Freeswitch has been quietly growing in both popularity and stability, not as a direct competitor to Asterisk, but as a fully featured, carrier-grade Softswitch. Get the full lowdown on Freeswitch over on Ostatic, our open source blog.

AT&T will spend $1 billion this year to push out its enterprise access and utility computing services internationally. The money will go toward a new undersea cable to Japan and Asia, investments in cables running to the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and the Middle East. It plans to add DSL service in four countries, enhanced Ethernet in 14 cities, and 180,000 square feet to its 38 existing data centers worldwide. Enterprise growth for the carrier was 1.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, but data services such as VPN and enterprise IP services grew at rates of 31 percent and 21 percent respectively.

RingCentral, a Redwood City, Calif.-based VoIP company, has raised $12 million in Series B funding, doubling the amount it raised in its Series A round. New investor DAG Ventures led the latest funding, with existing investors Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures participating as well. The company claims some 50,000 customers, making it one of the more successful players in the hosted VoIP sector. I was highly skeptical of RingCentral when it launched, but I guess there are 50,000 reasons why I was wrong. (I am going to post a long overdue review of RingCentral’s service later this month. )

Social voice startup Jaxtr has reached 10 million users, doubling its user base in less than three months. The company has also announced the end of its beta and the beginning of revenue, with ads running on the Jaxtr Cafe site. The site essentially turns Jaxtr from an widget-based mobile VoIP platform into a one-stop shop for social voice and text messaging that can be delivered to a mobile phone without the user giving out his or her phone number.

Two months after saying it would open up its network to other devices, Verizon Wireless is inviting developers to a mid-March conference where they can learn more about building software and devices that will run on its network. It’s an important step, because without people to build devices on Verizon’s CDMA wireless networks, the commitment to openness is just whitewash. And just in case you like your walled garden, the last paragraph of the Verizon release, which touts both the conference and the company’s commitment to openness, is quick to assure folks that it will continue to offer Verizon-approved devices in company stores. Talk about a mixed message.