Enhanced 911 services provider RedSky Technologies announced that its flagship product, E911 Manager Version 6, is now available as a hosted, cloud-based service.

The E911 solution integrates with major call servers/PBXs to track detailed location data from a range of phones on the enterprise network, including analog, digital, SIP, H.323, WiFi and softphones. The application automatically updates the location information used by emergency-service dispatchers at public safety answering points (PSAPs) throughout the nation.

E911 Manager works with platforms including Avaya, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Siemens (NYSE: SI) and supports SIP endpoints and voice platforms, Chicago-based Red Sky said. 

In addition to hosting on RedSky's private cloud, the automated E911 solution can be deployed on-premises, in a virtual environment or on a dedicated server.

RedSky SVP Nick Maier said offering E911 Manager as a hosted service provides deployment options to organizations that seek automated E911 protection.

"We are witnessing a major transition of enterprise applications moving to the cloud," Maier said. " We believe an increasing number of organizations will take advantage of E911 in the cloud to help manage their capital expenditures and IT staffing costs."

RedSky's E911 Manager is built on a Java/Linux platform that allows scalability and meets uptime requirements of enterprise applications, the company said. 

For more:
 - see this release

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Hometown vendor NetVersant Solutions has signed a five-year deal with the Houston Airport System (HAS) to provide telecommunications services for three Houston airports--George Bush Intercontinental, William P. Hobby and Ellington.

The Houston Airport System is the fourth-largest U.S. airport system and the world's sixth largest, with a system that served more than 49.5 million passengers in 2010, including more than 8.5 million international travelers, the company said.

NetVersant's key business areas are network infrastructure, integrated security solutions, enterprise communications, mobility solutions and environmental monitoring and control, the company said.

"NetVersant Solutions has the infrastructure and capabilities to support the mission critical communications network within HAS," the airport system's technology services manager, Frederick McDowell, said in a statement.

For more:
-see the release

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Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM) will be providing its RealPresence solutions and an enterprise video collaboration network for 75,000 globally located employees of India-based Essar Group, The Economic Times reported.

Essar Group is deploying Polycom in its head office in Mahalaxmi and three other offices in Mumbai which will then be connected globally.

The conglomorate will use Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Lync environment for IM, presence, call control, Web conferencing, video and voice collaboration, as it follows a worldwide trend to reduce travel and downtime costs while ensuring business continuity.

"In the current competitive landscape, businesses such as ours are pressured to find the most efficient and effective ways to increase productivity and accelerate operations at a faster pace," said Essar Group CTO Jayantha Prabhu, calling video collaboration "mission critical" for the organization.

For more:
 - see this story

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The Federal Communications Commission on Friday released its plan to take a fresh look at old regulations so to root out industry mandates that may be inconsistent, redundant, outdated or needlessly impede U.S. global competitiveness and dissuade industry investment.

Genachowski

Part of the administration's Campaign to Cut Waste, the regulatory reform initiative is aimed at making the FCC's rulemaking process more transparent, its regulatory program more effective and industry compliance less burdensome by removing unjustified regulations, streamlining procedures and ridding the FCC of counterproductive requirements that stymie economic growth and innovation.

The Final Plan for Retrospective Analysis of Existing Rules outlines the independent commission's strategy for a prudent and rational regulatory apparatus for the telephone, broadcasting, satellite and wired communications industries the FCC oversees, and keeps with the FCC's charge to protect consumers and ensure a competitive marketplace.

The Final Plan calls for systematic reviews of significant regulations and information-collection requirements to determine if the existing requirements have outlived their usefulness or become unfairly onerous or have unjustified costs.

"Every part of the Commission is involved in efforts to eliminate outdated regulations and to promote private investment and innovation that creates jobs and spurs economic growth," the document reads.

The commission's larger regulatory-reform efforts extend beyond just retrospective review.

The FCC plan indicates that to foster better outcomes in the rulemaking process, there is "early involvement" of the commission's chief economist and FCC staff members consult with the administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on best practices for cost-benefit analyses, for instance.

The FCC rule-lookback plan follows President Barack Obama's nonbinding July 2011 executive order that independent federal agencies--such as the FCC and the Securities and Exchange Commission--join his administration's government-wide campaign against needlessly burdensome industry mandates.

Executive Order 13579 (76 FR 41587) called on independent federal agencies to consider "how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with what has been learned."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, said the Final Plan's release affirms the agency's "extensive efforts" to eliminate unnecessary regulations.

"Our commitment to smart and streamlined government is helping promote a healthy climate for private investment, innovation, and job creation, benefiting all Americans," said Genachowski, a 2009 Obama appointee.

The FCC has long had a statutory-mandated rule-review process. Section 11(a) of the federal Communications Act (Pub.L. 73-416), as amended, requires that every two years the commission consider whether a regulation warrants revision amid changes in technology, research or market structure.

Pai

The law requires the commission "to repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer necessary in the public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service.

Newly minted FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, a Republican, said the review should neither be done hastily nor in the usual fashion.

"In light of the importance of this comprehensive retrospective analysis, I believe that the 2012 Biennial Review should take the form of Commission-level action rather than bureau-level recommendations," " Pai, a former FCC deputy general counsel, said in a statement.

In its efforts to eliminate unnecessary government mandates on the communications industries, the FCC since 2009 has eliminated 219 regulations.

Among recent FCC streamlining instances noted in the Final Plan:

• Modification of Outage Reporting Requirements: The commission amended outage reporting requirements for interconnected IP-based services, citing new technologies. 
• USF Contribution Reform: On April 27, the commission adopted a proceeding to reform the contribution side of universal service. It requires telecommunications carriers and certain other providers to contribute on the basis of their end-user revenues. 
• Wireless E911 Location Accuracy: In July 2011, the commission proposed measures to improve 911 availability and location determination for users of interconnected VoIP services.    
• IP-based Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) Technological Standards: The FCC said technological advances have resulted in the migration of the majority of TRS usage from public-switched telephone network services to IP-based services.
• Docket Management: The commission amended its organizational rules to facilitate the termination of 999 dormant dockets. 

The FCC released its Preliminary Plan for Retrospective Analysis of Existing Rules in November 2011. The five-member commission is among some 30 federal agencies and departments that submitted reg-reform plans to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, following the president's request.

For more:
- see the FCC Final Plan

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Onvoy Voice Services is urging the Federal Communications Commission to allow local exchange carriers (LECs) to assess originating access charges on traffic within a carrier's MTA, or major trading area.

Jones

The Minneapolis-based, privately held wholesale-services provider has a pending petition for reconsideration or clarification of the landmark 2011 USF/ICC Transformation Order.  Specifically, Onvoy's petition relates to pre-existing VoIP-PSTN bill-and-keep interconnection agreements.

In a May 15 ex parte presentation to Wireline Competition Bureau staff, the company outlined "technical obstacles" related to implementation of bill-and-keep for intraMTA traffic exchanged between wireline LECs and CMRS providers.

Onvoy counsel Thomas Jones, in an ex parte letter, reiterated a suggested remedy.

"The Commission should permit a wireline LEC to assess originating access charges on intraMTA calls where the wireline LEC originates the call and transmits it to an unaffiliated interexchange carrier which then transmits the call to a CMRS provider for delivery to the called party," wrote Jones, partner in the Communications, Media & Privacy Department at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.

At the presentation with Jones were Onvoy Inc. president Fritz Hendricks and company general counsel Scott Sawyer. The trio met with WCB officials Victoria Goldberg, Randy Clarke and Travis Litman, FCC papers indicate.

Onvoy's petition, filed in December 2011, asks the commission to clarify the default transitional rates adopted in the Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier Compensation (ICC/USF) Reform order do not apply to a LEC that has entered into an interconnection agreement to exchange local and toll VoIP-PSTN traffic on a bill-and-keep basis, even if that agreement contains a change-of-law provision.

The change of law in the order, they argue, ought only apply to carriers that did not have an existing agreement to exchange VoIP-PSTN traffic on a bill-and-keep basis. Moreover, allowing carriers that have been engaging traffic under bill-and-keep to begin charging higher transition default rates undermines the commission's goals, the company said.

"The order clearly permits LECs to assess access changes for the transmission of VoIP traffic despite the face the FCC has not ruled that VoIP is a telecommunications service," the company argued for the petition, adding that the FCC should not bar the collection of tandem switched access charges for calls to and from parties that are not purchasers of "telecommunications services.'"

The FCC Report and Order overhauling ICC/USF rules was published in the Federal Register (76 FR 73830) on Nov. 29, 2011. The rule became effective Dec. 29, 2011.

Onvoy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zayo Group Holdings, a Louisville, Colo.-based provider of bandwidth infrastructure and network-neutral colocation and interconnection services.

For more:
- see the petition
- see the ex parte presentation

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Last October, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) sold its Genesys call-center business for $1.5 billion and, in the process, lost over $500 million in annual revenue from the division.

Genesys just wrapped up its first 100 days as a stand-alone company, and it's a good bet AlcaLu is looking fondly at its former business... and coveting the revenues the company continues to generate.

Genesys is eager to let folks know that life after Alcatel-Lucent is just fine, thank you. The Daly City, Calif.-based company said it continued its "consistent track record of year-over-year revenue growth for full-year 2011."

In its first quarter on its own, the company said it achieved 13 percent year-over-year growth, with annual revenues of over $500 million.

In Q1 2012, the newly formed stand-alone company launched its mobile customer-care solution, Social Engagement, and "maintained a leading presence in the market," with "strong customer momentum" behind its workforce optimization, social customer service and SIP-based solutions, as well as its pay-per-use and hosted offerings.

"We're pleased to report that the new, stand-alone Genesys is off to a strong start," said Paul Segre, president and CEO of Genesys. "Our business is growing and we're continuing to innovate in the customer experience space, driven by a planned 14 percent increase in R&D investment this year and the passion of our people, which is evident everyday in the results we are achieving with customers."

Among other highlights in the quarter:

For the full year of 2011, the company achieved approximately 8 percent growth over 2010;

Saw 35 percent growth in pay-per-use and hosted solutions, and 80 percent growth in workforce optimization.

Maintained a healthy EBITDA of more than 20 percent.

Saw South Africa's Vodacom and the UK's Everything Everywhere going live with Genesys' social customer service solution, Social Engagement.

Reached 300,000 seats for its SIP Server solution, fueling a shift away from PBX-based contact centers to pure software SIP-based solutions.

For more:
- see this release

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Decrying the "exorbitant rates" for telephone calls placed from most state prisons and correctional institutions, a broad coalition of civil-rights groups and conservative leaders called Friday on the Federal Communications Commission to examine the harm caused by interstate prison phone call rates.

Pressing the FCC to protect prisoners and their families from "predatory" fees is an unlikely coalition that includes progressive groups--the ACLU, NAACP, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights--and national conservative leaders, including American Values president Gary Bauer, the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, and Galen Carey of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The coalition, among other consumer protections, seeks an FCC-imposed cap on interstate prison phone call rates. Today, a 15-minute collect call placed from a state correctional institution typically costs $10 to $17, the group wrote in its letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat.

"We write to you as organizations and individuals that represent a wide variety of views on many issues, but that stand united on the need to reduce the exorbitant rates for telephone calls from prisons," they wrote. "Unreasonably high prison phone rates unjustly punish the families of people who are incarcerated, and contribute to rising recidivism rates by deterring regular telephone contact with family members and loved ones."

In their letter to Genachowski, the signatories urged the five-member FCC to act on the so-called Wright Petition that they said has languished before regulators since November 2003.  The petition seeks a 25-cent per minute cap for collect calls, and no connection fees, as well as a benchmark rate of 20 cents per minute for calls placed using a calling card.

The petition asks the FCC also to bar exclusive inmate calling service agreements and collect call-only restrictions at privately administered prisons, and to require facilities to permit multiple long distance carriers to interconnect with prison telephone systems.

Promulgating consumer protections from predatory phone rates for inmates and their families "is a critical opportunity for the Commission to exert its leadership," the letter argues.

The coalition and other critics argue that the unreasonable prison phone rates harming inmates' families result from most states' requirements that bids for prison telephone service also include an annual commission to the prison operator. Commissions, typically based on a share of phone revenues, are negotiated during the contracting process.

"The costs of the calls are passed on to prisoners' families in the form of higher telephone rates, while the prison reaps the benefit of the extra fees and commissions," the coalition's letter reads. "Thus, prisons have every incentive to choose bids that maximize fees and maximize telephone rates-a clear ‘moral hazard.'"

Six states--Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma and Rhode Island--forego commissions and pass the savings on in lower inmate phone rates. The other 44 states, in 2011, collectively raised $152 million in revenue for prisons from "predatory rates," said Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The issue of inmate phone tolls came before the FCC in 2001, after Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia referred to commissioners a civil-rights lawsuit filed by Martha Wright and 19 other plaintiffs with relatives in state prison.

Filed in February 2000, the class action against Nashville, Tenn.-based private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE: CXW) asked the U.S. district court to recoup damages to inmates and families and to nullify phone-service contracts entered into by CCA and several carriers, among other prayers.

After the FCC received the case, the commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. That proceeding has been pending before the commission since December 2003, the coalition said.

"[W]e urge you to act quickly to address this problem by capping the charges that can be imposed for interstate prison phone calls," reads their letter to Genachowski.

The lawyer for Wright, who filed the petition and brought forth the underlying litigation, said he's hopeful the FCC--now with its full complement of five commissioners and technology available to carriers--will act on the petition.  

"The plight of the families of inmates paying exorbitant telephone rates to remain in contact with their loved ones has languished at the FCC for more than 10 years," said Lee Petro, of counsel to the Telecommunications & Mass Media Team at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.

"With the resolution of other long-pending matters, the recent additions of two new Commissioners, and new technologies developed by the service providers that has decreased their costs of service, prompt action now will give relief to struggling families in these tough economic times," Petro added.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which charges significantly lower calling rates that states' facilities, uses its revenue commissions to help bankroll inmate programs and recreation.

In fiscal year 2010, federal prison system charged 6 cents per minute for local calls and 23 cents per minute for long-distance calls. That year, the inmate telephone system generated approximately $74 million in revenue, cost roughly $39 million to operate, and showed a profit of some $34 million, according to a September 2011 Government Accountability Office report (GAO-11-893).

Securus Technologies Inc., which offers communications solutions for the corrections industry, met with FCC officials May 7 and May 17 to discuss, among other regulatory matters, prison calling rates.

A bevy of factors cause inmate-generated collect calls to be more costly than traditional operator-assisted calls, the Dallas-based company told Michael Steffen, legal advisor to Genachowski; Deena Shetler, associate bureau chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau; and Nicholas Alexander, deputy division chief of the WCB Pricing Policy Division.

Particular to prison calls, they said, are costs of bad debt, research and development and site commissions, Securus counsel Stephanie Joyce recounted in an FCC filing.

"Securus explained that site commissions are the product of a public policy decision made by correctional authorities, and in some cases state legislatures, to fund prison operations and inmate welfare funds through the inmate telecommunications system," Joyce, a partner in the telecommunications practice group at Arent Fox, wrote.

In October 1999, the FCC began requiring carriers to disclose the rates consumers will actually pay for phone calls received from prisoners. The rule--Operator Services for Prison Inmate Phones-is codified at 47 C.F.R. § 67.710.

The FCC petition matter is Docket No. 96-128, Petitioner Martha Wright et al., Alternative Rulemaking Proposal.

For more:
- see the coalition letter
- the Securus filings are here and here

A new survey shows that larger companies, and companies with a higher percentage of workers who telecommute, are most likely to see greater value in unified communications technologies.

The survey, from CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the IT industry, showed that 80 percent of companies are interested in UC.

Click here to view a larger version of this image.

Despite economic uncertainties, budgets for communications and collaboration solutions are increasing or keeping pace with other technology priorities, at 85 percent of companies surveyed, CompTIA said in its Second Annual Unified Communications Market Trends study.

Among benefits companies expect from unified communications: greater employee productivity, reduced costs and a means to improve customer engagement.

"But to get there, significant barriers must be overcome," said Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, CompTIA.

Integrating new unified communications tools with existing technologies is one of several hurdles that needs to be cleared, CompTIA found.

Questions that also need to be answered include calculating return on investment, the challenge of making UC mobile, including social networking, collaboration and video conferencing.

Even when those issues are addressed, some companies still have concerns about the reliability of communications systems.

Cloud and managed systems can help organizations sidestep some of the technical issues they're most worried about, said CompTIA, and most, about 70 percent of the companies surveyed, said they'd consider a cloud system or managed services model for their unified communications needs.

"What we are most likely to see is a hybrid approach in many organizations, using the cloud for collaboration and web conferencing, and on-premise infrastructure for data, voice and video," Robinson said.

Videoconferencing was one of the more widely adopted and anticipated UC technologies. Some 71 percent of companies have some form of video conferencing in place, with another 16 percent planning to add it over the next year.

But the technology faces some formidable obstacles to full adoption: the users. Just 27 percent of employees are extremely comfortable with the format, and video accounts for less than 10 percent of communications in companies where it is installed.

For more:
- see this release

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Level 3 Communications (NYSE: LVLT), which has been busily building out its presence in Latin America for the past several months, today said customer demand has prompted it to expand its data-center capabilities in the region.

The company has added capacity to its 14 data centers in the region, with substantial expansions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. It's also introduced new hosting and storage services, and increased its backup and storage capacity.

The moves, Level 3 said, are aimed at enhancing customers' efficiency, security and growth, at a time when enterprises increasingly are looking for third-party data center solutions as they move toward adopting cloud computing.

Research from IDC estimates the market for data center services and managed security services in Latin America will reach nearly $4 billion in market size by 2015, growing at a compound annual rate of 11.9 percent between 2011 and 2015.

"Data center service providers that can demonstrate the ability to integrate value-added services and guarantee high service levels will be strongly positioned to capitalize on the region's market growth opportunity, providing the data center and security solution capabilities demanded by customers," said Diego Anesini, telecom research and consulting manager for IDC in Latin America.

In April, Level 3 SVP Mark Taylor told FierceOnlineVideo that the company was "expanding rapidly into South America."
"It's a nice growth story for us," he said at the time, pointing out that Level 3's recent acquisition of Global Crossings "has made it easier to put our POPs in South America."

For more:
- see this release

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VoIP technology provider Vitelity Communications, partnering with Patton Electronics, has launched a communications bundle, SIP Enable, that allows legacy phone systems without native SIP capabilities to use SIP trunk services from Vitelity.

The privately held company said the product can integrate the advanced technology into a system in order connect to the Internet and utilize additional features, such as SMS, vFax and global DID origination.

SIP Enable improves the functionality for the end-user, said CEO Chris Hall, and provides a cost-effective method to integrate newer technologies into older systems."

"It's exciting to be able bring our SIP trunking service to systems that it was never intended for," Hall said.

For more:
- see this release

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Swedish telecom service provide TeliaSonera is taking a step that other European operators--as well as some of their U.S. counterparts--have been loathe to because of concerns about net neutrality interpretations. The company, today said it would start charging for VoIP calls, including those made across the Skype platform, in an effort to "start exploring new business models."

Not only will it charge for the services, TeliaSonera said that it plans to charge more for VoIP than it does for other data.

The telco said it will bump prices in Sweden and in its Spanish market, too, in an effort to recoup revenues lost as the free services increasingly encroach on voice and SMS revenues.

"We have been in the forefront stating that while prices for voice will continue to come down there must be a stronger correlation between usage and pricing of data," the company wrote in its interim report. "We have been early in introducing tiered pricing of data, lower costs for data roaming and recently openly communicated that we will start to charge for mobile VoIP."

VoIP and Skype have sometimes faced a tough go in Europe as some operators have looked for ways to make it less appealing to consumers.

In March, A Europen telecom regulator accused telecom companies of routinely using traffic management rules to interfere with VoIP traffic as well as peer-2-peer file sharing.

Data from some 400 European operators--250 fixed and 150 mobile--shows blocking of VoIP calls, especially on mobile networks, is common, according to a study from the Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC).

For more:
- see this article

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CDW's fourth annual Energy Efficient IT Report addresses the question of whether cloud services can help companies save on energy costs. The report, which drew from the results of a 760-person survey, in various positions in non-profit, corporate, school, and government sectors, relayed that 62 percent of those asked thought that cloud computing was an energy-efficient solution for data consolidation. The report states that cloud computing can directly curb emissions, as well as energy costs associated with maintaining office space, by giving employees the freedom to telecommunicate and remotely access data that is otherwise only available at central locales. Hurdles--particularly more knowledge and education--still exists, the report states. Article