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Who's going to Orlando? In a few weeks, VoiceCon will be taking over the Gaylord Palms resort in Orlando, Florida to discuss the latest in VoIP and Unified Communications. The keynotes will feature speakers from Avaya, IBM, Siemens, Cisco, and Microsoft all discussing the evolution of IP communications.

Since 'what's next in IP communications' is the focus of FierceVoIP, we will be there to cover the event and discuss the latest solutions on display at the show. Do you have some big news planned for the show? Please send us an email and let's plan to talk. Embargoed press releases, meeting requests and any news you'd like to share before the show are all welcome. Look forward to seeing you all there in two weeks! -Mike

Digium is spreading its Asterisk-based phone system love further with a new deal with Synnex, a company with a network of 15,000 IT resellers. Synnex has a dedicated telephony group to provide unified communications solutions to resellers that service the small-to-medium sized business.

The partnership will get Digium's Switchvox business phone systems to resellers throughout the U.S. and Canada. The deal will allow Synnex resellers to offer Switchvox business phone systems, Asterisk Business Edition software, and digital and analog telephony cards. Digium's open source Asterisk software-based systems will provide an interesting alternative offering for the resellers' catalogs.

For more:
- read the release

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Vitelity, a large VoIP network provider with more than 10,000 wholesale customers in 50 states is having XO Communications provide dedicated long-haul network connectivity between Denver and Los Angeles for its network. XO will also upgrade the network in the Denver-based company's hometown. Vitelity's move to upgrade its network speed with a 10 Gbps backbone is due in part to the Denver area's demand for VoIP and IP services increasing by nearly 800 percent in the past 3 years.

The 10 gig long-haul route between Denver and Los Angeles is Vitelity's first such connection with LA. The new network will connect the LA market with the the companies Denver-based data center and will offer customers high-capacity VoIP and data capabilities.

XO won the contract in a competive bidding process. Don MacNeil, vice president of XO Carrier Services Operations stated in a release that "Vitelity's continued relationship with XO speaks to the fact that we're dedicated to expanding the capabilities of our network so that we can quickly respond to customer demands with top-of-the-line products and services."

For more:
- read the release

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Ars Technica has a story about how the National Broadband Plan is getting dumped on. Look out towards the bottom for some tidbits on how the plan might benefit small VoIP providers... Article

A new version of Avaya's IP Office for small and medium enterprises (SME) has hit the market with some new unified communications (UC) offerings. The new features include advanced collaboration tools using voice, instant messaging, presence and video. The addition of video collaboration comes with the release of the IP Office Video Softphone application.

In addition to the new UC features, the Avaya IP Office 6.0 is easier to install and according to the company makes UC 40 percent cheaper for small enterprises. According to the release, some of the savings comes from Avaya IP Office being "available to this segment through a new 'combination card'--providing just a single card for what used to require several cards to support digital, analog and IP devices." Cutting down on equipment needs and pairing the combo card with the cost savings of UC, the new offering is sure to spur a few more SME's to join the UC migration trend.

For more:
- read the release

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Although the service provider VoIP equipment market was down 28 percent in 2009, the industry's last quarter was led by the steady sales of session border controllers (SBC) says a new report from Infonetics, Q4 Service Provider VoIP Equipment and Subscribers. Q4 2009 was the third consecutive quarter of stable revenue.

Despite being down for the year, the revenue for the VoIP equipment market did show a comeback being up 2.7 percent over Q3 09. According to the release: "The migration to native IP sped up during the past 12 months due to the acceleration of TDM access line loss, resulting in significant declines in TDM-related equipment, particularly traditional trunk media gateways and softswitches."

The report noted four vendors who stood out for growing revenue in 2009 with Metaswitch pulling in sales from trunk media gateways and softswitches, Acme Packet providing SBCs, Radisys moving media servers, and BroadSoft dealing in voice application servers. The report also highlighted that GENBAND's takeover of Nortel's CVAS unit will spur new changes in the VoIP vendor landscape.

For more:
- read the release

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Last week Skype announced they were officially launching a Skype app for Nokia phones, but the story turns out to be a little more complicated than that. According to Venture Beat, due to Skype's new deal with Verizon which will one day embed Skype on Verizon phones, the Symbian-based app will not be available for download in the U.S. via the Ovi store.

According to Venture Beat, Nokia spokespeople were caught off guard by Skype not releasing the U.S. version into the Ovi store. Skype later explained that they wanted to be able to draw more attention to their partnership with Verizon in the U.S. and if Nokia phone users wanted to use the Skype app, they could still download it from the Skype website.

The Nokia/Skype software is capable of running on 200 million Nokia mobile phones and plans are in the works to get the software running on other non-Nokia Symbian-based phones. The service offers free Skype-to-Skype calls anywhere in the world over WiFi and 3G.

For more:
- read the Venture Beat story

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In-Stat's latest report is getting some press as it announced that there will be 288 million VoIP subscribers by 2013 due to the growth of mobile VoIP. Check out this GigaOM post.

Not to be outdone by Avaya, Cisco is also showcasing its Unified Communications (UC) healthcare offering at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference this week. True to form for a company that calls its telepresence offering 'Telepresence', their healthcare system is called HealthPresence.

The system combines Cisco's Telepresence with their Internet call center solutions and digital diagnostic devices and allows doctors and other healthcare providers to make consultations with patients via video conferencing. Patients will be able to provide doctors with various health indicators using a digital stethoscope, an ear-nose-throat camera, and a vital signs device--passing on blood pressure, temperature, pulse rate, and blood oxygen levels information to caregivers. In addition, the system can also be linked to electronic health records so that doctors and patients can review health information and update records through the system.

For more:
- read this article

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A few weeks ago, Skype launched a Beta version of its software for Nokia phones. Now it's official. Skype has launched Skype for Symbian and it is now available for download at Nokia's Ovi app store.

The Skype software is capable of running on 200 million Nokia mobile phones and plans are in the works to get the software running on other non-Nokia Symbian-based phones.

The service offers free Skype-to-Skype calls anywhere in the world over WiFi and 3G. Users can get calls to their online numbers, share pictures and videos, and send instant messages to each other.

This last mobile move follows Skype's deal with Verizon to embed a seamless Skype application on certain phones in the carrier's lineup.

For more:
- see this article
- see Skype's explaination here

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REDCOM Laboratories, a designer of digital and IP-enabled telecom systems, completed its Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) interoperability testing for their HDX and SLICE 2100 Carrier-Class 4/5 softswitches with a number of SoundPoint IP phones from telepresence solutions provider Polycom.

REDCOM was able to verify 100 percent integration between the Polycom VoIP phones and REDCOM's HDX and SLICE 2100 SIP platforms after thorough testing. REDCOM engineers assured commercial customers that the phones and call platforms could be deployed together problem-free--highlighting that despite SIP being a standard that promotes compatibility, testing is still important.

"SIP is supposed to be a standard that eliminates many of the challenges with integrating systems from different vendors, but interoperability is not something that can be assumed or taken for granted," said Gerald Totsline, Director of Engineering, REDCOM in a release. "SIP interoperability testing is a good method of verification to ensure that when two SIP-based solutions are actually deployed that they will work together flawlessly."

For more:
- read the release

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CDW, a technology products and services company, has just posted the results of its second annual Unified Communications (UC) Tracking Poll. While it found that UC deployments remained steady from a year ago, companies with strategic plans to deploy UC were up 12 percent.

Today, 45 percent of IT executives surveyed have deployed presence technology compared to 37 percent in surveyed in 2009. Fifty four percent of those surveyed cited reduced operating costs as the top benefit seen from their UC deployment--followed by productivity and more reliable communications.

CDW surveyed 915 IT professionals who were actively exploring UC. The survey pool was divided up between various sectors: medium and large businesses, the federal government, state and local governments, healthcare, higher education and K-12 public schools.

For more:
- read the release
- get the report here

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Nortel just got approval from the bankruptcy courts in the U.S. and Canada that they could go through with the sale of their Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions (CVAS) assets to GENBAND.

Apparently, the deal still requires the approval of Israeli courts. After that, the companies hope to work through the second quarter of 2010 to transfer the assets, products and customer accounts over to GENBAND.

According to the agreement, GENBAND will pay a purchase price of $282 million, subject to balance sheet and other adjustments currently estimated at approximately $100 million for a net purchase price of approximately $182 million. GENBAND launched a stalking bid for Nortel's CVAS unit in December 2009.

For more:
- read the release

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Israeli telecom equipment provider, VocalTec won a $1 million contract with a Russian Tier-1 operator to supply the core platform to deliver VoIP services to over 100,000 subscribers.

The deal with the unnamed operator will provide VocalTec's Essentra BAX Large-Scale Class-5 solution as the core platform for the delivery of Voice over IP subscriber services. The deal is only the first stage of deployment and the system is meant to be able to grow to support more users.

“This transaction reflects our ongoing penetration to the top-tier service provider community in Russia and reinforces our position as a global provider of VoIP and Convergence solutions. We look forward to implementing our solutions with this new customer and to expanding our relationship in the near future.” said Ido Gur, President and CEO of VocalTec Communications in a release.

For more:
- read this article
- read this release

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Apparently with all the auctioning, Nortel's name was also up for sale but the buyers of its various pieces did not pick up the name. GENBAND's VP and CMO Mehmet Balos said it declined to buy the name. Article

Sure its not an IP Communications conference, but that doesn't mean UC providers can't have fun at HIMSS too. At the healthcare conference today, Avaya announced unified communications products to make healthcare providers' patient care more efficient.

The four products announced are meant to help providers make processes run more smoothly and be more organized while increasing the quality of care:

• Mobile Device Checkout: Frees hospital and nursing staff from the nursing station allowing them to receive notifications and communication using a personal WLAN device from anywhere in the hospital. When devices are checked-out in the beginning of a shift they are given a specific phone number and can be tagged with identifiers like 'lead nurse' to make it easier for doctors to contact the right person for the job.
  
• Nurse Call Response: This solution is aimed at reducing nurse walk times and allowing patients to directly ping their nurses so that patients get faster care.
  
• Patient Appointment Reminder: This offering automates out-bound calls to patients to remind them of appointments, using a voice activated system for patients to confirm they will be coming and it allows them to reschedule through voice activated menus. This is aimed at reducing patient no-shows.
  
• Patient Admit Coordinator: This is a patient work-flow solution aimed at replacing the time hogging paper-based ER admittance process. The solution hopes to speed things up for admitting new patients, free up beds and avoid patient walk-outs.

For more:
- read the release

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News is starting to trickle out of Channel Partners Conference and Expo in Las Vegas and it looks like the creators of VoxOx have some VoIP news to share. TelCentris has a signed a Master Agent agreement with Sandler Partners, a telecommunications master agency, which will allow it to expand the reach of the company's IP communications products to 900 sub-agents nationwide.

"Partnering with Sandler is an exciting, strategic step for us that reinforces the strength of our growing Channel Partner Program, which we launched last fall," said Bryan Hertz, CEO of TelCentris in a release. Sandler will be reselling a number of TelCentris' products including hosted IP-PBX, SIP trunking, hosted contact center solutions and wholesale carrier services. 

For more:
- read the release

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So maybe it's just in Korea right now, but Skype-enabled TVs are now among us. Samsung LED 7000 and 8000 series televisions include Internet connectivity and when combined with Samsungs' FREETALK TV Camera, couch potatoes and their friends can interact over Skype video calling.

Users will be able to send and receive voice calls as well as video calls using the service that makes use of Skype's SILK audio codecs enabling super-wideband audio quality. The TV-based Skype will work just like on the computer, with users setting up new accounts with their TV remote and having access to long distance landline calls at Skype's low rates.

Although currently only available in Korea, the TVs are slated for release to the rest of the world in the first half of 2010.

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- read this release

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In an earings call on Friday, Sonus Networks shared some positive results for the year. Despite the down economy in 2009, Sonus announced that it was profitable on a non-GAAP basis and ended the year with over $414 million of cash and investments on their balance sheet. 

Some highlights Sonus pointed out for 2009 were that they "won a multimillion dollar contract with a Fortune 50 customer that extends VoIP capabilities from within the enterprise to IP peering points at the carry edge", and they announced new customer relationships with service providers like Cox Communications, CITIC 1616, Hypercube and KDDI Global. They are also providing the IP voice network core for an American Tier 1 exchange carrier.

According to CEO Richard Nottenburg, the company will use 2010 to launch a new IP to IP platform and focus on four points:

• Create products that lead the industry in scale, performance and reliability for IP to IP session management targeted at service providers, enterprises, and channel distribution.
• Invest in creating solutions and ensure service continuity on broadband wireless networks and bring out solutions for Internet-based and carrier-hosted services to work in a fixed-mobile convergence environment.
• Use the platform to deliver solutions for policy based control of IP services and flows; empower service providers to create new services and controls; maximize returns on existing and new traffic investments.
• Continue to invest and extend the company's leadership in their other core products and service offerings.

For more:
- read the SeekingAlpha transcript of the call

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Ok, ok. Don't freak out--it looks like this is just a step towards supporting the new Microsoft mobile operating system and not a move showing Skype is quiting MS-based phones altogether. Skype has pulled their app for Window Mobile, meaning new users will not be able to download it. Users with the software already installed will still be able to use it. According to GigaOm, it appears the reasons are that the software never quite achieved the best possible consistent user experience and Skype has grown tired of supporting it when they could be focusing on making a killer app for the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

"We felt that Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile were not offering the best possible Skype experience," reads the Skype for Windows Mobile FAQ.

For now mobile Skype enthusiasts will have to look toward Verizon with their latest Skype integration deal or the iPhone app that runs over WiFi. As with these apps, it seems Skype is very focused on ironing out all the kinks before releasing a product to ensure the best user experience. Perhaps with the previous Windows app, they didn't feel they were living up to this goal.

For more:
- read this blog post

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