Mobile IM is getting some hype, but has a long way before it can take over SMS. The way I see it - SMS is king, and it is here to stay. This is mainly due to the ease of use one enjoys with SMS. Today, at least, IM usually involves a buddy list and presence information. Once you connect to someone (a “buddy”), you will be able to see his presence status and send him an instant message. If
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | August 14th, 2008 | Filed under Clients
There is no such thing as Unified Communications or Social Media. For that matter, Web 2.0 and Phone 2.0 are also non-existent. And there’s no Presence in TelePresence either. For the last decade, I’ve been a player in these worlds, working on either development or marketing of related building blocks for this industry. During that time, only three things have changed: There’s a lot more bandwidth waiting to be used There’s a lot more processing power There’s more acceptance
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 31st, 2008 | Filed under Technology
There’s no presence in TelePresence. And you know what? There’s also no “unified” or “communication” in UC (Unified Communication). These are just new buzzwords in VoIP town. They are there to replace “video conferencing” and “convergence.” Besides the fact that they are more of the same (maybe better), there’s nothing new under the sun. TelePresence TelePresence is simply better video conferencing. It has higher resolutions (1080p instead of 720p, or CIF if you refer to legacy systems), higher bitrates and
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 24th, 2008 | Filed under Technology
You can do everything with SIP: Voice over IP, video telephony, presence, instant messaging, SMS, MMS and much more. Sometimes it feels like SIP is a protocol invented by a salesman: “Oh, you are looking for a solution that starts the microwave when you get to your driveway after a long day? Sure we have it - SIP!”Last week I wrote about XMPP versus SIMPLE, where both are used for presence and SIMPLE and utilize SIP for its transport. A
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 21st, 2008 | Filed under Protocol stacks, Standardization
Presence is always positioned as the key to unified communications (UC) - at the very heart of UC is the ability to discern the current status of people and resources. Which protocol will be the one used to power Presence? SIMPLE or XMPP? XMPP XMPP stands for “Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol”. It is a streaming based protocol that routes XML messages between entities. It is mainly used for presence and instant messaging although other uses for it exist
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 17th, 2008 | Filed under Standardization
This post is better suited for our Video Over Enterprise blog, but this should be a good lesson to all of us in the VoIP market. For the past several years, our company has been investing in VoIP infrastructure. Today, I am capable of making video calls and joining audio and video conferences from practically everywhere - from meeting rooms to my work station, my laptop and even my mobile handset. Or as Sagee would say - “The shoe-maker does
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | June 30th, 2008 | Filed under Technology
Developing a videophone or any other telecommunication client? You should start thinking seriously about IMS. Today, there are two main standards used for multimedia communications over IP: SIP and H.323, where SIP is the standard which is being adopted by most vendors today - especially in the consumer market. As 3GPP, 3GPP2, TISPAN, Packet Cable and WiMAX have all selected IMS for their next generation networks, it goes without saying that a lot of vendors will start working on IMS
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | March 6th, 2008 | Filed under Clients
Video telephony as a technology is making its way to the consumer market. The next step is the set top boxes and the world of IPTV.Today, people around the world can use video calling on millions of 3G mobile handsets in Europe and Asia. There are issues with pricing, usability and quality, but I can never have enough of the smiles of my baby girl on my 3G phone. Video telephony on mobile handsets is just the beginning - in
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 21st, 2008 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
It’s the beginning of 2008 and of course, people love to make predictions for the year ahead (if anything to guarantee a good laughter after all). Yours truly is not an exception - this post was thought to appear under the name of Crystal Ball 2008, and it was supposed to make a number of bold (how else) predictions regarding the future of the communication technologies for upcoming year. Thinking about it, isn’t it great to know what the future
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By Anatoli Levine | January 29th, 2008 | Filed under Technology
