Mr. Blog, PhoneGnome's CEO David Beckemeyer, says he considers to stop writing about VoIP because I called his blog a business tool.

Markus Göbel says this blog is a business tool. That means I have failed. I have let too much from that world creep over to this world.

Sorry everybody. I guess this means I have to blog less about VoIP, or anything related to ventures I'm involved in. Perhaps I shouldn't talk about VoIP here at all.

Please stop him from doing that! Leave a comment on his blog post and tell him that he should go on. I like his VoIP posts in this private blog very much. He makes us think when he says that Jaxtr math doesn't add up or that the Ooma business model could be considered a Toll Fraud. These are brilliant thoughts and he brought them up first. I don't want him to stop that.

Of course he also encouraged his readers to leave PhoneGnome favourable comments under an article from FierceVoIP. That's OK! It was only self defense against the Ooma fanboys who were dissing the PhoneGnome there. In this case he used his private blog as a business tool, something I would never criticize at an entrepreneur.

Labels: Jaxtr, Media, Ooma, PhoneGnome, VoIP

                                      

Do you remember PhoneGnome's "Build Your Own Ooma" challenge which they started at July 19th, 2007?

We invite any company that sees promise in Ooma’s recently announced “peer to peer” VoIP model to consider rolling such a service out on the PhoneGnome platform and see how it flies.

It seems that they have succeeded, as you can tell from the latest post in the PhoneGnome blog. The company does not declare a winner of the challenge, so they probably developed the new "Directed Calling / Remote POTS Access" feature of PhoneGnome by themselves. It resembles quite exactly what Ooma already does:

This feature enables remote access to your POTS phone service (the telephone service connected to the PhoneGnome box LINE port). A user with the PhoneGnome box can grant access to other PhoneGnome accounts. Such an authorized user can then use their PhoneGnome account to direct a call to a specific POTS telephone service.

With the new Directed Calling / Remote POTS Access feature, friends and family members in one area can place calls to local numbers in another area. One PhoneGnome box can serve any number of accounts whether those accounts have the PhoneGnome box or not.

That's also the Ooma model: Phone calls are delivered over the internet and terminated for free to the PSTN over an Ooma or PhoneGnome box, since people in the US usually have free local calls. But other than Ooma the PhoneGnome feature can also work internationally. If I had a PhoneGnome at home I could directly allow other users to make free calls to Germany by sharing my phone line. Ooma restricts its free calls only to the USA.

Another big difference is that with PhoneGnome you know at least who is sharing your phone line, while Ooma just accomplishes other people's phone calls over your fixed phone line whithout even telling you. You can find the implications of this in my former blog post "Why Ooma is a security risk". In contrast the "Directed Calling / Remote POTS Access" feature of PhoneGnome adds a sumbenu called "PhoneGnome Users Permitted to Use your Phone Line". That gives a sense of security if people grant that permission only to friends and family members. But I guess that we will soon hear about PhoneGnome users who grant free calls to anyone unknown who gives them free calls in his area in exchange. One PhoneGnome box can serve any number of accounts and so it's theoretically possible to build a network for worldwide free phone calls. Yet there are PhoneGnome users in over 100 countries.

So it seems that the PhoneGnome is now slightly ahead in the funny feature fight with Ooma.

But what about the Toll Fraud?

Only one month ago PhoneGnome's CEO David Beckemeyer reasoned in his blog and in a conversation with The VoIP weblog that the way Ooma operates could be construed as Toll Fraud, or at the very least, against the terms of service of your phone company. He quoted an AT&T web page that says:

You would never allow a stranger to walk into your place of business and walk off with your company’s products or services. And yet, an individual who perpetrates toll fraud on an unsuspecting business is doing just that.

Simply put, remote toll fraud is the fraudulent, illegal use of a company’s telecommunications system by a third party from a remote location.

Very diplomatically he concluded in his blog post that it was "probably just a coincidence that we receive this notice at the same time that Ooma is launching a service that permits strangers remote access to one's telecommunications system (specifically our AT&T landline)".

Now the PhoneGnome does the same.

Labels: ATA, free phone calls, Ooma, PhoneGnome, VoIP

                                      

The website ooma-revealed.info had a very short live. It was set up at the end of August and yet had to close only some days later. Webmaster Mike Pierce, a techie who started the website where he dissected the Ooma service, says in a comment to a blog post:

The web site ooma-revealed.info was taken offline under threat of legal action by ooma, claiming that it contained many untruths and was slanderous. They would not detail what they thought was untrue or try to provide corrections.

September 6, 2007 2:54 PM

ooma-revealed.info lived such a short time that there isn't even a copy in the cache of Google or MSN. You can find only some regarding blog posts or comments in other blogs where Mike advertized his site.

I have been told that at first Ooma approached Mike, indicating that they were trying to "reach out" to him. They alledgedly offered him a White Rabbit, which he refused, and told him Ooma technical people would look at the site and get in contact with Mike about issues that they think are wrong. However, instead, a few days later, Tom Cronan, Ooma CFO and counsel, supposedly called and threatened legal action so Mike took the site down.

That's just what I have been told in a private message. I never had the chance to see the website. You would think a company launching a new product would have better things to do. Please use the comments section if you know more or want to correct the information.

Labels: Ooma, VoIP

                                      

After the Funny fight between Ooma and PhoneGnome on FierceVoIP don't forget to read today the answer from PhoneGnome's CEO David Beckemeyer!

Last week an interview with Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Ooma, caused furor among the PhoneGnome users when he answered the question "How is ooma different from PhoneGnome, aside from the physical aspect?". David Beckemeyer immediately demanded his right to answer and comes up with this comparison:

The key distinguishing aspects of the two products, as we see it, are:

Ooma:
- Prepay for hardware plus a bundle of services/features up front
- Service options defined by ooma
- Proprietary, closed, architecture
- Available to users in the United States
- International calls at ooma rates

PhoneGnome:
- A la carte model, with lower up-front costs
- Customers pay less up front and pay for the services/features they want
- Open, expandable and interconnects with other VoIP services/systems
- Embraces open-standards, interoperability, and industry standards
- Available to users anywhere in the world
- Free software extends PhoneGnome-enabled service to a PC or mobile phone
- PhoneGnome box works with VoIP, cable and landline phone service
- Compatible with a variety of international and domestic plans

Also we learn from the article what a tiny company stands behind the PhoneGnome. "We are a typical early stage startup, running very lean and mean. We don't have any Hollywood actors and we don't have a big pile of VC cash to burn", says Beckemeyer with a side blow to Ooma's Ashton Kutcher. They have only ten people working full time and "many terrific folks who work with us, outsourced and under other arrangements to allow us to operate without large capital requirements as we strive to expand and grow organically".

Too sad that Beckemeyer didn't tell the actual status of PhoneGnome's “Build Your Own Ooma” challenge where they try to roll out a similar peer-to-peer service on the PhoneGnome platform.

Labels: free phone calls, Ooma, PhoneGnome, VoIP

                                      

FierceVoIP has an interview with Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Ooma. We can learn something, but it's mostly PR blabla for Ooma. Much more interesting are, again, the comments to this article.

Maybe Andrew shouldn't have answered the question "How is ooma different from PhoneGnome, aside from the physical aspect?". It causes an outrage of devoted PhoneGnome users, calling his answer "completely misleading" and presuming that he didn't understand how PhoneGnome works.

In steps Dennis Peng, director product management at Ooma, making an even more comprehensive comparation of the two devices. He asserts that PhoneGnome doesn't have two phone lines, like Ooma does, but just "one and a half". What does that mean? Maybe a half phone line is shorter than a full line? Peng gets it worse from the next commentator who says "Dennis, with all due respect to your position at Ooma, you need to do a little more homework", before he strips down his argumentation.

Too sad that most comments are anonymous, because they give pretty much insight and are funny to read. I hope that Mr. Blog himself, PhoneGnome's CEO David Beckemeyer, will find this article soon and also leave a comment.

I was personally shocked to read that poor Americans pay $65-70 monthly just to get two phone lines from AT&T and PhoneGnome. With the necessary broadband connection it sums up to $100 every month.

I just pay $40 monthly for broadband and VoIP, of course having two phones lines. Two people can call my Sipgate number at the same time. If the first phone is already in use the other rings. Also twofold dial out is possible. Betamax' SparVoIP allows this without hassle, using my Sipgate number as caller ID and letting me call my favourite countries for free for just $3 per month. On top of that I can use 10 different VoIP providers on my Fritz!Box, having lots of inbound numbers from different countries and arbitrating for the best price on outgoing calls. At Voxalot I can install 30 more providers.

I can switch easily if one provider goes belly up or messes with their rates, without getting a new box or changing anything hardware-wise. Ooma guarantees only three years of free service and nobody knows what happens to the box if they go bankrupt.


UPDATE:

David Beckemeyer, designer and proprietor of PhoneGnome, aka "Mr. Blog," aka former chief technology officer and co-founder of EarthLink, has officially requested the opportunity to respond to Andrew Frame's comparison of Ooma and PhoneGnome.

You can read more about that in today's FierceVoIP article "ooma versus PhoneGnome". But his response will not be featured untile the Monday, Sept. 10 edition of FierceVoIP.

Too sad we have to wait so long.

Labels: Betamax, free phone calls, Ooma, PhoneGnome, Sipgate, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

That was a funny to read yesterday: VoIP guru Jeff Pulver published the manifesto "Social Communications. A way of Life for me.", stating that "advent of Social Media provides us all with a great set of online tools we can use to build friendships and conduct business". He tells how he feels connected with hundreds of friends and collaborators without the need to ever meet the person face-to-face and declares 2007 as his year when social media extended itself into his life and changed everything.

Sometime during 2007, with the advent of my discovery/obsession with twitter and my recent adoption of Facebook as my iHome, the result of my actions have accelerated the way I have been able to create new relationships with people. These are people whom I've never met, yet over time people whom I feel truly connected with. And I would include in this list some of the people whose blogs I read as well as some of the people who have taken the time to leave a comment on my blog and whom I got to know afterwards.

The text ends with an invitation to join him on Facebook and Twitter, where we can read important information like "Good morning! Looks like a great day. I just hope the weather stays like this for my drive/ferry/drive to Boston on Thursday." or "Jeff is sleeping and dreaming about Jerusalem ROCKS!".

I nearly cracked up laughing when directly afterwards I read the post "Facebook Crap" on the Wireless Utopia blog. The writer Rajiv, a programmer from Bangalore, came straight to the point:

I finally have to admit it: I have not been able to figure out Facebook. No, not their business model. But what to do with it. I am on it and so are a decent amount of friends. But I hardly ever go beyond the home page. I see all my friends adding all sorts of applications, running quizzes, giving each other gifts, reading fortune cookies and whatnot. They seem to be having a good time.

But somehow I fail to enjoy it. None of the apps are really interesting. Or useful. To be frank, some of them are downright childish. Fortune cookies, comparing likes and dislikes. Who has the time for these things.

You are so right Rajiv! I feel the same. Facebook is a great time sucker.

On purpose I made there only "friends" who should be serious people: CEOs, CTOs, analysts, investors, sales people, journalists. I hoped to get in interesting discussions and to learn something. But what do I see? Messages like "Andy Abramson is going to dinner, about to drink wine..." or adult people pretending to be Zombies and virtually bite each other.

The groups, where we could have discussions, are barely updated with new posted items or wall posts. Even the page of the Rebtel group, with 153 members, didn't change in the last 12 days. Other groups that sounded interesting (EQO Mobile, Jajah, Ooma, FWD, ...) didn't develop further than some introductory statements.

Twitter is worse because it's only silly personal status messages. Have fun to read Jeff Pulver saying mostly "Good morning" and talking about the wheather on his Twitter page.

Who needs this? I wonder what Jeff Pulver would say.


UPDATE:

Reuters: Facebook surfers cost their bosses billions
Mon Aug 20, 2007 6:29AM EDT

Labels: EQO Mobile, Facebook, FWD, Jajah, Ooma, Rebtel, Twitter, Web_2.0

                                      

The blogosphere has criticized Ooma for various reasons, while traditional media have praised it to the skies for Ooma's unlimited free calls to the US, probably not knowing that this is part of most VoIP offers today. Now Ooma's co-founder Dennis Peng took the time for some explaining words comments section of GigaOM:

There are three pillars to our core value proposition that are unique to ooma:
* unlimited calling to any number in the US - with no monthly fees
* the Instant Second Line - the easiest second line you’ll ever use
* the Broadband Answering Machine - the best voicemail experience ever

His insightful comment is quite interesting to read. Especially for sentences like: "Both the Instant Second Line and Broadband Answering Machine are unprecedented features. To do them requires a unique combination of assets (processors, lights, buttons, speakers, inter-device networking, etc.) and architecture (star vs bus) that no ATA or other embedded device has ever had". Or: "What they will see, however, is a continual set of new services and the trained-eye will realize that we’ve designed this platform so that new services don’t all need to be “in-the-cloud”, but rather a unique blend of client/server intelligence and interactions".

This makes me hungry for more details, because the public still doesn't know how Ooma manages its Peer-to-Peer network, and whether it can survive if the company breaks down. Vinay has some interesting thoughts under the overpromising title "Ooma VOIP to offer Worldwide Free Calls?":

Some people reportedly said, Ooma won't work if they got closed down without understanding how they exactly work? No one really knows whether they use a Hydrid P2P or pure P2P. If they use hybrid P2P, then they have a central server that keeps information on peers and responds to requests for that information. I guess this could be required since regulation might require companies to know about their customers and some quality/security issues related to it. If they use pure P2P, they could have serious legal issues but ooma will continue to run irrespective of the company, coz the peers are responsible for data transfer and there is no central server.

Unfortunately Vinay's text doesn't mention how to use an Ooma device for worldwide free calls, although the title promised. Technically this should be possible, since there are many countries with free local calls or cheap nationwide phone flat rates, such as Germany. Jeff Pulver tries to build a worldwide free communication network around this with his fwdOUT service for Asterisk, yet for more than two years.

As I see it most ATAs run Linux and have been hacked for other purposes than the intended.

So will be Ooma.

Labels: Asterisk, ATA, free phone calls, FWD, Linux, Ooma, P2P, VoIP

                                      

Now finally it's out what Ooma is:

With one fell swoop, it hopes to let people share their phone lines with each other in order to disrupt the business of major telecommunications companies.

Here’s how it works: You install an Ooma “hub” device, costing a $399 one-time fee, in your home that routes phone calls through your computer or your land-line. Ooma’s device also sends and receives calls for other people in your geographic area (local land lines that Ooma takes advantage of).

A P2P calling application? That's pretty dangerous and has failed before! I think it will not work, especially in the USA where people are so afraid of terrorists. Would you borrow your phone to Al Qaeda for their next announcement? No? But you might be doing it with Ooma, without even notice.

Out of the same reason Jeff Pulver's "fwdOUT™ Phone Sharing Network" (former Bellster) never made it big: People cannot control who is talking under their number. When someone uses Ooma or fwdOUT, his call will appear on someone else's phone bill or call record. This poor person would then have to prove that it was an unknown criminal who made the latest phone call. Quite difficult.

Jeff Pulvers fwdOUT idea sounds quite similar:

The fwdOUT™ Network is a system that matches callers with other users that can complete the call for them at no charge. The only catch is that to make some calls, you have to let others use your phone. fwdOUT™is free and not to be used for commercial purposes.

For Instance, Erik lives in New York City, and he gets free local phone service, his family is in Holland. Joe is an expatriate from New York living in Holland that calls New York on a regular basis. Using the Free World Dialup Phone Sharing Service, Erik shares his number. Joe also shares his number. When Joe calls New York, he uses Erik’s line and Erik uses Joe’s Line. The sharing is not done on a one-on-one basis, members share with the entire community and accumulate credits when their line is used. These credits can be used to place calls through other member’s phones. Free World Dialup maintains the tallies so that no line is used more than the owner has permitted.

Only that fwdOUT doesn't connect slick Ooma boxes over the internet but private Asterisk PBXes worldwide. It doesn't work too good because there are to few people providing their phone lines and the project has to face legal problems. Some Russians use it, but that's not enough. Boingboing wrote already two years ago about Bellster/fwdOUT:

The Bellster challenge for 2005 is to find out whether or not there are still people in the world who would let total strangers place non-commercial phone calls for free in exchange for the ability to do the same thing themselves. At the moment we have a handful of active nodes around the world, and as the word of Bellster spreads, my hope is that our network will be able to deliver calls to the PSTN all around the world.

Now Ooma wants to do the same. Good luck! As far as I know Jeff Pulver's project did not fail from technical difficulties, but from lack of acceptance. Jeff downsized his support when he realized what a difficult issue it is. Here you can read the fwdOUT risks, collected by voip-info.org. Many of them apply to Ooma as well:

Possible Risks:

• Potentially a criminal offence in some countries to provide this service, and you could face jail time, while there you would end up meeting a big guy named bubba who wants to be really good friends.


• Your phone line could be used for credit card fraud or to report bomb threats or death threats, and you will have a lot of explaining to do when the police come and confiscate your equipment and take you down to the station for a little chat. Unlike carriers who are explictly exempt from being responsible for facilitating these kinds of things occuring, home users aren't and you could end up being the one facing court over it. Even if you get off, there will be no doubt a great inconvience for some from having their machines confiscated for any arbitary length of time. Although if you decided to give smart answers to the police you could end up being the next rodney king.


• Contractually, the phone company could cut you off, or could introduce clauses in your contract to cut you off in future if they feel you are participating in this kind of service. Phone companies can and do monitor call patterns in different countries and people have reportedly been cut off when their call patterns changed legimately, they were still required to sign documents that it was their calls, the calls were valid and even had to pay a reconnection fee.


• Security, any route your call takes could easily be monitored, recorded or altered, all without your knowledge or consent, even if this is against bellsters terms and conditions you may not know it is happening until it's too late.


• You could end up with large phone bills, it's one thing to setup asterisk for home use for your own toll by pass but securing asterisk to prevent unwanted calls is a whole other thing and it's your phone bill on the line if someone works out a way round your filtering. Some 1800 numbers in the US offer to bill your phone line like a 1900 number, so this could also increase your phone bill. Some people apparently are listing themselves as +1 area code, what they don't realise is that there is 20+ countries other then just the US listed under +1 which could also give them a nasty surprise if the bellster route filtering is breached. These calls are not blocked by the fwdOUT network (but instructions for blocking them are available). There are other locations that aren't being listed that could cause similar damage to your phone bill/wallet.

Minor points:

• Only likely to benefit those in cheap call areas, in which case you can use VoIP providers which in general have MUCH better call quality and are bound by privacy regulations regarding your privacy.


• Call quality, you are relying on the fact that someone else won't suddenly flood their home line with a massive download causing your phone call to be lagged or jittered severely.


• You could end up receiving calls from people in foreign languages if you don't setup asterisk properly to block out bound caller ID (also you can't always block Caller ID apparently)


• Bellster has the potential to make it easier for telemarketers to push their sales pitches by leveraging the bellster network.
  
• Time to establish a phone call could dramatically increase if you hit a bunch of hosts that only allow calls out of hours, so while the network hunts and trys different routes you either hear local ring back or dead air depending on your local configuration of asterisk, which could potentially miss inform people about the true state of the call.


• non-geek house hold members, is it likely that most people will want to queue to use their own phone line? try explaining it to non-geeks and see how they react to it.


• high barrier to entry, as you not only need a linux box running asterisk but also hardware that's capable of interfacing with the PSTN network.

Labels: FWD, Ooma, P2P, VoIP