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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more:
- see this AdvertisingAge article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more:
- see this release

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Fans of Toshiba's IPedge business telephone systems just got a more affordable option that can be used with the IPedge system as well as the Strata CIX system.

The IP5531-SDL is a nine-line device with 20 programmable buttons and a10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet connection with a full-duplex speakerphone.

"We are responding to our customers' demands for a more affordable IP telephone handset with Fast Ethernet and LCD button labels," said Eric Abing, product manager of Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. and the Telecommunication Systems Division.

The new phone gives Toshiba customers nine different IP5000-series telephones from which to choose.

Toshiba introduces IPedge in June, pitching the Linux-based single-server solution designed to be powerful, affordable, reliable and easier to administer.

The platform accommodates multiple unified communication applications, including call processing, voicemail and unified messaging, native SIP line and SIP trunk support, mobility, survivability, centralized administration of all sites and feature-rich telephone endpoints.

For more:
- see this release

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more:
- see this release

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No Jitter has done a cool round up of Frost and Sullivan findings on the world enterprise telephony market. Truly it's a plug for the full report, but the highlight reel is interesting nonetheless.

Despite all of our positive talk about the industry succeeding during the economic slump, enterprise telephony in general saw some declines. Enterprise line shipments saw a negative 20.4 percent growth rate from 2008. You might blame the decline on traditional phone service, but IP systems made up 74.2 percent of total line shipments. They declined by 21.2 percent in the base year.

So the economy did indeed snag us a little. The research firm projects a compound annual growth rate of 1.1 percent over a seven-year period IP sales beating out TDM. A bit slow, but growth is growth, right?

For more:
- read the rest of highlights here or get the report

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No Jitter has an interesting post on why unified communications (UC), while exciting, isn't really the biggest concern for most companies looking to migrate to IP. The posts reads like an advice column for making the right choices in selecting a company's next telephony upgrade. Article

Research and Markets has debuted a new report offering some insights into the growth of the VoIP market. The "US Business VoIP Overview: Optimization Trumps Expansion" report takes In-Stat's recent claim of 79% penetration of VoIP in businesses by 2013, and states that much of the focus in the industry will be on optimizing current systems and upgrading headquarters rather than bringing more VoIP systems to satellite offices.

The 79 percent figure represents company's having VoIP deployed in at least one of their location, meaning the universal use of VoIP throughout these companies is not being implied. The study also found that Hosted IP Centrex is now the leading revenue generator over Broadband IP Telephony for carrier-based business VoIP solutions.

For more:
- read this release

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A new Frost and Sullivan report talks about the cost savings of IP Telephony and how it'll be hard to ignore them in the future. TMCnet has this article.

JAJAH, an IP telephony platform, announced the beta launch of VoIP calling functionality for Twitter called "@call." Both the caller and the recipient of the call will have to sign up for the beta program for a call to work, but once they've registered, the caller only needs to send a message reading "@call@twittername" to connect to the recipient for up to a two-minute call.

JAJAH said the caller's phone number will be hidden, allowing for anonymous contact, similar to the blind VoIP calls the company enables for e-dating sites eHarmony and Match.com. The Twitter integration will take time to move meaningful amounts of minutes, due to the registration process. However, this test is another way JAJAH is increasing its reach and distribution points, and the company's strategy of integrating directly with popular applications is an excellent way to ward off the threat of commoditization. 

For more:
- see the PC World write-up of the JAJAH-Twitter announcement here

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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