Time Warner Cable has decided its time to leave Sprint's services behind and strike out on its own with voice service. While cable companies have long had wholesale agreements with certain carriers, as competition heats up some are looking for ways to bring these lucrative services in house.

A report by Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research revealed that Sprint's contract with Time Warner Cable "equates to about $5 per subscriber per month in unadjusted earnings, or about $249 million a year." TWC has over 4 million subscribers using the Sprint system for digital voice service.

Time Warner Cable spokesman Justin Venech would not confirm the exact date when this transition will be completed or what TWC pays Sprint for this service, but some sources say it will be within the next four years. "It improves our economics, but it will take several years to complete," Venech said.

For more:
- see FierceTelecom article
- see the FierceCable article
- see this Zacks.com article

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Synergy Research Group released their newest report describing the market share break down of the VoIP markets and showing what's been driving the carrier VoIP market.

In "Carrier VoIP Q4 2009 and YE 2009 market shares," Synergy reveals that the market for Carrier VoIP totalled $10 billion in 2009. While traditionally the migration of old PSTN lines to VoIP was the main driver of Carrier VoIP, Synergy found that further growth was added by Mobile Operators seeking the Capex and OpEx benefits of IP. "Mobile deployments for Carrier VoIP have made a serious impact on market sizes and market players for the VoIP Media Gateway market," says the release. 

As for market share, Synergy saw GENBAND as the leader of the pack for Media Gateways with 22 percent followed by Huawei with 15 percent. When GENBAND acquires Nortel CVAS its market share will be twice its nearest competitor. In the IMS VoIP market, Synergy saw Alcatel-Lucent as the leader with 47 percent of the market share. Ericsson followed Alcatel-Lucent with Huawei nipping at its heels.

For more:
- read the release

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Looks like Skype is seeing some growing pains. A few weeks ago it was revealed that Skype is responsible 12 percent of international voice calls--so it's no wonder the company might be experiencing some issues rising to that scale.

VoIP Watch noted from one of his contacts that Skype had become unavailable once again on Sunday. According to the Skype site, some users were having trouble "opening Payment In Client window, making a call to Online number, making a purchase or using any other service." Users may have also seen an error message like "Internal error" on the web or "Check your connection" in their Skype Client. The company is currently investigating the issue. It does not seem like the problems were widespread.

Just last week, Skype users experienced issues logging in to Skype. Those who had logged in before the outage had no problem using the service, but those who tried to log in during the outage could not. 

For more:
- here's the VoIP Watch page
- here's the Skype page

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Remote call forwarding for enterprises with local business branches might become a thing of the past. Verizon Business, today, announced a new service called Verizon VoIP Inbound with Local Originations.

The new voice-over-Internet-protocol service from Verizon allows businesses to create a local face using a local phone number that can direct overflow calls as needed to off-site (centralized) call centers adding a new level of personalization to businesses handling customer calls. "Enterprises may want to demonstrate that they have a local presence even though they use contact centers," explained Alla Reznik, Director of Global Contact Centers for Verizon in an interview with FierceVoIP.

Generally prior to this new service, companies would use the same toll-free number for all their branches, and if a company wanted to have a local number presence they had to employ a work around using remote call forwarding to route to a toll-free number and call center. "Remote call forwarding has been used very widely, to the point where managers didn't realize how inefficient it is," said Reznik. With the old remote call forwarding, enterprise customers must design the route, pay for local calls, pay for the toll free charges as well as other charges.

Additionally, the new service integrates with Verizon IP Interactive Voice Response, can deliver customer calls to either traditional or IP-based contact centers, and by being a network solution it can stay up in the event of local network outages.

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Reliability. Security. Scalability. Quality. These are the reasons why enterprise UC offerings are here to stay. A great take from a No Jitter blogger.

According to a recent independent study conducted by Telegeography, about 12 percent of international calls are made on Skype! While international calling growth has slowed, Skype calling growth increased. The report states that Skype's international calling traffic was 54 billion minutes in 2009 having grown 63 percent since 2008.

The Telegeography report revealed that annual international telephone calling only grew by about 8 percent. "The volume of traffic routed via Skype is tremendous," said TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert in the release. "Skype is now the largest provider of cross border communications in the world, by far." With even more options and Skype competitors on the horizon, one can only imagine what these numbers will look like this time next year.

For more:
- read the release

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Apple stock hit an all time high, over $200 this week. But that's just the financial story. What is really impressive is how well Apple is faring in purchase popularity in every category they compete it.

In phones.

In the desktop and laptop categories, when you consider how much more expensive their products are vs. the Windows boxes, you realize just how well they are doing.

Apple is doing this well because their products work. They look good and the require very little support. One has to also wonder how they are doing with the accessories like mice/mouse, WiFi routers (I have yet to find a consumer product that is as solid as the Airport Extreme and Airport Express for travel) or monitors.

Bottom line. Apple's demand and sell through is increasing.

According to Maine's attorney general, the state will get a small chunk from the $3 million multistate settlement with Vonage that was announced last week.

Thirty one other states were part of the $3 million settlement due to customer complaints over three main issues: the difficulty of canceling service; a requirement to have a high-speed broadband line to access the service; and the definition of "free" services, including money back guarantees and trial service periods. Most of the $3 million will go to the state governments to pay for legal fees dealing with the settlement. Vonage will also refund customers claiming to be affected by the alleged problems, but the cost of those refunds will not be determined until customers come foward and Vonage begins making the refunds.

For more:
- read this article

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• Prophecy Interactive Voice Response and Unified Self Service platform helps enterprises and service providers automate their most common customer and employee interactions via phone, SMS, IM, Twitter, mobile web and more.
• VoiceObjects Application Server helps enterprises and service providers design, create, deploy, manage, and analyze personalized self-service applications.
• Micromethod VoIP platforms and solutions help enterprises and service providers deploy highly-scalable, customizable infrastructure for VoIP solutions.
• IMified technology delivers a web service that enables applications to interact with any text messaging network, including SMS, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Avaya announced that it has secured approval for its acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions division under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act as well as from Canadian Competition Bureau.

Avaya's acquisition of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions division at first met a series of approvals from a U.S. Bankruptcy court judge and a Canadian court judge for the $915 million deal, but then more authorities got involved. Canadian authorities placed the deal under review, citing a provision in the "Investment Canada Act" that requires review of all foreign investments in Canadian companies exceeding $286 million. The deal could now close as early as December 7.

Meanwhile, Nortel has continued to launch product upgrades and improvements to keep its current VoIP customers happy. At Supercomm, the beleaguered communications vendor launched the CS2000a, an upgrade to its Communication Server 2000.

For more:
- read the release

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Client Voxygen took the raps off something I've known about for quite some time at eComm yesterday. It's a Voice 2.0/next generation "click to call" application that has the all the trappings of a winner according to pal Alec Saunders.

What makes the app so special is how the application gathers up data from the web site and mashes up that information, triggers a call and then presents it to the call center agent. That's one smart app.

When you look at the direction voice and actual informational data are heading, you start to realize how limited most of what we have being deployed today is. This app from Voxygen and others along the same lines from Mr. Mashup Thomas Howe, client IfByPhone, Ribbit and others shows me that the surface is just being scratched and that in 2010 we'll begin to see a whole lot more.

While Sprint reported wireline revenues of $1.4 billion were down 10 percent year-over-year because of decreases in voice and legacy data services, the IXC's Internet revenues were up 5 percent due in part to increased wholesale VoIP service demand.

Sprint's third quarter Internet revenues were up 5 percent from the third quarter of 2008 and flat sequentially. Sprint claimed the year-over-year increase was from demand for its Global MPLS services as well as demand from cable operators in need of wholesale VoIP service. At the end of the third quarter, Sprint reported it is supporting 4.9 million users of their cable partners VoIP services. While traditional voice declined 14 percent, customers continued to migrate to IP-based services. 

For more:
- read the release here

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Cedar Point, an integrated VoIP switching technologies provider, announced a next generation solution geared towards cable MSOs and network service providers. The company argues the new solution will help service providers deploy PacketCable 2.0 and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-based networks faster and more cost-effectively to deliver carrier-class residential and business communications services. In addition, the solution reduces the number of network elements necessary to launch Packet Cable 2.0 and IMS.

The offering also includes Cedar Point's SafariFusion AP software which combines voice, video and data to provide an integrated user experience for the deployments immediately. The new offering is designed to "combine network elements, simplify application development and leverage the capabilities of existing equipment--all in an effort to make it cost-efficient for operators to deploy high-quality next-generation services," according to Mark Tubinis, CTO of Cedar Point Communications.

For more:
- read the release

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I do love GoGo's inflight service, even if they are blocking VoIP. On my "up the state" commute, three times this week, I've actually used it only once first due to a lack of the in seat power ( it was a defective outlet) on my Virgin America flight on Thursday, and my error in grabbing my uncharged Mac Book Air, but today I used it almost non-stop once we hit the required altitude.

For me, the airplane is an extension of my work life. I chatted with Karl Good, Truphone's Director of Consumer apps who I found was working on something on a Sunday about his recent Android release then tapped away with eComm mind-behind Lee Dryburgh and caught up on some exciting news that will be forthcoming regarding some topics and speakers.

Of course I also did the requisite email checking, mailing and web surfing, but most of all I actually sat back and read a book.

Here's the net net. The peace of mind, knowing I can be in touch vs. out of touch makes the $5.95 cost for GoGo on a short hop a pleasure. Add to that the in-seat power keeps my Air nice and charged, ready for a morning of breakfast, some fresh air and a view of the Bay from where I will be most of the day working away before meeting up with friends in SF.

NetTALK, makers of the pocket-sized TK6000 VoIP device, announced it has brought in $1.1 million in funding from Midtown Partners & Co.

"The proceeds of this new funding will further implement the ongoing development and expansion of the TK6000 Telecommunications VOIP Network and products," Anastasios Kyriakides, chairman of netTALK, said in a press release.

Officially launched in July and just recently taken public, netTALK offers free calls within the US and Canada with the one-time purchase of the TK6000, which lists at $99. Requiring no computer--just a high-speed internet hook-up and a regular analog telephone--the service provides a low-cost portable VoIP option for basically the price of Internet service, after the initial device purchase. It's designed to be brought anywhere customers have an broadband Internet connection, according to the company.

For more:
- read this press release

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Microblogging company Twitter confirmed that it raised additional capital last week in a funding round led by T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners rumored to be worth $100 million. The company did not disclose the amount of the funding nor the valuation it received however.

The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch said the round valued the company at around $1 billion, a significant increase from the $255 million valuation it was assigned in its last funding round, which took place earlier this year.

Twitter is still yet to generate revenue, but its user base is growing rapidly. Many different ideas for how the service will earn money have been floated, including running targeted ads. But it still remains to be seen if Twitter can provide a return on the significant investments that it has received. 

For more:
- see the Wall Street Journal article here
- see the CNET post on the story here 

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Snom 870 SIP phones are getting an HD audio boost from SPIRIT DSP's TeamSpirit Voice Engine Embedded, according to a TMC report. Licensing the SPIRIT technology allows snom devices to provide wideband audio even to users on overloaded networks, according to the company.

The companies said the including the SPIRIT technology in the snom 870 phones assures that enterprise communications have the highest possible quality, by providing HD call quality and cutting-edge IP telephony features. Snom launched the 870 in June in North America, after rolling it out first in Europe.

For more:
- see the TMC report here 

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ShoreTel will serve as Skype's first partner in its Skype for SIP play, which will try to take share in the SMB market. ShoreTel's 11,000 enterprise customers now can sign up for a beta version of the Skype for SIP offering, which allows incoming Skype calls to be routed over a company's PBX and allows outbound calls to be made at normal Skype rates.

Skype is hoping the cost savings from being able to make Skype calls into and out from small businesses will open a new revenue stream in this market, where it has yet to develop significant traction. Since the test program is free of any up-front charges, it is likely to see good trial numbers as small enterprises search for ways to save money during the recession. The companies did not announce what sort of incentive ShoreTel received from Skype to facilitate the arrangement, but access to Skype's more than 400 million customers certainly didn't hurt matters. 

For more:
- see the GigaOm article on the announcement here 

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CounterPath, an enterprise unified communications vendor, is taking a different approach to the market segment and offered alternative ways to drive ROI with UC solutions. There is a lot of skepticism around the ultimate utility and value around UC deployments, a fact John Craig, director of enterprise unified communications for CounterPath, readily admits.

"The productivity benefit has been relatively overstated, and it's probably a horses*** argument altogether," Craig said. "There isn't a CIO in the world that's going to deploy UC based a productivity benefit, but in this recessionary environment, if you want to take that and turn it into a hard cost savings, focus the deployment on climbing into the client's skin a little bit. Take the internal productivity benefit and face it out to customers."

Craig offered a hypothetical hospitality environment where guests would receive a SMS message upon arrival that would allow them to login to the hotel's system, receiving RSS feeds about events in the hotel, deals and offers, and updates on their room if it was not ready immediately. He said this system would also allow the customer to customize their profile and contact settings, so the enterprise didn't overbear and discourage use of the system.

In other areas, Craig said the company was seeing success deploying its mobile UC client on Nokia dual-mode devices in Europe, and would be more profitable if partner Nortel wasn't bankrupt.

Craig also said he sees trouble ahead for VoIP and UC, as the industry is in a "race to zero very quickly," due to mobile network advances around LTE.

"After the LTE revolution, what's a VoIP phone?" Craig said. "It will just be a data radio and a SIP client, which doesn't bode well for people selling those solutions."

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LOS ANGELES - Marc Robins, managing director of the SIP Forum, said the advocacy and awareness group's mission is evolving now that nearly every service provider and vendor has some sort of SIP solution or offering on the market. Robins said the SIP Forum, which currently has 48 paying members, 5 academic partners and 6,500 individual registrants, is now most concerned with interoperability challenges.

"The first challenge was to get it adopted, and that is battle is over," Robins said. "SIP is everywhere, and the new battle cry is for interoperability, while you must instantly recognize that it's a complex problem."

Robins said that, similar to other standards, SIP has growing pains from vendors designing workable solutions from a common standards document that don't federate.

"We've got 150 RFCs and a similar number of drafts, which is great, because there is a lot of interest and development around the protocol," Robins said. "But it's difficult when companies' build on different solutions, which all are correct but don't interoperate. When Company A uses option 1, and Company B uses option 2, something weird will happen, from outright call failure to bad QoS. What the forum does right now is look for the major pain points."

Robins said SIP trunking, the forum's lead application, is the first to be addressed through the SIP Forum's SIP Connect initiative. He said Version 1.0 has been ratified and that Version 1.1 is being developed currently with a target delivery date of the end of 2009. 

For more:
- here's a link to the SIP Forum's IT EXPO announcements 

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Yankee Group VoIP analyst Zeus Kerravala thinks the session border controller (SBC) market will see significant expansion as enterprises deploy SIP trunking solutions, cloud services and VoIP networks that integrate with public networks, according to a research note at No Jitter. Zerravala wrote that SBC manufacturers stand to gain the most from additional SIP deployments, as an SBC would allow the enterprise to move the network "edge" into the SIP hosting provider's cloud.

He also noted that SBCs would allow enterprise-to-enterprise communications that currently access the PSTN network to bypass it and do direct VoIP calling. SBCs can handle voice security better than traditional firewalls and other security equipment because they can handle bidirectional communications traffic, according to the report.

For more:
- see the article on No Jitter here 

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It looks like VoIP is really starting to go mainstream and while Apple plays footsie with the regulators, Google is coming out full bore embracing VoIP on the Android.

A quick read of the official Google blog says so. But other than SiPDroid and a Gizmo client attempt, nothing really is there yet that does the trick over WiFi.

The other thing is 3G. As noted earlier, 3G voice is good if you want to be standing still, but in motion, it leaves a lot to be desired. That's why in my view alot of this is part of the game of getting ready for LTE by saying..."look here. We're ready for you..."

Catharine Trebenick, senior research analyst at Avian Securities, is holding onto her theory that Sonus is still in the hunt for Nortel's VoIP division, maintaining Sonus continues to be "aggressively pursuing" Nortel's VoIP assets. In fact, Trebenick argues that Sonus' recent job cuts may even be tied to its pursuit of Nortel's VoIP division. "We believe [Sonus'] latest round of North American layoffs may be attributed to [Sonus] seeking Nortel's VoIP assets in addition to [Sonus'] relocation of organizational functions such as R&D to India."

Avian's claims follows reports that Nortel will launch an $800 million stalking horse bid for its VoIP division. Samih Elhage, president of Nortel's Carrier VoIP and Applications Solutions unit was quoted in Canada's Financial Post as saying that "we are very close to getting a stalking-horse bid, which will provide clarity on the situation."

But even if Sonus becomes the victor, Trebenik added that Sonus would have to get outside help to integrate the division into its company.

Of course, Sonus will have company if it does make a move. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), while losing out to Ericsson in its fight for Nortel's LTE and CDMA assets, could still launch a bid as could Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson. In the event NSN becomes the victor, Trebenick believes the company would divvy up the assets and possibly sell off the media gateway elements to a vendor such as Genband. Genband previously purchased NSN's media gateway product set last year and is under a five year contract to provide media gateways to NSN.

For more:
- Cable Digital News has this analysis

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Etisalat, a U.A.E.-based telco with a large footprint in the Middle East and Africa, announced it has chosen Alcatel-Lucent to deploy a unified communications and VoIP system in the telco's offices throughout the region. The company said the deployment would enable 10,000 IP endpoints in eight main sites, as well as 3,500 users of Alca-Lu's My Instant Communicator UC solution.

Etisalat chief marketing officer Essa Al Haddad said in a release that Alca-Lu's solution would help Etisalat employees collaborate and be more productive.

The deal should generate significant equipment and services revenue for Alca-Lu, given the scope of Etisalat's organization and number of licenses the telco is purchasing. The installation also gives Alca-Lu a footprint into the region, which could generate more sales if the Etisalat deployment delivers. Alca-Lu also recently signed a 10-year agreement with HP to develop IP telephony solutions, which could provide future UC products to the Etisalat as well.

For more:
- see the press release here 

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Global Crossing announced it is extending its local VoIP service to four additional European countries, both providing access to the countries for its enterprise and carrier customers, according to the company. Global Crossing's VoIP Local Service is now available in Greece, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.

The company said its IP interconnect minutes are up 58 percent year-over-year, demonstrating the strong market response to its telephony offering, according to a company release. As part of the announcement, Global Crossing said customers in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Spain can now access national numbers that reduce international calling rates. 

For more:
- see the company's press release here 

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New York legislators are going to get a good old country whippen, if they're not carful. Talk about bait and switch. Wow.

Every month New Yawkers shell out .70 cents on their cell phone bill (and that's going up to $1.20 soon) per mobile number to support 911 services, so you would think the money would go to improve the 911 service that motorists call.

WRONG.

Read the Buffalo News story and see the latest example of "highway robbery" in one of the nation's biggest states.

Fonolo, makers of the "Deep Dialing" IVR bypass system, announced it will begin offering a hosted version of the service for enterprises who want to improve customer interactions while saving on call center expenses. The company said the service will allow businesses to streamline their IVR systems and improve call handling efficiency by making their menus available to customers.

The Deep Dialing feature maps the IVR menus of large corporations, allowing users to find the exact number for the department they're trying to reach without having to interact with the automated menu system. The user then clicks on the number, and Fonolo calls the customer and connects them with the desired number.

As part of today's announcement, the feature will no longer require registration and can be accessed directly from the company's home page, free of charge. Fonolo also added a feature called "Quick Tones," which lets users save numbers they routinely have to enter on IVR menus, such as account numbers and frequent flyer IDs.

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Nortel announced Wednesday the availability of version 6.0 of its Communication Server 1000, which it said uses 40 percent less power than competitive models. The company also stressed that the release includes "greater centralization of functions that can further help enterprises to reduce the total cost of ownership of their network solution," a statement even murkier than the telecom equipment giant's future.

The new release did add support for the IBM x3350 and Dell R300 rack servers, and said it updated the media gateway and unified communications portions of the offering, though the release was also short details about what exactly is new and improved in this launch.

Kevin Tolly, founder of independent testing company The Tolly Group, said he performed hands-on testing in June with the Nortel CS 1000 6.0 and the Cisco 7835 and found that the Nortel offering used 40 percent less energy. A separate analyst, Jim Sinopoli, an energy-efficiency expert, said "every component of the Nortel configuration is more energy efficient than the comparable Cisco equipment. 

For more:
- see the press release here 

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Dan York, best practices chair of the VoIP Security Alliance and an admitted Skype advocate, is not impressed with the VoIP giant's product strategy, according to a recent blog post he wrote regarding Skype's 4.1 for Windows announcement last week. He said the inability for his Mac Skype client to talk to users on another operating system, such as Windows or Linux, makes it hard to get enthused about new updates to Skype's software.

"Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Skype fan," York wrote. "It's open for me all the time and I have something like 40+ group chats (IM) open at any time for various projects and teams. But Skype's continued belief in a fragmented, fractured, siloed platform-specific product strategy is still a path of monumental stupidity, in my opinion."

York expressed his desire for the next full release of Skype to enable interoperability amongst operating systems and to also coordinate the release across the multiple OSs on which Skype operates. He's been talking about the lack of interoperability for some time, and you can take a look at an earlier article on York's position here. 

For more:
- see the full article here on Dan's Disruptive Telephony blog 

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Apparent Networks, an IT performance manager focusing on cloud applications, conducted a survey of IT managers that found VoIP is the most likely application type to have deployments delayed due to third-party network concerns. Seventy-three percent of the survey respondents also said VoIP was the most common application to stress their networks.

Of the IT managers surveyed who said they delayed an application deployment (36 percent), 61 percent said they had delayed a VoIP application. Unified communications and video delivery applications were the next two most commonly cited for delays in deployment. 

For more:
- see the press release here

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Alcatel-Lucent's Market Advantage Program released results of a global study of how the recessionary climate is affecting consumer spending on specific telecommunications services that surprisingly found consumers much less likely to cut back on landline spend than either free or paid VoIP services. Seventy-four percent of the 3,200 respondents said they considered their landline telephone an "essential network-based service" they would not reduce spending on due to economic pressure. Only 32 percent of participants said the same for their paid VoIP service. As you would expect, respondents said they were less likely to cut back on free VoIP services, as 48 percent considered them essential.

While the number of landline telephones globally dwarfs the paid VoIP extension total, the results of the Alca-Lu survey do call into question the value proposition of VoIP, at least in terms of how integral consumers consider it. It's a question VoIP service providers need to be asking, as nearly two-thirds of participants planned on cutting spending on network services in 2009, according to the survey.

Despite all the noise over threats of landline loss due to mobile substitution and free VoIP alternatives, this survey suggests global consumers might not be in any rush to cut the cord. 

For more:
- see the press release and results explanation here

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I've been trying to come up with a name for the cool, pocket size WiFi hotspot creators that are rapidly coming to market, starting with the Novatel Wirless MiFis (of which I now have both CDMA and GSM version-unlocked to boot).

Then it hit me..the term is POCKETSPOT. I claim first use of the term, even though you will find the term used in photography for a small spotlight to light a very discreet amount of space, I've yet to see the term used in relation to the MiFi like device .

Empirix, an IP communications testing company, announced Empirix Testing as a Service, which is designed as a way for large contact centers to validate the performance of their voice services and the quality of the user experience while using a "pay as you go" model. The new service uses Empirix's Hammer testing technology and the company's expertise in addressing contact center performance issues to provide custom solutions that fit the organization's specific testing needs.

"In today's economic climate, customer retention is critical and therefore businesses need to ensure that their contact centers are delivering the highest level of customer service possible," Daniel Hong, lead analyst of Datamonitor's Customer Interaction Technologies team, said in a release. "Empirix Testing as a Service is an economically palatable on-demand solution that identifies potential issues before they can negatively impact the customer experience - and as a result helps protect revenue."

The Testing as a Service product, which is available immediately, can address interoperability issues in multi-vendor environments, check for performance compliance and help with migration from TDM to IP telephony. The company claims the service sets itself apart due to its ability to replicate real-world, peak-use scenarios around the specific functions of individual call centers. 

For more:
- see the Empirix press release here 

Related article
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Responding to some customers' price sensitivity, Verizon Business is rolling out a stripped-down version of its cloud-based Web Center contact center service that lowers the cost per agent by around 50 percent, according to the company. The new Web Center Voice offering does not come with some of the advanced non-voice features of the full product, such as e-mail, chat, Web callback and recording, but still features IVR support, VoIP access and CRM software, among other features.

Verizon Business said the Web Center Voice is aimed at start-up businesses and those that don't require the set of multimedia functions the full Web Center product has. Web Center Voice will cost between $75 and $125 per month per agent, depending on the feature set and the size of the specific enterprise.

For more:
- see the bmighty.com article here
- see the Verizon Business article here 

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Verizon Business boosts hosted IP Centrex

Today's report by the Dell'Oro group that carrier IP telephony revenues were down 25 percent in the first quarter is just the latest in a long line of negative reports for companies in this space. The carrier market started slipping in the second quarter of 2008 and has still not seen an upswing. Some reports don't see a rebound in the market until 2011 when global sales are expected to increase due to growth in developing markets. Enterprises are retrenching and delaying upgrades to their communications equipment and services in the process, making revenue growth seem elusive in the interim.

So what are vendors and service providers to do during the lull in spending? Are there viable alternatives to cost cutting and headcount reductions while waiting for the Great Recession to end?

The glimmer of hope in the Dell'Oro report came from sales of session border controllers and SIP trunking equipment and services. Frost and Sullivan also estimated the SIP trunking market will bring in twice as much revenue as hosted PBXs by 2012. Another report from Infonetics in March saw IMS revenues climbing. As enterprises delay cap ex, hosted services and cloud computing options have shown potential to drive revenue growth as well, but companies haven't offered many hard numbers about the uptake of these services.

One notable trend that could be attributed to the market downswing is an increased focus on high-level partnerships and reselling agreements. HP and Alca-Lu's deal today is expected to drive billions of dollars in revenues, at least by the companies themselves. HP and Microsoft also announced a major partnership around UC in the past month, and Cisco released a statement saying that UC and collaboration would jointly comprise a $34 billion market opportunity. Another buzz word and potential revenue driver is HD voice, which many industry watchers think could revitalize the VoIP industry entirely.

Perhaps a blended approach of new technologies and offerings can revitalize the space, or the economy begins climbing sooner than expected and brings IP telephony revenues with it. Either way, we'll be keeping an eye out for "green shoots" in the IP communications space through this rainy early summer in D.C., even though reports are rather bleak at the moment.

- Pete
@fiercevoip

The carrier IP telephony market got hammered in the first quarter, as recessionary forces dragged down revenues about 25 percent compared to Q1 2008, according to a report by analyst firm Dell'Oro Group. The report attributed the decline to a mix of seasonal weakness, the global recession and resulting cap ex pullbacks, and wireless substitution.

The report also found that vendors with a global presence fared better than those who rely heavily on the U.S. market. Though the sector dipped as a whole, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and Nokia Siemens gained share, while Cisco, Nortel and Sonus Networks contracted on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

Sales of SIP trunking and other business VoIP services remained strong despite the overall sector decline, according to the report. 

For more:
- see the press release here 

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MTS Allstream, a Canadian provider of unified communications solutions, announced it has selected NetIQ to manage its enterprise UC applications and infrastructure. With the addition of MTS Allstream's customers, NetIQ now manages more than 1 million VoIP lines worldwide, according to the company.  

MTS Allstream will deploy NetIQ's AppManager for network assessment, end-to-end monitoring and reporting on MTS Allstream customer UC deployments, according to the release.

For more:
- see the joint press release here 

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Alcatel-Lucent and Hewlett Packard announced a 10-year global alliance Thursday that aims to bring customers converged telecommunications and IT equipment. The companies will jointly market any resulting products, which will include Alca-Lu IP telephony and unified communications products combined with HP IT solutions. The companies said they would target these offerings at the mid to large-size enterprises and public sector companies.

This is HP's second major announcement on unified communications products in less than a month, as HP and Microsoft announced a $180 million UC partnership on May 19.

HP and Alca-Lu want to create a "one-stop shop" for service providers to transform their IT and telecom infrastructures, as well as "truly integrated communication environments," according to the release.

 "We expect customers will be able to create new business opportunities and greater efficiencies from this alliance," said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and chief executive officer, in a release. "By combining our deep expertise in IT and communications, HP and Alcatel-Lucent will help customers transform their technology needs into a competitive edge." 

For more:
- see the joint press release here 

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Infonetics Research recently released a report entitled "IMS Equipment and Subscribers" that found strong continued uptake for IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) equipment and predicted global sales of IMS equipment will increase 74 percent in 2009. The report also found that Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens are the current leaders in IMC core equipment deployments.

The global IMS market is expected to grow at a rapid pace for the next five years, and the report predicted revenues will grow from around $200 million in 2008 to more than $2.5 billion in 2013. The report anticipated growth would be strongest in Europe, the Middle East and Africa initially, with Asia Pacific taking the lead at some point around 2010, as Chinese IMS deployments increase dramatically.

For more:
- see the press release here 

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Avaya announced it bought Agile Software, the provider of its mid-market contact center software Contact Center Express, for an undisclosed sum. Avaya already owned 23 percent of Agile, and Avaya said the purchase will allow it to tightly integrate Agile's software with other Avaya products.

Avaya also said the deal will help it streamline and hasten research and development for its contact center products. Current Analysis analyst Mike Barbagallo told Network World the Agile purchase will make Avaya's midsize contact center offerings more competitive with those sold by Cisco, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent, among others.

As part of the announcement, Avaya also announced the availability of version 4.0 of Contact Center Express, which adds IVR features previously only available through third-party products. 

For more:
- see the Network World article here 

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As most any VoIP industry observer knows now, last week VoIP pioneer Vonage was named to Time Magazine's list of the 10 biggest tech failures of the past decade. TelecomTV has an interesting take on Vonage's struggles and details some of the reasons the company deserves the bad rap Time has given it.

While the article acknowledges Vonage's consistent overspending on marketing as one of the company's problems, it also points to the company's inability to find alternative revenue streams or applications that use its VoIP networks and capabilities as the main impediment to Vonage's success.

For more:
- see the TelecomTV explanation about Vonage's selection here

Ingate Systems and Dialogic announced today a partnership to allow enterprises with legacy PBXs and contact centers to add fully-interoperable and secure SIP trunking services alongside their existing PSTN hardware. The joint offering will use a Dialogic Media Gateway along with an Ingate SIPerator or an Ingate Firewall product.

The Ingate products will be deployed at the network edge, sitting between the public IP network and the company LAN, while the Dialogic gateway will connect the company LAN and legacy PBX.

"To date, most SIP trunking providers and resellers have focused on the opportunity to migrate SMB (small- to medium-sized business) class customers from PSTN service in concert with an upgrade to a SIP ready IP-PBX system," Ingate President Steve Johnson said in a prepared statement. "While this opportunity focus remains logical and compelling, there is also a significant opportunity to migrate enterprise-class customers who maintain legacy (non-SIP) PBX and contact center systems."

Ingate announced both the SIPerator and Firewall in a separate release today. The products will handle up to 1,800 concurrent SIP sessions, according to the company. 

For more:
- see the Ingate-Dialogic release here 

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Wired has a story about wireless Internet access, calling the questions as to why we have so little of it. It's timely, especially in light of the nations (and likely the worlds) looming data network access crush wirelessly until fatter pipe access becomes more ubiquitous.

Let's start with some history.

The mobile operators didn't really embrace WiFi at all as they wanted to sell mobile data services. Now they are scrambling to catch up with WiFi as a means to offload the need for their users to stay connected. The telcos who did attempt to offer WiFi either made access so expensive that no one embraced it offered up the pricing model theory of offer it so only a few can use it. Muni-Wireless failed because the technology model was so flawed that even if your city had it, it wouldn't work because the systems were designed to work "outside" and no higher than two stories up and could hardly penetrate the windows. The cable guys, who had the most capacity, biggest opportunity are only waking up to the potential of what it means, with Cablevision leading the charge in metro New York by creating a cloud that is just for their customers.

Some time back Muniwireless maven Esme Vos suggested the solution to local wireless access was dining establishments and coffee shops. She felt that local governments simply had to mandate that these retailers offer WiFi like they're required to have public restrooms for patrons.

Even earlier I felt the MSOs (multiple system operators) were the answer in consort with local municipalities where they were franchised and wanted to see new franchise agreements put the pressure on the cable operators to "light up" more fiber and more bandwidth in public places like schools, libraries and public assembly locations like parks and plazas, while offering low cost access to merchants who would allow them to have access.

But there was one other reason why we less wireless Internet access than we need. Lack of competition. The near extinction of the CLEC in telephony and the limitation as to the number of mobile operators in each country has pretty much chased away anyone from wanting to be a player in the game due to the sheer fear that they won't be able to survive. Once we get a more competitive mindset again, then maybe we'll see more wireless access.

Alcatel-Lucent announced a new cloud-based VPN service plan for service providers targeting enterprises. The Application-Assured VPN client will lower expenses by eliminating the need to have equipment at each business location in order to offer applications like VoIP, Citrix, IM and video conferencing, according to the company.

The Application-Assured client takes deep-packet inspection functions usually done on premise into the network, the company said. The offering also contains a Web portal that allows enterprises to monitor application prioritization and bandwidth usage.

"Current offerings provide limited visibility and control at the service level, or there is the option to add appliances that require time and money and add to the overall complexity," said Jim Metzler, vice president of Ashton & Metzler Associates, in a prepared statement. "In contrast, this integrated approach provides the ability to drill down and have visibility, monitoring and control at a very granular application level. This is going to provide a significant advantage for enterprises who are buying a network-based VPN service."

Alcatel-Lucent said service providers that have deployed its Service Router portfolio simply can install a new "services card" to begin offering the services. 

For more:
- see the Alcatel-Lucent press release here

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Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, cofounders of Skype, Kazaa and Joost, reportedly are seeking limited partners to help raise $266 million by year's end for Atomico Ventures, their new fund that seeds disruptive, consumer-facing technology start-ups in Europe. The amount of money they are attempting to raise has sparked discussions that the fund could be a vehicle for Friis and Zennstrom to take another shot at reclaiming Skype from eBay.

But to do so, they'll likely have to put together an offer worth more than $2 billion, which eBay CEO John Donahoe said was "a low valuation" for the VoIP service. Atomico also seems like an odd way for the two to attempt another privatization of Skype, since the fund is focused on early-stage companies.

While Atomico Ventures has made 19 investments already in a wide range of companies, WiFi access sharing company FON is the closest to a telephony play, and it's tangential at best. But given Zennstrom and Friis' success with Skype, any future Atomico Ventures investment in or around the IP communications space should be watched closely. 

For more:
- see the VentureBeat article here
- see the New York Time article discussing the potential Skype buyback here 

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Sipera Systems, a provider of security solutions for unified communications products, announced Friday it is offering a distributed, secure UC solution for enterprises to deploy to a dispersed employee base. Sipera's Business Continuity Communications Solution (SBCCS) is designed for disaster recovery to provide secure VoIP, video, IM, collaboration and other UC capabilities for an enterprise, if its central location cannot be used.

SBCCS enables encryption, policy enforcement, and access control for the communications needs of "any worker in any location with IP network connectivity," according to a release. The Sipera solution allows for large enterprises to have greater workforce flexibility in the event of a major public health concern, natural disaster, or security issue. Andy Asava, Sipera vice president of worldwide sales, said disaster events are rare, but companies have a much greater chance of needing disaster recovery as their operations expand globally.

"Our UC-Sec solutions enable and secure complete UC services at employee's homes and remote offices, without requiring anything more than existing office VoIP phones and laptop PCs," Asava said a statement. "This enables ongoing business operations outside enterprise headquarters, to remote workers wherever they might be and whenever circumstances dictate staff should not commute to their usual workplaces."

Sipera said the solution requires no configuration changes in a company's IP-PBX, making it very easy and quick to deploy. 

For more:
- see the Sipera press release here 

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Alcatel-Lucent announced Tuesday a secure VoIP solution for medium and large firms that has no known vulnerabilities, according to the company. The system uses Alca-Lu's VPN Firewall Brick, which was designed by Bell Labs to preserve quality of service while defending against attacks.

"We are seeing more and more vulnerabilities posted against VoIP, and there are some easy targets," said Natalie Stallwood, Alcatel-Lucent's business development manager.

"Often when VoIP is deployed it is by a comms team, not an IT or security [team]. VoIP delivers so many great benefits to businesses including reducing costs, but they need to make sure it's secure."

The secure VoIP solution randomly and dynamically assigns a port for a call only once the session has been initiated, unlike other firewalls, which may assign several ports during a single call, leaving vulnerabilities for a network attack.

For more:
- see the Vnunet.com article here

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We wrap up last week's visit to MetaSwitch Forum with a pair of slide shows documenting the keynotes and scenery of the conference.

PICTURES - MetaSwitch Forum 2009, Keynote Sessions

Among the keynote speakers at the event were "CSI" creator Anthony Zuiker and Embarq CTO Dennis Huber.

PICTURES - Scenery from MetaSwitch Forum 2009

Words cannot do justice to the infamous MetaSwitch boxers given to all attendees. You'll have to find the picture and see them for yourself.

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Three former VoIP Inc. executives are being targeted by the SEC for improper bookkeeping and lying to investors about the financial shape of the company.

A complaint filed Monday in Miami federal court says that between November 2004 and May 2005, ex-VoIP inc. CFO and VP of Finance Osvaldo Pitters and GM Terrell Kuykendall recorded $1.4 million in fake revenue from the alleged sale of computer hardware and fees for management services. The inflated revenue raised the company's overall figures for 2004 by 43 percent.

It is also alleged that VoIP Inc. CEO Steven Ivester knew the company was struggling and the company's actual revenues were "substantially less" than its projections, said the complaint. He didn't question the company's financial statements, but resigned in October 2005 after unloading 4 million shares of the company's stock to make a tidy $4.4 million in profits. The SEC also says he didn't file the proper paperwork.

VoIP Inc.'s financial irregularities were discovered in March 2006, resulting in the resignation of Pitters and the subsequent firing of Kuykendall in April 2006.

The SEC is seeking for the three to lose the profits they made from their actions, pay a civil penalty and permanently bar them from acting as an officer or director of a publicly held company.

For more:
- South Florida Business Journal reports. Article.

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The European Union (EU) is reportedly preparing guidelines for wireless carriers to allow VoIP services like Skype to run over their networks, including punishments if they don't comply. An EU commissioner said "action" should be taken against carriers who use market power to block new services.

Apparently, the EU already has prepared a draft position to open up smartphones to VoIP services, but lawmakers want to refine the language. Right now, each EU country has to decide how they want to deal with blocked services on an individual basis, and the EU is asking countries to take legal action against carriers that "block innovative services." Deutsche Telekom's decision to block Skype may prompt the EU to look into antitrust charges against the carriers.

For more:
- TG Daily post on movement in the EU for unfettered mobile VoIP.

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Like all tourists who go to Orlando, FierceVoIP took pictures of the items and people we met during our travels at VoiceCon East 2009 in Orlando. We have grouped them into three categories:

Sights and Signage of VoiceCon East 2009 illustrates a few of the more interesting banners and signs we came across in Orlando. Companies spend a lot of money on banners and signs to make sure conference attendees know they are there and have a new story to tell.

Interesting IP phones at VoiceCon 2009 shows off some of the slick new media phones and telepresence devices we saw on the show floor.

People at VoiceCon 2009 has pictures of some of the IP communications executives we met with at the show.

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ORLANDO, Fla. - IBM has put its Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) solution front and center as the enterprise solution for unified communications. The company announced an interoperability testing program and a new consulting service for UC and SUT implementation.

IBM spokespersons are emphasizing SUT's ability to work with existing legacy equipment and the bright and shiny world of IP telephony, as well as its capability to work with multiple vendors - following the highlighting of UC interoperability by Cisco, TANDBERG and others at the show.

Initial companies participating in the Sametime Unified Telephony Validation Program include: IP PBX service providers Alcatel Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, NEC, Nortel, Mitel and Siemens; media gateway vendors Dialogic and NET; plus GN Netcom, Plantronics, Polycom and Psytechnics. Additional partners will be announced in the coming months.

IBM Converged Communications Services for Sametime Unified Telephony is the new service offering designed to provide strategy, assessment, architecture, design, integration and implementation for SUT. Consulting services are going to be key in bringing together SUT and other IP and legacy phone systems.

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ORLANDO, Fla. - Verizon Business has announced significant enhancements to its hosted IP Centrex service, including expansion of its burstable shared trunks capability, softphone support, easier E-911 provisioning, and local number provisioning.

Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunking (BEST), previously available on Verizon's IP trunking service, allows businesses to distribute inbound calls among multiple business locations, avoiding overloading when lots of calls come into one location. It also provides loadsharing of concurrent calls across the enterprise, so customers don't have to purchase more call capacity than they need for a group of locations.

Softphone support is being offered as an advanced feature under Hosted IP Centrex and includes a web management interface. In addition, a web tool allows users to register quickly and manually their physical location for E-911 purposes; other services require a more lengthy help desk service call for E-911 registration.

Another area where Verizon is coming a bit late (but still welcome) to the party is support for local number presence across North America. Businesses can now get local numbers regardless of the physical location of the office to enable a local presence.  A Verizon Business spokesperson indicated that overseas locations will be available down the road.

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Speaking to Fierce last week, Fred Knight, general manager of VoiceCon, was cautiously optimistic that the enterprise-focused communications show would have the same number of attendees as it did last year. "We've been at it for a long time and we hope everyone who is signed up can come," said Knight. "In this economic climate, you never know."

Tracking numbers last week were on par with the same as last year, putting projected attendance in the 5,000 to 5,500 range, depending on whether or not everyone who says they are coming is coming, noted Knight. "It's consistent with last year."

Knight believes that there will be little impact upon show attendance because of the big wireless show in Las Vegas going on at the same time. "VoiceCon is focused on the enterprise," he said. "CTIA has enterprise-related stuff, but it's hardly focused at an enterprise market. I think that over the years, VoiceCon has established itself as a location that if you're in enterprise communications, it's one of the focal points; arguably it is the focal point... VoiceCon is targeted at people responsible for enterprise communications. It's been a pretty clear and singular focus."

At least 50 percent of VoiceCon attendees are IT professionals from organizations with a thousand or more employees - this show is not designed for the crowded and sometimes confusing SMB market.  

What are attendees looking for when they come?  There's still a lot of demand for what Knight called "Traditional IP Telephony" with people looking at how to build the right platform and to make the right architectural/design choices for an IP phone infrastructure, as well as how to leverage an IP communications once it is operational.

"Overall, we're seeing more and more interest in video." said Knight. VoiceCon will have a day-long conference-within-a-conference track focusing on choices for enterprise video and encompassing products, network issues and internal support issues.

Cloud computing also gets a look, with a specific panel to focus on the cloud from the standpoint of enterprise computing. Enterprises have a number of options, ranging from tapping into idle computing resources for an in-house cloud solution, to subscribing to a commercial cloud service on an as-needed basis when computing resources surge on a seasonal or other basis.

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Salesforce.com announced plans to integrate its cloud services platform with Twitter Monday. The program, called Salesforce CRM for Twitter, is currently in beta, but will be available to all Service Cloud members for free.

In addition to being able to contact clients directly, the platform enables salespeople to contact customer service via text, phone or email directly to get information about how best to serve each client. The program is currently in beta testing, with no firm launch data yet.

"Salesforce is showing that perhaps the best use of social networking is perhaps on the service side of customer relationship management and not sales force automation," Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research at Nucleus Research told PC World.

For more:
- see the PC World article here

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On Thursday, Nimbuzz released a significant upgrade to its iPhone application including integration into SkypeOut and 10 SIP networks for cheap international phone calls over WiFi, plus an app to enable calls on an iPod Touch.

New features include the introduction of a dial pad and the ability to make VoIP calls to landlines and mobiles via Skype-Out. Nimbuzz provides the available Skype credit left on the dial pad when using Skype Out for phone calls to landlines and mobile phones.  New VoIP call options are available through the company's global affiliate SIP partners, including Gizmo5, Vyke, and SIPgate.  The networks are integrated into the interface to use Nimbuzz for cheap international calls to landlines and mobile phones over WiFi. A two week online banner campaign to promote iPhone SIP calling functionality will be conducted on partner sites Gizmo5, Vyke, and SIPgate.

In its press release, Nimbuzz also took the time to brag about adding one new user in less than 4 seconds, translating to over 20,000 new users a day; however, the company would not disclose the total number of users it has  According to an October 2008 user survey, 95 percent of Numbuzzers would recommend the service to a friend. There are also signed manufacturer partnership agreements with RIM, Spice Mobiles, and Toshiba.

For more:
- Nimbuzz's buzz. Blog.

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CosmoCom has announced Version 6 of CosmoCall Universe (CCU). The new release includes a whole bunch of enhancements and additions, plus optional capabilities available through new licenses.

Enhancements include new user types above and beyond the traditional Agent license designed for dedicated call center seats. A low-cost ReadyRep license is designed for "expert" users who have responsibilities that are traditionally outside the contact center, but who add great value to the customer service process.  A Business User license provides a basic extension without automatic routing attached.

Contact center mobility gets a boost with new smartphone technology, CosmoGo, to support mobile workers. Real time reporting and analytics additions include a customizable Dashboard interface with tabs and interactive, customizable gadgets and an optional online analytical processing (OLAP) database with standard and customizable reports.

Virtual outbound calling is now available, enabling agents to be anywhere while assigning unlimited resources to any dialing campaign. Multiple lists in different formats can be combined into a single campaign under the Linked campaigns feature.

A new multimedia recording component, including screen recording for capturing an entire user's desktop during contact sessions of all channels, including phone, email, and chat, provides a complete record of what is said and done during a call. Recordings are captured in WVM format.

To top it all off, CosmoCom has rolled out a dedicated hardware product, the CosmoPhone - an IP phone set dedicated to its software.

For more:
- CosmoCom announces v6 Universe. Release.

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• Ministers of Telecom Panel : Keynote speeches
• Ministers / Operators ? Investors Round tables
• Successful Case studies presented by world CEO speakers
• S2- Regulators Panel : Promoting Investments
• S3- Broadband session : Building effective networks to address developing needs
• S4- Liberalization, Privatization, Investment session
• S5- Developing new services & Business Models session

Verizon Business continues to steadily post big wins, as it landed a Department of Defense contract worth up to $2.5 billion. The contract is the latest in a series of federal customers the company has collected.

Under the Defense Information System Network Transmission Services - Pacific II (DTS-P II) contract, Verizon Business will provide telecommunications services at military installations and other government sites located in the Asia-Pacific region, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, the Middle East and the United States.  The contract term is 10 years if all options are exercised, and it has a maximum value of $2.5 billion.

Services Verizon Business will provide range from individual 64 Kbps circuits to 10G wavelength over fiber, along with managed data services, including native IP, Ethernet and Internet. 

Verizon Business had previously provided network services under the DTS-P contract. The DTS-P II network will be managed by Verizon Business on a 24x7x365 basis and supports many aspects of U.S. military operations around the globe, as well as other Department of Defense requirements.

For more:
- Verizon Business release.

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Frost & Sullivan says integrating unified communications (UC) applications such as chat, presence and conferencing, as well as more enmeshed apps such as CRM and ERP, into so-called communications-enabled business processes will provide the most opportunity for the hosted VoIP market. 

Close to 1 million installed hosted IP telephony lines were installed at the end of 2008, says Frost's new report "North American Hosted IP Telephony Service Markets." The firm expects the number to grow to about 3.6 million lines in 2014, with small businesses attracted to hosted offerings for cost-effective voice communications. Medium and larger businesses will seek out hosted solutions so they can focus on "core business processes," as well as to get access to apps and capabilities they can test without a capex spend.

IP telephony vendors will have to develop "astute" channel strategies since most service providers are smaller, next-generation providers with limited geographic footprint and support capabilities, no established brand-name recognition, and no established customer base, says Frost.

Frost recommends that service providers expand and diversify their channels, but believes the market will still remain "extremely fragmented" due to the reluctance of incumbent carriers to grow market share at the expense of cannibalizing legacy service revenues, along with limited demand for next-gen hosted services among their existing Centrix base.

Regardless of who is selling - CLEC, SaaS/hosted providers, VARs, or system integrators - channel support will determine the success of each provider's chances.

The crystal ball also sees providers taking advantage of M&A opportunities based on complementary technologies, expertise or channels, since consolidation can help improve customer awareness and margins.

For more:
- Frost summarizes its new report.

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Most of the "potholes" for implementing unified communications are non-technical in nature, says a recent CIO blog. Organizational changes to implement UC affect multiple groups within and outside of IT; the resulting "melting pot" of different agendas can have a negative impact on the successful deployment of UC.

Fear of the unknown, resistance to change and legacy policies can all stand in the way of a successful UC implementation. The top five challenges that typically appear during a UC deployment include: Uncertainty around UC ownership; an end-user culture that prevents adoption; new legal electronic discovery requirements; poorly planned support structure changes; and incomplete presentation of costs and benefits to executives.

Lawrence Imeish, author of the blog post and a principal consultant at Dimension Data, suggests that to avoid the potholes, ownership of UC needs to be "decisively" assigned to a person or group with no room for doubt on who has the final say in UC matters. Communication of the objectives, benefits and costs must be clearly communicated to all stakeholders, and support structure changes should be made well in advance of any migration to UC, with the ability to provide support on day one.

For more:
- CIO blog discussion

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Infonetics released two reports Wednesday that show mixed fortune for VoIP equipment manufacturers. Infonetics notes that carrier VoIP equipment spending suffered its first year-over-year drop, falling 6 percent from 2007's record showing, but IMS deployments show promise to become a serious revenue driver by 2011.

The carrier VoIP equipment market has experienced double-digit annual revenue growth since 2002, but the streak was stopped in 2008 by the general economic downturn and a resulting decrease in capex. Diane Myers, directing analyst for Infonetics and author of the reports, said carrier capex on VoIP equipment likely won't rebound until 2010.

"We've seen indicators already that 2009 is going to be down from 2008," Myers said. "Capex should slowly increase in 2010, but as more VoIP deployments reach maturity, we don't expect the same pace of equipment revenue growth to resume. Carrier are refocusing some of the spend at other strategic locations."

One of those areas, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) deployments, is growing rapidly, especially in European markets, with the segment up 94 percent in 2008. While fixed-line VoIP services are still the most popular applications delivered over IMS, Rich Communication Services will be an important part of the shift from fixed-line VoIP services to mobile networks and integration with standardized devices, according to the report.

Myers said the revenue total for IMS deployments is small currently, but will grow rapidly and become substantial in 2011 and beyond as mobile operators upgrade infrastructure.

Infonetics predicts IMS equipment sales will buck the general economic downturn and increase in 2009 and 2010. Currently, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, NEC and Huawei are the core IMS equipment leaders by installations. 

For more:
- see the Infonetics brief on the carrier VoIP report here
- see the brief on IMS spend here 

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SpinVox and Skype announced that Skype voicemail now can be converted to text in English, Spanish, French and German. Skype will leverage SpinVox's technology to produce a SMS text message of the voicemail that can be sent to a designated mobile phone.

In addition to the full text feature, Skype users can now use visual voicemail through the service, and get SMS notification of new voicemails if they would rather listen to the message.

"Skype is the first internet communications software provider to deploy SpinVox, further reinforcing our position as the only provider of voice to text messaging services which are used daily by millions of people on five continents," says SpinVox co-founder and CEO, Christina Domecq. "Our user base has grown over twenty-fold in the last 12 months and bringing Skype's voicemail subscribers on board will accelerate this trend."

Skype executives touted the flexibility the new system gives Skype users. Each voicemail-to-text conversion will cost the user an additional $0.25 more than the standard Skype SMS rate for their location. Users can set a limit on the number of conversions allowed per day, and restrict the service to messages from certain contacts. 

For more:
- see Skype's page for the voicemail-to-text feature here

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Stating the obvious in Vonage's 2008 earnings call, CEO Marc Lefar called the company's expenses to secure new customers "not acceptable," and added that the net addition of customers and cost of customer acquisition "fell well below" expectations. Lefar rattled off a series of improvements Vonage needed to make in bringing on customers and improving problem resolution. He also briefly sketched out new product offerings, including some sort of mobile phone client to leverage WiFi.

For starters, the SLAC - marketing expense per customer brought onboard - has gone up to $309, despite reducing marketing costs by $3 million from the previous quarter. Last quarter, SLAC was reported at $289.

Lefar wants to improve the quality of prospects calling into the company. While Vonage's latest set of commercials have produced a 10 percent improvement in the level of interest compared to prior work, the company is looking for a new ad agency and expects to close a deal at the end of this quarter.

Once customers arrive, the onramp experience to get them beyond sign-up to actually using the service needs to improve; after three weeks, a quarter of the customers who have signed up haven't used the service. 

Many customers who leave Vonage for competitive reasons are leaving due to call quality, Lefar said, so improvements are needed there as well.

Customer care is also a big cost center that Vonage needs to optimize. Lefar said the company gets 10 million calls per year into its call centers, but many of those can be "completely eliminated" with IVR and self-service web based tools.  A 10 percent reduction in live calls would save the company anywhere from $6 million to $8 million per year.

New products Vonage is looking to include improvements to core services such as outbound caller ID and autoconnection to a 411 service. The company sees new market opportunities outside of the U.S., UK, and Canada to leverage its heavy international usage.

Vonage would also like to "take advantage of" open mobile applications, with download/preloaded apps using WiFi for local connectivity a "good opportunity." VonagePro is going to get fine-tuned, as the company develops an SMB offering to support up to 10 phone lines.

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The Social Security Administration (SSA) is in the process of consolidating its different phone systems into one VoIP-based network.  SSA is the biggest agency so far to make the move to VoIP, and its experience and (potential) success in demonstrating cost savings and improved call handling may prompt other government agencies to do the same.

Federaltimes.com does a deep dive into the call handling improvements being made by SSA as Nortel turns up the system on a 10-year, $300 million contract. For example, inbound 800-number calls can be automatically routed to the closest Social Security field office and to the first available specialist; if the local staff is backed up, calls can automatically fall over to the next local office. Trying to do all this on a TDM system would require an ugly amount of effort across an array of legacy systems.

Cost savings are expected through move-add-change (MAC) simplification and plug-and-play of new equipment with remote management. New and moved offices gain the benefit and savings of having a single network for voice and data. There's also going to be much easier and faster call data for inbound calls, so call volume, wait time, peak times, and nature of the call can be quickly assessed.

The migration isn't all roses however. Traditional phone systems go down "less than 30 seconds a year" said a SSA spokesperson, while data networks average 86 hours of downtime a year. To make VoIP work, data networks have to be improved to handle call volume and have less than an hour of downtime a year.

For more:
- Federaltimes.com article

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On Wednesday, Verizon Business announced five new converged solutions for large businesses to help with security and performance challenges. Verizon Business says its enterprise customers face staffing constraints and are looking for reduced costs and a quick return on investment - which translates to a larger market for outsourced and managed services.

The new portfolio of "converged" offerings is designed to deliver integrated capabilities that span the entire IT "stack" of different organizational structures including network, data, applications and user layers. Enterprise IT organizations are struggling with how to work with the different groups responsible for their layers of the stack in order to avoid data breeches and poor applications performance.

Available today for U.S.-based enterprises, the Virtual Discovery and Classification (VDC) service combines professional services, security log analysis and advanced tools to monitor an organization's Internet traffic for unusual, malicious or unexpected traffic patterns and connections that can potentially cause harm to a customer's network.  VDC gives large enterprises a capability to manage and protect a complex network environment.

The four other solutions to be rolled out during the first half of the year are: Application Performance and Vulnerability Assessment to offer expert assessment of critical business applications and recommendations to improve performance and security; PCI-ready E-commerce Solution, combines hosting and application management offerings with security services to help an organization become PCI compliant for safeguarding credit card transactions; CoLo Vulnerability Management Service, which integrates vulnerability management services into a data center colocation environment using a self-service model; and Secure Virtualization Design Services, which help enterprises redesign an existing IT infrastructure to achieve the benefits of virtualization while maintaining a secure environment.

Global managed and professional services is a big and strategic market for Verizon Business, and the company expects continued growth in the area throughout 2009, what with all the staffing constraints and cost reductions going around.

For more:
- Verizon Business press release.

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Once upon a time, there was VON. It was all things to all people under the large purple umbrella. Then it went away, leaving a vacuum in its wake. So where's everyone going in 2009?

VON's two key problems were that it tried to be all things to all people and had the millstone of "VoIP = VON" so that it was primarily seen as a VoIP show rather than an IP communications show. 

Back in the day, you had a lot of service providers and Tier 1 vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Cisco) going to VON because it was The Place to meet people and find out what was going on in the industry. You also had thought leaders talking about the latest trends in technology and policy. Finally, you had enterprises attending because they wanted to be in on the latest and greatest.  VARs and channel types would also be there, but ITEXPO was more their cup of tea.

Service providers and Tier 1 vendors have pretty much returned to the fold of SuperComm over the past few years for carrier issues, but that's been no big secret.

For enterprise issues, they are going where the enterprise guys are - VoiceCon. I'll be down in Orlando at the end of March, and I'll be looking to see if the event has a slight bump in attendance compared to last year. If you take a look at VoiceCon's exhibitors, many of the Tier 1 exhibitors are the guys who spent beaucoup bucks at VON a couple of years ago.

Thought leadership may be taken up by eComm. There's a lot of promise in the event, but we also see some rough edges that we expect will be smoothed out over time; after all, the first VON event in the Puck Building had its moments as well.

To recap: VON gone. Replace with ITEXPO (channel partners/VARs and the people who love them), VoiceCon (Enterprise sales), SuperComm (Carriers/Service providers) and maybe eComm (thought leadership).

- Doug

Skype is touting its growth and enterprise uptake, claiming it now adds 380,000 users per day and that one-third of registered members use the VoIP service for business purposes. The end-of-year head count of 405 million registered users used 2.6 billion SkypeOut minutes in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The company is pushing small and medium-sized enterprise adoption of Skype with the release of Skype 4.0, which took three years to develop and offers "super wideband audio." A survey of Skype for Business users found that 80 percent of users reported an increase in productivity and employee collaboration by using the product and 62 percent said Skype allowed for better communication with customers.

"There has never been a better time than now for enterprises - particularly small to medium businesses - to consider switching to Skype for their communications," Dan Neary, Skype's vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific told mis-asia.com. "In this type of environment people are looking for cost savings wherever they can find them, they are looking to ‘recession-proof' their businesses. They don't want to fly from A to B, they want to do video-conferencing."

Skype would love to continue to expand its presence in enterprise telephony, as the market could substantially increase Skype's bottom line. 

For more:
- see the mis-asia.com piece here 

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Connectivity addicts should be happy to hear that Twitter has likely raised more than $20 million in a third round of venture funding supposedly lead by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).

A report by TechCrunch says the new round of investment values Twitter in the neighborhood of $250 million; down from the previous, mostly-stock, half-billion acquisition deal offered by Facebook in the fall. The company's last round of fund raising, which raised $15 million, was conducted in June 2008, with Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions leading the round along with previous investors Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage.

IVP has invested in a portfolio of companies crossing technology and entertainment, including comScore, NetFlix, and TiVo, so Twitter offers the right blend of a new, enabling concept and a rapidly growing user base. Now the focus returns to how to make money with all those tweeting users.

For more:
- TechCrunch reports.

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On Wednesday, Polycom posted its fourth quarter and yearly earnings for 2008. The company did just about the same in 4Q08 as it did a year ago, but closed FY08 with a "record" $1.1 billion for the company.  GAAP net income for 4Q08 was up by a nickel per share when compared to last year as well.

In 2007, Polycom closed out the year with $929.9 million, so adding another $170 million to the bottom line in a slumping economy is pretty good. Breakouts for net revenues in the fourth quarter work out to be 67 percent video solutions (further broken down into 54 percent video communication and 13 percent network systems) and 33 percent voice communications. Compared to last year, video is up slightly (63 percent in 4Q07) and voice is down a bit (37 percent 4Q07).

Icing on the cake was almost $51 million in positive operating cash flow in the fourth quarter, contributing to Polycom's 44th consecutive quarter of positive operating cash flow. The company departs 2008 with nearly $325 million in cash and investments and no debt.

During the company's earnings call, Polycom stated it has gross margins of around 60 percent on average on its speakerphone business. VoIP phones continued to be one of Polycom's fastest growing product lines in 2008, as the company saw customers putting out dollars to implement a "money saving solution."

For more:
- Polycom's 4Q08 and FY08 earnings announcement.
- Seeking Alpha has a transcript of Polycom's earnings call

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Will a slower economy pump VoIP growth faster during 2009?  This might be one of those "The Internet is going to crash" balloons.

Don Witt of cyLogistic posits that competition between businesses would push them to cut costs, and the easy way to cut costs is (in theory) to go to VoIP. Using some magic math and a graph, Witt says the VoIP growth curve has been "pulled down" by 6 to 12 months or more, and VoIP sales may increase 2 or 3 times more than previous forecasts predicted, with next year's VoIP growth jumping from 4 percent, to 8 or 12 percent.

Voxilla harpoons the idea by noting that there's a large up-front cost of making the move to VoIP, either by buying (i.e. capital expense) new hardware or contracting for a hosted service, plus the costs of training the existing workforce to use a new phone system. It thinks VoIP will continue to grow, but cash-strapped businesses aren't going to dump existing gear to buy new VoIP hardware in 2009.

For more:
- Voxilla discusses theory, harpoons it. Article.

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Infonetics Research reported Wednesday that the IP contact center market in 2008 was up 37 percent from 2007. The report, entitled "Unified Communications and IP Contact Center Market Share and Forecast," also predicted slowdowns in both markets due to poor macroeconomic conditions. But, it said strong IP contact center growth in the Asia Pacific region and increasing unified messaging platforms sales will keep the sectors from getting hit as hard as traditional telephony products companies.

The report forecast general declines in the enterprise telephony sector, but said unified communications was likely to be one bright spot amidst general lagging growth.

Avaya still dominates the IPCC market and leads the revenue market share in UC, according to the report. But Avaya lost IPCC share in 2008 to offerings from Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent, and Nortel took the lead in the unified messaging license market and Cisco gained in both revenue and licenses for unified communications. 

For more:
- see the MSNBC.com article here 

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Voxeo accomplished multiple goals in acquiring VoiceObjects, the second company it has bought this year.  More acquisitions are expected throughout 2009.

By purchasing VoiceObjects, Voxeo has acquired middleware to enable carrier-grade deployments of over-the-phone self-service apps that are easier and cheaper to deploy - and enable personalization to each caller. There's also a phone self-service analytics package for measuring performance that also allows non-technical staff members to make updates and changes.

VoiceObjects also brings a large European and mobile carrier footprint to Voxeo; Orange, O2 and Vodafone are all VoiceObjects customers, not to mention a bunch of enterprise customers including Adobe, Citibank, Hershey, IKEA, Kellogg, SAP and Volkswagen.

Open standards also play a role in this story. Voxeo and VoiceObjects are big users and advocates of VoiceXML, and it is likely Voxeo's future acquisitions will use VoiceXML to build their solutions. The combined company will continue to enhance the VoiceObjects platforms and launch several new VoiceObjects-based products and services in 2009.

Employee-owned, Voxeo said it has logged twenty consecutive quarters of profitable operations, while sustaining an average yearly revenue growth rate exceeding 60 percent. It's using all that cash to acquire companies, as it has bought four companies in the last four years. Earlier this year, the company bought Beijing-based Micromethod.  Voxeo "expects to close additional strategic acquisitions" in 2009.

For more:
- Voxeo talks about buying VoiceObjects. Release.

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Reports out of Mumbai claim the 10 member Lashker-e-Taiba terrorist attack group was steeped in off-the-shelf consumer technology.  The FBI is reportedly assisting Indian intelligence agencies in deciphering "Internet telephony signatures" originating in Pakistan.

Terrorist controllers/handlers in Pakistan used VoIP to communicate with the Mumbai attack cell, with calls flowing out of Pakistan to satellite phones carried by the group. Conducting traffic analysis - number of calls, type of calls, frequency, and length - on the communications stream between Pakistan and Mumbai seems to have occurred, but it is not clear if Indian authorities have access to any media streams - the actual verbal conversations -- of calls. 

The FBI is apparently providing support to trace back when calls started coming in to the cell phone. While not being publicly discussed, it is likely that a United States National Security Agency "vacuum cleaner" system sucked up the broadcasted satellite phone conversations in some form; it is unknown if the communications were encrypted end-to-end, but if they were, it would provide an additional complication to learning the substance of the communications between Lashker-e-Taiba and its Mumbai cell.

Players on both sides of the terrorist equation - both attackers and defenders - are aware of the use and application of off-the-shelf technologies for attacks. In October, a short report by the U.S. Army 304th Military Intelligence open source intelligence team examined the potential use and application of mobile phone and VoIP technologies by terrorist groups. While the media generally obsessed over the application of Twitter, the report also highlighted the use of GPS, software to change voices in conjunction with VoIP calls, and Google Maps.

For more:
- The Economic Times of India briefly discusses FBI involvement in VoIP cracking.
- Ars Technica and the media fetished on Twitter as a terrorist tool, but the U.S. Army report highlights other technologies as well.

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In about a month, Dan O'Shea and I will be out at CES (more formally, 2009 International CES) wearing out our shoes and going hoarse as we cram in keynote speeches, expert panels, breaking news and in-depth briefings.

I'd like to tell you why we'll be there and a general idea of whom we'll be meeting with between January 6 and January 9 in Las Vegas.  I'm writing this now in the (no doubt vain) hope you'll try to get editorial meetings up with us sooner (i.e. before January 1) rather than later.

CES is best typically associated with very cool gizmos you'll find down at the local Best Buy, such as the latest 50 inch plasma TVs and hot laptops. But the show has grown into much more and includes vendors across a broad range of consumer offerings, including phone services, IPTV, and content providers; content is the "new" story CES is telling this year, with Disney-ABC, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures Television scheduled to be in attendance.

At CES, there is something for all of the Fierce Telecom and Digital Media publications:

FierceIPTV:   Editor Dan O'Shea will be looking at a range of vendors offering IPTV solutions at CES, including end-user service offerings, head-end gear, set top boxes, middleware, and software. 

FierceVoIP: Doug Mohney will be making the rounds, looking at both services (hello 8x8, Skype) and hardware.  You might be surprised at the amount of carrier CPE gear turns up at CES. I'll also be looking forward to talk to the Casabi folks, which flows into...

FierceTelecom: We expect both AT&T and Verizon to have new announcements relating to broadband and TV services. Triple and quad play offerings may also be on the table.  Dan O'Shea and Doug Mohney will be coordinating coverage.  

FierceOnlineVideo:  Doug Mohney expects to deep dive into the proliferation and future of "independent" streaming video delivery devices ranging from Grandpa TiVo to Roku's streaming box used by Netflix. Content providers, PC desktop video delivery, and statistical tracking are also on the radar.

To schedule a briefing appointment at CES-

             Dan O'Shea        doshea@fiercemarkets.com            January 8-9, 2008

             Doug Mohney      doug@fiercemarkets.com               January 7-9, 2008

Doug Mohney expects be available for meetings at Digital Experience, ShowStoppers, and Lunch@Piero's (if he doesn't break down screaming or fall over from exhaustion). Depending on flight arrival time, he may also attend the latter half of CES: Unveiled on Tuesday, January 6, 2008.

Companies seeking to brief Dan and Doug at CES are STRONGLY encouraged to email as soon as possible and preferably before December 24, 2008.

A full-blown blog-o-war has started between The Register and BitTorrent.  A Register columnist said BitTorrent's uTorrent client is going to bring the internet to a crawl because of its preference for using UDP.

The use of UDP as UTorrent's default peer-to-peer protocol allegedly could make the amount of ungovernable traffic go through the roof, clobbering bandwidth, slowing gamers and VoIP. ISPs could control traffic flow by slowing down UDP traffic, but such a move would "utterly destroy VoIP," alleges The Register.

Techno sites have taken the cannon fodder and fired it with differing results. Excess UDP traffic could slow last-mile connections, say some, rather than bringing the whole Internet to its knees.

BitTorrent says The Register piece is "utter nonsense" and a switch to a UDP-based implementation of its client was intended to reduce internet congestion, not kill the Internet proper.

We suspect some of this brouhaha has to do with the fine British journalistic tradition (The Register is published in the UK) of running wild headlines and wilder stories to generate controversy and more readership. Gotta get those web hits up for the end of the year bonuses, wot?

For more:
- The Industry Standard raps on UDP vs TCP. Article.

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Techvibes is fingering EQO Communications as the next mobile VoIP player to go down; this despite the company's CEO citing strong user growth, and blaming job cuts initiated last month for two-thirds of the company on the economic environment.

EQO is reportedly closing down because the VCs aren't willing to fork over more cash. In remarks made last month to GigaOm, EQO CEO Bill Tam said that the October layoffs would let the company operate at "near profitability... until the smoke clears." 

Guess the (economic downturn) smoke choked the company to death.

Techvibe observed EQO's web pages were cleansed of the management team over the weekend - not really a good sign anyone is home to take phone calls. We've also heard a couple of bits and pieces to make us think EQO was running out of operating capital in November.

EQO seems to be joining an ever-growing list of failed me-too mobile VoIP plays that includes Fring, Jangl, and TalkPlus.  Expect at least one or two more to join the list by the end of the year.

For more:
- Techvibe scoops on EQO running out of coin. Post.

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By Monique Bozeman

At the risk of alienating those drinking or selling the UC Kool-Aid, here's a rose-colored glasses-off summary of what I think, have heard and have read about Unified Communications: you can't define it; it's not new (hard to define in the early 90s too); the vendor landscape is confusing; it's hard to prove ROI and customers are not sure about the value; proof points in actual deployments are limited; most organizations have yet to develop best practices and vendors, analysts, consultants and press have jumped on the bandwagon like lemmings promoting and professing expertise.
 
What I do love about these jello-like monikers/acronyms - think CTI, CRM, VOIP, UC - and market focus shifts around voice and data, is that the contact center is never far away, given its dominant position as the core interaction touch point with customers. Thus the apt question in an industry panel discussion of representatives from Avaya, Nortel, Genesys, Siemens and Cisco at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008: What role will unified communications tools, systems, architectures play in the contact center?
 
Before I get into a summary of their answers to that question, what do we mean by Unified Communications? The best attempt I can muster is to echo what two stalwart analysts had to say about UC in various tutorials and market overview sessions earlier in the week. Collectively, these analysts, Gary Audin and Allan Sulkin, have over 50 years experience with voice and data, and you can count on them to call a spade such.
 
"There is no uniform definition of UC, and what is included depends on who wrote the definition," notes Audin. The many functions include PBX functions and features, IP Telephony, presence and presence management, unified messaging, voice and multimedia conferencing and collaboration. Sulkin, in some random thoughts about UC, points out that UC is a concept, not a technology or single product. He thinks of UC as CTI grown up, meaning telephony systems plus client/servers. And he also skeptically points out that while "the demand for fully-featured UC solutions is moderate, the media continues to hype UC in overdrive mode as if everyone is buying."
 
So back to the question of UC as it relates to contact centers. The panelists agree the primary role of UC is to have the contact center more hooked into the rest of the organization and vice versa, by making it easier to collaborate back and forth between agents and non-call center experts. Al Baker, of Siemens Enterprise Communications, says it's about bringing collaboration into the contact center and the enterprise online. Contact center agents need assistance, but not from just anyone. He says UC brings expertise, brain ware if you will, into the front line contact center. Jim Hickey of Avaya echoed this sentiment saying access to experts anywhere is the fundamental breakthrough that UC offers the contact center. Nicolas de Kouchkovsky of Genesys sees three things enabled by UC in the Contact Center: collaboration, presence to locate the expertise within the organization and the ability to pass interactions back and forth from the contact center to other experts or groups within the organization.
 
What didn't get answered for me in this contact-center focused session was a sense of actual penetration of IP in the contact center, which I think is the real precursor to any real traction of UC solutions in the contact center. I'm still on that moniker. What do you think the penetration rate is of IP-enabled formal contact centers?
 
Monique Bozeman is a contact center industry expert/analyst, marketing consultant, writer and speaker.  She can be reached at  monique@moniquebozeman.com

Ifbyphone, the Skokie, Ill.-based voice app company, announced the closing of $4.6 million in Series B funding. Origin Ventures and Apex Ventures, which both invested in Ifbyphone's first round of funding, led this round as well.

Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro said the company planned to use the capital infusion to continue to expand its infrastructure, to more aggressively pursue the mid-market, and to market the company more actively.

"We want to improve our ability to handle the needs of the middle market," Shapiro said. "Ifbyphone technology can automate the answering of routine call center calls, like delivery dates and hours of operation, which can be up to 25 percent of total call volume."

Shapiro said the expanded marketing operations would help to reach potential customers who might find Ifbyphone's services very attractive in a recessionary environment. He said customer support remained a top priority for the company, and he claimed that the company doesn't have customers, it just has raving fans.

One such fan is Wayne Boulais, general partner of Apex Ventures, which led both fundraising rounds.

"Ifbyphone was an attractive investment because it's successfully capitalizing on two trends," Boulais said. "It's providing low-cost VoIP services very reliably, and its compatibility with Asterisk is changing the possibilities in exciting and flexible ways. Shapiro is an experienced entrepreneur, and we've been pleasantly surprised with the company's performance."

Boulais said Ifbyphone's customer retention and conversion rates were high, and the company was well suited in challenging economic times, because of good testing methods and low barriers of adoption by customers due to an aggressive pricing scheme. 

For more:
- see ifbyphone's press page here

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Asterisk 1.4 not only adds features to your PBX, it also adds enhanced voice quality for VoIP. The new and improved jitterbuffer implementation covers all RTP-based VoIP channels. Previoiusly, only the IAX2 channel driver had a jitter buffer implementation. (more…)

© Edvina AB, Sollentuna, Sweden 2008 VoIP-Forum. All Rights Reserved.

The Asterisk project has a very strict policy in regards to backwards compatibility. Unless we can’t find another solution, we’re not allowed to remove a function between releases. A configuration for Asterisk 2.4 should work in the next release. In order to be able to change functionality we warn users in one release and then remove the functionality in the coming release. So a configuration in 3.0 works in 3.2 but maybe not in 3.4.

This article tries to provide help with known problems with upgrading. Read on to learn how to avoid the traps! (more…)

© Edvina AB, Sollentuna, Sweden 2008 VoIP-Forum. All Rights Reserved.

Asterisk 1.4 delivers many new features. In regards to call state subscriptions, there are many news for you. Call state subscriptions are what makes the lamps blink on your phone when your collegue’s phone rings. In 1.4, you can make it blink based on activity in parking lots and meetme conferences as well. Read on! (more…)

© Edvina AB, Sollentuna, Sweden 2008 VoIP-Forum. All Rights Reserved.

Asterisk 1.4 introduces a new level of Jabber integration, developed by Matthew O’Gorman at Digium. The Asterisk Open Source PBX integrates with Jabber/XMPP in many ways. (more…)

© Edvina AB, Sollentuna, Sweden 2008 VoIP-Forum. All Rights Reserved.