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  • Skype Connect 1.0 Officially Launched

    Skype on Monday announced the official launch of Skype Connect 1.0, formerly known as Skype for SIP. Previously available in beta, Skype Connect delivers a business solution that enables IP-enabled private branch exchange (PBX) or Unified Communications systems to connect to Skype.

    According to the company, by using Skype Connect, businesses can now:

    • Make outbound calls from desktop phones to landlines and mobiles worldwide billed at Skype’s standard per-minute calling rates
    • Receive inbound calls from Skype connected users worldwide by placing Skype’s Click & Call buttons on their Web sites
    • Receive calls from landlines or mobile phones in the corporate PBX using Skype’s online numbers that have been purchased separately
    • Manage Skype calls using existing PBX or UC systems’ features such as call routing, automatic call distribution, conferencing, auto-attendant, voicemail, call recording and logging.

    David Gurlé, VP and general manager of Skype for Business said that based on internal research, in the first quarter of 2010, approximately 37% of Skype users reported that they use Skype for some business or business-related purposes.

    "Our team’s goal is to empower businesses of all sizes and types with rich communications tools to unleash their productivity, while reducing their telecommunications costs. […] Skype Connect seeks to enable our customers to reduce their phone bills, while protecting their investment in existing telecommunications equipment,” said Gurlé.

    Skype Connect already has over 2,400 active global customers and it’s now certified to work with PBX and UC products from Avaya, Cisco, SIPfoundry, ShoreTel and other OEMs.

    The solution also works with older TDM PBXs or Key Systems which can now add Skype calling capabilities through third-party IP gateways from AudioCodes, Grandstream and VoSKY.

    Companies using Skype Connect are charged a monthly channel fee of €4.95 / $6.95 per line. This is based on the number of concurrent calls being made or received. Each channel allows for one inbound or one outbound call at any given time. Calls to landlines and mobiles made using Skype Connect are billed at Skype’s standard calling rates worldwide.

    Relating articles
    Skype Now Available on Verizon Multimedia Phones on the BREW Platform
    Skype for iPhone Now Supports Multitasking, No Charges for Calling Over 3G
    Skype Names David Gurle to Lead Skype for Business Team
    Skype For SIP Now Available in Beta

  • Orange Launches Mobile HD Voice in the UK

    Orange announced that they are launching mobile High Definition Voice, which is now available nationwide at no extra cost for all UK Orange customers with an HD voice enabled handset.

    According to Orange, HD Voice reduces background noise and decreases perceived distance between callers by providing crystal clear calls. “Reducing the background noise, hisses and crackles of normal mobile calls, HD Voice also excels in noisy environments,” the company said.

    This will come as a relief for a third (32%) of Brits who blame background noise including road works or noisy chatty friends as the biggest disturbance in conversations (research conducted by Opinion Matters between 13/08/2010 and 16/08/2010).

    Orange HD Voice is available at no extra cost to all Orange mobile customers who take a HD Voice enabled handset. From launch, the Nokia 5230, Nokia X6, Nokia E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro will be HD Voice enabled with further manufactures expected to offer HD handsets in the coming months.

    All HD Voice enabled handsets will be labelled with the Orange HD Voice logo, helping customers to easily recognise those devices that support the new Orange HD Voice service. HD Voice demonstration units will also be available in Orange shops.

    According to Orange, HD Voice also opens up new opportunities for better ways of working in business. “The arrival of HD Voice is hotly anticipated by the broadcasting industry, which believes that the service could reduce its reliance on expensive ISDN lines and the need to ferry guests to studios for interviews. Other industries that will benefit significantly from HD Voice include those with significant background noise like the construction and manufacturing industries,” the company said.

  • Google Introduces Gmail Call

    Starting yesterday, Gmail users can call any phone right from Gmail. The new service is integrated into the web-based email client and enables to call anywhere in the US and Canada for free and get low rates for other countries.

    According to Gmail Blog, calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. “We worked hard to make these rates really cheap, with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute,” said Robin Schriebman, Software Enginee at Google.

    Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail.

    “We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception,” said Schriebman.

    Google is rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so they will be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in their chat list (they will need to install the voice and video plug-in if they haven’t already). But according to Schriebman, Google is working on making this available more broadly.

  • AT&T Adds IP Voice Services to Virtual Private Network Services

    AT&T announced that new and existing virtual private network (VPN) customers may add VoIP service to the network solution delivered over AT&T’s global network cloud.

    This converged solution is said to enable customers to consolidate their separate voice and data networks, reduce equipment and maintenance costs, and simplify migrating these complimentary capabilities to a common, secure infrastructure.

    By migrating to a common infrastructure, customers are able to take advantage of additional applications as AT&T makes them available, such as unified communications capabilities.

    The AT&T VoIP portfolio is certified for interoperability with leading industry providers of IP-PBX systems, such as SIP Trunking services qualified for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, providing support for businesses planning to incorporate a comprehensive unified communications solution in the future.

    The company’s portfolio of VoIP services includes AT&T IP Flexible Reach, a SIP trunking service, which "allows businesses to continue to use the capabilities of their existing IP-PBXs, optimizing their equipment investment."

    AT&T Voice DNA, another product in the VoIP portfolio, is a fully hosted network-based service with advanced features, applications and management tools for customers.

    AT&T customers can access their VPN using virtually any access technology, such as mobile, Wi-Fi, DSL, dial-up and Ethernet.

    “Voice service is as mission-critical for businesses today as it’s ever been, and customers expect their VoIP service to perform as well as their traditional telephone service,” said Shawn Conroy, vice president, AT&T Business Solutions.

    "Adding voice to the network cloud gives customers the ability to determine their optimal level of security, architecture, cost and performance objectives — key differentiators for AT&T,” he said.

    According to AT&t, Today, the company offers Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based services to 163 countries over 3,800 service nodes, and operates 38 Internet data centers around the world. These assets enable AT&T to provide customers with globally-consistent access to capacity and features – when and where they need it most.

    Related articles
    AT&T Releases Mobile Conferencing App for iPhone
    Global Crossing Launches Telepresence Solution
    AT&T Enables VoIP over Its 3G Network for iPhone

  • Silicon Labs and Beceem Partner on WiMAX VoIP Gateway Reference Design

    Silicon Laboratories announced that it has partnered with Beceem Communications, WiMAX solutions vendor, to deliver a VoIP broadband gateway reference design for 4G-WiMAX service providers.

    The WiMAX VoIP gateway reference design is based on Beceem’s recently introduced BCS5350 single-chip WiMAX customer premises equipment solution. It also incorporates Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC devices to provide the interface that enables the use of traditional home telephones for VoIP services over WiMAX.

    “With its market-leading low power consumption and small footprint, Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC is the perfect complement to our high-performance, single-chip WiMAX CPE solution,” said Aditya Agrawal, senior director of marketing at Beceem Communications.

    “The highly integrated reference design streamlines the development process, giving manufacturers greater flexibility and faster time to market in the increasingly competitive 4G marketplace,” he added.

    The reference design uses Silicon Labs’ Si32176 ProSLIC integrated SLIC/codec devices to add one or two telephone ports to a 4G-WiMAX broadband gateway. Beceem’s highly integrated BCS5350 device implements the entire PHY, MAC and RF functionality of a mobile WiMAX terminal on a single chip.

    The broadband gateway solution enables WiMAX service providers to deliver broadband and fixed-line telephony service wirelessly to subscribers as an alternative to wired broadband services such as ADSL or VDSL over telephone wires, data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) over coaxial cable and passive optical networks (PON) using optical fiber.

    According to Carlos Garcia, vice president of Silicon Labs, semiconductor solutions from Beceem and Silicon Labs will enable WiMAX gateway vendors to deliver products with the high performance, low cost, low power consumption and small size that their customers demand.

    According to Infonetics Research, the WiMAX market is rebounding from the recession and showing positive signs of growth, with major rollouts underway in the US, Japan, Russia and India. “We forecast around 125 million WiMAX subscribers by 2014, with 20 to 25 percent of them using VoIP over their WiMAX connection,” said Richard Webb, principle WiMAX analyst at Infonetics Research. “WiMAX operators will need a broad range of VoIP-enabled devices to serve this growing need.”

  • Report: The Future of Consumer VoIP

    According to the recent report "The Future of Consumer VoIP" by Research and Markets, it is important to distinguish between a profitable business that successfully sells VoIP services and a profitable VoIP business.

    “Successful VoIP businesses are driven by other services the company offers, and by services that align with customers’ perceived needs not by the VoIP business alone," as the research firm claims.

    In the early 2000s, telecom industry experts widely expected VoIP to change the dynamics of the voice communications business. But a decade later, the largest providers of consumer Internet voice services are, with one exception, conventional telecommunications companies. Some are pioneers and innovators, some are not. “What they do share, however, is a market strategy that doesn’t rely solely on price,” the analysts say.

    According to the report, the most profitable over-the-top VoIP providers are those that quickly leveraged their success into building their own networks. Successful VoIP providers offer multiple communications services, as well as services aligned with the key needs of targeted markets.

    The research shows that telecoms have more natural advantages in the VoIP business than incumbency. They understand consumer expectations, and the migration to all-IP networks allows them to leverage network consolidation.

    Analysts note that the pressure is on VoIP service providers to make VoIP mobile. Driven by growing mobile handset capabilities and broadband subscriptions, and continued high prices for international calls, the market for mobile VoIP is developing quickly. “The mobile handset is coming into its own as a platform for converged communications,” the research firm states.

    According to the report, the rapidly growing number of mobile smartphones creates opportunities to integrate voice interaction into a wide range of applications, as well as creating opportunities for other types of intelligent, converged appliances reinventing the home phone, for example. Amazon’s Kindle e-book shows the opportunity for mobile communications-equipped "appliances" at mass-market prices.

    Analysts also finds that consumers increasingly want services customized to their needs, preferences and priorities giving VARs, software companies, and internet companies, as well as voice service providers, opportunities increase their value to specific markets and customers.

    The report concludes that consumer VoIP is most successful in the most regulated (non-Communist) markets. “Emerging markets present big risks, but offer big VoIP opportunities because many people in these countries are bypassing conventional telephone service for mobile and VoIP,” according to Research and Markets.

    Related articles
    Juniper Research: Mobile VoIP Users to Exceed 100 Million by 2012
    BT, T-Systems, Vodafone Among Top Hosted Business VoIP Services Leaders in EMEA
    Nortel Patent Auction Benefits LTE Market

  • Acrobits Releases Groundwire, the First Business Caliber SIP Client

    Acrobits has released their new business caliber SIP Client, Groundwire for the iPhone. According to the company, it’s the mobile SIP client capable of replacing your desktop phone.

    Groundwire has all the features of Acrobits’ current softphone client, Acrobits Softphone, and adds some important business caliber features: it supports transfer and attended transfer, call waiting and conference calling. It also adds a voicemail waiting indicator and a programmable voicemail dialer.

    It also supports iOS4 multitasking and the original Acrobits Softphone’s Push Notification Service.

    SIP users finally have a mobile client capable of meeting all their needs, as Acrobits claims.

    Among the other features are:
    • Multi line
    • Customizable ringtones
    • HD Wideband audio through G.722
    • G.711, GSM and iLBC audio codecs.
    • TLS support for encrypted SIP
    • Bluetooth support for iPhones with OS 3.1 and higher
    • audio codec manipulation, enabling you to prioritize the codecs used and disable ones you don’t want to use
    • call recorder and player, seamlessly integrated into the call history
    • full localization (currently English, Chinese, Danish, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portueguese, Swedish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Czech and Slovak)
    • simultaneous registration of multiple SIP accounts
    • iPhone contacts integration
    • ability to generate DTMF tones while in call, to control various PBX features or automated systems (use audio, rfc 2833 or SIP INFO)
    • speakerphone support
    • configurable RTP port range
    • SIP Proxy support, VPN support
    • STUN server support, automatic service discovery using DNS SRV queries
    • quick import of accounts from major VoIP Providers, like Gizmo5, Voipcheap, TerraSIP and others

    Related articles
    Acrobits Launches New Free Service for SIP Providers
    CounterPath Brings Multitasking and Multi-Account VoIP Softphone to the iPhone
    Juniper Research: Mobile VoIP Users to Exceed 100 Million by 2012
    Acrobits Provides Three New SIP VoIP Operators with the iPhone Apps

  • Nokia and Intel Build Joint Research Center

    Intel, Nokia and the University of Oulu officially opened the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center. It will employ about two dozen R&D professionals and become the latest member of Intel’s European Research Network.

    According to the companies, initially the lab will conduct research for “new and compelling mobile user experiences that could leverage the rapidly increasing capabilities of mobile devices.” They claim that creating interfaces that are more similar to interactions in the real world can enable experiences that are more natural and intuitive, in the same way that modern games and movies are more immersive through the use of realistic 3-D graphics.

    The new lab is aligned with the MeeGo open source platform recently launched by Intel and Nokia.

    "The University of Oulu’s focus on future telecommunications solutions as well as electronics and photonics made it the perfect location for the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center," says Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer and director of Intel Labs.

    Another potential area of research could look into technologies that allow displaying a 3-D hologram of the person you are talking to on the phone, a capability only found in science fiction movies today. Consumers will feel more involved and engaged with their mobile experience than with current methods, as the companies claim.

    "3-D technology could change the way we use our mobile devices and make our experiences with them much more immersive," said Rich Green, Senior vice president and chief technical officer, Nokia. "Our new joint laboratory with Intel draws on the Oulu research community’s 3-D interface expertise, and over time will lay down some important foundations for future mobile experiences."

    The lab will be located at the Center for Internet Excellence at the University of Oulu, and will work closely with the Oulu Urban Living Labs, which provide a unique environment for sensor research, testing and piloting technological and social innovations.

    The Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center follows a successful industry and academia collaboration model similar to the ones of Intel Labs Barcelona and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain, the Intel Visual Computing Institute and the Saarland University in Germany or Intel Labs Berkeley at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States.

  • U.S. LCD-TV Market: Samsung Maintains Lead, but Vizio Closes Gap in Q2

    The battle for the top spot in the U.S. LCD-TV market heated up in the second quarter as the gap in market share between No. 1 Samsung and No. 2 Vizio dwindled to less than 1 percentage point, according to the electronic display research firm iSuppli.

    The research show that Samsung in the second quarter held a 0.7 percentage point lead over Vizio in terms of U.S. LCD-TV shipments, compared to 1.3 points in the first quarter. Both companies in the second quarter dramatically outperformed the overall market by offering sets with advanced features desired by U.S. consumers.

    “Leadership in the world’s largest television market—the United States—represents the marquee position for global LCD-TV brands,” said Riddhi Patel.

    “Because of this, companies are competing intensely to secure every point of market share—with the most closely fought battle occurring between South Korea’s Samsung and U.S.-based Vizio. The two companies have swapped quarterly leadership multiple times during the past few years, and now are virtually tied in the race for market leadership,” she added.

    According to the report, U.S. LCD-TV shipments rose by 12.8 percent in the second quarter to 7.36 million units, up from 6.53 million in the first quarter.

    Samsung’s shipments grew at more than twice the pace of the overall market, rising by 26 percent to 1.45 million units, up from 1.15 million in the first quarter. Vizio grew even faster, with its shipments rising by an industry-leading 30.8 percent to 1.39 million units, up from 1.07 million in the first quarter.


    Pattel noted that in the past, the two companies pursued very different strategies to attain LCD-TV market leadership, with Samsung focusing on premium products and Vizio stressing low-cost value-oriented LCD-TVs. However, as U.S. consumer preferences have shifted to higher-end LCD TVs, Vizio has realigned its product line to offer more advanced features.

    “Most LCD-TVs purchased in the United States in 2010 are replacements of first-generation flat panels,” Patel said. “Because of this, U.S. consumers are more informed and demand larger LCD-TVs with better picture quality and more premium features, including 3-D, LED backlighting and built-in Internet connectivity. While Samsung continues to lead these technological trends, including the nascent 3-D TV segment, Vizio has significantly closed the feature gap.”

    Television research from iSuppli’s U.S. TV Consumer Preference Analysis service, which surveys Americans on their attitudes regarding television purchases, illustrates the rising importance of advanced features when buying a television.

    Of consumers surveyed in the second quarter, 17.2 percent said the LCD-TV sets they had purchased used LED backlighting, an increase of 5 percentage points from the first quarter. Furthermore, 60.8 percent of the consumers purchased a 40-inch or larger set in the second quarter of 2010, up from 51 percent during the same period in 2009. Finally, about 32 percent consumers say they connected their new televisions to the Internet.

  • LG-Ericsson and Accton to Deliver Unified Voice and Data Solutions for Businesses

    LG-Ericsson USA officially launched its brand into the North American market offering a broad portfolio of end-to-end data and voice networking solutions for businesses ranging in size from small- and medium-sized businesses to large enterprises.

    Headquartered in Irvine, California, USA, LG-Ericsson USA, formerly Edgecore Networks, Inc., is a joint venture between LG-Ericsson and Taiwan-based Accton Technology Corporation, a global provider of voice and data networking solutions.

    The company said it will develop and deliver a line of “world-class high-performance” data and voice communications solutions to North American SMBs and enterprise businesses. LG-Ericsson owns 60 percent share in the joint venture while Accton owns 40 percent.

    According to LG-Ericsson, their solutions will include a comprehensive suite of IP PBX systems and a full complement of business-class digital, IP, WiFi, SIP, soft phones, and multimedia terminals, as well as a host of smart, fully-managed and unmanaged switches with a robust Network Management Services (NMS) and Unified Device Manager (UDM) platform to provide easy management.

    "The launch of LG-Ericsson USA will, for the first time, provide SMBs and large enterprises with a portfolio of scalable, performance-oriented, unified end-to-end data and voice network solutions from a single manufacturer," stated S.B. Mun, CEO of LG-Ericsson USA.

    "We are confident that by deploying our solutions, our customers will benefit from improved cost effectiveness and operational efficiency, as well as unparalleled interoperability," he added.