Tag Archive for 'voip'

Fancy €100,000 p.a.?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 10/5/2007
in Telecoms and voip
. 1 Comment

That is what Pat Phelan is offering to his next hire! Pat is posting this on his blog and in the job sections of the papers. It will be interesting to know where he receives the most applications from.

Pat is looking for a business development manager. Unfortunately he is looking for someone with experience in business development so that rules me out, I guess :-(

Shame, I could have done with the salary, the new car, share options etc which go with the position.

If you feel you are right for the job, for God’s sake don’t contact Pat. I want him to come crawling to me ;-)

Off to MIX07

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/4/2007
in Telecoms and voip
. 1 Comment

I’m writing this post in Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport waiting to board a flight to Chicago (and then another to Vegas) for Microsoft’s MIX07 conference.

I’m looking forward to the conference, the line-up of talks looks really impressive and I’ll get a chance to meet some great people.

What is really cool as well is that Pat Phelan has ensured that my phone charges while I’m there will be minimal! How did he do that? Well, he mapped a Cork number (+353212349915) to my TruPhone number.

Now anyone who calls me from Ireland can call me on the Cork number Pat provided and, as long as I’m in a wifi zone, I will receive the call without incurring any roaming charges. And with Truphone, all outgoing calls to landlines are free until the end of June!

The only time I expect to incur call charges is if I have to call someone on mobile.

Excellent, thanks Pat.

Jangl sign-up broken?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/4/2007
in Telecoms and voip
. 2 Comments

I have been trying unsuccessfully, to sign-up for Jangl’s service for several days now.

Part of the process involves calling their service, choosing and entering a four digit PIN. However, every time I have tried this, Jangl says it doesn’t recognise the PIN I have entered.

The explanation can’t be as simple as Jangl doesn’t recognise the DTMF tones from my phone because to enter the PIN, I had to enter 1 and it recognised that, no problem.

Maybe I should try again using 1111 as my password!

Has anyone else had this problem?

Problems receiving calls with Truphone

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 20/4/2007
in voip and wifi
. 16 Comments

I set up a Truphone account to try out with the Nokia E61 I have been using the last few days.

Truphone gives you a US landline number when you sign up for an account with them (mine is 14259053151). Calls to this number are supposed to be routed to my mobile whenever I am logged into a wifi hotspot on the phone’s wifi.

Unfortunately, although this worked fine yesterday, it has stopped working today for some reason. Calls to my US number now go straight to voice mail.

I can call out no problem using Truphone and I can collect my voicemails so there is nothing wrong with the account or the wifi, just there seems to be an issue with incoming calls. :-(

Is your mobile operator crippling your phone?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/4/2007
in Telecoms and voip
. 2 Comments

Making calls from your mobile over wifi, instead of your mobile provider’s network, saves lots of money on call charges. This has the obvious consequence of reducing the income of the bloodsucking mobile operators (all together now, awwwww).

To ensure you can’t do this, some mobile operators have crippled the ability to make Internet calls on the phones they sell you as this video demonstrates:

If your mobile operator has done thisto your phone, shame on them. I presume re-installing the original Nokia firmware on your phone will bring back the Internet calling functionality. Can anyone confirm this?

Quick Nokia E61 review

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 19/4/2007
in review and voip
. 10 Comments

A good friend gave me a Nokia E61 to try out recently.

There are several things I don’t like about the phone:

  • It is huge!
  • It is really wide (to accommodate the qwerty keyboard) but this means your hand quickly becomes tired holding it to your ear for any prolonged period.
  • It doesn’t have a camera (this might sound trivial but I have really come to depend on having ready access to a camera and it was having access to a cameraphone that allowed me to capture this image easily, for instance). And
  • There are no games included (ok, that one was a bit trivial!)

However, the E61 does have a couple of nice features:

  • The qwerty keyboard ironically, takes some unlearning to get used to but once you do, it does really speed up typing on the phone and
  • The fact that the E61 has built-in wifi means that I can now use services like Truphone to make free and very cheap calls from my mobile anytime I have access to wifi.

Truphone also gives me a US landline number (+1 425 905 3151). This is handy as I will be able to receive calls when I am in the US on that number, without having to pay any roaming costs as long as I have wifi.

Truphone also has an offer on at the moment giving away free calls to landlines in 40 countries until the end of June! Excellent.

I can now make free calls to landlines, from my wifi network at home (at higher call quality than my GSM network at home!!!), using the E61.

Now all I need is a cameraphone with wifi!

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