[asterisk-users] [Astlinux-users] VoIP Users Conference Call Friday Nov 7 On Wideband Voice & Conferencing

[Kristian Kielhofner]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Michael Graves <mgraves at mstvp.com> wrote:
> This Friday's edition of the weekly VoIP Users Conference call  is all
> about wideband audio (aka HD Voice) and conferencing. The guest for
> this call is David Frankel, CEO of ZipDX a commercial service that
> specializes in wideband conferencing. We expect an interesting call
> touching on many aspects of VoIP going beyond the traditional phone
> service, conference bridges, technical standards, device compatibility,
> etc.
>
> The conference call will be held as usual on the Talkshoe service for
> people calling in from normal (G.711) phones. The Talkshoe bridge can
> be reached by PSTN or SIP URI.
>
> Anyone with G.722 capable phones (some models of Polycom, Snom, Cisco,
> Avaya, Mitel, Siemens or Grandstream) or a G.722 capable soft phone
> (Eyebeam, OEM version only) will be able to connect to the ZipDX
> conference bridge and participate in glorious wideband audio.
>
> The two conference bridges will be connected. People connected to ZipDX
> directly will be able to hear the startling difference that HDVoice
> makes. This is especially true in conference calls where line quality,
> accents and background noise all cause intelligibility issues. The
> downloadable recording of the conference will let everyone hear the
> difference for themselves.
>
> The call will happen Friday Nov 7 at 12 noon EST. To find out more
> about how to
> join this call please visit:
>
> http://blog.mgraves.org/
>
> or
>
> http://voipusersconference.org/ning/
>
> Michael Graves
>

While I appreciate the benefits of wideband audio/G722/etc and your
efforts to educate people about it during the VoIP User's Conference,
I wince at the thought of hearing a sales pitch.  At the very least I
find some of this company's existing marketing literature suspect (big
surprise there, right):

"ZipDX is the only audio conferencing service available today that can
support the HD Voice capabilities of the Polycom IP 6000 and IP 7000.
Our system was designed from the ground up to take full advantage of
these devices. You can also experience HDVoice on Polycom's
SoundPoint(R) IP-550, IP-560 and IP-650."

taken from:

http://www.zipdx.com/Info/PolycomSS

another gem:

"Patented No-Codes Conferencing"

Apparently they've patented dialing out to conference participants
and/or reading Caller ID/ANI to bypass the pin.  More fantastic work
from the US Patent Office!

I know there is more to "HD Voice" than G.722 but I also know that at
least (in the FOSS world alone) FreeSWITCH supports conferencing in
G.722.  Pingtel's sipx uses FreeSWITCH as a conference engine.  I
would bet with some investigation various other commercial products
support it too.

This was originally posted to various Asterisk-related groups and I
certainly realize FreeSWITCH isn't Asterisk.  I just doubt that the
CEO from a company that makes questionable claims such as this is
going to contribute much to what is (usually) an otherwise interesting
discussion about (largely) FOSS technology.  More than likely you're
going to get a sales pitch for their hosted service, which at
$0.10/min per participant is expensive.  I understand they offer other
conferencing features but it's pretty clear they are leading with
their "exclusive" support for wideband audio.

I'm sorry for the sarcastic tone and poor attitude but I'm getting
increasingly frustrated with sales and marketing goons infiltrating
what are otherwise excellent opportunities for *purely* technical
discussions.  Asterisk-Biz is overrun, they appear on Asterisk-Users
from time to time, and they've all but taken over most conferences.

Come on guys, don't let it happen to the VoIP User's Conference!! ;)

-- 
Kristian Kielhofner
http://blog.krisk.org
http://www.submityoursip.com
http://www.astlinux.org
http://www.star2star.com