Entries tagged with voip - Channel 10

Live Messenger Adds VoIP

sarahintampa — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:51:00 GMT

Today, Telefonica, the provider of the largest telecommunications network in Latin America is bringing their VoIP service, Voype, to Windows Live Messenger users in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, the United States, and Venezuela, according to Inside Windows Live Messenger blog. The integration of the service will be done in two phases. In the first phase, you’ll be able to make calls from your PC to any landline or mobile phone in the world. In phase two, you’ll actually be able to both send and receive calls on your PC.

The calls to and from Windows Live Messenger users will be free and calls to landlines and cell phones will be available for a fee. The rates are as follows: about a penny to China, 2¢ to the UK, 5¢ to Canada, or 10¢ to Mexico per minute when calling landlines.

To get started, just sign-up for an account here. Remember - you need a microphone & speakers or headset and broadband connection. You can buy credit in amounts of $5, $10 or $20.

Then to make a call, the process will vary depending on what version of Messenger you have. Here are the steps, courtesy of the WLM blog:

If you are using Windows Live Messenger 8.0, 8.1 or 8.5, click on the phone icon either in the main window or choose a contact and click on the phone icon. From the drop down menu, select ‘Call a phone’. Add a phone number, click on enter and start talking.
If you are already using the new Windows Live Messenger beta, there are a few of ways you can make a call. You can hover over a contact and if you have a phone associated with that contact, just click on ‘call work’, ‘call mobile’, etc. You can also open up a conversation window with that contact and click on the phone icon and enter their telephone number. For ad hoc calls, you can launch Windows Live Call from the start menu under All Programs > Windows Live Call beta, enter their telephone number and click Call.

This new service will be a direct competitor to Skype, a popular program for making phone calls via the internet.

Vitelix shows their latest VoIP hardware

Tina — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:32:00 GMT

Vitelix is a Microsoft partner in unified communicatins that designs and markets VOIP solutions for converging telephony, Internet and PCs through USB and Bluetooth connectivity. These devices are designed to operate with Microsoft's Unified Communications platform.

In this video, Vitelix shows some of their latest products and talk a little bit about the story behind them. So check it out and see some of the stuff that mght end up on your desk soon.

NEC Unified Solutions

Tina — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:15:00 GMT

NEC Unified Solutions Inc., a global leader in VoIP and data communications for the enterprise and small-medium business, delivers the industry’s most innovative suite of products, applications and services that help customers achieve business value through technology. NEC Unified Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation of America, offers a complete portfolio of solutions for wireless, unified communications, voice, data and management services, and an open migration path to protect investments. NEC Unified Solutions, Inc. serves Fortune 1000 customers across the globe in vertical markets such as hospitality, education, government and healthcare.

Unified Communications: The Next BIG Thing in Healthcare

bcrounse — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:23:00 GMT

In previous Blog entries and on my House Calls audio-cast series, I’ve highlighted healthcare customers who are doing some outstanding work using Microsoft and Microsoft partner solutions to build portals that make key performance indicators, quality standards, and price standards more transparent. These same solutions are being used to automate clinical and business work-flow processes, manage documents, and generally improve collaboration across the enterprise. Today, I want to focus on what I see as the next really big opportunity in healthcare; Unified Communication.

Healthcare is a communication intensive business. Good communication has a profound effect on the quality and safety of patient care. Communication also has a huge bearing on patient satisfaction. Yet historically, the options for how we communicate with each other in the healthcare industry have been somewhat limited. We are hampered by an industry that has far too long relied on old fashioned telephone, paging, fax, and mail (both postal and interoffice); not exactly the most contemporary communication infrastructure.

Today’s progressive businesses use a wide variety of tools and technologies to facilitate communication. Communication can be synchronous or asynchronous depending on the urgency or context of the message. Information can be relayed and exchanged by instant message, e-mail, telephone (including voice over IP), audio conferencing, or video conferencing. In addition, the concept of “presence” in communication technologies now allows us to know ahead of time if someone is available to receive a message or take a call. It also lets us set up rules on how, when, where, and on what devices we want to be contacted.

So let’s extend all that into the typical healthcare setting. No longer am I restricted to the telephone for communicating with colleagues or patients. Depending on the nature of the message, where I am and what I’m doing, I can decide to use either a synchronous or asynchronous mode of communication. No more waiting on hold or playing phone tag on the telephone. Furthermore, as communication technology converges to the computer and is increasingly facilitated by the Net, my choice of device is no longer restricted either. My office telephone, Smartphone, Pocket-PC, laptop, Tablet-PC or desktop PC will all be able to do the job for me whether it’s an instant message, e-mail, voice, or video communication that is required. This technology will also have a profound effect on the way we conduct meetings and do training in the future. The use of multi-media web conferencing and interactive e-learning technologies will absolutely explode in healthcare as we increasingly communicate electronically in the office and at home for grand rounds presentations, staff training, patient education, and more. Finally, advances in speech recognition and the incorporation of speech recognition technology into unified communications, will open up new vistas for securely accessing patient information and relaying clinical orders.

I’m not going to spill the beans on everything that is yet to come. But if you work in healthcare, or you are an industry vendor building communication and collaboration solutions for the healthcare industry, the future is blazingly bright.

Bill Crounse, MD Worldwide Health Director Microsoft