Digium announces the release of Asterisk 1.8, a significant update to the software that developers, integrators, resellers and others around the world use to create customized, feature-rich and cost-effective business phone systems. Asterisk 1.8 includes more than 200 enhancements, including new security features, integration with IPv6 and extensive additions to ISDN-BRI functionality. Asterisk 1.8 is designated as a Long Term Support release, indicating four years of support from Digium. Hundreds of members of the open source Asterisk community will take an in-depth look at the software's new capabilities at next week's AstriCon Conference & Expo, which runs from October 26-28 near Washington, D.C.

XO Communications announces that it is offering advanced IP-based communications, managed network and hosted IT services to businesses across the Rochester and Buffalo metropolitan areas. By expanding the reach of the 19,000-mile nationwide XO® network, and establishing points of presence across western New York, XO Communications is now able to offer businesses a local and nationwide alternative for their communications and network needs.

HelloSoft announced at 4G World, the availability of video on its range of communicator offerings for 4G devices. HelloSoft Communicator™ is a client for PC’s, tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices that offers full VOIP, convergence and rich communication suites for mobile devices, and is now enabling support for video calling, sharing and teleconferencing. HelloSoft’s full range of award winning client solutions are available as white label clients for operators around the world and for leading ODM’s and OEMs.

HelloSoft’s comprehensive video processing framework and video QoS technology ensures top quality video under varied network conditions. H.263 and H.264 based video client solutions are available for PC platforms and for mobile platforms such as Android, Windows Mobile, and upcoming for iPhone. Other platforms such as Linux, MAC, and Symbian are under development. This comprehensive offering enables service providers and OEMs quick time to market for presenceenabled rich communication on a wide range of devices.

VoIP Supply announces the launch of Deploy. Deploy by VoIP Supply is a suite of nationwide VoIP Installations service aimed at business that don’t have the time or technical acumen to properly install a VoIP solution. Through Deploy businesses can make the evaluation and installation of a VoIP system quick, easy and affordable.

“Even though VoIP systems have become easier to set-up and install do it yourself is not for everyone,” stated Garrett Smith, Director of Marketing and Business Development at VoIP Supply, LLC. “With Deploy by VoIP Supply those businesses that do not have the time or expertise to properly set-up and install a VoIP system can now do so quickly and inexpensively, ensuring they realize the cost savings and efficiency increases that come with VoIP.”

Voice over IP is becoming increasingly important to service providers and achieving significant penetration of the consumer market according to the latest figures from leading industry analysts Point Topic.

“Over 22% of consumer broadband lines worldwide now come with a Voice over IP service. Passing 100 million subscriptions by the end of 2009 VoIP has continued to grow adding another 12 million subscribers in the first half of 2010,” said Point Topic’s Senior Analyst John Bosnell.

John BosnellThere are some markets now where it is very difficult and not generally cost effective to subscribe to broadband without a VoIP service thrown in. France Telecom for example offer one relatively low speed consumer stand-alone broadband subscription but a wide range of higher speed bundles.

TalkFree recently surpassed 1.0 billion voice minutes and the numbers continue to grow. TalkFree is on a path to surpass 1.5 billion SIP terminated, paid voice minutes over its network in 2010.

Since launching its 1legcall and Zonefone mobile VoIP solutions in 2009, TalkFree’s total voice minutes have grown by an average of 40 percent for five consecutive quarters, making it one of the fastest growing mobile VoIP companies in the world. TalkFree’s mobile dialers are being downloaded all over the globe with heavy concentrations in the Middle East, Africa, Central American and South American markets.

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its SBC Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey. The report, part of a series on the service provider VoIP and IMS market, captures a strategic overview from a wide range of service providers about applications using session border controllers, important SBC features, security issues, and which vendors are being utilized in the market.

Broadvox and Cypress Communications announce the signing of a merger agreement. Award-winning hosted unified communications provider Cypress Communications is known for helping to define the unified communications as a service category and has been providing hosted communications to small and mid-sized businesses and enterprises for more than 25 years. As a worldwide communications leader, Broadvox has nearly a decade of experience in providing SIP Origination and Terminating services to carriers. In 2007, Broadvox began offering SMBs and SMEs various SIP Trunking products and this year expanded the offering with virtual PBX hosted services.

JAJAH is powering IP voice calling on Yahoo's newly released Messenger iPhone App, it was announced today. Yahoo! Messenger iPhone App 2.0 lets iPhone users make free calls to their Yahoo! Messenger friends, and low cost calls to any phone in the world.

Yahoo! and JAJAH have partnered together since 2008, when JAJAH was chosen to power the popular Yahoo! Voice service for Messenger on the PC. This is the first time this capability has been included in a smartphone application.

8x8 has signed a partnership agreement with Polycom enabling it to offer Polycom's IP telephony and conferencing solutions to 8x8 Virtual Office hosted VoIP subscribers.

8x8's initial offering features the Polycom SoundPoint IP 335 desk phone. The SoundPoint IP 335 is a high quality, entry-level SIP phone that seamlessly integrates with 8x8's systems to deliver advanced telephony features such as auto attendant, voicemail, Caller ID, call forwarding, conference bridge and Polycom HD Voice at an affordable cost. In addition to providing a great customer experience, these phones also include a capability called Voice Quality Monitoring, which gives 8x8 the ability to monitor in real-time the quality of a customer's call. This feature helps 8x8 quickly diagnose customer issues, provide faster problem resolution and ultimately deliver better service. 8x8 will be introducing additional SoundPoint IP desktop phones, SoundStation IP conference phones and Polycom KIRK wireless phones and accessories in the coming weeks and months.

Skype announces the launch of the new Skype for Windows, which brings people together like never before.

• The integration of the Facebook News Feed and Phonebook in Skype makes it easier to stay connected with the people and communities you care about.
• A revitalised look and feel makes voice and video calling, instant messaging, screen sharing, file sharing and more, intuitive and easy to navigate.
• Skype users can bring even more of their family and friends together with the new group video calling feature available in open beta.

The Facebook integration makes Skype even more social. For the first time Skype users can keep up-to-date and interact with their Facebook News Feed, including posting status updates, commenting, and liking, directly from Skype. Even better, the Facebook Phonebook in Skype allows users to call and SMS their Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines with just a few clicks. If your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact, you can make a free Skype-to-Skype call.

Qualcomm has acquired iSkoot, a San Francisco-based pioneer of providing services at the intersection of mobile and the internet. iSkoot works with leading device manufacturers and U.S. mobile operators to bring popular social networks and new internet services to mobile handsets in an intelligent manner that reduces data bandwidth usage on the network and saves battery life on phones.

iSkoot is now a subsidiary of QuIC, Qualcomm’s subsidiary focused on enabling and optimizing open source software with Qualcomm technologies, and will focus on three areas: continued support of its current customers; integrating its offerings with Qualcomm’s products; ,and developing open source data management contributions for mobile devices.

Nimbuzz has surpassed 3.65 billion mobile voice minutes in the last year, and 150,000,000 downloads of its application since launch in May 2008. With 50% of downloads originating from the Nimbuzz.com, Nimbuzz, the new-generation mobile service providing free and low-cost calls and messaging. It is also one of the best performing applications in the popular Ovi and GetJar application stores.

Ovi Store: Five million downloads since launch in the Ovi store from September 2009 to October 1, 2010, making Nimbuzz a global top five application.
GetJar: 45 million downloads (twice as many as Yahoo! Mobile) on GetJar, and the application is number four of the top five most downloaded global applications.

Edgewater Networks announces the availability of EdgeView VoIP Support System software version 10.5 which includes enhancements that reduce operating expense for network operators and improve end-user satisfaction. The award-winning EdgeView VoIP Support System is used by leading service providers and enterprise organizations that maintain and manage converged voice and data networks. EdgeView provides visibility into VoIP call quality performance, auto-provisioning of IP phones, simplified device administration and ongoing VoIP network monitoring.

Voiceserve will be presenting its VoIP software and solutions this month at the GITEX Technology Week from October 17-21 in Dubai and the FutureCOM in Sao Paulo from October 25-28.

GITEX Technology is one of the most influential and high-profile events in the global information and communication technology sector. Now in its 30th year, GITEX connects over 133,000 professionals with more than 3,500 suppliers. The conference is made up of industry professionals primarily from the Middle East who have purchasing authority of generally up to $1 million, most of whom are seeking new products, services or suppliers.