I had gotten my first MagicJack USB VoIP device on July, 19 2007. After one small business trip, it somehow stopped working but the guys over at MagicJack replaced it without question last October. So my “one year review” truly started in October, 19 2007.

A year later, I have gone from Windows 2003 Server SP2 to Windows Vista SP1 - I know, I know… it still sucks - switched professions and cities, and I still am using the same replacement MagicJack device. I’ve even pumped in about $50 into making overseas calls while on-the-go - the rates are “competitive” to most countries… but honestly still a disappointment to some other countries compared to other VoIP options.
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Friday (and Halloween), so gorge yourself on candy, take off your shoes, put up your feet, and empty your head into the comment section below.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

The same week Dell announced their most recent netbook, Michael Dell “predicted” that the future would see subsidized netbooks, sold by wireless carriers on the cheap if users were willing to sign long-term contracts. It wasn’t much of a prediction, given Dell was already negotiating such a deal, and such offers are already commonplace in Europe and Asia. This week the Wall Street Journal reported that Hewlett Packard was in talks with AT&T, Verizon Wireless, or both concerning subsidized netbooks. How low companies will go with subsized netbook prices remains to be seen. 0? 0?
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

On the heels of broad hikes by Comcast, Mediacom, and select hikes by Cox — Cablevision dropped me a line this evening to say they’ll be joining the other cable operators in bumping the price of some TV packages next year. The company will be raising cable TV rates in 2009 by an average 3.5%, though spokesman Jim Maiella insists to me via e-mail this is “once again below the current rate of inflation” (not sure if that makes you folks feel any better).

Maiella notes that the company’s broadband and VoIP products are not seeing a hike for going on six consecutive years. The company’s triple play promotion is also not seeing hikes, and hasn’t since 2004 when it was introduced, says Maiella. The exact nature of the hikes, which were 4.7% last year, hasn’t yet been specified. A press release sent to the media suggests the hikes are justified by Cablevision upgrades, including their Wi-Fi initiative and VOD enhancements (customers can obviously make that determination for themselves):

Cablevision customers: do you feel you’re getting your money’s worth? Everyone else: happy cable (and probably telcoTV) rate hike season. We know what you’re getting this year!
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

SD. RV0. SPA. ABC..DEF…ugh.
If you are like me, you probably want to pull your hair out when confronted by the alphabet soup of product names that today’s manufacturers cook-up. Well, before you go and stock up on Rogaine, let’s take a look at demystifying at least one manufacturer’s part numbers - Linksys.
Demystifying Linksys Part Numbers
The [...]

Link to the original article…

Survey: Unlimited Mobile Broadband a Trap for Operators cable360.net
AT&T, Lenovo and Ericsson Break Down Barriers to Embedded Broadband Service in Notebook PCs zibb.com
Verizon-Alltel Deal Wins Justice Department Approval; Verizon Must Sell Assets bloomberg.com
Motorola cuts 3,000 jobs, delays spinoff of cell phone unit yahoo.com
Big Guns Come Out In Effort To Show RIAA’s Lawsuits Are Unconstitutional techdirt.com
WiMAX deployments in France hit serious delays: a lesson for WiMAX operators in developed countries? muniwireless.com
Apple’s ‘next move’ is an HSDPA MacBook, forecasts analyst reghardware.co.uk
LIN TV CEO: We re Getting Cash From Time Warner Cable multichannel.com
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

Qwest recently told us they were ahead of schedule on their 0 million ADSL2+ deployment plan, with their new 12Mbps/896kbps and 20Mbps/896kbps tiers available to 1.5 million customers. That number should reach 1.8 million by the end of this year, and may reach 5 million by the end of 2009, Qwest CEO Ed Mueller told investors this week. Mueller says Qwest could shift spending efforts to help feed FTTN/ADSL2+ deployment, but they won’t raise the company s overall capex budget to do so. Earlier this week, the company announced they’d be cutting 1,200 jobs, as landline losses and a lack of a wireless division continues to dog the baby bell.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

As most of you who are reading this already know, a little less than two month’s ago we underwent a major upgrade of our ecommerce platform - the one that powers the world’s most popular VoIP store, VoIPSupply.com. Similar to what many other businesses experience when tearing out a piece of business infrastructure and replacing [...]

Link to the original article…

JD Power and Associates has released their 2008 ISP Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, which for eleven years has ranked both dial-up and broadband ISPs on five criteria: performance and reliability, cost of service, customer service, billing, and offerings and promotions. ISPs are also ranked geographically by four regions. According to the study, Cablevision took top honors in the East, Roadrunner in the South, WOW in the North Central region, and Cox in the West.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

Polycom recently announced the release of SIP Firmware version 3.1 for their popular SoundPoint IP Series telephones. Feature enhancements in this release include:

Enhanced Feature Keys
Configurable Telephony Soft Keys
Server driven message display to user
Enhanced ‘Dialog Package’ BLF
Electronic Hookswitch compatibility with Plantronics Headsets
Programmable Soft Keys
Telephony Control and Status API
Push Capability
XHTML browser link [...]

Link to the original article…

On the heels of rumored plans by both Comcast and Verizon to deploy femtocells, AT&T is poised to also offer the technology soon. According to Unstrung, AT&T is the last of the big three cellular operators in the U.S. to get on board the femto bandwagon, and will begin testing the technology late this year and early next. Femtocells essentially create a micro-cell tower inside the home that routes calls over broadband, lessening the impact on local towers while improving indoor coverage for consumers. Sprint ’s “Airave” femtocell service launched last summer, and provides unlimited calling for an additional per month ( for multi-cell families, 0 for the hardware).
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

On the heels of hike announcements from Comcast, Cox, Mediacom and Cablevision, Time Warner Cable customers say they’re receiving notices saying they’ll be seeing rate hikes of their own. While hikes are determined on a market-by-market basis by Time Warner Cable (in part by competition or lack thereof), many users are being told they’ll be paying more for DVR service. Users in Ohio are being told they’ll see hikes between 10 and 12 percent starting in November. The e-mail to customers suggests Time Warner Cable feels just horrible about charging more:

Everything? How about using the revenue gained from your new entry into DNS Redirection advertising and the money saved from your decision to no longer offer newsgroup access to offset programming hikes? Or did you not really mean everything?
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

Sprint has been slacking at getting their new early termination fee (ETF) system in place after announcing it a year ago. Critics say it was because Sprint, already on shaky ground, is afraid of losing any more customers — but Sprint’s CEO recently claimed it was a billing integration issue. Whatever the case, Michael Stanclift at Neowin has scooped the news that Sprint’s new ETF system goes into effect November 2. It appears that Sprint’s new ETF plan will drop per month off of your ETF, after the first 5 months of service. Some of the new plan’s fine print:

The ETF changes were originally prompted when Sprint was sued by the Minnesota Attorney General for violating State consumer protection laws and misleading consumers by extending user contracts if a user made even slight plan changes. Sprint is also facing a class action lawsuit for their ETFs (Verizon settled a similar suit earlier this year for million). In response, Sprint claimed they’d pro-rate their ETFs almost exactly one year ago, so the carrier’s running a little late.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

Yesterday’s Comcast earning numbers showed that despite a tightening economy and increased competition from telcoTV, Comcast is weathering the storm — thanks in particular to the company’s rapid VoIP growth. Despite the faster speeds offered via FiOS, Comcast COO Stephen Burke this week stated that AT&T was the bigger threat.

Burke must be worried about AT&T’s sheer size alone, because not only is Comcast adding VoIP at a faster rate than AT&T is adding video subscribers, they’re adding substantially more broadband customers per quarter. Comcast’s speeds also beat AT&T’s copper-constrained top offering of 10Mbps, and that was before Comcast’s recent announcement of DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades. As we mentioned yesterday, Comcast should probably pass AT&T to become the largest U.S. broadband ISP by the end of the year, if they haven’t already.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

An anonymous reader writes in this morning: “Prior to 1987 there was a gentlemen’s agreement never to build a building taller than the statue of the city’s founding father William Penn. When Liberty Place was built in 1987, some believe this upset the sports gods and the city of Philadelphia was cursed with never winning a championship since. In 2007, the Comcast Tower was built making it the tallest building in Philladephia. The tower was also topped off with a likeness of William Penn as an attempt to break the cities 2 decade old curse.

Last night the Philladelphia Phillies won the world series! Conicidence, or did Comcast help end the curse?”
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…