VoIP provider Vonage (NYSE: VG), which saw its income triple in the third quarter, is looking to grow that line by getting more aggressive in its advertising, launching a two-pronged campaign that targets customers who take bundled cable services.

The new campaign is designed to make consumers take a harder look at their cable bill--which has been in the headlines a lot recently as the pay-TV industry has seen subscribers impacted by the economy look to save money by "cutting the cord" to service providers.

The ads question the bottom line for consumers of cable's bundling practice with lines like "Our cable company sure is sneaky," and "This bundle of yours is costing us a fortune." The company said it believed about 70 percent of consumers could save money if they dropped cable's phone service and went with Vonage.

But first, said Vonage VP of marketing Leesa Eichberger, the company has to make consumers aware of what each piece of their cable bill costs them.

"We found that a lot of people are in bundles, but they don't really know what they're paying," said Leesa Eichberger, Vonage VP-marketing. "We wanted to raise that question in consumers' minds."

Vonage, with a subscriber base of 2.4 million, makes about half its revenue from that segment. And it plans to hit its cable competitors right where they live, running the ads on cable channels like ESPN, Discovery and the History Channel.

Analysts say the VoIP market is about 26 million users in the U.S., worth an estimated $14.1 billion this year, and projected to grow to $31.5 in 2016. Cable operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Charter count about 20 million of those users.

For more:
- see this AdvertisingAge article

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IP telephony vendor snom, which increasingly has found itself to be a player in the enterprise space, is introducing a new line of business VoIP phones.

The company said its new 7xx series is designed for both small and mid-sized businesses requiring enterprise-class performance, while keeping costs down.

Snom said the snom 720 and snom 760 business phones combine multiple programmable buttons and standard business functionality of the snom 3xx series with the advanced functionality and Gigabit Ethernet switch found in the snom 8xx series to create an advanced desktop phone at a value-driven price. The new phone, the company said, puts it in with some of the biggest vendors in the industry competing for enterprise business.

"Two years ago we were never in the enterprise space," Mike Storella, COO of the U.S. division of snom Technologies told FierceEnterpriseComunications. "We were in the hosted carrier SMB space. The enterprise players were Avaya, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Mitel (Nasdaq: MITL) and ShoreTel (Nasdaq: SHOR). Now our phones are right in the middle of the fight."

Snom's 300 series has been on the market for about five years. It's been a meat and potatoes device popular with SMBs. Storella said he expects the 700 series to become snom's workhorse.

"We think the sweet spot for business phones is in the $129 to $379 range," he said, which is why the 720 carries an MSRP of $219 and the snom 760 an MSRP of $329 (snom's 300 series starts at $129).

"We believe the snom 720 and 760 should have broad appeal to customers requiring an endpoint that has exceptional design, performance and advanced IP communications features while still retaining the convenience and utility of a traditional business phone," he said.

Both the snom 720 and 760 feature a Gigabit Ethernet switch, automatic provisioning, wireless LAN connectivity and snom's wideband high definition voice quality. Both phones also feature Bluetooth connectivity via optional USB stick, allowing users the freedom to use a compatible Bluetooth headset.

Storella said snom doesn't yet have a video-capable phone, but says the company eventually will offer one as video conferencing becomes more common and the cost of components continues to plunge.

At the moment, he said, snom is focusing on the increasing demand for unified communications.

"A few years ago, all anyone wanted was the ability to have common directories," he said. "That's happened. Now, we're looking at the convergence of all devices so that everything is in sync. When we have standards so that we can interoperate on video, that might be the glue that holds all of that together to make it happen."

For more:
- see this release

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Snom 821 goes Gigabit

Competition in what has become a hot session border control (SBC) market grew fiercer in the second quarter of 2011, according to new research, with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) entering the market and quickly nabbing a 4 percent share.

Overall, said Dell'Oro Group, "carrier IP telephony" market revenues grew 10 percent in the second quarter, compared with the previous quarter, but were flat on a year-to-year basis.

But, said the researcher in its Carrier IP Telephony Report, declines in media gateway and softswitch revenues offset the high growth experienced by the voice application server (VAS) and SBC markets.

VAS revenues in the second quarter were up more than 15 percent. Dell'Oro said the growth was due, in large part, to service providers' increased deployment of hosted business services.

But the SBC market showed the biggest bump, with nearly 40 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. That growth, said Dell'Oro, has attracted new vendors, like Alcatel-Lucent, to the sector.

Genband, which this week won a price reduction for bankrupt telephone equipment maker Nortel's CVAS business (see related story), maintained its revenue share lead in the wireline voice core market, while Ericsson remained No. 1 in wireless voice core.

For more:
- see this release

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Report: Enterprise VoIP drove wireline NGN resurgence

VoIP is spreading from the fixed-line world to the mobile world. Usage is on the rise creating significant opportunity for mobile VoIP gateway equipment suppliers as expenditures in this space are expected to soar beyond the $6 billion mark in 2015, says In-Stat.

fring announced the rollout of its network-optimized DVQ mobile video calling technology. The company’s proprietary DVQ (dynamic video quality) technology adjusts video bit rate and frame rate according to the specific device to match current network bandwidth during a call, delivering the best possible video picture quality for available bandwidth between call peers.

Dell'Oro Group reported that the Unified Communications market expanded to its highest level since 2008 in the third quarter this year. Strong second half seasonality helped offset weakness in Europe as the Unified Communications market expanded 7 percent sequentially.

Traffic upswing in the mobile VoIP sector in China is expected to exceed 100 percent annually till 2014, according to Research and Markets’ recently released "China Sourcing Report: VoIP Products 2010" report.

The latest figures released by analyst firm MZA have shown that the Corded PBX market (excluding Micro PBX products) increased by 16% in Q2 2010 compared to Q2 2009 at a global level. Avaya continued to lead the world PBX market, growing market share from 13% in Q1 2010 to 15% in Q2 2010.

According to the recent report "The Future of Consumer VoIP" by Research and Markets, it is important to distinguish between a profitable business that successfully sells VoIP services and a profitable VoIP business. The report shows that the most profitable over-the-top VoIP providers are those that quickly leveraged their success into building their own networks.

Vonage has just introduced the Vonage Mobile application for Facebook, a new service that allows users to make free mobile calls to all of their Facebook friends who have the app, anywhere in the world, directly from their friends list.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, European Videoconferencing Endpoints Market, finds that the market earned revenues of $383.6 million in 2009 and estimates this to reach $1.03 billion in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 18.0 per cent.

VoIP penetration among US businesses will increase rapidly over the next few years, reaching 79% by 2013, compared to 42% at the end of 2009, reports In-Stat. This penetration reflects companies having a VoIP solution deployed in at least one location.

Infonetics Research released its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report, which tracks business and residential/SOHO voice over IP services and includes a North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix that analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the VoIP business services market.

The report shows that demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow even as spending in other communication areas tightens. For the first half of 2009, the worldwide VoIP services market grew to $20.7 billion. Residential VoIP services remain healthy, comprising the majority of worldwide VoIP services revenue, and subscribers are up 14% from the end of 2008.

Our sister publication FierceTelecom got an interview with Verizon Business president Fran Shammo this week that touched on a number of relevant topics, including the division's hosted VoIP business, security plays, and overall business communications services spending. Shammo sees strong growth in the hosted VoIP business, and he said while business services volumes are decreasing and equipment purchases are down, the focus on cost savings has opened discussions in other areas of Verizon Business' markets. 

For more:
- see the full interview here

Average selling prices in the UC desktop market, which has been holding steady over the past six months, dropped slightly in Q1 2009.
This weakening indicates the growing competitive nature of the industry, according to the authors of a Synergy Research Group report on the global market for collaborative applications.

The IP telephony endpoint market will be affected by the economic downturn - despite the fact an increasing number of enterprises are recognizing the benefits of both IP desktop phones and enterprise soft clients.
That's the conclusion of Melanie Turek, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, which has just released its latest global study of the sector's enterprise market.

Research and consulting firm The Radicati Group released a study today predicting the hosted unified communications market will generate $2.3 billion in revenue in 2009, a number that will jump to nearly $5 billion by 2013. The report, entitled "Hosted Unified Communications Market, 2009-2013," breaks out revenues by vendor and region.

The report--which analyzes providers including AT&T, Microsoft, DoCoMo and Skype--predicts growth will occur in the small business market, where entrepreneurs will increasingly switch to hosted offerings to simplify deployments and maintenance.

The Radicati Group's report comes on the heels of two other studies on the hosted UC market, one from Infonetics and the other from Frost and Sullivan, that predict similarly robust growth for the sector. 

For more:
- see the press release here 

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Sprint announced today the availability of its new unified communications solutions through its Business Markets Group. In promoting the new offerings, Sprint trumpeted its partnerships with Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and others and its "leadership in wireless-wireline integration."

As part of the release, Sprint announced it is can offer SIP trunking and mobile integration with Cisco's Unified Communications Manager, IBM's SameTime Unified Telephony platform, and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2.

"Enabling unified communications is a cornerstone of Sprint's strategy to serve the rapidly evolving and increasing demands of the business and government market via our dependable Now Network," said Paget Alves, president of the carrier's Business Markets Group, in a release. "Our customers operate in a complex environment, but they need just the opposite in their communications experience. We are converging wireless and wireline technologies into an unprecedented user experience that is fully mobile, flexible, feature-rich, simplified and cost-efficient."

In the release, Sprint also touted the $6 million it has saved using the unified communications solutions internally.

Sprint's Business Markets Group is a significant revenue driver for the company, as the group provided almost $4 billion in revenue in the first quarter.

For more:
- see the press release here
- see the Business Markets Group earnings results release here 

Related article
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Microsoft is to ban apps that enable VoIP services over carriers' networks from its Windows MarketPlace for Mobile store when it launches in the second half of this year.
The VoIP app restriction is among the 12 application types forbidden in a list of "rules" announced by Microsoft.

LG-Nortel has responded to an expected doubling of IP phone penetration in businesses this year by launching a new line of desktop IP Phones.
Geared towards business users and carrier-hosted VoIP services, JD An, vice president, Enterprise Solutions at LG-Nortel, said the IP Phone 8800 series had been designed to meet rising demand for IP phone solutions from enterprises.

One of the US's largest providers of VoIP solutions, Cypress Communications, is to announce shortly that it is expanding operations into Europe and the Middle East.
After more than 20 years providing managed communication solutions to clients across the States, the Atlanta, Georgia-based company is to extend its network internationally.

As Skype says, so Skype does.  The company has made arrangements to embedded its software on Nokia's newest devices and get a "screen" on the Sony-Ericsson Xperia X1 phone.

Skype's announcements at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain are fulfillment of an objective announced at CES and other venues to have its client pre-loaded and integrated onto handsets to provide better ease-of-use and market penetration. Downloading and working with a client not integrated into a handset is seen as a hurdle to further penetration; if users have to download it and then have to hunt for it on their phones, it is more of a headache. Skype wants seamlessness to the communications experience.

Nokia has agreed to integrate Skype into its devices, starting with the Nokia N-series and the N97 "flagship" device.  The N97 will incorporate Skype in the third quarter of 2009, with Skype as a part of the address book of the phone, enabling presence, IM, and voice calls. Users will be able to see when Skype contacts are online, IM them, launch free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, and use the client to make low-cost Skype-Out calls.

On the other hand, Skype is one of a bunch of new panels added to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 phone over the past two weeks. Users can customize the X1 user interface, bringing the apps and content they want to their active desktop.  Skype's panel brings up Skype on the X1 and provides the functionality you'd expect - IM, presence, and calling.

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The IP phone market is actually a tale of two drastically different markets- business and consumer.
The former is thriving and the latter is diverging in a drastically different direction, according to In-Stat.

i2Telecom has announced that its MyGlobalTalk service is now available for the Symbian S60 operating system.
The service has just been approved for inclusion on Android's Marketplace and has been submitted for approval on the iPhone App Store.

VoIP in India is very hopeful and is witnessing a number of players. This is being said across plausible internet sources and is now supported by the thoughts of Yusuf Motiwala, CEO, TringMe.
TringMe's range of diverse services: Call Widget, Mobile VoIP and use of web-based messengers, has won them a strong consumer base in the last 2 years.
biz-news.com blogger correspondent Jolsna Rajan spoke with Yusuf Motiwala about TringMe's success, its ongoing initiatives and a lot about the status and outlook of VoIP market in India.