Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

By Traci Patterson
CedMagazine

In the past year, cable telephony subscribers have increased by nearly eight million worldwide, according to a new report from In-Stat.

Growth in North America has been particularly strong as cable operators near the end of their transition to VoIP-enabled network architectures, In-Stat’s report found.

“Current priorities for cable telephony service providers are expanding the availability of their service and attracting business end-users, especially small- and medium-size businesses,” said Mike Paxton, an In-Stat analyst.

In-Stat’s research, “34 Million Subscribers: Worldwide Cable Telephony Services Continue to Expand,” found that:

As mentioned above, the Pivot JV involved cable operators Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Advance/Newhouse (Bright House Networks), which were working with Sprint Nextel to offer the Pivot wireless service. In April, it was announced that the cable operators were done with Pivot (story here).

In-Stat’s research covers the worldwide market for cable telephony. It discusses the business case for cable telephony services, discusses the availability of the service and examines specific network architectures, In-Stat said. In addition, it updates leading cable TV operator telephony deployment strategies and presents the results of a U.S. cable telephony subscriber consumer survey.

The research also provides forecasts for worldwide cable telephony subscribers, VoIP cable telephony subscribers and installed cable telephony lines through 2012, and it forecasts cable telephony service revenues and “Voice-over-Broadband” cable telephony subscribers over the next five years.

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

ShoreTel has been awarded the ’Best Overall VoIP Provider’in the fifth annual Memertes PilotHouse Awards for Unified Communications & Collaboration.

ShoreTel emerged as the overall best following opinions poll conducted for customers to assess VoIP vendors’ performances. In all, the opinions and experiences of426 customers were examined against 24 VoIP vendors and the overall result came in favour of ShorTel.

The vote was conducted in an Olympic gymnastics style voting system,where winner amassed the most points or votes. ShoreTelgot a total score of 4.22 out of a possible maximum high score of 5.0.

Among the parameters considered during the vote are the kind of technology used covering the underlying software, platforms, intelligence and standard compliance; product features focusing on handset and switch capabilities; solution experience focusing on the ability to understand business requirements and craft solutions that meet customers’ needs.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Martin County, Florida, has replaced it leased telephony service with Alcatel-Lucent’s turnkey system that provides VoIP services as well as WiFi and contact center solutions. The 545 square mile county was installed by the county to help support the government’s efforts to deliver faster and better services to its residents.

“We wanted a networking foundation to match the culture of service we have instilled in the county government, and the Alcatel-Lucent solution provides us with the performance and features we need,” said Kevin Kryzda, Martin County’s Chief Information Officer. “Installing this system is also a considerable cost saving for the county, because it cuts our ongoing telecommunications expenses in half.”
“Martin County is a trend setter among government agencies,” said Tom Burns, Chief Operating Officer of Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise activities. “By improving community relations and interconnecting its citizens with collaboration over a secure high speed network, they have accomplished their goal of making government services responsive and cost-effective.”

Source: www.voip-news.com

PC Magazine recently tested a number of VoIP solutions designed for the home and small business. There’s no doubt that VoIP can be a money-saving alternative, but finding the right solution - the best solution - can be tough. Here’s a sampling of their picks:

• Best for Home: YMax magicJack
• Good Ready-to-Use Solution: Microsoft Response Point
• Good Serviceable and Scalable Solution: Avaya Quick Edition/Netgear Voice over IP
• Good Pricing: RingCentral

To read the full review of these, click here.

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

The business case for adopting voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony systems grows more compelling every day.

In addition to the long distance savings, the equipment costs less, and does more. Moves, adds and changes are much easier. System monitoring is straightforward, and the usage reports are richer. And, most importantly, companies can leverage their existing IP networks to achieve an integrated voice and data platform.

Features, such as videoconferencing and unified messaging, offer tools that can transform the way a business operates.

While there are real pitfalls to watch for the momentum of VoIP seems unstoppable, say experts who have managed numerous installations.

This has been made possible by the emergence of very high speed, rliable IP networks.

As Jocelyn Philbrook, vice president of corporate marketing and investor relations at Westford, MA based Sonus Networks puts it, "What we’ve seen in the past five years is the quality assurance and high speed bandwidth that are able to support multiple types of communications-video, voice, data-very rapidly and with a high degree of quality throughout the network."

Early adopters have already worked through various telephony strategies and have started to move steadily to VoIP-based solutions with consolidated voice and data networks, reports Roberta Fox, Principal at Mount Albert based Fox Group Consulting.

But the pace of change has been incremental. This has led to a prevalence of hybrid systems as companies slowly replace legacy TDM (time-division multiplexing) systems with IP based systems. "VoIP has become the de facto standard on net new locations, but we’re not seeing people rip out legacy TDM systems and replace them with IP telephony," said Fox

Itbusiness.ca

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

Jaxter has Reached the Five million registered member mark–a 10-fold increase from its base of 500,000 members in July. And the Menlo Park, Calif.-based VoIP provider announced that it has appointed Taneli Otala to the position of vice president of engineering, as part of a plan to support its phenomenal growth. Without downloading an application, mobile phone users can use their domestic minutes to make international calls via jaxtr’s technology. After signing up with jaxtr, members get listed in the jaxtr database, where friends and other contacts can find them. Contacts click the "call me free" button, give jaxtr their number, and then the service calls them and connects them with their friend.

Jaxtr members get up to 100 minutes worth of free incoming calls. Once users hit the maximum, their calls are directed to a jaxtr voice mailbox, and they can resume receiving calls when their free minutes are renewed each month.

Jaxtr is available in 220 countries, and some 32,000 new members have signed up each day for the past 140 days. The company has hired Otala, who most recently served as vice president of technology at Various (and CTO of MySQL prior to that) to handle the challenges that come with scaling out systems to meet such high demand.

OMD

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

An expert has released a proof-of-concept program to show how easy it would be for criminals to eavesdrop on the VoIP-based phone calls of any company using the technology.

Called SIPtap, the software is able to monitor multiple Voice-over-IP (VoIP) call streams, listening in and recording them for remote inspection as .wav files. All that the criminal would need would be to infect a single PC inside the network with a Trojan incorporating these functions, although the hack would work at ISP level as well.

The program can index ’IP-tapped’ calls by caller - using SIP identity information - and by recipient, and even by date. Running from August this year until the most recent tap on November 21st, SIPtap had no problems in extracting enough information on the test network to prove that call recording of any and every VoIP call at a hypothetical company was now a trivial exercise.

Source: PC World (NZ)

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

Lots of companies over the years have thrived on undercutting incumbent operators’ prices for long-distance and international calls. Calling cards and callback systems are the two oldest and most common examples; VoIP is a more recent one. Lots of companies have targeted the mobile market as well, either just through marketing, or with products geared towards mobile users, but their underlying proposition remains the same: cheaper calls.

Last summer, which (among other things) gave users local numbers for their international contacts. So instead of dialing the international number, you’d dial the local number, then the call would get routed through Rebtel’s VoIP network at cheaper rates. It’s a novel idea, and apparently one worth copying, as another mobile VoIP company, Jajah, has announced a similar feature.

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

Back in May, “Intel has invested an undisclosed amount in VoIP firm Jajah, a Voice over IP firm, and the company will also get access to Intel’s own patents,” p2pnet posted, continuing:

Now Jajah says it’s organised a partnership with Oridian Online Media Solutions centering on in-call advertising.

What that means is the companies will try to persuade users to sign up for a deal under which they’ll have to listen to advertising in return for which they’ll have an “opportunity” to “earn credits,’ or “potentially” cover the cost of the call, says vnunet.“Earnings from an audio ad played while the call is being initiated are shared between the user and Jajah and credited to the user’s account,” says the story.

“Oridian reckons that sponsoring calls allows advertisers to establish new customer relationships and revenue streams, while telcos can generate greater average revenue per user by implementing the service alongside existing infrastructures.”

It’ll probably be like when you make a call to a company and you’re forced to listen to canned audio ad blurb while you’re waiting for a real person to come online.

The story doesn’t say if there’d be some kind of built-in delay so the ad could play before connections are made.

p2pnet.net

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

BT in a move to persuade customers to share their Wi-Fi.

BT has liased with Spanish technology company Fon, with the support of world giant, Google, to try to get its more than 3 million British internet users to open up part of their home wireless broadband networks so that other people can use them. They are hoping it will push wireless broadband access, or wi-fi, into suburban and even rural areas. In return for letting other BT customers use part

McDonald to make Wi-Fi available in all of its UK Restuarants

The internationally known fast food owners, McDonald’s has promised its customers free high speed wireless internet access at most of its 1,200 branches before the year runs out, this single act would make McDonald’s the biggest provider of such a service in the whole of the UK. All tha is needed by a Customer laptop, compatible mobile phones or games consoles and they stay connected for hours

Skype founders contended with honorable £260m exit

The two co-founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have happily voiced their decision to step down from the company they sold to eBay in 2005. The move, which was announced yesterday, has forced eBay into a £590m writedown on the £2.1bn it paid for the internet telephony company just two years ago. This decision has nothing todo with the chairmanship of Mr Zannstrom, as he

Nokia spends $8 Billion on Navteq, promises Excellent Location-Based Services

The Finnish mobile phone giant company, NOKIA, with nearly a third of the global handset market, has decided to bet big on location-based services (LBS), and has moves on buying off the Chicago-based digital map company NAVTEQ for the going price of $8.1 billion. A break up would give about $78 per share. This is one of Nokia’s largest purchases in recent history, the worldclass mobile giant has

Best Buy to buy Covad, How True?

In a recent release by a magazine, Broadband Reports, it was observed and stated that Best Buy (BBY), the large North American electronics marketing network, is very ready and interested to acquire Covad (DVW), a large wholesale broadband provider after recently grabbing Speakeasy, a major DSL provider. From all indications, the discussions on the purchase is the shaky in nature, Broadband

Zune2 is definitelly not an iPod killer

Microsoft has announced the introduction of second-generation Zunes which will go on sale in November this year. Indications show that the products would be sold at $249.99 for Zune 80GB hard-drive model, with a 3.2 inch screen, and two flash models: a Zune 8GB at $199.99 and a 4GB for $149.99. The 8GB and 4GB will come in pink, green, black and glossy red. It is obvious that Microsoft is

Power personalised: Ten easy steps to unlock your iPhone using the new iNDependence

iPhone users now have the freedom of downloading the latest iPhone firmware on to their unlocked iPhone, this is a new firmware that will unlock all the functionalitie of the iPhone except for the phone service. It is a Cocoa-based application for Mac OS X known as iNDependence. This has a simple User Interface for modifying iPhones. The easy steps start by downloading iNDependence from http:

JAJAH buttons removed from eBay listings

Not long ago JAJAH introduced new widgets to help eBay listers to use them on their listings pages. The simple idea of inserting the widget is allow JAJAH users to talk directly to the seller just by a click of the widget. It seems the fact that eBay owns JAJAH competitor Skype is behind this quick decision, Well, left alone, I would conclude its true. A report by Amy-Mae Elliott of the

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

Use this service call anywhere free with any existing phone no download no configuration just simple free long distance and enhanced phone services.

Click2Voice is offering free calls to some selected destinations worldwide. This offer is available for over 30 countries in the Europe, Asia and America. Although, Click2Voice is quite a small VOIP industry it has determined to offer this service probably to boast its ego and to make the service available for as many countries as selected.

For you to be able to take advantage of this opportunity, you must first ensure you fall within the range of the selected countries and then other procedures are quite simple. For more Info visit Click2Voice.com

Source: voipworld.wordpress.com

Skype, the internet VOIP phone service, announced that CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennstrom will step down from his role as CEO according to a press release issued by eBay.

He will retain his role as chairman. Skype was purchased by eBay in 2005. Shareholders of Skype were to be paid based on an earn-out agreement. This earn-out agreement was based upon specific active user, revenue and gross profit targets that were to be achieved in 2008 and the first half of 2009.

Rumor has it that eBay is not happy with the current performance of Skype. One such issue was the Skype outage and the poor handling of that.