VoIP Week-in-Review from TMCnet

By Mae Kowalke

TMCnet Associate Editor

 

At least on the East Coast of the U.S., spring has sprung—leaves are out on trees, dandelions paint lawns and fields yellow, and the weather is mostly warm and mild. All this bursting into life seems to have affected the VoIP industry, too; this week’s news is mostly dominated by a variety of new product launches, re-releases of enhanced solutions, and service introductions.

 

So, without further ado (we’d like to leave you some time to enjoy the great outdoors), here are highlights from this week’s VoIP-related news.

 

We’ll start with Jabber, Inc., which this week released version 5.2 of its MomentIM Windows desktop instant messaging client. For this new version, Jabber scrapped the old code base and started from scratch to deliver a smaller hard disk footprint, download size, and memory footprint than competing products.

 

MomentIM 5.2 is tightly integrated with Windows, and works off a COM-based plug-in architecture. The company said that the new version makes it easier for third-party developers to create plug-ins for the software, using any COM interface-supported language—including C, C++, C# and Visual Basic.

 

VoIP provider NEC (News - Alert) Unified Solutions also decided this would be a good week for a launch. The company announced its new intelligent call management application, Univerge Attendant (UA5200), a solution designed for both the enterprise and small business markets.

 

Univerge is optimized for VoIP environments, and now features a new user interface, advanced advanced call-processing capabilities, enhanced directory functionality and improved caller response time with tools designed to meet the needs of government, healthcare, and higher-education vertical markets.

 

Speaking of various types of phone environments, Plantronics (News - Alert) has been busy lately thinking deeply about how the changing needs of office professionals. With that in mind, the company introduced its CS70N Professional Wireless Headset System, a third-generation product that bring together audio performance, style and comfort for office professionals.

 

Plantronics designed CS70N in response to changing needs for headsets; phone calls have evolved beyond just a means of voice communications, and now often involve multimedia, document collaboration, and other interactive elements that require professionals to be active and hands-free.

 

The need for enhanced, wireless headsets isn’t the only area the phone system market where new solutions are needed. Another area that’s generally been lacking is solutions designed to help businesses reduce their phone bills by using Internet-based calling—without sacrificing functionality. VoSKY to the rescue!

 

This week Skype Limited (a division of eBay), the company behind the widely popular, Internet-based Skype calling service, officially endorsed a third-party solution from VoSKY Technologies designed to help businesses use the service to meet their calling needs.

 

Certification was granted to VoSKY Exchange, a rack-mountable PBX gateway designed to bring the benefits of SKype to the business market. The solution integrates seamlessly with existing phone systems, allowing businesses to reap the cost saving benefits of Skype without investing in major infrastructure changes.

 

The product arena wasn’t the only VoIP market area to see changes this week. New services were also introduced. For example, Fusion—a global provider of communications services—announced expansion of its IP-based voice and data solutions for the business market. Companies not yet ready to migrate away from traditional phone systems can now use Fusion’s IP Connect and IP Call Termination services to realize the benefits of VoIP.

 

IP Connect lets businesses combine their interoffice, local, U.S. long distance, and international calling on a single IP circuit (connected to the existing phone system). IP Call Termination, a service for U.S. and international long distance calling, lets companies maintain their local network access facilities.

 

Maintaining strong VoIP and other, related, networks requires not only excellent equipment and services, but also monitoring. That’s why VoIP test solutions provider Tektronix announced a group of enhancements to its line of RF Scout Interference Hunter devices. The family of products now includes radio frequency benchmarking capabilities that allow service providers to take competitive measurements of carrier quality and coverage. Also included in the new features is integrated, map-based spectrum analysis that speeds up network optimization.

 

RF Scout, first introduced in 2006, is now more robust than ever, with capabilities locating radio frequency interference and checking indoor and outdoor signal quality/coverage. All this is packed into a single, rugged handheld device designed for use in the field.

 

Amid all these new product and service launches, it may be confusing for businesses to pick which solution is right for them. After all, choosing an enterprise VoIP solution is a a big decision. Voice service is critical to business operations, so no company wants to select a technology that might compromise call quality or reliability. Yet, the cost savings and value-added features of VoIP make it a compelling investment. 

 

Businesses don’t have to choose between cost savings and functionality, though. In a recent white paper titled “Comparing Alternatives for Enterprise VoIP and VoIP Access,” Quintum (News - Alert) addressed this very point. The paper explained that VoIP platforms are available which deliver intelligent call routing functions, integration with existing equipment, and  survivability features—plus a low upfront cost.

Speaking of low-cost, here’s a timely promotion to consider. VoIP service provider Skype and chipmaker Intel this week announced a joint marketing campaign aimed at making the PC into a central, reliable platform for voice and video calling using the Internet. As an incentive to get consumers interested in VoIP, Skype is offering a free day of global calling on Mother’s Day.

 

Skype hopes that consumers who try out the service to call their moms on May 13 will decide VoIP is the way to go—and sign up for the company’s Unlimited Calling plan.

 

Okay, enough with the launches and new products! It’s time to take a broader view of things with some articles published this week that examine trends in the VoIP industry. First up is a report by TMCnet editor Stefania Viscusi, in which she shares insight from Any Mercker, director of marketing at Telrex (News - Alert), about the evolution of call recording.

 

Call recording is quickly becoming a standard business application. In fact, a sea change is occurring with regard to how businesses approach the value of call recording. Mercker said that the value proposition of call recording has shifted from simply protecting a business to growing that business. As call recording deployments grow, this application is increasingly being viewed as an asset capable of being leverage to a company’s advantage.

 

Another recent VoIP-related trend is the increasing use of SIP trunking. TMCnet asked Peter Sandstrom, CTO at BandTel , to answer some questions about SIP trunking—what it is, how it works, what it’s used for. Sandstrom explained that SIP trunking is a mechanism for interconnecting SIP-enabled PBXs and/or SIP user agents to established voice sessions over an IP network.

 

SIP trunks, Sandstrom said, allow for call control and routing, enabling enterprises to create a single, pure IP connection.

 

But, let us not forget about IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Along those lines, Sylantro Systems (News - Alert) this week announced the appointment of Marco Limena as the company’s new president and CEO. Limena told TMCnet that one of his main focuses will be on continued development in the IMS arena, an industry which he indicated shows tremendous promise.

 

Sylantro’s platform, in fact, is specifically designed to help service providers introduce IMS-based deployments of new applications and standards. The solution is built on SIP in order to make video, mobility and other next-generation application development easier.

 

The future is not quite so clear for UK-based mobile VoIP provider Truphone. The company this week indicated that it’s considering bringing a lawsuit against Orange and Vodafone after those two operators allegedly disabled Truphone VoIP capability on their branded Nokia N95 handsets.

 

The mobile VoIP service from Truphone lets Nokia cell phone users make low-cost or free calls using either the data portion of the provider’s 3G network, or using WiFi. Perhaps not surprisingly, this new type of service is seen as a threat by mobile operators, since such companies make the bulk of their revenues from traditional cell calls.

 

Well, that’s it folks—highlights from this week’s VoIP news. Now go outside and enjoy the great weather (hopefully it is great where you’re located). See you next week!

 

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