TMC announces the recipients of the 2008 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Awards. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has recognized 37 companies as recipients of the fourth annual award for excellence in delivering VoIP/IP communications solutions. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been the VoIP Authority since 1998.

snom launched its new VoIP business telephone, the snom 820. The SIP-based snom 820 combines mature VoIP technology with exclusive design to set new technical and aesthetic standards. The new snom 820 has a high-resolution TFT color display that optimises the presentation of call lists, address books, caller information and other applications. This data is provided through the integrated XML browser and accessed directly by the user via the display screen.

The telephone receiver's integrated broadband technology guarantees high-end sound quality and voice clarity that give users the feeling they are speaking with someone in the same room. In loudspeaker mode, a Class D amplifier reliably suppresses all interference. Moreover, the snom 820 supports WiFi standard802.11, thereby offering all the advantages of wireless mobility. The new snom 820 comes equipped with all the standard business functions - from three-way conferences and multiple ring tones to twelve different SIP identities per phone. In addition, the snom 820 satisfies the highest security standards for the business world. The VoIP telephone is not only VPN capable but also supports SRTP and TLS security standards that effectively prevent the recording and the sniffing of data.

Covad announces its new Covad Integrated Access service, an affordable, all-in-one phone and Internet service for businesses with up to 35 employees per location.

Covad Integrated Access service is delivered over a powerful voice-optimized T1 line and works with customers’ existing phone systems so businesses can leverage their equipment investment while saving money and simplifying operations.

Covad Integrated Access now also utilizes SIP trunking and supports a wide range of IP, digital and analog PBXs.

About 8.5 million more U.S. households will start using VoIP for their home phone service over the next two years, according to a new forecast from Pike & Fischer's Broadband Advisory Services.

The number of VoIP-connected households in the United States will approach 30 million by the end of the decade, generating more than $11 billion in revenue for cable operators, telephone companies and network-independent providers such as Skype, P&F predicts.

PhoneFusion announces that Fusion Voicemail Plus for BlackBerry smartphones is now out of beta. The beta version of this free visual voicemail application has been available since June for any BlackBerry device on any U.S. wireless carrier. The downloadable voicemail application gives BlackBerry users the ability to centralize all of their voicemail boxes and see -- right on the screen of their mobile device -- a list of their voicemail messages. The service also allows users to listen to their voicemails directly from their BlackBerry. BlackBerry users -- whether or not they are an existing PhoneFusion customer -- can access Fusion Voicemail Plus v 1.0 at www.fusionvoicemailplus.com. The free service also comes as a standard feature in the PhoneFusion One solution.

The increasing attention and buzz around unified communications is affecting how customers select telephony systems and services, according to survey results from the fifth annual Enterprise VoIP Survey conducted by IDC in conjunction with InfoWorld magazine.

The IDC study, Key Trends in Enterprise VoIP 2008: Customer Perspectives on Unified Communications, concentrates on the results of all questions about end users' perspectives on UC in relation to what it means to their organizations, which vendors have the most strategic value, and which applications will be integrated with their communications infrastructure.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "US Business VoIP and Unified Communications" report to their offering.

VoIP adoption continues to grow among US businesses at a considerable pace, and while adoption is still low for unified communications, its potential is intriguing. There are trends that occur in these two areas across all verticals, but there are also differences among verticals. This report examines overall trends in business VoIP and unified communications, as well as the particulars within four of the most important verticals: professional services, healthcare, government, and education.

Global IP Solutions released its VideoEngine Mobile on the Windows Mobile platform, which enables peer-to-peer video calling and multi-point video conferencing on mobile phones.

Using GIPS VideoEngine Mobile, wireless carriers, application developers and mobile handset manufacturers can provide high-quality video calls, even under adverse network conditions. The company has partnered with Marvell Technology to ensure its media processing software provides the most advanced mobile phone features on the Marvell chipset and to highly optimize it for the XScale PXA310 devices including the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ series, Samsung's SGH-i780 and Gigabyte's GSmart MS808.

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VoX has signed an agreement to partner with privately-held Unified Technologies Group to become the first to provide VoIP-enabled service to mobile phone customers across the United States on a tier one cellular carrier network. The renewable contract with UTGI includes take-or-pay provisions for at least 50,000 lines in the first year of service. VoX will provide its high-quality digital voice service to UTGI’s customer base over one of the top-tier mobile networks in the U.S.

Comstar has implemented a VoIP network solution from Nortel to help accommodate the need for reliable, affordable long-distance VoIP across the entire Russian Federation. Comstar obtained its long-distance access area codes for Russia in July 2008 and has begun commercial operations of long-distance voice services.

Russia is the largest country in the world spanning more than an eighth of the Earth's land area. In a country of this size, affordable communications - especially long-distance communications - is important to stay connected with friends and family. With the new Carrier VoIP network from Nortel, Comstar can provide affordable, long-distance VoIP across all regions of the Russian Federation including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-na-Donu, Vladivostok and other regional centres.

Cellcrypt is on a mission to appoint key channel partners worldwide to address the increasing concern about voice security. Many individuals and organisations have recognised the issue of voice security, however traditional encrypted mobile phones have severe limitations. Cellcrypt Mobile breaks through these barriers allowing resellers to offer dramatically improved solutions to existing customers and to reach customers whose problems they haven’t been able to solve until now.

VoIPshield made its third announcement of security vulnerabilities in VoIP systems marketed by Avaya, Cisco and Nortel. This brings the total number of vulnerability groups reported to VoIP vendors in 2008 to over sixty, representing over 200 unique vulnerabilities. The vulnerability groups will be disclosed in limited detail at noon EDT today on VoIPshield's website at www.voipshield.com/research.

Under its Responsible Disclosure Policy, VoIPshield works with the VoIP vendors to assist them in reproducing the vulnerabilities in their labs, thus facilitating the development of software patches for the affected products. Avaya, Cisco and Nortel are acknowledging these vulnerabilities today on their websites, and issuing their own security advisories and patches.

Speakeasy will offer voice, broadband and managed services in bundled packages designed to save businesses money while enabling them to upgrade data and telecommunications capabilities. SpeakeasyONE business bundles offer significant savings over traditional telecom services and up to 20 percent savings over Speakeasy's ala carte options. The bundles include activation, installation and network equipment at no charge, while providing the technology benefits of VoIP and business-class broadband, all from a single provider.

Wholesale customers now have more choices when they purchase Verizon Business' Advanced Toll Free service. Verizon Business is adding an IP termination service, available immediately on a limited basis, to the company's switchless-termination and dedicated-termination toll free services, which use traditional telephony technology.

Wholesale telecommunication providers sell each segment of a telephone call -- access, transport and termination -- individually.