Cisco: Inching Us Towards True Covergence
Cisco acquires Scientific Atlanta, with the hope of combining the various home networks: video, data, voice, audio. In one stroke, Cisco has positioned itself at the pinnacle of the Network Convergence debate.
Only two companies had a complete lock over the channel serving the STB market: Motorola and Scientific Atlanta. With today’s acquisition, Cisco cuts through the barrier to enter the STB market, and with it, acquires a massive opportunity to lead the innovation in home networking. Neither Motorola, nor SA had enough of the other pieces. Cisco does.
Imagine the future of the Home Network …
One, just One box from Cisco sits as a Gateway Server for ALL the home networks, with a fat pipe coming into it. Services can be turned on and off remotely, as the consumer pays. Various Clients – all Wireless, of course – plays off this Server: The VOIP/VideoOIP phone handset / headset / Camera, the TV, the PC, the Laptop, …
This server is both a smart Set-Top-Box and a big storage device with PVR, DVD, DVR, Digital Music Console, Wireless Router.
Cisco already has great Storage Networking technology in-house, although tailoring that down to consumer-level idiot-proofing will continue to be a challenge. The driver, of course, is that consumers would want to view, listen, communicate over multiple displays / speakers / handsets – all around the house. The specs also include catering to a secure, authenticated, multi-user environment.
In a nutshell, the STB was extremely important in the food-chain, and now that Cisco has got its hands on that vital piece, including solving the channel challenge, we can dream.
So far, a true Home Network convergence device was not possible.
Now it is.
ps. Configuring and managing Home Networks will be a big profession, and this job cannot be outsourced as easily. A largely non-tech savvy consumer population will demand that service personnel come out to their homes and fix things. Who pays? Consumer or Carrier? Without this support, Convergence will not cross the chasm.
What You Should Know About Voip Technology
You have heard it all-everyone is talking about the VOIP technology and how it is outpacing the telephones companies and even the cellular companies. So what is all the talk about?
VOIP allows you to make your entire local, long distance and international telephone calls over your high-speed internet connection. All of this for just one low price that can be rolled up into your monthly internet cable invoice. The technology is changing rapidly and there are a lot of new features available to people savvy enough to get in on the ground floor for this new technology.
So, what should you do? How different will your VOIP technology be over your regular telephone company? If you listen to the advertisements, you will realize that they are a lot alike, but there are also some benefits that VOIP technology now offers.
For your VOIP telephone phone, you can have voice mail, 3-way calling, speed dialing, call forwarding, simultaneous ring, call waiting, caller ID, call return, caller ID block, anonymous call rejection, do not disturb feature, and last number redial. If changing to the VOIP system you can take your existing telephone number, get great international rates, make it possible for people overseas to call you with it being a local call for them (gone are the long distance rates), you get free in-calling network and can manage your account online.
Well, this sounds a lot like the other phone companies, so what really makes the VOIP technology better? It is debatable as to whether or not this is better. It is definitely different, however; recently, there was a press release on http://News.com that “A technical review conducted by the British government has found several security flaws in products that use VOIP and text messaging, including those from Microsoft and Cisco Systems.” So, there can be a problem with the VOIP technology.
There is also concern that the VOIP does not full support their own encryptions yet. This means that it is easy to eavesdrop on VOIP telephones and to even change what is being said. Experts are working on security options, but have not yet found one that is completely reliable to take care of this problem.
If you look at it only one way, you would say, this is a major problem and I can not deal with that. However, consider the cyper terrorists. They can and will disrupt any communications system-all it takes is the time and patience to find a single flaw and everything can come crashing down.
The choice is yours to decided whether or not the VOIP technology is advanced enough for you to use this as your primary means of communicating on the telephone. Take your time and really think about whether or not this new VOIP technology will do everything you need it to do. If not, you might want to wait a few years until the technology has advanced more before changing over to the new VOIP technology. You know that technology will only change and be improved for the better.
How to Stop Annoying Telemarketers
Many people in the United States have noticed a decline in the effectiveness of the once-vaunted Do Not Call registry in past years. Calls from telemarketers have returned in full force, alongside those from political candidates and nonprofits. Many people now complain about getting so-called “robocalls,†where a computer is on the other end saying to click a button if interested in a product or service.
Several solutions exist in the marketplace for ending this nuisance. Many phone companies now offer a convenient, albeit expensive, service which will screen out calls. Vendors also sell boxes that do the same thing. Each of these systems works by requiring the caller to say his or her name before connecting them to the user’s phone. Then, the user can decide whether or not to accept the call.
Alternative methods exist, such as simply not picking up the phone when anyone calls, or screening out all callers who do not provide caller ID. Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution, as many telephone salespeople have figured out ways around such systems. According to industry statistics, 90 percent of solicitors do actually provide a caller ID on their calls, though frequently when one attempts to call that number, no one picks up.
One innovative service has tied web-based reporting of telemarketer sales calls to automated blocking of those calls. This free telemarketer blocking service, provided by PhoneSpamFilter.com, allows individual users on the web to report annoying telemarketers. Then, other users can view these comments on a website.
But most importantly, PhoneSpamFilter.com offers a mechanism by which telephony providers can automatically query PhoneSpamFilter.com’s database of known telemarketers. Much like the collaborative filtering employed by modern e-mail spam filters, this system uses the knowledge of all telephone users to block the right incoming calls.
The system is very simple to implement using such PBX software as the open-source Asterisk. And it has already been adopted by several Voice-Over-IP providers. Hopefully, this new offering will put an end to annoying telemarketers once and for all.
Of course, no matter what happens, it probably makes sense for angry consumers to notify the government about illegal telemarketer calls. Unfortunately, however, many such calls are not even illegal, due to carve-outs in the Do Not Call legislation. PhoneSpamFilter.com offers one of the few solutions out there to eliminate even these annoying calls.
