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Sunday, October 31, 2010
What is it a telephony application?
“So what do you do?” “Sorry, what is it that you do?” I’m confused, what is that? As a startup, of something new and innovative, you’ll hear some of the comments above. Its not because the pitch is bad or you are not explaining your product properly, its more that you’re product is new and people aren’t familiar with what the product can do for them. Sometimes, it takes time for people to let go of what they think they know. Its hard, to be told the world functions a certain way and all of the sudden someone comes along and says “No, the world could function in a different manner as well.” It’s like the whole drama with kids and Santa Clause. What history has taught us to this point is that, new ideas will be apposed by many at the start but as more and more people accept it, it will become easier. No! We just want to add some perspective on the whole “telephony application” confusion. What is a telephony application? and what is it that we do at TELTUB? In plain simple language, a telephony application is any additional feature on your phone line. Be it voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting, conference calling.    Make sense? Good!So basically, anything done on your phone that pertains to a call that requires information transfer is somehow tied to a “telephony application.” That was a little more technical explanation. Hope you still follow. Now at TELTUB, we have put a new twist on these so called “telephony applications”; and by twist we don’t mean we are doing something weird to it. Just something different than what you are used to. For example, call-forwarding is a very common telephony application that everyone is familiar with. This telephony application makes it is possible to forward your incoming call to any other number of your choice. TELTUB’s call forwarding is more evolved and intuitive. When you want to forward a call from TELTUB, you can choose to identify who is calling you and at what time and according to YOUR preference forward that call to any number you choose, or even your voicemail. Now that sounds odd to many people. We don’t blame you, it hasn’t been done before. Nobody ever thought about why does a great feature such as call-forwarding has to be so restrictive. Google has recently (about year or so) has started thinking the same way. Their product, Google Voice does something similar to TELTUB’s call-forwarding application and would have faced the same kind of scepticism, all new products do, if it wasn’t because of Google’s GIAN-ORMOUS name and reputation.  So now you may think, what's the difference between what Google and TELTUB is doing? Without going on and on about many technical differences and pros and cons between the services, I will show you in a couple of bullet points below.
Now, we are not saying we are better than Google. NO! We wouldn’t dream of saying something like that. We leave comments like that to the users who get to try both services. Labels: telephony application, TELTUB 
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Running a call center? Don't worry about PCI; Paytel is here to rescue
Today, the TELTUB team won an award in the Hacketon contest for implementing Paytel. Paytel is a TELTUB application developed for call centers to enable them to accept credit card and Paypal payments over the phone securely.
 Many call centers all over world accept credit card payments. They simply ask the caller to say the credit card number and in many cases the CVV code. The problem is that many of these centers do record these conversations and they usually store them without proper protections. Storing PAN data without proper protection is against PCI. Moreover, storing CVV in any shape or form, even encrypted, violates PCI. This is why call centers are looking for solutions to address this issue. Paytel is designed to solve this issue. It simply takes the call center, at least its voice portion, out of the scope for PCI. This is a significant saving for call centers in assessment and maintenance expenses of PCI. Integrating Paytel requires minimum-to-no change in the call center technology and processes. Just as an added bonus, Paytel allows callers to pay with their Paypal account instead of thire credit card. This is not only easier for the caller but also allows the call centers to collect the payments from the people who are concerned about sharing their credit card information with other parties. Thanks to our friends at Paypal and X.com, TELTUB is now offering a great solution to this problem. We will be happy to hear your feedbacks.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
A Home Phone For Only $1.5 Per Month Based on Google Voice
TELTUB is built to make things possible in the telephony world. It brings the functionalities that have been only available to tech-savvy people to the public domain. You may have heard somebody saying:
"My phone is free?" "Are you still paying for your phone?" “Well, I have a cousin who know how to this stuff.”
How many times have you a company and you got to an automated machine which does way more than just taking your message?
TELTUB makes all this possible for everybody. You don't have to know how PBX systems work or look for DID providers on the net. You don't even have to know what these things are!
In this post, I wanted to describe a TELTUB solution for one of the most common problems: How can I find an affordable, reliable and stable phone line for my home?
This TELTUB product allows you to use your Google Voice account as your home phone. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that you use Google Voice to make long distance calls with your home line to reduce costs. I am saying: Use Google Voice As Your Only Home Line! You don't need any other phone line from any phone company. Google will be your phone company (well, with a little bit of help from TELTUB). You just need to have a Google Voice account, which you can get from here, and the gHome solution from TELTUB. The total cost of this solution is $1.5 per month and it gives you unlimited calls to/from US/Canada. You will be able to use your Google Voice phone number, as your home phone number so that when somebody calls it, your handset at home will ring.
You need:
Here is How:
Setting up your VoIP adaptor, or IP phone, is very straight forward. You only need to know your TELTUB's username, your VoIP password (which you will choose during the wizard) and the sip domain (sip.siptub.com). We will have a separate post in future on how to configure you VoIP adaptor or IP phone (Let us know how soon you need this explained).
You now have a phone line that costs only $1.5 per month with an unlimited US/Canada plan. We have not been able to find anything even remotely comparable, both in terms of price and features, anywhere in North America (and very possibly in the world).
This solution is perfect if you want an affordable reliable home phone. Some variations of this might also be used for students who live in campus and only have wireless Internet and an iPod (or an iPhone, a laptop or anything that smart :) )
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
New phone technologies save you up to $200 per month on phone services
“Hi, Call you back later, I’m free after 6.” “Hi, call me, I don’t have minutes.” If you own a cell phone, you undoubtedly have said or heard the phrases above. Many of us have opted for more expensive phone plans to not have to worry about minutes or usage on our cells. According to a survey done by JD Power in 2008, average monthly cell phone bill for Americans come in around $63 and the trend is growing. Meanwhile, the push by Apple, Samsung, Nokia, HTC and Motorola for newest and best cell phones has made cell plans more complicated and more expensive with added services as data, text messages as well as incoming and outgoing minutes, not to mention long distance. And the trend is not just within the US, though slightly different, Canada, UK and most of Europe all also follow a similar pattern.
With hundreds of millions of cell phones in just North America, and with the aid of the table above, anyone can see the amount of money being spent on mobile calling is astronomical with no end in sight. According to CBC, the revenue for cell phone companies in 2008 was $15.9 billion. Same source also claims phone companies have up to 5000% profit margin on some services. These figures are, simply put, ridiculous. What other ways are out there to reduce this cost for the consumer?    Technology being used to this day As our population gains more momentum in the technology sector with faster computers and better mobile phones, one can’t help to wonder why there isn’t anything being done in the telecommunication to help ease people’s pain? We keep hearing about better phones that are capable of all kinds of amazing things but what about the service that comes with it? Where is the innovation that allows for cheaper calls and quality services for everyone? Currently, there are maybe a handful of companies that offer good quality VOIP service with decent pricing(like skype or vonage), but that has its drawbacks and using it requires changing how you go about your daily life. This is big issue as people are more likely to pay for convenience these days (despite the recession). No one likes to get tied to a computer to make a call or in the case of Skype, run around to find a wifi spot to make a call. More often than not, people will opt out for making calls through the cell phone carrier instead of the inconvenience of finding a wifi spot in the city. What else? Oh yes, there are some SIP enabled companies like Gizmo5 that allow calls to go through the web, but then again those tie you to a computer and if you are not really tech savvy, you might run into “unsolvable” problems.
   Leading the technology and innovation pack And then there is GOOGLE. Google has made consumer lives easier for many years by offering free services like Gmail, Google earth, and street-view and Voice.  Much like VOIP and SIP accounts, Google Voice also requires people to come out of their daily routines and change how they make a phone call, but the advantage is that the service is free and is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of saving money and improving consumers’ quality of life through innovative technology.  Here at TELTUB, We look for innovative ways of merging the latest technology and applying it solely to the telecom industry. One of our solutions, available to the public by invitation, integrates the concepts of a VOIP phone and the Google Voice service to bring unlimited calling to consumers’ smartphone plans without using their airtime minutes! The product effectively uses the 3G/Wifi connection to make and receive phone calls. This results in unlimited calls from the data plan and not airtime minutes and the best part is that this service doesn’t not require a log-in and doesn’t tie to a computer. The users’ experience is not any different than when they are on their mobile phones. It’s just they can make unlimited free calls without coming out of their comfort zone. Users can also simply switch their active call to the regular cell phone line if the call quality is not great because of the 3G/Wifi connection(as we all know, VoIP’s call quality may drop from time to time specially when you are on 3G/Wifi). Users can seamlessly do this while taking an incoming call by pressing *. Much like Google voice, the users of this service require to have an existing cell phone line with one of the carriers, but what makes the work innovative and worthwhile is that, users no longer have to pay an arm and a leg on to get the minutes and usage they want. With the addition of this solution from TELTUB to the lowest plan from their carrier (that includes data), users will have the luxury of unlimited calling to the globe at a fraction of they would pay the carriers. As you can see in the chart the cost for an unlimited north American service for a smartphone comes around $200 a month!!
Outlook of the future As time goes on and technology becomes available, we have witnessed more innovations in various sectors and industry, least in the telecommunication perhaps. Until recent, the concept of “Free unlimited calls” was a distant dream. Thanks to recent innovative approaches and the “do-no-evil” approach we are witnessing more applications and services get introduced that would save money for the consumer without them jumping through hoops. The innovative world is finally paying attention to consumers’ phone bills. On the horizon, perhaps the future where useful phone services are affordable for everyone. Labels: cell phone plans, free phone, gFi, Google voice, SIP, TELTUB, unlimited
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About us
We will be talking about phone products and services. Tips on how can you reduce your costs and have a better quality service. We introduce products from different companies and tell you how to mix and match them to get what you want.
We are building a new startup and we want to share our journey with you. We love to hear from you if you pay a lot of money to your phone company or cannot find the service that fits your needs. Tell us your story and we promise to do our best to provide you with the best available solution in your area. We truly believe that you deserve to Connect your way and we want to be helping you to get there. TELTUB on Facebook |
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