News Archive - December 2004

How Do You Make International Calls?
December 31, 2004

"What telephone, VOIP, or other kinds of services are available to make international calls? Is there any open source VOIP software that can connect directly through port 80, bypassing firewalls?"
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Report: DoCoMo, 25 Others to Develop Advanced 3G Format
December 31, 2004

The world's leading wireless carriers and telecoms equipment makers, including NTT DoCoMo, have agreed to develop an advanced mobile phone standard capable of sending high-resolution video in an instant.
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Cheap Cell Calls Have a Price
December 30, 2004

A new service promises cheaper mobile calls by exploiting VOIP, but it's not going to be easy. The big carriers must be considered, plus customers will have to punch lots of extra numbers.
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Federal Court Sides With VoIP Companies
December 29, 2004

A Minnesota agency may not regulate calls through cyberspace as it does calls through traditional phone lines, a federal appeals court ruled.
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Session Controllers Are Going Places
December 28, 2004

The session border controller (SBC) sector has emerged as one of 2004's hottest niche markets, and the upstart vendors vying for the attention of carrier customers and large vendor partners have ended the year on a noisy note.
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Sprint Engaged in a War
December 22, 2004

Sprint's collection department toll-free number clashes with a local exchange, resulting in dozens of calls being misdirected to the wrong guy— me! And after several months, boy am I really pissed off now.
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Huawei Builds Monster Softswitch Network
December 22, 2004

Huawei announced that it has built the world's largest Softswitch network in China for China Mobile, expecting to carry 1/3 of the traditional traffic carried between the 31 provinces over which it is deployed.
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H.323 and SIP GSM gateway
December 22, 2004

The VoiceBlue Enterpise fixed cellular terminal can be used not only as a gateway to GSM but also a protocol translator between the SIP and H323 environments.
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Service Providers See Growth in 2005
December 21, 2004

In a recent poll, most service provider surveyed said they believe revenues will grow by more than 10 percent next year, with nearly a third of large carriers projecting double-digit growth.
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Vonage service to retail at CompUSA outlets
December 21, 2004

Vonage signed on CompUSA to sell its Net phone (VoIP) service through 229 stores run by the retail chain.
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Vonage and Galaxy Broadband Bring VoIP Phone Service to Isolated Canadians
December 20, 2004

Vonage Canada announced a partnership with Galaxy Broadband Communications to offer Canadians in remote locations a more affordable, reliable and potentially life-saving link to the world via satellite.
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AT&T adds to Internet phone services
December 16, 2004

AT&T announced new features for its CallVantage users as it continues to battle in the highly competitive Net telephony market. — But, it appears these new features come at a price, which should be no surprise coming from AT&T.
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U.S. Telecommunications Marketing Budgets Grow by 2% in 2004
December 16, 2004

The IDC CMO Advisory Service finds that U.S.- based Telecommunications Services Providers have increased their marketing investment for business wireline services by just under 2% in 2004.
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Tholos aims big with video-conferencing system
December 16, 2004

Why talk to strangers in your own city when you can talk to strangers across the continent? Tholos Systems plans to let people in London and Vienna do just that (and, presumably, more useful things) next spring with a massive 3-metre high, 360-degree video-conferencing installation.
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Nortel's Numbers Disappoint
December 15, 2004

Having struggled to put its financial house in order for nearly a year, the Nortel finally released some financial results for the first three quarters of 2004 and for 2001, 2002, and 2003.
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Avaya Acquires RouteScience
December 15, 2004

Avaya announced it has acquired substantially all of the assets of RouteScience Technologies, Inc., a maker of adaptive networking software (ANS) for enterprises and service providers.
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Increased Availability of IP End Points Signifying Emergence of Viable VoIP Market
December 15, 2004

VoIP is finally emerging and the promise of integrated voice, video, and data services is starting to become a reality.
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Sprint, Nextel agree to $35 billion merger
December 15, 2004

Sprint will buy Nextel Communications in a $35 billion deal that will create a wireless behemoth.
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Feds move on wireless Web, cell phones in flight
December 15, 2004

Federal regulators have proposed allowing cell phones to be used on airplanes, and took steps toward bringing high-speed wireless Internet connections to passengers' seats. — If Wi-Fi is allowed, who would need a cell phone, since would could just use VoIP?
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Sonus Ranks #1 in Carrier VoIP Market Share According to Industry Research Firms
December 14, 2004

The title says it all, but we actually find this very hard to believe since their revenues and stock price do not align with such a claim.
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Tekelec's Monday Blues
December 14, 2004

Tekelec starts the week badly as analysts downgrade, the CFO walks, and its stock slumps.
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AOL Canada to spread VoIP
December 14, 2004

AOL Canada plans to launch Internet phone service in greater Toronto over the next couple of weeks, marking the first AOL property to enter the growing VoIP market.
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Dilithium Networks' AnswerFast Reduces 3G Video Set-Up to Under 1 Second
December 14, 2004

Dilithium Networks has a means of establishing H.323M-based 3G video calls in under 1 second, helping to establish the standard as the preferred choice for mobile video telephony.
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International Industry Heads Say Government Holding Back VoIP Adoption
December 14, 2004

According to a study conducted by Spirent Communications, Americans are more worried that service quality over government regulation will hold back the adoption of VoIP-based telephony.
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In U.S., cell phone users are often all talk
December 13, 2004

Wireless carriers that are spending billions of dollars to build high-speed networks in the hopes that their customers will do more than just talk, but Motorola's phone sales suggest that many users just want basic voice services.
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Cable Gets a Vault from VoIP
December 13, 2004

Researchers say as many as 10% of the US population could be using VoIP by 2009, many of whom may get their service from cable operators. Or will they?
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Packetizer Announces Free VoIP Giveaway Winner
December 13, 2004

Packetizer would like to announce its Free VoIP Giveaway contest has concluded and the winner, randomly selected via computer, is Paul Comfort of Maryland. We want to congradulate Mr. Comfort!
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Intel, AT&T team on telecom
December 10, 2004

Intel and AT&T have been working together under a rare alliance to boost their suffering communications businesses.
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GlowPoint Powers Australian IP-based Network for Video Communications
December 9, 2004

GlowPoint announced its partnership with Integrated Vision to power the continent's first dedicated IP-based network for global video communications.
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Mobile phone users double since 2000
December 9, 2004

Mobile phone subscribers around the globe totaled nearly 1.5 billion by the middle of this year, about one quarter of the world's population.
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Siemens claims gigabit wireless breakthrough
December 9, 2004

Siemens has shown what it claims to be the fastest-ever wireless network connection, reaching speeds of 1Gbps.
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It's all about location for RIM, Nextel
December 9, 2004

The companies announced that they will work to bring location-based services to RIM's BlackBerry handhelds.
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GTS-Datanet Selects MERA's SBC
December 9, 2004

MERA announced that GTS-Datanet has deployed it's Session Border Controller to Enhance Routing Flexibility in Its International VoIP Network.
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Signalling standard for video, telephony turning into anything but a standard
December 9, 2004

"In the future, enterprises will likely use SIP but with proprietary extensions that are exclusive to each vendor."
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Qwest Launches Expanded Nationwide VoIP Service for Businesses
December 8, 2004

Qwest announced that its VoIP service is available to more than 100 cities across the U.S. for small, medium and enterprise business customers.
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Worldwide VoIP Semiconductor Market to Take Off, Reaching $1.7 Billion by 2008
December 8, 2004

After years of hope, the worldwide VoIP semiconductor market is now experiencing significant growth as the deployment benefits of packetized voice are being continuously proven to service providers, businesses, and consumers.
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Vonage goes to the video
December 8, 2004

Internet phone service provider Vonage will sell videophones and a videophone service sometime before the end of March.
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Japan Dominates VoIP Over DSL
December 8, 2004

Voice-over-broadband services may be one of the hottest topics in telecom right now, but according to specialist research firm Point Topic Ltd., there are just 5 million people in the whole world signed up to such services, most of whom are in Japan. — This is likely right, but I think the report ignores PC to phone services, enterprise users, and companies transporting billions of minutes each month over H.323 transit networks.
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IDT Seeks Sole Control of Net2Phone
December 8, 2004

International carrier IDT is set to take control of Net2Phone, the VoIP service provider it spun out in 1999, in a stock deal worth $56 million.
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Cablevision's Optimum Voice Surpasses 250,000 Customers
December 7, 2004

Cablevision Systems Corporation announced that its Optimum Voice digital voice-over-cable (VoIP) service had surpassed the 250,000-customer milestone. — Turning up the heat on competitors like Vonage, AT&T, and Verizon.
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Nortel Wins 3G Wireless Infrastructure Renewal with Sprint
December 7, 2004

Nortel announced a contract renewal agreement with Sprint estimated to be worth approximately US$1 billion over three years to deploy enhanced wireless infrastructure equipment and provide professional services to support the continued expansion of the Nortel portion of Sprint's nationwide third generation (3G) wireless network. — OK, so now we know where $1 billion of the $3 billion is going.
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BellSouth: Access Will Rise Again
December 7, 2004

BellSouth has finally come forward with its next-generation access network plans, saying it will cover nearly 80 percent of the households in its network with high-speed Internet capabilities.
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Global IP Sound and Telchemy Form Strategic Alliance to Promote Voice over IP Call Quality
December 7, 2004

Telchemy and Global IP Sound announced that they have entered into a strategic business alliance to collaborate on joint development and marketing of speech processing and performance management solutions for VoIP equipment and service providers.
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Sprint begins $3 billion march to 3G
December 7, 2004

Sprint, the fourth-largest U.S. cell phone operator, has started a $3 billion network upgrade, with $1 billion earmarked for a wireless broadband service to launch soon in selected cities.
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New worry for phones: tight pants
December 7, 2004

As if the increasing number of dangerous counterfeit batteries weren't enough of a worry for cell-phone owners, now comes a warning about tight pants.
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Pivetal Integrates Telchemy's VQmon VoIP Fault & Performance Management Software Into New VQM Probes
December 6, 2004

Telchemy and Pivetal announced that Pivetal has embedded Telchemy's VQmon/SA (Stream Analysis) call quality analysis algorithms in their new QspeeQ family of VoIP Speech Quality Monitoring products.
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GIPS iLBC First Speech Codec to be Standardized by the IETF for IP Telephony Solutions
December 6, 2004

Global IP Sound claims that the IETF has "standardized" the Internet Low Bit-Rate CODEC (iLBC), appearing in RFC 3951 and RFC 3952. — Note: This was placed into the experimental category and is NOT and IETF standard.
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Lucent Linked to More Cingular Booty
December 6, 2004

Lucent Technologies is tipped to continue its success at Cingular Wireless with a network consolidation services contract worth up to $500 million over two years.
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Lloyds to spend nearly $1 billion on broadband
December 6, 2004

IBM said it will install the new Lloyds infrastructure, using fiber cables and 70,000 VoIP telephone lines.
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Till death do you part (from your phone company)
December 6, 2004

How much would you pay for a lifetime of unlimited phone calling? Try $1,000 on for size, says a New England phone company.
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Camera Phones Dominate EMEA as 3G, WiFi Service Buzz Builds
December 4, 2004

Despite the surge in camera phone popularity in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, there is not yet evidence that Europeans want to use 3G phone features such as multimedia messaging or emailing photos.
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Singapore Airlines to add broadband
December 3, 2004

Singapore Airlines on Friday announced a deal with a subsidiary of Boeing that will give the airline's passengers broadband connectivity starting next year.
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AOL debuts voice conferencing for consumers
December 2, 2004

The AIM Voice Conferencing service incorporates AIM Instant Messenger's "presence" technology, which allows people to see if friends and family are online and available to chat. They can then invite up to 15 people to join a group call. Calls are placed over regular telephone lines using AIM's Buddy List feature.
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BT Selects Nortel for IP-based Contact Center
December 2, 2004

BT has selected Nortel Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and contact center solutions to upgrade its contact center infrastructure that serves more than 500 business units across 124 sites in the UK.
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Line sharing issue is pawn in FCC game
December 1, 2004

Regulations that would allow telephone companies to lease lines from the big local carriers for high-speed Internet service are caught in a high-stakes fight before U.S. communications regulators.
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Siemens to supply high-speed 3G mobile network to Cingular Wireless
December 1, 2004

Siemens Communications announced that it has been chosen to assist Cingular Wireless with its nationwide deployment of a true third generation (3G) high-speed UMTS.
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Tekelec Rings True at Cingular
December 1, 2004

Tekelec has landed a meaty deal at Cingular Wireless — one potentially worth tens of millions of dollars during the next few years.
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Cisco adds video to conferencing suite
December 1, 2004

Cisco announced it has added video to its Internet-based conferencing software, MeetingPlace.
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Philly, Verizon reach accord on city Wi-Fi plan
December 1, 2004

Pennsylvania's governor has signed closely watched legislation that Philadelphia officials had worried would imperil their plans to provide Wi-Fi service to all city residents. — It probably will.
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Minnesota backs down on VoIP rules—for now
December 1, 2004

Utility regulators in Minnesota have temporarily halted the first-ever attempt by a state to impose its telephone rules and regulations on an Internet phone service provider. — And it's a good thing, since they were making some in the FCC a bit unhappy!
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Samsung rises in cell sales
December 1, 2004

South Korea's Samsung Electronics overtook Motorola as the world's second-biggest mobile phone maker in the third quarter as the market continued to boom.
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Carriers throw their weight around towns
December 1, 2004

It seems that SBC, Comcast, and Verizon are working hard to prevent local governments from offering broadband access to customers. Clearly, they do not have the interest of the people at heart.
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