Fonality announces high growth in the company’s commercial and open source business units. trixbox CE, Fonality’s open source project, in 2008 alone was downloaded a total of 2.8 million times, which includes 336,000 SourceForge downloads and an additional 2.48 million downloads and upgrades from trixbox.org. On the commercial side, Fonality's trixbox Pro and PBXtra systems reached 44,000 deployments in over 125 countries delivering over 750 million calls using the company’s patent-pending hybrid-hosted architecture.

Zoom Technologies is now shipping the X6v, which combines a feature set that establishes a new benchmark for DSL gateways. The X6v integrates an ADSL 2/2+ modem, 802.11g/b wireless router with firewall security, a four-port switch, and a VoIP telephone adapter into a single product. The product has built-in QoS to assure that voice quality is maintained. The X6v also has user-friendly QoS menus that enable a user to easily set the bandwidth dedicated to the 4 Ethernet LAN ports and the wireless LAN channel.

CounterPath has been assigned United States patent number 7,502,615 for its technology pertaining to handoffs between cellular and IP telephony. The newly patented technology enables users to roam between mobile and IP networks seamlessly, allowing active calls to be handed off faster between mobile and IP networks.

Zultys has approved babyTEL as a preferred Internet Telephony Service Provider for Canada and the US. babyTEL’s quality services make them a leading ITSP. babyTEL offers flat rate and free site-to-site calling in Canada and the U.S, and allows users to be reached via a single number, regardless of location. The collaboration between Zultys and babyTEL gives both companies the ability to engage channel partners to provide Canadian and U.S. businesses with complete end-to-end high quality VoIP solutions.

TANDBERG is now shipping its E20 video IP phone, making scalable, DVD-quality video on every desktop a reality. Designed to replace the standard office phone, the E20 provides a superior quality video experience combined with CD quality audio to enable face-to-face collaboration from any desk.

According to a recent study by the International Association of Business Communicators, direct, face-to-face communication practices are the most valuable for building employee engagement and increasing productivity. Yet the expanding global and remote workforce makes in-person communications challenging and expensive. With the E20, organizations can affordably connect all employees face-to-face from their desks, no matter where they are located, enabling instant knowledge sharing and collaboration to drive innovation and productivity.

Companies using Asterisk in the call center now have access to sophisticated statistical information thanks to a partnership between Digium and Orderly Software. The two companies will collaborate on the provisioning of sophisticated call center services and management applications to the Asterisk community.

Polycom redefines desktop communications with the introduction of its first business media phone, the Polycom VVX 1500. The VVX 1500 is the first device of its kind -- a business media phone that combines a personal video conferencing system with a fully featured VoIP telephone with Polycom HD Voice and an open application programming interface and microbrowser for real-time delivery of personalized Web content as well as integration with key business applications. All of these features are seamlessly integrated with an intuitive color touch-screen interface to enhance personal productivity, simplify multimedia communications, improve team collaboration, and reduce travel costs.

snom's VoIP phone portfolio has achieved the highest "green" standard in a recent test against VoIP handset competitors. snom's SIP based phones received top marks for being the most energy efficient in head-to-head testing against six other VoIP competitors in a recent lab study conducted by the Research Group for Telecommunication Networks at the Frankfurt Main University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

Plantronics introduced the Plantronics .Audio 655 USB Stereo Headset for PC-based communications and multimedia. The .Audio 655 is the industry's first headset to take full advantage of the crystal clear audio quality of calls in the all-new version of Skype for Windows.

The .Audio 655 is the first headset certified to work with Skype's new SILK speech codec, which was introduced earlier this year. This new audio codec delivers exceptionally clear conversations and achieves wideband audio quality (16kHz) using 50 percent less network bandwidth than previously required. Moreover, it introduces a new standard for speech quality -- super wideband audio (24kHz) -- which delivers crystal clear, richer and warmer sound to those using a compatible headset and a high quality broadband connection. Skype's bandwidth manager interacts with the codec to adjust quickly to fluctuating bandwidth conditions to produce the most reliable sound.

SpinVox launches voicemail to text conversion for all Skype voicemail users. SpinVox conveniently converts voice messages to text in English, Spanish, French and German. The messages are then sent by Skype as an SMS text directly to a designated mobile phone for users to read.

VoiceCon Orlando announces the latest additions to the Conference program, including the addition of keynote speaker Angel Wingate, Assistant Vice President of the Office of Information Technology at Duke University. VoiceCon Orlando is happening March 30 - April 2, 2009, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel in Orlando, FL. Registration is open at www.voicecon.com/orlando.

Ixia announces the next generation in residential and business VoIP testing. With its IxLoad Voice matches the capacity of modern media gateways with an unprecedented 1 million SIP- and RTP-based endpoints per chassis – five times the capacity of its nearest competing product. Ixia’s new Acceleron-XP load module implements voice protocols with hardware to reach these major capacity milestones.

Voxbone made a series of enhancements to iNum, its global phone number service. The enhancements include support for presence, enabling iNum users to tell instantly whether fellow iNum users are available on their VoIP phone or instant-messaging client.

iNum uses numbers from the International Telecommunication Union’s new +883 country code, so users maintain a single phone number no matter where in the world they are. The new enhancements expand that reachability by adding presence: iNum users now can tell at a glance whether a contact is best reached by phone or by IM.

FreedomVOICE announces the addition of the X-Lite 3.0 Softphone from CounterPath to the included features of their FreedomIQ hosted PBX offering. This lightweight software application allows users to place and receive calls from any computer with an IP network connection.

Once launched, the X-Lite softphone appears as a phone console on the user’s screen. The friendly interface allows users to dial outbound calls or receive inbound calls with the click of a mouse. Additional features include mute, three-way calling and do not disturb. FreedomIQ users can easily forward their calls to the softphone, providing an effortless way to accept calls on their computer when their VoIP phone is not available.

Speakeasy expanded its SIP IP voice and data integration capability as part of its comprehensive 'Integrated Voice' service. Speakeasy can now provide combined voice and data service over direct SIP trunks, in addition to its existing service over analog and digital lines. Speakeasy's Integrated Voice connects to a traditional key system or PBX, and now with direct SIP, to an IP PBX, making it easier than ever to take advantage of the cost savings and flexibility of Speakeasy Voice.