Skype and Intel Corporation announce a joint effort to advance a shared vision of establishing the personal computer as a central and reliable platform for voice and video calling over the Internet. By offering an Intel-sponsored day of free global calling over Skype on Mother’s Day to U.S. and Canadian consumers, the two companies are encouraging U.S. and Canadian users to take advantage of Internet communication via their PCs or laptops. This builds on the success of the Skype Unlimited Calling plan which has enabled thousands of consumers across the U.S. and Canada to save hundreds of dollars on domestic calling since it was introduced in December 2006.

According to a March 2007 In-Stat report entitled U.S. Residential Voice-Over IP Market Dynamics and Market Tracker, the number of VoIP households in the U.S. continued to grow briskly in the fourth quarter, with more than 10.6 million households now using VoIP. In-Stat found that while cable providers drove strong adoption of VoIP, Skype gained significant market share in the quarter, consolidating its leading market position at the expense of its client-based VoIP rivals. The report credits Skype’s innovative and disruptive pricing and product strategy for its success, citing the Skype Unlimited Calling plan for allowing registered users to make unlimited SkypeOut calls to any phone number in the U.S. and Canada for a flat, annual subscription fee of just $29.95, almost 90 percent less than traditional calling plans that can cost consumers $24.95 per month or more.

Network-1 announces it had agreed to a settlement of its patent infringement litigation against D-Link Corporation and D-Link Systems in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division for infringement of the Network-1's Remote Power Patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,218,930).

Under the terms of the settlement, D-Link has agreed to enter into a license agreement for the Remote Power Patent the terms of which include monthly royalty payments of 3.25% of the net sales of D-Link branded Power over Ethernet products, including those products which comply with the IEEE 802.3af and 802.3at Standards, for the full term of the Remote Power Patent, which expires in March 2020. The royalty rate is subject to adjustment beginning after the first quarter of 2008 to a rate consistent with other similarly situated licensees of the Remote Power Patent based on units of shipments of licensed products. In addition, D-Link has agreed to pay Network-1 $100,000.

The products covered by the settlement include Power over Ethernet enabled switches, wireless access points, network security cameras and VoIP telephones, among others. The terms of the License Agreement are subject to a definitive agreement between the parties, which will be accompanied by a dismissal with prejudice of all claims and counterclaims in the litigation currently pending in the Eastern District of Texas.

With today being 'Thirsty Thursday' hopefully these articles will help quench your thirst for some VoIP news. Just be sure to read in moderation.

Tricks and Tips: Use Skype as a Home Security System
Fring enables VOIP on N95
Senate committee extends E911 provisions to VoIP providers
Broadband Service Providers Face Wiretapping Deadline
Skype claims 10m Extras downloads
Free Wi-Fi for all in San Francisco

Vocalscape announces that they have signed a contract with NTeL.

The Vocalscape calling card solution will bring a number of benefits and enhancements to NTeL in a phased approach. Initial improvements will allow NTeL to better understand how customers use their system by providing detailed records and reports.

Phase two will allow NTeL's customers to recharge their calling cards online so they won't have to visit a retail outlet in order to purchase more minutes. Additionally, NTeL will have even more control over their system through a management interface that allows them to have and control multiple rates and packages as well as Least Cost Routing.

Vonage launches a national grassroots communications campaign to educate and mobilize consumers about preserving the freedom to choose their phone service provider. The campaign, called "Free to Compete," will raise awareness of the importance of consumer choice.

Recently, Verizon has pursued litigation against Vonage in an effort to achieve in court what it cannot achieve in the marketplace.

"We want to highlight the choice that Vonage offers to the public: a choice to receive great phone service at a great price," said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's chairman, chief strategist and interim chief executive officer. "We think this issue warrants national attention because when competition is stifled, consumers literally pay the price. Vonage is the target today, but what other innovative companies might be next?"

The North America small and medium business segment for hosted business-VoIP is set to reach US$416 million this year - from about US$165 million in 2005. Between 2005 and 2010, the cumulative growth rate will cross 56.9%, according to the latest study by AMI Partners Inc.

The market opportunity for hosted business-VoIP solutions for SMBs is huge and growing rapidly - and so is the competition, which is increasing with participation from traditional telecom and cable companies, equipment vendors, and focused complimentary service providers.

Rebtel announces a new pricing program that will provide millions of mobile phone users with the ability to make free or low-priced international calls to more than 36 countries around the world, reaching over 1.3 Billion people. By using VoIP to connect pre-assigned local numbers, Rebtel allows its customers to make international calls on the go, regardless of the model of their phone, and, without the use of any special hardware or downloads. In addition, there is no fee to sign up to use the service.

iotum and JAJAH, two of the brightest lights in the emerging world of Voice 2.0 and New Presence, today announced a strategic alliance to deliver new capabilities to mobile users and further their shared vision of the future for Internet telephony and mobility.

As a first step, iotum and JAJAH are leveraging their expertise to offer BlackBerry users the power of iotum’s Talk-Now application for presence-enabled call management combined with JAJAH’s low rates for calling anywhere in the world.

“We saw a clear opportunity to enhance the experience for mobile users by partnering with JAJAH,” said iotum CEO Alec Saunders. “Initially, our collaboration means that iotum Talk-Now users will have one-click access to JAJAH for all their contacts. In the future, iotum will release other ‘New Presence’–enabled applications in conjunction with JAJAH, such as PIN-less, mobile conferencing.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. today issued Vonage a permanent stay of a previous court's injunction that would have barred it from signing up new customers. Vonage sought the stay following an April 6th decision by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. enjoining the company from using certain VoIP technology to add new customers. The permanent stay enables Vonage to add new customers as we pursue our appeal. Existing customers remain unaffected by the company's ongoing patent litigation.

"We thank the appellate court for its thoughtful consideration of the merits of our case," said Jeffrey Citron, Vonage chairman and interim chief executive officer. "It's business as usual for us. We will continue providing reliable, quality digital phone service at the best value in the market and connecting thousands of phone calls every day. We remain focused on growing and strengthening our business and driving toward profitability."

FON announced a partnership with Time Warner Cable which allows Time Warner Cable broadband subscribers to access the world’s largest and fastest-growing WiFi network. The partnership specifically allows Time Warner Cable subscribers to become FON community members and create FON access points via their home or business broadband connection. Furthermore, the same subscribers would enjoy free WiFi access around the world, wherever FON has partner ISPs.

With nearly 60,000 FON community members in the U.S. alone, FON is the largest WiFi network in the United States. Hotspot providers are FON community members (called Foneros) who share their unused bandwidth via a FON router in exchange for free WiFi access when roaming through any other FON access point. Through this partnership, Time Warner Cable subscribers will have the opportunity to be members of the FON community and enjoy free unlimited WiFi access at any of FON’s partner ISP WiFi hotspots.

The Fierce 15, FierceWireless' annual list of the top emerging companies in the wireless industry has been released. Checkout this years Fierce15 and congratulations to all the companies listed.

Acme Packet announced that Australian broadband provider Internode has deployed Acme Packet’s Net-Net session border controllers to support its recently launched NodePhone2 VoIP service. NodePhone2 is Internode’s second generation VoIP service for business and residential customers throughout Australia. Acme Packet’s SBCs are deployed along with BroadSoft BroadWorks, a VoIP application software platform, as a BroadSoft Premier Access Solution that streamlined the planning and delivery process for Internode’s new service.

Internode’s NodePhone2 launch comes 18 months after the kick-off of its Public Switched Telephone Network outbound-only NodePhone1 service. With NodePhone2, subscribers can now both receive and make calls over the PSTN as well as over Internode’s IP network to other NodePhone2 subscribers. All NodePhone calls are transported on Internode’s fully redundant, private IP national network, which is used by more than 100,000 customers throughout Australia.

CommuniClique announces a 30 day free trial for customers who sign up at www.communiclique.com. The trial gives users the opportunity to explore the on-demand capabilities of the VoIP enabled solution including project collaboration, tracking and development.

CommuniClique is a web-based application that offers businesses and other groups VoIP enabled project collaboration. Once registered, customers are able to create an unlimited number of projects utilizing team document sharing and progress tracking. They may also invite an unlimited number of new or existing CommuniClique users to participate in each project through online meetings, connected phone calls, IM, e-mail and document sharing. In addition, the solution is equipped with a metrics dashboard complete with a suite of reporting tools capable of producing useful information about specific team members, the project as a whole, or all current and past projects. Finally, developers can use the CommuniCode API to easily integrate custom and third party applications.

VoIP technology has proven to be the key market enabler for cable telephony services and subscriber growth, reports In-Stat. Generally less expensive to provision than more traditional circuit-switched telephony, the increasing availability of VoIP services in North America was directly responsible for an almost two-fold increase in the number of North American subscribers during 2006, the high-tech market research firm says.

“In a growing number of markets around the world, cable TV operators consider telephony service to be an integral part of their telecommunications service bundle,” says Mike Paxton, In-Stat analyst. “This has led to increasing service availability in North America, Europe, and in a few countries in Asia.”

Voice services continue to be the mainstay for most communication service companies in the U.S. even in the face of all the exciting changes taking place in the market and the explosion of growth opportunities in new areas such as video and broadband. While it is true that the IP revolution combined with competitive and regulatory environment changes have initiated massive change in the voice services market, this does not mean that traditional voice communication, a key medium for effective human interaction over many years, will suddenly disappear.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, U.S. Residential Voice Services Study - Is Voice Still the Killer App?, finds that the market generated revenues of more than $50 billion from the traditional voice services segment in 2006 in the U.S. Revenues from this market segment will increasingly shift to emerging voice services such as VoIP and converged wireline-wireless voice applications by 2013.