Frontier Communications announced its pending acquisition of Verizon Communications’ local wireline operations has received approvals from the California Public Utilities Commission, the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, and the Public Service Commission of South Carolina. The transaction, announced May 13, 2009, includes Verizon’s local exchange businesses in 14 states, including parts of California, and certain customer relationships for long distance services, broadband Internet access and broadband video.

Market research firm Infonetics Research released its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers report, which tracks business and residential/SOHO voice over IP services and includes a North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix that analyzes and ranks the top service providers in the VoIP business services market.

BT announces it is offering unlimited fixed line calling packages for small businesses. The new high value BT Business One Plan Inclusive packages offer unlimited calling minutes to UK landlines, UK mobiles, international destinations and 0845 and 0870 numbers for a fixed fee*.

BT Business is also offering businesses greater savings by introducing 500 free UK calling minutes per calendar month per line (fixed or VoIP).**

Voxbone announces that its geographically-independent number service, iNum, now supports HD calling between dozens of VoIP networks and Skype, the global leader in Internet communications.

Greatly expanding availability of emerging HD voice technology, Voxbone will transcode, or translate, between Skype's super-wideband SILK codec and the widely deployed HD codec, G.722, Voxbone announced at eComm Europe 2009.

Touchfon International is pleased to announce the addition of TouchfonLive VoIP Phone Service to its comprehensive suite of communication products. TouchfonLive VoIP Phone Service is available to residential and small business users, as well users in many foreign countries. TouchfonLive uses customer's high-speed internet connection to provide clear, crisp and cost saving calling to anyone, anywhere. Touchfonlive, which includes features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, and more allows customers to keep their current number and phone equipment, while cutting their monthly costs in half. TouchfonLive includes unlimited long distance to the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. International calling plans are available starting at just $.02/minute to help alleviate long distance costs associated with most phone services.

VocalTec announces that Far East Telecom has selected VocalTec as the provider for its core Class-5 and Class-4 VoIP network. The project will be implemented in conjunction with Inline Telecom, a leading Systems Integrator in Russia.

Far East Telecom is transforming its network to a core IP network. This deployment represents the first stage of Far East Telecom’s migration plan, including the deployment of VocalTec’s Essentra Class-5 and Class-4 VoIP solutions across five distributed locations with initial support for tens of thousands of subscribers. The project will provide for a seamless transition and will enable Far East Telecom to offer a wide range of innovative subscriber services, as well as efficiently managing the interconnection to its existing traditional telephony network.

The V Phone offers a key advantage that is sure to grab the attention of users of other mobile VoIP software. Rather than locking iPhone users into working with a single VoIP provider, it lets users choose between multiple providers of their choice for voice calling. The V Phone nullifies the single provider protocol and lets users choose the most cost-effective provider for each task, a capability that is unique among such programs. In addition, the V Phone app is the first ‘open and configurable’ app to also offer SMS messaging over IP.

As the New York Yankees take on the reigning champion Philadelphia Phillies in the 2009 Major League Baseball World Series, there's more on the line for two unified communications providers. After last year's World Series bet with a Tampa-based company (Oranges for Cheesesteaks), Philadelphia-based Alteva, North America's largest enterprise hosted VoIP and unified communications solutions provider, has initiated another friendly competition with Stage 2 Networks, New York's leader in hosted PBX and converged network solutions.

Pakistanis living in 50 countries around the world can now call friends and family in Pakistan free of charge using any phone - landline or mobile - with the introduction of Rebtel service in Pakistan.

The same goes for people in Pakistan who can now use their landline or mobile phones to call friends and family in 50 other countries free of charge, or make ultra-cheap calls to anywhere else in the world using Rebtel, the Internet phone company.

Panasonic announces the interoperability of BroadSoft's BroadWorks platform with the KX-TGP500 series of SIP DECT cordless telephones, which offers outstanding voice quality and a range of productivity-boosting capabilities in a full-featured desk phone replacement. DECT 6.0 ensures no interference with wireless networks, and the convenient cordless design eliminates the need to run dedicated network wiring to each employee workstation. It is ideal for home and business environments.

Sipera Systems announces availability of the Sipera Secure Live Communications (SLiC) mobility solution. Delivering breakthrough enterprise-class communications privacy and security for VoIP and UC on smartphones, Sipera SLiC makes smartphone VoIP and UC "business ready."

Sipera SLiC is the industry's first security solution enabling enterprises to "tame" the smartphone, permitting employees to use VoIP, UC, cloud telephony, and other low-cost and feature-rich communications applications on mobile devices with complete security and privacy. In an important industry first, Sipera SLiC enables smartphone VoIP to include smart-card card authentication for accessing enterprise resources, providing unparalleled access control and communications privacy.

TANDBERG and BroadSoft announced at the BroadSoft Connections 2009 Users' Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., that the companies have extended their joint solution capabilities through additional TANDBERG product interoperability and applications. Now, it is even easier for service providers to deliver integrated video and voice solutions to businesses of any size through a Software as a Service model.

China VoIP & Digital Telecom announced that as a result of the political riot on July 5 in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region, the country issued an order in July 2009 to block VoIP services, which may be difficult to continue. The government has not removed the order to resume services.

Mr. Li Kunwu, CEO of the company, said: “The indefinite block of VoIP services is a political need at this time and we cannot change the government’s policy. CVDT is considering discontinuing the VoIP service and focusing on providing the virtualization solutions and services.”

BroadSoft has completed the acquisition of privately held, Cupertino, California-based Packet Island, Inc. Packet Island is a pioneer of SaaS-based quality of service assessment and monitoring tools for VoIP and video networks and services.

This acquisition expands BroadSoft's solutions portfolio for service providers, enabling them to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy VoIP and video services with guaranteed end-to-end "carrier-grade" service delivery. Service providers can now ensure significantly enhanced QoS assessment and monitoring capabilities of their communications services.

Adaption Technologies announces the release of ExamiNet, a remote LAN assessment tool designed specifically to meet the site prequalification and technical support needs of VoIP providers. ExamiNet provides a quick and convenient method of assessing a client's LAN to determine its ability to support VoIP services. The ExamiNet platform also provides a secure and efficient means of collecting the assessment data and allowing access to the data via a web portal. This assessment process is achieved with use of an application that was designed with the chief principle of simplicity for the client end-user. This simplicity removes the need for any technical understanding of networks, PCs or VoIP telephony by the client to collect this information and making it available to the technical support staff responsible for interpreting the data.