SPIRIT DSP announces that Korean Telecom giant KT has licensed the company's TeamSpirit Voice Engine Mobile, an SDK that enables HD VoIP calling on a broad range mobile devices. KT is S. Korea's top fixed-lined operator and the No. 2 mobile carrier in the region.

Internet telephony is Korea's prominent daily communications medium. The VoIP rates are 80 percent cheaper for intercity calls, 20 percent lower for calls to mobile phones and 95 percent cheaper for international calls. According to the Korean Communications Commission, the number of paid Internet telephony subscribers broke the 10 million mark this year.

The TeamSpirit Engine is a SDK for real-time IP calling/conferencing communications, allowing business application developers and service providers to offer superior quality communications products to millions of global users. The TeamSpirit Engine software uniquely combines scalable echo- and noise-free audio with scalable video, a necessary marriage to ensure the highest quality conferencing experience. TeamSpirit enables many hours of battery life in wideband talk mode. The voice engine includes highly optimized standard voice codecs and a patent-free wideband error-resilient scalable SPIRIT IP-MRTM voice codec (IETF RFC 6262). The video engine includes SPIRIT's H.264 scalable video codec that is able to adapt streams to each peer’s network and PC environments without heavy transcoding and it includes a multi-component stream protection module that compensates for network jitter and packet loss.

Acme Packet announces four new customers across southeastern Asia. These incumbent, wireless and competitive service providers rely on Acme Packet’s Net-Net session border controllers to control the delivery of trusted, first-class IP communications to their customers. With these four customers, Acme Packet SBCs are now deployed by over 100 service providers in 19 Asia Pacific countries, ranging from Australia to China and India to Japan.

These new customers have deployed Acme Packet’s Net-Net SBCs at fixed and wireless broadband access borders to support residential and business services. The Net-Net SBCs provide critical control functions, satisfying requirements in five major areas: security, service reach maximization, SLA assurance, revenue and profit protection, and regulatory compliance. Acme Packet’s Net-SAFE security architecture protects service provider VoIP networks, assuring network availability and service uptime, with topology hiding and denial of service protection from malicious attacks and non-malicious overloads.

Acme Packet’s new customers include incumbent and competitive service providers from four countries:

• Packet One Networks, Malaysia’s first and leading WiMAX service provider with the country’s widest WiMAX network, sells VoWiMAX VoIP services, using Acme Packet SBCs to secure, control and quality-assure the WiMAX access border.
• SingTel, Asia’s leading communications company, has deployed Acme Packet’s SBCs as a component of its i-PhoneNet service to deliver secure SIP trunking and hosted voice services for its business customers.
• Suntel, a competitive service provider in Sri Lanka, uses Acme Packet Net-Net SBCs in its next-generation network as well as IMS access networks, to provide hosted IP PBX, PSTN emulation and SIP trunking services to its business customers. Suntel utilizes Acme Packet’s sophisticated QoS monitoring capabilities to proactively monitor and assess quality in their network.
• TOT, the Thailand incumbent service provider, has deployed Acme Packet’s SBCs to provide hosted voice and secure SIP trunking services. TOT uses Acme Packet SBCs to protect the core network and provide interoperability among several endpoints and softswitches.

These new Acme Packet customers reflect a time of increased VoIP adoption in the Asia Pacific region. In a series of May 2010 reports, Infonetics Research forecasted that service providers will invest $4.3 billion in VoIP and IMS equipment from 2010–2014 in order to serve over 100 million residential and business subscribers in 2014 in the Asia Pacific region.

According to IDC, mobile workers will number 1.2 billion by the end of 2010--thanks in part to the growth in VoIP technology.

The driving force behind the growth is the emergy markets of Asia/Pacific and the regions use of unified communications (UC) technologies. According to the analysts, the mobile workforces in the U.S. and Europe have peaked. The U.S. is described as having a highly concentrated mobile workforce, but that by 2013 over 75 percent of workers will be described as mobile in some way--that's 129 million people. Compare that to Asia/Pacific figures, and you'll see why IDC is saying the real action won't be in the U.S. By 2013, about 37 percent of Asia/Pacific workers will be described as mobile, and before you say that percentage sounds smaller, it is actually 734.5 million people!

For more:
- read this report

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Paradial, an IP-communications software developer, has signed an agreement with a major Asian telecom operator, a comprehensive provider of communications services in the region.
The licensing agreement covers Paradial's RealTunnel standards-based firewall and NAT traversal product, which includes STUN, TURN and ICE support.

BroadSoft announces that it is providing the IP voice technology for Samsung Networks residential 070 VoIP service, WyzHome, which was launched in October 2008. Samsung Networks provides a full portfolio of communications services, including network, telephone and digital multimedia services, which leverage the company's global infrastructure. Today's announcement extends BroadSoft's relationship with Samsung Networks, which dates back to 2006. Samsung Networks also uses BroadSoft's BroadWorks VoIP application platform to deliver Hosted PBX and SIP trunking to large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses in South Korea. Samsung Networks has successfully deployed 300,000 seats on the BroadWorks platform.

IMS-compliant BroadWorks provides a comprehensive range of advanced communications and multimedia applications, including Hosted Unified Communications, Hosted Video Communications, Mobile PBX, Business Trunking and residential broadband services fully integrated into a single VoIP application platform.

BroadSoft's Korean branch office was established in 2004, and is responsible for more than 75 percent of business VoIP deployments in Korea. Four of the top five business VoIP service providers and two of the top five residential VoIP service providers have deployed BroadWorks in their networks.

VoIP adoption in South Korea is growing rapidly with the number of VoIP subscribers now amounting to about 12 percent of the total number of fixed-line phone users, according to data gathered by VoIP providers. Yonhap News recently reported South Korea had more than three million VoIP subscribers at the end of February. Adoption is expected to grow rapidly when new telecommunications regulations are passed that make it easier for consumers to keep their existing phone number when switching to VoIP.

XConnect has entered an exclusive agreement with Korea Internet Neutral Exchange to launch a Korean peering federation for IP communications. The new joint venture will provide advanced VoIP and NGN peering capabilities to Korea?s IP communications providers, including mobile, fixed-line, and Web-based service providers and ITSPs. The agreement will also enable inter-federation peering with other initiatives around the globe, such as those formed through XConnect?s Global Alliance and DirectRoute services. Peering will enable Korean operators to exchange calls via IP interconnection, which increases call quality and reduces unnecessary transit costs. Peering also enables these operators to securely offer services that the PSTN cannot carry, such as video and high-definition voice, across network boundaries.

SIP Peering, security, identity management

With all major leading Korean service providers already exchanging IP data packets through its facilities, KINX will use its partnership with XConnect to enable innovative ENUM registry and SIP interconnection services, as well as security and identity management capability, to deliver flexible and policy-based peering.

The full suite of XConnect?s services will be deployed. These services include a multi-lateral interconnect platform, SIP interoperability, and optimized routing via the multi-protocol XConnect directory server, available through both hosted and locally resident options.

Access to other federations will be made available in several forms. International settlement-free peering will be offered through XConnect?s Global Alliance. Federation member providers will also have the option to earn termination revenue from global wholesale carriers through XConnect?s DirectRoute service, and to form separate, customized bilateral peering agreements with their own policies and settlement terms.

The Korean national federation announcement follows XConnect?s development of similar national peering federations in the Netherlands and Brazil.

The chief telecom regulation authority in Bangladesh will cancel the license of any Internet service provider (ISP) found running an illegal VoIP business in the country.

A "zero tolerance policy" is in effect. After raids last week, the authorities shut down one ISP and seized equipment used for the illegal activities 

In February the Bangladesh Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (BTRC) issued three international gateway (IGW) licenses to companies for the purpose of routing international incoming and outgoing calls through VoIP. However, the three IGW operators can't handle the VoIP call volume being generated within and routed to the country, resulting in a booming grey market. About 25 percent of IGW calls are being routed successfully, said one source.

About 11 million minutes of calls go to and from Bangladesh every day, with 90 percent made by expatriates living around the world and calling home. With over 200 authorized ISPs in the country, a little illegal VoIP on the side is quite tempting, especially since they can charge 2.5 cents per minute - undercutting 4 cent rates charged by IGW licensees.

Bangladesh regulators have had a long-running battle to control VoIP within the country. Phone minutes are a good source of revenue for the government.

For more:
- The Daily Star reports on the coming illegal VoIP crackdown in Bangladesh

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