Challenger Mobile announces the opening of the company's new offices in Singapore. The announcement follows on the heels of the recent hiring of two key Challenger Mobile executives and a commitment to a significant Asian marketing partnership.

According to Gartner Inc., while worldwide sales of mobile phones increased by 13.6 percent from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008, sales in the Asia/Pacific region increased by 26.6 percent, nearly twice the worldwide growth rates, over the same period. Most Asian countries remain strong markets in large part because mobile phones are the primary means of communication for many individuals. Mobile VoIP is well-suited for these markets because it offers significantly lower costs for roaming, long-distance and international calling, and international calls are commonplace for many Asians.

The Green Power Internet Café Union has agreed with Buzz Technologies to 'hardwire' all of their PC homepages to the Chinese Language Version of www.12buzz.com. They will also begin testing the BuzzTel VoIP platform.

Green Power Internet Café Union consists of over 10,000 PCs in 50 plus Internet Café locations, bringing the total number of PCs dedicated to Buzz in China to 40,000. Internet cafe PCs' market size in China is between 6 million and 10 million units, and these PCs are upgraded every 18 months. Buzz is aiming to capture the majority of these PCs through working with the various Internet Café Unions and rolling out VoIP, ISP and regional IT services across the country in an effort to catch the 2 market leaders in China, Google and Baidu.

VoSKY announces a major global expansion of its VoSKY Exchange VoIP application gateway business through an agreement with Digital China. VoSKY Exchange is the first Skype solution for business to be sold through the Digital China network, reflecting growing market interest in the gateway's ability to add enhanced VoIP-based business applications and Skype trunks to any traditional or IP-based office phone system.

Effective immediately, Digital China's 6,000 VARs have access to the full VoSKY Exchange product line, including seven four-port and eight-port editions that seamlessly connect to any PBX with no modifications to existing PBX equipment, desk phones or user PCs. This will enable resellers to offer low-cost, easily deployable, value-added VoIP solutions to the 8.3 million small and medium businesses in China.

TRUE Corporation has selected NICE SmartCenter for its VoIP contact centers. NICE Perform and the NICE workforce management solutions will replace competing systems being used today. TRUE selected NICE SmartCenter to leverage the synergies of the NICE solutions, to improve customer service, dispute resolution capabilities, and operational efficiency.

TRUE Corporation is Thailand’s leading and only fully-integrated provider of telecommunications services, with more than 10,000 employees, and operates five core businesses, including: mobile, business, online business, pay-TV, digital commerce, and digital content. TRUE’s contact centers handle over 8 million annual customer calls covering topics such as account information inquiries, telephony needs, and technical support requests.

The Smooth Global (China) Holdings has signed an agreement with Beijing Shunyi Investment Promotion Bureau for the launching of ''VoIP Networkwork Construction'' service in the Shunyi District of Beijing, which offers the construction of VoIP Network for brand named companies in the district of Shunyi in Beijing, targeting for $1.2 million gross margin annually.

According to the general plan of Beijing Municipality, Shunyi is located in the middle segment of the East Development Band with the concept of ''2 axles - 2 bands - multi-centers". With this plan, Shunyi District will be awarded with four functions: modern manufacturing, a logistics hub, an international exchange and holiday relaxation. Shunyi District has attracted over 300 large and medium foreign enterprises from over 18 countries including some famous brands such as Ericsson, SONY, JVC, AIRBUS, Panasonic and Citizen. More than 20 factories and R&D companies, which are listed in the World's Top 500 Companies, established their business in Shunyi District based on its predominant investing environment, excellent office settings and well-served daily assistance.

A partnership bringing free video sharing and VoIP services to Taiwan was announced Friday by Globe7 and ChinaTimes.com.

The agreement will allow ChinaTimes.com to provide users with Globe7’s free Internet calling to 25 countries as well as free sharing and downloading of pictures, videos and music. One of Taiwan’s largest domestically owned Websites, ChinaTimes.com is the fourth largest recipient of online advertising in Taiwan.

VoIP-PAL.com is pleased to announce that the Company will be expanding its market to 50 million users by launching its first foreign e-commerce Web site to South Korea. The Web site will enable users in South Korea to purchase the Company's VoIP products online, which will build VoIP-PAL.com's customer base substantially.

VoIP allows voice and data transmissions to be sent across a wide variety of Internet networks, allowing users to talk to each other using PC phones over the Internet. Consumers and businesses will be able to utilize VoIP at home or at the office for all of their communications needs, providing them with an alternative to expensive long distance telephone costs, saving them up to 70 percent.

Buzz Technologies is pleased to announce a series of developments in the company’s mobile unit. One of them is a WAP based VoIP that allows mobile phone users to make low cost calls directly from their mobile phone. “This service is free to all members of Buzz’s Social Networking Sites, BuzZMe In and the Chinese Xirxi. Services such as VoIP, video, music, radio, news and instant messaging coupled with mobile devices such as a WiFi enabled iPod, and the ubiquity of broadband will result in 100 million consumer mobile VoIP users in 2011,” says Sutida Suwunnavid, Chairwoman of Buzz Technologies. “WiFi enabled mobile entertainment devices will make up 36% of all mobile VoIP devices sold in 2011.”

Buzz needs no special equipment or software, just a WAP enabled phone. Sutida also predicts that by 2011 Skype will have 25% of the world's VoIP users and $1.2 billion in voice service revenues. Buzz is aiming at Market penetration of 12.5% and $600m in revenue by 2011.

SK Telink announces at the BroadSoft Connections 2007 Executive Users Conference that it will work with five major cable providers in South Korea to bring VoIP services to residential consumers, small businesses and home offices using BroadSoft's BroadWorks application platform.

SK Telink's new offering integrates VoIP with customers' set-top television cable boxes. The BroadWorks-based services work through customers' cable boxes to display caller ID, a phone directory and other phone services on the TV, while customers watch television programs. These calling features can be controlled with the TV remote control. Residential customers can get premium services such as call pick-up, call transfer and shared-call appearance to use among family members.

Reportlinker.com announces that a new report related to the Chinese telecommunication industry is now available to its catalogue. The VoIP business volume in China telecom operation market increased dramatically. Presently, the call duration of VoIP in China is the same to that of PSTN basically, but the growth rate of VoIP business is higher compared to PSTN. Up to Sep 2006, the IP call duration of telecom operators was 109.931 billion minutes, up 11.8% y-o-y, and accounting for 43.16% in the long-distance call duration. It is forecasted that the share of VoIP in the long-distance call market will be equal to or even exceed the total long-distance call of PSTN and mobile in the following two or three years gradually.

New World Telecommunications celebrates the worldwide launch of talk2hk, a new-generation VoIP service.

With an authentic Hong Kong fixed line number talk2hk enables customers to enjoy unlimited calls with their friends, families and business associates in Hong Kong at a flat, low monthly charge of US$12. Apart from unlimited calls to and from Hong Kong, customers can also interact with business partners and friends all over the world at very competitive IDD rates. For instance, calls to China and other countries only cost as little as US $0.02.

Mainland China is expected to increase output of VoIP phones by 34 percent in 2007 to more than 29 million units, spurred by growing domestic and global demand, according to Global Sources' China Sourcing Report: VoIP Phones.

"China's VoIP phone industry is poised for continuous growth, with both production and exports forecast to grow," said publisher of the report, Mark A. Saunderson. "Manufacturers are developing product lines and raising output capacity."

The report indicates mainland China's exports of VoIP phones are expected to reach 21 million units in 2007 -- up 26 percent from 2006.

ATLANTIC-ACM and Stealth Communications are pleased to announce the “The Dragon Market: VoIP Opportunities in China 2007 – 2011” session at the Voice Peering Forum Spring 2007. The session will be held on Wednesday March 7th at 5:15pm in the Miami Beach Resort & Spa.

Based on the newly published ATLANTIC-ACM report The Dragon Market: VoIP in China 2007-2011, this session will cover forecasts for several different types of VoIP, the underling drivers of VoIP adoption, the regulatory landscape, key statistics about the telecom market, and discussion about wireline, wireless, 3G and other telecom services in China.

China’s telecom industry, fueled by GDP growth of eight- to 10-percent over the next five years, will continue to grow on all fronts. The total number of Chinese broadband subscribers will be 144 million by 2011, and paid VoIP services adoption will dovetail with broadband growth, according to The Dragon Market: VoIP in China 2007 - 2011.

TechnoConcepts announces that its subsidiary in China, Jinshilin Techno has received from the Shanghai Forest Electronics Technology a product supply and sales contract for 100,000 set-top boxes integrating both Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone services. The contract represents the first such purchase order pursuant to the Cooperation Agreements between Jinshilin Techno and Shanghai Forest, under which Jinshilin Techno expects to ship a total of two million IPTV/VOIP set top boxes to Shanghai Forest by the end of 2009.

Shanghai Forest has agreed to pay in excess of $9 million for the 100,000 boxes, with 30% of the price of each shipment to be paid in advance. The first shipment is for 5,000 units in February 2007, ramping up each month to a shipment of 30,000 units in July 2007.

Pingo announces lower rates on calls to the Philippines -- 13.75 cents for calls to landline phones and 14.5 cents for calls to mobile phones. The Philippines is one of the highest-volume calling destinations in the world, and is a particularly popular destination for users of prepaid calling card services such as Pingo. Philippines long distance calls comprise approximately 4 percent of all international calls from the U.S.1

The reduction in Pingo’s international calling card rates to the Philippines is the result of RateWatcher, a feature of Pingo that actively searches for opportunities to reduce costs and pass the savings along to Pingo phone card subscribers. RateWatcher is just one of the features that makes Pingo “the last calling card you’ll ever need”. With RateWatcher, Pingo calling card customers benefit from the worldwide buying power of iBasis, one of the largest carriers of international telephone calls in the world.