3Com has announced its SIP-based Wi-Fi VoIP phone is availablenow from channel partners and distributors at a list price of A$535.
The clamshell phone is compatible with VoIP services runningon a wireless LAN (802.11b/g) infrastructure allowing users to roam freelyabout the office, or across a campus-wide wireless network.
Supporting VoIP, wireless email and data applications, the 3108Wireless Phone, will most likely find a home in larger enterprise deployments includingeducation, government, healthcare and retail, says the company.
Security relies on the latest Wireless Protected Access 2(WPA2) protocol and advanced encryption. Since the phone is SIP compliantstandards-based IP telephony systems can provide the phone with call controland applications for delivering robust communication capabilities and securevoice communications.
“In today’s interactive world, many employees are no longerspending hours tied to their desks. To be productive, employees have to bemobile to effectively engage customers, solve problems and collaborate withpartners and other employees,” said Brian Allain, vice president and generalmanager of 3Com’s Data and Voice Business Unit.
“Organisations know the cost savings and business benefitsof VoIP and the flexibility a wireless infrastructure deliver. This phonebrings these capabilities together,” he said.
Slick 3Com WLAN Phone Now Available
3Com has announced its SIP-based Wi-Fi VoIP phone is availablenow from channel partners and…
Read More Engin’s TV Tie Up Approved By Shareholders
Leading Australian residential VoIP service provider, engin,will go forward with its proposed 33%…
Read More Channel Staff To Help Drive ISPhone Growth
ISPhone Australasiahas added a Senior Channel Sales Manager and an Accounts Manager to support…
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In what has to be, to date, the most unusual perk to adding broadband service, it’s been reported in Australia that rolling out broadband weeds out (pun fully intended) drug pushers. In this case, it is specifically the more obscure broadband over power line technology, which allows companies to monitor unusually heavy (or stolen) power usage that can indicate indoor hydroponic setups. Forget efficiency in your home or office. Forget discounted rates for triple-play bundles. Forget stepping into the 21st century. Say Yes to Broadband, Say No to Drugs. Just when you think you’ve heard it all…
As reported by 24/7 Wall Street, telephone companies like Verizon and Cingular are lagging behind the cable companies (i.e., Comcast) in broadband sales. Although Verizon is performing well with new cell phone customers (1.9 million), their broadband subscriptions have yet to do as well.
“One of the specific disappointments is the lack of strong growth in broadband Internet subscription, although overall the results were good,” said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research.
How come? They’re all still playing catch-up, plain and simple. Verizon has been trying to compete with their optical fiber network, but even that effort has only brought in slightly more than 100,000 customers so far. Of course, this is still a game of leapfrog. Telco supporters point out how much faster and how much longer life fiber optic has. Cable supporters just point to the numbers (literally millions of new subscribers to VoIP services for each of the major cable companies). The broadband war has only just begun.
Centennial Communications Corporation announced today that they are launching their Aptus service suite in Puerto Rico, giving islanders an opportunity to use their integrated broadband telephone services. The Aptus service “is a converged offering, allowing business customers to manage all voice communications needs through a single, integrated Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) platform. The Aptus feature set includes Auto Attendant, Remote Office, Selective Acceptance, Sequential Ring and Simultaneous Ring.”
Centennial’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Small, said in a statement, “We’re pleased to expand our comprehensive set of bandwidth and networking solutions for commercial customers with the launch of our Aptus service suite… We have an unparalleled terrestrial and undersea fiber network in Puerto Rico, which supports a superior competitive position.”
Centennial is a company based in New Jersey, with approximately 1.4 million wireless subscribers. In addition to Puerto Rico, Centennial Caribbean business includes the Dominician Republic and the US Virgin Islands.
Leading Australian residential VoIP service provider, engin,will go forward with its proposed 33% sell-off to free-to-air TV broadcaster SevenNetwork.
Shareholders yesterday voted in favour of selling the stake to Seven Digital Media(Investments) Pty Limited’s, a subsidiary of Channel 7 and Yahoo’s Australianpartner.
The deal will see Seven Digital take a very strategic stakein engin paying A$26 million for its one third stake. This represents a priceof about 22 cents for the 119 million fully paid ordinary shares.
Along with the money, engin takes on board three newnon-executive directors nominated by Seven: Rohan Lund, Ryan Stokes and BruceMcWilliam.
Executive Director and CEO, Ilkka Tales explained that the capitalinvested by Seven underpins plans to accelerate the provision of engin’s coreservice offering in internet telephony to the mass market through the SevenNetwork, Pacific Magazines and Yahoo!7.
The deal will also allow the two new partners to workcooperatively to develop digital consumer services to diversify the Enginservice offering.
Some of the new funding will be poured directly intoadvertising not only in Seven Network affiliated vehicles but also in-storeactivity and promotional campaigns.
www.engin.com.au
ISPhone Australasiahas added a Senior Channel Sales Manager and an Accounts Manager to support thecompany’s continued growth in the reseller channel.
The twonew staffers include Greg Brodie, Senior Channel Sales Manager and DavidSokolovic who has joined the company as an Accounts Manager.
Brodie isan industry veteran of more than 20 years. It will be his job to help out thecompany grow its reseller channel by recruiting new partners, developing newbusiness opportunities, and expanding the sales team, says the company.
Priortotaking on the role at ISPhone Brodie worked at TPG Networking Group, Volante,Allied Technologies and NetStar Australiain a series of account management roles.
More thanthis telco experience, Brodie brings experience running his own distributionoutfit to the ISPhone skills base having established his own distributioncompany and IT consulting business in the past.
Mostrecently, however, Brodie was working for VoIP vendor and distributor Splicecomon the company’s channel development program, making him perfect for the newrole.
Some may knowDavid Sokolovic from his previous role at Australian Telecommunications UsersGroup (ATUG), where he acted as the main point of contact for all enquiries andinformation in the organisation.
Sokolovic willalso work on the channel alongside Brodie. Sokolovic will be called up on to assistresellers with deployment, providing support and training to the channel, andfacilitating the growth of reseller activity.
GavinMcDougal, ISPhone Managing Director said the two appointments are all part ofmeting the increasing demand from SMEs.
“As wecontinue to see explosive growth in business VoIP across Australia it isessential that providers have the resources to properly manage and support thecustomer,” said McDougal.
“David andGreg’s solid background in the telecommunications industry will be invaluableas we continue to build our relationships with resellers and partners andpromote high quality VoIP services to the SME sector.”
www.isphone.com.au
One of three companies bidding to pick up the remains offailed VOIP hardware company, Zultys Technologies, has agreed to pay US$2.65million plus some debts to secure control of the existing product line.
Pivot VoIP, a newly minted company backed by Israeli-based Telrad(Telrad Connegy in the US) wassuccessful in its bid, TMCreports.
In that report, former Vice President of Technology forZultys, Vladimir Movshovich, who now works for Pivot related how the biddingprocess concluded.
Pivot, the successful bidder is a team of only sixemployees, formed by a core set of former Zultys engineers was the ‘last manstanding’ when rival bidder InPath was unable to best its bid which includedthe payment of ‘priority’ claims such as some back wages and taxes. The Pivotdeal also agrees to pay the members of the creditors committee a percentage ofprofits for several years.
Pivot VoIP plans to take the Zultys business and productline forward, although a change in management is inevitable.
“It was a heavy battle between Pivot and InPath,” VladimirMovshovich explained to TMC. “Both sides put everything on the table.”
Though founder and president, Iain Milne had hoped to retaincontrol of the company he was well out of the bidding, unable to meet thebidding threshold in the new round of bidding .
Also, reports Movshovich, rival bidder InPath ran out ofmoney and was unable to contract its venture capital backers to commit morefunds. With no guarantee they could go higher, presiding Judge Arthur S.Weissbrodt, allowed an end to the auction process before subsequently grantingthe motion at around 10 pm US Pacific Time last night.
Although Pivot is believed to be offering jobs to the threetech support reps at Zultys the new owner reportedly has no interest insecuring members of the Zutlys management team as witnessed by an emaildistributed by former President Milne and posted on on GregGalitizine’s VoIP Authority Blog.
Founded exactly five years ago the Zultys Technologies flameburned brightly but briefly with its failure precipitated by a unsuccessfulattempt to secure further funding earlier this year.
A team up between IP Telephony specialist, Avaya andnetworking tearaway, Juniper is set to bring a new branch office solution to market that commentators are saying could give Cisco cause for concern.
The two companies joined forces a year ago to put together aBranch Office solution for IP Telephony. Their first progeny is now ready to emergein the form of the J Series router - a device that will bring integrated communicationssolutions to the outlying reaches of enterprise networks.
The J-Series will ultimately combine Juniper’s routing andWAN acceleration technology together with Avaya’s industry-leading IP voicegateway and intelligent communications applications. It will be the first integratedsolution to emerge from the joint product engineering and software development being undertaken by the two companies.
The idea is to bring data and communications together in onebranch office device in order to reduce cost and complexity for larger enterpriseVoIP installations. The new J-series routers are available now, but the compatible Avaya telephonycards are not due for availability until first quarter 2007.
Once they become available in the New Year, Avaya’s newIG550 gateway cards (there are three models) will allow the J-Series routers to provide telephony support for up to 100station users.
Two analogue stations as well as two analogue trunks provideembedded local survivability in the basic card. Even more back up is possiblewith an expanded analogue port option, which supports four additional stationand four additional trunk ports. Another card features a digital trunk interface option supportinga single T1/E1/PRI interface; and a four-port ISDN BRI version for interofficetrunking.
Phone services actually rely on centralised Avaya call servers unless in survivability mode.
The new Juniper J4350 and J6350 J-series routers provide upto two Gigabit Ethernet and, of course, are telephony-ready. They run modularJUNOS operating system software, which offers many advanced services (MPLS,IPv6, QoS, multicast, etc.) and security (stateful firewall and IPSec VPN) atno additional charge.
The idea is for Juniper to progressively add features to this operating system to enhance support for security and so on.
The annual conference of the European CompetitiveTelecommunications Association will run from the 15th - 17th November. The hottopic for the conference is set to be the proposals to separate access andservice in an effort to improve competition in the market.
To be held in Brussels, the ECTAAnnual Regulatory Conference 2006 promises an opportunity for Europe’snew telco operators to consider the European Commission’s recent proposals forthe 2006 Telecoms Framework Review.
These have raised some interesting questions includingwhether access should be separated from services to boost competition, whetherwe are ready to relax retail regulation, and whether the Commission should havemore powers over the decisions of national regulators.
There will be specifc content covering the VoIP industry asregulators and the industry as a whole debates how to handle the move to nextgen networks and VoIP in a way that is pro-competitive and fosters investment, accordingto the organisers.
Founded in 1998, the ECTA looks after the regulatory andcommercial interests of new entrant telecoms operators, ISPs and suppliers. Intotal there are about 150 member companies encompassing operators, serviceproviders and suppliers as well as National Associations.
This annual gathering attracts the leading telecom altnets fromacross Europe and the highly topical currentissues based on the 2006 Telecoms Framework Review are sure to make it aninteresting event.
The big questions surrounding the potential for functionalseparation and the possible relaxation of retail regulations may pale into insignificancein the face of discussions over whether the European Commission should havegreater powers over national regulators’ decisions.
All these questions and much more will be addressed at ECTA’sannual regulatory conference as well as up-to-the-minute perspectives onpolitical priorities for telecoms, the latest competition law developments anddecisions by key regulators and the Commission, says the organisers.