8x8 announces it reached the $1 million mark in cash payments made to subscribers, channel partners and third parties who have referred new business customers to 8x8 through the company's lucrative word-of-mouth "Business Referral Program."

The 8x8 "Business Referral Program" rewards existing subscribers and registered partners for submitting business referrals that become customers of 8x8's business communications services, which include the 8x8 Virtual Office VoIP phone service and 8x8 Virtual Office Pro unified communications solution. Participants in the program have an opportunity to earn unlimited cash rewards of $100 for each qualifying Virtual Office extension the new customer orders, provided they remain a subscriber in good standing for at least 60 days.

Bandwidth.com has signed a commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies under which the parties agree to terminate each other’s VoIP traffic at a rate of $0.0007 per minute.

The agreed upon rate, which applies to traffic that originates from or terminates to a VoIP end user, provides the companies with cost certainty for the traffic they exchange, thereby increasing the opportunity for both companies to make further investments in innovative services that benefit their customers.

Pac-West Telecomm announces that its Telastic on-demand border controller service, launched in September, has rated and routed in excess of a billion minutes through the end of 2010.

Pac-West recently launched the Telastic on-demand service set, consisting of three integrated elements: Telastic Infrastructure, Telastic Application Capacity, and Telastic Turnkey VoIP Applications. Telastic Border Controller technology is at the heart of the Telastic Infrastructure offering, which provides scalable on-demand border control, including VoIP security with network address translation capability, firewall traversal, and interworking. The Telastic Border Controller also includes a suite of advanced managerial features including domestic and international routing, VoIP peering, numbers management, billing, traffic analysis and reporting, revenue protection, fraud detection, and traffic management.

MegaPath is helping small-to-medium sized businesses get a smart start on 2011 with its new nationwide Ethernet 2x2 Mbps service. Offering the lowest cost per megabit on the market, MegaPath is redefining both business-class Internet service performance and price.

MegaPath eliminates the confusion of true speed by guaranteeing Ethernet 2x2 service customers receive always-on, dedicated access to fast symmetrical upload and download speeds from their data connection. In addition, MegaPath provides the Ethernet 2x2 service via a single consistent nationwide network that offers the broadest coverage of any provider, with access to 90 percent of businesses across the U.S. Business owners looking to increase productivity and lower costs can take advantage of free activation and installation for only $259 per month. Customers can recognize even greater savings by bundling the Ethernet 2x2 service with MegaPath's Hosted Voice for $229 per month.

Vertical Communications announces the release of MBX IP, a converged IP telephony system designed to meet the needs of multi-site small businesses. The availability of MBX IP completes Vertical’s next-gen telephony product line-up with SBX IP and Wave IP, providing powerful telephony solutions to help businesses further increase productivity and efficiency.

The MBX IP system provides a migration friendly pathway for existing MP-5000, FX-II and XTS IP systems, supporting traditional endpoints, IP endpoints and (VoIP) SIP trunking — all with a single system that is scalable to meet the demands of multi-site SMB customers. MBX IP supports existing XTS IP, FX/MP, STS, and SBX IP endpoints, including the new Edge 8000 IP phones, as well as, having a compatible feature set. The MBX IP system is targeted for businesses having 50 to 250 users and up to 72 multiple sites, so you enjoy pay-as-you-grow scalability.

ShoreTel has again recognized AmeriCom for achieving “A World Class level of professionalism and customer care in network assessment, system design, project management, end user training and post sale follow up as reflected by the ShoreTel customer satisfaction surveys conducted by an objective third party” during AmeriCom’s 2010 fiscal year.

VOIP business phone systems is an extremely competitive market, and a feature rich industry with capabilities of high customer satisfaction when executed right. ShoreTel VOIP phone systems ride the crest of the wave. AmeriCom excels at both the technical and customer/people oriented facets of fitting a proper ShoreTel VOIP business phone system to an organization in need of state-of-the-art communications. AmeriCom’s passion for excellence is reflected in their high customer satisfaction results.

CEVA announces that PMC-Sierra has licensed its CEVA-VoP VoIP platform for use in PMC-Sierra's next generation system-on-chip devices for Fiber-To-The-Home applications. CEVA-VoP is a complete hardware and software VoIP solution based on the CEVA-TeakLite-II DSP, designed to be deployed in integrated networking and VoP SoCs.

VoIP-PAL.com announces the addition of two new Payment Platforms for the end-users on their retail website www.pointsphone.com.

"We are preparing the Company for the anticipated influx of new subscribers at the start of the 2011 new year," states Dennis Chang, President. "The only Pay Platform we used in the past was PayPal. By adding Moneybookers and Google Checkout, the end user now has alternative ways to sign up to our service. Testing on major infrastructure upgrades is currently being completed and the addition of these two new pay platforms is just one phase of our upgrade."

TelcoBridges and Xener Systems announce the successful completion of interoperability testing between TelcoBridges’ Tmedia family of VoIP gateways and Xener Systems’ family of Class 4 and Class 5 softswitch solutions. As a result of this certified compatibility, service providers that choose TelcoBridges’ VoIP gateways and Xener Systems’ softswitches can be sure that they will achieve optimum compatibility and performance with carrier-grade reliability.

Junction Networks announces that MBLM NYC has become the company’s 10,000th customer of its hosted VoIP services. Following a merger, the New York-based branding firm chose to deploy OnSIP Hosted PBX service to quickly deploy a complete communications solution and save on upfront investment.

"When we merged with a larger company and needed to quickly deploy an additional 16 workstations, we decided to move from a PSTN Gateway service with Junction Networks to OnSIP, in order to save on upfront cost and get up and running quickly,” said Olaf Kreitz, Partner, MBLM NYC. “We love that the service was easy to set up and also offers such a robust feature set. We did a lot of shopping around and found OnSIP to be the best value. The My.OnSIP feature has also become a fast favorite for us, as it allows each individual employee to manage their extension in so many ways."

Truphone announces that its mobile VoIP service is now available for desktops and laptops. The new desktop application has been unveiled at the same time as the company's new brand name Tru and its refreshed website.

Tru's new desktop application can be easily downloaded from www.truphone.com/applications allowing customers to stay in touch with the people that matter to them using voice, instant messenger or SMS text messaging, for free or at low cost, using their device's Internet connection.

Tru's customers will be able to transfer their PC calls seamlessly onto their mobile phones, providing the ultimate in convenience and allowing customers to stay connected wherever they are.

VoIP Logic has upgraded its managed services Class 5 Hosted PBX infrastructure to support Cisco's "Skinny". With existing support for SIP and MGCP, VoIP Logic now provides Class 5 hosted PBX functionality to address the needs of Carriers serving enterprise clients using older generation VoIP phone equipment from Cisco Systems. Communications Service Providers working with VoIP Logic now have the capability to address the needs of the large number of enterprises who are in the market for an enhanced or replacement hosted PBX service provider.

Covad Wholesale and Broadvox announce that the companies are extending their partnership. Broadvox will now leverage Covad's IP Backhaul Aggregation Service and Ethernet access services to deliver, prioritize and segment voice traffic to meet the demanding needs of their business customer base, which includes professional services and healthcare-related business customers.

Acme Packet announces that Etisalat Lanka is deploying Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers to support its IP interconnects for international calls. Etisalat Lanka uses IP interconnects to enhance international voice traffic and selected Acme Packet to secure and optimize those connections for expansion. The deployment of SBCs also complements Etisalat Lanka’s migration to all-IP networks for lower total cost of ownership and the delivery of new services.

Patton announces a strategic partnership with Neocenter. Culminating several months of strategic planning, Patton has signed Mexico-based Neocenter as Value-Added Distributor for Patton’s US-manufactured IP networking equipment.

The Patton-Neocenter partnership is particularly focused on driving accelerated adoption of the award-winning SmartNode line of VoIP gateways, routers, IADs and SBCs in the rapidly expanding Americas convergence market.