Nat-R-Net From Net1 Broadband

All Net1 Customers can now avail of a free telephone line and local number which is delivered across your Net1 Broadband connection. This service is called Net1 Nar-R-Net and is the only service in Ireland offering Broadband and Telephone line for €35 per month.

• All customers receive a local telephone number
• Call the world from as little as 3c per minute
• No more line rental (your telephone line is free with your Net1 Connection)
• No more nasty surprises (The Nat-R-Net system works on a pay as you go basis which you can top up in advance)

If you are a Net1 Nat-R-Net Plus (or old Net1 Home €47 PM) customer you also get free calls to all standard landlines in Ireland, The UK, USA and Canada, at all times for no extra cost (Subject to fair usage policy)

If you are a Net1 Business Pro customer – you get free calls to landlines in all EU countries along with China, Australia the USA and Canada.

To use the Nat-R-Net service you will need a device called an ATA – This device simply plugs into your existing router and you then plug a standard telephone into the ATA. There are also wireless routers which have built in ATA’s, meaning you just need to plug your existing telephone into the router and also cordless phones on which the charger simply plugs into your existing router – Net1 have a number of these devices for sale in our Nat-R-Net store – simply logon to http://www.net1.ie/store

Got your existing landline with another provider and want to keep your existing landline number – No Problem – Contact Net1 and we will arrange to have your existing number ported over to the Nat-R-Net system – we will give you a temporary number to use while your number is being moved across to our system which usually takes under two weeks.

Is Video the New Voice?

“Video is the new voice”. Nice slogan.

When John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, says it, I want to believe him.

I really do like the slogan. I like the alliteration. It is simple, clear and concise, all the things a good slogan should be.

It is also based on a proven template: “a is the new b”. Doing a Google search for the phrase “is the new black” yields over 7 million hits! We find that red, green, cheetah, orange, frost, pink, white, wine, brown, and camel, amongst others, are all the new black.

So we have a good slogan following a proven template; but is video the new voice? I suspect not.

Video is good; video is definitely useful; and even so, video is not the new voice.

In order to understand why I believe video is not the new voice, let’s look at the evolution to voice communications. And what voice is.

Drums, Smoke and Voice
First there were drums. Under ideal conditions, messages sent by drum sound could be understood at 8 km (5 miles) (Wikipedia).

Smoke signals passed from tower to tower allowed messages to be relayed as far as 300 miles in only a few hours according to HowStuffWorks. (The site also provides details on how to send your own smoke signals should you conclude that “smoke is the new voice”.) The Vatican still uses different colored smoke to communicate during the election of a new Pope: Black smoke means no pope.

In the 1790s the semaphore system (i.e. flag waving) played a key part in the French revolution.

Drums, smoke and flags all shared the drawback that anyone could intercept the message, hence often coded messages were employed.

In the early 1800s the electric telegraph was first being experimented with. In 1866 the first transatlantic electric telegraph message was transmitted.

The telephone was first demonstrated to the world at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In 1877 the Bell Telephone Company was formed. The era of voice was at hand.

By the end of 2009, there were a total of nearly 6 billion telephone subscribers worldwide. This included 1.25 billion fixed-line subscribers and 4.6 billion mobile subscribers.

Voice via the telephone was ubiquitous. Every home, every office, every hotel, every restaurant and, in the year 2000, 2 million pay phones in the U.S, all provided you with a voice connection.

Because a voice connection was available anywhere, it was easy to call when you “got there”, call if you were going to be late, or find a phone booth and call for directions if you got lost (although many would say this was never easy for most of us men!)

With the advent of the mobile phone, voice became even closer, virtually always at hand, or for the geekier of us, strapped to our belts in a little leather pouch. Now you could call to say you were arriving even as you pulled up. You could call to say you would be late even while still desperately speeding to your destination. You could call for directions in the car before you got hopelessly lost (although still this seemed difficult for most of us men).

Especially with the adoption of mobile phones, the “old voice” was accessible almost everywhere; it was quick and easy, and it was mostly private (as long as you didn’t talk too loud).

So any “new voice” should also be accessible, quick, easy and mostly private.

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Skype Officially Launched Group Video Calling with New Premium Package

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show, Skype has officially launched group video calling for consumers and enterprises. Group video calling is available as part of the new Premium package which offers group video calling together with access to live chat customer support as a day pass for $4.99 (€3.49/£2.99) or as a monthly subscription for $8.99 (€5.99/£4.99) per month.

Skype users who sign up for group video calling in the first month it’s available will receive a 33 percent discount on 3 and 12-month subscriptions. New users receive a 7-day free trial. In addition, consumers who sign up for group video calling will receive a 25 percent discount off an HD webcam.

Group video calling is also available in the new Business version of Skype, a desktop application for PCs, which gives enterprises the ability to control how Skype is used within the workplace, with the capacity to turn off or configure a variety of Skype settings. According to Skype, with group video calling, enterprises “can easily set up real-time, face-to-face meetings and work in more collaborative and productive ways.” For enterprises using Skype Manager who sign up for Group Video Calling, they will receive a 33 percent discount when signing up for a 3 or 12 month subscription. In addition, they will receive a 15 percent discount off of a headset and speakerphone bundle.

To start a group video call, only one member of the call needs to have activated the seven-day free trial or to have signed up for a day pass or monthly subscription using Skype for Windows 5.1. For all participants to receive video, they need to be on at least the 5.0 version of Mac and windows.

According to Skype, video calling accounted for approximately 41.5% of all Skype-to-Skype minutes in the second half of 2010.

Skype also said that video calls between two parties will continue to be offered as a free product.

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Is Someone Listening to Your VoIP Calls?

It’s no secret that Internet telephony is vulnerable to eavesdroppers, much more so than conventional phone calls. That’s because IP phones aren’t part of the public phone network, where tapping requires a specific, physical wire connection. Calls transmitted via a LAN, a WAN or the Internet can be easily intercepted by anyone with a protocol analyzer, simply by capturing and analyzing the voice packets. This means that just about anyone can snoop on your business and personal calls, including employees, business partners, competitors, law-enforcement authorities and government officials.

Since you probably don’t like the idea of everybody and anybody listening to your conversations, you’ll want to take action to ensure your VoIP privacy. The best way to accomplish this is with encryption.

As you probably already know, VoIP voice traffic is data that is transmitted over networks. This means, like any type of computer data, VoIP can be protected by encryption. Unfortunately, while VoIP encryption tools are widely available, not many people have taken the minimal time and effort required to use the technology. That’s a shame, because encryption can make it make it nearly impossible for someone to snoop on IP telephony calls. Here’s a look at five different VoIP encryption approaches.

Zfone: Perhaps the easiest way to encrypt VoIP calls is with Zfone. The software’s chief designer is Phil Zimmermann, who created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), the world’s most widely used email encryption software. The technology is simple enough to be installed and used by just about anyone. The latest beta version of Zfone can be downloaded for free. The software’s biggest drawback is that it requires both callers to install the application. This means that calls to people you already know, at least those who are willing to install Zfone, will be secure. But calls to banks, brokers, government agencies, and various other organizations and strangers won’t necessarily be protected.

Internal Encryption: Many VoIP clients have responded to customer security concerns by incorporating encryption into their software. Skype Ltd., for example, has installed encryption support into its proprietary software. Check your client’s provider to see if any encryption services are available.

TLS (Transport Layer Security) and IPsec (IP Security): TLS and IPsec are handy ways of encrypting VoIP calls. TLS encrypts VoIP data traveling between two applications, while IPsec encrypts information for two devices and all the applications running on them. Both protocols aim to keep unauthorized parties from interfering with or listening to calls, and they are almost impossible to manipulate externally. Both approaches are well worth considering.

SRTP (Secure Real-Time Transfer Protocol): SRTP is ideal for protecting VoIP traffic because it has a minimal effect on call quality. For each call you make, a unique encryption key is created, which makes eavesdropping almost impossible. This attribute alone makes SRTP a good choice for day-to-day calls, as well as highly confidential conversations.

VPN (Virtual Private Network): If your business has a VPN, you can leverage its built-in encryption feature to protect your IP telephony calls. Best of all, this protection is extended to all users — even traveling employees who log in to the VPN from a laptop. Remember, however, that a VPN can only secure the data from gateway to gateway. Once calls are on your LAN, you’ll need additional protection.

People expect their phone calls to be as private as when they’re speaking to someone in their own office or home. VoIP technology by itself can’t guarantee this level of protection, so it’s up to you to provide the safeguard — encryption — that will keep your conversations confidential.

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Blueface is thrilled to announce that they have given away over 500,000 minutes with the free Irish calls for life offer.

The plan includes unlimited calls to Irish landlines with the purchase of the €199 offer. There is no need for a computer or smartphone, all you need is a good broadband connection.

More than half a million minutes of calls have already been made FOR FREE! thanks to this revolutionary offer.

If you need to make international calls, Blueface has fantastic rates to hundreds of destinations, this includes popular call destinations such as the UK, USA, India, Poland, China, South Africa. Simply top up your Pay as you Go balance and away you go.

You can also keep your existing number by porting it over to Blueface. Find out more about Number Porting now.

Contact us if you have any query, our team are always available to provide help and advice when choosing a call plan.

Blueface

Christiano Ronaldo

We salute Portugal’s flying winger! And we want you to salute him too!

So next time you see the No.7 taking a dive, rejoice! If you’ve updated your account with Pay As You Go credit you’ll get a 10% bonus! The promotion will be valid through this weekend all the way up to kick off of Portugal’s Round 16 World Cup game. We’ll have another promotion in time for the final, so even if you’re team isn’t winning, even if you’re being driven mad by the sound of the vuvuzelas you’ll always be winning with Blueface! Just remember to top up your account before kick off.

Now that’s something to Vuvuzela about!

What are the chances of the No.7 actually diving? I would like to draw your attention to exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1LiWYJswZw

All you need to do is top-up your Pay As You Go account and if Ronaldo dives during the game we’ll give 10% bonus credit!

You can top up anytime over the weekend, Monday or Tuesday morning. But All top ups must be purchased before the game kicks off.

So get to it! Top up your account, watch the game and get rewarded!

To Top Up login to Blueface.ie and from your Call History page select the Top Up amount.

Blueface

What is an Entrepreneur? It all depends on who’s talking. Members of the political class, media, industry, academia, and the general public have a variety of perspectives on entrepreneurship.   Often, it means something altogether different for each cohort.  The unfortunate thing about entrepreneurship, however, is that it is sometimes completely misunderstood, and worse still, entrepreneurs themselves are viewed as having almost enigmatic and somewhat obscure personalities.  Are they mad, attention seeking, unscrupulous, greedy, independent, ingenious or terrifying?  Or are they simply misunderstood?

Our perspectives are often driven by a textbook definition which can be a linear interpretation of what it means to be an entrepreneur.   From a leadership perspective, we apply a “great man theory” lens to entrepreneurs.  We assume that they have some magical, charismatic and mystic quality that makes them entrepreneurs.  At some levels, we believe that entrepreneurs are born, not made.  They take risks that the ordinary man or woman would not take.  Why?  Because they have some extraordinary genius that makes them, well, entrepreneurs…

Personally, I would like to challenge that thinking.  Firstly, I would argue that having met a range of highly successful entrepreneurs in Ireland over the last few years, that each one of them would attribute their success to the team they have around them.  People are key.  In fact, the most successful would put even more emphasis and value on the people that surround them; their attitude, their teamwork, their energy and their competence.  The most successful companies of all time have built high energy “hot spots” (check out the book by Lynda Gratton) and which are built around cultures of performance.  High performance people create high performance cultures.  The problem is that “culture” is a very esoteric and fluffy term.  From the start-ups and SME’s that I have seen, the culture of a business is created and built by people working in the business.  Culture is more than the original founder, although they have a huge impact on the business.  But it’s more than them.  It’s a collective thing, a way of operating and set of behaviours, all of which are reinforced by the team.   The entrepreneur is more like a team captain.  They are not the team, they are a part of it.

Secondly, in my opinion, entrepreneurship is about innovation.  It’s not all about the next big thing.  It’s not all about revolutionary, game changing technology.  We can be entrepreneurial in existing businesses.  We can find new, better and more innovative ways of doing business and serving our customer.  Some of the most recent successful, enterprising ideas have been centred around business model innovation like DELL or Amazon or Ryanair.   I can safely say that the majority of entrepreneurs don’t see visions of the future and then arrive back on earth to prepare a business plan and seek funding.   Business, as in life, just doesn’t work that way.   Entrepreneurship is about serving a need or a gap and fixing it.  I would even go so far as to say that most inventions have been a reaction to a gaping lack of something and a clear, identifiable need.  It’s not about sitting on top of some mountain somewhere and strategising.  It’s about knowing your customer and their needs and doing everything in your power to serve them and address those needs.   Entrepreneurship firstly involves identifying gaps and weaknesses in the current order of things.  But coupled with this, entrepreneurship involves actually doing something about it.   This is what differentiates entrepreneurs and this is potentially why we elevate them to celebrity status.   But we forget that sometimes these entrepreneurs weren’t so visionary, so talented or so lucky.  Sometimes they needed to make a living.  They had to take a risk which led them down a path they might not ordinarily have chosen.  They committed themselves to a course and a trajectory, which either worked or did not.  But it’s safe to say, they almost never went it alone.

Alan Foy

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” – Henry Ford.

Mr. Henry Ford  I salute you, but we at Blueface feel a little differently about our customers! We’re a communications company, customers are our business and only through interaction with you, our customers, will we be able to continue to deliver the products that you want and services that you need. We’ve embedded a short survey, which should take no more than 5 minutes to complete, on our customer call history page and we we be very grateful if you’d take some time to log into your account and complete it anytime over the next  4 or 5 days. The survey has some basic questions about what services you use, what features you’d like added and how we can improve your experience online.

This information will be used to develop new products and services as well as helping us improve the services we currently have on offer. We’d like to thank you in advance for taking the time to do this it will be of great use to us over the coming few months.

To take the survey, please go to : Customer Satisfaction Survey

Regards,

Alan Haverty

Blueface

Calling all Entrepreneurs!

Blueface are sponsoring The Entrepreneur Show which runs on Friday and Saturday (April 23rd and 24th). This is a fantastic event which Blueface are delighted to be involved in. There are some great speakers lined up including some of the Irish and UK dragons; there are a host of companies exhibiting and of course some tremendous prizes on offer too!

Take a look at: The Entrepreneur Show

Blueface are also launching a new product at the show which has been designed specifically for the Irish Entrepreneur. It is yet another revolutionary product and one which I think will raise quite a few eyebrows!

We have a stand at the show where we will be very pleased to meet with existing and new customers – we will be on stand E3 which is just inside the main entrance and over to the right, next to Google’s stand.

Oh – did I mention we’re giving away an iPad?

See you there!

Feargal

The ability to set the SMS Sender ID of any SMS sent via our website, as your private mobile phone number (rather than : ‘blueface’) has been requested by various customers either on our forum or on support emails.

It’s now possible!

The Sender ID can be set as your own mobile phone number after ownership has been verified. We obviously cannot allow anyone to send SMS with any ‘Sender ID’, that could lead to SMS spoofing and identity thefts problems.

The verification process is very quick and simple and is just the cost of a sending an SMS (a few cents):

1. Login in www.blueface.ie and go to the ‘Text’ page, where you usually send SMS from

2. Complete the form at the bottom, called ‘Verify my Sender Id’. You’ll be prompted for your mobile phone number, fill it and validate (remain on the page after validating!). A SMS will sent with a verification code. The SMS is charged the usual price for the destination (7c for Irish mobiles for example).

3. Within a minute you will receive the SMS. Enter the verification code on the page and validate.

4. A notification message should appear on the page saying that your number has been approved. Wait 10 to 15 minutes to the approval to be registered and activated. You will then be able send SMS as your own mobile number.

We hope this addition will make the SMS feature much more handy to use, especially for our business customers.

You can also send SMS to multiple recipients at the same time by separating the mobile numbers by a comma. In the future, we may add additional functionality to make sending bulk emails easier. Let us know if you would find this a useful feature.

As always, if you have questions or feedback let us know!

Guillaume