Telecom – Dovid's Blog

March 1, 2009Dovid Bender No Comments

The fault game

<rant>
I sort of had it with the service providers. It seems that everyone here loves playing the blame game. If you call the cable company its the ISP’s issue. If you call the ISP then its the cable companies issue. A little while back a customer called up the phone company and stated that their internet was not working. The phone company said that it was an issue with their ISP. After speaking to the customer about which lights were lit up on the modem it turned out that the mode was not plugged in. How dumb is the telco ? They are so fast to blame the ISP where the modem was unplugged.

Which service provider do you hate the most ?

</rant>

May 15, 2008Dovid Bender No Comments

A Gui for Asterisk that I like (just a little)

Yes. You read correctly. As some may know I hate almost any and every gui out there that has been created for Asterisk. Now when a customer wants a GUI on Asterisk you do as the nice paying customer says. I was forced to check out some GUI’s and the Asterisk-Gui (created by Digium) is not to bed. The interface takes a little bit to learn but it’s not hard to get the hang of it. The code that it generates is small and simple (unlike some other GUI’s *Cough** TrixBox**Cough*). Anything that you manually put in to the configuration files will show up in the GUI. While I still prefer “vanilla” Asterisk if you are trying to learn Asterisk or need a quick fix then Asterisk-GUI is the way to go. (Of course GUI’s are always for plan Z and should be used in a worst case scenario 😉 )

April 7, 2008Dovid Bender No Comments

False Advertising: Enough !!!

A coworker was online today and came across an Israeli add that offered “unlimited” calling for 39 NIS (Aprox. $10.00). Once clicking on the advertisement it says unlimited is 500 minutes. It amazes me how people can lie straight out. True they tell you once you click on the advertisement that it is only 500 minutes but I think companies should not be allowed to use such advertising tactics. The funny thing is that companies offer “unlimited” which they say is 5,000 minutes have a hard time from their clients.

December 11, 2007Dovid Bender No Comments

Want to set up a Gray Route ?

According to THIS blog setting up a gray route seems to be pretty easy. What surprises me more is all the large telco’s in the US that use gray routes. For instance I know of a major player in the US who was using gray route to Israel mobile. They were getting a great rate so in turn they gave great rates to their customers. That “provider” started making problems for them and they are finally having to go with a white route. This means an increase for them of 2-3 cents a minute. They now have to explain to their clients that their rates will go up and the reason for the low rates until now were the gray routes. Bottom line if you are going to use a gray route, have a backup plan.

October 10, 2007Dovid Bender No Comments

VON 2007 Israel

I will be in Israel this coming week. I just received my confirmation and will be attending VON 200 7 Israel. Jeff Pulver always seems to do a terrific job. I can not wait to see the latest innovation’s coming out of Israel. The Israeli’s seem to know how to get it right. If you are going to be there please let me know and maybe we can dream up some thing new. Life is all about creativity.