With VoIP technology come new scams, phishing, and spamming techniques. "VoIP is becoming a standard for companies, and a household appliance in most parts of Europe and the US, scammers are trying their best to rack in a few extra bills with newer, much more effective scams."

Congratulations Skype, "Internet telephony provider Skype announced Friday it now has more than 100 million registered users worldwide." This is one large milestone to pass with many more to come I'm sure.

Vonexus, a global developer of Microsoft-based IP communications systems and wholly-owned subsidiary of Interactive Intelligence Inc., will host a free half-day seminar in Houston, Wednesday, May 10, 12:00 noon to 4 p.m., called "Developing and Implementing a Strong VoIP Strategy for Your Business."

This educational seminar is designed for CEOs, CIOs, IT managers, and others involved in technology decisions at small to medium-sized businesses, distributed organizations of all sizes, enterprises with a mobile workforce, and vertically-focused companies, such as financial services and law firms.

Verso Technologies, Inc., a global provider of next generation network solutions, announced that it will exhibit at Booth C310 at VON Europe in Stockholm, Sweden from May 15 through May 18, 2006 at Stockholm International Fairs.

VON Europe is the definitive event for Europe's IP communications industry, drawing major industry participants from the fixed, wireless and broadband sectors. The large and diverse audience makes the venue an ideal one for Verso to feature its widening portfolio of solutions including its MetroNet VoIP Overlay Solution, a turnkey, next generation network (NGN) offering for metropolitan market deployments that enables key services and features for enterprise and residential VoBB subscribers.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Technology Service announced that customers subscribing to the MCI's Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service can now place voice calls over their data network using a new or existing MCI provided data circuit. VoIP is a technology that allows the user to make telephone calls using an Internet connection instead of a regular phone line to call anyone who has a telephone number -- including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers. By consolidating voice and data applications over a single network, MCI's VoIP option provides significant cost savings potential because it does not require a separate telephone service.

8x8, Inc., the Packet8 broadband Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) and videophone communications service provider, announced that it has reached an agreement with CompUSA, one of the nation's leading retailers and resellers of technology products and services, to offer Packet8 Virtual Office in each of its 226 nationwide outlets.

Packet8 Virtual Office is a VoIP-hosted PBX phone service that enables small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) to implement a full featured, corporate class phone system for a fraction of the cost of traditional premise-based private branch exchanges (PBXs). In addition to PBX- functionality, Virtual Office service plans provide unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and Canada for a flat-rate of $39.99 a month, as well as lower-priced metered plans and international calling at highly competitive prices.

Measures considered by some operators to block, or make illegal, the use of VoIP services on their network are a waste of time, especially given the clear signals by consumer and business users indicating a demand for these type of applications. This is one of the findings from visiongain's new report, "VoIP in Europe 2006-2011: Market analysis and forecasts."

Vonage's announcement that it has teamed up with UK Wi-Fi service provider The Cloud to offer free VoIP calls is the first major move in this direction, which will force mobile operators to follow suit.

Brix Networks, the leading provider of the most widely deployed converged service assurance solutions, announced it has expanded its sales teams that serve the Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC) markets.

At the same time, the growing company also announced it has boosted its North American sales coverage in response to increased demand for its award-winning solutions and services from carriers, cable companies, managed service providers, and large enterprises.

Users of the Internet phone application Skype can buy more ringtones. "Users of Skype's popular VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) application can buy a greater selection of ringtones under a deal the company has reached with four music publishers, it said this week."

Vapps, the global infrastructure supplier of VoIP conference call solutions, announced that the Gizmo Project has deployed the Vapps VoIP conference calling platform to offer free worldwide conference calling services for its users.

Vapps' state of the art VoIP conference calling service enables Gizmo subscribers to connect multiple users over the Internet for cost-effective and highly reliable conference calls. All the features of a traditional conference calling service are available through Gizmo's web site, such as standard call management (volume control, muting, participant announcing, conference locking and recording) along with sophisticated moderator features for Web-based on- demand call control.

LiteScape Technologies, Inc., announced that Allen & Overy, one of the largest law firms in the world, has selected LiteScape's VoIP solutions to improve the firm's global communications and collaboration. LiteScape's CallTrack PRO and OnCast Directory are being deployed at the firm's London offices to unify communications between phones, PCs and other IP-enabled devices. This deployment marks LiteScape's entrance into the European marketplace where enterprises are increasingly recognizing the value and benefits of applications as strategic investments in IP-based communications.

HelloSoft, Inc. has been adjudged the recipient of the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation of the Year in the VoIP market segment. HelloSoft will be presented with this Award at the 2006 Excellence in Industrial Technologies Awards Banquet, tonight at 7pm, at the Disney's BoardWalk Inn in Orlando, Florida.

"HelloSoft's VoIP product delivers more functionality in a small package than any other VoIP solution. They also offer very high performance in Voice quality coupled with lower power consumption when compared to any other VoIP product in the market", said Aravind T Seshagiri, Analyst for Frost & Sullivan. "HelloSoft is unmatched when it comes to feature integration, size, and market acceptance", said Deepa Doraiswamy, Manager for Frost & Sullivan.

Netcentrex, the leading enabler of next generation converged voice and video solutions, announced that, according to an annual report issued by industry research firm iLocus, Netcentrex delivered 29% of VoIP local call volume minutes for standards-based Voice over Broadband (VoBB) platforms, making the company the leader in this market. In addition, Netcentrex was named the leading Independent Subscriber Feature Server worldwide, with 32% market share.

Netrake announced that Voice over IP (VoIP) carrier CTI (Communication Technology Inc.) has selected Netrake to support its launch of VoIP services throughout the Caribbean region. Netrake's nCite session border controller provides CTI with secure traversal of firewall and network address translation (FW/NAT) systems, as well as denial of service (DOS) attack prevention through deep packet inspection at both the SIP signaling and VoIP media layers. Netrake's session controllers also provide end-to-end quality of service (QoS) assurance and SLA enforcement for each call across network borders.

Time Warner Telecom Inc., a leading provider of managed voice and data networking solutions for businesses, announced the successful installation of its SIP IP connections for VoIP services to Boise State University.

"Migrating to Time Warner Telecom's SIP trunk connectivity represents the next evolution of our VoIP communications solution," said Brian McDevitt, manager of telephone network services for Boise State University. "We'll be able to save about half the cost of what we paid previously through significantly reduced network administration, retirement of gateway devices and essentially free long-distance calling between Time Warner Telecom nodes."