This startup says that ISPs can deploy VoIP services, but that if they use cheap CPE and open source softswitches, they'll call on Jasomi to tie it all together.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [February 13, 2004]

Jasomi was named on a whim, but founded on a technological faith. The name is the concatenation of the names of children of two of the co-founders: Jasper and Naomi. The deeply held belief is that voice messaging is ready, now, for widespread deployment at work and home.

"You don't need to be the phone company to do VoIP. You don't even need to be a CLEC," says Dan Freedman, CEO and co-founder of San Jose, Calif.-based Jasomi. He says that while, in the past, ISPs worked long and hard to get CLEC certification, they don't have to anymore. "You can use a company like MCI for the PSTN part of the network."

But you'll need a product that does what Jasomi does to navigate the complexities of VoIP. "The SIP standard is the IETF's largest document ever," says Freedman. "It's 285 pages, and that's not counting the referenced documents, which are about 1,600 pages."

VoIP is complex. It's no longer proprietary, and it's no longer low quality. It's a buzzword this year, in 2004. VoIP is affecting regulation, altering business plans, and making possible new workflow processes. Freedman, a true believer, talks about a few of his favorite applications.

He mentions a Boeing factory where any riveter can place an IP call to the main office from a handheld computer to report a defect—because Boeing is serious about eliminating defects.

He talks about the difficult lifestyle of the businessmen who negotiate deals in the trade between Taiwan and China that passes through Hong Kong. These people fly so much that they're nicknamed "astronauts." A local CLEC and VoIP company, Voice-Comm, makes their lives a little easier by providing them a local phone number in each of three cities (Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai) so that they can always be in touch with business partners and family.

Freedman brings the discussion back home by complaining about call centers. "Isn't it interesting that they're always experiencing higher than usual call volumes," he asks rhetorically. Instead, with VoIP and a computer interface, the call center could simply call you back. "It would save money for the call center, with fewer 800 number minutes, and would provide better service," he says.

For ISPs, the lure of VoIP is even more basic: get more money from the same customers, make them happier, and thereby keep them longer. But try to build your own VoIP system and you could end up with a mess.

PeerPoint Complete is designed to provide whatever data every device in a VoIP call wants. "In the real world, our product sits between a cheap phone and a cheap back end system. It is tolerant of the data it accepts, and strict about what it emits," says Freedman.

That simple explanation elides over several different types of complex operations. Tasks PeerPoint Complete might perform on any individual call include:

• Editing outdated implementations of SIP specs, bringing the code up to standard.
• Removing extra brackets from the code, a mundane task.
• For a device behind a NAT gateway, translating its local IP address into an Internet routable IP address.
• Emulating the originating device in transactions with the other side. "If the firewall sees an outbound connection from one place and an inbound connection from another place, it might assume that's an attack, and shut off the call," says Freedman.

He says the company is updating its software constantly with lessons learned from actual deployments. "We're learning as stuff gets deployed," he says. "If it's not deployed, we don't make money." (For the experience of Jasomi's beta tester Broadline, see Broadly Speaking).

Pricing and availability
The product is available now. PeerPoint Complete starts at $10,000, and a basic system would cost about $50,000, with all prices depending on the size of the network. A single Jasomi 1U box can handle 1,000 to 150,000 simultaneous calls, which is more than almost any ISP will ever need.

—End