It's all about being local these days. Well, being a multinational corporation that looks local anyway. Luckily, IP communications is here to help. VoIP provider Alteva is offering Canadian companies the appearance of a local U.S. presence using a local number with a hosted VoIP solution.

"This has never been done on an enterprise level," said Mark Marquez, CIO at Alteva in a release. "The demand for international enterprise deployments is growing and we are ready to meet the needs of our multi location customers and expand the global reach of our VoIP and Unified Communications (UC) services worldwide. Alteva will offer porting capabilities to over 70 countries by the end of 2010."

The hosted VoIP solution will offer enterprises lower up front costs, flexibility, scalability and redundancy measures with live failover. The hosted solution also means easy automatic upgrades. The new offering reminds me in some ways of Verizon's recent announcement of their local calling solution for call centers of businesses that want to maintain a local presence.

For more:
- read the release

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VocalTec, a provider of carrier-class multimedia and voice-over-IP solutions, announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Outsmart, a provider of telecommunications convergence solutions.

The Outsmart assets acquired by VocalTec included Outsmart's technology and intellectual property, as well as its primary customer and partner contracts. The company says the engagement by VocalTec of certain Outsmart personnel “is intended to enable the continued development and support and an uninterrupted transition to all Outsmart customers and partners.”

Kineto announced what it claims to be the industry’s first software client that supports both VoLGA (voice over LTE via Generic Access) and IMS voice for LTE handsets.

According to the company, the new client enables handset manufacturers to easily integrate a combined VoLGA/IMS voice client and accelerate LTE handsets to market.

Wireless operators have never placed much value in VoIP, preferring to tout cash cow voice and SMS services. However, recent announcements from Verizon Wireless and Telefonica O2 illustrate that wireless operators are changing their tune. First there was Verizon, which last week highlighted that it was testing VoIP services on its LTE network in Boston. During a trial with Alcatel-Lucent, Verizon Wireless said it successfully made data calls using VoIP to enable voice transmissions over the LTE 4G network. The wireless operator added that it also completed the first LTE 4G data call based on the 3GPP Release 8 standard in Seattle with Ericsson.

But Telefonica O2's German division took the VoIP idea even further. The operator announced that VoIP applications can now be carried on its 3G wireless network, but only in its German market. O2 said subscribers who want to access VoIP applications such as Skype or Fring will have to buy a mobile Internet Pack for around $35.21 per month which includes 200 Mbps of HSPA. While 4G is far from actual mainstream reality, these moves by Verizon and O2 as suggested by Om Malik in his blog, should prove to wireless operators that VoIP is yet another data application that is going to run over their respective IP network.

For more:
- GigaOM has this post
- theunwired.net has this article
- here's the Verizon Wireless release

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There could be 94 million people using VoIP hardware over mobile broadband connections across Europe by 2017, according to new research.
Figures from the Coda Research Consultancy suggest the uptake of mobile broadband will continue to expand significantly. This could potentially change business practices as more people have the option of working from home rather than heading into the office.

INTERVIEW: Telecom carriers are beginning to deploy IMS (IP multimedia subsystem) technology in their networks instead of buying VoIP equipment.
VoIP.biz-news spoke to Mavenir Systems, a provider of converged voice and messaging solutions, about the opportunities and challenges faced in delivering next generation communications.

Alteva, an enterprise hosted VoIP provider, announced Alteva Anywhere, a fixed-mobile convergence offering the company said unifies personal settings across all of a user's fixed and mobile devices without any third-party components. Alteva Anywhere allows users to have one business number that reaches all selected devices simultaneously, to use various business features on any device, and to move calls among devices.

The service also does not require formal integration between service providers and the user's mobile network. It works with all phone types including IP desk phones, soft clients and PSTN devices, the company said, and it's available directly from Alteva or through resellers. 

For more:
- see the press release here 

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Traditional network-based mobile carriers face the real prospect of losing a major slice of their voice traffic and revenue to new non-infrastructure players that use VoIP.
This could mean that within 10 years, more than 50 per cent of mobile voice traffic will be carried using end-to-end VoIP, according to Gartner.