voice — GigaOM

voice

Skype, the Internet telephony service went on the blink last week, stranding millions who rely on it to communicate. In conversation, CEO Tony Bates revealed that the problem might be some errant Windows clients, but that only hinted at the true cause, which I explain here. Read More »

Skype CEO Tony Bates in a conversation gives us an update and status report on Skype’s outage. It seems like a majority of users in Europe and the East Coast of the U.S. are back online. Bates is sorry about the outage and will compensate users. … Read More »

 
 

Skype failed yesterday, and this morning, almost 24 hours after people first started complaining about not being able to log on, the VoIP provider disclosed that about 10 million people were back online: about 40 percent of its concurrent user base of 25 million. Read More »

Programmable networks could mean less downtime.

If you are one of Skype’s many users who use the service to make a living or talking to your remote users, then you are straight out of luck. The service this morning is down and the outage is impacting millions of users. Read More »

First, Skype and Nimbuzz reported how well they are doing. Then there was the spectacular launch of Viber. And now fring is telling us that they are seeing their quarterly revenues grow at a rapid clip. Mobile VoIP is finally seeing its day under the sun. Read More »

The nature of the work force is changing radically, thanks to the connected-ness of modern society. This work shifting is prompting need for new tools, new methodologies and new corporate work methodologies. Here are findings from a survey conducted on behalf of Skype and GigaOM Pro. Read More »

Skype is on an engineering hiring binge. From mobile developers to web gurus, the Internet telephony company wants them all, especially in Silicon Valley, as it tries to expand its agenda from being a mere desktop client to the dial tone of the 21st century. Read More »

Virtual Office Pro 2.0, from telecoms company 8×8, is a web-based suite of communications services. It includes phone, fax, web conferencing, call recording and chat, and has functions that are standard with many VoIP systems, such as call forwarding and three-way calling. Read More »

One in five broadband lines has a VoIP service attached to it, according to analyst firm Point Topic. They estimate nearly 22 percent of consumer broadband lines have a VoIP service. That’s about 112 million lines at the half-way mark in 2010. Read More »

Skype, the big daddy of Internet telephony, Skype is cutting off Nimbuzz, the upstart mobile VoIP company from Netherlands. In addition, the company is exerting a tighter control over its mobile ecosystem, especially as it signs up lucrative partnership deals with mobile phone companies. Read More »

Skype today announced that it has signed up KDDI, a Japanese phone company, which will integrate Skype into some of its handsets. This makes KDDI one of the handful of cellphone companies (including Verizon Wireless) Skype is looking for growth, ahead of its IPO. Read More »

Skype today released a brand new version of its software for Windows operating systems. The new Version 5 of the popular communications and Internet telephony software is inherently more social, thanks to integration with Facebook. These features are not available on Mac and Skype’s Mobile clients. Read More »

More Must Reads

Nimbuzz, the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Mobile VoIP start-up says that different variants of its mobile app have crossed 150 million downloads. The service has over 30 million users. Nimbuzz users have talked for 3.65 billion mobile voice minutes since the app downloads began in May 2008. Read More »

Josh Silverman, who till recently was the CEO of Skype, is joining venture firm Greylock Partners as an executive-in-residence. Silverman is viewed as someone who brought stability to Skype during a tumultuous time, right after both Skype founders quit the company. Read More »

T-Mobile USA says it will be launching UMA-based Wi-Fi calling on a select few Android handsets in coming days. Unlike in the past, Andorid phones will use an App for Wi-Fi calling. T-Mobile’s myTouch and new Motorola’s DEFY are likely to support UMA-based calling features. Read More »

Skype has expanded availability of its Internet calling service to most Android phones, though U.S. users are limited to Wi-Fi calls. Skype said today that a new client for Android phones running 2.1 or higher is now available for download in Android Market or at skype.com. Read More »

Skype has made some partnerships that extend its reach beyond the desktop computer. A logical acquirer of Skype would be an Internet software company, telephony equipment maker or telecom carrier, and recent headlines suggest Cisco might be a natural fit. Read More »

Cisco Systems veteran Tony Bates is taking over as the CEO of Skype. He will replace Josh Silverman, who is leaving the company for undisclosed reasons. Bates’ hiring is indicative that Skype is serious about its IPO plans. Read More »

Facebook wants to mesh communications and community together, which explains why Facebook Phone is in the cards. If Skype wants to become the communication console of tomorrow, it needs to embrace newer forms of communication. It’s logical for Facebook and Twitter to come together. Read More »

Ring2Skype, a free service that competes directly against the $60-per-year SkypeIn product, alleges it’s been blocked by Skype since Friday of last week. Is this a glitch, a case of he-said/she-said, or what it appears to be: a heavy-handed play by Skype? Read More »

FriendCaller, a browser-based click-to-call voice calling service developed by Dortmund, Germany-based startup C2Call, is once again showing that despite Skype’s monstrous market share, the game isn’t over just yet. The company is adding thousands of new users every day. Read More »

Craig Walker — co-founder of GrandCentral, the San Francisco-based startup that eventually became the underpinning of Google Voice — is leaving the company. Vincent Paquet, the other GrandCentral co-founder, will take over from Walker, who’s joining Google Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Read More »

With 560 million registered users (124 million of which are active), but only 8.1 million paying customers, Skype could use some help. Cisco makes a great deal of sense as a buyer, because it can monetize Skype’s user base in a way that Skype never could. Read More »

Skype is taking the beta tag off Skype Connect, its VoIP service that integrates into an enterprise PBX or Unified Communication solution. Why the push for business customers? Skype has to beat Google to the punch and start getting more of its customers to buy services. Read More »

Skype, the Internet telephony company that recently filed for an IPO maybe up for sale. Cisco Systems is said to be sniffing around Skype, according to a report. The deal if it happens would put Cisco in direct conflict with some of its carrier customers. Read More »

Google today launched a new feature that allows Gmail users to use the Google Voice service. With IM, Chat, SMS and now Voice, Google is turning Gmail into a collaboration hub. And that is only the start for Gmail as a platform. Read More »

This morning I was prompted to check my phone bill, and found that I have been using less than 500 minutes a month for past six months. Wow! We really don’t talk anymore! In the last few decades, our daily modes of communication have changed entirely. Read More »

fring, today launched a preview version of its upcoming fringOut service that will allow you to call anywhere in the world for 1-cent a minute to anyplace on the planet. For now it works only on Nokia phones, but support for other platforms is coming. Read More »

Voxeo Corp, the Orlando, Florida-based IP telephony company behind Tropo web-and-telephony cloud-based development platform is acquiring a smaller competitor for an undisclosed amount of money. Teleku. Together, Tropo and Teleku will compete with the startups such as Twilio for the cloud based web-telephony platform business Read More »

When I first read about Callvine, a company that makes an eponymously named group calling and texting application for iOS 4, I remembered what New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra once said: it’s like déjà vu all over again. Read More »

Skype and Net2Phone have a long history of legal skirmishes. The most recent involved Net2Phone’s parent company IDT filing an antitrust complaint against Skype, which could have easily derailed the latter’s IPO had all the parties not settled their differences — last week. Read More »

Some of the developers behind FreePBX, a well-known open-source phone system, have teamed up and started The 2600hz Project, an entity promoting a collection of open-source telephony applications and libraries. They’re releasing blue.box, a reworked version of open source FreePBX. Read More »

Survey results based on July to December 2009 data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention show continued wireless communication adoption in the home over wired landlines. Younger generations are cutting the cord in increasing numbers and keeping it cut as they grow older. Read More »

Whether it’s a clip of “Tajik Jimmy” putting Bollywood soundtracks to shame, catching a friend’s wedding eight time zones away or working “side by side” with coworkers in another country, it’s all video. And it’s changing the way we communicate with one another. Video technology has … Read More »

As Google is learning the hard way, customer care is a crucial component the mobile world. And its importance will increase as connectivity extends to a wide range of devices and applications. That presents a key opportunity for carriers to bring added value to the table. Read More »

First Cisco Systems decided to buy Norwegian video conferencing equipment maker Tandberg for about $3 billion. This week, Logitech, a Swiss computer peripherals maker, acquired LifeSize, an Austin, Texas-based private company, for about $405 million in cash. The two deals have brought the fast-growing … Read More »

When it comes to the smart grid, utility executives seem willing to embrace the dumb pipe status that their cousins in the telecommunications world are so leery of. That’s because the history of heavy regulation — and near-monopoly — has created an environment where … Read More »

Crank calls have never been so easy. As folks on Reddit have pointed out, Disney’s Hannah Montana Wake-Up Call makes getting up to no good a snap. Just enter your friend’s victim’s phone number and the delightful Miley Cyrus’s voice will wake them … Read More »

CTIA is here and that means plenty of phone announcements are likely this week. Verizon Wireless kicks things off with five new models … Read More »

My main computer is an Apple Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro. It is a beautifully designed piece of technology. Since I spend so much time on my notebook (remember, it’s not a laptop), I have plenty of gripes.  I’ve already mentioned my annoyance with the … Read More »

Mike Masnick at his most brutal best. He says why is everyone over hyping technologies that don’t exist. The object of his un-affection, Wireless VoIP. The list of what wireless VoIP is suddenly expected to kill keeps getting longer. First, it’s going to destroy … Read More »

Verizon is jumping into the consumer VoIP services business and is going to offer standalone service in 130 cities, reports The Wall Street Journal. The unlimited long distance and local calling plan dubbed VoiceWing will cost $40 a month, for those who are … Read More »

Good lord! It has been an awfully busy day in the telecom world. Between conferences, earnings calls and the AT&T bombshell, I was not ready for another stink bomb today. Even a hard nosed cynic like moi does have his limits. (Well Boston is losing so … Read More »

Ma Bell’s aggressive pricing strategy is going to kill a lot of start-ups, reports EWeek. No Shit! The AT&T brand gives a great boost to VOIP’s credibility among consumers, said Jon Arnold, a VOIP market analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “The more people who have … Read More »

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