Join TechRepublic vice president Bob Artner and Scott Testa from Mindbridge Software as they discuss some of the major cost savings that voice over IP technology can offer organizations. The two will also exam potential hidden costs and how you can avoid them.

Cheap but not revolutionary

Associated Press business writer Seth Sutel has been having one heck of a problem getting service on his balky VoIP connection.Sutel writes that after his AT&T CallVantage service went down recently, he reached for his cell and called up his ISP, Time Warner Cable. He asked them if his problem ...

Boston and Hartford will be Comcasts next two markets for its Comcast Digital Voice product. Thats according to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who made the announcement yesterday in a public forum in Philadelphia. Not uncoincidentally, thats Comcast home base.Service costs a base $39.95. As I have said before, and many ...

As our Jim Hu reported late yesterday, Comcasts Internet access service has experienced two major national outages in the last six days. Page requests would repeatedly time out. Problem with Comcasts Domain Name Servers.Seemed to be a bit sluggish last night as well.Whats this got to do with VoIP, and ...

CNet news is reporting that SBCs VoIP service, which is being rolled out at present time, will be one of the first, if not the first, to come tapped into a coherent 911 service. This is because SBC, of which the SBC VoIP service is a subsidiary, also ...

New post in Telephony Online has a leading broadband analyst predicting that at before the year is out, two VoIP-over-cable providers could have more subscribers than Vonage. I think Time Warner and Cablevision can take the lead in VoIP from Vonage this year, Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst with Broadbandtrends.com, ...

Got milk?Got VoIP?Well, if you are Upstate Farms Cooperative Inc. of New York State, you have both.The Rochester-based food and beverage dairy co-op has just signed a deal with Amherst,N.Y.-based networking and VoIP systems integrator PremCom Corp. to link four plants to its Rochester facility via VoIP.The plants are in ...

We live in the digital age and with every new technology comes another way for people to exploit it for their own benefit. With networks being hacked and viruses being produced daily, VoIP is by no means resistant to such...

NEW YORK (AP) -- As Internet telephony blurs the distinction between voice and data services, federal regulators are facing an entirely new set of challenges....

A Yankee Group survey of 231 business VOIP usage found that 39% of US businesses were using IP telephony in some form. Of those, 9% were testing, 25% were partially deployed and 5% were fully deployed. Of the 113 mln US business handsets in use today, only 10% use VOIP. Yankee Group estimates 50% of new lines shipped this year will use IP.

Forrester finds that interest in the technology is greatest among companies with over 20,000 employees.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Who becomes the 21st century equivalent of Ma Bell is anybodys bet right now. The current U.S. Internet telephony leader, Vonage Holdings Corp., launched in 2001 and says it has about 600,000 lines in service....

Microsoft plugs critical holes in Windows, Ina Fried, CNet, April 12, 2005Microsoft Patch Day Brings Urgent Updates, Ryan Naraine, eWeek, April 12, 2005SpywareAdware firm tightens product control, John Cook, Seattle PI, April 12, 2005Welcome to Spyware City, Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine, April 6, 2005Spyware Lawsuit Alleges Computer Hijacking, Karen Schwartz, eWeek, April 5, 2005Threats Against Spyware Detectors, Removers, and Critics, Ben Edelman, April 2, 2005The Chaotic World of Defining Spyware, Ryan Naraine, eWeek, April 1, 2005Adware Firms Up The Ante On Anti-Spyware, Wendy Davis, Media Post, March 31, 2005CoolWebSearch, Dubbed Adwares Ebola, Tops Spyware Threat List, Gregg Keizer, TechWebNews, March ...

In 2002 a conversation regarding VoIP would go like this: VoIP? What s that? Enter 2005 and now the world cant seem to get enough. Large cable companies such as Time Warner and Cox Communications are reporting an incredible increase in...

A recent study done by SunRocket, a Virginia based VoIP provider showed that nearly 85% of the people had heard about VoIP. More importantly, over 20% of the 2,228 respondents were already using a VoIP service of some kind. While...

Security is a never-ending threat on the Internet, and the proliferation of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, increases these risks to a new level. [PRWEB Apr 13, 2005]

Research shows that IP telephony continues to show significant growth, and adequate preparation for IP telephony ensures a smooth transition. Are you ready? Will your transition be smooth or a nightmare? Avoid the nightmare by joining Elizabeth Herrell, Vice President of Forrester Research, as she shares the four key steps you need to know to properly prepare for IP telephony and case studies to illustrate why you need to make the transition. How to Prepare for IP Telephony will leave you with the knowledge and confidence that your IP telephony installation will be an easy and pain free transition, if done correctly.

Blog: SBCs Internet telephony operation got a competitive 911 service up and running in a few weeks. No surprise it turned to SBC,...

Blog: So whats VoIP Inc. up to? The two-year-old Net phone service provider will only say its soon going to offer free VoIP to...

Fellow VoIP blogger Ted Wallingford has caught syndicated consumer tech columnist Kim Komando in another uninformed screed about VoIP.Ted notes that in todays USA Today, Kim tends to overstate the high price of unlimited local and long distance VoIP calling.Worse than that, Kim says that if you want to use ...

Maybe you are new to VoIP, and dont know your H.323 from your SIP.Perhaps you have gotten that far, but your eyes glaze over when a systems integrator is talking about the virtues of G.722 vs. G.711 audio encoding.If those terms befuddle you, Ive got a quick-and-easy resource for you. ...

There seems to be something in the makeup of security organizations and the people that head them: a pre-disposition to envision worse-case scenarios and warn about them. That way, if they happen, these security types can say they saw it coming. Shades of Orange Alerts and WMD assertions.An overabundance of ...

TalkFree Telecom, the leadingfacilities-based international Voice Over IP (VoIP) carrier, todayannounced the industrys lowest PC to phone calling service to and frommore than 200 countries worldwide....

Cost savings, convenience, and reliability would be best enticements to switch.

Internet telephony is the talk of the town, so get on the blower and enjoy cheaper, or even free, calls

For better or worse, depending on your perspective, VoIP phone calls can be recorded much easier than traditional calls.

VoIP companies to provide 911 service comparable to incumbent telephone companies

ASC (www.asctelecom.com), a leading provider of performance improvement solutions for contact centers, financial institutions, and public safety and government organizations, today announced the worlds first Linux-based VoIP recording solution and highlighted the addition of SIP (session initiation protocol) evaluation capability.

Those of us who use IP softphone or voice-over-IM services have a component-related decision to make that is kind of unglamorous - but necessary.What about the headset/mic?You have lots of choices. If you are really looking to economize, you can buy one of those economical models, like the $39.99 Logitech ...

First came Texas. Will New York and California be next to file lawsuits against the VoIP provider over its 911 service?

LignUp Corporation, a provider of Web services-based converged communications solutions, today announced the successful close of its Series A financing round. The $5.9 million round was co-led by Wasatch Venture Fund, an affiliate fund of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and vSpring Capital, a leading early stage venture fund. Other investors included the University of Utahs University Venture Fund and the iOCS Venture Fund. The investment will support LignUps expansion of operations and market penetration in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific.LignUp Corporation delivers a powerful Web services-based voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications platform deployed with IP-PBX, IP-Centrex, Voice Mail, Unified Messaging, and IVR Web ...

VoIP Security Alliance Chairman says threats are increasing; emergency services, fire, and police may be targeted.

Australias enterprise IP telephony market grew 98% in 2004 compared to 2003, according to IDC. Shipments of IP phones grew 176%, bringing the number of IP phones in Australia to more than 200,000.

For around a decade, Wired has had a column contrasting the new, new things as Wired, and the fading fads as Tired. This creates a problem for Wired in the new century, because the concept of being Wired is now itself Tired.Now you might think that what Im talking about is that Wireless is the new thing. That radio is a cool new area - that radio is the new wire. But that is not at all the point. Radio is only a small part of this new century. The point is that the containers and transports for information, ...

Cheap calls etc

David Endler, chairman of the VoIP Security Alliance, says threats are increasing, and emergency services, fire and police may be targeted.

Global IP Sound (GIPS), a leadingprovider of embedded voice-processing solutions for the Voice-over-IPmarket, is releasing its VoiceMail Engine, which allows applicationsdevelopers to quickly and...

With all the talk about how service providers are rushing to provide triple plays or quadruple plays of service involving voice, video, data and mobile voice, its easy to lose track of the fact that its really all data. Forgetting that fact is just asking for trouble, however, as the data pipe can effectively wipe out the business models for the other ones. It looks like some service providers are going to try to fight this in some manner. Recently, Clearwire took some heat for blocking VoIP, and now some folks have spotted some odd wording in ...

According to Slashdot poster "Zonk," some people are doing just that - turning their desktop Skype software into an impromptu personal radio station. In fact, theres a new name for the practice- "Skypecasting."In his post, Zonk refers to solutions discussed by "Skypecasters" on sites such as Unbound Spiral and Moodle.I ...

Fellow VoIP blogger Ted Wallingford has posted a tale of woe about the company I often refer to as "Comcash."Seems as though Teds problems started almost a year after he installed Packet8 VoIP on his - OK Comcast broadband connection.Packet 8s VoIP started dropping packets like mad. He called Comcast, ...

While there hasnt been anything specific coming from the Google camp in regards to VoIP, many market analysts see the benefit of Google joining the market. With more than 110 million PBX users in the country, the base for VoIP...

The Motley Fool - Ive talked before about how voice-over Internet protocol, or VoIP, is the next telecommunication revolution. Both Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO - News) and Microsofts (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) MSN have long offered rudimentary phone service using their instant messaging software through a PC. This was the beginning of the end for high-cost consumer long-distance service.

One of the nations largest ISP enters the VoIP consumer market.

The Colorado based VoIP telecom company New Global, boasted an increase in their customer base by two fold. The quality of their product and customer satisfaction seems to be at the forefront of this growth. Proof of these can be...

Yesterday, AOL announced the details for its long-anticipated entrance into the voice over IP (VoIP) market, which will be based on two partnerships with Level 3 and Sonus. The company will extend beyond todays voice chat, offering telephony services that link to its email and IM portals. AOLs entrance into the market will drive awareness, but VoIP use will be low while AOL ramps up its broadband subscribers.

Calling Vonage "the Amazon of VoIP," a recent article in Governing magazine discusses the issues surrounding the regulation and taxation of VoIP. The reason for the Amazon comparison is a feeling in the minds of State government officials that this "problem" is analogous to the ...

Haven?t used MSNMessenger in a while? Maybe you?re a Mac user who?s urked by the disparity of features on the Mac version?or maybe you just hate Microsoft and you use AIM just to spite them. But MSN Messenger is worth another look , because it does some pretty cool stuff, like SIP-based Voice over IP and Video calls (though not with the elegence of iChat AV). Version 7 of MSN Messenger even lets users share photos and blog through Microsoft?s MSN Spaces, a members-only blogging service. Of course, if you run Linux or OS X, there may be better tools ...

Microsofts New MSN Messenger 7.0 has been launched with some enhanced PC-to-PC audio capability. The giant from Redmond says the new 7.0 is built on a peer-to-peer technology that will render it less susceptible to unwanted firewall block.As voice-over-IM expands with better quality, I cannot help but wonder - ...