The study, performed by Perspective Associates, concluded that unlicensed use of white-space spectrum could lead to low cost wireless broadband access in rural areas since white space is essentially supercharged WiFi that can operate over a larger range than WiFi. The study also said that white-space spectrum will lead to a number of devices and services because of a low cost of entry.

"This innovation in unlicensed spectrum is built on competition between thousands of manufacturers, service providers, and system integrators of varying scale and scope competing to sell a wide range of products and services directly to end users," the report said. "In contrast, voice and data services in licensed spectrum are provided by a small number of network operators, selling largely similar bundles of services."

The FCC last year approved unlicensed use of white-space spectrum as long as the services don't interfere with existing services. Google, Microsoft and Motorola are among the service's largest backers. Still the National Association of Broadcasters has filed suit against the FCC over interference concerns. White-space standards have yet to be established by regulators and device makers.

Posted by Dal at 12:51 PM | Direct Link | TrackBacks (0) Posted to WiFi / Wireless

Digium is the creator, sponsor and driving force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. The company’s product lines include a wide range of software and hardware that enable businesses to implement turnkey unified communications solutions or to design their own Voice over IP (VoIP) systems. Software developers, resellers and telecom professionals choose Digium’s products because only Digium delivers the technical superiority, security and flexibility associated with Asterisk.

Incendonet empowers organizations to add advanced speech capabilities as a seamless enhancement to their IP-PBX and other IT network investments at a price point never before possible for enterprise speech recognition technology. SpeechBridge is the perfect complement to core enterprise applications, and with its integrated speech-attendant, email and calendaring applications customers will begin realizing a return on their investment from day one. With an emphasis on ease of deployment, self-configuring technology allows for SpeechBridge to be provisioned and deployed in under an hour. Now all the benefits of automated speech recognition technology are no longer reserved for large enterprises and call centers.

“We are excited to make SpeechBridge available as a plug and play enhancement to the millions of servers running Asterisk,” said Tim Kruse, VP of sales and business development at Incendonet. “We look forward to working with Digium to extend the capabilities of their customers’ Asterisk deployments with our turnkey speech recognition solutions.”

Bill Miller, vice president of product management at Digium, said: “Incendonet’s SpeechBridge is a SIP-based, enterprise-grade, complete speech solution that we believe will be of substantial interest to businesses using Asterisk. It’s fast to deploy, easy to use and gives cost-effective Asterisk deployments the feel of much more expensive systems.”

Source: Digium & Incendonet

Posted by Dal at 02:04 PM | Direct Link | TrackBacks (0) Posted to Asterisk Software

 

The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality — the equal treatment of Internet traffic. That would bar Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. or AT&T Inc., from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.

Without strict rules ensuring Net neutrality, consumer watchdogs fear the communications companies could interfere with the transmission of content, such as TV shows delivered over the Internet, that compete with services the ISPs offer, like cable television.

Internet providers have opposed regulations that would inhibit the way they control their networks, arguing they need to be able to make sure applications that consume a lot of bandwidth don't slow Internet access to other users.

"This is about whether I can turn off my cable TV and watch TV over the Internet," said Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime broadband industry newsletter. "Comcast cares about this because they don't want people to turn off their cable TV."

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Posted by Dal at 01:36 PM | Direct Link | TrackBacks (0) Posted to VoIP Politics

As predicted last month, the IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard.

Finalization of the new wireless networking standard--which is capable of delivering throughput speeds up to 300 megabits per second (and even higher)--took exactly seven years from the day it was conceived, or six years from the first draft version. The standard has been through a dozen or so draft versions.

News of the ratification broke via a blog post displaying an e-mail sent by Bruce Kraemer, longtime chairman of the 802.11n Task Group, to task group members. There has been no public announcement yet. Update 5:49 p.m. PDT: A press release has been issued.

(The 802.11n Task Group is part of the 802.11 Working Group, which oversees WLAN (wireless local-area network) standards. Task group members include the majority of Wi-Fi chipmakers, software developers, and equipment OEM vendors. Meru Networks, one of the members, posted the blog that broke the news.)

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Posted by Dal at 04:15 PM | Direct Link | TrackBacks (0) Posted to WiFi / Wireless