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Do you need to get your name or new idea out there? Have you been searching for the perfect opportunity to get brand recognition from a global audience? Maybe you want to do some networking with brilliant telecom professionals, or you want to support and shape the future of communications technology. If any of these [...]
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Siremis v5.3.0 is out – the open source web management interface for Kamailio SIP Server.
This version comes with major changes and many new features, among them the removal of legacy flash charts (now uses pure JS), make the code compatible with PHP 7.x and web views to manage many new modules added up to Kamailio v5.3.x, including the replacement of MI control interface with JSONRPC. This is the first full release in 5.x series of Siremis.
Step by step installation tutorial, screenshots and changelog are available on the web at:
The deployment of Siremis can be also done using Docker, see the guidelines at:
Siremis project is hosted on Github at:
Do not forget about the next Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany! The first group of speakers has been announced, the schedule in under work, news about the event agenda to be released very soon! See you there!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
We’re back in Orlando for TADHack-mini Orlando #4, the weekend before Enterprise Connect 2020! You can see what we got up to at TADHack-mini Orlando 2019, as well as 2018, and 2017.
What? It’s a hackathon about using the Apidaze, Asterisk, Inference Solutions, Intelepeer, and Simwood resources to solve problems that matter to you in your work, home and community life. A focus for this year is intelligent assistants / bots.
Who? Anyone who’s interested, web dev skills will help.
Why? To showcase the power of sponsors’ resources, network with great people, and possibly win some of the $5k in prizes + other goodies (free access to Enterprise Connect 2020 – previous winners can tell you about all the fun stuff).
But I’m going to Code Camp! We’re stretching the TADHack agenda so you can still attend Code Camp, then come over to TADHack on Saturday late afternoon / evening, and have more time on Sunday. We’re going to help you have a jam-packed and very successful weekend!
But what about COVID-19? We’ve always accepted remote entries. So whether you’re not able to make it to Orlando in-person, or you’re avoiding crowds because of COVID-19, you can still take part. I’ll be in Orlando looking forward to all your entries.
Go to the TADHack Orlando site to learn more about the excellent resources from Apidaze, Asterisk, Inference Solutions, Intelepeer, and Simwood.
We have TADHack Global planned for the weekend of October 10th / 11th (Saturday and Sunday). Website is coming soon.
TADHack Global is the largest global hackathon for 6 years straight, since the first TADHack in 2014, and 2020 will make it 7 years. You can see some of what we’ve achieved here: http://blog.tadhack.com/2018/11/09/reviewing-5-years-of-tadhack/. The TADHack YouTube channel has had over 2.5k hours of viewing from 70k views.
Given COVID-19 one or two locations may run online this year rather than in-person, we’ll ensure TADHack Global happens in the safest way for everyone involved. We have always accepted remote entries at TADHack, ever since our first TADHack in 2014.
In September we’ll finalize the exact plans location by location. Regardless, we’ll be hacking together both in-person and over the internet on the 10th and 11th October. A great demonstration of how communications enables us to JFDI regardless of the situation.
If you’re interested in running a TADHack Global location whether its in-person or online please let me know.
Join us at TADHack!
Follow us on twitter @TADHack
The post TADHack-mini Orlando, 28-29 March, + TADHack Global Prep appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
Last week, I wrote a bit about the Unified Communications value proposition and the panel I was on at IT Expo. When preparing for that panel, I went back to a report we commissioned over a year ago to try and quantify the UC gains. And I also saw this blog I wrote about a year ago on the topic. This got a decent amount of traffic, and many found the information useful. So I decided to repost it for those who may not have seen this last year. And at the bottom, you’ll see a link to the report.
Businesses buy new phone systems for a variety of reasons. There could be a new location. The old phone system might have been outgrown or may just be too old and about to fall over dead. The business could be looking for new features beyond just voice or may be replacing a plain old phone system that ended up costing too much (because of PSTN trunks for high maintenance fees). These are all good reasons. Today, most new phone systems are of the Unified Communications (UC) type – offering features beyond just basic voice.
The drivers for buying UC phone systems that you typically hear are:
These are typical since, with UC, there can be other forms of communication, such as instant messaging, that can be utilized while occupied with some other communication activity, such as during a conference call. Or you remain connected with your smartphone outside of the actual business environment so you can “expand” your office hours. Or because all the calls are on IP, the business can save mobile phone and PSTN trunks charges. Add this all up, and the business scores efficiency and productivity gains.
Sangoma partnered with the Eastern Management Group to undertake a wide-ranging survey aimed at providing some quantified data on value improvements in different areas to help explain the Unified Communications value proposition. The report can be obtained here.
The post Putting Some Numbers Behind the Unified Communications Value Proposition appeared first on Sangoma.
When most people think of WebRTC they think of video communications. Similarly, home surveillance is usually associated with video streaming. That’s why I was surprised to hear about a home security project that leverages WebRTC not for video streaming, but for the DataChannel. WebRTC’s DataChannel might not demo as well as a video call, but […]
The post Private Home Surveillance with the WebRTC DataChannel (Ivelin Ivanov) appeared first on webrtcHacks.
Recently a new module has been imported in Kamailio git master branch – secsipid:
It implements the IETF extensions for Secure Telephone Identity (RFC8224, RFC 8588), known as STIR and SHAKEN. Their scope is to detect and prevent SPIT (SIP/Telephony spam calls) and robo-calling, allowing the SIP/VoIP providers and carriers to assert and validate the identity of callers. Currently the authorities in USA are pushing for implementation of those extensions, in the first phase by the major telecom companies.
The module relies on a library made available by Asipto at:
The secsipidx project offers also a CLI tool and an HTTP API server for checking or building SIP identity.
You can learn more about this module, or STIR and SHAKEN in general, at SimCon3Â (March 5-6, 2020, in Bristol, UK) and the next Kamailio World Conference (April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany) where Daniel, the author of the module, will participate.
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Toll Fraud
A common attack against business phone systems where the malicious agent attempts to gain access to your long-distance, toll-bearing trunks. If the attacker is able to make calls using your long-distance account, they can make calls for free, while you are left liable for the fees.
Phone System Exploitation
Hackers can gain access to a phone system via endpoints by either exploiting vulnerabilities in the unprotected system or using software to crack the system administrator’s credentials. These credentials give unlimited access to system functionality and stored information.
Denial of Service (DoS)
An attack which compromises your system in such a way that it is inaccessible to users. DoS attacks can target specific services such as access to remote UC features and the ability to dial out trunks – or even bring down your entire system.
Social Engineering
A social engineering attack occurs when a malicious agent is able to gain access to your system by fraudulently networking with your staff. For example, an attacker may pretend to be a member of your IT department in order to obtain network or endpoint access.
Man in the Middle
This attack occurs when your encrypted traffic is intercepted. While your services appear to be working normally, if the attacker can intercept authentication credentials, they can use this information to perform a DoS or Toll Fraud attack or gain access to privileged information.
SBCs are designed to understand SIP traffic at the application layer, automatically detecting VoIP threats and taking action. You should use an SBC to protect against malicious attacks, to connect remote workers without opening up ports in your firewall, and with cloud services or hosted phone systems.
The post [Infographic] Mitigating Common VoIP Security Threats appeared first on Sangoma.
ClueCon Sale! ClueCon is having a half way there sale! We're only 6 months away from the developers conference of the year, so make sure you take advantage of this special discount before February 24! ClueCon.com ClueCon is a conference for developers by developers: an annual technology conference held every summer hosted by the team [...]
The post Half Way There! appeared first on FreeSWITCH.
Last Thursday, I was on a UC panel at ITEXPO. This was an interesting panel because it was about us as employees being bombarded by all kinds of communication tools and whether these tools are really helping us, or whether are we just robotically utilizing these tools all day. Like, are you really able to get anything done? By the way, this is not really a new topic. When email first came into business, these very kind of panels were formed to discuss the use of email and whether they were useful or not. At that time, some companies were turning off email for an hour a day. What goes around comes around!
Anyway, as readers of this blog know, the topic of quantifying UC productiveness has been top of mind for me. Sangoma sponsored two different studies into this in the last couple of years (one with Eastern Management Group, one with Frost and Sullivan).
Part of the panel, though, also delved into whether an organization has “too many” tools of the same ilk. Like marketing uses a different one from engineering who uses different UC tools from support and then it’s an issue to “talk” to that one group in their “language.” And that can be a problem in larger companies.
However, launching new products and services is also important. To me, this is about the entire UC value prop. There are many elements of UC, and it’s doubtful a user, during the initial deployment, utilizes all of them from the get-go. We frequently see customers who like 1 or 2 elements of UC and that’s why they buy it, yet over time they really like other functions that weren’t part of the purchasing decision. And these other functions enable new services that they hadn’t thought of before. For instance, with mobility, your office phone number can ring on your smartphone. And since your smartphone is with you at all times, maybe you can offer expanded service support times and charge more for that.
Anyway, it was fun and productive.
The post [ITEXPO Panel] Using Unified Communications to Convert Wasted Time to Productive Work appeared first on Sangoma.
We’re excited to announce IntelePeer as a 2020 sponsor of TADHack-mini Orlando.
IntelePeer delivers an omni-channel communications platform as a service built for the enterprise, Atmosphere® CPaaS. They believe that business communications are meant for more than just simple interactions – they should enable businesses to deliver truly delightful experiences.
With their voice, messaging, ready-to-use applications, open APIs, and real time analytics, companies can build and integrate communications-enabled workflows to create world-class customer experiences and improve business processes through automation. Their full-stack solution is backed by a rock-solid network and a team of experts who provide nothing but award-winning customer service.
Building on the intelligent assistant theme of Enterprise Connect TADHack Orlando, developers can focus their hacks on a specific use case scenario that will improve a business process by implementing chat bots or virtual assistants using technologies like IBM Watson Assistant or Google Dialogflow. IntelePeer makes it quick and easy to build out comprehensive communications flows using their Atmosphere® SmartFlows (see video below), Engage, and Analytics platforms. There’s $1k in prize money available for hacks built on Intelepeer.
For those attending Enterprise Connect 2020, make sure to mark the “Hackathon Report: Focus on Intelligent Agents/Assistants” at 2:00 PM on Monday 30th March in Room Sun D. You’ll see the power of Intelepeer’s Atmosphere® CPaaS and the ease with which solutions (hacks) can be created within only 24 hours to solve real-world problems. It’s going to be fun!
The post IntelePeer Sponsors TADHack-mini Orlando appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
We’re excited to announce VoIP Innovations are back sponsoring TADHack-mini Orlando. VoIP Innovations (through the company they bought, Apidaze) has sponsored TADHack since its founding in 2014.
This year VoIP Innovations brings with it Sangoma, who bought them in 2019. What’s really cool is Sangoma have 2 prizes this year. One $1k pot for hacks on Apidaze, and a second $1k pot for hacks on Asterisk (the oldest, most popular, and widest used open source telecom project in the world). They’re ideally looking for hacks that mash-up both Apidaze and Asterisk.
Sangoma has the broadest enterprise communications stack in the industry. Their stack includes open source projects like Asterisk and FreePBX, communication APIs from Apidaze, almost every type of enterprise communications platform and service (both cloud and on-premise), through to carrier services.
With Sangoma, businesses of all sizes can find affordable cloud and on-premise enterprise communications systems with advanced functionality.
For those attending Enterprise Connect 2020, make sure to mark the “Hackathon Report: Focus on Intelligent Agents/Assistants” at 2:00 PM on Monday 30th March in Room Sun D. You’ll see the power of Apidaze and Asterisk, and the ease with which solutions to real-world problems (hacks) can be created within only 24 hours. It’s going to be fun!
On related note. Sangoma announced this week Astricon 2020 on the 6-8 October in Orlando. Astricon is THE Asterisk user event. TADSummit Americas <website coming soon> a sister event to TADHack, will be co-located with Astricon this year. From the first ever TADSummit in November of 2013 came the idea for TADHack. We’ll be visiting Orlando twice this year 
The post VoIP Innovations is back, and brings Sangoma to sponsor TADHack-mini Orlando appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
We’ve all been there. The dreaded phone call. “It’s not you, it’s me.” “I just see us going in different directions.” Or the one we all secretly hope never happens, “There is someone else.” Ending a relationship of any kind can be an uncomfortable situation. A relationship that is often overlooked is the one between a business and their phone system. A lot of businesses are stuck using dated analog or PRI lines with a legacy PBX or might be trapped in a hosted phone system contract that catfished you into what you thought was a deal, but ended up costing you considerably more than you originally agreed to. Here are some helpful tips on how to break up with your current phone system and move on to your dream communication solution.
Review your Contracts
If you are using a legacy on-premise phone system, chances are that you own the hardware, but you are probably paying for analog or PRI phone service. If you are already using a hosted VoIP phone system, you probably signed a yearly contract. Take the time to see when that service provider contract is up and if you are free to move to another provider. If you don’t, you might end up paying a fee to end the contract prematurely.
Check your Number Portability
Once you’ve determined that you are free to move to another provider (or if you really don’t care and have set aside the money to pay your way out of the contract), you will need to make sure your current numbers or DIDs are portable to your new provider. This will ensure that you can keep the same number on business cards, signs, and websites. Make sure to port your numbers over to your new phone service provider before you cancel your service. Once service is cancelled, you may not be able to recover your numbers. In a few rare cases, providers may hold onto their numbers regardless and may not release them. By doing your homework ahead of time and checking your number portability, you can get ahead of this issue rather than dealing with vendor breakup regret.
Put it in writing, as well as a phone call
Just like breaking up with someone via text message is a classless act, being vague with your vendor is very unprofessional. Most contracts require written notice 30/60/90 days in advance to cancel services. Having a paper trail by sending an email, as well as a phone call with the vendor will make the “break up” official and give you something to reference with the coming conversations.
Take time to self reflect
By now you should have an idea of what you are looking for in a new phone system based on your experience with your old one. In order to make entering into your new phone system relationship easier, it’s good to do a self evaluation and know where you stand. What is your current bandwidth and will it support a hosted environment? (By the way, we recommend 100Kbps per concurrent call if you are going hosted). Do you have the correct cabling in place everywhere a phone will be located? Do you require standard or gig phones? Do you have the resources in your office to implement a new system or will you need assistance from a local partner? Before moving on, know your technical environment and make any improvements needed before getting tied down again.
Vendor speed dating
Although in actual relationships dating before the breakup is looked down upon, with vendors it’s actually respected. While you are window shopping, ask for a demo or see if there is a free trial so you can experience the service without the commitment. This is an excellent way to evaluate vendors and see which one will check off your requirement list. Remember to keep your standards high and hold vendors accountable for what they promise. Our free trial for Switchvox even includes D60 IP phones and softphones so you can really test drive everything Switchvox has to offer.
Since your head is probably spinning and your gut is filled with dread, let’s do a quick recap. First, review your contracts to see if you are free to move to another provider and you don’t get burned with fees. Second, check your number portability and set up the porting to the new vendor before you make the switch. Once numbers are ported, then you can break up with your legacy phone system. Next, when you do “break up” with your vendor, do so in writing and over the phone so you have evidence and an established timeline. Be sure to review your existing infrastructure and make any improvements before the new phone system moves in. Lastly, don’t be afraid to see what is out there. Test drive with free trials and ask for demos to see which vendor is right for you.
There is no shame in our game! Check out our Switchvox Cloud free trial and experience a real production environment, test drive our D-Series phones plus softphones, and see what it feels like to truly have all features included. Give us a call today. Don’t worry, we won’t tell your current legacy phone system provider.
The post How to Break Up with your Legacy Phone System… appeared first on Sangoma.
By Abbi Minessale We’ve all been there before. We have all experienced the horrors of a bad Interactive Voice Response (IVR). You call the pharmacy with the intent of talking to a pharmacist. But to your absolute terror, you end up chatting with a robot. You called to ask a human person a question about your medication but [...]
The post How to build an IVR that doesn’t suck appeared first on FreeSWITCH.
Sangoma today announced we have signed definitive agreements to purchase .e4, based in Traverse City, Michigan. .e4 is Sangoma’s leading valued added distributor focused on open source offerings and a vital part of both the FreePBX and Asterisk ecosytems. The completion of this deal is expected to occur within our quarter.
This deal significantly strengthens Sangoma’s sales and support for both FreePBX and Asterisk, as well as further demonstrates Sangoma’s deep commitment to the open source market.
.e4 is led by Michael White, a pioneer in the open source communications market for almost two decades and a leader who is well known and very well respected in the community. Mike and the talented .e4 team will take on the leading role within Sangoma spearheading FreePBX/PBXact and Asterisk sales.
Sangoma welcomes .e4 to the team!
The post Sangoma Announces Definitive Agreement to Purchase .e4 appeared first on Sangoma.
SDP has been a frequent topic, both here on webrtcHacks as well as in the discussion about the standard itself. Modifying the SDP in arcane ways is referred to as SDP munging. This post gives an introduction into what SDP munging is, why its done and why it should not be done. This is not […]
The post Not a Guide to SDP Munging appeared first on webrtcHacks.
Kamailio SIP Server v5.1.10 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.1.9. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.
Important note: v5.1.10 is the last planned release in the 5.1 series, marking the end of official maintenance for branch 5.1. Consider to upgrade as soon as possible to 5.2.x or 5.3.x series to ensure you are running supported releases.
Kamailio® v5.1.10 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.1 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.1.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.1 branch.
Resources for Kamailio version 5.1.10
Source tarballs are available at:
Detailed changelog:
Download via GIT:
# git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio # cd kamailio # git checkout -b 5.1 origin/5.1
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
Modules’ documentation:
What is new in 5.1.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.1.0:
Note: the branch 5.1 is an old stable branch. The latest stable branches are now 5.2 and 5.3, at this time with v5.3.2 being the latest stable release. Be aware that you may need to change the configuration files and database structures from 5.1.x to 5.2.x or 5.3.x. See more details about it at:
Do not forget about the next Kamailio World Conference, the 8th edition, April 27-29, 2020, the event will take place again in Berlin, Germany. The first group of speakers should be announced in the near future! Stay tuned!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Sangoma has concluded a thorough investigation into a misconfiguration of an internal, long unused customer support ticketing system historically used by Sangoma’s support and engineering departments to resolve IT and customer issues. As part of that investigation, we were obliged to comply with applicable legal requirements and procedures and have reported the incident to the appropriate legal authorities: we are now permitted to make this public.
While the investigation found no malicious use, we want to be transparent about this incident with all customers and reassure them that we are taking it very seriously and holding ourselves accountable.
Our investigation has determined that a permission change made to the two deprecated Jira projects, by the IT team, on Nov 12 2019 allowed public read only exposure of the data. In specific search phrases, the contents of those Jira tickets were being offered as part of search engine results. Individuals would have been able to click on the search result and enter into a specific Jira ticket offered by the search engine.
We became aware of the issue on Dec 17, 2019 and, on the same day, Sangoma IT remediated the configuration to restrict the jira access and prevent any further unauthorized access. This issue was specific to two internal deprecated Jira projects: INFRA & SIP, that have NOT been in-use for a number of years and were only used for internal support cases by IT and Cloud Services support teams.
Our investigation confirmed that substantially all of the records did not contain any personal or CPNI information in accordance with our standard practices. After reviewing the contents of all Sangoma INFRA & SIP Tickets that were exposed to the internet and cross referenced the tickets to the access logs, we determined that there were two cases of possible exposure. None of the data exposed was material and we informed our affected customers.
We are committed to the privacy and security of our customers and are taking action to prevent future occurrences of this issue. We have updated our procedures to make sure that such changes do not occur in the future: alerts will be triggered on configuration changes along with scheduled period reviews of public facing systems.
We want to sincerely apologize and reassure our customers that we are taking it seriously and working diligently to make sure that such mistakes do not happen again.
The post Access Misconfiguration of Internal Legacy Customer Support Ticketing System appeared first on Sangoma.
The ability to capture leads and close a sale is firmly wrapped up in seamless communication through your dealership’s website, CRM, and business phone system; contact information should be prevalent. Even after a sale, customer retention and loyalty is based on the quality of customer satisfaction, which again, comes down to communications. Investing in solutions that enable seamless and effective communications is vital in this competitive industry, and the need spans beyond a traditional phone system.
The Switchvox Unified Communications (UC) system has been used in auto dealerships for years, benefiting every department’s unique communication needs. Switchvox boasts advanced and flexible features that work well across multiple locations, so multi-site dealerships can seamlessly connect to the same solution. Implementation of Switchvox is simple and can be done with little or no IT staff. Here is a quick look at the features within Switchvox that can help your auto dealership:
Unified Communications is expanding and streamlining the way auto dealerships communicate- from the beginning of the sale to ongoing customer care. Access our Switchvox for Auto Dealerships guide for a detailed overview of every Switchvox feature your dealership can benefit from.
The post Must-Have Unified Communications Features for Auto Dealerships appeared first on Sangoma.
Series preface: We generally lean toward long posts here at webrtcHacks, but not all interesting topics warrant a lot of new text. Sometimes briefer is better. So to better address the many topics that fit into this category, we are starting a new Minimum Duration series. Here is our first post under this set covering […]
The post Min Duration Series – Part 1: Perfect Negotiation appeared first on webrtcHacks.
SIP trunking is growing. According to the Eastern Management Group, the global SIP trunking market was approximately valued at $14.4 billion in 2018 and projected to grow 7.6% annually through 2020. The predominant reason for this is the growth of IP phone systems, which need to be connected to SIP Trunks.
But if you are a business, what types of SIP trunks should you buy – retail or wholesale?
Retail SIP trunks are designed for small to mid-sized businesses and are bought from a provider in much the same manner as the business buys other forms of telephony. Pricing is typically calculated per line, per month.
Wholesale SIP trunks are intended for service providers and large enterprises that consume large amounts of telephony service, either internally or as a provider. There is often a minimum commitment per month (in the form of usage) that you’d be required to sign up for, and after that, it would be metered. In other words, this is for organizations that utilize a lot of minutes, or intend to resell into the retail business.
There are many other considerations as well, including SMS, fax, and fraud protection. Please read our whitepaper for more information.
Sangoma offers both retail SIP trunking and wholesale SIP trunking.
The post The Difference Between Retail and Wholesale SIP Trunking appeared first on Sangoma.
When I started doing things with Debian in 1997, it was prompted by a visit from another Debian Developer. His generosity with his time, skill and advice have left an impression on me to this day about what it means to be a Debian Developer.
Virtual Moreland was just starting out with a $100,000 grant to get us moving. Some second-hand servers had been donated to run web sites and mail systems, thin clients to build a training lab. I had been using Slackware Linux for a number of years and anticipated using it for Virtual Moreland.
Fortunately, I was introduced to this Developer who pointed out the benefits of the Debian packaging system over Slackware. He brought the latest Debian archive to me on his hard disk so I could get a local mirror up and running more quickly. When I introduce people to Debian today, I hope I can be equally helpful to them.
That was before Debian had a constitution and before SPI, Inc, a US organisation which has excluded many Developers from the membership rolls, had seized a Debian trademark. It was before Debian was persuaded into accepting a Code of Conduct that doesn't have any safeguards for the community.
Today, after more than 20 years, Debian still means much the same thing for me: technical excellence. Giving back to the community. Following the principles laid out in the Debian Social Contract.
Yet being on the Debian keyring has become a poisoned chalice. After the events of 2018, it is clear that people are both added to the keyring and removed for reasons that are related to politics and control.
To put it another way, rogue elements of Debian want to flex their muscles and have the power of an employer, without paying us.
For most of us, our responsibility is to the employers and clients who do pay us, not to those who coerce us and periodically use Debian's otherwise enviable reputation to shame somebody and maintain control through fear. People who prioritize their family, their education or their health are no less Debian Developers than those who submit to control from these would-be masters.
In 2010, the Debian Developers passed a motion allowing non-Developers to be regarded as Developers. In other words, 285 members of the project who voted made a decision that being a Debian Developer was now about status rather than Developer competence. Approximately 600 people, the majority, did not vote at all.
This started us going down a slippery slope.
At the bottom of that slippery slope there is a very hard landing. Developers, with over 30 years experience between them, suddenly deleted under the radar. One of the newest non-developing Developers stands up at a conference to boast about rudely displacing people who were there from the beginning. Neo-Developers who behave like this have nothing in common with the Debian Developers I first met in 1997.
When this type of person decides to indulge herself shaming a volunteer at a time of grief, that is a step too far.
What about those who still feel comfortable with the original and more honest and logical definition of a Developer?
Personally, none of my employers has ever expected me to be on the Debian keyring. Some of them would see it as an unacceptable risk for any employee to be on the Debian keyring if it puts them at risk of coercion. Imagine if you are a manager and somebody outside the company spreads a rumour that one of your employees has been demoted by an external group like Debian, can you afford the damage to productivity and morale? Many other professional developers I speak to don't feel the time demanded by Debian's politics and bureaucracy justifies the benefits of participation. While other communities have grown, Debian reached approximately 1,000 members and has stayed at this level for many years.
I really don't care which Debian keyring I'm on and either should anybody else. As long as I follow the same principles and find creative ways to make my packages available to the world, I'm entirely consistent with the principles Debian was founded on. After all, Linus Torvalds didn't ask for permission to make Linux. Ian Murdock didn't ask for permission to make Debian. If you have done the same work creating packages, why do you need permission to call yourself by the same title, Debian Developer? For that matter, why shouldn't anybody create their own Debian keyring and distribute it to their friends and clients, as long as they are using it to sign packages created in accordance with the principles we all associate with Debian? In other words, is being a Developer about egos or about principles?
If even one person is happily using your packages, you might be a Debian Developer too. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
TADHack-mini Phoenix ran on the 1st and 2nd February, just before Avaya ENGAGE. This was the first time we’ve run an event in Phoenix, a big thank you to Phoenix developer and technology community for your support, including PHX DEVS, {az}devs, #yesphx, ASU, UAT, and many more.
What?
It’s a hackathon about using the Avaya and Google dialogflow resources to solve problems in Education, Healthcare, Energy / Environment, and St. Mary’s Food Bank (Phoenix based charity).
Who?
Anyone who’s interested, web dev skills will help.
Why?
To showcase the power of Avaya OneCloud CPaaS and Google’s Dialogflow, network with great people, and possibly win some of the $15k in prizes plus other goodies (excellent stickers from Github, t-shirts from Avaya, access to the Avaya welcome party and Avaya ENGAGE).
We had close to 100 registrations across in-person and remote. For in-person we bust through our estimates and had to bring in additional tables and chairs. You can see all the pitch videos in the TADHack-mini Phoenix 2020 playlist. Covered here are the winners announced today.
The hack’s name was Goovaya, which if we had a prize category for best name would win that. The team was Vlastik Walker, John Zechlin, and David Anderson. A text-bot that folks can text if they are interested in making a difference in their community by donating or volunteering with St Mary’s Food Bank. They also built a great connector between Avaya CPaaS and Google Dialogflow. They won $4k in the St Mary’s Food Bank category.
Nick Kwiatkowski created a hack names “CEBP Enabled Remote EKG.” A cellular-connected EKG unit that provides the ability for remote healthcare workers to help diagnose, triage and escalate patient cardiovascular problems in realtime. IoT units will alarm out a mediation server and will escalate out via Avaya Cloud to triage nurses and doctors via calls, MMS and more. He won $4k in the healthcare category.
Stephen Drew created Middle School Parent Line. Parent line to report absences, get student gpa and homework, and initiate conversation with teacher via SMS. Technologies used: Avaya CPaaS for voice and SMS, google dialogflow, MongoDB cloud, NiFi, Java/Tomcat. He won $4k in the Education category.
The MRT B-Team was Darryl Jackman and Jambu Atchison. They created a unified Voice & SMS Cloud IVR for scheduling appointments, getting office hours and location, transferring to an agent with caller data screen pop, and self serve diagnosis. Technology used: PHP, nodejs, MySQL, Google Dialogflow, Zang CPaaS. Winning a $1.5k honorable mention.
Mike Cairn’s remote entry hack was called Feed The Hungry with Food Bot. A chatbot that matched food surplus (from food waste) to food demand using Avaya CPaaS and Google Dialogflow. The idea is to reduce food waste from businesses and individuals by publishing a food surplus. This will reduce the amount of food waste, reduce methane in landfills, shorten transportation of food waste and provide food to the needy for free. He won $1.5k honorable mention.
And we finish on a group picture of the hardy souls that stayed until after the end when we remembered to take a group picture – doh!
Below are other excellent hacks that just missed out on a prize.
The hack ‘Health News Now’ was created by Koshin Mariano, Andrew Steinheiser, and Olu Ayandosu. A timely hack given the coronavirus is thought likely to become a pandemic. Health News Now allows you to sign up for news related to health topics in your region. You sign up and select which topics you are interested in and you will get a daily SMS message with a link to the latest news on the Health Topics you selected. Technology Used: Avaya CPaaS for SMS, Google Cloud, NextJS.
The ‘Closed-loop communication with patients’ hack was from ‘GATE6 AGILE WARRIORS’
Communication with patients visiting Radiology and other healthcare organizations is a cumbersome and manual process today. In addition, a missed appointment is an operational overhead for medical administrative staff resulting in an additional cost for every missed appointment. Timely communication with patients can reduce the overhead and deliver superior customer experience to consumers.
Gate6 Agile Warriors have solved this problem by delivering two use cases –
a) Deliver timely SMS messages to patients for appointment reminders. Gate6 has taken an existing appointment reminder product for our customers and enhanced it with SMS notification. In addition, allow patients to reschedule appointments via a closed-loop communication by calling out the patient and connecting them with admin staff.
b) AI-based Facial recognition system alerting physician and admin staff upon patient arrival. When a patient arrives for their appointment at the healthcare clinic, our artificial intelligence system recognizes the patient via webcam and notifies the contextual information about the patient (picture, arrival time, profile) to the admin staff and physician via SMS.
Technologies Used – All of our services are deployed on Google GCP cloud. Our invocations are made from our cloud services to Avaya CPaaS cloud SMS and Call APIs.
Github URL – https://github.com/gate6/sdiriskportal/tree/demo
The My Guardian hack came from Voiceflow. The project link is here.
The team ‘IRBIDS_ I read but I don’t speak’, included Marco Castro, Carlos Daza, Marlon Acosta, and Juan Pablo Morales.
They created a phone app that uses artificial intelligence to help improve the pronunciation of non-native speakers using the phone. There is a voice app that you can call at +1 916 860 1204. The app will ask you to repeat a given phrase and check how well you did it. Your score will be saved on a database and you will be able to see how it improves over time. The results are available on http://irbids.ingenian.com
The whole voice flow is made using the resources provided by Avaya and available at https://cloud.zang.io This means the phone number used, and the voice routing and the voice recording are provided by Avaya.
The information is available on https://github.com/jpmoralesingenian/irbidsapi
Arizona Food Bank Mobile from Miko Aro, Xcel Labs.
From the Avaya team we had a great Showcase on the power of their platform with Universal Translation.
St Marys Food Finder Flutter App by Allan Jackson. This Flutter application provides direct access to ST MARYs Food Bank Web site and the Arizona Food Banks Websites. Application is constructed with Google Flutter and does not use Avaya or Google Cloud resources
The post TADHack-mini Phoenix 2020 Summary appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
In 2020, Tennis Australia presented a special trophy to Margaret Court, one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Court claimed all four major titles in the year 1970 and won a total of 24 grand slams: Serena Williams has only won 23 so far and Roger Federer only has 20.
While there is no doubt as to Court's greatness as an athlete, her views on LGBT people and their rights are controversial and not consistent with the majority of people in the sport today.
Despite these sensitive issues and the offense they cause to LGBT players in particular, Tennis Australia has still gone ahead with a ceremony to recognize Court's achievements as an athlete, right in the middle of the 2020 Australian Open tournament, on center court, the trophy presented to her by another legend of Australian Tennis, Rod Laver.
While doing so, Tennis Australia has made it clear that they are distinguishing her personal views from her sporting achievements, explicitly acknowledging the pain caused by the former. Fellow athletes went further, Martina Navratilova climbing the umpire's chair and using the microphone to denounce Court.
What does diversity mean to you? Is Tennis Australia being true to diversity, by recognising Court's sporting achievements for their athletic merit alone? Or does diversity mean we have to erase those people who don't agree with our own definition of diversity?
Compare this to the recent lynchings in Free Software communities around the world.
In 2014, Brendan Eich, one of the co-founders of Mozilla, was promoted to the position of CEO. A lynching-by-Twitter quickly began, hounding him to resign barely 10 days later because of his concerns about gay marriage.
In 2019, similar tactics were used to attack Richard Stallman (RMS), founder of the Free Software Foundation. RMS has no homophobic or sexist agenda. He is a computer scientist, not a diplomat and some of his communications could have been worded more carefully. Nonetheless, the dogs were let off their leash, things he had written were used out of context to create a false depiction of him as a villain and within a few days, RMS had resigned.
In contrast to Tennis Australia's memorialisation of Margaret Court's achievements, the FSF has set about deleting RMS's legacy, deleting his name from their history. Newspaper headlines have appeared associating RMS with Jeffrey Epstein, yet there is no evidence that they ever had any contact during Epstein's visits to RMS's former workplace, MIT. This type of press coverage is no accident: it is not only intended to hurt RMS personally, it is also intended to undermine his message of freedom. It is an attack that hurts anybody with a personality that prioritizes principles over popularity.
In the short term, some of those behind these attacks may be giving themselves high-fives and pats on the back but in the long term, these lynchings send out a subconscious message to volunteers that we are all disposable. If the founder of the movement can be backstabbed on the cusp of his retirement, anybody can. Tennis Australia's celebration of Margaret Court, however, sends out a message that achievement will always have merit and nobody's achievements will be erased for political expedience. Which type of organization would you rather associate with in the long term?
If you have to force people to fit your definition of diversity, you are not promoting diversity at all.
Genuine diversity has its roots in the principles of equality and human rights. Mob justice, censorship and exclusion on political grounds violate human rights and therefore sabotage the foundation upon which diversity is built.
Educators and administrators are tasked with keeping students safe as they go through the school day. From homeroom to the car line, quick and reliable communication is of the utmost importance. Whether calling the nurse to care for a sick student or office staff connecting with a teacher on the other side of the school, all professionals in a school must be able to communicate efficiently to ensure safety.
Unified Communications (UC) presents a way for schools to streamline all forms of communication in a single platform, including email, voicemail, instant messaging, and more. This helps keep everything centralized and accessible for school officials.
Here are some of the best ways to improve school safety with UC:
Mobile softphones allow teachers to communicate from anywhere in the school
In the event of hazardous weather or other emergency, teachers are often confined to certain areas of the school, such as hallways, classrooms, or the gym. Mobile softphone applications allow office managers and administrators to contact teachers without relying on the intercom system or desk phones.
Instead, teachers can make and receive calls via a mobile phone – all through their office extension.
Integrations with programs like Quicklert help administrators keep parents informed
Today, many administrators use a variety of communications avenues to connect with parents and staff during an urgent situation. This might include using robocalls to inform parents of inclement weather or a delayed start to the school day, or notifying staff of an unauthorized visitor on campus.
A UC solution like Switchvox allows school officials to integrate with programs like Quicklert, which simplifies responses by detecting emergency situations and notifying the correct parties. Check out this article if you’d like to learn more about Quicklert.
Call forwarding rules ensure nurses and resource officers are easy to reach
Within a school, there are plenty of staff members who are on the go, such as nurses, paraprofessionals, and resource officers. These officials must be able to look after students around the campus without losing contact with staff.
Call forwarding rules allow users to have calls sent to softphones or other extensions after a certain number of rings. So, if someone is not at their desk, the call rules set in place can automatically direct the call to the office, a softphone, or another potential responder, helping officials maintain communication during urgent events.
Switchvox offers a complete UC solution for schools looking to implement an affordable, reliable communications system. If you’d like to learn more about the features your school can implement with Switchvox, download our free Switchvox for Education guide.
The post Ways to Improve School Safety with UC appeared first on Sangoma.
The first month of 2020 is almost gone and besides very high activity in the new year on development side (e.g., release of 5.3.2 and 5.2.6, support for structured json logging, two new modules mqtt and secsipid (STIR/SHAKEN), …), Kamailio developers and community members are preparing to attend many events around the world in the first quarter, among them:
Should you be aware of other events where you plan to participate and meet Kamailio folks, let us know via sr-users mailing list and we will add to this list.
Looking forward to meeting many enthusiastic Kamailians along 2020!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
In a previous blog, I wrote about how to get started with Smart Home technology.
One topic that comes up frequently in discussions with people is the use of smart radiator valves (TRVs). Will the energy savings outweigh the costs?
In colder locations, like Ireland, the savings can be more significant than in a similar house in the south of England and it is far more important to investigate these solutions.
The first thing to realize about this issue is that it is not just a cost issue. If you have a room that is always too hot then a smart TRV may be more effective than a regular TRV. On the other hand, if there are heating pipes under the floor of that room and they are not insulated, neither type of TRV will be able to completely limit the heat.
With that in mind, you could start with a single smart TRV in the room where temperature control is most difficult before deciding whether to buy more of them.
Integrated with a centralized control system, as described in my previous blog, the boiler can be switched on and off on demand. Yet this functionality isn't essential: many of the smart TRVs can run standalone, without activating their wireless connectivity. Each TRV has a built-in thermometer so it can monitor the temperature of the room and control the valve. At times when the boiler is running, the TRV will control that room on a standalone basis and when the boiler is off, the TRV does nothing.
Modern boilers may operate with lower fuel consumption at times when many of the radiators are shut down. Older boilers may continue to burn gas at the same rate whether all the radiators are in use or just one. Before buying smart TRVs, you can simply measure gas consumption for an hour with all radiators on and then measure gas consumption for a further hour with all but one radiator switched off.
Instead of buying these TRVs, you may find other algorithms for controlling the boiler are more effective at saving money, even on old boilers. For example, if your smart home system can detect those nights when nobody is home, it can choose not to start the boiler in the morning. This logic could be achieved with motion sensors and door sensors.
On Feb 16, 2020, the federal version of Kari’s law goes into effect. It’s a complex but important topic, and justifies a comprehensive treatment in this update, something Sangoma is uniquely qualified to offer. But it is indeed complicated, so after reading this, if you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to contact us!
The new law applies to business phone systems manufactured, imported, offered for sale or lease, first sold or leased, or installed after February 16, 2020. A key requirement of Kari’s law is to ensure that persons in distress can reach a PSAP by dialing 911, even from a multi-line telephone system (such as exists in a typical business or hotel) that might normally need to dial a prefix such as a 1 or a 9 to get to an outside line.
The purpose of the regulation is to prevent a tragedies like the 2013 death of Kari Hunt that ultimately led to the federal version of Kari’s Law.
Moving forward, regardless of their location in the U.S. or where they are dialing from, persons will be able to immediately connect with emergency responders by dialing 911, with no need to dial a prefix such as 1 or 9. Just dialing 911 from a business phone system, like you would from a house phone or a mobile phone, would get the caller to a PSAP.
An additional requirement of Kari’s Law is that a notification of any E911 calls being made, be sent to a central location at the facility in which the phone system is installed. Ray Baum’s Act is meant to ensure location improvement beyond what currently exists in Kari’s Law by defining “dispatchable location” as “the street address of the calling party, and additional information such as room number, floor number, or other similar information necessary to adequately identify the location of the calling party.” This is because identifying the exact location of the emergency for first responders is critical when dialing 911.
With VoIP, however, location isn’t at the heart of the call. There is no physical location per se such as when using a copper landline. As such, over time, laws were enacted to ensure VoIP landlines had physical locations and a PSAP could understand where a VoIP call was coming from. This law takes it one step further. The business phone system is associated with an address, but what if the system is installed in a large building? Where in the building is the phone where the 911 call is being made? What floor and what room for example? Notifications such as emails, text, or phone calls need to occur to more accurately pinpoint location, and this is at the heart of this law as well.
All of this means if you are a business purchasing a new phone system (or a Sangoma business partner implementing one for your ‘end-user’ customers), you need to ensure this new phone system supports these federal laws. And we’re here to help you every step of the way!
At Sangoma, we have a few lines of business phone systems such as FreePBX, PBXact, and Switchvox.
Sangoma’s on-premise phone systems (Switchvox, FreePBX, and PBXact) are all compliant with the location portions of the Ray Baum Act and Kari’s Law by supporting/requiring that the customer provide their location during initial set up of the phone system. With these systems, the system admin/user will need to configure the dial plan to allow for direct 911 dial. These systems shall also be compliant to the location notification requirements by the February 16, 2020 deadline. If these systems also use Sangoma’s SIPStation SIP trunking solution, they can also provide a quick method of updating their location (by completing an efficient online form).
Our Cloud (or hosted) PBX systems (FreePBX, PBXact, and Switchvox) also operate as a multi-line telephony business system. And these cloud systems are already compliant to the 911 dial directive and the main office address directive. As with our premise systems, we support/require customers to provide their location during the initial setup of the phone system and even for updating location via the online form (see below). Regarding the new ‘notification’ requirements, by February 16th, all new installations of Switchvox Cloud will comply. PBXact Cloud will also comply, but will do so via the end-user admin (or the Sangoma business partner) configuring the system to provide notification of these 911 calls to other onsite staff (as determined by our customers).
For additional information on Sangoma products and Kari’s Law/Ray Baum compliance, please visit https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/ST/E911+Service#E911Service-InitialSetupoftheMasterE911DID, https://support.digium.com/community/s/article/How-do-I-Set-Up-Switchvox-for-Emergency-Dialing, and here for the online location form.
Additionally, individual states may have more stringent timelines and requirements, so please consult with your legal counsel.
For “non-fixed multi-line telephony system” phones or devices which are off-premises, such as a remote-office deskphone connected to the company PBX, businesses have two years to fulfill the regulatory obligations. Another example of this would be the Sangoma UC client softphone called Zulu (installed on your computeror mobile phone). Businesses also have two years in this case.
Beyond the PBX itself, another implication of this law is on SIP trunking because the additional information needs to be carried on the SIP Trunk. It’s critical for your trunking provider to offer 911 services, either as a bundled package or on a standalone basis. The key is to find a service provider whose SIP trunks enable managing E911 effectively and offer the tools you need to be compliant. Sangoma has two SIP trunking solutions that do exactly that: SIPStation and our trunking service from VoIP Innovations, a Sangoma Company (VI).
First, for SIPStation, the trunk needs to know the location, and this is done via the online form as described above. Additionally, when using SIPStation, a user can dial 933 to find the location on record, and then, if required, change the location on record via filling out the form.
And second for our VI trunking service, we have the ability to automate new registrations, edit existing registrations, and remove outdated registrations on any number on any network without having to move your number either through an online portal or via API.
In addition to making sure your phone system is compliant, VI offers several additional solutions that can help achieve compliance for a comprehensive solution that not only takes the new law into account, but the reasons for the law in the first place: safety and the need for immediate coordinated response to assist in an emergency situation. VI’s new Location Monitoring solution provides immediate notification of any 911 call placed by triggering a text message to a group of contacts that allows them to communicate over text but more importantly provides the ability to listen to the 911 in progress. Once on the call, you can talk with the other members of the alert group to coordinate an immediate response.
At Sangoma, as stated above, we offer multiple business phone systems (both premise and cloud) and two SIP trunking services. The good news is Kari’s Law and Ray Baum compliance is possible with all of them. We would also be pleased to work with you to upgrade an existing phone system (if necessary) to ensure compliance. And as mentioned at the outset, this is a lot! So, if you have any questions whatsoever, just reach out to us by going here.
The post Sangoma Products’ Support for Kari’s Law / Ray Baum’s Act and How We Can Help You (and your Customers) Comply appeared first on Sangoma.
Kamailio SIP Server v5.2.6 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.2.5. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.
Kamailio® v5.2.6 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.2 and it represents the latest stable version of this branch. We recommend those running previous 5.2.x versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.2 branch.
Resources for Kamailio version 5.2.6
Source tarballs are available at:
Detailed changelog:
Download via GIT:
# git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio # cd kamailio # git checkout -b 5.2 origin/5.2
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
Modules’ documentation:
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Note that this is a release from the previous stable branch. Currently the latest stable branch is 5.3, with v5.3.2 released out of it.
Do not forget to make the plans for the next Kamailio World Conference, in Berlin, Germany, during April 27-29, 2020! Three days of knowledge sharing and networking with renowned RTC experts.
When Lausanne 2020 Youth Winter Olympics began on 9 January, Australia had six states and ten territories.
Thanks to the efforts of Josie Baff, winning a gold medal in the women's snowboard cross, we now add a new territory to that tally: Villars-sur-Ollon in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. (Please, please don't try to add it to the list of Australian territories in Wikipedia).
Acquiring Swiss citizenship requires ten years of residence and a serious effort to learn at least one of the national languages (French, German, Italian and Romansh). Ten years? Baff had a margin of just 0.05 seconds when she staked her claim to that gold medal, leaving our amazing hosts to take bronze.
Baff appeared live on an Olympic Channel broadcast the next day, where they selected her race for a replay and Baff herself demonstrates she is not just a winner but also a capable leader, a tremendous ambassador for this niche area of Australian sport that now keeps the Swiss and Canadians from sleeping at night.
(The full broadcast is available from Olympic Channel)
To put Baff's achievement in perspective, in the entire history of the winter Olympics, Australia has only won five gold medals.
Whenever I speak to my Swiss friends now, the first thing they mention is Australia winning medals in winter sports. It doesn't stop there. On my travels in the region, speaking to Olympic volunteers and representatives of other teams, they see Baff's victory as more than a gold medal: this is evidence of Australia transposing a universally respected excellence in summer sports into the world of winter sports. People don't ask if Australia can repeat this victory: they ask which event will Australia target next.
The Lausanne 2020 mascot is Yodli, seen here acknowledging Australia's claim on Swiss alpine territory.
Footnote: the Australian Antarctic Territory is the largest territory of Antarctica and at almost six million square kilometers, it is 142 times the size of Switzerland.
Fred Posner has recently launched a new project with LOD called APIBAN:
The site provides an API to share IP addresses of bad SIP traffic; allowing you to block the traffic before it reaches your RTC platform.
Examples are provided for integration with Kamailio (via http_client, jansson and htable modules) as well as an open source iptables client in Go.
The service is free, provided as a public Beta and an API key can be requested from the site itself.
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Should you be aware of similar services or articles that you think worth sharing with the Kamailio community, let us know and we will gladly publish news about them.
Looking forward to meeting many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany!
I was walking through an airport towards the end of 2019 with my Sangoma backpack, and someone approached me and asked if I worked there. I said, “yes,” and the person then asked me if we still sold the Dialogic boards (since he knew Sangoma bought the Dialogic board and gateway business two years ago). 
We got to talking a bit, and he said that he still needed a few boards for a call center solution he needed to upgrade. And we reminisced about him coming to the NJ HQ years ago.
I told him he could buy the boards he needed through the same distribution channels he always had used or to find a distributor from our website. And I told him we continue to provide operating system updates and other sorts of firmware upgrades where possible and are also in fact working on a new gateway. And I told him we still had an office in NJ.
So YES, we still sell them, and we still use a contract manufacturer based in North America to manufacture them. And we’ll continue to make them while we can and while there is still demand.
So why are they still required? Well, the whole world is not yet on VoIP (even though a lot of the people in the communications industry act like that). Some solutions are still connected to the PSTN and require these boards for that purpose. Some solutions are connected to a VoIP network through a gateway, but the solution does not need to be re-architected because of the existence of that VoIP gateway. So the boards are still used in the solution. That scenario was the case of the guy I met in the airport.
So, if you need Dialogic boards or gateways and don’t know where to go, visit our website or give us a call.
The post Still Selling Dialogic Boards and Gateways appeared first on Sangoma.
Many parents would be shocked if they found schoolteachers providing banned books to their children. If I mentioned the bible is virtually banned in China, they would see where I was going and their shock would dissipate.
When George Orwell finished Animal Farm, he struggled to find a publisher for it. It wasn't officially banned like a section of What Not but it was incredibly unpopular with mainstream publishers, like certain blog posts that mysteriously fail to appear in search results today.
In 2017, a German organisation, FSFE e.V, elected me as their community representative. They had this odd approach to membership, approximately 28 people had been registered as members of the assocation. Their 1500 volunteers and donors were invited to join but kept off the books. As the organization's contempt for membership became apparent, I started to feel Orwell's animals coming to life. As he wrote all those years ago, All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. In FSFE's case, we could say all Fellows are equal but some Fellows are more equal than others.
Those wanting to suppress publication of Orwell's work felt that his pigs and plot were unambiguously analogous to the rise of a British ally, the young Soviet Union. In particular, his choice of the pig to represent Stalin's elite was seen as blatantly offensive: an early example of what we call trolling today.
In recent times, both the US First Lady and the Queen of England have been accused of trolling the US president with their wardrobe choices. A young female Muslim in the US has been accused of trolling China with a make-up video. Would Orwell appreciate their courage?
Seventy years after Orwell's death, the copyright on all his works expires shortly and people will be able to distribute copies and make derivative works in much the same way that we can distribute and make derivative works from software licensed under a free license.
Throughout the free software space, we can see the the pig phenomena has spread with all the poetry of foot-and-mouth disease: one of the larger organizations, the Debian Project, started an experiment in demotions during 2018. A few weeks later, Lucy Wayland, a volunteer confined to the lowest tier, Debian Contributor, was dead. At almost the same time, a much smaller organization in Albania tried to replicate the model, declaring by fiat that all foreign members were being demoted under the radar at Christmas.
Where would Orwell fit in these organizations that exist for nothing less than the promotion of our freedom (over technology)? Would he surf the web with the Tor Browser, using anonymous email accounts to post messages satiring the abuse of volunteers? Instead of using fiction to convey his messages, would he have developed an app like Girls-Around-Me, a stark demonstration of how nude we all are on social media?
Or would Mr Orwell refrain from writing anything at all, horrified at the thought that Amazon would track every purchase of his works?
Animal Farm is only one side of the Orwellian coin, the other being his uncannily accurate tour-de-force of the modern surveillance state, Nineteen-Eighty-Four. All of the organizations mentioned above (Debian, FSFE) are secretly funded by Google. Would you be less surprised to find a bible in a church than to find Nineteen-Eighty-Four under the pillows of Google's founders? One of the most startling discoveries during my time as community representative was the extent to which all of these organizations had built their budgets around recurring annual contributions from Google. Their experiments in demotions arose at exactly the same time that women in Google's workforce who spoke up against harassment found themselves being publicly demoted and humiliated. It was revealed that one of the organizations, Debian, had secretly banked $300,000 from Google under the radar at the same time that attention was on an identical-sized donation from a non-profit, the Handshake Foundation. What a convenient cover. After Linux Foundation and FSFE had decided to eliminate their annual elections, Google's money had a community representative "demoted" to a lower status in Debian just days before the call for nominations in leadership elections.
Today, it feels that the tables have been turned, the installation of surveillance cameras at the grave of Karl Marx trolling those who sympathise with Orwell's works.
Reading Animal Farm at school, I never imagined it had any relevance to the real world. It felt like pure fiction. I never imagined being one of the casualties.
The schedule for the RTC devroom at FOSDEM 2020 in Brussels, Belgium has recently been announced. The devroom is on Sunday, 2 February 2020. We have 18 great presentations scheduled this year. Please share the link and come to support them.
You can read read the full schedule here.
Discussion has also started about a dinner in Brussels for members of the open source telephony and real-time communications community. Please contact us if you would like to join. The dinner is usually held on the Saturday night in the middle of FOSDEM and finishes early enough for you to join other activities in central Brussels if you wish.
WebRTC has a new browser – kind of. Yesterday Microsoft’s “new” Edge browser based on Chromium – commonly referred to Edgium – went GA. This certainly will make life easier for WebRTC developers since the previous Edge had many differences from other implementations. The big question is how different is Edgium from Chrome for WebRTC […]
The post Does Chromium-based Edge’s WebRTC Look Like Chrome? appeared first on webrtcHacks.
The automotive market is incredibly interesting. It is incredibly saturated, yet, with ups and downs, demand for new and used vehicles remains fairly steady. Millennials may not be lining up to buy houses, jewelry, or meals at fast-casual restaurants, but even they buy cars.
For the typical customer, buying a car sits at the intersection of needs and desires, both of which pull at their hearts and minds when they shop for their new vehicle. That’s why car buyers can feel clueless. More customers than ever know exactly how much they want to spend, either total or per month, but many do not know what brand or model is right for them.
And that’s exactly why dealerships still employ salespeople. If buying a car was a purely financial matter, salespeople would have been replaced by cashiers decades ago. But the road to the car deal is not purely logical. Many customers rely on the attention and dedication of a salesperson to help them find the car they’ll fall in love with…and ensure they don’t get wet feet when it’s time to splash out for their exciting new rides.
The Key to Selling Cars? Communication.
Every step of the car sales process relies almost entirely on the communication skills of the salesperson. And typically, most of that is done face to face. But it’s the time and effort devoted to communication with customers who aren’t on the lot or in the showroom that separates the sales legends from the run-of-the-mill top performers.
The best thing a dealership owner, general manager, or general sales manager can do to increase sales and create more sales legends is to invest in the technology that will facilitate faster and easier customer communications.
If you’re selling enough cars already, disregard this…
Unified Communications (UC) is the answer to the prayers of owners and managers nationwide who dream of seeing their dealership thrive and create opportunity for a new generation of sales professionals.
Business phone systems operating on a UC platform integrate all the various methods of communication into a single communications system that connects to CRMs and other business tools. This massively increases productivity by automating routine work and eliminating the time spent switching between tools.
How does UC increase sales and gross profit?
So, you’re probably wondering how improving your communications platform will increase both the quality and quantity of car deals being made in your dealership.
Let me illustrate with a story. Jeff is a sales professional with several years of experience working for a decent-sized dealership selling three or four domestic auto brands. He’s focused, attentive, and knows the sales process backwards and forwards. His customer service skills are ridiculous, and he typically closes his deals on the second pencil without manager turn-over.
Jeff lives to sell cars and loves what he does. He’s a real car guy. He’s one of his dealership’s top performers, but every month, he feels a little disappointed because he keeps hitting what feels like a limit to his sales. There’s just not enough time in the day, even working well past “bell to bell.” He has the drive and the skills to become a sales legend, but he needs the tools to push it to the next level.
Then, his dealership deployed Switchvox, the fully-featured UC business phone system from Sangoma. Jeff understood how to use it from day one, and instantly, his performance was increased. For every two cars he was used to selling, he was now getting a third one out the door. Within a year, he was being awarded by the manufacturer as one of the brand’s top selling professionals in the country. How did Switchvox help him do it?
Jeff has thrived since his dealership deployed the Switchvox UC business phone system, and so has the dealership which has increased sales by over 50% while saving significantly on communications costs compared to their older legacy phone system.
Are you ready to create your next sales legend?
Explore Switchvox, the UC business phone system designed for modern dealerships. With powerful functionality and productivity-increasing features, Switchvox is a true game-changer for every person involved in the car sales process.
Click here to learn more by checking out our free Switchvox for Auto Dealerships guide!
The post How to Sell Cars with UC appeared first on Sangoma.
TADHack Mini will be in Orlando in about ten weeks, at the very end of March, the weekend before Enterprise Connect. As per the TADHack website, a TADHack is an event in which people (e.g. students, graphic designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, Enterprise Connect attendees, computer programmers, interested individuals, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project focused on programmable telecoms. And for Enterprise Connect attendees, you get hands-on experience with communication APIs, intelligent agents/assistants, UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), UC&C (Unified Communications and Collaboration), and much more
To read more about TADHack mini, please go here.
Sangoma is happy to sponsor this TADHack Mini where we will be bringing two communications development platforms to the Hack – Asterisk, our base communications platform and toolkit, and APIdaze, our CPaaS platform. We’ll be offering a $1,000 prize for the best application written on each. And the prizes do stack! If you write a great application utilizing both platforms, then the total $2,000 up for grabs will go to the one person or team responsible.
Winners even get to make their pitch at a special session at Enterprise Connect, which is some really good exposure.
We hope to see you there!
We’ll also have a booth at Enterprise Connect under the VoIP Innovations, a Sangoma Company, name. Please stop by, if you are there!
The post Bringing Asterisk and APIdaze to TADHack Mini in Orlando appeared first on Sangoma.
The registration for the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference is now open! More details and registration forms are available on the website:
Like at the previous editions, the event spans over three days, April 27-29, 2020, taking place at our usual venue, in the hearth of Berlin city, Germany. The first day contains the technical tutorials, the following two days are for conference presentations and exhibition.
At this edition, besides the traditional cocktail party, we are organizing again another social networking event during the evening of the first day, the 27th of April. The goal is to allow more time for interaction and networking between participants, as well as get a taste of Berlin. Therefore, this event is going to happen outside of the conference venue, couple of options being considered at this time, like city tour by boat or double deck bus, pub or pizza party. The cocktail party will take place as usual, during the evening of the 2nd day, the 28th of April. More updates about this new social networking event in the near future!
Note also that the Call For Speakers is still in progress and we already have a consistent group of submissions, if you plan to present at Kamailio World 2020, hurry up with the proposal! Scalability and security, next generation emergency services, WebRTC, IMS and VoLTE or IoT with Kamailio as well as related projects such as Asterisk or FreeSwitch are among the topics to be covered this year.
Keep an eye on the website of the event, soon we will publish more details about accepted speakers and the first draft of the agenda.
Looking forward to meeting many of you in Berlin at Kamailio World 2020!
Many remember Sydney 2000 as the best games ever. For 44 years Sydney officials had anticipated their opportunitity to host the games after 1956 Melbourne Olympics. There was no way Sydney would have wasted such an opportunity. The friendly rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney paid dividends for Olympic fans.
Having visited Sydney 2000, I couldn't help comparing it to Lausanne and decided to dig out some of my old photos and compare them to those I've taken this week. In Sydney I was shooting on a Canon EOS 630 with B&W film while today I'm using a Nikon D800.
Sydney has its harbour, bridge and opera house.
Lausanne has the Chateau-de-Chillon, athletes and fans pass it each day on the way into the mountains.
Sydney's Olympic Park has a boulevard comparable in size to the runways at the airport.
Les Diableret, home to the Alpine Ski events at Lausanne 2020, has a more cosy atmosphere.
Every games is made possible by the tireless efforts of the volunteers. Sydney volunteers wear much lighter uniforms than those in Lausanne.
Yodli is the official mascot of Lausanne 2020 and thanks to an army of volunteers, he appears simulteneously in many different venues.
Sydney's cauldron and flame were visible from space.
At Lausanne 2020 an open flame serves a more practical purpose: keeping warm.
The main cauldron is in the Flon district, surrounded by a temporary go-kart course.
The Nestlé building is a key feature of the Sydney skyline. Their world headquarters is in Vevey, a short distance from Lausanne.
One of Australia's most well-known athletes, a previous holder of the world record for the marathon and former director of the Australian Institute of Sport, Robert de Castella, has Swiss ancestry from the Swiss-Romande region (Neuchatel). de Castella's ancestors famously plotted out the future of Australian wine making in the text John Bull's Vineyard (1886). The winemakers of Vaud have recently celebrated their once-in-a-generation Fete de Vignerons in Vevey.
As American and Iranian forces stand down in the middle East, the next confrontation will take place in a very different environment.
Junior athletes from around the world, including America and Iran, will come face to face on the slopes of the Swiss alps just days after their adult leaders went to the brink of war. Will these young athletes, aged 15 to 18 years, demonstrate more maturity than the man running a superpower?
Lausanne 2020 is promoting the green credentials of the games, gender equality with an equal number of male and female athletes, Olympic values and good sportsmanship.
On my tour of the Lausanne 2020 Olympic Village I was lucky to meet teams from Ireland, Australia and a host of other countries.
Kamailio SIP Server v5.3.2 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.3.1. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.
Kamailio® v5.3.2 is based on the latest source code of GIT branch 5.3 and it represents the latest stable version. We recommend those running previous 5.3.x or older versions to upgrade. There is no change that has to be done to configuration file or database structure comparing with the previous releases of the v5.3 branch.
Resources for Kamailio version 5.3.2
Source tarballs are available at:
Detailed changelog:
Download via GIT:
# git clone https://github.com/kamailio/kamailio kamailio # cd kamailio # git checkout -b 5.3 origin/5.3
Relevant notes, binaries and packages will be uploaded at:
Modules’ documentation:
What is new in 5.3.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.3.0:
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Do not forget to make the plans for the next Kamailio World Conference, in Berlin, Germany, during April 27-29, 2020! Three days of knowledge sharing and networking with renowned RTC experts.
Teachers are already successful communicators, but there’s only so much time in a day. Adding additional resources to the school classroom can help educators maintain positive connections with parents – and your school phone system is the best place to look.
As they start a new semester, teachers are likely to find their email and voicemail inboxes filled with messages from parents asking about assignments, grades, or upcoming events. This is undoubtedly overwhelming, but Unified Communications (UC) makes it easy for teachers to balance their daily duties with the needs of parents.
UC solutions offer a myriad of features that can help teachers, administrators, and staff keep students safe, parents informed, and the school day running smoothly. And with Switchvox’s All Features Included pricing models, schools can stay within strict budgets and ensure teachers have top-notch communications capabilities.
Here are the top 3 ways that teachers can boost communications with parents using UC:
Voicemail-to-Email
Teachers are often receiving calls and communication from parents throughout the day. And answering the phone in the middle of a lesson isn’t necessarily an option. This leaves educators will a full voicemail inbox, creating the potential for buried or lost messages.
With voicemail-to-email capabilities, parents can leave a voicemail which will be recorded and delivered to a teacher’s email inbox. Teachers can listen to the voicemail via the email message, sort them as needed, or mark the email for quick reference – allowing for easier organization and a clear voicemail!
Softphone Options
Giving out personal phone numbers is usually a recipe for disaster, and it can be stressful for many teachers who want to be available to parents. Switchvox offers desktop and mobile softphone applications that allow teachers to make or receive calls when necessary using their work extensions on their computers and personal phones.
Office extensions can be listed on the school website directory, added to syllabus documents, or used in email signatures. This also helps keep staff from fielding calls for teachers, so they can focus on better aiding the students and visitors in the front office.
Call Forwarding
Teachers aren’t always confined to their classrooms – and, like it or not, their work often has a tendency to follow them home. So, advanced call rules are a must-have when teachers are on lunch duty, running to the front office, or grading papers away from their desk.
With call forwarding, teachers can have their calls sent to another extension or softphone after a certain number of rings, keeping them in contact with parents and colleagues throughout the busy school day and beyond when necessary.
Sangoma’s award-winning Switchvox UC solution offers the advanced phone system features that school staff, teachers, and administrators need – all for one affordable price. For case studies, white papers, and other resources on the Switchvox phone system for schools, check out our education industry page.
Or, if you’d like to see Switchvox in action, visit our demo center.
The post Top Ways to Boost Teacher-Parent Communications with UC appeared first on Sangoma.
The year just started and a new module was merged into Kamailio git master branch, respectively mqtt:
It has been contributed by Thomas Weber from pascom.net, who has become a registered developer with commit access rights for Kamailio project.
The MQTT module allows bidirectional publish/subscribe communication by connecting Kamailio to a MQTT Broker. Messages can be published from any point in the routing script. Also the subscriptions can be fully controlled by scripting commands.
Enjoy!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
People ask sometimes what’s going to happen in our industry in 2020. And I typically say “I don’t know” because I really don’t know. The telecommunications industry will always surprise you. But, usually, there are hints of what’s going to happen because something is already brewing in the background, and it will just come to fore or become more of a force in the coming year.
Take 5G. It’s easy to say it’s coming in 2020. But it’s not as easy to say that WiFi will continue to grow and, in fact, may take some of the luster off the need for 5G. Even within an office environment, it’s becoming more common for connections to your business phone system to be over WiFi – whether from a WiFi-enabled desk phone, a laptop softphone, or from a business phone system app that rings on your smartphone (which can be connected via WiFi or through a high speed cellular network). So it’s important that we not underestimate or forget the importance of WiFi in 2020.
And Artificial Intelligence, or at least smarter communication applications that can maybe predict what you may want or need due to data analysis, will become more and more commonplace.
To read more about my view on 2020, please read my FastMode 2020 Trends article here.
The post Communications Trends for 2020 appeared first on Sangoma.
The 2019 was busier than ever and gone by now, yet another year with sustained development and high community activity for the Kamailio project, with a new major release and remarkable editions of Kamailio World Conference and Kamailio Developers Meeting! Thank you everyone for contributing to the project!
We wish a healthy and successful 2020 to all Kamailio friends and the project itself, once again hoping to meet many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference and other events around this magnificent world!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
Enjoy 2020 and stay safe!
Happy New Year!
Review of Chrome's migration to WebRTC's Unified Plan, how false metrics may have misguided this effort, and what that means moving forward.
The post Is everyone switching to Unified Plan? appeared first on webrtcHacks.
Ever heard of Moore’s Law? You probably have. Tech journalism rehashes the basic idea of Moore’s Law every time some big name chip manufacturer releases a new and impressive set of chips. The somewhat misleading name refers to the observation and prediction made by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit roughly doubles every couple of years. This “law” was pronounced in the 1960s and remained startlingly accurate until the 2010s. This exponential growth in chip performance and processing capability still ripples strongly throughout every industry, allowing for the rapid development and improvement of technology.
Oftentimes, the pace at which technology has grown and continues to grow leaves the casual bystander in awe, unable to follow every new development and not able to understand each new release’s importance. And before you know it, you start to hear that the technology, you’ve come to rely on and built whole business processes around (your business phone system, for example) has reached what the manufacturer calls “end of life.”
What does End of Life Mean?
End of Life (EOL) is the designation applied to platforms or products deemed by its manufacturer to have reached the end of its useful life. This typically occurs many years after production of hardware or development of software has ceased.
What that means for the owner or system administrator is that, for their phone system:
Why Should You Care?
Now, it would be easy to shrug your shoulders and assume there’s no harm in ignoring an EOL announcement on your system. Just thinking about updating or replacing your phone system sounds expensive, right?
While that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, the truth is that there are many hidden and severe risks and expenses associated with trying to be willfully ignorant of an EOL system.
First and foremost is the obvious. If your system is EOL, warranties and support will end soon or already have ceased, with no options to renew or extend. This leaves those that rely on that system totally beholden to the hardiness of the technology. If a problem occurs, there’s no official means to receive help troubleshooting and getting the system running again. Every hour the system is down is another hour of lost opportunity and lost credibility.
Not to mention, more complicated phone systems can often rely on tech support to make changes to extensions and system settings. For those types of systems, EOL status could mean being essentially locked into whatever settings were in place before support expired.
The second reason you should care is less immediately apparent. Suppose your system is working fine for now and doesn’t rely on any services that the manufacturer may have ceased support for on your particular EOL model or system. It makes sense to try to squeeze as much life out of a phone system as you can, but eventually something is going to break. It’s at that point that many people realize they didn’t really save a lot of money by ignoring their EOL system. That’s because the longer a product or system is EOL, the more expensive even the smallest repair parts become. What was working fine one day, is costing hundreds or thousands of dollars the next, just to get back up and running. There’s nothing wrong with trying to get as much out of a system as you can, but always do so with caution and a solid plan for upgrading and replacing the EOL system.
Finally, you should care because there’s a reason your phone system is EOL, and it’s not just that your manufacturer is trying to force you to buy a new one that does the same thing. Sometimes a system is EOL because the manufacturer is simply repositioning themselves away from certain kinds of systems (like Toshiba ending their hosted and on-premise IP PBXs). But most often a certain product or system is EOL because major advances have been made and new functionality has necessitated better hardware or software. There’s no telling what new functionality or feature has been developed to keep your system secure and greatly improve the workflow of your business, maximizing the return on investing in a new system by increasing productivity. This is especially true if your EOL system did not possess or have access to Unified Communications (UC) functionality.
What You Can Do about your End of Life System
So you’ve got an EOL business phone system, and you’re wondering what’s the most responsible thing to do about it, eliminating the liability of an EOL system without making unnecessary purchases.
Well, it depends largely on your business’ situation and what type of EOL or soon-to-be EOL system you are currently using. Considerations such as what deployment type is currently installed and what budget, if any, exists for upgrades and replacements weigh heavy in deciding what you can do about your end of life system.
If your business is currently using a phone system hosted in the Cloud that is set to be discontinued, the good news is that transitioning to another hosted phone system can be a smooth, easy transition, with little or no upfront investment. If Cloud has been working for your business, there isn’t much reason to stop using a hosted service.
The situation is only slightly more complicated for those businesses operating end of life on-premise phone systems. For these systems, the fear isn’t usually phone service being discontinued as much as the system being unsupported by its manufacturer and becoming increasingly, exponentially more expensive to maintain and repair.
If your business is using an EOL or soon-to-be EOL on-premise phone system, you should take the steps now to replace the system, but you typically have some time to transition more gradually. Milk any warranties and maintenance contracts you may still have for all they are worth. You paid for them, after all. A reliable VoIP gateway and SIP trunking service will save you money on connectivity and allow you to get a little more mileage out of your EOL system while these warranties and contracts are still in effect.
Then, when any warranties and maintenance obligations from the manufacturer are due to expire, you have two options.
Many businesses who currently operate EOL on-premise systems will find switching to a hosted phone system favorable. It does not require a large upfront investment. The Cloud offers flexible, easily-variable service to accommodate every business, from startups to enterprises, and it takes the complexities out of linking multiple locations.
The needs and wishes of every business, however, do not always lend themselves to a hosted phone system. For medium-sized and larger businesses with stable needs that change at a slower pace, a new on-premise phone system provides reliable, supported service while allowing the business to fully control its network and maintenance. In addition, for organizations that have the budget for investing upfront, an on-premise system, whether deployed on a dedicated appliance or installed in a virtual environment, is more cost-effective over the life of the system than any other deployment type.
Whether it makes more sense for your business to transition to the Cloud or simply replace your end of life system with a new on-premise option, it’s important to start planning and shopping around now.
Solutions from Sangoma
With almost four decades of experience, Sangoma has helped countless businesses upgrade and replace their end of life hardware and phone systems. With a global community of satisfied customers and experienced integrators, Sangoma’s robust portfolio of products and services — built on open standards — is uniquely equipped to help modern businesses adopt future-proof, feature-rich business phone systems at a price point accessible to even the smallest businesses. There’s a reason Sangoma is widely considered the best value in Unified Communications (UC)!
Best of all, customers in the Sangoma family don’t have to deal with the headache of purchasing and installing different pieces of their communications infrastructure from different vendors. Sangoma offers complete solutions, giving customers piece of mind that every part of their business phone system was designed to work together. Our portfolio of product and service offerings includes gateways, cards, and IP phones, as well as full UC systems and Cloud services, such as faxing and SIP trunking.
Explore Switchvox, our premiere UC phone system available on-premise or hosted in the cloud. Or if you would like some personal guidance on the best options for your EOL system, contact one of our friendly solution specialists!
The post Technology Reaching End of Life? Why You Should Care… appeared first on Sangoma.
For SMBs in search of a solution to transmit basic data to your central office or headquarters, there exist many more options today than in the past. Standard DSL and cable internet connections have become economical choices for typical business use.
But for large retailers transmitting mission-critical real-time data from each location to headquarters, the ubiquitous T1 connection may still be your best option, even with these newer connection types available on the market. Plus, large retailers with established solutions working over T1 are typically hesitant to change their connection method at all.
A T1 connection is more beneficial for large retailers in a number of ways :
The only real competition for T1 in the large retailers market niche is carrier-grade Ethernet, but that is not always an option since this type of technology exists mainly in large urban areas.
So, with all the benefits of a T1 connection for large retailers, what do they do when virtually all vendors of T1 equipment have discontinued their solutions? In the past, several vendors provided T1 data cards, used by integrators, to create custom gateways. They would be used at each of the retailer’s store locations to collect and transmit mission-critical real-time data back to headquarters. But today’s reality is that the market has become barren, including support for these products, leaving retailers stranded in search of a supported alternative.
Fortunately for this market, Sangoma offers supported T1 data cards that are drop-in replacements for those products discontinued by other vendors. Since 1984, Sangoma has been producing and supporting T1 data cards for custom gateway deployments. Among our satisfied customers are some of the largest and most trusted retail chains in North America and beyond.
Lanner Electronics Inc., for example, uses Sangoma T1 cards in their custom fail-over solutions for large retailers. A leading global provider of advanced network appliances and rugged applied computing platforms for system integrators, service providers, and application developers, solutions from Lanner Electronics include a wide range of vCPE white box hardware, pre-validated by major SD-WAN solution leaders in the market to accommodate the demands for resilience, performance, and enhanced connectivity.
“We have been using Sangoma A101 and A102 T1 data cards in our appliances for years now, to support some of the largest retailers for T1 failover solutions, “ says Sven Freudenfeld, CTO of Lanner Electronics. “They are highly compatible, very reliable, and very easy to integrate. We recommend Sangoma’s T1 cards for all integrators who need to build custom gateways to interface with T1 and Point-of-Sale.”
If you are an integrator looking to create a gateway solution to interface with T1 and connect to point-of-sale systems, Sangoma is a trusted leader.
For more information, visit https://www.sangoma.com/telephony-cards/sd-wan/
The post For Large Retailers, Hope Still Remains for Integrated Service T1 Gateways appeared first on Sangoma.
If you are a SMB (Small to Mid-sized Business) owner, you probably keep hearing, “You should move to the Cloud!” or “The Cloud is the future of business communications.” You are not alone. Moving everything to the Cloud is a not only a business trend, but it’s also a smart business decision. The “Cloud” in communication terms, is essential the same thing as your typical on-premise phone system, except it is hosted by a vendor in their data center. Your phone service is delivered to you over the internet. The golden question most business owners are asking is: “How do I know if the Cloud is a good fit for me and my business?” I invite you to ask yourself the following questions.
Do you have a reliable ISP (Internet Service Provider)?
Internet is arguably the most important aspect to have in place before moving to the Cloud or any hosted service for that matter. In order to receive high-quality voice and video, there are certain aspects of your network that need to be validated. We call this “VoIP Network Readiness.” In general, we recommend at least 100Kbps per concurrent call both internal and external. You can check your network’s bandwidth, latency (delay), packet loss, jitter, and quality of service here by using our free comprehensive VoIP network test.
Do you have many projects going on right now that might be tying up money on hand?
A cloud-based phone system is categorized as an OPEX or Operational Expenditure, meaning that it’s a subscription that you pay for over time with little to no upfront investment. Many SMB owners are trying to establish inventory, personnel, and keep their feet underneath them. Being able to distribute the cost of a business phone system and phone service over the course of a few years can allow for more money to be spent upfront on immediate needs.
Are you a small-medium sized company with little to no IT footprint?
On-premise appliances are known to come with some physical maintenance issues from time to time. All technology hardware needs to be properly maintained with updates and occasionally some parts replaced. When an SMB doesn’t have a dedicated IT staff to maintain all of this physical technology, it can become a burden to the business owner or whoever the “tech-savvy” person in the office might be. A hosted phone system is housed in the data center(s) of the vendor that is providing the service, giving the business owner peace of mind and less to manage. When software needs to be updated or hardware replaced, you can feel confident that the vendor is maintaining that on your behalf, freeing up your time to focus on your business and customers.
Do you have remote workers or multiple offices?
In today’s modern business world, more and more companies are allowing employees to work from home. In fact, some studies are showing that those in the new workforce generation are expecting the option of working from home as needed. A hosted phone system allows you to communicate anytime, anywhere. As long as you have internet access, you can connect to the PBX hosted in the vendor’s data center. The ability to have your business phone calls roll to your mobile phone is a commonly requested feature. This is giving business owners the luxury of extending office hours and keeping customers happy by always having someone available to answer the phone. A hosted phone system is also ideal for businesses with multiple offices because you don’t have to stress about piering multiple devices together. All the phones/endpoints register to the Cloud, no matter where they are deployed.
Is the growth or future of your company a concern?
The future of any SMB can be hard to predict, but making sure you invest in technology that can grow with your company is a priority for any ambitious business owner. A hosted business phone system is very flexible and future proof, giving your company the ability to add and drop users as needed. If you have a seasonal business, then this flexibility will particularly benefit you. All business owners want to see their company grow and expand; knowing that you have a phone system that will grow with you can give you the added confidence you need to push full steam ahead.
If any of the above reasons resonate with you, then the Cloud is something you should definitely consider. Communication is certainly the lifeline between businesses and their customers, but when you are juggling all that comes with owning a business, the last thing you need to worry about is maintaining expensive on-site hardware. A hosted phone system is meant to give the end user a reliable, worry-free, and effortless experience.
At Sangoma, we maintain all the software upgrades and hardware replacements behind the scenes so you don’t have to. Switchvox Cloud arrives with all features included and is quick to install and easy to use. With everything coming from one vendor, not only does it simplify your monthly expenses, but it can also mean big savings as well. Click here to see a quick tour of Switchvox Cloud and see how your business can grow and benefit from an all inclusive, hosted business phone system!
The post How Do I Know if Cloud is Right for Me? appeared first on Sangoma.
Why does it seem that CPaaS and SIP trunking goes together, like chocolate and peanut butter (or chocolate and anything!)? At first glance, these offerings seem to be for different markets – one for developers and one for end users.
To offer good CPaaS, you need a few things beyond the basic good CPaaS platform (useful APIs and SDKs for voice, video, SMS, security, email, other comms platform integration, etc.).
Like what? For one thing, you need good bandwidth, and these come via reliable and fast SIP trunks. After all, if your applications are not running on-premise, then your applications are being accessed remotely through a cloud. And that cloud needs to perform well. As such if you are offering Platform as a Service, then the latency needs to be as low as possible. You also need to be able to offer phone numbers if you want this communications application to scale outside of peer-to-peer internet communications. And you need to be able to do this globally. SIP trunking offers all of this.
Thus, the seemingly at-first-glance strange marriage between CPaaS and SIP Trunking becomes less strange.
Sangoma recently acquired VoIP Innovations. That means we can offer both CPaaS and wholesale SIP trunking now as well. It made sense to us.
The post CPaaS and SIP Trunks appeared first on Sangoma.
We have 3 hackathon dates planned for TADHack 2020.
Prize Pot of $15k to be shared across 3 prize categories. Winners also get access to Avaya ENGAGE and can attend the Avaya Welcome Party immediately after the hackathon (featuring a Big Game) at Chase Field, in downtown Phoenix, about 10 minute walk away from the hackathon.
Avaya ENGAGE, hosted by Avaya and the International Avaya User Group (IAUG), is the premier event for the future of communications. Avaya ENGAGE 2020 brings you four days of workshops, inspirational speakers, and experts. One of their keynote speakers is Earvin “Magic” Johnson, NBA Hall of Famer and Entrepreneur!
The weekend (1-2 Feb 2020) before Avaya ENGAGE is TADHack-mini Phoenix.
Communications is now democratized so anyone can program with it. You can add programmable voice, calling, messages, video, faxing (yep, fax still exists), and so much more through easy to use APIs/SDKs.
TADHack is an event in which people (e.g. students, graphic designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, Avaya ENGAGE attendees, computer programmers, interested individuals, remote participants, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project focused on programmable telecoms. You do not need to be a coder to take part. The most challenging part of TADHack is we ask you to use Avaya’s resources to solve problems that matter to you across your home, work or community life.
For Avaya ENGAGE attendees you get hands-on experience with communication APIs, and much more. You’ll experience first-hand how programmable communications can solve a variety of problems, and network with local developers to witness the power of programmable communications.
For those not attending Avaya ENGAGE you get to build your portfolio of skills in programmable communication that will be in demand for the next decade.
We encourage people who cannot attend TADHack in person in Phoenix to take part remotely. We accept remote entries. It’s a great way to get involved, we live stream the event so you’ll still feel part of the hackathon, and have a chance to win the prize pot.
Winners and runners up from TADHack-mini Phoenix can pitch at Avaya ENGAGE for even greater exposure! We have a session dedicated to the TADHack Winners where the prizes will be given. You also get free entry to Avaya ENGAGE, perhaps you’ll meet Magic Johnson?
TADHack is all about learning, sharing, coding, creating, and most importantly having fun with a diverse group of people. And if that is not enough to entice you, we have free entry and free food.
We’re back in Orlando for TADHack-mini Orlando #4, the weekend before Enterprise Connect 2020! Here you can see what we got up to at TADHack-mini Orlando 2019, as well as 2018, and 2017.
Communications is now democratized so anyone can program with it. You can add programmable voice, calling, text messages (SMS and IM), audio and video messages, video calling, faxing (yep, fax still exists), secure communications and authentication, decentralized communications, mobile payments, and much much more through easy to use APIs/SDKs, and even easier to use GUIs. Programmable Telecoms is everything to do with communications between people and things that can be controlled by software (on your phone/laptop, in the cloud, or in your business).
For 2020 we’re adding a theme, a focus, for the hackathon on intelligent agents / assistants (also known as bots) using conversational interfaces. We have the support of renowned expert Dan Miller, Opus Research. Who will be joining us for the judging on Sunday, and supporting us in the run-up to the event. More coming on this soon.
A TADHack is an event in which people (e.g. students, graphic designers, project managers, product managers, IT Managers, Enterprise Connect attendees, computer programmers, interested individuals, remote participants, and subject-matter-experts) collaborate on a software project focused on programmable telecoms. You do not need to be a coder to take part.
For Enterprise Connect attendees you get hands-on experience with communication APIs, intelligent agents / assistants, UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), UC&C (Unified Communications and Collaboration), and much more.
For those not attending EC20 you get to build your portfolio of skills in programmable telecoms that will be in demand for the next decade.
We encourage people who cannot attend TADHack-mini Orlando in person in Orlando to take part remotely.
Winners and runners up from TADHack-mini Orlando can pitch at Enterprise Connect for even greater exposure! We have a session dedicated to the TADHack Winners on Monday, March 30 at 2:00 to 2:45 PM.
TADHack is all about learning, sharing, coding (you can even avoid this with some of the GUIs), creating, and most importantly having fun with a diverse group of people. And if that is not enough to entice you, we have lots of cash prizes, free entrance, and free food.
TADHack is the largest global hackathon focused on programmable communications, thousands of people take part. 2020 will be its 7th year. Here are just a few of the stats:
To quote Barbara Mikulski. “Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change,” by helping everyone involved in TADHack solve problems that matter to them using the latest Internet, IT, and Telecoms technologies.
Thank you to everyone who has taken part in TADHack over the past 6 years. We look forward to working with you in its 7th year, 2020.
We’re working on some exciting plans for 2020 to help TADHack reach many more people and have a bigger impact within the communities that run a TADHack. Including:
Best wishes for 2020
The post TADHack 2020 appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.
When you experience a day in the life of Switchvox, you understand how Unified Communications (UC) connects your workplace like never before. Switchvox unifies your business with your employees and customers. Using Switchvox’s powerful communications tools throughout your day makes you…a Switchvox pro!
Today’s modern business phone system is more than office extensions and employees fielding incoming customer calls. Companies look for Unified Communications solutions to effectively manage their business communications.
UC integrates enterprise communications services and tools and provides a more effective user experience. Think of your business phones, instant messaging, and presence technology all working together seamlessly. Now think bigger. Imagine dozens of applications all working together, connecting your business, your employees, and your customers around the clock. That is Unified Communications.
A Switchvox UC solution connects your workforce with multiple applications from a single turnkey solution. These applications include mobility options, call center capabilities, queue monitoring and management, conferencing, reporting, IVRs, alerts, and notifications.
Receptionists and office administrators alike enjoy the intuitive browser-based interface of the Switchvox Switchboard because Switchvox connects and informs. From the moment your coworkers arrive at the office or remote locations, you’ll know their status and if they’re available or busy. They even have the option to post a customized message.
Whether your incoming calls are from new customers or valued clients, powerful UC features help provide a seamless interaction from the instant they call to the moment they leave. Routing a call to the correct party is as easy as a drag-and-drop transfer.
The Switchboard Queues widget allows for multiple queues that can be easily managed in single or multiple panels. Add the dedicated Wallboard widget, and you have the ability to monitor call queue statistics in an easy-to-read location. Now that’s using UC like a Switchvox Pro!
Most importantly, Switchvox integrates with business applications such as Salesforce.com, Zendesk, and Outlook. And that is just the beginning.
One of the many features that set Switchvox apart from other UC offerings is mobility. The Switchvox Softphone app brings the power of your IP phone to your desktop, laptop, and mobile device! You can send and receive calls from anywhere as if you were at your office. Make extension to extension calls and utilize advanced Call Control options, such as transfers, 3-way calling, and more. You also have the ability to set your status and view the status of others.
Switchvox has so much to offer! Switchvox’s powerful Unified Communications solution is available on-premise, virtualized, or hosted in the Cloud. Learn how you can become a Switchvox pro by signing up for your free demo today!
The post A Day in the Life of Switchvox [Video] appeared first on Sangoma.
We would like to inform that Fred Posner and Victor Seva have joined the Kamailio Management group, replacing Jesus Rodriguez and Iñaki Baz Castillo.
Jesus and Iñaki changed a while ago their daily activities to roles that do not involve the use of Kamailio. We would like to express our thanks for all their contribution so far to Kamailio project!
Fred and Victor are long time community members, actively involved in promoting the project or development of the Kamailio application. The proposal to have them in the management group was sent a few days ago on the public mailing lists:
The management group of Kamailio has the role of taking decisions related to the project ecosystem, specially decide on special situations that involve the project as an entity. The development and decisions about the evolution of Kamailio as an open source SIP server application are done publicly on sr-users and sr-dev mailing lists.
A warm welcome to Fred and Victor!
Thanks for flying Kamailio!
If you haven’t noticed, the call for presentations at Kamailio World Conference 2020 is open! You are welcome to submit a proposal if you want to share your experience in Realtime Communications with the community!
A few weeks ago, Sangoma released Switchvox 7.3. In one way, it’s a typical point release like all software point releases as it brings the product forward with incremental, interesting improvements to functionality.
On the other hand, this particular one represents a real coming together of Sangoma and Digium. When Sangoma acquired Digium, Switchvox had its own roadmap for the releases in progress at the time. Sangoma didn’t interfere and didn’t want to slow it down. As such, the next release, which is this one, is where we wanted to merge some Sangoma items with Switchvox to create a better overall business phone system solution.
What does that mean? This latest release includes integrations with the Sangoma line of DECT phones, which Digium didn’t have, and with the industry leading SIP trunking service, SIPStation.
Switchvox 7.3 supports Sangoma’s DECT handsets which provide secure, wireless communication for work environments that demand mobility, such as required in retail, manufacturing, construction, and other office mobility sectors. Also on the phone front, an all-new sidecar has been created for the D65 IP phone, supporting up to 40 programmable buttons on a 5-inch full-color, backlit screen across two pages which can be daisy-changed for greater numbers of buttons.
The SIP trunking integration is also significant. According to a 2019 Eastern Management Group survey, Sangoma’s SIPStation is the best SIP trunking service available. Using an auto-provisioning tool that is new to the Switchvox 7.3 administrative interface, customers of all VoIP knowledge backgrounds can quickly and easily connect their systems to the outside world. SIPStation provides a self-service management portal and is available with monthly and yearly service plans.
Switchvox 7.3 also introduces new, major contact center features for improved caller experience and contact center management which enhances the customer experience and improves operations. A new Queue Priority feature enables agents assigned to multiple queues to respond to high priority customer calls first.
Additionally, the new Global Arrival time feature tracks a caller’s total wait time so that their priority is respected system-wide if they are transferred between queues or departments. Callers also now have the ability to disconnect and keep their position in line with the all-new Queue Call-Back feature.
As with all of our product and service releases, Sangoma strove to improve the overall customer solution set with this release.
For more information about Switchvox, please visit this page.
The post The Significance of Switchvox 7.3 appeared first on Sangoma.
Jitsi Meet has had the ability to share your screen with others for years now. Thanks to WebRTC it’s really effortless for applications to allow users to share a window, full-screen or browser tab.
When it comes to the user experience, we decided to replace the user’s video with the shared sreen, and this has been the case ever since Jitsi Meet has supported screen-sharing. Many users would like to share their screen in addition to sharing their video. This can be really helpful during a presentation, since attendees can also see the presenter and their body language thoughout the presentation.
We heard you. It took us a while but here we are, introducing Presenter Mode: simultaneous sccreen and camera sharing is now available on Jitsi Meet.
As you can see, we position a camera thumbnail on the lower right corner of the screen, where the presenter is displayed. You can enable this by “unmutting” your video while sharing your screen.
“But tell us about the implementation!” Ok ok, here we go. There are a number of ways this feature can be implemented. We decided to do it by composing the video on the sender side (preparing the layout on a canvas and creating a MediaStream out of it). This vastly simplifies the implementation on all layers since it’s “just a video stream”. Now that we have it inplace, we have plans to make it even better with a couple of more features, stay tuned!
We hope you like this! Try it out today at meet.jit.si
The post Introducing: Presenter Mode appeared first on Jitsi.
Today we are trying something new. We invited Tsahi Levent-Levi to write a guest postfor us. For those working with WebRTC for some time Tsahi will be a faminilar name. Tsahi has been working in the software communications space as an engineer, manager, marketer and CTO for the last two decades. In his various roles he meets and helps vendors with their communication projects, especially when these relate to WebRTC, CPaaS and AI.
Building real life applications using WebRTC is more than just grabbing a sample code from GitHub and adding some HTML and CSS on top of it. It requires installing and managing servers.
To get a WebRTC session to work, you will be needing a signaling server (to get the users connected to one another) and TURN servers (to get over NATs and firewalls when needed). In many cases, you will also need media servers to handle some media processing or routing on the server side.
The most common use cases for media servers in WebRTC rely on SFUs, Selective Forwarding Units. These types of servers route media around the network from one user to another. They are quite handy for group video conferences – it enables them to run efficiently without needing to encode and decode the media (a very expensive task) while maintaining a great user experience.
As a developer, if you are in need of an SFU, there are a few alternatives that you can take:
That last option is quite popular with those who want to put up their own infrastructure. It gives you both flexibility (you have the source) as well as faster development (it’s a media server implementation).
Why should you be considering the use of an open source SFU?
Starting a project and needing an SFU? Why not try using an open source one? And if you’re headed that way, make sure you check out these criteria for choosing an open source SFU.
Guest Blog by Tsahi Levent-Levi, Author of BlogGeek.me as well as CEO & Co-founder at testRTC. He also has online courses (free and paid) at webrtccourse.com
The post Open Source SFUs appeared first on Jitsi.
Most consumers would say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. When a customer calls into your business with an issue, a poorly designed or outdated phone system can throw them over the edge, and you can quickly lose them as a customer. Understanding the most frustrating experiences customers have with a business’s phone system is the best way to design a solution that enhances your customer’s experience by solving their issues quickly and efficiently.
Here are some of the common customer pain points with a business phone system, and how a Unified Communication (UC) solution can solve them:
Pain Point: Inadequate staffing & long hold times. (The customer might say, “I’ve been on hold for over five minutes. Maybe you should hire more people to answer the phones.”)
How UC Solves: Managers can correlate agent staffing with call reports, which show the heavy and low-volume call times during the day. Appropriately staffing call center agents based on call volume reduces on-hold time for customers, enables issues to be resolved faster, and can save on costs.
Pain Point: Confusing phone menu (IVR). A poorly designed IVR is a very frustrating experience for customers, yet the majority of businesses have just that: an outdated, unhelpful, confusing IVR . (The customer might say, “I pushed 2 for support and it transferred me to sales. Can I just speak to a manager now?”)
How UC Solves: The IVR was designed for several reasons: to enable customers to help themselves without involving an agent, to route customers to the correct agent who can help them with whatever they need, and to provide general business information. A solid UC solution will provide businesses with several options for their IVR needs, including stock voice prompts, stock music, extension setup, and integrations allowing for more advanced features and capabilities. With the correct tools, your business can create a helpful IVR that will reduce customer frustrations and get them the information they need, faster.
Pain Point: Lack of communication mediums to work through a technical issue. (The customer might say, “I’m having an issue with this feature… there is a little box and a confusing pop-up thing. I wish you could just see what I’m seeing.”)
How UC Solves: A web-based solution allows for collaboration among internal and external users (customers and agents) without the need for plug-ins, separate applications, or passwords; all users need is an Internet connection. Some customer issues are hard to explain without visually seeing what’s happening. In cases like this, the right UC solution allows employees to screen share or host a live video session to walk the customer through an issue or to demonstrate a feature.
Pain Point: Having to repeat information. (The customer might say, “I already dialed in my case number, and now you’re asking for it again?”)
How UC Solves: In addition to a well-designed IVR, CRM integration enables an agent to view detailed customer records as soon as the call comes in (including recent case numbers). If there is an issue, the agent can identify the appropriate person to handle it, check their presence to see if they are available, send them an instant message to give them a heads up about the call, and then route the call. While the IVR provides options for customers to be directed to the appropriate person, the CRM screen pop provides the agent information about the customer. With these two UC features, the agent should have a good idea of who the customer is and how they can help before they even engage in conversation.
Pain Point: Lack of proper agent training (the customer might say, “You aren’t understanding what I’m saying. I need to speak with a manager!”)
How UC Solves: Barge and Whisper features allow a manager to interact on a customer call by joining the conversation (barge) or speaking to the agent without the customer hearing the conversation (whisper). These features are also useful when training new call center agents on the appropriate (and inappropriate) ways to handle a customer issue. These conversations can also be recorded and filed in agent’s personnel folders or used for future training sessions.
Request a personalized demo to see for yourself how Switchvox can immediately improve the customer experience for your company!
The post Customer Service Pain Points a Unified Communications Solution Can Solve appeared first on Sangoma.
Last week, I explored why virtualization is a possibility for a UC solution and why it may be a viable option for some businesses.
This week, I want to go through some of the benefits.
One of the biggest benefits is saving money. If you already have a few servers running other business applications, then you don’t have to buy a new piece of hardware. You can put your UC software on the existing server. However, there is likely still some money to spend because you’ll need to buy virtualization software (such as VMWare or Hyper-V). RedHat does have a free one if you are using Linux. Additionally, you will be spending less money on cooling and electricity and have a smaller overall data center footprint because you’ll have less servers.
The environment and “going green” is also a big deal. You may want to do your part to help the planet or there may be business benefits for saying you are “green”. One of the benefits mentioned in the above paragraph is using less power than if every business application had it’s own server. Using as little power as possible means being as green as possible.
Another benefit that I mentioned briefly last week is improved uptime and disaster recovery. The virtualization technology also comes with the added benefit of not only scheduling multiple applications on the same server but also enabling two different physical servers to work together, bringing the benefit of increased reliability and uptime.
Please read our whitepaper to find out more.
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