This is our 11th installment of the TMC Labs Innovation Awards recognizing the truly unique and innovative products and services within the VoIP industry. Over the years, TMC Labs has recognized some remarkable achievements in the VoIP and telecom space. While the VoIP industry has certainly matured and perhaps products are not as unique as they were, say, five years ago, we still encounter products pushing the leading edge by offering better performance, a slight variation in features, or a more comprehensive all-on-one solution that eliminates the need for several disparate products.

Take, for example, one winner, the Grandstream GXV3611 PoE dome camera. While IP cameras are nothing new, Grandstream’s camera supports H.264 with an impressive max resolution of up to 1600x900 at 25fps. ClearOne has taken its innovative speakerphone technology and embedded it into a USB speakerphone so it can be used with the popular Microsoft OCS 2007 platform.

Choosing the most innovative products and services is always challenging, but TMC Labs carefully scrutinized each applicant and came up with the 15 most innovative companies. TMC Labs proudly bestows each of these 15 companies with a TMC Labs Innovation Award.

We’re publishing details about the awards recipients in two parts to accommodate our in-depth write-ups for the winners. The complete winners list will be published in both issues; however, we will run the detailed write-ups in alphabetical order beginning with AccessLine Communications and ending with Hatteras Networks this month. Next month, we start with PhonePower and end with Transera Communications.

AccessLine Communications

Digital Phone Service

AccessLine told TMC Labs that more than 15 percent of its customers were asking to purchase a cordless phone that would work with their hosted digital phone service. After deciding to develop a DECT (News - Alert) cordless phone product, the company knew it was important to ensure complete feature parity between the DECT cordless phones and the desk phones. The DECT Cordless phone the company developed is fully compatible with all system features including voicemail, call park/ pickup, intercom, call hold, call transfer, call waiting, multiline display and call conferencing. It’s worth noting that the cordless phones are not twins of a desk phone and have their own extension, phone number and voicemail box. 

The company claims to be the first hosted phone system provider to offer DECT cordless phones. AccessLine pre-configures the entire phone system (including the cordless phones), and the customer installs the phones in a few minutes. AccessLine pointed out that competitors offer desk phones with a twin cordless phone, but added that its customer research showed that customers wanted the phone to be stand alone, but still have complete integration with the full set of features of the phone system. 

ADTRAN

TOTAL ACCESS 5000 platform

For decades voice was the dominant type of traffic, but today data is becoming the dominant traffic type, and as a result networks are evolving to transport data, voice and video in an integrated architecture. As customers migrate toward integrated communication and entertainment services, carriers and businesses are transitioning their networks to packet-based technologies, such as Ethernet and IP. ADTRAN explains: “Now, service providers are faced with optimizing their existing network infrastructure to support advanced services, enabling not only voice and simple broadband connections to the Internet, but more advanced services such as IPTV (News - Alert) and Ethernet. Clearly, service providers must drive toward increased subscriber revenues through the delivery of these enhanced broadband services while simultaneously driving operational cost out of the network. This evolution requires a platform that has the capacity and scalability for these advanced services while providing a seamless migration path for existing legacy services.”

ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000, a carrier-class multi-service access and aggregation platform, helps solve this problem. It is designed to help service providers bridge the gap between existing and next-generation networks. It supports both legacy and emerging service interfaces over copper and fiber and can be easily scaled to support even the most bandwidth-intensive applications.

The Total Access 5000 was the first product of its kind on the market with a pure Ethernet core – unlike traditional ATM- and SONET-based platforms, which require enormous overhead and expensive add-ons to deliver emerging services. The Total Access 5000 supports both legacy and emerging service interfaces over copper and fiber and, includes support for both TDM and VoIP switches. In addition, the Total Access 5000's Ethernet core provides a scalable and cost-optimized aggregation point in the network, with interfaces ranging from DS1 to gigabit Ethernet.

The Total Access 5000 supports a variety of access and line modules with supported applications including IP DSLAM, broadband loop carrier, fiber to the premises, fiber to the node, Ethernet aggregation and legacy service aggregation. As a broadband loop carrier, the Total Access 5000 provides converged POTS and enhanced broadband services using ADSL2+, VDSL2 and GPON technologies.

Aricent

Media EXP Suite

With the growth of smartphones with powerful processors the desire to play high-definition video content on your mobile phone also has seen dramatic growth. Aricent offers a pre-integrated and pre-optimized set of applications and middleware, along with Aricent’s high-performance codecs, which enhances the end user multimedia experience across a multitude of platforms (Android, Win Mobile, LiMO, etc). Aricent’s multimedia coders/decoders are a key element of Aricent’s Media EXP suite, a pre-packaged software framework that enables device manufacturers to accelerate the launch of highly differentiated products for mobile TV, messaging, videoconferencing and streaming media solutions. The pre-packaged software framework reduces the development cost and complexity for vendors manufacturing a variety of consumer electronic devices such as mobile Internet devices, smartphones, digital photo frames, portable media players, and more.

Their frameworks also makes it easy to develop applications such as VoIP, video telephony, IM, DLNA-enabled streaming media players, mobile TV, photo album manager, and Internet radio. The middleware solution includes multimedia framework, IMS, file parsers, RTSP streaming, HTTP streaming, video telephony, Media Transfer Protocol, DLNA and UPnP. Aricent claims to be the first to integrate 720p video playback on a constraint device (Samsung Omnia) and the first to integrate DivX DRM in AVI file playback.

The components included in the Media EXP suite leverage the target hardware capabilities like graphics acceleration, 2D and 3D services making the solution capable of providing the best performance on the target platform. Aricent codecs are pre-optimized for multiple processors (e.g. ARM, TI, Marvell and Intel) and operating systems (e.g. Symbian, Windows Mobile, BREW, Java and Android), resulting in considerable savings in CPU processing power, which extends battery life for video recording and playback.

ClearOne

CHAT 70

One of the missing pieces to the Microsoft Office Communications Server platform is a good speakerphone. ClearOne addresses this missing piece with its CHAT 70 USB-based speakerphone. The CHAT 70 is a personal speakerphone that connects to PCs and laptops for rich, hands-free audio communication with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. It replaces the poor-quality handset speakerphone you get with your typical desktop phone. It’s plug-and-play with no drivers or software to install. ClearOne told TMC Labs: “Although the Chat 70 was not the first product introduced in this category, it raised the bar in delivering crystal-clear audio to participants on both ends of the call, and introduced HDConference, the suite of advanced audio technologies that was developed for ClearOne's market-leading professional audio conferencing products.”

The ClearOne product delivers full duplex audio and eliminates echo. HDConference, the suite of advanced audio technologies, developed for ClearOne's other higher-end professional audio conferencing products, is incorporated into the CHAT 70 to give it superb audio characteristics. It leverages distributed echo cancellation on every microphone input (DSPs, not software); noise cancellation, which removes ambient room noise; and automatic level controls to keep participants’ audio balanced and consistent. It also uses first-mic priority gating techniques to eliminate hollow tunnel sound.

Epygi Technologies Ltd.

QuadroM8L

Epygi’s new solid state QuadroM8L appliance targets offices with 32 to 98 users and supports eight FXO trunk line ports or an ITSP with SIP trunking. Hitting the small to medium business sweet spot, the QuadroM8L delivers advanced features like call recording, conferencing, automatic call distribution and barge-in, while maintaining an affordable price point of $2,395.

The QuadroM8L is a SIP-based IP PBX that has your typical auto-attendant and ACD features for call routing, but it also has find me/follow me routing. Tools like hot desking and remote extensions provide further flexibility for offices that have a dynamic employee base. Standard features include auto attendant, unified voicemail, unified fax, free upgrades and a number of other standard features. Purchasable features include automatic call distribution for call centers, call recording, supervisor barge-in, silent agent monitoring, supervisor whisper, integrated conference bridges and a XML application programmers interface. In this way, businesses can start with the features they need and as they grow they can enable more advanced functionality.

Epygi partnered with Polycom and Yealink to bring businesses video call support for free to the SMB. In the past, this feature only has been available to large enterprise companies and was an expensive capital investment. Further, Epygi has teamed with VoIP security systems and IP-based cameras suppliers, such as Cyber Data, ITS and Mobotix, to create a completely integrated VoIP security system that will stream video through the security cameras to video handsets or cell phones.

Grandstream

GVX3611

Grandstream’s GXV3611 indoor fixed dome IP cameras are among the most feature-rich power over Ethernet IP cameras that we’ve encountered – and they won’t break the bank either. Easily mounted on walls or ceilings, the GXM3611 cameras deliver razor-sharp image clarity and can archive video to memory or captured and archived using free software. Grandstream’s GXV3611_HD camera includes 2-Mexapixel progressive scan CMOS sensor and advanced lens while delivering multi-rate H.264 real-time video streaming with a maximum resolution of 1600x900 and at a frame rate of up to 25fps. Using GSurf, Grandstream’s free video management software, businesses can monitor and control up to 36 cameras simultaneously. The GXV3601_LL captures and streams high quality real-time video under low light conditions (as low as 0.05Lux) and up to 30fps with full D1 (720x480) or VGA (640x480) resolution. It features multi-rate H.264 video compression with excellent image quality.

Grandstream is known for its SIP phones, well they’ve taken that knowledge and added support for SIP/VoIP and 2-way audio to their cameras. SIP/VoIP essentially turns these cameras into smart camera phones for video monitoring and two-way audio intercom/monitoring. Live video feeds from any of Grandstream’s surveillance cameras can also be routed through Grandstream’s GXE502x IP PBX and streamed onto Grandstream’s IP video endpoints like the GXV3140 for a completely integrated, cost-effective network solution.

In addition to the integrated microphone and speaker, it also sports a smoke detector. It also features motion detection and alert notification. A 24MB pre-/post-event recording buffer makes sure you don’t miss the preceding moments of when an event/alert occurred. Lastly, you can use its Web-based graphical user interface for both configuration and monitoring of individual cameras.

Hatteras Networks

HN6100

The HN6100 is a modular, multi-service platform designed to enable carriers to offer any service, over any media, via any port or slot, from one compact, ultra-dense chassis. The 40gbps, two-rack-unit solution’s simple, flexible support for the complete range of Ethernet business services and mobile backhaul from the same pay-as-you-grow platform is a unique differentiator that enables a carrier to cost-effectively reduce its number of vendors.

The HN6100 supports Ethernet over Copper customer premises equipment via Hatteras Networks’ HN400 Series, Ethernet over Time Division Multiplexing and Ethernet over NxT1/E1 via the new HN500 Series and TDM over Ethernet CPE via the new HN600 Series with PWE3-plus, Hatteras Networks’ revolutionary, patented method of simultaneously transporting native Ethernet and native TDM over copper for mobile backhaul solutions. The same HN6100 multi-service chassis will also support Ethernet over fiber interfaces in the future. The HN600 delivers 10 times more bandwidth at one-tenth the cost of legacy technologies for mobile backhaul.

The HN6100 addresses the synchronization issues that are prevalent with emulated T1/E1 services. The HN6100 delivers a synchronization solution that is fast, reliable, and accurate where every interface port can be synchronized to a reference clock (including the Ethernet ports), and these same interfaces can serve as a clock source. The HN6100 is NEBS level 3 certified, temperature-hardened, and has full front access to all of its cables and plug-in modules. Its two RU-high chassis can be deployed in a central office, a controlled environmental vault, an outside plant remote-terminal, a cell site, or at the customer’s premises.