Free conference call providers are a dying breed
The days are numbered for all Free Conference Call services, it’s simply a matter of time. The big telcos have been a bit pissy for having to aid their competitors indirectly via the USF. The emotion over this has been coming to boil for years now and recently Free Conference Call provider Foonz fell, just a few days ago.
I am sure glad we decided to pull out of that Free Conference Call game long ago. Our conference call service “Lypp” (formerly Gaboogie) started by offering free conferencing but quickly decide that was a bad idea (duh!). Lypp is now cash flow positive, growing like crazy and not showing any signs of slowing down.
Innovative Phone System Benefits Local Company
As our little telecommunications company continues to grow Microsoft continues to take notice. Most recently our partners in Redmond have completed and published a case study on one of our customers “True North Drafting” (TND) a specialist in creating the detailed shop drawings that guide the fabrication and on-site installation of commercial-grade glass and aluminum structures.
TND has been a long time customer of ours and before purchasing their Response Point small business phone system they were using the Lypp conference call services.
This marks the second Lypp case study by Microsoft. The first was on Lypp itself, as a value added reseller for Response Point.
Thanks goes out to Rex and his team at Microsoft for the mention and to our customer of the month, “True North Drafting”, for their ongoing support.
Gaboogie Wins Red Herring Canada Top 50 Award
Gaboogie has just won the Red Herring Canada Top 50 award in the category of Communications based on our Lypp Conference Call application. We would like to thank Red Herring Canada for the recognition and all of our supporters and clients for making this possible.
The company continues to grow organically and we are very excited about what the future holds.
Thanks again to all who made this happen!
Erik Lagerway – President
Gaboogie Canada Inc.
Rick Segal – your Outlook conference call is about to begin.
I must really suck at marketing.
Rick Segal is pondering the effect an Outlook Add-in would have in the conferencing world if it worked seamlessly with Outlook Calendar and simply called everyone at the time of the meeting.
Rick has perfectly described the Lypp service and our Outlook Add-in.
Lypp chosen by Microsoft for Response Point Partner Case Study
Microsoft has recently published a case study on Lypp for our involvement with their Small Business Phone System – Response Point.
It also mentions our plans to deliver a last mile broadband offer that will potentially make VoIP for Small Businesses a viable solution in Canada.
Thanks to Rex Backman at Microsoft for putting this together.
International Lypp conference call services now in 20+ countries including the United Kingdom
Just a quick post… We quietly launched our International service for Lypp teleconferencing this evening. Users from Australia, UK, Germany and many more countries, can now sign-up and start using Lypp teleconferencing. Existing and new users in North America can also now include participants from 20+ countries. We only charge you for minutes you use and there are NO additional long distance costs if you use the outbound calling feature.
Since Lypp calls you and your attendees there is little or no need for an International Toll Free number. Use the Lypp for Outlook Add-in or the Lypp.com website and simply set it and forget it. Lypp notifies and calls everyone for you at the time of the meeting. The only thing you have to remember is to answer the phone when it rings.
Yes, Conference Calls and now International Conference Calls are just that simple at Lypp.
Ribbit sold, what's going on with Lypp?
Already a couple of days old now is the news that Ribbit just sold for $105m with (£53m) in cash. A congratulations is in order for Ted Griggs and his crew!
Due to this news Lypp is receiving a bit more attention and I have recently been asked by a few interested parties, “What are you going to do with Lypp?”.
The short answer is “We are building a profitable company.” The long answer is, “We are building a profitable company.”
Next week as we will be announcing the availability of the Lypp Teleconferencing service in more than 20 countries Worldwide with more to come shortly thereafter. Countries in this next release include; UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong and 15 more.
The international rates will be competitive, as an example Australia will be the same price as our North American rate at 9 cents/min with zero long distance calling costs. International Toll Free will be unnecessary considering Lypp calls all the meeting participants, in all countries served, at the time of the meeting.
So that is what is going on with Lypp. We are on track and I am thrilled with our progress. Yes, there are some interesting conversations in play and we will see where that takes us but the end game is to create a healthy company that continues to grow.
WebHuddle Integrates Lypp API and Enables Teleconferencing
WebHuddle’s Web Conferencing and Desktop Sharing solution has integrated Teleconferencing / Conference Calling via Lypp.
WebHuddle is an open source Web Conferencing & Desktop Sharing solution that works on both Mac & Windows. It is both free to download and use. For a limited time WebHuddle is offering free Teleconferencing via Lypp as well. WebHuddle + Lypp works rather well even though it is in early beta.
Small Business IP Phones Now Cordless
Aastra recently launched it’s AastraLink RP™ platform in support of the Microsoft® Response Point™ phone system software. Let me say, the Aastra IP Phones kick butt!
Aastra really went the distance on the IP Phones for their initial roll out of AastraLink RP™. They incorporated some features you are not going to find on any other Response Point handset, namely the cordless version (6757i CT RP) seen above.
Microsoft® Response Point™ is now available in 3 flavors; D-Link, Syspine and now Aastra. They each have their strong points and all will certainly be contenders in the rebirth of this market. They can all be bought online at SMBPhoneSystems.ca
I will be doing a full review of the AastraLink RP system once I have find time to write it up.
Response Point – Small Office Phone System – Install 3
Yesterday marked my 3rd installation of a Response Point small office phone system.
This time the customer opted for the Syspine system simply because of the Power over Ethernet features that Syspine has integrated.
They are a small company based in Vancouver and needed a system that offered maximum flexibility, virtual operator features and could scale to 30 or 40 seats.
Since they are all working during the day, having a receptionist answer the phone was not going to fly. When I showed them the virtual operator feature for Response Point coupled with the Voice Recognition and Voice mail to Email features, they flipped.
“It’s exactly what a company like ours needs.” Was the comment I received.
I set them up with a the Syspine system and 6 handsets, a Gigabit PoE switch, UPS and about 250′ of Cat6 cabling. I already knew the LAN layout so when I showed up for the install I knew it was going to go off without a hitch, or at least it should have.
Since my previous customers went with the D-Link VoiceCenter system, this was to be my first Syspine installation. I am not new to PoE so stringing the cable and getting the phones powered up went rather quickly. Then something strange happened. The devices on the LAN started picking up IP addresses that were not coming from my router. Hmm, my lab system never did this. On top of it the router was dropping wireless connections like crazy. Then I remember my distributor saying something about an embedded security gateway that shipped with the production Syspine systems, and that the lab systems did not come with the gateway.
I started poking around in the admin interface and sure enough I found the gateway DHCP settings tucked away in a hidden advanced settings menu.
Since we are not using any VPNs here and the administrator wanted to administer the LAN via the WAN IP, I connected all the LAN drops via the gig switch to the LAN router .
Now the the network was happy and so was I. Since the install spanned over a couple of days the timing actually worked out well. I was able to get the Response Point Service Pack 1 installed and now the customer can use SIP trunks (VoIP) for his call forwarding without using up an analog line. You should have seen the smile on his face when I told him that 🙂
I will give them a week or so to do some discovery and then I will get them up to speed on the Click to Call capabilities, Windows screen pops for incoming calls and some SIP call forwarding.
WebRTC.is 