Byod

[Brian]

So, for those of us using PAP2T's or other devices, will there be any issues from the no-BYOD policy, once we go completely live?

[burris]

Good question, since as you may have read, my GS died and I have my backup SPA-2102 on line.

Working fine...the only difference I see so far is that the CID shows the calling number on both lines instead of the name..

[VOIPoNorm]

Hi,

Tim will have the final say on the subject of BYOD.

From a purely technical perspective, VoIPo intends to be fully RFC 3261 compliant. There are NO plans to use any proprietary protocols such as Skype.

Regards,
Norm

[fisamo]

From what I recall, Tim had indicated that Beta users would continue to be allowed BYOD access. Once they go public, users won't be given their SIP passwords. Beyond that, I don't know what, if anything, Tim had planned with the purpose of limiting user agents.

I was planning to continue with my Asterisk trunk; otherwise, I'd be bugging Tim for a Grandstream. (As much as I wouldn't mind checking out the Grandstream, I'd much rather keep my Asterisk system online!)

[Brian]

From what I recall, Tim had indicated that Beta users would continue to be allowed BYOD access. Once they go public, users won't be given their SIP passwords. Beyond that, I don't know what, if anything, Tim had planned with the purpose of limiting user agents.

I was planning to continue with my Asterisk trunk; otherwise, I'd be bugging Tim for a Grandstream. (As much as I wouldn't mind checking out the Grandstream, I'd much rather keep my Asterisk system online!)

I agree, I remember this, but I was wondering how they can do Softphones without giving out passwords...

[fisamo]

A good question. Not that I have the answer, but ATTCV has a custom softphone application. When you sign up for the softphone account, you get a registration key (that very likely has your phone# and sip password encoded within). You can register your softphone, but you never know the sip password.

I'll also be interested to hear Tim's answer to your question.

[usa2k]

I wondered the same since soft phone is a teaser option.

If they give out credentials for a soft phone account when a new launch customer signs up, people will try and use telephone adapters instead.

Will soft phones be in some sandbox server?

[Brian]

No rush Tim, just want to make sure you don't miss this one

[burris]

One of the possibilities for controlling the BYOD world might be to require the registration of the MAC for each device they will allow to connect, and include the MAC of the GS devices they send out.

[VOIPoTim]

First just so we're clear, we're not going to force any existing BETA users to stop using BYOD. You'll still be able to continue as a BYOD user, but it'll be 100% unsupported and we can't gurantee things will always work for you.

Right now we really have no plans for BYOD publicly and we will not be allowing anyone new who is not grandfathered in to have BYOD service.

We are evaluating several options for softphones at this point, but I don't have a solid answer for anyone yet.

Again, I know BYOD is important for some users and can appreciate that. For our business model and mass market target though, it just doesn't work well.

This is probably not what anyone wants to hear and it's certainly not what a lot of companies will admit, but it's just reality....

1) BYOD will increase support load. Not may or might. It 100% will. Even if we tell people BYOD is "use at your own risk", most people will invariably "forget" that when they run into a problem. They will want to check and see if it's a system-wide issue just in case it's not on their end.

For most people, if they can't find a problem on their end, they subconsciously low their opinion of our service as well. They may not be able to pin it down because the problem may/may not be on our end, but the reality is it's not working for them for some reason. It's kind of like being in a bad mood when you go to lunch with someone. They may have not done anything to you, but you may just not be in a good mood. It's similar in that if a feature or service isn't working for a BYOD user, they get irritated.

2) Reviews, forum posts, etc are affected when a lot of people using BYOD are posting when they have issues. While they may not be asking for support, they may be talking about the problems that come up in forums, etc. New users can see things like this and instantly be turned off because it gives the appearance that the service has a lot of issues even if it doesn't. In terms of reviews...if something doesn't work with a BYOD user, they're not going to lie and say it does and likely they're not going to try to apologize for it (but I think it would work if I was using their ATA). If something doesn't work for someone, it doesn't work for them. Let's be honest, most people care more about their own opinion than those of others.

3) When we're dealing with residential unlimited plans, we're dealing with averages and pricing is based on the average user (total usage, calling patterns, etc).

When we open things up to all devices. we can't control the context under which someone can use our service. When we can control the context, we effectively force people to operate within or close to those aveage usage patterns.

As an example we don't want people using an unlimited plan on an Asterisk server where they can share it, etc. We also don't want people routing all the "expensive" calls out using their unlimited account and all normal calls using someone else either.

I know a lot of people just play with Asterisk, etc as a hobby and would still be within an acceptable range of usage, but there is a huge amount of fraud and abuse out there. The more we limit exposure to that kind of thing, the lower our prices are and the better the service levels are.

This is not just VoIP...it's anything unlimited...particularly when there's the ability to share or selectively use (like routing expensive calls only).

Netflix offers unlimited rentals, but it's pretty well-known they control the context in which you can get your DVDs with mysterious delays in shipping time. An all you can eat buffet wouldn't allow you to have 5 people at your table only ordering the salad portion while you go up and get the other stuff and bring back to them. They'd all have to order the full buffet. In web hosting, everyone may offer thousands of GBs of space, but anyone using that much space will always hit a limit somewhere else in the plan or violate the TOS in some way.

4) Systems evovle and things change whether it's network setup, the way certain features are handled, etc. Especially when you're dealing with massive growth, you will constantly be making changes and improving things.

While we can confirm changes will work well on supported devices, we can't for all devices.

Another thing that's similar is security. It's important that our systems are as secure as they possibly could be. There is a ton of fraud in this industry. As we tighten things, this is another area where BYOD users could be impacted.

Invariably, this causes there to be occasional issues where BYOD users have a "I didn't change anything and this stopped working". Well sometimes when that happens, it's not you, it's us...

Ultimately, we're here to offer the best possible service, be able to scale well and handle a massive customer base, and be profitable doing it. Our policies, procedures, and pricing have to all be made with this in mind so we can achieve those goals.

I challenge anyone to find a company that support BYOD with a sizable customer base.

Again, I'm just being honest about it. Take it for what it's worth.