Coms.Com News

Microsoft poised to make biggest ever buy – Skype

2011-05-10T17:11:00.003+01:00

Richard Bennett comments - Now that it has a retail as well as an enterprise proposition with Lync, Microsoft will truly revolutionise the market. Telephony will
become solely an internet application, with the likes of BT left selling naked broadband. Coms will benefit on all fronts as hosted VoIP is an internet telephony application, and there will be unprecedented demand for new equipment that will be supplied through VCOMM.

Coms Mission Critical VoIP and Broadband

2011-04-17T13:12:00.003+01:00

London, United Kingdom, 18 April 2011:

Coms have launched two "Mission Critical" (MC) services:
• Mission Critical Broadband
• Mission Critical VoIP

Both services require twin Broadband Connections, but they are very different in implementation. MC Broadband is a managed dual broadband service, whereas MC VoIP uses technology that transmits VoIP simultaneously over two internet connections and then re-assembles the VoIP data at our Core Platform from both circuits in real-time to cut out any packet loss, jitter or latency and to enable instant failover.

Coms Mission Critical Broadband
Broadband is quite reliable, but if it goes down, the impact on a business that is reliant on a single IP connection can be severe, therefore Coms has developed their “Mission Critical Broadband” service.

Coms MC Broadband uses twin broadband circuits, a primary and a secondary, to enable bi-directional failover. Bi-directional failover enables your static IP’s to be reachable even if the circuit associated with those addresses is offline, enabling for example VPN and Mail Servers to be online when if the associated circuit is offline.

The service includes a fully configured and managed twin WAN Cisco 1700 series router and clever IP forwarding in our core to ensure your IP’s are reachable even when they are offline.

Coms Mission Critical VoIP delivers ISDN reliability for VoIP
The "Mission Critical VoIP" service uses two independent internet connections to send and receive voice data between Coms and our customers, with voice data packets transmitted simultaneously over two internet connections and then re-assembled from both circuits in real-time to cut out any packet loss, jitter or latency and to enable instant failover.

The system is completely invisible to callers, the only difference being that calls have improved consistent quality and resilience.

The system is based on Coms Xstream bandwidth server, with two small Xstream appliances installed on the customer’s premises, a primary and a failover secondary appliance. The Xstream appliance sets up a VPN tunnel from the customer’s premises to the Xstream servers housed in the Coms core platform with data being reduced by removing repetitive header data.

Discover Leisure plc. a premier outdoor leisure retailer specialising in the caravan and motorhome market, has maximised its resources and saved on fixed and variable telephony costs by adding Coms SIP Trunks to existing communications technology.

Tim Ormrod, IT Manager at Discover, said, “Operating a Call Centre from Rural Locations was always going to be a challenge as IP connectivity is slow and unreliable. Over the last 12 months Coms Xstream has enabled us to reduce bandwidth to levels that are supported in our rural locations, and having moved to Coms Mission Critical VoIP in January 2011, I now have the confidence to cancel our remaining ISDN lines, which will reduce costs and increase flexibility”.

David Cargill, CTO of Coms states, "The weakest link in the VoIP chain is IP connectivity to customer premises and enabling Coms Mission Critical VoIP within our product portfolio allows us to deliver true High Availability Hosted VoIP and SIP Trunks.

Further Details from www.coms.com

End.
Media Contact:
Laura Howells
Coms PLC
020 7148 3037
lh@coms.com

Seven Steps to Better SIP Trunking / IP-PBX Security

2010-12-01T15:21:00.008Z

There are industrial grade scanners operating 24/7 to find and exploit IP-PBX’s that are not secured.

Any PC or Network with direct access to the internet must be secured, using strong passwords, network security, firewalls and disabling unnecessary services, deploying an IP-PBX is no different.

Before deploying an Asterisk based IP-PBX on the internet Coms reccomends that you MUST ensure it is secured against malicious attacks and hacks.

Seven Easy Steps to Better SIP Security on Asterisk:

1. Don’t accept SIP authentication requests from all IP addresses. Use the “permit=” and “deny=” lines in sip.conf to only allow a reasonable subset of IP addresses to reach each listed extension/user in your sip.conf file. Even if you accept inbound calls from “anywhere” (via [default]) don’t let those users reach authenticated elements!

2. Set “alwaysauthreject=yes” in your sip.conf file. This option has been around for a while (since 1.2?) but the default is “no”, which allows extension information leakage. Setting this to “yes” will reject bad authentication requests on valid usernames with the same rejection information as with invalid usernames, denying remote attackers the ability to detect existing extensions with brute-force guessing attacks.

3. Use STRONG passwords for SIP entities. This is probably the most important step you can take. Don’t just concatenate two words together and suffix it with “1″ – if you’ve seen how sophisticated the tools are that guess passwords, you’d understand that trivial obfuscation like that is a minor hindrance to a modern CPU. Use symbols, numbers, and a mix of upper and lowercase letters at least 12 digits long.

4. Block your AMI manager ports. Use “permit=” and “deny=” lines in manager.conf to reduce inbound connections to known hosts only. Use strong passwords here, again at least 12 characters with a complex mix of symbols, numbers, and letters.

5. Allow only one or two calls at a time per SIP entity, where possible. At the worst, limiting your exposure to toll fraud is a wise thing to do. This also limits your exposure when legitimate password holders on your system lose control of their passphrase – writing it on the bottom of the SIP phone, for instance, which I’ve seen.

6. Make your SIP usernames different than your extensions. While it is convenient to have extension “1234″ map to SIP entry “1234″ which is also SIP user “1234″, this is an easy target for attackers to guess SIP authentication names. Use the MAC address of the device, or some sort of combination of a common phrase + extension MD5 hash (example: from a shell prompt, try “md5 -s ThePassword5000″)

7. Ensure your [default] context is secure. Don’t allow unauthenticated callers to reach any contexts that allow toll calls. Permit only a limited number of active calls through your default context (use the “GROUP” function as a counter.) Prohibit unauthenticated calls entirely (if you don’t want them) by setting “allowguest=no” in the [general] part of sip.conf.

In summary:
These seven basic security measures will protect you against the vast majority of SIP-based brute-force attacks. Most of the SIP attackers are fools with tools – they are opportunists who see an easy way to defraud people who have not considered the costs of insecure methods. Asterisk has some methods to prevent the most obvious attacks from succeeding at the network level, but the most effective method of protection are the administrative issues of password robustness and username obscurity.

Further Details from http://www.coms.com/sip-trunks.html

Coms Inclusive: The Hosted VoIP Service that includes a choice of Polycom IP Handsets

2010-03-13T10:22:00.012Z

London, UK, 10th March 2010 Coms Plc (AIM: COMS.L), Coms, A leading UK provider of VoIP Business Telephone Systems, today announced the launch of Coms Inclusive, the Hosted VoIP Service that includes a choice of Polycom IP Handsets.

Typically Hosted VoIP service providers charge customers a monthly subscription for the service and require customers to purchase expensive VoIP handsets, which does not sit well with the low CAPEX model of Hosted VoIP, one of its key features.

Coms Inclusive bundles the service and a choice of handsets into the monthly subscription, significantly lowering the barrier to entry to Hosted VoIP, and moving the service to a utility model, whereby customers, pay for the service, which includes the handset.

Coms Inclusive: Combined Coms Service & Polycom IP-Handset

Included in the monthly rental price:
• The VoIP telephone (one required per user)
• The Coms Telephone Service, which includes a main inbound number and an Auto Attendant to answer and route inbound calls
• A geographic or internal extension number per telephone
• Polycom handsets are supported with a hot-swap replacement service
• Terms: 36 month contract

The Coms Business Phone System replaces expensive PBX phone systems, installation, handsets, BT lines and numbers with a simple, cost-efficient alternative. We manage and host a powerful phone system which is available to use as a service on a monthly subscription basis. Each user is provided with a pre-configured handset which just needs to be plugged into your broadband or office network to allow them to access features such as inbound and outbound calling, call transfer, call hold, voicemail and more.

David Cargill, CTO of Coms states, "Bundling the Coms Service and the Handsets into the monthly subscription significantly lowers the barrier to entry to Hosted VoIP for businesses as well as improving customer experience as the service and the hardware are effectively combined and managed by the supplier.”

Further information is available from the Company website, www.coms.com.

Coms Plc Supplies HelpAge International with Cost-Saving Telecoms System

2009-10-13T07:24:00.006+01:00

Coms Plc has been selected to supply HelpAge International with a Hosted VoIP telephone system that is saving this leading charity in excess of 25% of its monthly telecommunications budget. HelpAge International, which operates through partners in over 75 countries, sought proposals from traditional and Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone system providers, to ensure that the system it purchased would deliver both short term and long term benefits.

Key features and benefits sought by HelpAge included:
• Cost savings on UK and International calls
• To include 23 international offices within their “office” network
• To provide an Integrated conferencing service
• To provide Personal Direct Dial numbers
• To enable Hot Desking flexibility
• Voice mail to Email

Coms delivered these benefits. Its system includes 60 Polycom Handsets in the London office and handsets in 22 offices abroad. All UK users have direct dial numbers, which can be forwarded to any of the office handsets or other VoIP or traditional numbers should they be working off-site or at home.

HelpAge International’s IT Manager Stephen Teal commented:“Deciding to switch from a traditional installed phone system was not an easy step to take, but once we appreciated the cost savings and benefits associated with Coms’ Hosted VoIP, it was a very easy decision. In addition, because Hosted VoIP is a managed service, we now have 24/7 support.”

David Cargill, CTO Coms & ITSPA Council Member, stated: “Once we understood the nature of HelpAge International’s telecommunication requirements, and the fact that they have 22 overseas offices, we were convinced that Hosted VoIP was the way forward because it includes all users within the same network, wherever they are, enabling a consistent company-wide phone directory, free on-net calls and centralised billing for calls made from foreign offices.”
Further information is available from the Company website, www.coms.com

About Coms plc
Coms was founded by Jason Drummond in 2000 with the vision of using the Internet to carry and deliver voice telephone calls. Voice over IP (VoIP) is changing the way consumers and businesses make and receive their telephone calls. Coms offers a low-cost VoIP service that can be combined
With services provided by broadband Internet suppliers to make and receive telephone calls. Coms subscribers can make high quality calls over the Internet wherever a high-speed Internet connection is available, including wireless hotspots as they are allocated their own location-free unique user telephone number. Subscription is available in a range of packages.

Coms is an OFCOM authorised Public Electronic Communications Network (PECN) and a member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA).

Coms is listed on the London Stock Exchange AIM Market (LSE:COMS)

About HelpAge International
HelpAge International helps older people claim their rights, challenge discrimination and overcome poverty, so that they can lead dignified, secure, active and healthy lives.

HelpAge International is a charity that works in over 75 countries is strengthened through its global network of like-minded organisations – the only one of its kind in the world.

HelpAge International has offices in London and Brussels, five regional centres co-ordinating its work in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe/Central Asia, and a number of national programmes and emergency response programmes.

Coms Launches Video Conferencing Service and Extends Relationship With Polycom

2009-09-27T08:43:00.009+01:00

1st OCT 2009: Coms plc, a provider of internet telephony services to business customers, today launches an innovative video conferencing service based upon the Polycom CX5000 video conferencing phone that was developed in partnership between Polycom and Microsoft.

The Coms Hosted Video Conferencing service combines the Polycom CX5000 Conference Station and Microsoft Live Meeting to provide a unique group voice and video collaboration experience, giving remote participants a 360-degree panoramic view of the conference room and video that automatically tracks the flow of conversation for more productive and efficient meetings.

The 360-degree panoramic view of the entire room is sent to all far-end participants, providing a continuous view of everyone in the meeting room. In addition, a second video view of the active speaker is also sent, using advanced technology that automatically focuses on the current speaker and tracks the flow of conversation so that the active speaker can always be identified. Both of these video views plus the content being shared are all shown on the same screen for remote participants who are connected to the same Live Meeting session.

The intuitive design with plug-and-play functionality makes it easy to deploy and use the Polycom CX5000 with little or no training. The Polycom CX5000 is a USB device that easily connects to any PC running the Live Meeting. In a conference room, anyone with a laptop PC can simply plug the Polycom CX5000 into their PC and start sharing voice, video, and content with remote participants. The remote participants need no additional equipment, just a computer and a network connection, to join the meeting with panoramic and active speaker video.
As the conference is a Microsoft Live Meeting Session, participants have access to shared notes, white boards, desktops, PowerPoint presentations, handouts, etc, plus the meeting can be recorded.

Jason Drummond (Executive Chairman) said “I believe that the market for low cost video conferencing is going to grow exponentially and the new Polycom video conferencing device will become as ubiquitous as their existing iconic triangular conference phone. Coms’s video conferencing service combined with Polycom’s CX5000 will generate a new long term recurring revenue stream for the Company.”

Glynn Jones (Vice President, EMEA Voice Solutions, Polycom) said “We are delighted to build upon our successful relationship with Coms. Video Telepresence improves communication within businesses, combined with increased availability of bandwidth and the need to reduce travel costs, video conferencing will be one of the fastest growing sectors of the IP communications market”.

About Coms Plc: Coms was founded by Jason Drummond in 2000 with the vision of using the Internet to carry and deliver voice telephone calls. Voice over IP (VoIP) is changing the way consumers and businesses make and receive their telephone calls. Coms offers a low-cost VoIP service that can be combined with services provided by broadband Internet suppliers to make and receive telephone calls. Coms subscribers can make high quality calls over the Internet wherever a high-speed Internet connection is available, including in wireless hotspot as they are allocated their own location free unique user telephone number. Subscription is available in a range of packages. See www.coms.com for more information.

Coms is an OFCOM authorised Public Electronic Communications Network (PECN) and a member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA).

Coms is listed on the London Stock Exchange AIM market (LSE:COMS)

Coms Xstream Enables More Calls Over ADSL

2009-02-15T12:01:00.008Z

20 February 2009: Coms launches Coms Xstream, a VoIP compression technology that dramatically improves the number of calls over a DSL connection, but crucially maintains call quality.

Terry Martin, CEO of Coms, commented, “VoIP technology has so far had an unsteady reputation and it’s usually down to the quality of calls. This is mainly due to the fact that regular SME ADSL lines are up and down in terms of quality. We are extremely excited by Xstream as it dramatically improves the quality of VoIP calls over a regular line by utilising compression and prioritisation technology, that has a side effect of being able to let you make more calls over a regular DSL Broadband line.”

Coms Xstream overview
Coms Xstream reduces the bandwidth overhead so that more calls can be made on an ADSL line. In doing so Xstream also improves Quality of Service (QoS) as voice packets are treated as priority.

As ADSL is slower sending than receiving data (i.e. the uplink has lower bandwidth than the downlink), the number of calls that can be made is limited by the much slower uplink speed (typically 256K or 446k).

Bandwidth is an important issue because VoIP speech is encoded using a codec, the main two codec’s used being G.711 and G.729. G.711 is considered to be the highest quality codec, but it doesn’t compress speech, so it’s very bandwidth hungry, while G.729 is considered the best match between compression and quality.

When speech is sent over the Internet there is still a “transport overhead” for each call that increases the bandwidth used by a VoIP call, however, Coms Xstream uses only one transport overhead for all calls, thereby maximising the available bandwidth.

To view the bandwidth comparison table click here

How Coms Xstream Works
Voice is no longer treated as simply another type of data, which happens to have a high priority. Instead, it is treated as a data stream with very specific requirements not only in terms of priority, but also in terms of spacing between packets. Voice and data can readily coexist on a single link. Data transfer rates are not compromised by the fact that voice is present. Classes of data can be given their own share of available bandwidth in a much more granular way than traditional QoS.

Coms Xstream benefits and features include:
• Enables up to 28 concurrent calls on a standard 256k uplink ADSL connection or 52 calls on a 446K ADSL connection.
• Enables delivery of SIP trunking up to 28 ports on a single ADSL connection with only 256k upstream bandwidth, making it a viable replacement for E1 circuits.
• Dynamic and seamless blending of voice and data using QoS allowing FULL utilisation of bandwidth increasing overall throughput for both voice and data traffic.
• Enables low Broadband bandwidth to be used for VPN connectivity in branch / retail environments offering simultaneous voice and data access.
• Supports multiple Voice protocols.
• Increased security for both voice and data traffic.

Coms launches Bundled VoIP and Broadband Package for Business

2009-02-14T17:18:00.000Z

London, UK, 1st Febuary 2009 Coms Plc (AIM: COMS.L), a leading provider of VoIP Telephone Systems for Business, is launching a combined VoIP and Broadband service, which provides substantial cost savings and guaranteed consistent high quality whilst eliminating the need for a BT landline.

In conjunction with Tiscali broadband, customers receive the ‘Coms Office 10’ package, comprising 2mB SDSL-M Broadband plus the company’s fully featured VoIP service for ten users, which can be extended as required. The package, which can be installed within hours, includes UK DDIs, an Auto Attendant, plus leading edge call handling features such as call hold, transfer, forwarding, follow-me, voice mail, conference service and voice mail to email.

Terry Martin, Coms CEO, commented: ‘We chose SDSL-M because it is available to over 80% of UK businesses. By installing the Broadband element ourselves, we now have total control over the quality of calls, emails and fax. No longer will UK businesses have to pay BT’s expensive line charges and call rates.’

One of the system’s first users is Craft Publishing which is seeing major benefits already. Matthew Line, Director, commented: ‘We have been with Coms for over a year as we established the business. It’s ‘pay as you grow’ VoIP model enabled us to build our business without investing in communications infrastructure. We have now moved into a new office and with Coms Office 10, we were up and running on day one, as soon as the Broadband went live - again without investing in costly or potentially obsolete infrastructure.’

Terry Martin continued: ‘Our primary objective is to deliver business class telephony services to UK business using VoIP that simply works. We see it as our role to deliver calls and dial tones to our customers while keeping the complexities behind the service firmly locked up in our data centre. Office 10 extends this philosophy by combining business VoIP and the DSL Broadband service used to deliver VoIP in a combined package.’

Glastonbury Festivals use the Coms On-Demand Business Telephone System

2009-02-14T07:29:00.001Z

LONDON, UK - 1 FEB 2009: Glastonbury Festivals use the Coms On-Demand Business Telephone System at their office in Northload Street Glastonbury, which deals with many commercial aspects of the main festival such as press contact and trader enquiries as well as the organisation of events such as the Glastonbury Extravaganza and Equinox Party.

In the past communications was provided by means of an onsite PBX with 4 lines plus 3 direct lines for the press office. While this worked well the PBX was coming to the end of its life and a decision was made to move into the 21st century.

Tony Daniel, of Glastonbury Festivals comments: "The functionality of Coms On-Demand System exceeded requirements and enabled us to cut costs by reducing the number of BT telephone lines and removing the expensive PBX maintenance costs."

"Keeping existing numbers was easy with the number porting service and the change over was on time and painless."

The Coms On-Demand telephone system has many features, but the two features that really worked for Glastonbury Festivals were:
1. The Ability to handle limitless inbound and outbound calls
2. Auto Attendant Flexibility

Limitless inbound and outbound calls
During the year, about 1,000 calls a month are made to and from the office, however, in the run up to and during the Festival this increases to over 2,500 calls per day.

While we were not able to answer all the calls at peak times the automatic voice mail service for those unanswered meant that no calls were missed and the ability to respond during quiet times kept the work flowing.

Auto Attendant Flexibility
During the year the Auto Attendant works just like most offices, greeting callers and giving them an option to route their calls, e.g. Welcome to Glastonbury Festivals, press 1 for this and 2 for that etc, but in the run-up and during the festival, the Auto Attendant was changed as required to give callers relevant updates, particularly when the office was not manned during the main festival times and the use of voice mail was again very useful. These features were not available with the previous PBX and even messages on the answer phone were restricted to 5 messages and most people actually only heard the engaged tone during peak periods.

One of the best features of the new system was the support we received from Coms which was very helpful and responsive.

Further Details from http://www.coms.com/

Coms Integrates Outlook with Polycom IP Phones

2009-02-14T06:39:00.000Z

LONDON, UK - 13 FEB 2009 : Coms PolyPop integrates Outlook with Polycom IP Phones so that Outlook users can Click to Call from their Outlook Contacts and also have Contact details pop up to match inbound calls.

The development brings CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) in reach of many SMB customers, whereas previously CTI was for Enterprise or Power users.

Coms PolyPop CTI is a not only a time saving tool, it's also an efficiency tool as caller details are seamlessly available to called parties, enabling simpler use of contact details to improve relationships and leverage exsisting contact data.

Coms PolyPop has options as to which data fields are used to math inbound call with and also how contact data is screen popped as well as how it's displayed.

Available to download for a free 30 day trial and then it's just £10 for a single user per year.

Full details from http://www.coms.com/polypop