It appears that AT&T's CallVantage VoIP service has been experiencing an outage across the country for some time now. Users who spoke to AT&T's CV support were told there was a "huge outage". At 11am EDT they had not diagnosed the problem yet.

Area's affected are numberous and you can keep up with the latest news at dslreports.com to find out when area's are coming back online.

IPEVO is showcasing its slim USB handset for VoIP at Spring VON.x held at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California from March 18-19. IPEVO's handset is a flexible solution for VoIP offering seamless integration with Skype software, Avaya one-X Desktop Edition, and other VoIP applications.

Emphasizing the company's commitment to supporting a broader range of SIP-based VoIP applications, IPEVO is exhibiting the USB handset and other devices in Booth D-914 in the Digium Asterisk World pavilion, dedicated to the companies that are leading the way in Open Source products and services.

IBISWorld released its list of industries with strong growth forecasts expected for 2008. VoIP is first of the top 10 industries which IBISWorld predicts to do well in 2008 and is forecasted to grow by 24.3 percent this year. Those in corn farming, foam product manufacturing, web search portal, and biotechnology fields, won’t be far behind.

VoIP Leads The Way

Subscriber growth will drive revenue in the VoIP sector, with numbers expected to rise by 21.2 percent this year to 16.6 million, while the number of establishments will jump by a significant 44.5 percent to 2,190 nationwide.

Responding to growing adoption of VoIP by its customers, Untangle announced VoIP support for the Untangle Gateway Platform, the world’s first commercial-grade open source solution for blocking spam, spyware, viruses, adware and unwanted content on the network.

To date, security, firewall and Unified Threat Management solutions have faced challenges co-existing alongside VoIP and Asterisk servers, resulting in increased SIP traffic latency. For small-to-medium businesses using VoIP for voice communications, this has often meant choosing between the lesser of two evils - poor voice quality or an unsecured network.

Aastra announced that Verizon Business has certified Aastra’s award-winning line of 5xi SIP telephones based on the Session Initiation Protocol for use with its Hosted IP Centrex service offering. Adding Aastra’s SIP phones to Verizon Business’s portfolio of VoIP Customer Premises Equipment provides new and existing Verizon Business customers with greater flexibility and choice.

All of Aastra’s open standard SIP telephones underwent stringent lab testing required by Verizon Business to meet the high performance and reliability standards for products certified for its Hosted IP Centrex platform.

Linksys introduced its new Cisco Wireless-G IP iPhone. The device is the latest edition to the Linksys IP phone product family offering VoIP connectivity via WiFi Internet access. The WIP310 is an ideal solution for voice service providers and IP telephony value-added resellers who want to expand their voice communication offerings to consumers or small businesses by extending voice mobility capabilities with an 802.11 b/g/n WiFi infrastructure.

The Linksys by Cisco iPhone voice solutions is designed to harness the power of the Internet offering more than basic voice communication by integrating Internet connectivity and access to dynamic multimedia content like live weather updates and local search. The WIP310 is also the first Linksys WiFi Phone to ease service provider integration utilizing the same robust Linksys session initiation protocol (SIP) implementation and provisioning software found in the Linksys market leading ATAs and IP phones for quick interoperability minimizing service certification lead-time and customer service training.

PhoneFusion announced the launch of Fusion Voicemail Plus. This free, downloadable voicemail application gives any smartphone user with a wireless data and text messaging plan the ability to centralize all of their voicemail boxes and see right on the screen of their mobile device a list of their voicemail messages. The service also allows users to listen to their voicemails directly from their smartphone. Fusion Voicemail Plus is available to anyone whether or not they are an existing PhoneFusion customer at www.fvmplus.com. This free service also comes as a standard feature in the PhoneFusion One solution.

Fusion Voicemail Plus provides a faster, more efficient way to review messages in the order people want, rather than dialing multiple voicemail systems and listening to the messages in chronological order. A feature distinct to Fusion Voicemail Plus, users can view the incoming phone number and see the caller ID name. Other services only display names if they are stored in the users' phone books. With that information, Fusion Voicemail Plus users are able to dial the callers back immediately or send them a text message.

TV Worldwide to webcast Pulvermedia's Spring VON.x, via VON TV, a Pulvermedia/TV Worldwide Internet TV channel which is attracting national attention after a recent Net Neutrality live webcast that included FCC participation. TV Worldwide will showcase Spring VON.x event during VON TV webcast coverage, March 18-19, live from San Jose. VON TV will host live and taped content, archived event footage and other IP industry video programming. An exciting state-of-the-art component of the webcast will be TV Worldwide's deployment of live flash streaming with the new Kulabyte encoder, backed by the Limelight Networks content delivery network. Other VON TV partners for Spring VON.x include IP industry leaders NextPoint, BroadSoft, Jabber, and Telcordia.

Extreme Networks made enhancements to its network solutions that provide behavior-based rules to protect IP Telephony and VoIP traffic. These security rules help mitigate the threat of malicious users and hackers who are actively trying to exploit vulnerabilities and breach the IP communications network. Based on these rules, users or devices that demonstrate destructive behavior when entering the network can rapidly be addressed to preserve the quality of voice communications.

Extreme Networks is adding IP Telephony security rules that focus protection around voice traffic traversing a unified communications network. A packaged set of rules is available now for Extreme Networks Sentriant security appliance. These rules help to simplify management tasks and better protect VoIP gateways, SIP servers and VoIP phones.

Infineon Technologies to offer VoIP functionality for low-cost mobile phones, enabling operators to offer fixed-mobile convergence by integrating Wi-Fi on its mobile phone platform. The solution helps to significantly reduce the bill-of-materials cost for Wi-Fi enabled cell phones by up to 50 percent compared to existing solutions.

At the Spring VON.x Conference and Expo in California, Infineon announced the availability of its reference platform for a low-cost dual-mode GSM/Wi-Fi solution. Together with Atheros Communications, Infineon has developed a fully-functional, low-cost, dual-mode GSM/Wi-Fi mobile platform. The complete reference solution will bring Wi-Fi technology to low-cost mobile phones, enabling millions of users worldwide to make high-quality VoIP calls at virtually no cost when connected to wireless local area networks.

Fonality announced that Technology Marketing Corporation’s Unified Communications magazine has named trixbox Pro with HUD as a recipient of its Product of the Year Award for 2007. trixbox Pro is the business-grade phone system that allows companies with up to 500 employees to make free VoIP calls and features Heads Up Display, Fonality’s market-leading unified communications desktop application that gives employees one-touch control over their phone system and real time visibility and access to the people using it.

D2 Technologies announced that its flagship embedded VoIP product, vPort, has increased its universal mobility capabilities by resolving the problem posed by firewalls and Network Address Translation traversal. Through broader support for the Internet Engineering Task Force’s standards, including STUN, TURN and ICE, vPort eliminates barriers created by disparate communications platforms and individual network security implementations, such as what might exist between a user and a corporate network. As a result, vPort now guarantees the delivery speed and quality of VoIP calls and allows manufacturers to quickly and affordably deliver the latest VoIP-enabled communications devices to market, including dual mode phones, triple and quadruple-play devices, advanced VoIP adapters/gateways, IP phones and other mobile devices.

VoSKY is launching valued-added business applications for its award-winning VoSKY Exchange VoIP application gateway at VoiceCon Orlando. VoSKY Exchange integrates a company's phone system with Skype, enabling businesses to benefit from Skype's cost savings and enhanced communication features.

Among the new applications for VoiceCon, VoSKY's Web Click-to-Call and PBX Remote Access give companies new opportunities to further reduce their telecom bill and benefit from useful call handling capabilities with Skype. VoSKY's PBX Remote Access Application seamlessly connects remote employees and call agents to a corporate PBX through Skype's VoIP network. VoSKY Web Click-to-Call optimizes online sales and marketing efforts, by incorporating both direct web click-to-call for Skype users and call back for non-Skype users.

AT&T U-verse Voice in Sacramento brings consumers a next-generation digital voice service delivered over the AT&T U-verse IP network. U-verse Voice brings together customers' AT&T wireline and wireless voice, broadband and TV services with unique features that provide a new level of integration, convenience and control.

AT&T U-verse Voice completes the company's IP triple play. With U-verse Voice, customers receive a new set of features that highlight the benefits of having advanced video, broadband, wireless and wireline voice services from a single provider -- and all on one bill.

AT&T U-verse Voice is a managed IP-based service that is delivered over AT&T's fiber-rich network, unlike many VoIP providers that offer best-effort digital phone services over the public Internet. This allows U-verse Voice customers to enjoy great sound quality and reliability, as well as unmatched calling features that combine with customers' AT&T U-verse TV, broadband and AT&T wireless services.

Fonality announces high growth in the company’s commercial and open source business units. trixbox CE, Fonality’s open source project, has now been downloaded a total of 2.6 million times, which includes 1.6 million SourceForge downloads and an additional one million upgrades downloaded from trixbox.org. Separately, over the past five months Fonality’s commercial customer count has doubled. More than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries are now using the company’s business phone systems and have made a total of 225 million calls over the company’s hybrid-hosted systems, PBXtra and trixbox Pro.

“We’ve hit the 225 million call threshold and have proven that Fonality can scale with the market opportunity,” said Chris Lyman, Fonality CEO. “We are on track to serve a broad segment of the 35 million small businesses that will adopt VoIP over the next several years.”