iTalk Services - VoIP services in NZ market

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charris1955

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#4751 24-Aug-2005 09:09

What is the future of SIP based VoIP services in NZ? Has any one used iTalk from Slingshot?

Any news on Telecom coming out with Brodband + VoIP services?

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#19036 24-Aug-2005 09:11

Telecom is trialling consumer landline VoIP at the moment. It is a service of the Telecom NGN (Next Generation Network)

sbiddle

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#19076 24-Aug-2005 20:49

italk rocks - I no longer have a phone line at home (since I have telstraclear cable I can simply get a 2mb cable connection and no phone line rental).

call quality is superb and if you run something like asterisk (an open source linux pbx) you can use multiple VoIP providers, I have an account with one in australia which gives me 10c untimed calls to australia.

The only issue with italk is Telecom screwing with packets over DSL, if you've got a UBS connection the quality will possibly be poor. Also forget about it if you have Woosh as the latency is so high it simply will not work well at all.

charris1955

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#19083 24-Aug-2005 22:32

I agreee, I am using one us provider called packet8.net and it gives me for $20 unlimited londistance calling to any number in USA and canada. i use DSL and sometime I feel the same. The latency goes up like carzy..

sbiddle

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#19086 24-Aug-2005 23:43

My 5c dream prediction is that in 10 years there won't be such things as ISP's and phone companies. They will all be one and the same. All calls will be IP based and you won't have such things as mobiles & home phones, merely internet devices running IM software.

The Google Talk software is big news today here in the UK, quite surprising really when it's nothing new!!

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#19087 25-Aug-2005 08:16

"The only issue with italk is Telecom screwing with packets over DSL, if you've got a UBS connection the quality will possibly be poor"

Hold on, lets get some reality around this. Telecom can not physically 'screw' with packets over DSL. The processing required to do this is enormous and the routers with this sort of processing power simply do not exist. Believe me if Telecom could do this then every Telco in the world would be beating a path to NZ.

timbo

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#19088 25-Aug-2005 09:10

sbiddle: My 5c dream prediction is that in 10 years there won't be such things as ISP's and phone companies. They will all be one and the same. All calls will be IP based and you won't have such things as mobiles & home phones, merely internet devices running IM software.

Agreed, I think there will only be Internet Access Providers (IAP's) - fixed and wireless - which simply provide high speed low-latency packet services, and a whole range of internet based service providers. Internet based services should be anything you can imagine: e-mail, voice & voice mail, IM, video messaging, push-to-talk, song/video download etc.

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charris1955

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#19100 25-Aug-2005 11:48

"Hold on, lets get some reality around this. Telecom can not physically 'screw' with packets over DSL. The processing required to do this is enormous and the routers with this sort of processing power simply do not exist. Believe me if Telecom could do this then every Telco in the world would be beating a path to NZ."

In all routers u can prioritise the packets and the ADSL we use uses ATM-UBR (unspecified bit rate) connection on ATM switch. TCP connections running over UBR can experience low throughput and high unfairness.

ATM-UBR switches respond to congestion by dropping cells when their buffers become full. TCP connections running over UBR experience low throughput and high unfairness. For 100% TCP throughput each switch needs buffers equal to the sum of the window sizes of all the TCP connections. Intelligent drop policies can improve the performance of TCP over UBR with limited buffers. The UBR+ service proposes enhancements to UBR for intelligent drop. Early Packet Discard improves throughput but does not attempt to improve fairness. Selective packet drop based on per-connection buffer occupancy improves fairness.

sbiddle

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#19123 25-Aug-2005 20:58

Screwing with packets probably wasn't the correct term to use but the issue I'm talking about is interveaving. I know it's a touchy topic and there are pros and cons when it comes to having it switched on or off on an ADSL network but it does appear to be the cause of problems with VoIP in NZ, particularly with UBS connections. The interleaving adds around 30ms delay and the serialisation delay causes problems as well. While none of these create a real issue for general surfing the order that packets arrive in is a real issue when it comes to VoIP, you start to get serious jitter which is not good.

I also understand the interleaving delay is also longer over UBS connections than non UBS, somebody may want to correct me on this if they know otherwise.

chris021

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#19301 29-Aug-2005 21:47

sbiddle: My 5c dream prediction is that in 10 years there won't be such things as ISP's and phone companies. They will all be one and the same. All calls will be IP based and you won't have such things as mobiles & home phones, merely internet devices running IM software.

The Google Talk software is big news today here in the UK, quite surprising really when it's nothing new!!

Check out your little flag steve... looks like your in the uk :-P
Hows the hol going?

sbiddle

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#19355 30-Aug-2005 20:59

Hopefully little flag comes up as Germany now!!

Going well, lots of cool toys over here. One thing I really loved was the Vodafone stores in the UK that have working V800´s on display so you can play with the 3G services, I am really surprised they didn´t bring some of the kiosks to NZ. You could make video calls, browse Live! etc.. video calling to NZ however was disabled! :-)

tonyhughes

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#19357 30-Aug-2005 21:16

Hey Steve - you are really getting around!!

I hope to make posts from Mexico and Guatelmala and wherever else I end up in our travels in Central America soon.

Are you roaming? WiFi-ing? Cafe-ing?

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sbiddle

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#19522 1-Sep-2005 23:52

Just travelling around, off to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary over the next few weeks so I'll have to try and see how many flags I can get!

Just using internet cafes, at least with $10mb data I can afford to send the occasional PXT and use email on my phone. It's 30 here in Munich today so I'm off for a few beers for lunch!