I know its been a log time in coming and we have had literally tons of beta volunteers, and we genuinely appreciate all of their hard work using the test version of the app and providing feedback, but now all that work has paid off and our android app is now available for everyone to download.

You can find it on Google Play here

Please download it and use to your hearts content, and we really do appreciate giving it a review as well.

Example #1:  Customer lives in Dallas, but has family in Argentina.  Instead of always calling his family on his PhonePower line, he can get a local Argentina number.  This allows his family to call him without making an international call.

Example #2:  Customer runs her business in Boston, but has customers in both Singapore and Spain.  She can get an international number in Singapore and another one in Spain.  This gives her business an instant worldwide presence.

This feature has been highly requested recently so we are rushing this out a little early.  We’re still labeling it a “beta” program since we haven’t yet added in the ability to manage these numbers in the customer portal.  So for right now if you are interested in adding an international virtual number, please email billing@phonepower.com Below is a list of countries that we are providing local numbers in today.  Pricing ranges from $7-$17 per month depending on the country.  There are no additional per minute charges. All numbers have a one-time $10 activation fee:

Danny from Shipping won the Heartburn award for his “5×5 Burger”.

Support Manager Chris held onto his title of “The Annihilator” for putting away the most food by himself: one Tri-tip sandwich with fries, one double Charburger with fries, and two single charburgers, both with fries.

Final tally for the day:
40 Charburger with cheese
25 Double Charburger with cheese
30 BBQ Chicken sandwiches
12 Tri-tip sandwiches
3 Veggie Burgers
60 orders of French Fries
50 orders of Onion Rings
60 Medium drinks

Thanks again to The Habit for coming out.

As you all begin tinkering, please understand that this application is still very much in testing, so expect some bugs and defects, and if they come up, or if you see behavior that seems unusual, please email support and let them know about it so we can improve the product and your experience.

Thanks in advance to all who are participating in this for helping to make this project more successful and helping to improve the experience for all Phone Power customers.

This means if you are on our beta list you will be getting contact in the next few weeks. We presently have about 6 critical bugs to close out before we can start passing it out for beta testing.

Thanks for bearing with us on this, as it has been a very trying project so far, and stick around for more good news to come.

I know its been a while since I posted anything, but don’t fear, I have not forgotten you (OK well I might have for a little bit but I got your text messages and were BFF’s again), so the latest big thing at Phone Power is….Canada. Ok I know its not new, politically, or geologically speaking but its shiny and new to us, and now you can order service in Canada, so you can join the happy masses already drinking the Phone Power kool-aid, or if you are already a customer and have friends and relatives in Canada, we can also do virtual numbers so you become a local call to them, or if you always wanted to move to Canada, but couldn’t bear to leave your Phone Power service behind, well we thought of you too. Get moving, we’ve got you covered.

See you next time

-Ryan

• Mac Support. Yep real honest to goodness mac support. The exact same fully tested andpolished softphone, but this time on OSX. We always felt a tad hypocritical for offering an iphone app but no Mac softphone, and now we dont feel nearly as bad.
• Call recording is even easier. Our softphone always did call recording, but now it can be enabled from within a call with a single click, and will just default to your desktop (or documents library for mac users).
• Outlook integration: This one obviously only applies to windows users BUT it means any user in your contacts can be dialed with a simple right-click
• CallTo URL integration: anything on your system that formats a phone number in callto url format, our softphone can trap and turn into a click2call. This means if you use Zimbra mesaging suite for email, any phone number in your contacts and email just became click-able, or you can use a browser plugin such as telify for firefox to make all phone numbers you see on the internet into call-to URLs that the softphone can trap and make dialing anything 10x easier.
• Enhanced compatibility: We used to use a system browser for the embedded portal and system integration but now we carry our own so the experience should be much more uniform regardless of what system browser plugins etc you have.
• Easeir to navigate: We took the feedback about the most commonly used items in the UI and moved them to make them easier to reach. You can now change audio devices just by clicking on the speaker or mic icons and selecting your audio device. No need to go digging in options anymore.
• Speedier portal: The portal navigation experience has been sped up signifigantly thanks to heavy optimization of the embedded rendering engine.
• Call Transfer: Our business users have been asking for this one and now you have it. * Users on the Aquarius network will need to have this feature activated for them
• Updated UI: We re-skinned and re-sized the UI to make it less obtrusive and overall make better use of real-estate. This means it now fits easily on most netbook sized screen resolutions for maximum mobility and takes up less precious space on your desktop without any loss in functionality.
• Added a delete key to the dial windows: Users making use of our softphone on a touch-screen PC environment were clamoring for a touch-able delete key, so we gave you one.

Our biggest focus in this release has been to take our softphone and make its integration and use as seamless and natural as possible. To us an application is a tool, not the destination itself, and the best tool in the world is one that does its job without you thinking about it, such as your TV remote, you use it, but unconsciously, with the focus instead being on what you want to do. Our softphones job is to facilitate communication, and the more time you spend rummaging around inside it is time that you aren’t using it to communicate with friends, family or colleagues, so that is all time it isn’t working like it should.

To download it, you can login to my account and go to the softphone page, where a beta link should be available.

Happy calling!

First things first, lets quickly go over some of the statistics we are looking at here.

MOS: This means Mean Opinion Score. This is an age-old telephony metric used to measure measure how a human will perceive the quality of the network. The scale runs from 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. To help you relate here are some common reference points:

• 5: In the same room as the speaker
• 4.2: POTS – The traditional AT&T “You can hear a pin-drop” PSTN service. This is voice encoded into G711 uLaw and transmitted across a problem-free TDM network
• 3.7: G729 – This is a phone call encoded into G729 for low bandwidth and transmitted across a problem-free network
• 3.5: Cell phone – This would be an average cellular phone call
• 2.5-3: Poor cell phone call.

Jitter: This is the variation in timing between arriving audio packets. If an audio packet contains 20ms of audio, the next packet MUST arrive and be ready to be played before the last packet is done being played. Jitter is corrected with a jitter buffer, typically a 100-300ms buffer used to  smooth out the arriving audio packets. Jitter in VoIP is most commonly experienced as audible clicks and pops, which is what happens when there is no audio to play for a few milliseconds while we wait for the next late packet to arrive. Something to note about jitter, it is perfectly OK for ping times to be high as long as packet delivery rates are consistent.

Packet Loss: This is exactly what it sounds like, audio packets that never make it to the other party, or arrive late. Unlike in a TCP stream where late packets are re-assembled into the final product, and missing packets are re-sent, once the next sound byte has played to a listening party, you cannot go back and re-play late arriving audio packets, you just discard them. Packet loss is caused by the traffic taking different network paths to the destination or by congestion, and most commonly manifests itself as one party sounding garbled or robotic as the jitter buffer slams mis-matching audio packets on top of one another.

Mbps: This is exactly what it sounds like. The raw measured speed of a connection in megabits per second. This metric is what most ISP’s will advertize in their literature, and really only pertains to TCP sessions. It is worth noting that its still a decent metric of the overall connection capacity.

Data Flow QoS is a measure of how smoothly data packets are moving. If a connection is un congested or unregulated then every packet should flow at a rate that matches the maximum capacity of the slowest part of the connection’s route. If regulation of congestion causes this pattern to change then the data flow QoS should drop. This metric is often linked to Jitter and Packet loss.

So now that we are all on the same page, lets take a look at what we have found.Keep in mind that ISP’s have been grouped by the names their network blocks were registered with ARIN, so this explains why there may be some unusual names here, and if you want to know where you land on this chart, you can lookup your IP at ARIN or mosey over to this easy whois tool that does most of the work for you, and find the OrgName that owns your IP address.

First lets take a look at how the top ISP’s we have sample data from line up with regard to MOS scoring.

There are 3 MOS scores plotted here:

• The Average MOS (the average we have seen across the entire sample range)
• The Mean MOS score (the score that the ISP produces most often)
• The Maximum MOS score (the best value we have seen from the ISP)

Now I know you statisticians out there will immediately mention I am missing the minimum and standard deviance, however the minimum is always going to be 1 since its guaranteed that at least one person ran a test on a LAN with issues so it was statistically insignificant, and the standard deviance value while it was easily calculable turned out to be pretty useless for producing a tangible feel for how VoIP traffic fared on that network, so to avoid confusion digesting some of this data we just omitted it.

What does this tell us? Well we can clearly see several things:

1. Nearly every ISP shows MOS scores that will produce a VoIP call quality that is virtually indistinguishable from POTS.
2. There is a clear divide with the wireline networks’s on the left of the graph, and the satellite providers on the far right. This reinforces what most of us knew which is satellite and indirect wireless connections are less capable of producing usable VoIP quality.
3. Geography seems to make much less difference in the MOS score than the network access method. DSL carriers in Europe, Australia and Asia scored consistently better than domestic wireless carriers.

Next lets see how all these carrier stack up with Jitter and Packet Loss.

So what does this tell us? Well first of all you can see that it again is perfectly clear that geography makes much less difference than the last mile technology in use by the network as nearly every network charted clearly illustrates the capacity to produce a jitter-free communication channel. We have also included the average TCP Pause which is indicative of round trip time in this graph to see where it falls in relation to the upstream and downstream measurements taken over a UDP stream.

When looking at the packet loss graph we again see that most show an average of under 1% packet loss both up and down. This is completely imperceptible, again showing absolutely no preference for geography.

Now lets take a quick look at the bandwidth we have seen from these carriers. First things first this is bandwidth as expressed in application speed, which means TCP sessions, i.e. horsepower to the wheels, as you will use it.

So again lets take a serious look at this and see what this tells us.

1. Bandwidth definitely doesn’t equal quality. Some of the carriers that showed the absolute highest MOS scoring and best jitter and packet loss stats land in the mid-low range from a bandwidth perspective,
2. BUT that doesn’t matter so much for voice. Remember, 1 uncompressed VoIP call (G711uLaw) only uses 84kbps of bandwidth (both up AND down). This means that even the most meager carrier here can support 2-3 uncompressed calls and if you add in compression with G729, you can do 4 times as many concurrent calls. Obviously this is assuming there is absolutely no other network traffic. Without getting too technical about buffer bloat and network saturation issues a safe bet when scoping out how many calls you can support across your link is 50% of your measured capacity can be available for voice consistently without causing quality issues. Going over 50% on a non-business grade line is a recipie for issues.
3. The state of broadband in North America is still nothing to be terribly proud about, given that the majority of the carriers still provide an upload under 1mbps and an download/upload speed ratio of often 4/1 which, while it certainly doesn’t hurt anything for your standard web/youtube/netflix/facebook internet experience, will certainly be a barrier as more and more real-time applications such as HD voice and video chat services start gaining popularity.
4. The major mobile providers now supply broadband connectivity that is easily equal to or better than most DSL or lower-end cable from a bandwidth perspective.

Speaking of mobile providers. Lets isolate them for a second since I know Voice over 3G/WiFi is on the forefront of everyones mind. In the following graphs the major US wireless data players are outlined, though their network names might confuse you:

• T-Mobile USA is self explanatory.
• Service Provider Corporation represents AT&T Wireless data (this is how their ARIN entries are presented)
• Clearwire US LLC represents obviously Clearwire as well as the Sprint 4G network
• Cellco Partnership DBA Verizon LLC is Verizon Wireless
• Sprint Nextel Corporation represnets Sprints 3G data network

Now this data was collected not off of mobile phones, since our speedtest presently doesnt work on mobile platforms but instead on laptops and PC’s using mobile hotspots (or cellphones in hotspot mode) or USB dongles, so if it doesn’t represent your carriers new flashy LTE network, this may be why.

This shows clearly that AT&T wireless, T-Mobile and Clearwire all produce average results that can produce VoIP call quality that is as good as a landline, while nealry all of them can produce VoIP call quality that is as good as a cell phone, and very usable, with the age of the respective carrier networks definitely being evident.

Now with Jitter the story shifts a little bit, with clearwire (the only player not running a voice network) showing a subtle performance boost, however notice that average jitter across the board never goes over 125ms which is still well within what most jitter buffers can accommodate for.

Now we take a look at the other side of the jitter equation, packet loss. The scale is in percentage of total packets lost, so AT&T clearly runs away here scoring an average of less than 0.2% lost, with Clearwire showing the next best performance, then T-Mobile close behind with Sprint and then Verizon. What is interesting here is the packet loss numbers from Verizon are nearly the inverse of their jitter numbers, which again levels the playing field pretty well.

Finally the good ol bandwidth test. While the download numbers definitely bounce around (and some are pretty high), what is most interesting here is nearly everyone is showing around or over 1mbps of upload speed; well more than enough for a video call over 3G or a voip conference call. Of course that is without getting into the topic of data caps, roaming, etc but ill save that for another post.

So what have we learned from all this? Well firstly geography doesn’t matter nearly as much as the quality of the network. Second bandwidth does not equal quality. Clearly some of the providers with the highest consistent quality scores were middle to low end in the speed department.

This is just the tip of the iceberg here, since we are still only looking at a few months of data, and more interestingly a few months of data, sampled when there isn’t a significant LTE play yet. I can assure you we will re-visit this topic in the future as the landscape is still changing.

Let us know how your ISP stacks up.

P.S.: For any of you out there that are just gaga for statistics, you can download the data in excel  below

Internet_According_To_PhonePower

This is just a quick state of the union on our android application, due to overwhelming customer demand for some transparency. We hear you, and we are working feverishly to deliver our android application, but just to bring you up to speed on some of the hurdles we have faced and where the state of the project is.

We originally began with the intent of re-using the underlying SIP engine on the iPhone application which we have had an extremely long time to test and tune on and ensure that it plays safe and sane on our network and provides a hopefully seamless and easy VoIP experience. This path we found fraught with difficulty due to platform differences and results were sub-optimal at best; and most importantly held indications that while we could push through the resulting mess would not live up to our standards in the long run; so we tore it down and built a more android friendly voip engine from the ground up. Unfortunately in developing products like this there is the occasional false start, we have certainly had that, and we have taken some extremely valuable lessons away from it.

We have also learned that the Android ecosystem is extremely complex to write for given the tremendous variety of devices, screen resolutions, and firmware permutations one can encounter in the wild; now I know most of you out there in internet-land are thinking “Well duh” to yourselves, and we presumed this going in, but the rabbit hole went much deeper than even we expected and so we have devoted an extreme amount of time to testing a large cross-section of not only the newest devices, but also testing a huge swath of devices that our customers will actually have in their pockets right now. Large touch screen phones, small sliders, tablets, Verizon phones, Sprint phones, ATT phones, you name it. This endeavor again has given us mountains of valuable information on how people actually use their devices, and has lead us to shift some of the UI around, as well as tune for the peculiarities of how each of these carriers actually handle their mobile data.

This whole project has been a herculean effort, which turned out to be orders of magnitude larger than the iPhone application due to open device ecosystem. That being said, I feel we are on track to a closed beta program (if you have told our support team you want to be a part of a beta program, we have you on a list don’t worry, and we will be contacting you) in the coming weeks but I don’t want to promise anything just yet since every time we have tried to provide a timeline the project seemed to go a bit pear-shaped.

Long story short, this is the biggest thing on our minds as of this moment and we are laser-focused on delivering a solid experience, so with  that said, I’ll return to our development cave with the motivation stick and a wheelbarrow full of Cheetos and Mountain Dew to continue the effort.

Keep your eyes on the blog and forum for more developments.

-Ryan

Just to quickly announce, that as of today the Phone Power iPhone app now does VoIP over 3G/WiFi with fail-back to click2call for when there just isnt a good enough connection available.We have put a tremendous amount of work into this and are finally happy to announce that we feel its ready to show.

This is just V2.0 and there is still much coming, but its an important milestone for us. Go download it now, no really, right now. and dont forget to leave feedback! Happy calling.

P.S.: We haven’t forgotten about all you android guys. The iPhone app just had a huge lead on it. Its coming, with all the functionality in the iPhone app and a little more. Stay tuned!

-Ryan