VOIP and SIP News

There’s a new solution from Alcatel-Lucent, apparently. The 7705 SAR - Fixed Form Factor offers more bandwidth and scalability at a lower operational cost.

According to Alcatel-Lucent:

This innovative solution reinforces Alcatel-Lucent’s Mobile Evolution Transport Architecture (META) as the industry’s most comprehensive and cost-effective architecture for evolving mobile networks to all-IP. The 7705 SAR-F enhances a fully managed, complete end-to-end solution for carriers moving from TDM/PDH transport for mobile backhaul to Carrier Ethernet and IP/MPLS networks. New features and functionality of the single-rack unit 7705 SAR-F include: cost-effective scaling, resiliency/redundancy covering synchronization, uplinks and power feeds as well as extreme temperature hardened characteristics (-40degrees C to +65 degrees C).

“The one unit aggregation router product category is an important one for many 3G and 4G operators looking to migrate to IP backhaul,” said Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading. “It enables the cost and performance benefits of IP to be extended out from the core of the network all the way to the cell site.”

The company also released version 1.1 of its 7705 SAR family software today.

“As mobile operators look beyond 3G to long-term evolution (LTE) their networks will move to all-IP for its operational and cost efficiencies. To enable this Alcatel-Lucent is delivering the industry’s most comprehensive and integrated mobile solution, from the IP backbone through to the cell tower,” said Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent IP activities. “The introduction of the new 7705 SAR-F and enhancements to our SAR family demonstrate our commitment to continuous innovation and technological leadership in the IP/MPLS market for mobile service providers.”

London, UK – 17 September, 2008 – 3CX and Deerfield announce the availability of an integrated call and email handling system that improves customer relations and customer handling efficiency with the release of VisNetic MailFlow version 3.8.

“3CX is designed for and used by businesses that require a high level of functionality and reliability in a phone system, but are also knowledgeable and budget conscious enough to avoid high overhead or administrative phone system costs,” said Nick Galea, CEO of 3CX. “Similarly, VisNetic MailFlow is an email management application offered by Deerfield.com [3CX North American Distributors] that provides all of the necessary tools to ensure a high level of email customer service, but is also reasonably priced and easy to administer. The integration of these products provides companies with an advanced and affordable integrated communication system that can manage and track all of an organizations’ email and telephony traffic.”

The integration also illustrates how a PBX, when running on Windows, can integrate seamlessly with other Windows Business Applications, allowing companies to make the PBX work harder and deliver considerable productivity gains.

VisNetic MailFlow is an email customer service solution for Windows used by thousands of organizations that provides: email routing and tracking, reporting, standard responses, a global contact database, customer email history tracking, and much more. 3CX Phone System for Windows is a multi award-winning software-based IP PBX that replaces traditional proprietary hardware PBX. It is based on the SIP standard, and therefore interoperates with most popular SIP phones, VoIP Gateways and VoIP providers.

“VisNetic MailFlow 3.8 is a momentous release for both VisNetic MailFlow and 3CX customers, as the combination of the two products gives them an end to end customer service solution,” said Mike Deerfield, CEO of Deerfield.com - developers of VisNetic MailFlow. “Features like click to call, telephone conversation time stamps and call notes allow MailFlow customers to easily call their contacts within MailFlow and record – and refer back to – their telephone conversations, while 3CX users not currently employing an email management solution will benefit greatly from MailFlow features such as: automatic email routing, shared email queues, standard responses and reporting. Deerfield.com also fully supports both products and can provide all of the necessary assistance to ensure a smooth installation.”

About 3CX and 3CX Phone System for Windows

3CX is an international developer of telecommunications software, headquartered in Europe with offices in the UK, Germany, Cyprus, Malta, USA, Australia and Hong Kong. It is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and is backed by an experienced management and development team. 3CX Phone System for Windows is an award-winning software-based IP PBX that replaces a traditional proprietary hardware PBX. It is entirely SIP standard based, and therefore interoperates with leading SIP phones, VoIP Gateways and VoIP providers. 3CX’s IP PBX has earned Windows Server 2003 Certification and has been developed specifically for the SMB market with a full set of features that make it simple to install and manage. For more information on 3CX and 3CX Phone System for Windows visit www.3cx.com.

About VisNetic MailFlow

VisNetic MailFlow is an email management solution designed for businesses who wish to improve their level of email customer service and business intelligence. VisNetic MailFlow combines excellent affordability with super-fast deployment capability and extremely low management burden to offer an incredibly compelling value. First released in 2002, making is one of the most mature email management applications. Today, VisNetic MailFlow is used by over 22,000 agents worldwide – a sampling of which include John Hopkins Medicine, Boston Globe, Blue Nile, Gold Medal Travel Group, Guess Inc. and Lowrance Electronics. Flexible licensing terms includes a 30-day “try before you buy” download and free technical support.

Useful Links:

VisNetic MailFlow website: http://www.deerfield.com/products/visnetic-mailflow/
Request a Guided Demo: http://www.deerfield.com/products/visnetic-mailflow/demo/index.htm
Datasheet: http://www.visneticmailflow.com/resources/vmf_datasheet_v3.pdf

The Asterisk development team is pleased to announce new releases of Asterisk and DAHDI.

For more information on the reasoning behind the transition to DAHDI, please see the following post:

http://blogs.digium.com/2008/05/19/zaptel-project-being-renamed-to-dahdi/

The list of packages released today includes:

dahdi-linux 2.0.0-rc4
dahdi-linux-complete 2.0.0-rc4+2.0.0-rc2
asterisk 1.4.22-rc4
asterisk 1.6.0-rc5

One concern many small businesses have about open-source IP PBXes is security. Not the kind of security having to do with hackers and break-ins, but rather the kind involving future support and upgrades. It's the type of service that large vendors are best equipped to provide. Users of IP PBXes based on Pingtel Corp. open-source software may have worried more about such issues than those using Asterisk-based products, given that Pingtel was lesser-known than Asterisk leaders Digium Inc. and Fonality. Nortel Networks' recent acquisition of Pingtel should quiet some of those concerns.

Read more about it here.

Everyone hates their job, right? Well, maybe not everyone. ZDNet has been running a series of articles about IT workers who love what they do. One of the latest profiles is of a network-security professional at a VoIP carrier in Connecticut. If your business can't hire this guy, it wants someone just like him — if it can afford him; his price probably just went up after the article was published. Take a look at J. Oquendo's profile at ZDNet.

Call conferencing, Paging and Windows 2008 support among major features added to software-based 3CX Phone System for Windows in record time

London, UK – 24 June 2008 - 3CX (www.3cx.com) has announced the release of version 6.0 of 3CX Phone System for Windows. The most recent version of the award-winning and software-based PBX ships with 10 key new enterprise-level features such as call conferencing, paging and Windows 2008 support. These 10 new features were developed by the international software development company in only 20 weeks.

“We are very excited to launch this new version of 3CX Phone System for Windows. 3CX’ development team has proved that we can turn around new versions and new features in record time. What would take years on traditional PBXs takes only months on a software-based PBX like ours; simply because the structure is much more manageable” said Nick Galea, CEO at 3CX.

“With our new Windows 2008 support, organizations can virtualize the PBX and run a phone system without the need for an appliance or an extra server. This means lower administration costs, no extra hardware and less energy consumption.”

10 Key New Features of 3CX Phone System for Windows v6.0

1. Call conference service – up to 32 participants.
2. Windows 2008 server support – run a PBX virtualized.
3. Paging – page groups of users to broadcast a message.
4. Intercom – with two-way audio capability.
5. Support for Vegastream gateways (Patton & Audiocode already supported).
6. Enhanced SIP interoperability – addition of support for many leading international VoIP providers and SIP phones.
7. BLF provisioning – automatic provision of BLF lights indicating extension status on phones.
8. Phonebook Provisioning – listing all extensions and allowing addition of custom entries.
9. Fax – 3CX’ fax server allows the whole network to send and receive faxes.
10. Extended HTTP API - ability to switch recording on/off, disable an extension, and disable outbound calls for an extension.

Jaxtr Inc. attracted a lot of attention and money last year when it introduced a service that provides free, anonymous phone calls to members of social networks. Just put a jaxtr widget or link in your profile, Web page or email signature, and people can click it to call you from their own phones at no cost. Now, jaxtr has begun offering its members low-cost outbound calling as well. The company has also received another $10 million in funding from Lehman Brothers Inc., having scored the same amount last August in an A round led by August Capital.