The Call 18 - 10/25/2004
From Michael Robertson, CEO and founder,
SIPphone.com
Briefly: Lower Prices, Free Shipping and Cheap Calls to Asia
Starting September 1, we have lowered the prices on all SIPphone adapters. The new prices are as follows:
| SIPphone Mini 286 | was |
→ now just $59.99 |
| SIPphone Mini 486 | was |
→ now just $69.99 |
| SIPphone Call-in-One | was |
→ now just $79.99 |
All orders in the US will receive free UPS Ground shipping and there is no "handling" fees on any orders as of August 1.
Our September SIP Minutes promotion slashes prices on all calls to Japan, Taiwan and Korea at just 3¢/min. The promotion is limited to landline calls.
Main Story: Calling All Universities
This week we finished our first peering relationship with an institution of higher education, The University of California, San Diego, my alma mater. It is a groundbreaking connection for SIP. You will read about it more next week in the press, I am sure.
UCSD has over 20,000 "seats" on their telephone PBX system. They control two full prefixes in the San Diego area code (858). Starting last week, anyone in the UCSD telephone network can pick up their phone and dial a SIPphone number directly, for free. Likewise, any SIPphone user in the world can dial a UCSD number directly for free. Of course, I know peering is not new. We have already enabled most the residents of Singapore and millions of people in Australia to do the same thing from their home or mobile phone. If you are in either of these countries, you should give it a shot. Just pick up your phone and dial a SIP number.
However, what is so important about the peering partnership with UCSD is both its immediate utility and its long term potential for SIPphone and the university. Consider some of the immediate consequences:
- A family in India can call their son, a graduate student in Computer Engineering, daily at no cost
- An archeology professor working in Egypt on a dig can stay directly tied to campus, keeping his local phone number to talk with other faculty and students
- Two professors working on a breakthrough in chip architecture, one in China and the other on campus in San Diego, can talk as frequently and as long as they need to, without concern for cost and with the convenience of dialing the office next door
Going forward, I predict two things will happen. First, you are going to hear many more of these university announcements from SIPphone in the coming weeks and months. Second, universities like UCSD will start abandoning their expensive, old PBX systems for flexible Linux-based softswitches like the one we used with UCSD. In fact, we tied our network to UCSDs for under $500 and less than a day of work.
I was so impressed, I immediately bought ten more identical servers and sent them to ten leading universities in California with whom we have been speaking to get them up and running. Each peering partner exchanges free calls with the SIPphone network, but also with any other peering partner. So a university in Asia can dial a UCSD number directly for free and vice versa by peering with SIPphone with no cost but an inexpensive software based gateway. Peering is a great way to pull the old, tired PSTN network into the next century.
The next obvious step is to get a company like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear to sell simple, inexpensive ATA's pre-configured with our Plug-N-Dial system in campus bookstores (hint, hint, are you guys listening?). Students could get their own campus line at no monthly fee for under $50, fully equipped and ready to make calls around the world for free or just pennies a minute. Of course the student would get our voicemail-to-email and conference calling service for free, as well. In fact, as most campuses like UCSD are completely WiFi-enabled, students can use their SIPphone all over campus with a WiFi phone, PDA or laptop.
Inspired? If you are a member of a university anywhere in the world and you would like to interconnect our network, drop me a line. We have setup a site just for you explaining the process and the requirements in good detail. And for selected universities, I will even ship you a free pre-configured demonstration server to get you going in just a few days.
Let us know your thoughts and feedback in our user forum.
** Michael Robertson
CEO and Founder
SIPphone.com
Let us know your thoughts and feedback about this or any other SIP topic in our user forum.
**Michael Robertson
CEO and Founder
SIPphone.com
