A recent study said that while SIP trunking has seen steady adoption over the past five years, interoperability issues and a lack of standardization have limited its overall adoption and hamstrung service providers from gaining deeper market penetration.

But a new technical initiative from the SIP Forum--SIPconnect-IT--aims to speed up vendor and service provider interoperability with the SIPconnect 1.1 Technical Specification, ratified by the SIP Forum earlier this year.

A series of testing events will help provide application developers, equipment vendors and operators with a platform from which to demonstrate and test implementations of the specification in real-world scenarios.

The first SIPconnect-IT testing event is planned for mid-2012 in Louisville, Colo., and will be hosted by CableLabs.

The ratification of the SIPconnect 1.1 technical recommendation earlier this year was seen as a significant step toward the adoption of a common interoperability specification between SIP-enabled IP-PBXs and service provider networks. It provides a framework for direct IP peering between SIP-enabled enterprises and service provider networks, ensuring the interoperability of network elements across the IP environment and providing best-practices guidelines for vendors and service providers as they develop new equipment and IP applications for deployment.

"SIPconnect-IT represents the next step and is designed to transform these specs into action and to ensure IP applications and infrastructure utilizing the SIPconnect 1.1 guidelines can be implemented in live telecom environments," said Marc Robins, SIP Forum president and managing director.

For more:
- see this release

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8x8 has a birthday. They're now 25 years old. The company has had a lot of transitions, but the core to their business is a patent portfolio that puts things inside real time communications hardware and software. 

Here's a list of their milestones:

With worker mobility becoming a mushrooming problem to deal with for more companies, IP desktop phone provider snom technology is looking to make it easier to provision a business' cell phone fleet.

The company has launched One IP PBX, adding mobility capabilities that extend standard IP PBX calling features to employee's mobile devices, and introducing new management and security features. One IP PBX enables users to integrate mobile phones into an organization's internal telephony platform, which, snom said, should help make the mobile workforce more producticve.

Snom One IP PBX allows cell phones to act as integrated extensions, incorporating call transfers, conferencing, internal extension dialing and other features. It also now supports mobile SIP clients and has had its web-based interface enhanced to make administering the system easier.

The snom One is optimized for all snom phones and provides WAN-based authentication for plug and play with snom 7xx and snom 8xx series phones. It's available as virtual appliances for VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V via a .vhd file, and can be updated via the web interface.

The snom One is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac environments and is equipped with web security through HTTPS and call security through TLS and SRTP. snom ONE supports mixed IPv4/IPv6 LAN and WAN environments and comes with an automatic blacklisting feature that makes it possible to expose public IP addresses.

For more:
- see this release

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RTX is rolling out a new cordless Skype phone that doesn't require a user to be physically connected to a PC to make a VoIP call.

The DUALphone 4088 simply requires a broadband connection to its base station in order to make Skype calls.

The Danish company said its DUALphone 4088 simply requires a broadband connection to its base station in order to make Skype calls free of charge to other Skype users or have the choice of conventional paid-for landline calls worldwide.

The company's CEO, Jesper Mailind, said the phone "offers consumers a unique way to use Skype."

"We believe there is a growing demand for dual phones from the existing 170 million Skype account holders," he said, adding that the phone also will provide a business opportunity for resellers.

Telecom market research firm TeleGeography recently said international use of Skype was increasing, growing 48 percent in 2011, to 145 billion minutes.

The RTX features a color TFT screen and uses of high definition audio. The phone system can switch between two separate Skype accounts and can be extended to four handsets per household. Standard features including call waiting, voicemail and a phone contact list of 200 numbers that have been enhanced by software to show the Skype status of the user and all contacts.

For more:
- see this release

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• "Cell phone as an extension": The snom ONE allows cell phones to act as truly integrated extensions, incorporating call transfers, conferencing, internal extension dialling and other features.
• Broad SIP client support: The snom ONE now supports mobile SIP clients, running on popular platforms such as Android and the iPhone.
• Enhanced management features: The web-based interface has been enhanced to make administering the system even easier and more productive.
• Enhanced remote phone security: snom ONE provides WAN-based authentication for plug and play with snom 7xx and snom 8xx series phones, alleviating the need for users to enter password information and increasing simplicity and security for remote workers.
• Plug and play deployment: The snom ONE is optimized for all snom phones, enabling plug-and-play deployment and provisioning for the snom 3xx, snom 8xx and newly released snom 7xx series desktop phones, as well as other endpoints, including the snom M9 DECT phone, the snom PA1 public address system and the snom MeetingPoint conference phone.
• Virtual appliance: snom ONE is available as virtual appliances for VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V via a .vhd file. This addresses the demand for hardware failover without dropping calls.
• Enhanced Software Update Mechanism: The system can be updated easily via the web interface, alleviating the need to connect to the operating system to perform upgrades.

If you haven't read pal Martin Geddes latest post on the Future of Communications entitled Peak Telecom, you are missing something that is likely either something you have likely said, thought, heard someone say in private or really wished you had. It's a stunningly brilliant piece of writing that leads you to wonder, "what is Martin going to say next" as you read through it.

This post is every bit as important as Alec Saunders 2005 post entitled The Voice 2.0 Manifesto in my opinion as far as laying things out or the famed Pulver Purple Minutes post. It is worthy of your time as it may impact your work or livelihood.

So everyone knows it was Martin who first suggested me and my agency to Nokia back in 2005 to help them decipher "social media" long before many knew what "social media" and blogging was really all about. That led to my development of the Nokia Blogger Relations program, and in turn gave birth to Nokia's Social Media efforts, something I'm now finally allowed to admit after getting permission recently.

It was Martin's clear cut thinking back then that foresaw the changing landscape of how media would impact the mobile world. Now in his post he's laid it all out pinpointing where the changes are coming from, and further pinning the operators into the dumb pipe corner.

With Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iPad continuing to see aggressive adoption by enterprises, it has been no surprise to see UC vendors scramble to get their platforms connected to the device. Add Avaya as the latest entry.

The company has rolled out a secure, next-gen unified communications solution for use on the iPad.

Avaya's Flare Communicator for iPad tablets, which works over either Wi-Fi or 3G networks, extends the Flare Experience currently delivered on the Avaya Desktop Video Device, to include the popular tablet. The free app is currently available for download in Apple's App Store, and Avaya promises it will be rolling out apps for other mobile devices later in 2012.

With the new app, users will be able to view the availability of enterprise associates from the contacts card, launch an instant message, voice call or email with a single tap. It also enables users to manage two simultaneous voice calls while mobile, multi-task on the iPad and access and add contacts to a corporate directory.

Customers with Avaya Aura 6.1 or later can add up to 50 Avaya Aura client access licenses at no cost to connect users to Flare Communicator during an introductory offer through April 30.

Pew Research Center this week said tablet ownership in the U.S. had grown by some 19 percent over the past several weeks, nearly doubling from 10 percent just prior to Christmas. In the September quarter, Apple sold 11.2 million tablets and indications are that Apple will report some 13 million sold last quarter.

Avaya earlier this month introduced a mobile UC app for the Android OS that enables enterprises to use Avaya's IP Office 8.0, including the ability to invite, view, mute and drop participants during a conference call.

The app lets users display their availability and show specific times of availability based on a user's Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Outlook calendar. The app also includes instant messaging, a geopresence display that lets users display their location and visual voicemail.

One-X Mobile Preferred for IP Office builds on Avaya's existing Essential Mobility solution for IP Office, which extends voice capabilities such as one number access and call control.

For more:
- see this release

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