Research and Markets has announced the addition of “2007 Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in Asia Report – Japan” to their offering. Japan’s telecommunications sector is one of the most active markets in the world. Into 2007, there was continuing strong growth, with Third Generation (3G) mobile services and FttH broadband leading the way. And at the same time, the adoption of VoIP and triple play services has been signalling a significant shift in the market.

The local telecom landscape continues to be dominated by NTT Corp, the world’s largest telecommunications operator. The company has had to face up to some big challenges in the market place. NTT has been busy pursuing KDDI’s big lead in 3G mobile. After lagging KDDI in the market for some years, NTT caught up and passed its rival in 2006. By 2007 mobile operator NTT DoCoMo had a comfortable lead. Though the 2G mobile telephone sector in Japan has entered a maturing market phase, the healthy expansion of 3G has seen the overall Japanese mobile market in a period of dynamic activity. More sophisticated handsets, and the popular built-in camera phones in particular, have been an especially interesting phenomenon that is certainly stimulating the local mobile data market.

GigaOm writes, "Skype on iPhone. No, seriously." It's not the first work around to get Skype on your iPhone, but it sure looks to be the most eye catching thanks to Shape Services.

Companies can now download trixbox Pro, a free business-grade phone system that allows companies with five to 500 employees to make free VoIP calls. In addition to traditional PSTN dialing and PBX features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, embedded corporate chat server, and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

Net2Phone is offering customers of other VoIP providers an attractive solution to ensure continuity of service. After recent events in the VoIP industry, customers of other VoIP services may be questioning the long term viability of their providers. Net2Phone, a VoIP provider since 1996, will migrate qualifying customers from a competing VoIP service to Net2Phone's VoiceLine service and provide three months of free calling. Service after the promotional period will be just $19.95/month. Net2Phone is a subsidiary of IDT Corporation.

Customers will have the option to migrate their current number and will be provided with a free telephone adapter upon request.

Net2Phone VoiceLine service provides unlimited local and long distance calling to the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. In addition, the VoiceLine service offers:

VoiceCon announces the extensive product and market announcements that will be made at VoiceCon San Francisco 2007. This year's event, which will address critical issues around unifying enterprise communications, is the premier venue for enterprise IP Telephony, Converged Network and Unified Communications technologies, products, systems and services. VoiceCon San Francisco 2007 will be held August 20-23 at the Moscone North Convention Center in San Francisco.

The list of exhibitors who will make announcements or debut products at VoiceCon San Francisco 2007 will continue to grow as the event nears. The list of current announcements is as follows:

Fring has closed a second round of funding that is reportedly in the ballpark of $12 million. This has not yet been confirmed by the company. Globes reported that the funding was led by North Bridge Venture Partners.

Also participating in the round were VenFin Ltd. and Fring's existing investors Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners, and Yossi Vardi, which made earlier investments totaling a few million dollars, according to Globes.

fring is a free, downloadable mobile phone application enabling free mVoIP calls, real-time presence and live chat with multiple IM providers over mobile data networks or a Wi-Fi connection.

AT&T announces that its IP Flexible Reach can now be added to existing key telephone systems. This enables SMBs to transition to VoIP without having to replace their legacy systems. IP Flexible Reach, which is available nationwide, uses VoIP technology and enables unlimited local and on-net calling, as well as competitive long distance and international calling plans. VoIP reduces costs by converging voice and data over a single IP connection and maximizes bandwidth usage over existing networks.

Worldwide VoIP service revenue jumped 66% to $15.8 billion in 2006 after more than doubling in 2005, and is expected to more than triple by 2010, says Infonetics Research in its new "VoIP Services and Subscribers" report. Hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling the market, but the business segment is also growing, and will continue to, the report says.

"Asia Pacific has been leading the VoIP services scene for a couple of years, with Japan's SoftBank pioneering the service and taking a strong lead, but the EMEA and North America regions have gained some ground at the expense of Asia in the last two years. The Latin American-Caribbean region is also posting impressive growth and gaining share," said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics Research and author of the report.

Pulvermedia announces that the eleventh annual Fall VON Conference & Expo will take place from October 29 - November 1, at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. This year, Pulvermedia's flagship event, which is the largest, longest- running, and most significant event in the IP communications industry, will feature several new adjoining conferences, and multiple new events and pavilions on the expo floor. As a result, a record number of attendees, participating companies and speakers are expected to take part throughout the four-day event.

TeleBlend experienced a disruption of service for part of its customer base earlier this week. During the service disruption, the company inadvertently made public statements that incorrectly implied the outage was due to an issue with Global Crossing’s network. TeleBlend would like to state definitively that the cause of the service disruption was in no way, shape or form due to any issue or outage with Global Crossing’s network, which continues to serve customers with industry-leading performance and 99.999 percent service reliability.

Fonality announces the beta release of trixbox 2.4, the latest version of the Asterisk-based telephony platform that has become synonymous with open source telephony and home to the largest Asterisk-based community. trixbox 2.4 incorporates the newest releases of CentOS 5, Asterisk 1.4 and FreePBX 2.3 for broader compatibility, choice and usability. trixbox 2.4 is beta software and timing of the general release will be gated by stability of Asterisk 1.4, as well as integration of all of the components and testing to ensure that it is ready for deployment in a demanding production environment.

This is a video review of the Philips 841 VOIP Phone. This is a great phone with many cool features and is recommended to any one that has and uses Skype. The VOIP841 is the first DECT cordless phone with Skype that works without a PC, offering consumers total flexibility and independence from the PC. A full color graphic display and outstanding sound clarity bring the emotion back to calls.

Lingo launches Lingo Small Business, an innovative offering of three customized calling plans designed to give small office and home office entrepreneurs the communication tools they need to grow and save. Lingo Small Business services run on a customer’s high-speed Internet connection and existing phone and phone number to provide three distinct tiered calling plans for the smart small business.

All plans include the Lingo Small Business Office Assistant, an exclusive package of productivity tools, including a free second phone line that can be used for voice or fax to generate more business; critical conferencing services to close the deal; simultaneous ringing and call forwarding services to help avoid missed business calls and opportunities; voice mail that automatically transcribes into email; and more than 20 other Lingo calling features that can be easily managed 24/7 directly from Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox. In addition, Lingo Small Business comes with free Lingo equipment, a $50 value.

Pulvermedia announces its line-up of events for the remainder of 2007. This schedule includes the addition of new conferences at familiar VON locations, and it also includes the launch of events in new markets for Pulvermedia, representing growth on multiples, within, and beyond the IP-communications industry.

Pulvermedia's expanded line-up of IP-communications-based events for 2007 includes:

1. The Fixed Mobile Convergence Conference, September 5-7, in Chicago. This event will help enterprises lean how to extend their fixed-line networks to mobile devices, in order to boost worker productivity and reduce cellular/mobile costs.

2. VON Europe Autumn, September 25-27, in Rome. As the new destination for Pulvermedia's Fall European events, Rome plays host to Europe's leading telecommunications executives, who will share their insights regarding the direction of the IP communications industry in Europe.

and more...

PeerMe launches its One-Click Photo Upload tool. This feature, which is part of PeerMe’s Java version, allows users to instantly transfer pictures taken on their wireless phones directly to their Facebook pages in one easy step. In addition, the tool also features one-click blogging integrated with Twitter. Any other photo or blog sites can integrate with PeerMe’s APIs and offer their users the same type of functionality. PeerMe was named one of the “10 emerging wireless entertainment companies to watch in 2007” by IDC.