TMCnews Featured Article

This was a pretty interesting week in the VoIP industry. Indeed, the VoIP Minute Watch reported on Vonage’s (News - Alert) rather unusual comment on its legal spat with Verizon, as well as announcements from Nortel, Tekelec, AT&T, Brix, and Quintum.

 

Vonage released an official statement quoting its its chief executive officer as saying that Verizon’s patent infringement suit, which currently contends in court, won’t hurt its business. The executive appears to want to debunk news report theories of Vonage facing an order to close shop if Verizon wins the case.

 

Vonage also publicly pointed out that Verizon is one of its toughest competitors. Being that, the company said it will fight the “frivolous” fight until the end. Yes, you’ve got it right, Vonage indeed called the lawsuit frivolous in the statement it released on Monday.

 

Vonage and Verizon began delivering open arguments for the multiple patent infringement case last Wednesday. Verizon had filed suit against Vonage last June alleging that the VoIP provider violated seven of the telecom’s patents including wireless telephony technology, voicemail, and call forwarding.

 

Verizon also made news on Wednesday when its Verizon Business division announced that its SIP trunking services have now been rated compliant with key Avaya IP telephony systems. The move will now allow enable enterprises using Avaya communication systems to have lower priced access to the public phone network without having to rely on hardwired land lines.

 

Verizon Business is a member of the Avaya DeveloperConnection (News - Alert) program, which serves as a platform for companies wanting to join Avaya to develop, market and sell third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology. As a member of the program, Verizon Business is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab located in Lincroft, New Jersey.

 

On Monday, Nortel announced that it added the Nortel Clinical Alarms and Alerts and Asset Tracking and Management to its Healthcare Solutions suite. The two additions will feature VoIP amongst its mobile communications capabilities. The move will aid hospitals and other health groups to provide its patients with better access to the staff and vice versa.

 

Nortel Clinical Alarms and Alerts and Asset Tracking and Management bundle Nortel products and services with applications and consulting services from partners to help manage medical alerts and hospital assets. The new Nortel Asset Tracking and Management feature allows for the tracking and instant location of thousands of monitors and other medical equipment. The system can be used to track hospital staff and patients within the hospital complex.

 

Nortel plans to introduce a series of WLAN handsets to be available in 2Q07, which are preferred for these new services and can fully integrate with Nortel’s enterprise VoIP and WLAN platforms.

 

Nortel announced another effort within the healthcare industry this week. Indeed, the company inked a deal with the Geisinger Health System to deploy an IP Contact Center system, which will link about 2.5 million people in the organization’s network of hospitals and physicians across 20,000 square miles. The system is part of Nortel’s clinical grade Healthcare Solutions, which facilitates access to the group’s practitioners and patients.

 

This upgrade to Geisinger’s call center communications would build a single virtual contact center, which will span wide geographical areas. The move will enable call routing automation of previously manually routed calls from agents at disparate locations, to appropriate representatives. Geisinger’s new contact center capabilities also include immediate routing of calls to doctors’ IP wireless phones, regardless of their location.

 

Frontier Communications, a rural local exchange telephone company, announced Tuesday that it chose Tekelec’s (News - Alert) switching products to deploy Frontier1 — a service that will link a customer’s cell and home phone with a single number and voicemail account.

 

Under the companies’ new contract, Frontier will use the Tekelec 9000 Distributed Switching Solution (DSS), the Tekelec 8000 Converged Media Gateway (News - Alert) (WMG), and the Tekelec 6000 Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Application Server to deploy a distributed switching network with improved apps, which will power the new service.

 

AT&T announced Wednesday that it is now offering up to 75 percent in discounts for international rates on phone calls carried out via its VoIP-based CallVantage Softphone Service. The telecom giant will now provide discounts to its subscribers calling a list comprised of approximately 40 international countries.

 

Sample rates include calls to the United Kingdom, Greece, Beijing and Germany for 2 cents a minute; Mexico City for 3 cents a minute, and New Delhi for 11 cents a minute. The full listing of international calling rates is available online.

 

Also on Wednesday, Brix Networks announced that it has expanded the BrixCall VoIP analysis and correlation application software by adding Network-based Call Signaling for cable operators. The move would provide cable operators with QoS visibility into subscribers’ homes. The software now supports the protocol commonly used in cable environments by correlating passive monitoring entries and active test results to allow for troubleshooting and fault isolation. BrixCall for Cable passively monitors live VoIP traffic, and also actively tests results to “guarantee” call quality from the core of a service provider’s net to customer care.

 

This week Quintum (News - Alert) announced that its VoIP products — including the company’s Tenor line of VoIP switches and gateways, have now been certified as NexTone-compatible with NexTone’s Multiprotocol Session Exchange (MSX).

 

NexTone has awarded Quintum’s VoIP products with a NetworkReady certification. This means that Quintum’s products have successfully completed thorough testing to prove interoperability with the specified versions of the products that comprise the NexTone IntelliConnect System.

 

According to NexTone, by interoperating with its MSX, Quintum will now be able to provide premises-based services to those providers interfacing with different equipment in a provider’s point of presence (POP), or IP network hub. The certification will also allow Quintum to offer services from the POP to the customer premises.

 

NexTone and Quintum announced that they will also market SIP Trunking bundles to service providers so they can then extend their VoIP communications services to their own SMB customers.

 

There you have it folks, another exciting week in the VoIP industry! Stay tuned and read the VoIP Minute Watch for the latest news…

  

--------