Pingtel Open Source VoIP Debuts in Europe

jasperbg writes "The Register has an interesting article on open-source VoIP provider Pingtel's debut in Europe. Pingtel is a commercial company which packages and sells products based on code from the SIPfoundry open source community."

Comments

This has been in the making for a while

[Dancin_Santa]

It seems that a year ago Pingtel had its doubts about SIP as the sole technology for VoIP. And they are right, of course.

The key to making this work is a combination of SIP and other related technologies, but most of all, VoIP needs a solid business plan to work. Despite good technologies and intentions, without a business plan that is well-designed, the project will be doomed to failure. Pingtel thinks they have the right business model. Time will tell

skype...

[torrents]

it would be nice if there was an open source alternative to skype that got major backing by some big players... let's hope this is it! (not that skype isn't good, it's great... but competition is even greater)

Re:w00t Indeed!

[pbhj]

How about this for a summary ...

Rich points out that many of the key members of the key IETF working groups also sit on the board of SIPfoundry.

The rest is just a bit of marketing speak - basically an advert with some generalised statements about where SIP is going and why SIPfoundry is better than Asterisk.

El-Reg put it down to a conflict between a standards group (SIPfoundry) and a "fleet-footed" application development group (Asterisk) ... as we've all seen the standards always win over the latest bells and whistles!

Oh, wait! ...

No crawl/package/sell here; Pingtel wrote it

[sipfounder]

Contrary to the assumption in this specific post, this is not a case of spider/package/sell. Pingtel itself wrote 100% of this software in the 6 years of its venture-backed history prior to releasing it under an open source license. This was previously closed-source software from a company that decided to shake up the VoIP business by shifting from a closed-source model to an open-source model.

So Pingtel is not merely selling something they didn't work hard to create. They made the original corpus of code, though the growing contributions of others will clearly improve it.

And even after these contributions grow in proportion to Pingtel's original source, there's still benefit in providing the same service RedHat does: decide what is ready for "prime time enterprise deployment" and what isn't, and package a release accordingly.

What I want that Skype can't provide

[sipfounder]

1. Something less invasive. Skype's peer-to-peer discovery techniques used at startup "learns" too much about my network "inside" my firewall by doing all kinds of broadcasting, exploring, poking, etc. I don't like it when some other, random company's software starts dissecting the organization of my internal network. I don't trust what they will, or won't do with that info, particularly since it is in the hands of a company who has a demonstrated willingness to do things the rest of the world may not be happy with but that it thinks are "good."
2. Something that the open source community can expand on in the way the Skype APIs are doing, but not do it in only the ways Skype -- in it's infinite wisdom -- decide are things that are useful / ok / interesting. This is the very beauty of open source -- lemme do what I want.
3. Play well with others. There are tons of SIP-based products and services starting to enter the market. (See the lists at www.sipforum.org and www.sipcenter.org, etc.) Skype is attracting some providers for SkypeOff, but I'd rather take advantage of the SIP industry's last 5 years of work to make a broad array of products (VXML engines, conference control interfaces, media servers, IP PBXs, etc.)

Oh, and to the point that Skype's firewall piercing is unique or unacceptable -- it isn't. See an analysis of Skype signaling done at Columbia University. Skype appears to use a variant of the STUN/ICE technique currently being worked through in the IETF for use with SIP, too. What isn't acceptable in the corporate environment is the local LAN probing / discovery that Skype does at startup!!!

So I want something that plays well with me, and others.

Re:So?

[Registered Coward v2]

The whole emergency services thing is a pile of crap. Just because a VoIP service performs LIKE a telephone, doesn't make it a telephone service.

Two comments:

Vonage, in the US at least,sells their service as an alternative to a land line - with number portablity, LD, etc. How they route the call is irrelevant to what service they are providing. People will expect 911 to work, and it should work just like any other phone.

Vonage, to their credit, does explain that you need to register to get 911 to work. Personally, if I were to use Voip at home I'd still keep a landline for emergencies and backup, at the lifeline rate if possible. Right now, my service is used to call from overseas to the US.

The 9xx issue is just a way for the authorities to get their foot in the door of regulating VoIP.

Actually, it's a way for existing phone companies to drive up the cost of VOIP, slowing it's acceptance, make some $$ on the interconnect, and buying time while they try to decide what to do.

There's a whole body of econmic thought on what regulation really does - starting with a Nobel Prize winning idea that regulation benefits the regulated.

I really feel that education about what exactly VoIP is and isn't would be better than regulation - It is a real shame that it takes death and injury for people to actually pay attention to the limitations of technology.

While education is good, it's largely irrelevant to the issue - VOIP is being sold as phone service, so people will expect it to act like one. If it doesn't, they'll scream. And even tech savvy peopel (suchas a neighbor of mine who happens to be an engineer) buy it because it's cheap, and haven't really thought about what happens when they lose power, their ISP has connection problems, or they dial 911 and don't get right into the emergency call center.

An the existing phone companies would like to regulate low cost VOIP out of business (at least until they decide how to offer it), while using VOIP tech to route calls they carry.