by alec on February 8, 2008
CounterPath is on the move. Since their merger with Newheights, and refinancing at the hands of Sir Terry Matthews they've been on a buying binge. February 1, it was FirstHand Technologies. Just yesterday, Andy Abramson mentioned that BridgePort Networks had also been acquired by CounterPath, February 5th.
The common thread here is fixed mobile convergence. They appear to be evolving from the softphone player that they were. FirstHand was an enterprise FMC company. BridgePort, was a carrier FMC company.
This one will be interesting to watch.
by alec on October 1, 2006
Last week, MobileIGNITE announced the release of their version 1.0 FMC Handover specification. This document specifies how the handoff between WiFi VoIP and GSM networks is to occur in transition from one network to another. Perhaps the most interesting part of the release was this paragraph:
3GPP is in advanced stages of completing the Voice Call Continuity (VCC) standard, which defines FMC Handover in a strict IMS network conforming to the to-be-released 3GPP Release 7 reference architecture.   MobileIGNITE’s Functional Specification is fully consistent with and references the draft 3GPP VCC specification* – and provides a level of detail necessary to progress to the protocol implementation agreements and test cases necessary for formal interoperability certification.
This leaves one with the impression that the 3GPP is completely ignoring VoIP scenarios. MobileIGNITE’s approach appears to be one of ensuring that the specification they’ve drafted conforms with a specification designed for some other purpose (in this case, hand-off from one IMS network to another).  Regardless of what the politics behind the scenes are, this is good news for everyone. There is now a standard (or as near a standard as you can shake a stick at!) for everyone in the business of either mobile, or WiFi VoIP to follow.Â
