Call free from Mountain view CA, Google home

Less than a year after the search engine giant said that it would unwire its hometown of Mountain View, California, GoogleFi is now open for packets.

The Mountain View network that cost nearly a million dollars to build went live at 9pm PST today. In order to use the network, the users will need a Google login, and those who don’t have Google ID, will be given a chance to sign up for the service, company officials said in an interview.
Click on the header or here to get the whole picture.

$3000 Voicemail Bill! Watch out if you are roaming

I just saw this on Jo-itos site and my jaw dropped because I am always roaming (well most of the time!). But I am on a different network.
The story is of a traveler from Europe who happened to travel by ship and made a call from LA. All his voicemail was counted as roaming and ended up with a bill for $3000. So if you are roaming and on T-Mobile watch out. Read more at Jo's site.

VOIP usage Jumps even higher!

Last April we reported that usage of IP Telephony is on the rise. The article VOIP IP Telephony: US consumer VOIP usage increases with Vonage leading the way gave the breakup of major companies.
Company......................................Market Share....Households
Vonage...........................................47.5%.......1,861000
Skype............................................11.8%.........463000
AT&T Call Vantage................................ 5.6%.........218000
Verizon Voice Wing................................5.0%.........196000
Google............................................2.5%..........97000
8x8 (Packet8).....................................1.7%..........67000
Other VoIP Providers (excluding cable companies) 25.9%.......1,013000
But now there is another research report is out!
The Subscriber rate has jumped 21% to 6.9 million in the second quarter, according to TeleGeography report issued on Wednesday.
Now Cable-TV companies are joining the foray. Even challenging the likes of Vonage and Skype.
Her is a brief summary;
Cable TV companies now account for 60 percent of VoIP subscribers, up from 52 percent in mid-2005. Vonage and other pure-play VoIP providers serve the remaining 40 percent, or about 2.8 million subscribers.
"Even more significantly, (cable companies) accounted for 68 percent of new subscribers added in the second quarter, a sign that (their) aggregate consumer VoIP market share will continue to grow in coming months," the report said.
Vonage still leads the way with 1.8 million subscriber lines. Time Warner Inc.'s cable TV business was second again at nearly 1.6 million. The companies added roughly the same number of accounts, with 243,000 for Vonage and 234,000 for Time Warner.
Cablevision Systems Corp is the third-largest provider, growing by 122,000 subscribers to 987,500, No. 4 Comcast Corp. posted a 73 percent jump in users during the second quarter, finishing with 721,000.
VoIP revenues for the second quarter were up 173 percent at $607 million across the United States, compared with a year-ago level of $221 million.

Asterisk Zero Configuration Service!

For all those that have been using fighting reinstalling or may be giving up of setting up an ASTERISK server or a PABX, you have a new tool! AZCS! Asterisk Zero Configuration Service. Not exactly the server configuration but the hand sets attached to it.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration Services (AZCS) provides a services for automating the configuration of handsets in a LAN environment even when handsets from different vendors are used.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration services also provides a means of modifying individual phones which may need access to a larger range of numbers (e.g. international dialing). The access rights of a given phone can be upgraded by dialing a specialized administration extension through which (given the right PIN) the phones access rights can be permanently upgraded. The new access rights will apply even if the phone is rebooted or moved to another location.
Alas it is not free and if you are still interested, you can get it here.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration Service is available for $3000 + GST and comes with support for a single type of manufacturers handset. Support for additional manufacturers and models can be purchased separately.

Let a chocolate sing songs for you! Verizon's LG VX8500

Geemodo: While Zune battles iPOD, VeriZon fights with LG VX8500 (LG-KG800)