Cellular Services

The Poor Wise Man's Burglar Alarm System with Asterisk: Under $10/month

The Poor Wise Man’s Burglar Alarm System with Asterisk: Under $10/month

Monday, July 14, 2014

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If you’re like us, spending $50 a month or more on a home security system is a bit like pouring money down the toilet. Add to that the complications of getting one to work reliably with VoIP without spending another $50 a month on a Ma Bell vintage telephone line just adds insult to injury. So perhaps you can share our elation when an email arrived last week announcing Straight Talk’s new Remote Alert System, a $10/month cellular-based system that… Read More ›

FMC: The Future of Telephony with Vitelity's vMobile and Asterisk in the Cloud

FMC: The Future of Telephony with Vitelity’s vMobile and Asterisk in the Cloud

Thursday, May 15, 2014

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If making phone calls from a web browser is what you’ve always longed for, then you’re in good company with Google and its future direction in the telephony space. Call us old fashioned but this strikes us as a solution in desperate need of a problem. What’s wrong with a Plain Old Telephone or a smartphone for making connections with friends and business associates? The real head scratcher is the fact that the WebRTC and Hangouts push demonstrates that the… Read More ›

Beware the Ides of May: It's Hammertime for Google Voice

Beware the Ides of May: It’s Hammertime for Google Voice

Thursday, May 1, 2014

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyEE0qpfeig You don’t have to be a soothsayer to appreciate what’s about to happen in the VoIP community. In just two weeks, millions of telephones in the United States are about to go silent. Let’s begin with what we know and don’t know about Google Voice and Google’s May 15 deadline. Google has made it crystal clear that XMPP connectivity to Google Voice is going away on May 15. What that means is that inbound and outbound calling using an… Read More ›

The New VoIP Frontier: Meet the iPad Mini with Retina Display

The New VoIP Frontier: Meet the iPad Mini with Retina Display

Monday, November 18, 2013

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Last week was interesting if for no other reason because Apple released an amazing new product without tooting a single trumpet. In fact, the iPad Mini with Retina display was quietly made available on Apple’s web site in the middle of the night. Most believe that the rationale was that the devices were in such short supply that Apple couldn’t afford the PR nightmare of releasing a new product that very few could buy. Guess what? It’s still available. You… Read More ›

Meet the Goophone: It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck For Under $100

Meet the Goophone: It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck For Under $100

Friday, November 8, 2013

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If you didn’t cheat and hover over the images above, then you’d be wrong if you guessed that you now can buy Apple’s shiny, new iPhone® 5c for less than $100. From first-hand experience, I can tell you that the price of the 32GB model without a contract remains $649. You can add another $50 for tax in most states. And you can add another $99 for AppleCare® and another $79 each time your daughter drops the phone on the… Read More ›

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Finally a 100% Portable PBX: Introducing GoIP, a SIP-GSM Gateway for Asterisk

Monday, September 30, 2013

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How far we have come! The original Asterisk® claim to fame was its ability to interface with proprietary phone systems and legacy telephony hardware, the glue that literally kept companies stuck to their overpriced PBXs. And, just as wired phone systems began to lose their edge, along came the Bell Sisters to introduce cellular communications with billing that began when the phone started ringing and an end to toll-free calling and extra fees for text messaging on top of exorbitantly… Read More ›

Amerika the Beautiful: An Insider's View of What Went Wrong and How To Fix It

Amerika the Beautiful: An Insider’s View of What Went Wrong and How To Fix It

Monday, June 17, 2013

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UPDATE: Following a week of almost daily new disclosures, we are republishing our original article with some additional observations from us and others who have been following what will almost certainly turn out to be one of the most shocking and important revelations in the history of our republic. Much of this story has unfolded on Twitter, one of the few companies that stood up to the government and refused to participate in the PRISM data collection enterprise. So it… Read More ›

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 2013 Cellphone Navigation Guide

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: 2013 Cellphone Navigation Guide

Thursday, June 6, 2013

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Every year or so we like to take a fresh look at the cell phone landscape and reassess what makes the most sense for business, personal, and family use in terms of cost, functionality, and performance. Last year’s favorite based upon both cost and feature set was StraightTalk which offered unlimited talk, text, and data (sort of) on either the AT&T or T-Mobile network for $45 a month. Since that article was released, StraightTalk has quietly dropped the AT&T offering… Read More ›