Belated Notes from VON

I'm an articles guy not a news blogger, so I didn't even try to compete with the numerous people blogging last week's VON conference.  In any event, I was double booked much of the time. The best part of VON is the people I meet and the one-on-one discussions but let me mention a few impressions of note:

• Social networking was everywhere, and not just because of Jeff's interest and/or the focus on Facebook in his kickoff speech.  Every combination and permutation is being tried, especially through Facebook applications.  I can't point to one application that's going to revolutionize IP communications in the sense Skype did, but I'm still hopeful.  At least these apps are a step forward from the digital POTS VoIP services like Vonage, AT&T CallVantage and the various cable VoIP offers.

• The convergence of Mobile and VoIP continues to be via work-around.  We're still a few years from true over-the-top IP communications on mobile, as today there's not enough upstream bandwidth, latencies for IP data are really something and, of course, there are mobile operator restrictions on VoIP over their networks.  Of course mobile voice telephony is still so expensive, especially internationally, that workarounds will abound.  But true mobile IP communications will be delayed a bit more...

One interesting tidbit:  I finally got to hear from ooma and get the answers to two questions that had plagued me about their distributed termination approach.  Distributed termination means calls, carried long distances by VoIP, can terminate in a remote city using another subscriber's local line.  My issues:

1. How do you handle the caller ID which will point to the local subscriber's line, not the original caller's line?  Answer:  they suppress CallerID, i.e. there is no caller ID.  That's not great, as I know my wife won't answer such a call.
2. What about people listening in on calls that are terminated through their local service?  Answer: the ooma equipment senses extensions going off hook and avoids routing calls through subscribers whose lines have a history of people listening in.  Well, that's certainly a partial answer.  It's easy to detect extensions going off hook as an extension telephone puts an additional load on the line.  But there are plenty of high impedance listening devices that don't load the line and can't be detected in any easy fashion.  Again, it's an answer, but not a great one...

The conference itself felt a little smaller than last year in Boston or last spring in San Jose, but booth traffic appeared to be good.  Also, there were more sessions and more tracks and more experimentation, as PulverMedia is obviously trying to reinvent itself and the show.  I have some specific suggestions which I will offer to Carl Ford, but it may be another week or two before I get a free moment to write them out.

Here's a photo of the show floor on Tuesday at lunch time.

Comments

[Mike Pierce]

Sure, Ooma keeps making these claims, but the truth is the following:

1. There are ways around the Calling Line ID blocking. Check out
http://causs.org/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=4785&mesg_id=4785&page=
Besides, any such blocking does not prevent the police from getting your ID for an illegal call.

2. Of course the Ooma Hub can detect other "extensions" going off hook by detecting the drop in line voltage. Most answering machines have done this for years. (In fact, mine often fails to detect an extension going off hook because of the low voltage the phone company feeds these days.) The privacy problem is about using things other than regular "phone extensions" to do the monitoring. Check out
http://oomahacks.blogspot.com/2007/10/eavesdropping-on-ooma-calls.html
As some one else noted, you can buy a telephone "butt set" in Home Depot that allows "high impedance" monitoring. It's the same as what I used to carry when I worked for AT&T.

I wish Ooma would come clean.

[brough]

Mike, thanks for the note.

1. Yes, "CallerID blocking" is implemented at the PSTN switch that delivers the call to the called party, so it only works at a consumer level. The calling party number is still passed through the telephone network in the SS7 ISUP setup message, so any company whose equipment is interfaced to the telephone network via SS7 signaling has access to calling party info despite blocking, for example, the call center mentioned in the post you point to.

2. Yes, the circuit shown is exactly what I meant by a high impedance listening device. Actually, you don't even need an amplifier. The minimum high impedance listening configuration I've seen is a single coupling capacitor connecting a ordinary phone which is then locally powered by a 9 volt battery in series with a 620 ohm resistor (to give about 15 ma of "talk battery"). You connect the battery-resistor power source across the two leads of the phone so the phone is "live" and you connect the phone to the line via one (or two) blocking capacitors so it doesn't load the line.

In any event, the ooma story is rather lame.

[MIke Pierce]

Yes, I believe a simple capacitor with a phone would work. Since the point is to do it unnoticed, you would not want the "talk battery" connected.