Alec Saunders SquawkBox

eComm is the espresso of the conference world.  Concentrated, condensed strong stuff.  My trip to eComm was short but jam packed.  A delayed arrival, due to mechanical problems in Ottawa, meant that I had just 36 hours in San Francisco.  In Tuesday at noon, out Wednesday at midnight.  Phew!  Concentrated, condensed, and very productive hours, however. 

Congratulations go out to Lee Dryburgh and his advisors.  eComm, as many have said, is unique in the communications industry.  It’s the place where people who are designing, creating and building the future of the industry gather.

It’s also a fabulous place to meet old friends, network, and conduct business.  Expect announcements in the future from relationships germinated at this one-of-a-kind event.  Everyone was there.

Here’s a sample of what others thought: Jim Courtney: eComm 2009: An Outstanding Primer in Emerging Communications,   Martin Geddes Virtual Presentation,Richard Sprague WebLog : eComm 09 virtually,VoIP Watch: eComm Was A Hit, Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless: Thoughts from eComm 

One of the truly great values of Calliflower is our international conference call network.  Using local dial numbers, we offer flat rate international conference calling in a growing number of cities around the world.  If you make even a few international conference calls a month, you can’t fail to save big with Calliflower. 

This week saw a number of upgrades to our network. 

• Tuesday we added Barcelona Spain – our first Spanish conference call local dial-access number.
• On Thursday we upgraded our VoIP service to a dedicated switch.  Our partner, TringMe, had recommended this after observing that our traffic was beginning to swamp the switch we shared with their other clients.  Users of our VoIP service should see an improvement in call quality as a result.
• Today we added Warsaw and Wroclaw Poland – our first Polish conference call local dial access numbers.

Give the Calliflower International Conference Call network a try, and let us know how we’re doing.

Have a great weekend!

Truphone Anywhere wasn’t supposed to announce this morning, but gosh… it did! While we were on the line chatting with Truphone’s James Body and Tom Carter, the team at Truphone HQ was madly reconfiguring their web site and getting the latest version of the Truphone client online.

So what’s special about it? Truphone Anywhere. Truphone Anywhere is a tool that lets Truphone users access Truphone’s famous low rates … via a local dial-in, and not just WiFi. Here in Canada, I will dedicate one of the MyFive numbers on my Rogers account to Truphone, which theoretically means I should be able to trim a substantial amount off my monthly bill.

Our call had over 20 people on it, with some very good questions asked by the various callers about how the Truphone model worked and Truphone’s business. In addition to the questions asked on the phone, there was also a lively discussion on the wall (account required to view).

On the call: Jeb Brilliant, James Body, Matthew Burpee, Andy Abramson, Dan York, Jim Courtney, Willhelm Wimmreuter, Mark Hewitt, Jeanette Fisher, Dave Brown, Ian Hood, Bill Volk, Warren Bent, Peter Childs, Jonathan Jensen, Randall Howard, Mike Pruyn, Todd Spraggins, Sheryl Breuker, Tom Carter, Greg McQuay, Roland Hanbury

Enjoy the call

 

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My RSS feed is jammed this morning, as it seems everyone has an opinion on the announcements made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld yesterday. Judging from the volume of material hitting blogs in the last 24 hours, it looks as if there's plenty to talk about, too!  So join us on the MacWorld edition Squawk Box at 8 AM and have your say!

Bell Canada has some life in it yet.  The Toronto Star reports this morning that, in a dramatic move for the Canadian market, Bell will start offering unlimited data plans for the HTC Touch for just $7/month.  Rather than offer this plan to everyone, Bell is restricting it to consumers only. Business users still get socked for big bucks on devices like BlackBerry:

While Bell's $7 unlimited plan runs the risk of upsetting its subscribers who use competing devices such as the BlackBerry, which don't come with unlimited data options, [Bell VP] Bazerghi stressed that the lack of a full keyboard means the HTC Touch will hold little appeal for email-crazed business-types.

I guess the tean at RIM needs to pay a visit to those crazy Bellheads and let them know, again, that they're in the consumer space now with products like Pearl and Curve.

Over to you, Mr. Rogers.