Sipgate and Voxalot

Hi,

I've just woken up to the fact that Sipgate won't allow the use of voxalot anymore. A couple of days ago I noticed that I could not receive calls or text out. I checked my account and saw that I was unregistered. I emailed sipgate and got this reply :-

Duesseldorf, 20.6.2007


Hi .....,


you have to register the device directly with our server.


Login details must not be given to 3rd parties. The provider mentioned above (note: voxalot is ment) attracted attention due to nonserious business practices. for our customers safety we try to remedy potential abuse through this corporation.


Best regards,


Frederik van Koningshoven

nonserious business practices.........customer safety.......potential abuse hmmmmm.

As far as I know voxalot is a well run company, and Martin (on their forum) very helpful.

Bill

Hi Bill,

Its an interesting situation and one I suspect Sipgate could expand upon by blocking others. I can appreciate that Sipgate want clients to log in direct so that they can monitor exactly which connections are 'live' and which are not. Having an intermediary somewhere in the middle means they no longer have any useful stats or user location information.

A client can apply for a Sipgate account and get Voxalot to continue to log into it and then disconnect all Voip software or devices without them knowing - a bit of a waste of resources.

Apart from that I suppose there is a very small extra potential for a security issue with giving login info to third parties - it does open up more options for errors and problem.

Best therefore to set up multiple accounts direct using SIP software like Xlite or Eyebeam or better still a multi line phone like the Cisco 7960 and login to both Voxalot and Sipgate direct via your own ISP.

There is some specific discussion on this topic on the Voxalot forum, here ...

http://forum.voxalot.com/voxalot-suppor ... onday.html

My name is Martin Burns one of the directors of voxalot. I thought I would take this opportunity to paraphrase a letter that was sent to sipgate by our managing director last week regarding this issue.

voxalot was founded in Feb 2005 by 5 ex IBM and Vodafone consultants. It is a service that allows its member base to centrally store, manage and use Voice Service Providers (VSP) services in addition to other valued added services. We do not, and have not ever, used our users' credentials for anything other than initiating calls that the users request.

We understand and appreciate that sipgate have some privacy concerns, however, voxalot has tens of thousands of registered members in over 130 countries and in well over a year and a half of operation we have not received a single complaint regarding our privacy and/or security practices. Our member base is steadily growing through word of mouth referrals and without any direct marketing on our part.

One does not achieve this sort of growth by conducting "non serious business practices". In the same way that sipgate users trust sipgate when they give their credit card details, voxalot users trust us to protect their details.

voxalot has many great relationships with major VSP's (VoIPBuster, SIPPhone, CallCentric and VoIPtalk to name a few) and we are more than happy to work with sipgate and address any concerns they may have.

In 4 weeks time we will be releasing our premium service. Once released, only premium members will have the ability to register their providers and receive inbounds (outbound calling and dial plans will remain free). I mention this as gray makes a very valid point in his post describing instances where members can setup registrations and walk away thus wasting both voxalot and provider resources. The release of voxpremium will address this very point and perhaps address sipgate's issue.

I encourage sipgate to respond to the letter we sent and work with us to address their concerns.

Regards

Martin

Thanks Martin.

For anyone interested, Voxalot's privacy policy can be seen here:-

http://www.voxalot.com/action/privacy

Dean

I dont really use voxalot but I did have my sip account on sipgate registered through www.pbxes.org and this worked fine. I dont know if this is still the case as I now have a fritzbox which allows up to 10 sip accounts to be registered.