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January 24, 2020

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.2.6 Released

  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:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.6/src/

  Detailed changelog:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.6/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:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.2.6/

  Modules’ documentation:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.2.x/

  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.

January 22, 2020

• Daniel Pocock Australia’s newest territory

  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.

January 21, 2020

• Kamailio apiban.org – A Service To Share IP Addresses Of Bad SIP Traffic

  Fred Posner has recently launched a new project with LOD called APIBAN:

  • https://apiban.org

  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!

• Digium Still Selling Dialogic Boards and Gateways

  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.

January 20, 2020

• Daniel Pocock If George Orwell was alive today, would he be an Internet troll?

  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.

January 19, 2020

• Daniel Pocock FOSDEM 2020 RTC Devroom schedule announced

  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.

January 16, 2020

• WebRTC Hacks Does Chromium-based Edge’s WebRTC Look Like Chrome?
  

  

  Continue reading Does Chromium-based Edge’s WebRTC Look Like Chrome? at webrtcHacks.

• Digium How to Sell Cars with UC

  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?

  • Mobility: Switchvox Mobile enables Jeff to access every Switchvox feature and capability via his smartphone, including call controls, call recording, visual voicemail, and more. This means that Jeff can conduct all communication through his work extension on his personal device, no matter where he is. Walking the lot, pulling cars around, out to lunch, Jeff gets more opportunities to sell cars because it’s much easier for customers to reach him and there’s no confusion about which number is his.
  • CRM Integration: The Extend API lets users build integrations with CRM applications, which triggers “screen-pops” displaying important caller information, location, and notes from previous interactions.  Salesforce CRM integration is available out of the box. Jeff never had trouble remembering a customer, but now customers are happily reporting that every time they call, Jeff sounds like he was expecting their call, with no need to fill in old details. This personal touch not only saves time, but the impression it creates has been a huge source of referral customers.
  • Call Queues: Queues enable calls to be delivered to the correct department or employee with little or no staff interaction. Queues ensure your customers are taken care of as quickly as possible based on your staffing levels. This has helped Jeff immensely because now incoming new customer calls are forwarded directly to the sales professional queue, with very few lost to the old system of parking calls for salespeople to pick up.
  • Call Recording: Switchvox gives the ability to Jeff and his managers to record calls easily, with the press of a button. That means Jeff can easily record calls to review later, which means not a single detail is forgotten.
  • Personalized Call Rules: With Switchvox, Jeff has the flexibility to set which of his phones ring, in what order, and what time of day. He can even have his status determine how his calls get routed, allowing him quick and dynamic control over his calls. This saves him and the customer time. 
  • Reduced Cost: With Switchvox, the communications for all of his dealership’s locations are combined into one. This allows for faster call handling as all incoming call traffic can be handled by one receptionist, instead of paying unnecessary salaries to several. Dealerships that implement Switchvox save an average of 40-60% on their monthly communications costs, which means Jeff is seeing a lot more spiffs for Saturday sales events.

  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.

January 14, 2020

• Digium Bringing Asterisk and APIdaze to TADHack Mini in Orlando

  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.

• Kamailio Kamailio World 2020 – Registration Is Now Open

  The registration for the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference is now open! More details and registration forms are available on the website:

  • https://www.kamailioworld.com/k08/registration/

  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!

January 12, 2020

• Daniel Pocock Lausanne 2020 in contrast with Sydney 2000

  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.

  Waterways

  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.

  

  Boulevards

  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.

  

  Volunteers

  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.

  

  The eternal flame

  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.

  

  Swiss connections

  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.

January 11, 2020

• Daniel Pocock Lausanne 2020’s Olympic Village: Vortex
  

January 10, 2020

• Daniel Pocock A new cold war

  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.

  

January 09, 2020

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.3.2 Released

  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:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.2/src/

  Detailed changelog:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.2/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:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.2/

  Modules’ documentation:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.3.x/

  What is new in 5.3.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.3.0:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-3-0-release-notes/

  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.

• Digium Top Ways to Boost Teacher-Parent Communications with UC

  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.

January 08, 2020

• Kamailio New Module: MQTT

  The year just started and a new module was merged into Kamailio git master branch, respectively mqtt:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/mqtt.html

  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!

January 07, 2020

• Digium Communications Trends for 2020

  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.

January 01, 2020

• Kamailio Happy New Year 2020!

  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!

December 31, 2019

• WebRTC Hacks Is everyone switching to Unified Plan?
  

  Review of Chrome's migration to WebRTC's Unified Plan, how false metrics may have misguided this effort, and what that means moving forward.

  Continue reading Is everyone switching to Unified Plan? at webrtcHacks.

December 25, 2019

• Kamailio Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays 2019-2020!
  Slowly getting to another end of a year, the 19th since the project was started — an excellent 2019, with sustained development of the project and plenty of community activities. We had another major releases, 5.3 in October and the 2nd yearly meeting dedicated for Kamailio developers, done by mid of November 2018, in Dusseldorf, Germany. We are grateful to all developers, companies and community members that contributed to moving the project further! The 7th edition of Kamailio World happened in the spring of 2019, now we prepare for the 8th edition during April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany. We look forward to meeting many of the community members there!

  

  Merry Christmas and Happy Winter Holidays! Santa is flying Kamailio!

December 24, 2019

• Digium Technology Reaching End of Life? Why You Should Care…

  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:

  • No further development, updates, or improvements will be made to the particular product or product line the manufacturer is retiring.
  • Technical support will typically be unavailable for that product after the expiration of existing support contracts.
  • The manufacture of new spare or repair parts for that product or product line will be drastically slowed or ceased.
  • No compatibility with new features will exist, and certain features or functionality may become limited or unavailable.

  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.

December 20, 2019

• Digium For Large Retailers, Hope Still Remains for Integrated Service T1 Gateways

  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 :

  • Offers reliable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and guarantees performance for applications in real-time, such as voice and video calling.
  • Not affected by distance from the exchange.
  • Not affected by contention ratios.
  • T1 line providers offer an uptime of 99.9%, making the service suitable for mission-critical applications.
  • DSL and cable internet may not exist in the geographical area, whereas T1 typically does.

  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.

December 19, 2019

• Digium How Do I Know if Cloud is Right for Me?

  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.

December 17, 2019

• Digium CPaaS and SIP Trunks

  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.

December 13, 2019

• TADHack TADHack 2020

  We have 3 hackathon dates planned for TADHack 2020.

  TADHack-mini Phoenix with Avaya ENGAGE 2020, 1-2 February 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.

   

  TADHack-mini Orlando, 28 – 29 March Orlando, just before Enterprise Connect 2020

  

  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.

   

  And then big one! TADHack Global, 10/11 Oct <website coming soon>

  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:

  • TADHack has run in 45 countries, and multiple cities in some of those countries, that’s 100 cities involved in TADHack.
  • 14,000 registrations.
  • 1200 pitches.
  • $300k in prize money, plus an additional $120k+ in goodies and vouchers.
  • 88 sponsors have made TADHack possible. And 160 partners running locations, including 18 Universities.
  • 800 YouTube videos of pitches, with 3k hours of viewing, some videos have been viewed over 3700 times.
  • 11 companies have been founded by teams involved in TADHack.
  • We know of 89 people we’ve helped get their next job or contact. And 100s more add TADHack to their resume and LinkedIn profile.
  • 21 services have been launched from hacks created at TADHack.
  • People from ages 13 to 85 have taken part!

  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:

  • New locations and some returning locations that took a break in 2019 and discovered they missed being involved
  • For locations that have school children involved we’re arranging specific recognition awards.
  • More opportunities for the winners to present at TADSummit and other related events.
  • More preparation workshops before TADHack Global.
  • Some locations want challenges, we’ll add them back in for 2020.
  • More post-event activities for winners and those taking part, for example an exclusive messaging channel for help and support in bringing their idea / hack to market. Also voting for people’s choice awards for the hacks.
  • Plus more to be announced in the coming months, its going to be great!

  Best wishes for 2020

  The post TADHack 2020 appeared first on Blog @ TADHack - Telecom Application Developer Hackathon.

December 12, 2019

• Digium A Day in the Life of Switchvox [Video]

  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!

  

  Why Unified Communications?

  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.
  

  How Switchvox Can Benefit Your Organization

  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.

  See Switchvox in Action

  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.

December 11, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio Management Group Updates

  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:

  • https://lists.kamailio.org/pipermail/sr-users/2019-December/107691.html
  • https://lists.kamailio.org/pipermail/sr-dev/2019-December/054786.html

  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!

December 10, 2019

• Digium The Significance of Switchvox 7.3

  

  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.

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  For more information about Switchvox, please visit this page.

  The post The Significance of Switchvox 7.3 appeared first on Sangoma.

December 06, 2019

• Jitsi Introducing: Presenter Mode

  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.

• Jitsi Open Source SFUs

  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:

  1. Use a SaaS vendor or a CPaaS provider, use everything and the kitchen sink that they have to offer (including an SFU somewhere in there)
  2. Find a commercial vendor and license an SFU from them
  3. Build your own
  4. Use an open source SFU – like… Jitsi! (there are a few others as well)

  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?

  • No vendor lock-in. Open source means you aren’t married to any specific vendor. Being able to switch from one provider to another, or one outsourcing company to another means greater flexibility and competition. You are locking yourself in to a specific open source project, but assuming you picked a popular and vibrant alternative, you will find multiple vendors offering both support and development services for that open source project.
  • Extensibility. While the first reason is mostly generic to open source, extensibility is really specific to WebRTC open source SFUs. many of the open source SFUs out there are quite extensible these days, enabling you to not only conduct group video conferences, but also connect PSTN/SIP users to the session, record streams or send media via RTSP/RTMP to external streaming services.
  • Customization. You have access to the code. Which means you can customize it. Modify it to fit your needs. This means fixing bugs you find without waiting for a third party to do that for you, or adding this very unique feature you really need. This mostly depends on your stance – I’ve seen developers treat an open source SFU as a starting point, forking away from the source almost immediately, while others trying to maintain as little modifications as possible. This flexibility is available only through open source development.
  • Infrastructure ownership. Open source gives you a great opportunity to own the infrastructure of your service. Making the decision on where to deploy your media servers and how to scale the service. This enables you to offer a localized service in areas where the popular cloud vendors aren’t readily available and when you need to maintain specific governance. It also enables you to more easily explain to customers how to configure and whitelist your servers in their firewalls if you target large enterprises. This ownership of infrastructure is important in many scenarios.
  • It is free. Open source is free. You download the code and use it, with some restrictions based on the open source license used. There are costs involved, such as support and integration, but for the most part, using open source has a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) versus the alternatives.

  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.

• Digium Customer Service Pain Points a Unified Communications Solution Can Solve

  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.

December 03, 2019

• Digium Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits

  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.

  The post Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits appeared first on Sangoma.

• Digium Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits

  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.

  The post Unified Communications Virtualization Benefits appeared first on Sangoma.

  

December 02, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio World 2020 – Call For Presentations

  We would like to announce that Call for Presentations at Kamailio World 2020 is now open. You can submit your proposal or see more details at:

  • https://www.kamailioworld.com/k08/call-for-speakers/

  The 8th edition of the event takes place again in Berlin, Germany, during April 27-29, 2020. Expect over 150 participants, developers and community members as well as representatives of the other popular open source VoIP projects such as Asterisk or FreeSwitch.

  Looking forward to meeting many of you there!

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

December 01, 2019

• Daniel Pocock Videos of my recent talks about reSIProcate development

  reSIProcate is a widely respected C++ implementation of SIP. For some time I've been involved in adding features, build system improvements and release management.

  Here is my introductory talk at Kamailio World 2018

  and the talk I gave on more advanced topics at Kamailio World 2019

November 27, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio HA With Dispatcher And DMQ Modules

  Another very interesting blog post published recently by the folks at Wazo project: “Achieving high availability for Kamailio with dispatcher and dmq modules”. You can read the full article at:

  • https://wazo-platform.org/blog/kamailio-ha-dispatcher-and-dmq

  Dispatcher can be used to ensure the reliability of SIP routing, with options to re-route traffic on next node unavailability, while DMQ solves the needs for sharing data and states between Kamailio nodes.

  Should you be aware of similar article that you think worth sharing, let us know and we will gladly publish news about it.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  Looking forward to meeting many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany!

November 26, 2019

• Jitsi Jitsi Meet now available on F-Droid

  Hey there Fellow (Android) Jitsters! We have a good one for you today. Well, technically it went up on Friday, but in case you missed it, here we go: Jitsi Meet is now available on F-Droid!

  F-Droid is a Google Play Store alternative focused on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications.

  Many people have Android devices which cannot access the Play Store or choose not to for various reasons. This one is for you. Without further ado, here you go: Jitsi Meet on F-Droid.

  

  Now, for those following along, or intersted in the details, this issue was brought up over 2 years ago. Back then we had barely released the app on the Play Store and there were many missing features. In addition, our build infrastructure was… not there yet. So we focused on making the app better until we felt like we could tackle this.

  Fast forward 2 years, we introduced a way to build Jitsi Meet without any proprietary dependencies (Google Play Services), which a requirement for inclusion in F-Droid.

  Then we were ready. Some back and forth with some F-Droid developers later, the merge request was ready!

  We are incredibly thankful to the F-Droid contributors who have helped us get here, and we are committed to maintaining the package forward.

  The post Jitsi Meet now available on F-Droid appeared first on Jitsi.

• Kamailio Kamailio SIP Routing With rtjson And http_async_client

  The folks at Wazo (a project aiming to offer a full open source API programable RTC platform) have recently published a blog article on SIP routing using Kamailio’s rtjson and http_async_client modules – it can be found at:

  • https://wazo-platform.org/blog/kamailio-routing-with-rtjson-and-http-async-client

  If you are looking to build (REST) API-driven RTC platforms with Kamailio, this article provides very useful details.

  Citing from the blog:

  “… Our goal was while supporting high degrees of flexibility and ease to configure, to avoid any compromise regarding performances: we aim to support a high number of concurrent calls, high call rates with predictable and linear degradation of performances in case of overload.

  The solution

  To provide flexible, API-driven routing features in the Wazo Platform C4 Softswitch we decided to implement it on the foundations of the rtjson module. This module not only allows you to push the routing destination URI and the outbound proxy, but it also supports the normalization of the From and To headers, the insertion of additional headers as well as various settings related to the transaction management and its timers.

  Together with the http_async_client Kamailio module, it offers a perfect solution to manage very complex and dynamic routing rules of SIP messages delegating the routing logic to an external, HTTP-based web service. The biggest advantage of http_async_client is that, as the name suggests, it is asynchronous: the HTTP request to the API server doesn’t block the Kamailio worker process which is immediately released, ready to serve subsequent SIP message requests. As soon as the HTTP request completes and the http_async_client worker process managing it collects the response, it resumes the Kamailio transaction and calls the Kamailio route designated to manage the API responses, resuming the processing of the SIP message and its transaction. …”

  Should you be aware of similar article that you think is worth sharing, let us know and we gladly publish a news article about it.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

  Looking forward to meeting many of you at the 8th edition of Kamailio World Conference, April 27-29, 2020, in Berlin, Germany!

• Digium The Virtualization Option for Unified Communications

  Most of us understand the on-prem or cloud options when considering a new UC solution. But what about a virtualization option for on-prem solutions? That is, taking the UC software and running it on an already existing high-powered server that is running other of your business applications as well. This would save you money because you wouldn’t necessarily have to buy another piece of hardware to go with your new UC software.

  First of all, let’s examine why this might be possible in the first place.

  One reason is pure advances in computing power. The COTS (commercial off the shelf) server you buy today clearly has a lot more computing power than the server you bought 5 years ago or even 18 months ago. I learned all about Moore’s law when I worked for Intel. As such, you don’t need discrete hardware to run each business application. It’s a bit hard to wrap your head around if you haven’t thought about it, but it makes sense. If the server has more computing power, then for any given application there will be “wasted” computing power on such as server. So why not use up that computing power by having it applied to multiple tasks or applications?

  Another reason is that, as the computing power has increased, software that allowed discrete applications to be run concurrently, yet separate from each other, on that same server came to the forefront. The initial virtualization technology that ushered in the cloud era was geared more toward transactional computing and not really suitable for VoIP applications that are sensitive to latency and dropped packets. However, today the virtualization technology can handle real-time communication applications as well.

  The virtualization technology also comes with the added benefit of not only scheduling multiple applications on the same server but also enables two different physical servers to work together, bringing the benefit of increased reliability and uptime.

  The post The Virtualization Option for Unified Communications appeared first on Sangoma.

November 25, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio Testing Framework

  Giacomo Vaca has published a detailed article about Kamailio Testing Framework:

  • https://www.giacomovacca.com/2019/11/kamailio-tests-testing-framework-for.html

  It presents how to use and extend it.

  The framework leverages Docker to run specific uses cases for Kamailio on many operating systems (now Debian 9, 10 and Centos 7), right now mainly targeting development and regression testing, but there is no limitation to it.

  We hope that community members will start contributing to the testing framework the use cases specific for their needs, helping to ensure great software reliability and compliant SIP routing for Kamailio!

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 22, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio Developers Meeting 2019 – Follow Up Remarks

  Last week we had the 2nd annual Kamailio Developers Meeting hosted by Sipgate in Dusseldorf, Germany:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/developers-meeting/

  16 people were at the event in various roles.

  Giacomo Vacca published on his blog a good summary of what happened there:

  • https://www.giacomovacca.com/2019/11/my-notes-on-kamailio-developer-meeting.html

  Henning Westerholt published on his blog a few pictures of the two days and the evening event:

  • https://skalatan.de/en/blog/kamailio-hackathon-2019

  This year we had a lot of discussions, as well as work done on multiple planes, not only Kamailio code. So I am trying to list here some of the conclusions for future development, the technical aspects of the meeting, so everyone is aware and can provide feedback.

  1) Effective work was done on:

  • kamailio code
  • kamailio rpm packaging
  • kamailio tools (kamctl)
  • kamailio release process
  • kamailio project keys (to be used to sign the packages)

  2) Documentation

  2.a) Wiki

  • it was somehow a rough consensus to move the wiki content to github,
    along with changing the format from dokuwiki markdown to the
    standard/github markdown. This should enable people to make pull
    requests so developers or community members can review and aprove new
    content. It also makes it easier to contribute using existing github
    account, now the kamailio.org/wiki is requiring to make a dedicated
    account, which many prefer not to do it.
  • the presentation can be done either by using mkdocs to generate html files hosted on kamailio.org or using the github provided wiki portal.

  2.b) Docs for variables and transformations

  • there was a proposal to move them in the documentation the modules
    that export them, there are pros and cons, needs more discussions. Now
    they are in the wiki, so this probably has to resume after deciding on 2.a).

  3) Kamailio Modules

  3.a) replication (dmq) – several participants discussed about
  negotiations between nodes to take active role on some cases (e.g.,
  active dialogs)

  3.b) api integration – quite some interest in JSON-based API routing,
  concluding in extending rtjson to cover more use cases

  3.c) security – have options to restrict the use of TLS1.3 or newer

  4) Kamailio Releases

  • v5.3.2 was released during the event, allowing to document the process
  • work to automatise the process is planned, then eventually assign
    teams for taking cares of releases from specific branches

  5) Kamailio Testing

  • existing docker-based testing framework should be extended and
    integrated in CD/CI pipeline

  6) Kamailio packages

  6.a) rpms

  • rpm.kamailio.org has been prepared and is expected to take over the
    opensuse build service for building rpms and hosting them. Expected to
    provide support for hosting many kamailio versions in the same release
    series so one can do downgrade to older releases. Also, there is work in
    progress to provide nightly builds.

  6.b) debs

  • work is planned to offer many kamailio versions in the same release
    series

  7) Kamailio tools

  • kamctl/kamdbctl should be obsoleted in favour of kamcli, which offers
    a better framework for input validation and output formatting, as well
    as better portability, no longer depending on shell interpreter

  8) Various discussions

  • KEMI exports from C point of view and how to combine the
    documentation for modules and their kemi exports
  • move code from internal libraries to core or specific modules (to be discussed further)
  • how to make Kamailio friendlier in virtualized environments (ended up
    in the need of making the use of advertised address a bit more dynamic)
  • project organising topics – to be approached separately
  • next events – Fosdem – someone should submit a proposal to present
    about Kamailio

  9) Long term goals

  We speak here more or less about Kamailio 6.0 …

  • change the behaviour of the native config interpreter to be consistent with the other programming languages in terms of handling the response code (change what is now: the evaluation of negative value to false and positive value to true and the hidden return 0 to exit)
  • make the pool of processes more generic, so they can handle traffic from more sockets (being sip traffic or something else) — this should make better use of resources, as some sockets might be less busy that others

  I hope I covered the important topics, if I remember something else, I will reply on this thread. Or maybe other participants can contribute missing topics.

  Should anyone have comments or suggestions on the above topics, or new ones, let’s discuss on sr-users mailing lists because it impacts the long term use of Kamailio.

  Overall, there were 2 very intensive days, however in a friendly and relaxed environment offered by Sipgate. Extremely useful discussions, not only about Kamailio, but about RTC ecosystem. At the evening social network event event, a couple of external people joined, some of them presenting very interesting use cases of Kamailio.

  Many thanks to all participants that allocated time and resources to come to Dusseldorf, as well as to the companies that covered expenses for participants.

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 21, 2019

• Digium The Basics of Phone System Virtualization

  There has been a lot of buzz about cloud computing for well over a decade, and it continues to be adopted by companies in every industry for a variety of processes, platforms, and tasks. Even with the dominance of the cloud in the modern world, most people would blank if you asked them “what is virtualization?” In fact, virtualization is often used interchangeably with cloud. Though related, the two words actually refer to different concepts. So what is virtualization? And how does it benefit your business?

  What is Virtualization?

  Imagine that you are daydreaming. While your body sits idle, a part of your mind is working hard on a separate and purely logical ‘instance’ of your existence. While that instance may be running or swimming or petting a dog, the physical ‘hardware’ is still running the main operating system (the real you) beneath. That’s essentially what virtualization is, except that computers can have as many simultaneous ‘daydreams’ as their hardware allows.

  Proprietary and open source virtualization softwares can emulate a wide variety of machines, including operating system desktops, servers, and PBXs, among so much more. They accomplish this impressive feat with a sophisticated program called a hypervisor.

  Hypervisors can be either native (‘bare-metal’) or hosted. The difference is that a native hypervisor controls the hardware directly for each virtualization instance, while a hosted hypervisor runs the instances digitally on top of an operating system. This makes a hosted hypervisor feel much more like a traditional application that can be started and stopped. The former makes hard divisions of processor cores and memory between instances, while the latter utilizes the processing and memory capacities of the hardware as needed.

  The dividing line between native and hosted can often become blurry with developments like the kernel-based virtual machine, which emulates a Linux kernel and operates hardware directly while still being able to use the system running the virtual machine software. (And the fact that so many softwares use Linux, one of the most important open source projects, at their core means even proprietary solutions are still open source virtualization programs at heart!)

  Why Virtualization?

  Now that you can answer “what is virtualization?”, let’s look at why it matters.

  The hypervisor in commercial and open source virtualization applications essentially gives the ability, using software, to run multiple systems on a single piece of hardware. This can be used on a single, discrete machine, on a small local area network, or on a software-defined wide area network. This has several key advantages.

  Flexibility

  One of the major reasons for virtualization is flexibility. It makes running multiple systems on a single piece of hardware possible as well as emulating a piece of hardware digitally without the need to physically purchase it.

  Efficiency

  Another advantage to virtualizing systems is hardware efficiency. Many times a single application cannot take full advantage of the computing power of a piece of hardware. But virtualization software can segment the power of a piece of hardware into multiple virtual systems to more completely use the hardware capabilities.

  Cost Savings

  By cleverly working around different hardware requirements and taking better advantage of existing equipment, one of the most convincing advantages of virtualization is the ability to reduce waste, equipment needs, and power usage. These three reductions spell significant cost savings for any size business.

  The post The Basics of Phone System Virtualization appeared first on Sangoma.

November 19, 2019

• Digium The End of the Toshiba IP Business Phone System

  It was only a matter of time before someone bought the division since it had a robust channel. And so a couple of months after that original announcement, Mitel completed the acquisition of that division. It then predictably subsequently announced a Toshiba product phase out plan.

  The phase out plan is now near its end. October of this year marked the end of any add-on hardware sales. So that’s it for any new sales, though there are two more years of support.

  Obviously, Mitel would like the old Toshiba dealers to sell Mitel. However, since that acquisition Mitel is going all-in on cloud.

  If you are a Toshiba dealer and would like to sell on-prem andcloud, not just cloud, what is one to do?  Sangoma is there to help you. Our Switchvox Business Phone system is available both in the cloud and on-prem and better yet, they share the same exact code base. It looks and behaves the same.

  Or if you are an end-user and your Toshiba system starts to get long in the tooth, what are you to do? You probably picked Toshiba since it did the basic functions well, and you didn’t feel like a number being a customer of a behemoth. With the world moving to UC, you want a good value-based UC system, and you want it from a company that won’t treat you like a number. Why not come to Sangoma, who has a great value-based UC system, sold by a great reseller channel.

  The post The End of the Toshiba IP Business Phone System appeared first on Sangoma.

November 15, 2019

• Jitsi New mobile releases and open beta access

  Hi there Fellow Jitsters! Today we are happy to announce Jitsi Meet for mobile 19.4! You can check the release notes here, but we’d like to talk about a couple of the new features here, we think you’ll like them!

  Private messages

  You may have noticed we have been gradually improving the in-meeting chat. In this release we have made improvements to the styling, but more importantly, we have added private messaging support.

  You can long-tap on any participant and a sheet will show up offering you some options. There is a new one available for sending private messages. These messages are sent in the context of the meeting, but no other participants will be able to see them!

  

   

  Shared document editing

  Long time Jitsi Meet users probably know that we support collaborative document editting on the web by integrating with Etherpad. Now that integration is coming to mobile! If your deployment has Etherpad configured a new button will show up offering you to edit the shared document. It’s that simple.

  

   

  If you are self-hosting Jitsi Meet you can easily enable Etherpad too, check this.

  Mobile SDKs released including all these features

  Jitsi Meet SDK 2.4 for Android and iOS have also been released including all the aforementioned features, in addition to many stability bugfixes. Check the release notes here!

  One more thing: open beta access!

  With these new releases we also wanted to open up our beta versions for everyone to join. We develop Jitsi Meet fully in the open: all the commits land on our GitHub repository. However, users wanting to checkout features before a release actually happens need to compile the apps themselves, which can be a bit tedious.

  In order to help our users get quicker access to the latest features, and help us help them by providing feedback, we are openeing our beta versiosn for anyone to join! Here are the links to both beta programmes:

  • Android
  • iOS

  – The Jitsi Mobile team.

  The post New mobile releases and open beta access appeared first on Jitsi.

November 14, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.3.1 Released

  Kamailio SIP Server v5.3.1 stable is out – a minor release including fixes in code and documentation since v5.3.0. The configuration file and database schema compatibility is preserved, which means you don’t have to change anything to update.

  Kamailio^® v5.3.1 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 5.3.1

  Source tarballs are available at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/src/

  Detailed changelog:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/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:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/pub/kamailio/5.3.1/

  Modules’ documentation:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/docs/modules/5.3.x/

  What is new in 5.3.x release series is summarized in the announcement of v5.3.0:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-3-0-release-notes/

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

November 12, 2019

• Digium The UCaaS Value Proposition

  

  As I’ve written about before, the drivers for buying UC phone systems typically revolve around efficiency improvement and productivity gains. These can be realized because with all the communications ‘unified’, there is less time lost trying to just connect with each other, track people down, and get info from other systems. In other words, different communications methods in one system enable a “best” way to get to someone when you need them.

  A new Frost and Sullivan UCaaS report adds a few more value propositions to the mix. As seen from the table above, improving customer experience and satisfaction and launching new products and services are also important. The improving customer experience and satisfaction, to me, are about obtaining efficiencies – but from the customer point of view. For instance, when I call in to a call center, my phone number identifies me, and my call history can pop up. So while that saves the call center time, it also saves me time and makes me happier because I don’t have to report rote information. So it gets me to my reason for calling, quicker.

  Launching new products and services is very interesting. In my opinion, this is just 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.

  To read the full Frost and Sullivan UCaaS report, please click here.

  The post The UCaaS Value Proposition appeared first on Sangoma.

November 08, 2019

• Victor Seva provisioning spa303 with docker
  Let's start again posting something just to be able to remember how I did it in the future 😅
  
  docker image from jumanjiman/tftp-hpa
  
  download and unzip firmware
  
  docker run -t --rm -p 69:69/udp -v $(pwd):/tftpboot/spa/:ro jumanjiman/tftp-hpa
  
  http://<phone_ip>/admin/upgrade?tftp://<ip>/spa/<firmware>.bin
• Digium What to Know about the ISDN Switch Off

  Often, one technology has to be retired to make way for newer, more efficient technology. Wooden ships that relied solely on wind and tides gave way to steel ships with powerful onboard engines and sophisticated geopositioning technology, cutting ocean passage times dramatically. In the same way, telecommunications technology has advanced, and telecom service providers worldwide have begun the process of retiring the older technologies and infrastructures. The public switched telephone network was upgraded to the integrated services digital network (ISDN), which now faces retirement to make way for more advanced IP communications networks.

   

  What is the ISDN?

   

  In the late 1980s, the public switched telephone network (PSTN) received a massive upgrade. Implementing new digital signaling protocols, such as Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and Primary Rate Interface (PRI), allowed the traditional circuits of the PSTN to transport voice services digitally as packets of data.

  Opening the door for a number of value-added services from service providers, the new ISDN was born and enjoyed widespread adoption across Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia.

   

  ISDN Switch Off

   

  This technology was revolutionary and defined twentieth century communications. But as the world has grown comfortably into the twenty-first century, these technologies now represent an expensive liability as the aging network struggles to keep up with the demands of the modern world.

  Thus, nearly all service providers have announced dates in the 2020s as the end of life for the ISDN and PSTN.

  British Telecom (BT), for example, will cease supplying in 2020, with a full migration to digital voice services by 2025.This move comprises a part of their cost transformation program. High maintenance legacy telecommunications infrastructure is not sustainable. Retiring the older technology opens up capital for investment in next generation IP networks that will not only be more cost effective but will provide more flexible services to meet the increasingly demanding business needs of the future.

  While this does present massive potential for growth and progress, the ISDN switch off affects over two million businesses in the United Kingdom alone, with millions more being affected in the coming years as European and Asian service providers also migrate toward IP networks and cease ISDN service.

   

  What is Sangoma’s Solution?

   

  Understandably, retiring the ISDN leaves customers with the challenge of reviewing their options before the network switch off. Luckily for these businesses, Sangoma has been preparing for this situation for years, developing a portfolio of products designed to ease the transition from PSTN and ISDN to full Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications (UC) service.

  In fact, Sangoma’s solutions allow businesses to migrate at their own pace without getting left behind and without service.

  Businesses ready for a major communications overhaul will find Sangoma’s on-premise and cloud hosted UC business phone systems the perfect full service solution with hardware, phones, accessories, and services like fax and SIP trunking service available from the same vendor.

  Those that need more time to transition their network or that simply want to get a little more life out of their existing PBX solution will find in Sangoma’s variety of VoIP gateways and other offerings the right hardware and services to connect their existing equipment to the IP network.

  Regardless of the pace at which a business is seeking to migrate, Sangoma is confident they will find switching to VoIP advantageous not only in its long-term cost effectiveness but also in productivity that can be gained by incorporating Unified Communications into the business workflow.

  The post What to Know about the ISDN Switch Off appeared first on Sangoma.

November 05, 2019

• Kamailio New Module: Kafka

  Vicente Hernando from sonoc.io has contributed a new module to Kamailio named kafka – its documentation is available at:

  • https://kamailio.org/docs/modules/devel/modules/kafka.html

  The module can be used to send messages to a Kafka server – Apache Kafka is an open-source stream-processing software platform developed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. The project aims to provide a unified, high-throughput, low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds and can connect to external systems (for data import/export).

  

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

• Digium On Purchasing VoIP Innovations

  

  As expected, I’ve had a few questions about why we purchased VoIP Innovations.

  One of the most obvious reasons is the addition of revenue (and recurring revenue at that) and healthy EBITDA. You can read the press release to see those kinds of details.

  Strategically, adding VoIP Innovations supplements Sangoma’s long term growth and direction as a Communications as a Service company – we provide UC, Contact Center, SIP trunking, and Device all as a Service today. This deal enhances our SIP Trunking and CPaaS “as a service” offerings. While we will still obviously continue to sell and invest in hardware such as UC/PBX on-prem, gateways, SBCs and phones, etc., the industry is evolving towards Cloud, and, thus, Sangoma needs to continue to evolve in this direction. VoIP Innovations helps us in this continuous evolution.

  One of the biggest questions I’ve received is related to why we are going down a service provider path, given most of VoIP Innovations revenue comes from their wholesale carrier services. Well, there are two reasons.

  First of all, with Cloud, the demarcation line between enterprise and service provider is blurred. For instance, Sangoma itself is a service provider because we offer cloud services to business users. So are we in the enterprise business or service provider business? Where is the line? The customers of the VI wholesale carrier services tend to be MSPs and large enterprises who also need UC solutions. And, as I just wrote, we can deliver that to them. So we see channel synergies.

  And, if you go back to the “traditional” definition of service provider, it is not like Sangoma is NOT in the service provider business. We sell to quite a few service providers, and when the Dialogic gateways came over in early 2018, Sangoma also picked up quite a few wholesale carrier customers and other service providers. So we know service providers, and there is also synergy with that part of our business and VoIP Innovations.

  Finally, the CPaaS development platform APIdaze will enable additional applications to be written (by us and by third parties) and paired with Sangoma solutions. We are excited about that opportunity going forward.

  In summary, we see revenue growth from the additional selling opportunities each side obtains by bringing the two companies being together.

  The post On Purchasing VoIP Innovations appeared first on Sangoma.

October 31, 2019

• Digium Creepy Conferencing Conundrums Solved with Switchvox Conferencing Widget

  We’ve all been there, the conference call from hell.  Where someone is not muted and you hear their dog or kids in the background and you can’t figure out who it is because half of the attendees are working remote that day. The guy who always arrives late and interrupts the person speaking with the entrance “beep” of shame, or the exact opposite of that where someone bails out of the call because “someone just walked in”, but in reality they just lost interest. After that someone always asks, “Who just left?” followed by an awkward chorus of “I’m still here” from all the remaining participants. Finally, my favorite conferencing conundrum, someone puts the entire conference call on hold and now the speaker has to shout over the hold music in order for everyone to hear. I am sure that Mozart and Beethoven are rolling over in their graves right now knowing their best symphonies are being shouted over by passive aggressive business people, all secretly dispising that inconsiderate coworker.

  Now that you are sitting there with that knotty, lump of annoyance and dread in your stomach, let me ease your troubles by saying there is a way to solve all of those annoyances with Switchvox’s new conferencing widget. Yes, it’s true, you can see everything. The participants as they leave and enter the conference call.  A speaker icon next to the individuals who have any audio coming from their end, whether they are speaking or there is background noise that is loud enough to be picked up by the phone. You can join your conference bridge from you switchboard or Sangoma D-series phone with one click of the mouse or button press and hang up. No more dialing in and then entering your own conference pin as if you are one of the attendees. 

  (In best TV salesperson’s voice) But that’s not all! You can mute all attendees with one click or button press, or you can mute individuals depending on the situation. So, when that one person has scary noises coming from the background, it will be illustrated by the speaker icon and you can mute that specific person, or better yet, you can kick them from the call entirely! (Mwa-Ha-Ha)  Finally, you can end the conference with a click or button press and everyone will be removed from the bridge. 

  It’s worth mentioning that this conferencing widget is available to every user on your Switchvox system at no extra cost. Grant admin privileges to specific co-workers, customize the music on hold, or make it to wear participants cannot talk until an admin is present. Scared to call the IT team and ask them to set this up for you? Fret no more, since this is all set up in your user portal yourself. As long as you are on Switchvox version 7.1, you will see the new conferencing widget appear in your switchboard edit menu and on your D-series phone. Even if you have not had the chance to upgrade, there are still advanced conferencing features silently waiting for you just around the corner in your user portal. 

  Schedule a demo with our one of our Account Executives and see the conferencing widget live! I promise we don’t bite, but we do reek of Halloween puns. Ah well, tis the season! Happy Conferencing!

  The post Creepy Conferencing Conundrums Solved with Switchvox Conferencing Widget appeared first on Sangoma.

October 29, 2019

• Daniel Pocock FOSDEM 2020 Real-Time Communications Call for Participation

  FOSDEM - Real Time Communications devroom CfP

  Overview

  FOSDEM is one of the world’s premier meetings of free software developers, with over five thousand people attending each year. FOSDEM 2020 takes place 1-2 February 2020 in Brussels, Belgium.

  This document contains information about:

  • Real-Time Communications developer room (devroom) and lounge
  • speaking opportunities
  • volunteering in the devroom and lounge
  • social events (the legendary FOSDEM Beer Night and Saturday night dinners provide endless networking opportunities)
  • the Planet aggregation sites for RTC blogs

  NEW: Save yourself entering Free-RTC events and CFP deadlines into your calendar and task list, follow our iCalendar feed: https://freertc.org/events.ics

  Call for participation - Real Time Communications (RTC)

  The Real-Time devroom and Real-Time lounge are about all things involving real-time communication, including: XMPP, SIP, WebRTC, telephony, mobile VoIP, codecs, peer-to-peer, privacy and encryption.

  We are looking for speakers for the devroom and volunteers and participants for the tables in the Real-Time lounge.

  The devroom is only on Sunday, 2nd of February 2020. The lounge will be present for both days.

  To discuss the devroom and lounge, please join the Free-RTC mailing list.

  Speaking opportunities

  Note: if you used FOSDEM Pentabarf before, please use the same account/username

  Real-Time Communications devroom: deadline 23:59 UTC on 15th of December. Please use the Pentabarf system to submit a talk proposal for the devroom. On the “General” tab, please look for the “Track” option and choose “Real Time Communications devroom”.

  Other devrooms and lightning talks: some speakers may find their topic is in the scope of more than one devroom. It is encouraged to apply to more than one devroom and also consider proposing a lightning talk, but please be kind enough to tell us if you do this by filling out the notes in the form. Here you can find the full list of devrooms and here you can apply for a lightning talk.

  First-time speaking?

  FOSDEM devrooms are a welcoming environment for people who have never given a talk before. Please feel free to contact the devroom administrators personally if you would like to ask any questions about it.

  Submission guidelines

  The Pentabarf system will ask for many of the essential details. Please remember to re-use your account from previous years if you have one.

  In the “Submission notes”, please tell us about:

  • The purpose of your talk
  • Any other talk applications (devrooms, lightning talks, main track)
  • Availability constraints and special needs

  You can use HTML and links in your bio, abstract and description.

  If you maintain a blog, please consider providing us with the URL of a feed with posts tagged for your RTC-related work.

  We will be looking for relevance to the conference and devroom themes, presentations aimed at developers of free and open source software about RTC-related topics.

  Please feel free to suggest a duration between 20 minutes and 55 minutes but note that the final decision on talk durations will be made by the devroom administrators based on the number of received proposals. As the two previous devrooms have been combined into one, we may decide to give shorter slots than in previous years so that more speakers can participate.

  Please note FOSDEM aims to record and live-stream all talks. The CC-BY license is used.

  Volunteers needed

  To make the devroom and lounge run successfully, we are looking for volunteers:

  • FOSDEM provides video recording equipment and live streaming, volunteers are needed to assist in this
  • Organizing one or more restaurant bookings (dependending upon number of participants) for the evening of Saturday, 1 February
  • Participation in the Real-Time lounge
  • Circulating this Call for Participation to other mailing lists

  Social events and dinners

  The traditional FOSDEM beer night occurs on Friday, 31st of January.

  On Saturday night, there are usually dinners associated with each of the devrooms. Most restaurants in Brussels are not so large so these dinners have space constraints and reservations are essential. Please subscribe to the Free-RTC mailing list for further details about the Saturday night dinner options and how you can register for a seat.

  Related events around FOSDEM

  As per usual, the XMPP Summit is happening ahead of FOSDEM. This time it will take place on the 30th and 31st of January also in Brussels. All details are available on the summit website.

  Spread the word and discuss

  If you know of any mailing lists where this CfP would be relevant, please forward this document. If this devroom excites you, please blog or microblog about it, especially if you are submitting a talk.

  If you regularly blog about RTC topics, please send details about your blog to the planet site administrators:

  • All projects https://planet.freertc.org planet@freertc.org
  • XMPP https://planet.jabber.org ralphm@ik.nu
  • SIP https://planet.sip5060.net planet@sip5060.net
    • (Español) https://planet.sip5060.net/es/ planet@sip5060.net

  Please also link to the Planet sites from your own blog or web site as this helps everybody in the free real-time communications community.

  Contact

  For any private queries, contact us directly using the address fosdem-rtc-admin@freertc.org and for any other queries please ask on the Free-RTC mailing list.

  The devroom administration team:

  • Saúl Ibarra Corretgé s@saghul.net
  • Ralph Meijer ralphm@ik.nu
  • Daniel-Constantin Mierla miconda@gmail.com
  • Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.pro
  • Guus der Kinderen guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com
• Kamailio Fosdem 2020 Call For Presentations

  The next FOSDEM edition (February 1-2, 2020) is hosting again a devroom for Real Time Communications.

  You can see more details about the announcement at:

  • https://lists.kamailio.org/pipermail/sr-users/2019-October/107165.html

  If you are interested to present on topics related to open source RTC, consider to submit a proposal via Pentabarf portal offered by FOSDEM organizers:

  • https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM20/

  In Pentabarf system, on the “General” tab, look for the “Track” option and choose “Real Time Communications devroom”. The deadline is 23:59 UTC on the 15th of December, 2019.

• Digium At AstriCon Now…

  

  Hello Everyone – AstriCon 2019 has started! We have well over 300 people here that just packed the introductory remarks from Bill Wignall and the keynote from Alan Quayle, which was also livestreamed.

  Alan just did a terrific keynote about why the Asterisk and open source community is important for the communications industry in general because it has the broadest set of applications, and you can better control your own destiny. That’s why you don’t have to be beholden to the “big guys” who control the analysts for UC solutions. So AstriCon is off to a great start!

  Yesterday, DevCon occurred, and, while I didn’t attend, from all accounts, it was successful.

  I’m looking forward to talking with everyone here, and like I said, it’s off to a great start. Now off to the tracks…

  The post At AstriCon Now… appeared first on Sangoma.

October 28, 2019

• Kamailio Using Kamailio as SBC for Microsoft Teams

  Henning Westerholt, one of the project’s core developers, published a tutorial on how to use Kamailio as SBC (Session Border Controller) for Microsoft Teams. The blog post can be found at:

  • https://skalatan.de/blog/kamailio-sbc-teams

  In this way you can extend the MS Teams systems with the features that Kamailio provides, especially for SIP trunking, interconnecting with VoIP providers or connecting external SIP endpoints.

October 22, 2019

• Digium How is Asterisk Different from FreePBX?

  Astricon 2019 is next week. And while there will certainly be a lot of discussion about Asterisk, there will also be some discussion about FreePBX. And sometimes I get questions about the differences.

  Let’s go through the reasons people ask this question in the first place. Number one, both are free, open source, downloadable communications software. The two leading ones in the world in fact. And by now the 25 Millionth download of Asterisk has occured! That’s a lot. And both are associated with PBXs. But what’s the actual difference?

  Asterisk is, in fact, a communications toolkit. Not a ready-to-go PBX. It has a lot of functionality that someone needs to craft into something. That something most often happens to be a PBX, but it doesn’t have to be a PBX. It can be contact center software, an automated call distributor, a voicemail system, a video mail system, an IP-PBX, or so much more. Someone could even add their own IoT hooks to it to turn it into some other kind of communication system. (By the way, we’ll be demoing something like that on FreePBX so come see it.)

  

  FreePBX, as per the definition from FreePBX.org, is “a web-based open source GUI (graphical user interface) that controls and manages Asterisk.” So it’s a GUI built on top of Asterisk that makes it easier to deploy a PBX from that Asterisk core. In the graphic above, it’s one of the items that would appear in the blue box.  It’s a complete IP-PBX.

  So they are two separate open-source projects. Sangoma will continue to support both projects. If you want to hear more, please attend Astricon next week in Atlanta.

  The post How is Asterisk Different from FreePBX? appeared first on Sangoma.

October 17, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio v5.3.0 Released

  October 17, 2019: Kamailio v5.3.0 is out –  a new major release, bringing new features and improvements added during nine months of development and about two months of testing.

  In short, this major release brings 6 new modules and enhancements to more than 80 existing modules, plus components of the core and internal libraries as well as optimizations for embedded interpreters (KEMI framework). Detailed release notes are available at:

  • https://www.kamailio.org/w/kamailio-v5-3-0-release-notes/

  This is the fourth major release in the series of 5.x.y versions. Besides adding plenty of new features, a lot of development was directed to add more flexibility to run on containerised deployments, next generation emergency services, bring new features to load balancer, dialog tracking or remote registrations and to make available more functions to KEMI interface.

  Enjoy SIP routing in a secure, flexible and easier way with Kamailio v5.3.0!

  Thank you for flying Kamailio and looking forward to meeting you at Kamailio World Conference 2020!

October 15, 2019

• Digium What is the Impact of the RingCentral & Avaya Partnership?

  I’ve had a few people ask me what does the RingCentral and Avaya partnership mean? I have to say, my first reaction was that the messaging at Enterprise Connect 2020 is going to be over the top. It was already over the top from RingCentral, but now it’s really going to be totally out of control. Anyway, it means quite a bit financially to both companies and if you want to see what those impacts are, there are quite a few articles out there on that already.

  But the questions to me are really about the customer who is considering a UC or PBX solution. And from that perspective, what it really means, like many others have written, is that Avaya hasn’t really executed on its cloud strategy, and this is a way for it to get there.

  However, if I’m an Avaya customer looking to upgrade to a new system or a prospect looking to buy now or soon, it likely means confusion. What if you don’t know what you want to do– on-prem or cloud –and you really just want to know about the pros and cons of each and which is best for you. Well, then you’re going to hear two different messages, probably from two different teams. You’re going to have to weigh the pros and cons of not only that but also two vastly different products.

  It’s going to be hard to know who to listen to and trust.

  So if you are considering a new UC system and you don’t know what is best for you, you are going to look around now. I’d say come to Sangoma. Of course I’d say that, right? But seriously, we happily sell both on-prem and cloud. And because the system is the same code base, it looks and acts the same whether on-prem and cloud. We’d be happy to go through what is best for you. And we know you’d be thrilled with our UC system. Give us a call or come visit and talk to us at AstriCon at the end of October in Atlanta.

  The post What is the Impact of the RingCentral & Avaya Partnership? appeared first on Sangoma.

October 14, 2019

• Kamailio Kamailio On FLOSS Weekly – Oct 16, 2019

  Fred Posner is the guest of FLOSS Weekly this week on Wednesday (October 16, 2019) to discuss about Kamailio SIP Server project.

  You can tune in live and see how the session goes – it happens at 9:30am Pacific Time (-7 UTC) / 16:30 UTC. The host of the show is Randal L. Schwartz.

  See more details at:

  • https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly

  UPDATE: the recorded video of the session is available at:

  • https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/551

  Thanks for flying Kamailio!

• TADHack TADHack Global 2019 Winners

  

  Its a wrap for TADHack Global 2019, we’ll announced all the location and global 2019 winners in this weblog.

  Thank you to everyone taking part in TADHack Global 2019. You’re part of something special, talent and innovation are everywhere! We hope taking part in TADHack helps make a difference in your life.

  Below is the video and presentation were we announced all the location and global 2019 winners. Its truly amazing what the innovative talent around the world can do with the sponsors’ technologies. Congratulations to all the teams.

  Thanks to our global sponsors for making TADHack possible: Telesign (Mobile Identity, Trust), Simwood (Programmable Telecoms, Fraud Protection), and VoIP Innovations (Programmable Telecoms).

  And thanks to all our local sponsors and supporters across the many locations: MTN, Inovo, IIT RTC Labs, Cluster Creatic, Aplisay, hSenid Mobile, IdeaLondon, Automat Berlin, Vio Networks, KPN API Store, and Speakup NL.

  Global Winners

  Simwood’s Global Winners

  6789cat.com by Peter Gillis and Markus Toepfer

  6789cat.com is a service that allows you create a virtual number and use it as privacy-shield for two-way communication. We’re a Simwood hack covering the few missing parts with Apidaze. $1000 global prize.

  #BlackPenta by Tselane Bolofo, Abraham Mokaba, and George Links. Great use of Simwood WebRTC: $100 Global Prize

  WhoCallsMe by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Inbound call reputation scoring and steering: $400 global prize.

  Simwood Node Library by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Wrapping the Simwood API in a node Library: $100 global prize.

  SimKube by Matt Williams, Yin Yee Williams. Scalable Simwood services implementation using Kubernetes: $400 global prize .

  TeleSign’s Global Winners

  Inbus by Andjelka Milovanovic, Stefan Kapunac, Luka Milosevic. InBus automatically notifies users on someone’s distance or time needed to reach a destination, using TeleSign SMS API. Telesign Global Prize of $1000.

  Universal help network by Brayan Mamian, Jonathan Ibarra, Cristian Gòmez, Tania Cañizares. Is a network that connects users and specialists to solve their needs on information or specialized advice. Used for users to request information needs and, on the other hand, specialists who take the information request and resolve it, the requests can be complemented through multimedia resources. example: a user consults: “”my puppy got sick and has the following symptoms …”” and the specialist takes the request and answers about possible diagnoses”. Telesign Global Prize of $600.

  Fighting Fantasy by Steve Goodwin. Interactive fiction by SMS. Telesign Global Prize of $400.

  VoIP Innovations Global Winners

  1st Place ($1000) – Automaton by Viacheslav Oleinik: Used VI voice APIs to trigger an acceptance call back to the user once everything has been completed.

  20% of tourists in Amsterdam come from outside the Shenghen zone and it’s very expensive for them to use roaming data! If they want to use a service based on QR code they can’t or it’s expensive. Thanks to the NFC solution of Auotmaton, the connection and the payment goes via the connected device itself through the suppliers’ infrastructure and users don’t have to be to use connected devices (bike rental, connected steps,..). By using VOIP Innovations, the supplier makes a confirmation call to users which also doesn’t cost anything for the user.

  2nd Place ($600) – Utenz by Vishal Chandrasekaran, Ryan Zheng, Pavan Pandurangi, Jihoon Park: Used VI SMS as their main communications feature to allow users to communicate with each other to talk about healthy eating. Utenz is a dieting and food-tracking app that promotes healthy living, eating, an connection.

  3rd Place ($400)– TechBuddy by Will Brickner, Dechen Tsechen: Used VI voice APIs exclusively to connect geniuses with each other. TechBuddy allows geniuses to talk to each other for free through a simple phone call. It matches people based on their skill level.

  Location Winners

  Belgrade Winners

  Here is the Belgrade playlist of all the pitches.

  Inbus by Andjelka Milovanovic, Stefan Kapunac, Luka Milosevic.  InBus automatically notifies users on someone’s distance or time needed to reach a destination, using TeleSign SMS API. 1st place, 50,000 RSD (Serbian dinars)

  SafeWalk by Aleksa Tonic, Stefan Mitrovic, Andjela Loncarski, Pavle Radoman.  Safety of kids or elderly. Their app is installed on a phone and on regular intervals asks user to confirm they’re safe. If they fail to do so, SMS with current location is sent to pre-set “safe” number.
  2nd place, 30,000 RSD (Serbian dinars).

  Reminder++ by Kristina Markovic, Filip Minic, Filip Carevic, Mladen Jugovic. A list of events is scraped from websites, such as shows, sports events etc. Then, users can subscribe to these events. The platform notifies users about any changes in subscribed events, via sms. 3rd place 20,000 RSD.

  Chicago Winners

  Here is the Chicago playlist of all the pitches.

  Scamdrop by Poshak Saran, Guru Moorthy, Noel, Madly, Rebecca, Mike, Urii, Kim. A service catered towards businesses with a large call volume to help grow their business in an efficient and people friendly manner while actively helping prevent fraudulent calls on a daily basis.Won the TADHack Chicago location prize of $500.

  Utenz by Vishal Chandrasekaran, Ryan Zheng, Pavan Pandurangi, Jihoon Park. Dieting and food-tracking app that promotes healthy living, eating, an connection. Won the hSenid Mobile prize of $500.

  Johannesburg Winners

  <playlist coming soon>

  London Winners

  Here is the London playlist of all the pitches.

  eFrancesco by Istvan Hoffer, Matyas Juhasz. Event organization assistant with analytics: joint third prize $100.

  RabbitDesk.ai by Dominic Norton,Supriya Rai, Immanual Baskaran. Recruitment Analytics: joint third prize $100 .

  Time journey by Joe Reeve, Waverley Chmura, Nadia Leonova, Lucie Kaffe. Telling a story over elapsed time: joint second prize $200.

  WhoCallsMe by Steve Goodwin, Lily Madar. Inbound call reputation scoring and steering: joint second prize $200 .

  SimKube by Matt Williams, Yin Yee Williams. Scalable Simwoods services implementation using Kubernetes: first prize $400.

  The Netherlands Winners

  Here is the The Netherlands playlist of all the pitches.

  AUTOMATON by Viacheslav Oleinik. 20% of tourists in Amsterdam come from outside the shenghen zone and it’s very expensive for them to use roaming data! If they want to use a service based on QR code they can’t or it’s expensive. Thanks to the NFC solution of Auotmaton, the connection and the payment goes via the connected device itself through the suppliers’infrastructure and users don’t ahve t be to use connected vdevises (bike rental, connected steps,..). By using VOIP Innovations, the supplier makes a confirmation call to users which also doesn’t cost anything for the user. 1st prize $300.

  SustainBin by Diana Zubchenko. Problem is that people keep on throwing regular garbage in clothing garbage container. municipalities in the netherlands spend a lot of energy, time and budget to sort clothing garbage again befind recycling. With connected smart bins, the bin opens when a user gets closer to the smart bin – after he / she created an account previously. Therefore no mistake can be made and people are actively using and recognizing the clothing bin. Also, thanks to an incentive program and gamification, user are stimulated to use these bins more often! 2nd prize $200.

  Chatplatform by Milo Arimit Bhattacharya. By creating a chat platform and connecting users per topic of interest, connected people will solve their loneliness. Users will be incented for long chats with a sticker reward program. Also, the chat platform can be reused by organisations dealing with people facing loneliness (elderly people, people in reinsertion, suicide hotline,..). API Store prize (€1.000 credits in the KPN API Store to further develop the project)

  Popayán Winners

  Here is the Popayán playlist of all the pitches.

  Helpme by Daniel Andrés Alean Mera, Cristhian Alejandro Cañar Muñoz, David Argote, Jhonatan Mariaca, and Edwin Hair Hidalgo. Help the homeless to improve the quality of life, through a donation network of people and foundations. The app publishes the photo and location of the homeless with a short story so that they can help them. 1st place: 500 USD.

  Id_Park by Sebastian Caldon, Valentina vásquez, Juan Benavides,
  James Tumbaqui Toro. They’re solving parking slot problem, using location to find the available spots and trusteable. The quotas separation is done through payment methods. 2nd place: 300 USD.

  Universal help network by Brayan Mamian, Jonathan Ibarra, Cristian Gòmez, Tania Cañizares. Is a network that connects users and specialists to solve their needs on information or specialized advice. Used for users to request information needs and, on the other hand, specialists who take the information request and resolve it, the requests can be complemented through multimedia resources. example: a user consults: “”my puppy got sick and has the following symptoms …”” and the specialist takes the request and answers about possible diagnoses”. 3rd place: 200 USD.

   

   

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