Packet8 has expanded the calling area of its Packet8 Freedom Unlimited residential calling service and reduced the monthly fee for the Packet8 Freedom Unlimited Global international calling plan. The Packet8 Freedom Unlimited VoIP calling plan, which previously offered unlimited local and long distance residential calling in the United States and Canada, now includes unlimited calls to regular, non-mobile phone numbers in Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, France, Italy, Ireland, Spain and United Kingdom along with unlimited in-network calling to other Packet8 subscribers worldwide. The monthly service fee for the expanded Freedom Unlimited calling plan remains unchanged at $24.99.

RNK has expedited expansion of its recently launched Phone Number Bank service into 80 additional markets nationwide. Phone Number Bank is a solution that enables consumers to keep or “bank” their phone numbers for as long as they want. In response to questions about how consumers can maintain more ownership of their phone numbers, which prior to PNB were never really “their” numbers, Richard Koch, President and CEO of RNK Communications, states, “Until now, your phone number never really belonged to you. It was part of the phone network and was just a routing mechanism to make your land line or cell phone ring when someone called what they believed to be “your” number.

Digium the Asterisk Company announces that Asterisk creator and Digium Founder Mark Spencer will join leaders from Cisco, Avaya, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens and Skype to discuss the future of VoIP and unified communications. Digium’s Spencer will represent the open source telephony industry in this high-powered discussion as Digium continues its charge to move the revolutionary open source technology deeper into the enterprise market with emerging and new software architectures for unified communications.

Spencer’s “Software Architecture and Unified Communications” panel will take place on Thursday, August 23 from 10:30 am–11:30 am. Also representing the open source industry at VoiceCon 2007 will be Digium’s VP of Product Management Bill Miller who will present “Open Source’s Role in Converged Networks” with Digium customer Southern Company, one of America’s largest generators of electricity with 4.3 million customers. Miller’s presentation will take place on Thursday, August 23 from 8:00 - 8:45 AM.

TeleCommunication Systems announces the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued patent number 7,260,186, titled, "Solutions For Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) 911 Location Services." The patent enables updating the mid-call location of a VoIP 9-1-1 caller using a Wi-Fi hot spot. The invention allows VoIP Wi-Fi E9-1-1 calls to be routed to the correct Public Safety Answering Point while automatically providing the location of the caller at the time the call was established. The invention helps mobile VoIP calls to meet the current FCC mandate requiring that wireless operators provide E9-1-1 service.

Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC) TMCnet Web site was visited by 3,078,409 unique visitors in July 2007, according to Webtrends. This represents a 50 percent increase in traffic since February 2007, when TMCnet attracted just over two million unique visitors.

TMCnet is the most-visited site on the World Wide Web for news, analysis and feature articles on communications and technology, including VoIP and other IP communications, CRM, contact centers, wireless, unified communications and IMS.

Wholesale customers who use Verizon Business SIP Gateway Service will be able to order service more quickly and efficiently, starting next month. Verizon Business is adding a series of eBonding and Web-based enhancements to the service, enabling customers to easily place, modify and check on their orders. SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, is an Internet-based signaling protocol used for creating, modifying and terminating sessions between two or more users on the Internet.

snom launched its Wireless Headset Adapter for VoIP phones. Suitable for companies of all sizes, the adapter provides professionals using VoIP telephony systems with increased office mobility. The snom Wireless Headset Adapter has an EHS, non-mechanical interface between the snom IP phone and wireless headset, conforming to vendor-specific as well as DHSG standards. It allows for electronic reception of calls on the headset itself, offering users the convenience of using a stationary phone while roaming freely throughout the home or office. snom recommends use of its Wireless Headset Adapter with GN and Plantronics headsets.

Voxbone announces three winners of its first-annual contest for the best applications built with Version 2.0 of its API, called VoxAPI. Using the latest version of VoxAPI, customers can view Voxbone’s coverage, order DID numbers, configure the routing and forwarding of DID numbers, and manage the capacity allocated to DID numbers --- all through a machine-machine interface in real time. As a result, customers are able to completely automate their transactions and lower their operational costs while maintaining high-quality service.

VoIP has expanded into wireless applications and is poised to transform the business landscape for fixed, mobile cables, broadband and VoIP service providers.

UNI brings to you the VoIP Asia 2007 Conference which will be held from 24 to 25 October 2007 . Our distinguished speakers will discuss in-depth the business case for wireless VoIP, cases studies of wireless VoIP deployment in Japan, South Korea and Europe, the most advanced VoIP technologies employed and the latest emerging technologies and the regulatory trend environment in the different regions.

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.

According to InfoTech's "2007 InfoTrack on Microsoft and Disruptive Convergence program: Enterprise and SMB Strategies for Implementing Microsoft's VoIP Solution," 46 percent of enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMBs) surveyed said they were "extremely likely" or "very likely" to implement Microsoft's voice-related systems, including Live Communications Server, Office Communications Server or its future complete software-based VoIP system.

The report was based on nearly 300 survey responses from InfoTech's research panel of U.S. and international enterprise and SMB decision-makers. Results of the survey also found that:

Raketu announces its 3 Months Of Free Calling promotion. Starting Monday, August 20, 2007, customers who purchase credits for Raketu's prepaid VoIP dial out calling service will receive up to 1200 minutes of free calling per month for three months to locations in 40 countries. To be eligible for the promotion, Raketu customers must purchase credits of either $9.95 or $24.95 to use towards Raketu's ultra-low global calling rates.

TMC has added a new trixbox Open Communication Certification course to the program at the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2007 on September 10-12, 2007 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Titled “FtOCC Technician”, the new course provides telephony resellers and IT professionals with in-depth technical training on Fonality PBXtra, as well as trixbox CE and the newly introduced trixbox Pro.

DIRECTV announces a wholesale distribution agreement that will enable DIRECTV to offer its customers CURRENT's innovative BPL (Broadband Over Powerline) high-speed Internet service and VoIP services at the end of 2007/beginning of 2008. DIRECTV customers will be able to access the Internet by plugging a BPL modem into virtually any outlet in their home. This easy-to-use symmetrical service can send data faster than the typical cable modem service in use today. The increased upload speed is particularly important as users rely on greater speeds to play interactive games or send significant volumes of digital content through the Internet.

Rebtel launched an application for Facebook users to make calls anywhere in the world for the price of a local call directly from their mobile phone. Reb Me allows Facebook users to create local numbers for global friends across their Facebook network direct from the Facebook site. The application allows users to add a 'Reb me!' box onto their profile so friends can instantly create a local number for them. New users receive 10 minutes of credit with which to try the Rebtel service, and another five minutes each time a friend they've invited adds the application and makes a call.