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Industry News Summary – Android, Windows 7 Phone, Qualcomm and Facetime

October 21, 2010 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment


Is Android “Evil”?
Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile tries to give a broader explanation about how “open” Android really is.
Among the flaws mentioned – Rapid development rate of Android versions, leaving no time to phone makers to adapt and the Compatibility Testing Suite (CTS) requirements which does not cover only API but also Hardware and performance testings.
While its true Android has it flaws – Can Google really choose a different path?

One step closer to unified communications?
Apple announced it’s Facetime mac client beta, which is available to download today from Apple.com.
Facetime is the apple protocol powering iPhone 4 video-communications, being based on open standards.
While Facetime might become popular at the future – Apple has yet to enable interoperability with anything other than its own products.

Stream of reviews about the new Windows Phone 7 devices
The general tone toward the new Windows Phone 7 platform is positive. While the expected flaws of a version 1.0 product are there – Microsoft offers unique features like integration to Xbox-Live (Microsoft Social network for its gaming console – the Xbox 360) and Sharepoint integration which might prove useful in the corporate market.

Cisco is rather sure about their network router capabilities
In a campaign for their ASR 9000 they allow costumers to pull RSP units out of the router, remotely via a robotic arm, while watching a video-stream uninterrupted:

MetroPCS Turn on its 4G LTE network in Detroit
MetroPCS, while not being one of the largest carriers in the United States was the first to offer LTE mobile phone – The Samsung Craft.
MetroPCS CEO, Roger D. Linquist, stated the company plans to expand to eastern and western Michigan throughout 2011.

Qualcomm acquires iSkoot Technologies
Qualcomm announced the acquisition of iSkoot – mobile application development company that known for it’s mobile Skype clients , social networking application and mobile internet platform – Kalaida.
Kalaida enables rich mobile internet experience on low-cost devices.

IMTC Annual meeting moved to November 3 !
IMTC Members, Please mark you calendars to join us for the 2010 IMTC Annual meeting on November 3 at the IMTC office in San Ramon, California, from 10:00-12:00 Pacific.  Remote attendance will be provided by both audio and video conferencing.

So what are the Business Tablets out there?
Fierce Voip explains.

To return to IMTC blog, please press here.
About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Industry News, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , ,

Events – ITExpo & 6th Annual VoIP Conference and Expo

September 29, 2010 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

IMTC President Anatoli Levin will participate in panels at two major events in October:

The VoIP conference and Expo is a two-day conference that include technical professionals, Telecom executives and Standards bodies. Anatoli will speak about mobile video communications in his panel – Video Communication on the Go – Realities and  Perspectives:

“Mobile video is rapidly becoming the hottest subject for device manufacturers and service providers. Apple’s FaceTime once again is showing to the world what’s possible for one, and Android is making it possible for many. Are the networks ready for mass proliferation of video communications? What is the role of the Service Providers in this market? Are people ready? Who will get paid? This presentation will answer some of these questions and provide plenty food for thought (and may be even heated discussion).”

Also, among the speakers will be Amir Wolf, an IMTC fellow. His panel is called “Evolution of Mobile Video Streaming“:
“Mobile video streaming made a long a way in last decade.  Starting with what used to be called standard streaming over UDP, through tunneling solutions and recently the trend in http based streaming.  The session will describe the existing solutions for http streaming and the reasons for transition into http. We will also discuss the differences between mobile streaming , online streaming and TV broadcasts.”

If you happen to participate in one of the events and want to meet Anatoli or send him a specific question before the event – Feel free to contact him via Email at alevine@radvision.com.


About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Events, IMTC News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Industry News Summary – Gmail VoIP, Mobile revenue models and 3D Cisco Telepresence

September 2, 2010 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

Google Integrates voice calls into Gmail
Google recently added voice calls as a part of it’s mail system.
For many of us that use Gmail at home – It is like a portal. It’s one of the first pages we see, and something we keep open in our brower for most of the day. This behaviour become more popular after google added the chat feature to Gmail – Now Google adds the option to call PSTN lines from inside Gmail, and that another step in the portal direction. Whole many see this move as a threat to Skype, some think its another weapon in an ongoing war with Facebook.

Financial Times – “Mobile operators predict application sales boom”
Mobile operators are taking a bit hit from the change toward smarth-phones and high speed data connections – they have yet to find a financial model to support this radical and continual change.
Bandwidth intensive site as youtube, create excessive traffic in their networks and yet data access is being sold at a very competitive and cheap prices.  So what would be the solution? one way would be charging by application usage, as mobile operators know that in the mobile world applications do sell.

Is 3D the next step for Telepresence? Cisco thinks so.
In an interview with CNET, John Chambers, Cisco CEO stated that his current Telepresence systems that are now in HD quality would eventually be 3D-enabled.

Russian Telecommunication Market Benefits from Technology Leap from 2G to 4G
Russia is expected to be one of the first countries with large LTE deployment, as they infect skipped 3G completely. New government support should boost market significantly in the next few years.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ radio equipment to deliver LTE services in
Sweden’s second largest city – Speeds up to 100mbps/30mbps.
LTE speeds are at max with Nokia Simens latest radio equipment.

Realizing “FaceTime” on Android Devices
Tsahi Levent-Levi (Radvision), Amit Lavi (Radvision) and Carl Ford (4GWE Crossfire Media) will Pass a webinar on mobile video communication in Tuesday September 14, 2010 11:00am ET / 8:00am PT.
Tsahi also wrote a nice summary of Facetime related material in Radvision Blog.

Ofcom, UK FCC equivalent, to release LTE spectrum for broadcast usage in 2012 Olympic Games.
This is infect a part of the bid the Olympic committee demanded, the LTE channles will be used from July 27 to September 9th 2012.

About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Industry News, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Technology Behind iPhone 4 FaceTime Protocol – Standards & Apple

June 9, 2010 By Anatoli Levine 34 Comments

Apple announcement of FaceTime, their new video telephony solution, included various standards: H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN, ICE, RTP, and SRTP. If this is the case, it would offer great start for interoperability, as the very same standards are widely used by the modern video communications solutions by majority of the vendors.

Here’s a short explanation on the role of each standard:

H.264 – one of most prominent video compression standards in use today. Used by every major and minor video communications solution today, from the mobile video to desktop to room system to Telepresence system. Has AVC (advanced video coding) and SVC (scalable video coding) profiles – AVC profile is what is widely used and interoperable today, while SVC profile holds great promise once interoperability will be established. Already used on the iPhone and other i-devices.
AAC – advanced audio coding standard. Widely used today in audio and video communications and has established interoperability. Used by iPhone and other i-devices.
SIP – Session Initiation Protocol – de-facto standard of IP Communications solutions, including both Voice and Video communications. Used by majority of video conferencing vendors, such as Cisco, Tandberg, Polycom, RADVISION and more. Also one of the core standards in 3GPP IMS ( IP Multimedia Subsystems) communications.. Highly interoperable, however, lacking dedicated definitions for IP Video Call Control – IMTC SIP Parity Activity group developed set of best common practices and use cases to improve interoperability of SIP –based video communications.
STUN, TURN and ICE – typically used together to support Firewall and NAT traversal functionality. STUN ( Session Traversal Utilities for NAT) allows to map internal IP addressed behind the NAT to the external IP addresses. TURN (Traversal Using Relay NAT) is used in rare cases where STUN doesn’t provide a solution. ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment) is used as an umbrella standard utilizing STUN, TURN, uPnP and others in order to find possible way to transfer the NAT and Firewall.
RTP, which stands for Real-time Transport Protocol, is used in Voice and Video over IP implementations to carry over real-time media and collecting of the statistics, such as jitter and latency, which in turn allows to implement better quality solutions. Today used by absolute majority IP voice and video vendors.
SRTP – Secure RTP, profile for secure RTP communication which supports encryption, message authentication and integrity. Widely used in both IP Video and Voice implementations.

We are looking froward for further implementations of this new technology. Things are getting very interesting in visual communication products.

—
More about Facetime:

  • Facetime Technical Analysis on packetstan.com - Part 1(TCP, UDP, AKAMI, STUN, SIP), Part 2 (Sip & Data Streams), Part 3 (Call Connection Initialization).
About the writer: Anatoli Levine
Filed Under: Interoperability, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thank You Mr. Jobs

June 8, 2010 By Anatoli Levine 1 Comment

Image representing Steve Jobs as depicted in C...

Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday, Steve Jobs, Apple‘s CEO, Introduced FaceTime , a video telephony solution for iPhone 4. It is based on  open standards and integrated in next generation iPhone as a simple to use video telephony product.
Apple is known for its ability to revolutionize industries. iTunes, iPod, iPhone and iPad – all changed their respective markets.

We expect that visual communication, delivered in Apple’s style – simple, reliable and sexy – will do exactly the same for mobile visual communications as the whole.

The introduction of FaceTime by Apple is a vote of confidence in visual communication, and IMTC is certain that it will increase the uptake of mobile video telephony.

IMTC has the biggest visual communication expert pool, as well as rich history of ensuring interoperability and promoting adoption of standards-based visual communication technologies. From mobile telephony, to desktop video conferencing, to Telepresence, IMTC has the most active interoperability and testing groups in the industry.

As such, we are excited about yesterday’s news, and looking forward to support FaceTime adoption as an open industry standard.

Anatoli Levine, President,  IMTC

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About the writer: Anatoli Levine
Filed Under: IMS, Technology insight, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,