 , which, if you read the terms and conditions will not cost a dime.