I was able to spend a day at the Spring 2004 VON show in Santa Clara. California. It was a very active and well attended show.
These are items that caught my interest at the VON show:
Disruptive Technology
Nimcat Networks has intelligent SIP phones that automatically self-configure into a PBX with voice mail. No server needed. Remove one phone and the others automatically provide voicemail, forwarding, etc for the missing phone.
SIP ATA with Phone line interfaces
There were several vendors showing SIP ATAs that have both FXO and FXS ports. The Sipura 3000 provides 1 FXS and 1 FXO port and will retail for approximately $170 in May. There is full dial-plan support so that you can automatically pass 911 calls to the PSTN, access a local phone line from VOIP, or make VOIP calls by dialing into your own PSTN phone line. An easy way to add an FXO and FXS port to an Asterisk box.
Sipura
New SIP phones
The Astra IP Phone is a 9 line SIP/MGCP phone with very nice display and rich feature set available for approx $150.
Support for Nimcat Networks rumored to be coming soon.
Sayson Phones
SIP interchange
ICUC has started a service to allow VOIP providers to query their serivce and find out if a call to a given phone number can be delivered via VOIP. Providers may both advertise the numbers they can accept and query for other providers to deliver a call. The ICUC service currenlty has information on over 1 million phone numbers. There is no charge for this service.
ICUC
Asterisk
The Digium booth was swamped with people. There was almost alway a crowd around the booth. A very popular product.
Asterisk
Border Control
Most session controllers only run on proprietary hardare. MediaRing offers a border controller that will run on an ordinary Linux or Solaris box.
MediaRing
Protocol Support
I was suprised at the number of companies that have appeared offering VOIP protocol stacks for inclusiion in other products. There ere also a number of companies offering protocol conformance testing products.
Voxilla
I ran into Marcelo Rodriguez from Voxilla on the show floor and he
gave me a Voxilla hat — best give-away I got at the show.
He will be taking pre-orders for the Sipura 3000. If you are interested
contact him at [email protected]
April 7, 2023
Phone System 