TMCnet News

Voiceglo Claims VoIP Technology to be Proprietary
[October 05, 2005]

Voiceglo Claims VoIP Technology to be Proprietary


By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist
 
Ed Cespedes is ready for a fight.
 
The president of theglobe.com and Voiceglo Holdings firmly believes Voiceglo’s voice-over-IP technology is proprietary and doesn’t violate any of Sprint Nextel’s patents. In fact, Cespedes said the technology is pending its own patent.


 

“Though we are still reviewing the complaint, we believe that it has no merit and we believe that in due course the courts will agree with us and ultimately settle the matter in our favor,” Cespedes said in a prepared statement.
 
Voiceglo’s chief executive is, of course, referring to the patent infringement suit filed by Sprint Nextel against his companies as well as VoIP industry darling Vonage Holdings. The suit (a copy of which was obtained by TMCnet and can be found at http://images.tmcnet.com/usubmit/images/2005/oct/patent_case_doc.pdf) alleges that the defendants deliberately and willfully infringed on Sprint’s patented technology and is seeking monetary damages as well as an injunction.
 
But while Vonage isn’t talking, Voiceglo definitely is.
 
“Use of the Internet for communications is open to all. Our products located at http://www.tglo.com are absolutely unique and growing fast. Products like ours that are low cost or free, easy to acquire and global are a natural threat to incumbent telecommunications companies,” Cespedes attested.
 
In this regard, the Voiceglo official does have a point. While the number of lines allocated to the public switched telephone network still dwarfs the amount of IP-based lines allocated each year, next-generation technologies have already had a major impact on core telecom equipment as evidenced by the fact that IP PBX shipments are outpacing traditional TDM PBX shipments.
 
Add to that the influx of new peer-to-peer voice services, which started with Skype but now includes all of the Instant Messaging heavyweights, and the growing threat to incumbent local exchange carriers becomes very real. In fact, Voiceglo is beta-testing its own browser-based communications platform called Centcomm.
 
“Our products are meant to be the central communications (Centcomm) hub of users' lives. They encompass far more than voice and incorporate features like SMS, email, messaging, audio and video broadcasting, podcasting, music, search, photos and more,” he continued
 
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.

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