Alec Saunders SquawkBox

The net is buzzing this morning with the announcement of RIM’s stylish new Blackberry 8800.  The business companion to the Pearl, this new device sports a full QWERTY keyboard, as well as onboard GPS, and the Pearls’ trackball (which is a huge improvement over the trackwheel!) but otherwise no other significant changes excepting the removal of the camera. That’s a significant loss.  The camera is a useful and fun feature. 

RIM already has the full feature set posted on their Discover Blackberry site, along with some dazzling photographs, but availability information is hard to come by.  It seems, however, that the first carriers to have the 8800 will be Rogers and Cingular, here in North America, and Vodaphone in Europe… apparently later this month.  Blackberry afficionados are no doubt already drooling.

Various sites are painting the 8800 as RIM’s response to the Apple iPhone.  They’re either misguided, or trying to make a story from a controversy that doesn’t exist.  iPhone is a consumer play.  The 8800 is a business persons tool, which Jim Balsillie understands all too well. 

RIM employees have been known to occasionally carry a new device, prior to launch, and I had the opportunity to play with one of these about a month ago for a few moments.  It’s a little heavier than the Pearl, with a keyboard that’s similar in size to the 8700.  Slim, and pretty to look at too.  I definitely want one.  Now. 

Over the weekend, I had a piece of email from a reader which said:

You are aware that Cubic Telecom is mentioned in page 14 of the at&t vs. Superior, et. al. lawsuit, right?  They are not listed as a defendant, but related to the service.

This is the $2 million suit that AT&T has filed against Superior Telephone Coop, and which resulted in the shutdown of FuturePhone, the company that gave away international long distance calls for “free” when you made a call to their relay number in the 712 area code.  Cubic Telecom is Irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan’s company, which is behind AllFreeCalls.net, and AllFreeCalls.ie. 

The Irish telco’s are already stalking Pat’s business, and he has had to make some changes to his service as a result.  When asked about the AT&T suit, though, he discretely said: “Cubic telecom has not received and has refused any payment from its Iowa provider until the current legal situation is resolved”.

The Irish papers had a longer story, which is linked from John Collins’ Tagging Tech blog.  In that story, there is a little more detail:

Cubic would not take any payments from the Iowa company until the case was resolved, he said, but Cubic could sustain the cost of providing the service “indefinitely”.

“AT&T are trying to squeeze us out of business by stopping payments for three to six months,” said Mr Phelan. “AT&T should be suing the FCC and not us.”

Indeed.

While it’s not uncommon for ILECs to dispute termination charges, it is unusual for them to dispute those charges in court.  In making its case so publicly, AT&T is deliberately politicizing the dispute — a blatant attempt to engage American politicians in a discussion of the rural telco subsidies.

The world of software-based telephony systems is certainly not without players.  Aside from open source solutions, like Asterisk and all its derivatives, there are a number of traditional software companies building these systems too.  CallButler is one of these.  A relative newcomer on the scene, their software has been in production for less than a year.  Located in Redmond, WA, the principals are a couple of ex-Microsoft guys, looking to make their mark in communications.

Just this morning they changed their name to Telephony2, from their former name of Works Out Software, reflecting their focus on the telephony market, especially the small and medium business market.

“Most small businesses typically have all they need to get started with Telephony2 – a computer and a broadband connection,” said Telephony2 CEO Jim Heising.  “Within minutes, users can start using powerful features by downloading Telephony2 software.”
 
Heising said Telephony2 strives to be different by:
• Delivering software that can demonstrate its value in 10 minutes or less.
• Delivering advanced telephony solutions that any company can afford and implement – without monthly charges and hidden costs.
• Supporting a multi-lingual worldwide community.
• Enabling small businesses to look more professional and be more efficient, helping them compete with companies 10 times their size.
• Providing a voiceware platform that empowers people to create new and innovative voice applications. 
 
Heising places the size of the “under 10 employee” market at more 150 million worldwide, with more than 20 million in the United States alone. “It is a huge and grossly under-served segment.  We’re looking to change that.”
 
Telephony2’s flagship product, CallButler™ ( www.callbutler.com/ ), is an easy-to-install and use Internet-based telephony system that quickly and affordably gives small businesses powerful office communication tools that rival or exceed those available in large business hardware (PBX) systems or via telephone company business-calling services.
 
“One dilemma many small companies face is that they often have some rather sophisticated office telephony needs, but a limited budget,” Heising added.  “As a result, they under-invest in one area where they really shouldn’t – communications.  For example, many of our customers do business in more than one language, or in a language other than English. They need a phone system that supports that.  CallButler allows our customers to easily add call prompts in multiple languages and, we are working with partners around the world to develop localized versions of CallButler.  We believe you should be able to define what telephony means to you – not have the phone company do it for you.” 

 Amen.

I’ve been experimenting with video again, and made another video of the iotum Talk-Now preview. The last video I made was criticized for:

• Being overly long. This one is nearly two minutes shorter.
• Being hard to view because it was shaky. In this one, I clamped the Blackberry into a stand on my desktop, and mounted the camera on a tripod.
• Poor color and lighting. This one is much better lit. Now, the lights I used are NOT photographic lights, but rather ordinary halogen shop lights that I bought at the local hardware store. This has resulted in a yellowish cast to the video, which I believe I could remove (at shooting time) by using the color balance features of the camea.
• Poor sound. Rather than record a voice-over using the PC, as I did last time, I simply used the microphone on the camera. The sound quality is much better, even when turned away from the camera, as I was when shooting the demo sequences.

Hope you like it, and I hope you give Talk-Now a try.

The video is available on You-Tube , Google Video , Video.ca, and Revver .