Your Business Landline is now in the palm of your hands.

Get Business Landline calls on your iPhone.

Dublin: Monday 26th of September 2011. Three, Ireland’s largest high speed mobile network and mobile broadband market leader, has together with Blueface launched a new and innovative business offering designed to deliver big business service at small business prices. Three and Blueface are today announcing the introduction of Ireland’s first telephone App delivering a mobile landline service for Three business customers on their iPhone.

This new telecom App is primarily targeted at the SME market, delivering significant cost savings versus existing services with all the flexibility of a mobile network. With Fixed Line penetration currently at 71%, Three and Blueface see a significant opportunity for growth through delivery of a high quality service with a very competitive cost structure.

It is widely acknowledged that Irish businesses currently pay some of the highest landline costs in Europe with Comreg estimates putting it as much as 40% higher than the UK (€25 compared to €15 in the UK). Blueface is a landline app that is free to download with no monthly charges or landline rental, allowing users to make significant savings. It enables you to create a brand new landline number or carry over your existing landline number. With this service, if your customers try to contact you on either your mobile or landline, you can be instantly reached.

Eoin MacManus, Commercial Director at Three commented on the launch: “This agreement with Blueface gives Three a significant advantage over our competitors in the SME market. This simple, easy to use service will mean businesses can now have all the benefits of a fixed line number with the flexibility of mobile communications at exceptional value. We are delighted to bring this innovative product to the market and look forward to working with current and potential business customers to offer them some of the best value business communications solutions in Ireland.”

Alan Foy CEO, Blueface revealed his delight at the deal: “Blueface are delighted to be partnering with an innovative operator like Three to launch this unique landline service to small businesses. The Three landline App not only provides business customers with an innovative way of accessing a fixed landline but also enables customers to save costs by removing fixed cost monthly line rental and by using Blueface’s low-cost international call rates. Blueface are continually innovating to provide our SME customers with big business communications services at a small business price, and we look forward to providing even more developments in the near future.”

This new offer from Three combines innovative new technology with an attractive pricing structure. The App is free to download and there is a once off activation fee of €10 (ex VAT). Charges to make or receive calls are 15c (ex VAT) peak, off peak and weekends. The service is available on a Business Solo Plan with Three costing €75 per month. This includes
unlimited Mobile & Landline ROI and UK calls, unlimited texts for ROI together with unlimited Data. International calls cost 12c EU, 10c US and Canada and 20c Rest of the World. Roaming charges include: EU calls are 25c to make, 11c to receive; making and receiving calls from US are 75c; making and receiving calls from Rest of the World cost 99c and world Data Charges are 99c per MB.

Blueface developed the award winning app in connection with Vennetics, an innovator in telecommunication and IT application solutions, using GSM OneAPI specifications. This partnership between Blueface and Vennetics resulted in the companies winning the North / South Collaboration Award at the Irish Times Innovation Awards 2011. The App is not only the first Telecom App in Ireland but also a world first in terms of the newly adapted One API specifications as agreed by the GSMA.

Three has launched a number of ground–breaking initiatives including Ireland’s first ‘All you can eat’ data offering on both Postpay and Prepay, allowing customers to surf for free, with no excess charges. Three is proud sponsor of the Irish National football team and the Football Association of Ireland. Three’s “Dare to Dream” affinity scheme offers Football Association of Ireland-affiliated clubs across the country the chance to earn cash when their members switch to Three which helps with its support and development of grass roots football

As a foreword, I’d like to advise that this article is a bit technical. If you have queries or would like more details, drop a comment and I’ll be happy to provide further explanations.

I’ve recently come across a softphone that works on Linux, iPhone and Android phones: Linphone. It’s open source and free of charge.

I’ve only tried it on Linux Ubuntu so far (if iPhones and Android users want to give it a go, I’m all ears about your feedback) and I definitely enjoyed its “ease of use” and quick setup.

One of its other features that is interesting for tech-minded people is that you can handle calls with command lines. This feature can be turned into something powerful when used in scripts.

If you’re not a Blueface customer yet and are simply looking for information about Linphone, do not hesitate to check out our services. We’re providing residential phone services and business VoIP solutions, as well as other extra services. Maybe you can give Blueface a go along with Linphone.

Here is a quick setup guide for the Ubuntu client :

1. Install the dependencies from Synaptic Package Manager: speex, libosip2, libeXosip2
2. Still from Synaptic Package Manager, install : linphone
3. After installation, you can find the app in your menu : Applications > Internet > Linphone
4. To setup your Blueface account, go to the menu : Linphone > Preferences > ‘Manage SIP Accounts’
5. There you need to add a new “proxy account” :

Your SIP Identity will be : sip:YOUR_BLUEFACE_SIP_USERNAME@sip.blueface.ie

SIP Proxy Address is : sip:sip.blueface.ie

Registration duration : 113

From there you should be able to call out using your Blueface account.

If you want to use the console interface, you need a few more steps:

1. Quit the client if you have it open, to make sure your SIP settings won’t conflict.
2. Open a terminal and run : ‘linphonec’ (notice the ‘c’ at the end)
3. You need to add your SIP details again, for that run the command : ‘proxy add’
4. You’ll be prompted for the same parameters as mentioned above, for the graphical version.
5. Follow the prompts and validate.

You should start seeing successful registrations messages.

To call, run the command : call <number>

For example : call 012222222

Don’t forget to end the call, by running : terminate

One draw back I’ve noticed is that the same configuration file is used by both the GUI and the console and both interfaces tend to erase the configuration of the other, so you can only use one, basically. The config file is in ~.linphonerc.

You can get more information about this tool from this page: linphonec

Do not hesitate to drop a comment if you need help in setting this up. If you are working on an application that makes use of this commands feature, let us know!

Guillaume

Published in Feburary ’10, The article featured in the Sunday Independent. Written by Shane Ross it focuses on the FREE CALLS FOR LIFE offer, and how it saves the general consumer a huge amount on their telephone bill.

Hannah Flattery posing for Blueface

So,what can small businesses, haemorrhaging with cashflow problems, do? One way they can cut costs is by cancelling their subscription to the SFA. Another is by ensuring that they owe no money to AIB. A third is by reducing landline phone charges.

Last week, I found a new way of slashing my home telephone bill, courtesy of a small business with big ideas. Any scheme that kicks Eircom in the solar plexus is good news for those of us who have been victims of the dinosaur for decades.

So, it was wonderful to stumble on a small business start-up that promises to put another nail in the Eircom coffin. Two entrepreneurs entered my life. They will not be joining the SFA or borrowing from AIB. So far they have taken the private equity route.

As a crusty sceptic, I gave Alan Foy and Brendan Gaffney of Blueface a sideways glance when they insisted that I could have “free landline calls for life” if i handed over €199.

I have to confess as a punter who lost Stg£200 in the Eighties on the three-card trick to a man with an orange box just outside Harrods, I am a bit wary of racing certainties.

But knowing the pair well, I handed over the money and tested the product. The two telecom wizards installed a phone and promised me that I now have free landline calls for life.

Blueface has landed a recession buster. The phone provided will eliminate my line rental charge, provided I have a decent broadband connection. I reckon that the end of rental fee alone will reduce my telephone bill by hundreds of euro every year. Not to mention the free calls.

The phone is a cordless handset, easily attached to my old number. I will still pay for mobile calls through pre-payment and any calls outside the country, but even the mobile charges are cheaper than Eircom’s.

I win on the rental, there is none. I win on the mobile charges, they are cheaper. Two fingers to Eircom.

Any punter who wants free landline calls for life should head to blueface.ie. It is Skype without the computer. Blueface is exactly the type of resourceful small business that Ireland needs.  Consumers will love it becuase it will dramatically cut the household budget. So far the offer is only open to residential customers. But Blueface already has visionary plans for small business. The company is lead by a group of young entrepreneurs determined to shake-up the telecoms market. They are launching the ideal product for a downturn, watch this space.

The free landline offer may not be open forever. But it is for life!

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

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.

For more information : My SIP Switch / SIP Sorcery

Guillaume