4PSA is celebrating the 5th anniversary of its flagship Unified Communications solution, VoipNow. The first version of VoipNow was released on 30th of May 2006 and it was the first VoIP platform designed for small and medium service providers.

The solution rapidly became popular thanks to its outstanding management features, easy deployment, and modest hardware requirements that included virtualization support. It quickly allowed service providers to access new business opportunities and increase the ARPU through value-added communication services. On its first release, VoipNow already featured an impressively diverse functionality that included call routing, call queues, dynamic conferencing, voicemail, call recording, call transfers, call waiting, call cascading, call forwarding and call filtering.

Global Wholesale Telecom Services and its affiliated company, 1 Source Energy Solutions, has partnered with Pervasip to market Pervasip's video phone services. GWTS and 1 Source market telecom and energy expense reduction services to more than five million residential consumers and businesses.

GWTS's President, Brent Kish, noted, "I purchased two video phones from Pervasip and sent one to my mother, who is not technologically sophisticated. She was able to plug in the video phone, watch it auto-provision in about one minute, and make a video call. When her grandchildren came to the phone, she started crying because she not had seen them recently. I believe the real-time clarity and ease-of-use of this phone makes it very easy for us to sell."

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "2010 VoIP Update - U.S. SMB Market" report to their offering.

It is believed that the market for IP based voice communications, i.e. VoIP, IP PBX will eventually merge. The last several years have been dogged by a difficult recession and many SMBs put on hold technology decisions. In the end, the migration of voice and data continues, the chance to leverage data networks with voice communications continues, and the opportunity for greater market penetration of IP solutions among the SMB community remains large.

fring announces closing its C-round of financing. The new financing will expedite fring's unrelenting mobile innovations and bring fring's fun video communication suite to a slew of new devices and segments of users.

fring's new financing complements fring's primary revenue engines, fringOut and advertising, which are contributing at a rate of $10 million annually.

"Time and again, our team has shown it has the innovative edge to deliver ground-breaking, consumer communication experiences." Said Avi Shechter, Co-Founder & CEO of fring. "This is how our young team has won tens of millions of users, bringing the world's 1st unrestricted mobile voice over IP, the 1st mobile Video over IP, and just last month, the 1st mobile Group Video over IP. And we're just getting started."

SPIRIT DSP announced its TeamSpiri Voice Engine Mobile is now powering more than 15 million users of the enormously popular and free mobile VoIP Viber application.

Backed by SPIRIT's Voice Engine Mobile, Viber offers HD (wideband) VoIP free calls from iPhone and Android mobile devices. Viber's free mobile VoIP app can make calls over 3G and Wi-Fi connections, bypassing the use of any cellular voice minutes; calls are free worldwide. Unlike other VoIP services such as Skype, Viber requires no registration or need to log-in to make calls.

Voxbone has been selected to provide a means for United Nations agencies responding with humanitarian aid in times of natural disasters to stay in contact and communicate with one another quickly and easily via a unique United Nations country code – 888.

Under agreement with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Voxbone has been authorized to implement the country code 888 that the ITU has assigned to OCHA for UN agencies engaged in rendering assistance to nations or regions affected by natural disasters, such as the Southeast Asian tsunami or the earthquake in Haiti.

Having its own special 888 country code will allow the UN to assign specific numbers to agencies providing humanitarian relief to victims of such disasters.

Fonality announces the launch of its “Turn it In/Turn it Up” trade-in program, providing small and mid-size businesses with a cost-effective solution to upgrade their business communications capabilities. Through this program, SMBs can trade their outdated, legacy phone systems for fair market value and receive credit toward Fonality’s cloud-based Unified Communications, VoIP and contact center solutions.

Specifically designed for SMBs, Fonality’s six-time award-winning communications solutions are simple to use, easy to manage and affordable to deploy. The company’s cloud-based solutions deliver Fortune 500 features without the costly hardware, infrastructure or lengthy implementation cycles associated with legacy on-premise IP systems. Productivity-enhancing features, such as unified messaging with email, secure chat and Microsoft Outlook contact integration, are combined with audio conferencing, photo caller ID, visual voicemail, email/text, ring-back and on-the-fly call recording. Fonality solutions start at a cost of $30 per user per month, which includes calls, and offer a total cost of ownership up to 50 percent less than legacy phone solutions.

Market research firm Infonetics Research released its first quarter 2011 IMS Equipment and Subscribers and Service Provider VoIP Equipment and Subscribers preliminary market share and forecast reports.

"Mobile is the big news in the IMS equipment market, with over half of all IMS equipment sold going to mobile networks in the first quarter of 2011. The impact of LTE is starting to kick in, particularly in North America, where IMS equipment is being implemented for LTE networks for subscriber registrations and mobile messaging services, and in Asia Pacific for enhanced services over 3G. We expect 2011 to be the year where LTE and network transformation projects start having an important impact on IMS. Meanwhile, the movement towards IMS and all-IP networks is having a reverse impact on legacy VoIP equipment such as softswitches and trunk media gateways," notes Diane Myers, directing analyst for VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.

CounterPath has launched an online certification program for Internet Telephony Service Providers. The CounterPath ITSP Partner Program enables ITSPs to certify their service with CounterPath's mobile softphone, Bria iPhone Edition, and provide a pre-provisioned service option within the softphone client.

By participating in the ITSP Partner Program, ITSPs can provide their customers with a premier softphone option that is easy to activate and use. The program also helps ITSPs expand their market reach by leveraging the CounterPath softphone user base.

8x8 has significantly upgraded its contract with World Telecom Group to offer 8x8 cloud-based VoIP and Unified Communications services to businesses nationwide through its network of agent partners.

WTG maintains a diverse portfolio of telecommunications products and services including local, long-distance, data, integrated access, VoIP, wireless and videoconferencing solutions. As an 8x8 master agent partner, WTG offers their agent and reseller partners an opportunity to expand their portfolios with 8x8's award-winning, cloud-based VoIP, video, contact center and managed hosting solutions, including the 8x8 Virtual Office and Virtual Office Pro services, now in use by over 24,000 businesses.

Voxofon announces the availability of its services to users of Hewlett Packard’s new compact Veer 4G mobile phone. Currently, VOXOFON IS THE ONLY COMPANY OFFERING A DEDICATED APPLICATION FOR AFFORDABLE INTERNATIONAL CALLING TO VEER USERS.

“Voxofon is delighted to extend our reliable, simple, and affordable international calling services to users of Hewlett Packard’s new Veer 4G mobile phone,” said Alexey Goloshubin, president of Voxofon. “The Veer-Voxofon combination is ideal for individuals on the go who want travel-sized, global communication capability. With Voxofon, Veer users can stay in touch with their contacts from anywhere and at any time, with high quality, budget-friendly international calling.”

Tone Software announced that its ReliaTel VoIP management solution is compliant with key IP telephony solutions from Avaya.

The ReliaTel solution provides comprehensive VoIP quality and service level management for converged environments, including real time VoIP QoS and QoE analysis and trunk performance reporting for Avaya Communications Manager through the SAT interface. The ReliaTel RTCP, SNMP and SAT functionality is now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with Avaya Aura Communication Manager 6.0.

VoIP Supply is pleased to announce the addition of Ruckus Wireless products that specialize in Wi-Fi for both enterprise and service provider markets.

Routing Wi-Fi signals can be unreliable due to interference, obstacles, and the sometimes erratic behavior of wireless signals themselves. Ruckus Wireless has developed “Smart Wi-Fi” to combat those barriers to a secure wireless network and restore faith in what companies love about Wi-Fi.

“VoIP Supply is excited to offer revolutionary Wi-Fi products from a manufacturer with such an impressive track record,” said Garrett Smith, Chief Marketing Officer at VoIP Supply. “Today’s Wi-Fi systems face increasing levels of interference and obstacles. Ruckus delivers the unthinkable - Reliability, range and speed by automatically adapting to the surrounding environment.”

Tone Software will be on hand at the upcoming IAUG Global Conference. Held from May 22-26 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the IAUG Global Conference is one of the world's largest international gatherings for communications technology professionals.

Supporting a converged voice and data environment and working with VoIP quality metrics can be a daunting task. Understanding which metrics to collect and analyze, their interdependencies, and how they manifest into user experience is key to successfully delivering VoIP quality and converged voice services. To that end, in a session titled, "The Language of VoIP QoS - Demystified," Tone's director of strategic technology advancement, Amit Kapoor, will help take the guesswork and unknowns out of supporting VoIP. Taking place on Thursday, May 26th at 9:45am, the session focuses on the terminology, impact, and utilization of QoS metrics to successfully support a VoIP environment.

Law firms Seeger Weiss LLP and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC announced that the U.S. District Court of New Jersey has granted final approval to a proposed settlement of a consumer class action against telecom provider Vonage Holdings Corp. challenging the company’s sales and marketing practices. The final settlement of In re Vonage Marketing and Sales Practice Litigation follows a fairness hearing on May 12, 2011. The settlement will likely provide dollar-for-dollar recovery to most settlement class members.

This multi-district litigation involved Vonage’s promotional “one month free” and “money back guarantee” offers and application of certain charges (including disconnect, cancellation and termination fees), and subscription fees despite requests for cancellation, which allegedly violated the law. Seeger Weiss partner Jonathan Shub and associate Scott George served as co-lead counsel in this case, along with Andrew Friedman and Victoria Nugent of Cohen, Milstein.