Just some VoIP news that I thought deserved some highlighting for today. So lets just jump right in.

First off I'd like to point out that the Phone tax refund is no scam. Taxpayers who paid excise taxes for Internet-based phone service, known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), are also eligible for the refund. The refunds range from $30 to $60, depending on the number of exemptions you claim on your tax return. So check out this article for information and a brief history on how the federal government first imposed a federal excise tax on phone services and how to get some money back.

My cousin informed me of 1500 free FON Wi-Fi routers at Giveaway Thursday: FON Wi-Fi routers, Joost and some Babelgum. I always love free stuff so do like they say, "give us some Digg love, click here. Help spread the word"

VoIP products who doesn't love them. Tom Keating brought my attention to VoIP products on QVC channel. Like Tom, I'd like to clearly state that I don't watch QVC. Tom's other news includes Skype for Mac 2.5 Goes Gold.

Jan writes about Skype Call forwarding plugin. Testing it now. Something fishy here and gives his scenario of what could happen if it falls into the wrong hands.

Todays last bit of news comes from Andy Abramson on fring and he explains it nicely at Fring Is Here so check it out. A brief description: fring uses your mobile internet connection to make peer-to-peer VoIP calls, send instant messages and talk with VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Talk, at no extra cost.

I posted an image of how fring works above. I know it's tiny, but that's why we use the lightbox script here on VoIPMonitor.net allowing you to simply click the image and see it in full scale. It works great for those over sized product images we receive too.

Pulvermedia announces that it has expanded its list of media partners, to augment the array of activities planned to help VON exhibitors reach the largest and most qualified attendee audience anywhere in the IP communications industry.

"We're looking forward to the best Spring VON event ever, and in the weeks leading up to the show, we plan to do everything we can to help our vendors prepare their storylines, and get their messages out to their customers and prospects," said Glenn Gaudet, Chief Marketing Officer for Pulvermedia. "Our media partners play a critical role in the promotion of the event, and in much of the business that gets done during, and after the show, and we're thrilled with the impressive collection of media partners we've assembled for Spring VON."

Voice over Internet Protocol telephone services, which last year counted less than 38 million subscribers worldwide, should have a subscriber base of over 267 million in 2012, according to a new study released by ABI Research.

“Hosted service providers, the pioneers of commercial VoIP, are going to grow to some extent, but it will be cable operators and other broadband providers trying to leverage their high speed data networks who will really push VoIP in the future,” says principal broadband analyst Michael Arden. These operators want to add value to their broadband “pipes,” and they want to generate new revenues over and above what they earn from their basic data services.

While traditional telcos have been slow to embrace VoIP due to their huge investment in conventional telephone networks, their desire for total control of service quality and their fear of upsetting their existing customer relationships, the development of VoIP markets will play out differently in the world’s major regions.

HelloSoft announces that Skype has licensed HelloSoft's Internet-Telephony technology which will be incorporated into Skype's communication software. HelloSoft's technology will allow consumers to enjoy free, high-quality voice calls anywhere their smartphones and Pocket PCs can connect to the Internet.

"HelloSoft products being a low-footprint design are extremely cost-effective and power-efficient," said Krishna Yarlagadda, HelloSoft's President and CEO. "Our technology will support today's mobile and wireless generation as they use Skype on the go. We are excited to be working with Skype to enhance the performance of Skype for Windows Mobile."

Bandwidth.com announces that top executives Henry Kaestner and David Morken have been awarded Frost & Sullivan's North American IP Communications Services Co-CEOs of the Year honors for their leadership in both the market and the workplace. This Frost & Sullivan Award is bestowed each year upon the CEO or executive who has demonstrated leadership excellence within their industry. With this year's Co-CEO designation, Bandwidth.com's superior leadership is doubly recognized and shows the teamwork ideology that has made the company one of the fastest growing telecom companies in 2006. Frost & Sullivan has recognized Bandwidth.com's success in the SME market, its traction in the business-class VoIP space and its goals for the coming year with this honor.

SIPphone the makers of Gizmo Project, announced the launch of its web-based VoIP product Gizmo Call, located at gizmocall.com. Gizmo Call lets people call any type of landline or mobile, anywhere in the world, from any web browser, for free. No traditional software download and installation is required, just a simple, lightweight Adobe Flash plug-in that works with a web browser. No registration or account setup is required.

Gizmo Call makes it easier than ever to make free long distance calls. It’s an online service that people can use from any web browser. Gizmo Call is a fantastic solution for users calling from internet cafés, kiosks, traveling laptops, as well as from home and work computers. It’s possible to even make calls simply by typing a number into a field in a browser. Users can use urls like: http://gizmocall.com/18005551212.

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.

Nuvoiz launches the company's first products, the Nuvoiz SoftPhone and the Nuvoiz VoIP Network Controller at the DEMO 07 conference in Palm Desert, California.

"Nuvoiz's CEO and founder Jin Koh has a focused and passionate vision for VoIP in the enterprise, particularly mobile VoIP, and we are thrilled to have him launch Nuvoiz's first products here with us," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO.

Enterprise Solutions for VoIP

While gaining in popularity among consumers, VoIP in enterprise settings is often problematic. In the enterprise, VoIP must meet more extensive user and network management requirements especially in the areas of mobility and integration into enterprise networks.

Nuvoiz believes it has successfully addressed these requirements with a complete VoIP system that finally enables wide scale adoption of VoIP in the enterprise.

"A consumer product like Skype just doesn't work for the enterprise," said Chong-Jin Koh, founder and CEO of Nuvoiz, Inc. "Enterprise users want a VoIP application with terrific sound quality that is IM-based, intuitive, and mobile, while enterprise IT executives demand a scalable, secure, and easy-to-deploy VoIP system. Nuvoiz is the first to deliver on both imperatives."

Sipera Systems debutes the Sipera IPCS 410 and the IPCS 510 for the enterprise. These platforms support new VoIP VPN capabilities for encrypted signaling, encrypted media and strong two-factor authentication. Both the IPCS 410 and 510 also offer VoIP Firewall/Border Control functionality to enable enterprises to solve firewall/NAT issues and apply granular signaling, media and security policies to every VoIP, IM and multimedia session based on network, user, device and time of day.

Sipera Unified Communications Policies characterize each call flow and create actions to allow, deny, or apply routing and security functionality to each session. With this capability, enterprises can deploy soft phones, VoIP remote users, WiFi/dual-mode phones, SIP Trunks and Click-to-Talk applications without compromising established security policies. The inherent flexibility and power of this framework also lowers TCO by minimizing expensive network changes; provides redundancy and cost-savings with flexible call routing; and transfers control back to enterprise IT managers for all real-time unified communications.

Allworx says that demand for its VoIP phones among small and medium businesses has exceeded all expectations - illustrated by the fact that the company has reached the 15,000 unit sales milestone for its VoIP phones well ahead of schedule.

“The reason demand for this product is so high is the fact that there are a number of distinct advantages the Allworx phones provide versus other competitive offerings,” stated Sandra Gault, EVP of Marketing for Allworx. “We know the SMB customer needs a strong feature set, maximum flexibility and a great price point. Unlike most phone offerings, the Allworx phones can be set to behave like a key or PBX system or a mix of the two. Additionally, our phones are the only IP phones that provide BLF/DSS, SIP appearance and line appearance to remote users. Finally, state-of-the-art echo canceling enables superior voice quality. These advantages, in addition to many others, have fuelled the increasing demand for the Allworx 9112 and 9102 VoIP phones within the SMB market.”

VoiceLog announces an agreement with Suddenlink Communications to provide third party verification and E911 notification services. Because of the partnership, Suddenlink will be able to ensure its broadband phone subscribers understand their E911 service and the safety rules that accompany all VoIP phones.

Under the agreement, VoiceLog will begin immediately supplying third party verification and E911 notification services for Suddenlink’s new broadband phone subscribers in several West Texas and Missouri communities. VoiceLog will continue to support the company as it expands its voice service in West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri and California.

Jan writes about a new Skype Extra Ringjacker - Hijack your friends Ringtone! Ring them up with your music!. Great.... let's hope this doesn't lead to an invasion of ABBA calls. Here's where you can find the Ringjacker download.

Tom Keating comments Skype Pro launches all while giving props where props are due to Rich Tehrani who rummored it last week at ITEXPO.

Alec Saunders, helping to discover a new, yet old VoIP blogger source Thomas Anglero who's been writing Telecom's Tsunami since 2003. I'm always interested in helping spread the word of a new resource of VoIP information. I enjoyed reading Anglero's post on Opening the VoIP community... to everyone. If I can't bring you the news myself, why not share the work of others and help open the gates of the VoIP blogging community. Alec makes a great point that "As with any blogger, the quickest way to get my attention is write something that links to something I’ve written, or drop me an email." Amen to that.

What better way to end todays VoIP blog round up than with an episode of VoIP cops busy in Bangladesh and even More “Cops” in Bangladesh. Busts include $360,000 worth of VoIP equipment being rounded up in the latest 14th and 15th crack downs.

Andy Abramson and Om Malik talk about GizmoProject's release of GizmoCall, a new web based calling service, which is now live.

Andy Abramson says, "So what does this mean? Well for starters since you can point any SIP service to GizmoProject it means that the idea of a softphone as a piece of software becomes unneeded, because any browser now becomes a softphone. That's very similar in approach to VoIPster and Abbeynet, but with a difference. GizmoPoject already has hundreds of thousands of users and they have built some telco relationships with carriers such as SingTel. Gizmo also leverages Level3's network and capabilities and since migrating away from some Tier 2 carriers here in the USA has seen their quality steadily rise."

Om Malik gives GizmoCall a big thumbs up, "From a usability standpoint, this one gets a big thumbs up from me. After installing this tiny plugin, you are given a screen that is pretty much a Flash-based replica of the Gizmo Project soft client."

Vonage announces that more than 94 percent of its U.S. subscriber lines are now equipped with Enhanced 911 (E911) service -- a feature that automatically associates a physical address with the calling party's telephone number. The most recent upgrades bring the total number of lines fitted for E911 to more than 2 million.

Vonage's nomadic E911 solution gives customers the ability to reach a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) or 911 centers, through the dedicated 911 network infrastructure. With Vonage's nomadic E911 solution, a customer's call is automatically routed to the appropriate 911 center, with the caller's registered street address and telephone number appearing on the dispatchers screen -- regardless of where or what exchange they are calling from. Vonage will continue to turn up and test new PSAPs that are VoIP-ready every day.

Fusion announced it has reached an agreement with the Daily News in New York to promote its Efonica VoIP services via a Valentine's Day sweepstakes. One thousand winners will be selected to make a free Efonica call to a family member or loved one anywhere in the world using Efonica's recently launched Mobilink service.

The nine day promotion, which kicks off today, gives 1,000 Daily News readers selected at random from all sweepstakes entrants, the opportunity to call anywhere in the world for five minutes using Efonica from their home or mobile phones. The international demographics represented by the nearly 800,000 readers of the Daily News closely mirror Fusion's target market of consumers who communicate frequently with friends and family around the world.