Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

PORTLAND, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The WiMAX Forum is pleased to recognize the decision of the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R) to include WiMAX technology in the IMT-2000 set of standards. This decision is of global importance to operators who look to ITU to endorse technologies before they invest in new infrastructure. The decision to approve the WiMAX Forum’s version of IEEE Standard 802.16 as an IMT-2000 technology significantly escalates opportunities for global deployment, especially within the 2.5-2.69 GHz band, to deliver Mobile Internet to satisfy both rural and urban market demand.

“This is a very special and unique milestone for WiMAX technology,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum. “This is the first time that a new air interface has been added to the IMT-2000 set of standards since the original technologies were selected nearly a decade ago. WiMAX technology currently has the potential to reach 2.7 billion people. And today’s announcement expands the reach to a significantly larger global population.”

From the initial application made at the ITU-R WP8F meeting in January of this year to this week’s meeting of the Radiocommunications Assembly in Geneva, Administrations, industry and ITU have worked together to achieve this groundbreaking decision.

“It gives me great satisfaction to observe that the ITU Radiocommunication Sector continues to be responsive to the most pressing needs of the wireless industry,” said Valery Timofeev, Director of the ITU Radio communication Bureau.

With WiMAX technology approved as a new IMT-2000 specification, the WIMAX ecosystem will benefit from greater economies of scale, thus reducing the already low cost to deliver broadband wireless services to include VOIP as well as the multiple services expected from wireless broadband Internet access.

Originally created to harmonize 3G mobile systems and to increase opportunities for worldwide interoperability, the IMT-2000 family of standards will now support four different access technologies, including OFDMA (includes WiMAX), FDMA, TDMA and CDMA.

“3G solutions based upon technologies such as W-CDMA, CDMA-2000, and TD-SCDMA technologies were already included in the IMT-2000 set of standards,” said Resnick. “With WiMAX technology now included, it places us on equal footing with the legacy-based technologies ITU-R already endorses." The bottom line is that operators across the globe now have the freedom to select the right technology to best meet their business and regional needs.”

WiMAX Forum

Source: voipcentral.org

In a country where 100,000 new users sign for a particular VoIP service (Read Skype) everyday, it is not surprising to announce sidelining of traditional phone services from mainstream. Yes, I am talking about China, which according to ReportLinker report, has enjoyed tremendous VoIP growth recording 109.931 billion minutes upto September 2006. It is 11.8 percent growth year over year.

Although, the call duration of VoIP in China is equal in number to that of PSTN, however the growth VoIP call duration is higher than PSTN. VoIP today accounts 43.16 percent in the long-distance call duration.

The research firm has claimed that the share of VoIP in the long-distance call market will be equal to or even exceed the total long-distance call of PSTN and mobile (GSM and CDMA) in the following two or three years gradually.

The compound annual growth rate of VoIP equipment spending by Chinese businesses will amount to 48% in the next five years. They will spend nearly 4.2 billion Chinese yuan renminbi in 2009.

Meanwhile, China also is suffering from illegal VoIP calls, which have been growing 30% every year from 2003 to 2006. Last year, illegal international call volume was about 500 million minutes. Therefore, the China government needs to take a cautious approach towards VoIP.

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Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Japan’s largest mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Friday it began testing a new cellular network nearly 100 times faster than its current system.

The company said in a press release it had started testing equipment it hopes will yield download speeds of up to 300 megabits per second. Current maximum down speeds are 3.6 megabits per second.

Super 3G features low-latency data transmission and improved spectrum efficiency. It is a highly advanced version of High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA), which have been evolved from W-CDMA packet transmission technologies standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The 3GPP, a telecommunications standards organization, is currently discussing standardization of Super 3G under the name Long Term Evolution (LTE).

DoCoMo will begin with an indoor experiment to test transmission speed using one transmitting and one receiving antenna. The company will then expand the experiment to examine downlink transmission by employing up to four Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas for both the base station (transmission side) and mobile station (receiving side); the goal is to achieve a downlink transmission speed of 300Mbps. MIMO is an antenna technology for wireless communications in which different data streams are spatially multiplexed using multiple antennas for both transmission and reception on the same frequency. Also to be examined is the "handover function" — switching of the connection between two base stations.

Completion of the new network is scheduled by 2009.

Competition in Japan’s saturated mobile communications market has been driving down margins for voice services, and DoCoMo and its rival carriers are trying to capture more business by turning to date-based services, which require more bandwidth.

DoCoMo press release

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

BUSINESS WIRE News article reports that Sprint has today announced the launch of Sprint Wireless Integration, a product that extends customers’ premises-based PBX features and functionality to their mobile phones. The solution offers business customers additional value and new capabilities by integrating Avaya “Extension to Cellular” capabilities and new Sprint network advancements.

Sprint Wireless Integration features include providing users with one phone number that simultaneously rings both the desk phone and mobile phone, along with one converged enterprise voicemail inbox. It also extends PBX features like conferencing and call forwarding to the mobile phone so users can get all the functionality of their desk phone even while away from the office. For example, mobile users can make intra-company calls by simply dialing the four-digit extension of the person they want to reach, just as they would from the office desk phone – with no access numbers to dial or codes to enter first.

Built within Sprint’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) architecture, Sprint Wireless Integration is the industry’s first "hosted mobility" solution. “By converging wireline and wireless functionality, Sprint Wireless Integration provides a better overall service – one that is more functional and also makes communication more simple and effective,” said Tony Krueck, vice president of product management and development, Sprint. “This solution is a great example of the promise of Fixed/Mobile Convergence.”

Sprint Wireless Integration provides:

Features

* One phone number with simultaneous ring to both the desk phone and mobile phone (using the existing desk phone number)
* One voicemail inbox using the enterprise voicemail platform
* Abbreviated (e.g., four-digit) intra-company dialing from the mobile phone
* Class-of-service extended to mobile calls for better control
* Mobile call tracking/logging by the telecom manager using the PBX

Savings

* Outbound mobile calls routed through the enterprise PBX are “on-net” and included in the monthly service fee. (Inbound calls to the mobile phone do incur minutes.)
* Mobile-to-international calls are billed as if from the enterprise PBX or VPN
* Desk phones can be eliminated if desired
* Billed as an add-on feature ($20/month) to an existing Sprint CDMA Wireless Plan

Requirements

* Premise-based Avaya Communications Manager (IP or TDM)
* Sprint CDMA mobile phone with data capability
* Sprint Dedicated IP or Global MPLS VPN connection

More details on Sprint Wireless Integration are available at Sprint.com/voip.

Links;
Businesswire your daily news source
Sprint wireless integration

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Now yu can add one more to the list of VOIP Patents. According to a press release from
FirstHand Technologies, The have announced today that it has been granted a patent for a multi-protocol data communication system supporting wireless telephony and content delivery.
This patent is licensed from Columbia University, along with several pending applications on which Prof. Henning Schulzrinne of Columbia University is an inventor. Patents pending include inventions for reducing MAC layer hand off latency in wireless networks; for call routing in an IP telephony network; for unified messaging in internet,intranet telephony; for an Ethernet-based telephone and system for internet intranet telephony; for internet telephony based on SIP; and for a system and method for cooperative roaming.
Also according to the same news, For enterprises needing to mobilize their employees, FirstHand Technologies delivers the FirstHand Mobile Console and FirstHand Mobile Assistant. Both products extend the functionality of various IP PBXs to a variety of mobile devices. Using Mobile Console, enterprise workers can place and receive a call over the best available network - WiFi or cellular - optimizing for lowest cost, highest call quality or user preference. The Mobile Console delivers personal command and control of communications services over WiFi or WiFi and GSM or WiFi and CDMA network interfaces. Using Mobile Assistant, activities normally confined to the office can now be performed on a mobile device such as making and answering enterprise calls, checking and reviewing voice mail, looking up colleague availability and connecting with one or more of them with the click of a phone button.

Links;
Firsthand Technologies

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Now yu can add one more to the list of VOIP Patents. According to a press release from
FirstHand Technologies, The have announced today that it has been granted a patent for a multi-protocol data communication system supporting wireless telephony and content delivery.
This patent is licensed from Columbia University, along with several pending applications on which Prof. Henning Schulzrinne of Columbia University is an inventor. Patents pending include inventions for reducing MAC layer hand off latency in wireless networks; for call routing in an IP telephony network; for unified messaging in internet,intranet telephony; for an Ethernet-based telephone and system for internet intranet telephony; for internet telephony based on SIP; and for a system and method for cooperative roaming.
Also according to the same news, For enterprises needing to mobilize their employees, FirstHand Technologies delivers the FirstHand Mobile Console and FirstHand Mobile Assistant. Both products extend the functionality of various IP PBXs to a variety of mobile devices. Using Mobile Console, enterprise workers can place and receive a call over the best available network - WiFi or cellular - optimizing for lowest cost, highest call quality or user preference. The Mobile Console delivers personal command and control of communications services over WiFi or WiFi and GSM or WiFi and CDMA network interfaces. Using Mobile Assistant, activities normally confined to the office can now be performed on a mobile device such as making and answering enterprise calls, checking and reviewing voice mail, looking up colleague availability and connecting with one or more of them with the click of a phone button.

Links;
Firsthand Technologies

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Now yu can add one more to the list of VOIP Patents. According to a press release from
FirstHand Technologies, The have announced today that it has been granted a patent for a multi-protocol data communication system supporting wireless telephony and content delivery.
This patent is licensed from Columbia University, along with several pending applications on which Prof. Henning Schulzrinne of Columbia University is an inventor. Patents pending include inventions for reducing MAC layer hand off latency in wireless networks; for call routing in an IP telephony network; for unified messaging in internet,intranet telephony; for an Ethernet-based telephone and system for internet intranet telephony; for internet telephony based on SIP; and for a system and method for cooperative roaming.
Also according to the same news, For enterprises needing to mobilize their employees, FirstHand Technologies delivers the FirstHand Mobile Console and FirstHand Mobile Assistant. Both products extend the functionality of various IP PBXs to a variety of mobile devices. Using Mobile Console, enterprise workers can place and receive a call over the best available network - WiFi or cellular - optimizing for lowest cost, highest call quality or user preference. The Mobile Console delivers personal command and control of communications services over WiFi or WiFi and GSM or WiFi and CDMA network interfaces. Using Mobile Assistant, activities normally confined to the office can now be performed on a mobile device such as making and answering enterprise calls, checking and reviewing voice mail, looking up colleague availability and connecting with one or more of them with the click of a phone button.

Links;
Firsthand Technologies

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Celliax is a channel driver for the Asterisk Free PBX that manages GSM and CDMA cellular phones through an adapter, composed by a data cable (for commands) and an audio cable (for the voice) interfacing the computer sound card.

chan_celliax is also capable of making and receiving Skype calls through the cellphone, and has an app like app_directory that let you choose which one of your Skype contacts you want to call.

Celliax runs on Asterisk 1.2 on Linux and Windows (with cygwin and a little modification to the compilation of Asterisk to avoid the calls to sigkill), and on Asterisk 1.4 only in Linux (because Asterisk 1.4 itself does not build on Windows, at date).

Together with chan_celliax is distributed the Celliax LiveCD, with a working installation of Asterisk, chan_celliax, and configuration utilities based on Knoppix. The Celliax LiveCD contains also all is needed to run Celliax on Windows:the cygwin installer and the tgz with the asterisk-celliax stuff to be untarred in a basic cygwin installation.

Links;
Celliax

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Celliax is a channel driver for the Asterisk Free PBX that manages GSM and CDMA cellular phones through an adapter, composed by a data cable (for commands) and an audio cable (for the voice) interfacing the computer sound card.

chan_celliax is also capable of making and receiving Skype calls through the cellphone, and has an app like app_directory that let you choose which one of your Skype contacts you want to call.

Celliax runs on Asterisk 1.2 on Linux and Windows (with cygwin and a little modification to the compilation of Asterisk to avoid the calls to sigkill), and on Asterisk 1.4 only in Linux (because Asterisk 1.4 itself does not build on Windows, at date).

Together with chan_celliax is distributed the Celliax LiveCD, with a working installation of Asterisk, chan_celliax, and configuration utilities based on Knoppix. The Celliax LiveCD contains also all is needed to run Celliax on Windows:the cygwin installer and the tgz with the asterisk-celliax stuff to be untarred in a basic cygwin installation.

Links;
Celliax

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Celliax is a channel driver for the Asterisk Free PBX that manages GSM and CDMA cellular phones through an adapter, composed by a data cable (for commands) and an audio cable (for the voice) interfacing the computer sound card.

chan_celliax is also capable of making and receiving Skype calls through the cellphone, and has an app like app_directory that let you choose which one of your Skype contacts you want to call.

Celliax runs on Asterisk 1.2 on Linux and Windows (with cygwin and a little modification to the compilation of Asterisk to avoid the calls to sigkill), and on Asterisk 1.4 only in Linux (because Asterisk 1.4 itself does not build on Windows, at date).

Together with chan_celliax is distributed the Celliax LiveCD, with a working installation of Asterisk, chan_celliax, and configuration utilities based on Knoppix. The Celliax LiveCD contains also all is needed to run Celliax on Windows:the cygwin installer and the tgz with the asterisk-celliax stuff to be untarred in a basic cygwin installation.

Links;
Celliax

Source: voipcentral.org

VoIP quality is now a matter of concern for both the business enterprises and residential users who want to go with this voice technology.

Despite favorable market condition for VoIP, the wireless providers are still hesitant to invest on VoIP due to deteriorating call quality and security problems.

Following the Brix Networks report, which pointed out that all most 77 percent of the VoIP calls made by May 2006 were quite unacceptable, the sift has been now on enriched VoIP quality.

In a bid to overcome these problems, the service providers are now interested to use the latest EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) wireless networking technology.

As known earlier, EV-DO or 1x Evolution-Data Optimized is a wireless radio broadband data standard developed and adopted by many CDMA mobile phone service providers in South Korea, Japan, the Czech Republic, Russia, Latvia, Romania, Portugal, Brazil, Israel, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Venezuela, Angola, Mexico, Norway and Puerto Rico.

The EV-DO technology is gaining momentum among the wireless carriers around the world. In USA, it is the Sprint which for first time introduced Revision A framework of the standard in San Diego, North America. Satisfied with the EV-DO performance in VoIP set-up, the company has decided to open another 20 additional markets to deliver EV-DO for the customers by the years end. The use of EV-DO has increased bandwidth for VoIP communications, explains Sprint. However, the company has some objections on QoS of VoIP.

Airvana Inc is another telecommunication company of USA to demonstrate a Quality of Service (QoS)-enabled mobile-to-mobile VoIP system carried across an EVDO Rev A network.

Airvana made mobile-to-mobile VoIP calls using handsets based on QUALCOMM’s MSM6800(tm) baseband ASIC and software to start QoS-based calls over delay-sensitive/low-latency flows in a commercial-grade Rev.

EV-DO Rev. A supports multiple QoS flows per handset each with its own sole QoS necessities. This ability allows VoIP and other multimedia traffic to get higher priority over other best-effort traffic, such as web, email, and file transfer traffic.

Vedat Eyuboglu, CTO at Airvana quoted,

VoIP is a highly delay-sensitive application, and delivering VoIP over an IP-based wireless infrastructure requires sophisticated QoS techniques. Our demonstration of VoIP on Airvana’s QoS-enabled commercial EV-DO Rev. A network infrastructure is a significant step towards commercial VoIP services over EV-DO Rev. A.

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