Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Friday 23 March 2007, 9:37 AM
Take on Skype for £250
While trawling through what was a largely news-free VoIP for Business conference yesterday, I happened upon the stand of Babble, a VoIP company which is roughly as longstanding as Skype itself.
Anyway, their latest offering is a kind of business partnership with, well, anyone who wants to set up their own SIP-based VoIP service. They provide the API, administration system and the wholesale telephony itself. You rebrand it and resell the telephony to your customers as your own VoIP network - you can even use the client for marketing purposes.
It only costs £250 to set up, plus £75 per month to maintain (obviously they take a cut of the revenues too). Not a bad idea, really. Cool marketing and a minor money-spinner to boot, depending on your business model.
Wednesday 21 March 2007, 12:21 PM
Biscit again. Yeah, I know.
Not feeling sorry enough for Biscit's customers yet? Well, now it turns out that Breathe (the one's who were buying Biscit's customers then weren't 'cos of legal issues) are, er, buying some of Biscit's customers. And O-Bit (great name) is buying the hosting rights. Although apparently it's also claiming to have bought some of the customer base.
Seriously, what is going on here? Where's the protection for the customers, to save them being pulled this way and that? Over to you, Ofcom...
Friday 16 March 2007, 1:06 PM
They killed Clippy... is OneCare next?
Tired at the end of the week? Why not tuck yourself into your, er, cubicle with this heartwarming (and slightly barking) fairytale from the good folks down at Microsoft.
Strangely absent from the story of Madeline the CEO is her uncomfortable encounter with OneCare, the bumbling, partially-sighted yet amusingly-named security ogre. For those who thought our recent editorial comment on OneCare was a bit harsh on Redmond, check out these comments from one of Microsoft's own security product managers... and weep.
Wednesday 14 March 2007, 10:25 AM
Vista not with the times?
Some thought-provoking comment here from Ian Fogg over at Jupiter Research, on the subject of Vista and the prevailing "zeitgeist" about climate change etc.
His theory is that people are so anti-Vista not because of the user experience, which he says is great, but because it's energy-inefficient. No doubt MS would have something to say about that in itself, but I reckon people are also quite exercised about issues such as DRM.
Thoughts?
Friday 9 March 2007, 12:53 PM
Biscit customers sold?
The eminently readable ISP Review site has "reliable sources" claiming that Biscit's remaining customer base has been sold on to Breathe Internet - not that Biscit's site mentions this at the moment (well, it has been frozen in time since December last year, thus missing quite a lot of, er, less positive developments).
One interesting aspect of the story was the quoted number of customers - 12,500 - a far cry from the 30,000 which Biscit was generally believed to have had. Ah well, rodents, sinking ship etc.
On a related note, ISP Review also reports that Netservices - Biscit's favourite wholesaler - has cheerfully dumped some of its smaller ISP customers for not raking in enough money.
"NetServices has for some time been transitioning its business away from domestic wholesale broadband and focussing operations on our portfolio of Business IP Telephony, hosting and data networking services," a statement said, with spokesperson Maria Goggins adding that "We did indeed advise circa 20 smaller resellers of domestic wholesale broadband that we wished to cease to supply as we do not and cannot see how we will make a profit with them in the future".
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