Toktumi Business VoIP Service

Toktumi offers a business IP telephony service costing $14.95 a month without contracts, activation fees,  termination fees, equipment to buy or per-minute charges. 

Click the graphic to see a large version of the comparison Toktumi provides.

Toktumi offers a dedicated number local number, an 800 number, or a ported existing number.

Features include call waiting, call transfer, caller ID, call forwarding, auto attendant, as well as a second number for a mobile phone that allows users to place and receive calls on mobiles using the Toktumi number. 

Instant conference calls for up to 20 people, including call recording, visual voice mail, customized greetings  for business and personal callers and PC-based calling are included. Directory-based dialing, unlimited calling, call forwarding, and conferencing to U.S. and Canadian numbers as well as other Toktumi users worldwide also are included. 

International calls cost $.02 per minute for calls to destinations including China, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Windows IP PBX in 10 Minutes?

Hak5 claims a Windows based IP-PBX can be set up in 10 minutes using software by 3CX. You might wonder why somebody who is fairly technical and in the "do it yourself" mode would not choose to use Asterisk. The answer is that some people will be able to create the functionality in Windows faster than they can using Linux.

Apparently 3CX offers a "free" download and then incremental payment for features such as unified messaging or call parking, for example. Hak5 reports the auto-provisioning to a Linksys Linksys SPA962 IP phone was flawless.

It's just another example of a sort of inversion of value in communications, where important communications functionality and value are very low cost, despite providing high value. It is conventional--and largely correct--wisdom that value is "moving up the stack."

That does not mean "pipes" and "infrastructure" such as call control are unimportant. People might not think electricity is unimportant, but watch the disruption when it suddenly fails. Still, even carriers and service providers increasingly are facing issues familiar to people working in the software business: lots of really valuable utility now is widely available at low cost.

So businesses have to built on incremental value using the still-essential but "utility-like" infrastructure. It's something like a million lines of code becoming an inexpensive foundation and value and revenue built on new apps that might, in some cases, require only scores of lines of additional code.

Setting up 16 phones took about two hours, including a firmware upgrade, Hak5 reports. Basic user maintenance apparently is simple enough that administration can be turned over to people who aren't IT staffers.

"I really would suggest anyone with a Windows machine lying around the house who has a need for a basic PBX for use with either a VOIP provider, or a PSTN gateway look at 3CX," says Matt Lestock, Hak5 contributor and a systems architect.

The analogy is the "freemium" business model, where basic and valuable features are offered "at no incremental cost" and fees support enhanced features.

Communications, Not Entertainment or Shopping, Now Dominates Online Use

As conventional wisdom has it, entertainment, rather than voice and data, will drive the communications business in the future. But recent research by Netpop suggests that even in the online world, it is communications, not shopping or entertainment, that drives usage.

Netpop | Connect Social Networkers 2008 Teaser

View more presentations from Netpop. (tags: advertising marketing)

Wireless Industry "Collapsing"?

Mobile subscriber penetration in the U.S. market is nearing saturation, no doubt about it. But it seems wildly wrong to maintain, as does Craig Moffett, Sanford C. Bernstein &  Company analyst, that “this industry is collapsing”

Slowing subscriber growth will lead to devasting price wars, he believes. To be sure, analysts always are worried about price wars. But "collapse"? Slowing subscriber numbers are a fact. But so is higher average revenue per user. 

Moffett notes that in 2008, wireless carriers added 5.9 percent more subscribers in the United States,  but he thinks they will add only three percent this year. A reasonable assumption, many might agree.

“The fourth quarter saw the lowest growth rate ever for the U.S. wireless industry,” Moffett notes. And yes, that is what happens in a maturing industry, at least on the subscriber front. But Moffett always seems to be more bearish on virtually all telecom companies than on cable companies, which also are losing video customers, though growing voice and broadband accounts. 

Small Business: TARP Failing

Small business customers are a key customer segment for many service and application providers, as they often are more willing to make faster decisions about new communication services and software.

To the extent that firm growth is a direct driver of software, hardware and communications activity, and given that up to 85 percent of new jobs are created by small businesses, perhaps somebody should be listening to them.

A survey conducted in February 2009 by online payroll service SurePayroll found that most small business owners feel the government should be taking a different approach to boost the economy during tough times.

Nearly three out of four small business owners disagree with the way the U.S. government has allocated funds in its Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), and believe tax cuts would be the ideal solution.

TARP was deemed effective by only three percent of respondents, while 72 percent were clear on their disapproval and 25 percent did not have a strong opinion.

BlackBerry App World Launches: Implications for Service Creation, Business Models Clear

Research In Motion has opened its new online application store, called BlackBerry App World, according to UPI. BlackBerry App World accepts PayPal for payments and starts prices at $2.99. That move might be an effort to screen apps for quality, something some believe is an issue for Apple's AppStore.

Price options also run up to $999, suggesting RIM will push high-end downloads through the store. To access the store, BlackBerry users will need to have a least a Version 4.2 operating system on their phones.

RIM appears to be negotiating back end revenue shares with vendors of applications that generate revenue through advertising or other means. It’s unclear what the share is, but language in developer contracts suggests that a revenue share is part of the model, Alec Saunders, Iotum CEO, notes.

The broad emergence of app stores, distributing or selling a wide variety of entertainment, utility or business apps, mostly Web related or data related rather than voice related, does raise some questions about the voice "service creation environment."

It is becoming possible to assemble apps rather than "create" them, using open and loosely-coupled processes. The problem would seem to be that "assembled" apps more nearly resemble the old "over-the-top" or loosely-coupled model rather than the high-availability, vertically-integrated model that has in the past been typical of voice applications.

There are obvious business model implications. Independent software developers and device manufacturers obviously participate in the revenue stream. It is less clear how access providers participate, and, if so, to what degree.

The longer-term implications are equally momentous. Up to this point the bulk of revenue has been generated by using "big iron" or "big code." And that might continue to be true for quite some time. Value, though, increasingly is realized by assembling new apps using building blocks essentially abstracted from the "big iron" or "big code" platforms.

That isn't to say that incremental "value" is equivalent to "revenue" in a linear way. Still, it is hard to see where the trajectory leads. To some extent, access, transport, computing, storage or basic features are--though not commodities--perhaps viewed as "table stakes." The new applications, though creating relatively small amounts of revenue, increasingly are viewed as the "secret sauce."

For service providers, there's a sort of inversion of value here. Most of the cost and even the value is provided by the basic infrastructure and connectivity. Yet the "sizzle" is coming from the new apps that represent little incremental revenue. The good news is that given enough sizzle, it will be easier to keep users using the "basic" features.

Broadband Stimulus Meeting in Washington March 10

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration is holding a meeting March 10, 2009 in Washington, D.C. on the "broadband stimulus" provisions of the "stimulus" bill. Click "related article" for details.

Separately, Mark Seifert, formerly with the Federal Communications Commission, has been tapped to head up the policy side of the NTIA's allocation of broadband stimulus grant and loan money. Bernadette McGuire-Rivera will be handling administrative duties.

Representatives of the NTIA, the FCC and the Ag Department's Rural Utilities Service are meeting next week to talk about how to hand out $7 billion-plus set aside in the Obama administration's economic stimulus package to provide Internet to un-served and underserved areas.