Open Source — No comments
08
Jan 10

SIP Sorcery – Open Source SIP experimentation

Blueface CTO, Aaron Clauson, started some years ago a project that allowed mangling with multiple SIP accounts with a single SIP phone. One of the particularities of this project was the fact that it handles only SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) signaling, rather than signaling AND media (ie: audio streams), which enables a fantastic flexibility when it comes to managing calls.

My SIP Switch was born!

My SIP Switch

My SIP Switch

This project has come a long way since its early days. It is now fully open source (freely available online at : SIP Sorcery Source),  regular blog news are posted regularly (SIP Sorcery Blog ) ,  more than 12.000 messages have been posted on the forum and about 1.000 people are using the application online every day.

The name of this project changed to SIP Sorcery recently (June 2009) along with a major backend and frontend update!

SIP Sorcery the Ruby of VoIP.

The great strength of SIP Sorcery resides in its Ruby (programming language) dial plans, out of which an almost endless lists of call related features can be designed by a creative and tech-savvy mind.  The tool can be used for very simple PBX tasks such as “find me follow me” (also called : Call Hunting) or time based call forwarding to more advanced features such as ENUM lookups,  Google Voice integration or Voxeo IVRs integration. These features make of SIP Sorcery one of the best web PBX solutions available and best of all, it’s FREE.

With multiple SIP accounts registered to SIP Sorcery, you can receive and manage the calls from many different phone numbers easily. For outgoing calls, you can chose the SIP account that will be used when dialing out. That’s another great benefit since you can call out using your provider that has the best rate for the actual destination.

SIP Sorcery can be installed on your computer or used directly online. There are still regular improvements and new features added to the software so it is more for experimenting than for a production system as of now but the feedback we are getting from the community of users predicts SIP Sorcery quite a bright future.

Some  famous VoIP related open source projects have become complete products with major added value mainly thanks to their community of users and developers (Asterisk, Open SER, SIP Foundry…). Blueface has been sponsoring My SIP Switch (hardware, website, as well as some development) since the end of 2006 because we believe there is an enormous potential in this application.

sip-sorcery-banner

For more information : www.mysipswitch.com / www.sipsorcery.com

Guillaume

Business News — 2 comments
06
Jan 10

Blueface kick-starts the Telecoms shake up in 2010

New CEO, Alan Foy
New CEO, Alan Foy is very confident about the year ahead

Blueface, Ireland’s leading internet telecoms company, is set to make some powerful changes in 2010.  Today, the innovative, fast growing technology company announced its first change; the appointment of a new Chief Executive, Mr. Alan Foy.

6th January, 2010 – Dublin, Ireland, Blueface formally announces the appointment of Alan Foy to the role of Chief Executive of Blueface Ltd.   Mr. Foy is charged with creating and building the next phase of growth for Blueface, a young, innovative and dynamic company with an ambitious new strategic direction.   Mr. Foy will lead the management team to create and deliver unique communications products and services to business, residential and wholesale customers in the UK and Ireland.

“There’s lots of very exciting news in Blueface”, Mr. Foy explains, “We have special cutting edge projects in incubation which clearly demonstrate Blueface’s commitment to innovation and to delivering low-cost, 21st century telecoms for all our customers”.  “We also have star players joining the management team both here in Ireland and in the UK to help deliver on Blueface’s ambitious plans and who fit with our company’s entrepreneurial and unique culture”.

Mr. Foy comments that, “Blueface is a home-grown Irish technology company delivering cost savings and great communications functionality to Irish and UK SME’s and residential customers in these challenging economic times”. “We empower our customers to take control of their communications services and to manage the costs involved in ways that most telecoms companies wouldn’t dare to offer.  The customer value proposition of Blueface stacks up now more than ever”.

Residential — No comments
23
Dec 09

VAT Update

Blueface would like to update our customers regarding the amended VAT rate which was outlined in the Budget and will come into effect on January 1st 2010. Originally, when the VAT rate was increased to 21.5% in December 08 Blueface did not increase the price of their residential call plans & respective charges and we now plan on reversing that change when the new VAT rate of 21% comes into effect next year.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for 2010.

Support — No comments
23
Dec 09

Blueface Christmas Holiday Support

logo-christmasBlueface will close on Wednesday 23rd December 2009 and will re-open on Monday 4th Jan 2010.

During this time, we will regularly monitor customers queries made by email & on the forum. Support will be via email only support@blueface.ie.

Best Wishes from all at Blueface!

Industry news — No comments
23
Dec 09

Number Porting in 1 Day

Number Porting has always been a really tedious long drawn out task for us and our customers. Back in 2005  the lead-time was several weeks and it was really expensive. Since then, Blueface have continuously worked to reduce the costs and lead-time of number porting for our customers. Now it takes 2 weeks to port numbers.

Number Porting in 1 Day

However, plans are afoot for number porting to be completed in just 1 day. Mobile phone customers have for years been able to port numbers on the same day without the rigmarole associated with porting Geographic numbers so we look forward to being able to provide a more effective & efficient service. This is very welcome news for everyone who wants to keep their phone number when they change service provider. The Comreg  Geographic Number Porting Steering Group (GNPSG) is working with various operators including Blueface to have this in place next year.

We look forward to similar pro-active initiatives managed by Comreg and Supported by industry operators like Blueface.

Support — No comments
22
Dec 09

Pay as you go phone credit and subscription call plan

As part of the Top support queries series of posts,  I wanted to clearly explain the distinction between the usage of our Pay as you go service and our call plans or subscriptions. It seems like it’s not clear to newcomers.

Why do I get low credit notification when I call a number?

time_is_moneyYou can use Blueface in a “Pay as you go” way which means you prepay for your calls by purchasing call credit on our shop. Then, each time you make a call, the calls are billed against your pay as you go balance. This is a prepaid service, so when you run out of credit then you can’t call out anymore (you can still be called though). Our rates are very cheap compared to other phone companies, so you’ll save a lot of money by using our services.

Depending on your calling habits and in order to save even more money, we have various types of call plans which allow you to make calls for a set amount of minutes per month or unlimited to a set number of destinations. The destinations are clearly mentioned in our pages explaining the different call plans that we have : Residential Call plans

When you have a subscription, you can still call destinations that are not included in the call plan, of course, but they will be billed again from your pay as you go credit. That’s why, even when you have a subscription, it’s best to have some pay as you go credit as well. It avoids not being allowed to make a call to a destination you are not used to calling, for example. Note that depending on your calling habits it may not be necessary to have credit in your pay as you go account.

Also check out our post about low balance notification.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

Support — 1 comment
14
Dec 09

Call forwarding : never miss a call wherever you ended up

As part of the Top support queries, here is an article about a popular question regarding our call features.

How do I set forwards and diverts?

You need to login to www.blueface.ie and go to the ToolBox (4th tab of the customer menu).direction_banner

In there you can do a LOT of cool stuff with your phone(s).

You will see a list of the phone numbers you have with us. You can’t modify the way Blueface extensions are called. Fax numbers are listed but cannot be modified here either (you can update the fax’s email in the Account Management page!).

For Irish geographic numbers you can change the way the call is routed : ring multiple numbers at once, specify backup phone numbers or SIP accounts if the phone is offline or already on a call.

The textbox in this section can support SIP accounts, mobile numbers, POTS numbers and IAX2 accounts.  You can also forward calls to a SIP account that is not a Blueface one.

You can also save your details into a ‘Profile’ and have various profiles so that you can easily load one when you need to make a quick change on your account. The use of profiles is not very user friendly. A few customers have already mentioned this and we have planned to improve this tool.

We have a few ideas to add new features around this tool, so stay tuned.

We have written a guide for this tool : Call forwarding tool.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

Business News — Comments Off
09
Dec 09

Blueface Business Plans: Details of each call plan.

Details of the Plans are listed below:

All prices are per month, and ex VAT.

  • Business Basic – €49 –  2 channel, 2 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 75 UK/Irl mobile minutes
  • Business Plus – €69 – 4 Channel, 8  DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 250 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Advantage – €99 – 8 Channel, 16 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 350 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Global – €139 – 16 Channel, 32 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 500 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Corporate – €219 32 Channel 64 DID’s Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 700 Irl/UK mobile minutes
Business News / Industry news — Comments Off
09
Dec 09

Changing the ‘face’ of business telephony in Ireland

During the final week of November we launched the newest area of our website, a dedicated Business section targeting Irish companies who are looking to upgrade their phone system to a more manageable, more efficient and most importantly better value service.

We spent a number of months developing a series of plans that we felt covered a range of business types from small office style businesses to SME’s and all the way up to multi-site retail outlets and call centres.

The Business plans are priced with the end-user in mind, the Business Basic package is a 2 channel package, included in this plan is unlimited Ireland & UK Landline calls* as well as 75 mobile minutes for only €49 a month. Next up is Business Plus for €69, Business Advantage for €99, Business Global €139, right up to Business Corporate which is a 32 channel package with unlimited Ireland & UK calls* and a massive 700 mobile minutes for only €219 a month.

We have only had our business call plans officially active for a few weeks now, but the interest has been remarkable. The demand for a reliable phone service which offers companies a greater level of freedom and significant cost savings is exceptional. We have spent no money on Marketing our products so far this quarter and yet, organically through coverage in the Sunday Business Post, Online via our partner sites and our excellent SEO performance has seen a huge increase in business enquiries. We stand by our belief that first and foremost we are a Communications company, if we’re not making it easier for businesses to stay in touch with their customers and suppliers then we’re not helping.

We can provide a number of features that enable Businesses to save money – ‘voicemail to email’ which saves time and money from having to access voicemail on their phones, ‘fax to email’ essentially ‘paperless’ faxing which again saves money and is better for the environment and more importantly, with exporting in mind, ‘International Geographic Numbers’. If your company would like to have a local number in London, New York or a number of international cities, we can provide you with a locally listed number for new potential customers to call, giving SME’s an early step up in International Business.

Business News — 1 comment
26
Nov 09

Blueface Proudly Sponsor the Digital Media Award

Digital Media Awards

Blueface Sponsor the Best in Blogging Category

Blueface.ie is delighted to announce their sponsorship of the Digital Media Awards ‘Best in Blogging’ category. The growth of blogging in recent years is consistent with the phenomenal increase in social networking and online communications.

This Award will recognise the very best in Irish Blogging, nominated by the public and decided by an expert panel of judges. Judges will be looking at the standard of content, quality of writing, regularity of updates, whether it is influential and the overall design and usability of the blog/site.

“We at Blueface are committed to providing superior levels of communications to our customers, much in the same way a dedicated blogger provides content for their site. We expect to see a diverse selection of nominations for this category and I expect that the judge’s job will not be made easy by the high standard of web blogging in Ireland. I encourage the public to nominate their favourite blog sites early, as competition for this award will be rivalrous.”
Feargal Brady

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