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Mark Evans

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Archive for April, 2005

VOIP & Home Alarm Systems

When you think about VOIP's adoption hurdles, there's the usual suspects: new technology, access to 911, the challenge using existing phone jack,s and lack of education about features. Another issue slightly off the radar screen is home alarm systems and whether they will work with VOIP rather than a regular phone line. Many consumers buy [...]

AOL Canada to Drop Prices

Looks like AOL Canada has decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em amid expectations it will lower prices of its TotalTalk VOIP plans this week. AOL is currently selling VOIP two packages: $44.95 a month for plenty of features and 1,000 minutes of LD in North America, and $34.95 for 60 minutes of LD. [...]

Who's Jeff Pulver - Entrepreneur, Evangelist, Blogger?

In the Internet world, Jeff Pulver is a man of many hats.
His mini-empire includes running conferences, an Internet telephony service with 500,000 subscribers, a popular blog, and Web sites selling telephony equipment and virtual phone numbers. Then there's his Internet radio station and ambitions to be a professional poker player.
The 42-year-old's jam-packed schedule takes him [...]

SIPquest picks up US$6M

SIPquest, which makes SIP-based Internet telephony software applications, has attracted US$6 million in private equity from Covington Capital and Skypoint Capital. The Ottawa-based company, whose customers include 3Com Inc., said the money will be used get its technology into customers looking for multimedia collaboration and mobility capabilities, as well as providing service to enterprise [...]

VON Canada Bits and Bytes

If you didn't get enough Skype news yesterday, Niklas Zennstrom said Skype Video will go into beta testing this summer and could be launched later this year. Skype is also focusing its growth on China through a partnership with Tom.com, and the U.S. Tom.com is already doing aggressive marketing - large billboards in Shanghai, for [...]

Skype Poaches Microsoft Exec

You'd think Skype's Niklas Zennstrom would have wanted to crow today at VON Canada about poachin Microsoft executive Lenn Pryor, who headed up Channel 9 and was Microsoft's director of platform evangelism.

Wi-Max is Perfect…Theoretically

Perhaps the quote of the day from VON Canada comes from WaveRider Communications CEO Charles Brown who said that “Wi-Max is perfect because it doesn't exist”. While having great promise, Rose argued there are still many challenges facing the technology as inter-operability issues, high equipment costs and inconsistent quality of service. I'm sure these are [...]

VOIP: It's the Features, Stupid

There has been lot of talk today about what's driving VOIP. The industry is naturally excited about the technology and its potential to drive adoption and revenue. The problem is there seems to be disappointment about the rate of growth. The main driver continues to be price rather than features. AOL Canada's Craig Wallace said [...]

Zennstrom's Math

I had a short chat with Skype's Niklas Zennstrom during VON Canada. You have to like his math: 34 million registered users, 1.2 million paying costs, very low marginal costs. Sooner or later, the telecom industry is going to have to take Skype seriously. You can either embrace disruptive technology or try to kill it. [...]

VON Canada: The "Steve Jobs" of VOIP

Jeff Pulver kicked off VON Canada with a keynote covering everything from his childhood interest - obsession? - with ham radios to his lament on how VOIP is being sold on price rather than features. A particularly intriguing idea is his belief that the VOIP industry's “Steve Jobs” are Skype's Niklas Zennstrom and Digium's Mark [...]

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