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VoIP Week in Review from TMCnet: IT EXPO East News
TMCnet VoIP Minute Watch Columnist
This week the VoIP Minute Watch brought you news straight from the exhibition halls and session rooms of the 2006 Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO East, which took place at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Amongst the companies that made noise this week were Netcentrex, Vegastream, Sonus, AT&T and Vonage.
Netcentrex announced a few deals this week. The company announced on Tuesday that it was tapped by TomatoVine to launch voice over broadband services based on the Netcentrex VoIP application servers. The deal will enable TomatoVine to initially roll out DID-based telephony services to the top 18 markets. The company's IMS-compliant residential service includes both Onvine Telephony and Onvine Video Calling and can be combined with high speed internet access and IPTV over a common broadband infrastructure for an integrated triple-play offering. TomatoVine also offers a suite of business services including Secure IP Trunking and Hosted IP Centrex with video calling and videomail.
The company also made news on Tuesday when it introduced IPCentrex One, a hosted telephony system for very small businesses. The system bundles Integrated Access Device (IAD) and IP phones, combined with a single provisioning screen per enterprise.
"Our long experience in the IP Centrex market has allowed us to build a solution enabling fast time to market and incremental revenues," said Erik Larsson, VP of marketing at Netcentrex . "The single page provisioning is key to service provider profitability, since it enables efficient volume order processing. The solution is also future proof, with features for fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) and interactive video services. IPCentrex One supports fixed and wireless phones, softphones, and dual-mode Wi-FI/GSM phones."
VoIP gateway manufacturer VegaStream announced on Tuesday that Bedford, Mass.-based vCentrix tapped the company to introduce a suite of VegaStream VoIP gateways to their carrier partners. Vcentrix provides branded wholesale VoIP services to CLECs, MSOs and ISPs, including provisioning, billing and subscriber management systems. The deal will enable vCentrix to deploy the entire VegaStream product line, including the Vega 400 digital gateway and the Vega 50 family of analog gateways. Headquartered in, vCentrix offers a world class VoIP services platform with an integrated and branded OSS toolset designed to serve their market channels. The vCentrix network is designed and built to provide the QoS and SLA standards expected by their carrier customers.
Canadian-based ThinkTel Communications announced on Tuesday that it also chose VegaStream to rollout VoIP services using its gateways. The partnership will ultimately enable ThinkTel to offer VoIP services to its business partners and customers. ThinkTel will deploy VegaStream's Vega 400 digital gateway and the Vega 50 suite of analog gateways. ThinkTel is a national wholesale provider of broadband voice communications for business and residential subscribers, with service in 33 local markets in Canada and 88 markets in the USA. The company offers a a suite of voice services including dial tone, long distance, calling cards and conferencing, all managed by ThinkTel's proprietary billing and provisioning systems.
VegaStream also made news on Wednesday when it announced it partnered with Latin American companies Commlogik Corp. and Telectro. "Our entry into Central, South and Latin America is a key step in leveraging the growing demand for VoIP services and equipment in the region," said Denis Letsinger, vice president of sales, Central and Latin America.
Integrated data and telecom company Intrado Inc. announced on Tuesday that it tapped Sonus Networks Inc., a supplier of service provider VoIP infrastructure systems to provide its IMS-ready architecture to support Intrado's nationwide expansion of its VoIP E9-1-1 system. The deal will enable Intrado to integrate Sonus' network architecture to deliver VoIP E9-1-1 service to public safety answering points. Intrado had already deployed its system in New York City that utilizes Sonus technology. The company will be expanding the Sonus footprint in its nationwide network rollout. Intrado presently provides emergency calling functionality to more than 30 VoIP service providers (VSPs).
AT&T Inc. and Avaya Inc. announced on Tuesday that they have formed a partnership to accelerate VoIP migration in the enterprise market and government agencies. The deal will integrate AT&T's global IP network, network design and management tools with Avaya's enterprise IP communications technology to deliver managed systems from the wide area network to the IP phone on the desktop. The systems will provide the tools necessary to accelerate migration to IP telephony and the associated local area network (LAN) and wireless LAN infrastructure.
The telecom giant also announced that it selected the INFOMART in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas to conduct its largest Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) exercise on February 8-15, 2006. According to the telecom giant's news release, the company chose this location because the "area businesses and residents continue to be on alert for wildfires throughout the state."
AT&T will send out self-contained equipment trucks which will test and evaluate how well the company can support its enterprise business customers in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. The company claims that in all of the NDR exercises that it has conducted in the 16-year history as part of this program, there has never before been an exercise that has featured 43 trailers, 30 of which are semi-trailers.
Residents and businesses in the cities of Bend, Hood River, Prineville, Redmond and Dalles in the state of Oregon will be able to sign up for Vonage's VoIP-based calling services. The VoIP service provider made this announcement on Friday after expanding its coverage to include the cities of Lancaster, Marietta, Pataskala, Sylvania, and Toledo in the state of Ohio earlier this week.
Vonage announced on Thursday that it has turned on E911 service in over 2,200 PSAPs in the U.S. The VoIP service provider announced it equipped over 200 calling centers in more than 35 new counties with 911 calling capabilities in just one week. "In just over a month, we have turned up E911 service in over 235 counties and 650 PSAPs across the nation," said Jeffrey A. Citron, Vonage’s Chairman and CEO. "Vonage continues to work with the FCC, regulators, Congress and public safety to turn up a national E911 system across the nation."
There you have it folks, another exciting week in the VoIP industry! Stay tuned and read the VoIP Minute Watch for the latest news and keep watching http://www.itexpo.com for info on the Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO Fall 2006 …
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Johanne Torres is contributing editor for TMCnet and Internet Telephony magazine. To see more articles by Johanne Torres, please visit Johanne Torres' columnist page.
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