Skype claims VoIP lead

Skype has claimed the top spot in the global voice over IP league, according to web traffic analysis by broadband management firm Sandvine. The data puts the market share in North America for London-based Skype at 46.2 per cent, giving it a clear lead over other VoIP providers including Vonage, AT&T Callvantage and Dialpad, which was acquired by Yahoo last week.

MCI Rolls Out Euro Biz VOIP

MCI today announced that it has begun its European roll-out of MCI Advantage, a portfolio of IP-based services designed for companies wanting to converge their voice and data networks. MCI Advantage, which includes networked voice over IP and Hosted IP telephony, will be introduced throughout the next year. The initial offering, MCI Advantage IP Integrated Access, is now available in the UK and will soon be available in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

switch to mac

ok, it's been some time since i last posted there. there's two reasons for that: (1) i've switched to a mac environment (imac g5) coming from a linux system (fedora core 2) that takes some getting used to, but i really like it a lot. if anyone can recommend me some interesting utilities, feel free to leave it in the comments. (2) sales of our packetbox boxed voip solution has been doing very well and we're already appointing distributors in neighbouring countries. if you're interested, drop me a note.

Linux Booming in Telecom

Some news to share about Linux in telecom. Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux in the enterprise, today announced it has published its Carrier Grade Linux requirements definition version 3.1 (CGL v3.1) and will host two SUPERCOMM panels, "Accelerating Linux Deployment in Communications" and "The Business Case for Linux," to meet the growing interest in CGL applications for telecommunications infrastructure.

"The tide has already turned in the telecommunications market. Recent announcements from a number of telecommunications companies demonstrate the increasing adoption of Linux to reduce costs and enable a higher level of flexibility in telecommunications devices," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of Open Source Development Labs. "With increasing awareness of CGL benefits, telecommunications equipment manufacturers are moving quickly to implement Linux in mission critical applications."

Bonjour/Zeroconf support for Asterisk

Astmasters - the Macintosh Asterisk community responsible for porting the popular open source PBX Asterisk to the Apple platform - has just added Bonjour/Zeroconf support to Asterisk. If you (like me) have no idea what they're talking about, here's what Apple has to say about Bonjour:

Bonjour lets you create an instant network of computers and smart devices just by getting them connected to each other. The computers and devices take over from there, automatically broadcasting and discovering what services each is offering for the use of others.

I bet the French have a slightly different interpretation.
The two main features are link local addressing and service discovery.

Link local addressing is the ability for a device to safely self-assign an IP address in the absence of any other method of address assignment. Service discovery is the ability for a device offering a service to advertise that service along with any required service parameters ...

Although today the service is mostly used for printers (in an AppleTalk environment I assume) it should prove interesting to be able to walk into a wifi hotspot location and have your phone automatically browse advertised voip services. It could significantly increase the ease of use (or lack thereof) of current voip services. Apparently Skype is based on the same system, which may partially explain its success.

This hasn't been getting the attention is deserves, so go and have a look, it definitely has some serious potential.

VoIP mainstream in businesses by 2008

Voice over IP is set to hit the big time in enterprises, according to one analyst. Speaking at the VoIP for Business conference in London today, Peter Hall, research director at Ovum, said: "IP telephony has reached the mainstream. The technology is robust. The number of vendors is considerable. The business case is becoming more sophisticated." Hall said the IP PBX market, in particular, is moving out of the early adopter stage in Western Europe. Ovum predicts IP PBXs will hit 50 per cent penetration by 2007 and 60 per cent by 2008.

Council of Europe switches to VoIP

The Council of Europe has put in place new internal telephone services, opting for a switch to VoIP. From now on, all communications from the 4,000 seats in the Council's offices in Strasbourg will be routed through IP. The call for tenders for the migration was won by the French network integrator, Amec Spie Communications.