Sprint Partners with Avaya for Hosted VoIP Services

Sprint and Avaya announced a partnership to develop and deliver hosted VoIP telephony wireline and wireless services for the North American marketplace. The agreement allows the companies to jointly develop, market and support new and differentiated VoIP services to business customers as a full-suite portfolio ranging from customer-premise solutions to network-based solutions. Under the agreement, Avaya will work with Sprint to offer Avaya's portfolio of IP communications applications including IP Telephony, Wireless Integration and Messaging in...

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Microsoft's Reorganization will Combine Windows Client, Server and MSN Groups

Microsoft will reorganize into three newly formed divisions, each of which will be led by its own president. In addition, the company said Ray Ozzie will expand his role as chief technical officer by assuming responsibility for helping drive its software-based services strategy and execution across all three divisions, and Jim Allchin will retire at the end of 2006 following the commercial release of Windows Vista. The three divisions are: the Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division, which will be led by Kevin Johnson and Jim Allchin...

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MCI Offers Wholesale SIP Termination Service

MCI has added a Carrier IP Termination solution using a SIP interface to its suite of wholesale VoIP offerings. MCI said the SIP-based Carrier IP Termination offering would help wholesale customers save money when terminating IP-originated calls to the PSTN, or when eliminating the need to convert IP traffic to TDM prior to handing traffic off to MCI's global IP network. The SIP-based product, available on a limited basis in 2005 and more broadly available in the U.S. in Q1 2006, joins MCI's previously announced TDM-based Carrier IP Termination...

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BellSouth VON Keynote: An RBOC Dinosaur's Perspective

It would be a disservice to the industry to make the claim that VoIP networks survived Hurricane Katrina while other networks did not, said Bill Smith, CTO of BellSouth, speaking at VON Fall in Boston. All network equipment -- including VoIP gear -- needs electricity to operate, said Smith, noting that the loss of back-up generators due to the inability to refuel them led to many of the outages in New Orleans following the hurricane. Keeping the network running required armed convoys of trucks to deliver diesel fuel and water. Smith also noted...

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VON Keynote: Pulver's Perspective

"VoIP is no longer just disrupting telecom, it is about transformation," said Jeff Pulver in a keynote address at the Fall VON in Boston. We are experiencing the coming together of 2 distinct groups -- the telecom industry and the computing industry -- and the pieces are coming together faster than ever before. Application developers are purchasing communications companies amid a new rush to add communication capabilities to everyday applications. eBay/Skype, Yahoo/Dialpad, Microsoft/Teleo, GoogleTalk -- all these have happened in the last 2 months.What...

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Alcatel to build "Smart Road" for UK Highways

Alcatel was awarded a EUR 120 million contract to build and deploy a converged high-speed telecommunication network alongside England's motorways. The project is managed by GeneSYS, the consortium selected to deploy the National Roads Telecommunications Services (NRTS) on behalf of the UK Highways Agency. The UK Highways Agency currently manages and maintains 28 networks with data coming from over 11,000 roadside devices. Alcatel's installation of a single, IP-based optical backbone network will improve the transmission of various types of...

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Entone Introduces Mgt System for Libraries of VOD Assets

Entone Technologies introduced its "Armada" asset allocation solution for managing libraries of VOD titles. The system goes beyond static VOD content distribution systems by dynamically and cost-optimally placing video assets in the appropriate location and storage media based on their real-time popularity. Entone's Armada asset allocation system anticipates that RAM will be the most appropriate storage medium for the most popular, but few video assets in a library. However, the cost of RAM storage is hundreds of times more expensive than other...

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BorderWare Releases SIPassure 2.0 to Secure Network Edge

BorderWare Technologies announced the release of SIPassure 2.0, a turn-key platform that provides network and application layer security for VoIP, Instant Messaging, Video Conferencing and other SIP-based applications. Borderware said traditional perimeter firewalls are not designed to secure and manage the dynamic nature of real-time SIP communications leaving enterprises exposed at the application layer. SIPassure 2.0 provides an added layer of security for SIP Proxy Servers, IP-PBX's, and real-time communications systems from market leaders...

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Taiwan's Seednet Offers TelTel's SIP Service

Seednet, a leading ISP based in Taiwan, has launched a VoIP telephony service using TelTel's SIP-based network. "Wagaly TelTel" is the new co-branded VoIP telephony service powered by TelTel's PsipTN - the SIP-based network backbone and turnkey solution for service providers. The service will be formally available to the 250,000 Seednet subscribers with an ADSL broadband connection in late October. The service allows users to make cost-effective Wagaly TelTel-enabled PC-PSTN calls both within Taiwan and internationally. http://www.teltel....

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Freescale Supplies Processor for Alvarion WiMAX-ready platform

Alvarion has chosen Freescale's most advanced PowerQUICC III processor containing a PowerPC core to handle the complex, multi-protocol host-processing functions for a WiMAX base station designed to support both fixed and mobile broadband connectivity. http://www.freescale....

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Convergin Unveils Core Network Convergence Solution

Convergin, a provider of core wireless convergence servers (WCS), unveiled its core network convergence solution to provide mobile capabilities for softswitch-based networks. Convergin's Accolade core WCS platform creates a unified fixed and mobile core switching solution by interworking with wireline softswitches. This enables wireless, and wireline service providers to leverage a softswitch-based packet network into a distributed mobile switching environment with gateway mobile switching center (GMSC) functionality, and at the same time start...

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Nominum Delivers ENUM for IMS with BladeCenter

Nominum is leveraging IBM's eServer BladeCenter to deliver ENUM carrier grade scalability for service Providers delivering IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS). Using Nominum's ENUM solution running on seven IBM eServer BladeCenter systems in a single BladeCenter chassis, the combined solution was able to load more than 200 million NAPTR records and respond to over 250,000 queries per second with a response time of 1 millisecond per query. By comparison, open source solutions including BIND, DJBDNS, and PowerDNS failed during their attempt to scale past...

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PMC-Sierra Debuts VoIP Wi-Fi Broadband Router Platform

PMC-Sierra introduced a VoIP Wi-Fi Broadband Router platform for OEMs and ODMs based on an open source-based design. The solution enables a Triple Play performance wireless home router with simultaneous PSTN-quality voice, wire-speed Fast Ethernet routing and firewall performance, and Video-over-IP service capability. It leverages a DSP-based voice engine to maximize the MIPS processor's performance in management, signaling and high speed IP routing tasks. PMC-Sierra said its VoIP technology has completed compliance testing at the China Netcom...

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Siemens and Genesys Integrate SIP-Based Solutions

Siemens Communications and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories (a division of Alcatel) have integrated the SIP-based Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System and the SIP-based Genesys 7 portfolio of contact center management applications. The two companies said they are creating a complete IP contact center solution based around the HiPath 8000 VoIP solution. Building upon a 10-year reseller relationship, Siemens and Genesys recently completed interoperability testing for the combined solution at the Siemens Labs in San Jose. Genesys is now...

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Pingtel Introduces Turn-Key SIPxchange Appliance

Pingtel Corp., a provider of open source, commercial-grade enterprise communications solutions, introduced a line of turnkey SIP IP PBX Appliances for the small to medium enterprise market based on technology from Alliance Systems , Intel, AudioCodes and Polycom.Alliance Systems has worked exclusively with Pingtel to engineer a cost competitive, certified IP PBX appliance that includes post sales technical support and global logistics. These turn-key appliances, supplied by Alliance Systems, utilize Intel servers, AudioCodes gateways, and Red Hat...

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mVox Offers USB Speakerphone Device

mVox Electronics introduced a portable USB speakerphone that works with Internet telephone applications such as Instant Messenger (IM) and VoIP. The device uses a DSP to deliver full-duplex voice quality as well as echo and background noise cancellation. It comes with a headset that allows users to have private conversations. The price is $39.99 and it will be sold online at Amazon.com, Target.com, eCost.com, VOIPSupply.com and SharperImage.com and at Sharper Image and Radio Shack retail stores across the country. www.mvox....

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Veraz Extends its Softswitch for Wireless

Veraz Networks has extended its service delivery platform for wireless networks, enabling fixed mobile convergence (FMC) by unifying the service layer and enabling application portability across wireline and wireless networks. Veraz's FMC approach is enabled by its family of programmable softswitch, service delivery and media gateway platforms that are based on a distributed architecture that maps to IMS. The Veraz architecture incorporates programmable service broker capabilities that can coordinate between multiple service platforms, like legacy...

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