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Keynote Systems released their latest VoIP quality report with some interesting findings. For one, Comcast, a cable company dominated the voice quality rankings beating the closest competitor by nearly 300 points. As for reliability, to no surprise AT&T won this category, no doubt to their decades of experience in building reliable voice and data networks.

Keynote Systems measures VoIP quality (MOS scores), call completion, etc. by automatically placing calls from corporate apartments using residential VoIP services and network services just like a typical residential customer would.  Service Reliability scores are based on the key performance metrics of Service Availability, Average Answer Time and Number of Dropped Calls. Additionally,  Audio Quality is an aggregate of Audio Clarity and Audio Delay (latency, jitter) performance factors. The study compares the relative performance of PSTN (regular analog) service, Broadband VoIP providers (e.g. Vonage, Verizon VoiceWing, EarthLink trueVoice, AT&ampT CallVantage etc), and cable voice services (e.g. Time Warner Digital Phone, Comcast Digital Voice). Test calls were placed from residential locations in New York and San Francisco.

Keynote ranked VoIP Service Providers in two categories: Reliability and Audio Quality. The Service Availability, Call Completion, Average Answer Time, and Dropped Audio performance factors all contribute to the Reliability ranking.

In the summary report they only list the top 3 VoIP provider names and then have Provider D - I as anonymous. You have to purchase the full report to see the names. I’m guessing Packet8 and Vonage are somewhere in this anonymous list.

Provider                   Reliability Points    Rank 
AT&T Landline                    996                1
Time Warner Digital Phone        925                2
Verizon VoiceWing                872                3
Provider D                       859                4
Provider E                       793                5
Provider F                       687                6
Provider G                       643                7
Provider H                       408                8
Provider I                       374                9

Audio Quality
Provider                   Reliability Points     Rank 
Comcast Digital Voice            901                1
Verizon VoiceWing                609                2
AT&T Landline                    506                3
Provider D                       500                4
Provider E                       487                5
Provider F                       480                6
Provider G                       462                7
Provider H                       252                8
Provider I                       0                  9

General Observations
• The best providers always deliver dial tine and connect the call to the number dialed in a timely fashion.
• Only one of the providers in the study failed to provide dial tone 99.9% of the time or better.
• All providers had very small percentages of calls with dropped audio, but only two providers had zero calls with dropped audio.
• One VoIP provider required two seconds more than any other voice provider to connect calls after dialing.
• Most providers had slightly more audio delay and slightly lower MOS in Wave 6 as compared to Wave 5.
• Eight of the nine providers in the study had a better call completion rate in Wave 6 than was evidenced in the Wave 5 results.

What’s amazing is that Comcast has been adding a ton of new VoIP customers each quarter. In fact, Comcast has become the nation’s fourth largest phone company. The cable company has signed up four million VoIP customers in just the last two years. Relatedly, Forrester Research analysts have projected that Cable VoIP providers will claim up to 80% of the 28.4 million residential VoIP users by 2013. This forecast includes an expected growth from the approximately 19 million installed lines in 2008.

Check out the summary report.

Tags: AT&T, Comcast, Comcast Digital Voice, jitter, Keynote Systems, latency, MOS, PackeҐ, PSTN, Verizon VoiceWing, voip, Vonage

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Cellphones

Well, now isn’t this something? Best Buy has its fancy little iPhone 3G, but it’ll be Wally World offering up the G1 outside of official T-Mobile outlets. As we’d heard yesterday, 550 Walmart stores across the country will begin selling the Android-powered handset beginning tomorrow, and folks who opt to pick one up here versus a traditional T-Mob store will save $31.11. Yep — according to company spokeswoman Melissa O′Brien, the new / upgrade-eligible customer price for a Walmart-sourced G1 will be just $148.88 with a 2-year agreement. Wait, what? You already purchased your ˇ at the full price? They always said the early bird pays the premium… or something along those lines.

T-Mobile G1 coming to Walmart for $148.88 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

While many of you are still waiting for T-Mobile’s RC28 update to hit your G1, at least one reader has trumped us all. KoSoVaR is sitting on fresh, over-the-air software after receiving an update notice a few minutes ago. The process rebooted his G1 “a few times” only to stabilize at RC29. Hard to say what’s new at this point but we’ll get back to you if we hear about anything more than bug fixes.

P.S. For what it’s worth, we’re still kicking it old skool back at RC19 — waiting… and waiting… for the automagic to begin.

Update: Another reader is up on RC29 now as well. Took 5 minutes start to finish and required a single reboot. Snap of the update screens after the break.

[Thanks, KoSoVaR and David]

Continue reading Mystery RC29 update hits T-Mobile’s G1

Mystery RC29 update hits T-Mobile’s G1 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Cellphones

With all sorts of outlandish figures being bandied about regarding sales / expectations for the T-Mobile G1, someone intimately close to the situation has finally chimed in with his take. Peter Chou, chief executive and co-founder of HTC, stated in a recent interview that it expects to ship over 600,000 G1s this year, and while he wouldn’t come clean on an exact figure for 2009, he did proclaim that “in general, we think we can do more next year.” We aren’t betting the farm that his prediction will come true or anything, but it certainly falls within the realm of feasibility. Oh, and if you were wondering how Mr. Chou planned on convincing potential iPhone buyers to opt for the G1 instead, he reckons that the full QWERTY keypad will handle that for him — after all, “Americans are very keyboard-oriented.”

[Via mocoNews]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones

It looks like getting up and running on an unactivated G1 is going to be a little easier than Apple made it for iPhone users. No jailbreak required. All you really need to do is beg, steal or borrow an active T-Mobile SIM card and slip it in the phone for the duration of the setup process (it should only take a few minutes). Once you’ve enabled WiFi you can go back to your old SIM: you’re ready to browse the web, run your apps and do everything you expect your Android-powered phone to do (except talk on the phone). If you’d like to get in on this action, check out the read link for the step-by-step instructions.

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Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

Filed under: Cellphones

Well, it looks like G1 owners (or some, at least) will be getting a bit of an unexpected surprise when they turn on their brand new device tomorrow, as T-Mobile is apparently already set to start pushing out the very first OTA software update for the phone. Nothing too major, it seems, but the update will include a fix for a bug that has prevented folks from listening to songs on Amazon, as well as a number of other unspecified “enhancements.” As with all OTA updates, however, it’s likely everyone won’t get their fix at once, and T-Mobile helpfully recommends that you simply just “wait,” or “wait a little longer” to make sure you get yours, or check your software version to see if you may have gotten the update without noticing (the new release is version RC28).

[Via TmoNews]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Cellphones

Being that the T-Mobile G1 launched officially today in the US of A, it makes sense that the phone’s marketplace for applications would open its doors as well. A recent post over at the Android Developers Blog has affirmed that users can now indulge in over 50 apps, and moreover, it has laid out details surrounding the process for getting your own app in there. Beginning on Monday, prospective devs will be forced to “register and pay a one time $25 application fee” in order to ensure that they’re “authenticated and responsible for their apps.” After that, the programs will be “made available to users without further validation or approval.” Starting in ̫, developers will be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps, and similar to Apple’s revenue model, devs will get 70% of the revenue, though it should be noted that Google won′t be taking a percentage of the remainder. Go at it, you eager developer you — we fully expect a gratis app showing off your handiwork to emerge on the 27th.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/T_Mobile_G1_now_available’; Now that T-Mobile’s systematic discrimination against non-T-Mobile customers (how dare they?) has come to an end, we can all exhale, pull out our credit cards and get to maxin’ out the plastic. That’s right — the Android-powered ˇ is now available for sale from T-Mob’s website to all comers, though we’re only seeing the black and bronze models listed at the moment and both are tagged with an ominous “extremely limited availability” label which tells us they probably won′t be there long. $179.99’s the price on two-year contract, and if they do sell out online, don′t sweat it just yet — sweep your local stores today.

[Thanks, Elisha]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones

We really, really like where this is going. First came the Zune puppet rap vid, followed by the equally astounding Large Hadron Collider joint. Now, we’ve got a video for all you G1 pre-orderers that’s sure to get your noggin′ bobbin′ as you patiently await the arrival of Android. And just as any true rap should, it unashamedly bashes the iPhone, Instinct and most every other “rival″ on the market today. The best 3 minutes and 56 seconds of your day are about to occur — click on past the break and get it going. Word?

[Via Phandroid, thanks Rob]

Continue reading Android rap shows the G1 love, gives Google some street cred

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Last summer, Sprint was the laughing stock of the major US carriers in terms of customer service. Fast forward 15 months, and the very same carrier is now sitting atop the pile. A recent report compiled by Pali Research has found that Sprint’s wireless customer care response times were best in class, and just 2.5 years ago in its first survey, Sprint was dead last. The carrier answered a whopping 91% of calls that researchers placed to the care center in under 30 seconds, while 99% of calls were answered within 2 minutes. If you’re curious how the other guys did, try this: Verizon grabbed the silver with 85%, T-Mobile followed with 43% and AT&T took home the award of shame with just 33% of test calls answered within half a minute. So, the real question is: have you Sprint customers noticed an uptick in service levels? And are you AT&T subscribers growing increasingly impatient?

[Via phoneArena]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Prior to the G1’s stealth launch, Google′s on-device Android Market was a busy place, teeming with some 50-plus apps seemingly ready to win the hearts and minds of early adopters anxious to outfit their G1s with… oh, you know, simple pleasures like a video player or the ability to change the UI’s font size. We guess that wasn’t part of Mountain View’s strategy, though, with all but 13 applications having been removed today — presumably a knee-jerk response to the knowledge that phones were starting to make their way into paying customers’ hands. Truth be told, this was probably the plan all along; the Market had gotten a little dirty from both developer and Google testing, and we′re figuring they were just looking to tidy things up a bit to make it presentable on launch day before it got nasty dirty with a flood of developers outside the confines of Google’s own Android Developer Challenge. Either that, or there’s some deep, dark conspiracy lurking involving the unceremonious removal of any content that upsets Schmidt, Brin, or Page.

Update: We’re hearing this is all due to an update to the Market — older apps that haven’t been updated to meet the Market’s specs aren’t available at the moment. Thanks, everyone!

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

October 22 was supposed to be the date, but you know, when you add in the shipping fudge factor, buffoonery was destined to ensue — and sure enough, G1s are already showing up on some buyers′ doorsteps days ahead of the official release. These pre-orders were only open to existing T-Mobile customers, which means us AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Alltel types are gritting our teeth and shaking our fists at merciless gods right about now. Wednesday, here we come. Anyone else nab theirs?

[Thanks, cWj]

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Original post by Chris Ziegler

At ITEXPO I met with John Nahm, CEO and co-founder of Phonevite, an intriguing VoIP-enabled one-to-many broadcasting service that takes the concept of the popular Evite email-centric invitations service and extends it to the phone world.

Calvin Kim is the other co-founder and he actually founded Dialpad, one of the pioneers of VoIP with their Java-based click-to-call application. Dialpad was later sold to Yahoo. Calvin is now the CTO of Phonevite.

John explained he wants Phonevite to be like Evite but for the phone. Phonevite was incorporated in January of last year and has reached profitability with their premium customers. They offer a free service with the only limitation that you can only blast a maximum of 25 phone numbers/contacts.

John explained that the largest users of his service includes lots of schools, Boy Scouts, soccer / little leagues, emergency rescue teams, and emergency management teams. The most important feature of Phonevite is that it trumps email when it is a time-critical matter and users don’t check email regularly. Or even if they do check email, John explained what if each of the soccer team’s parents are on the way to practice, it starts raining and the coach wants to cancel. They will most likely not be email accessible while driving. Using Phonevite you can blast the entire team’s mobile phone list announcing that practice has been canceled.

John pointed out that SMS is an alternative, but it has a limit to how many people you can SMS and it is difficult to describe situation in the 150 character SMS limit. The premium service offers a tiered bonus structure for tiered VoIP calling rates. Also, schools and non-profits get a discount.

At ITEXPO Phonevite is announcing their API. This will enable websites such as
freeconferencing.com, Evite,  socializr, pinger, etc. to directly tie into Phonevite’s service.

Interestingly, the back-end doesn′t use Asterisk, the open-source PBX platform. John told me they developer the back-end VoIP calling interface themselves. They do leverage other open source software though, such as MySQL.

Tags: API, Asterisk, Calvin Kim, ITEXPO, John Nahm, mobile phone, Phonevite, SMS, VoIP

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Transportation, Wireless

We dig the idea in theory, we really do, but we can definitely see this causing more harm than good. Starting this fall, San Francisco will begin a trial involving wireless parking sensors in 6,000 of its 24,000 metered spaces, enabling antsy drivers to be alerted via street signs or cellphones when a spot becomes available. Only one problem — give 50 anxious motorists the same message that a single spot is unoccupied, and you’ve just created a bona fide mess. Though it′d probably be fun to watch from the sidelines, wouldn′t you agree?

[Via Cor⟁]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation

We have all ideas (okay, so we know it for a fact) that the Los Angeles Traffic Cam was designed for those living in LA, but we can′t help but imagine how drivers in less congested cities could use this to make their own daily commute not seem so bad. NBC4 and 3rd Dimension have teamed up to beam out live video and nearly live still shots from some 270 LA-area traffic cameras to those with compatible mobiles, and being that it’s ad-supported, the whole thing is completely free to end users. Of course, for all you know, they could just loop a clip of gridlocked traffic during rush hour and call it reality. Sadly, said idea would almost work.

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Original post by Darren Murph