World VoIP Database

Verizon Wireless announced that it will deploy Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology for what it calls its 4G network. Verizon and Vodafone, the co-owners of Verizon Wireless will coordinate a trial of LTE using equipment from Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia-Siemens and Nortel. The carrier is also in talks with handset makers like LG, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson and other consumer electronics companies, which anticipate embedding wireless functionality in future products.

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Will the telecom industry run out of bandwidth? That’s what many carriers believe, as they are boosting transport bandwidth, migrating to IP, upping broadband access rates (both upstream and downstream) and aggressively sizing up the next new broadband technology, whatever it may be. Count AT&T among the optimists, as CEO Randall Stephenson, in a speech in Silicon Valley, said current bandwidth resources won’t be enough to handle explosive application growth to come.

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The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both reported that Sprint Nextel had rejected a $5 billion investment offer from South Korea’s SK Telecom and Providence Equity Partners. That bid also included the promise of former Nextel Chairman and CEO Tim Donahue being installed as CEO of Sprint Nextel. In today’s economic climate many telecom companies would have jumped at the offer.

Alcatel-Lucent and LG Electronics announced that they have completed Long Term Evolution (LTE) test calls using Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE solution and device prototypes from LG. The companies claim this is one of the first multi-vendor, over-the-air LTE interoperability tests to date. LTE is currently being standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The companies tested super high-speed data transmissions transmitting over a 10 MHz channel. The companies’ trials are part of a broader testing initiative that is being overseen by LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) group. The companies carried out the tests with Bell Labs researchers in Alcatel-Lucent’s facility in Stuttgart, Germany.

Technology Patents has filed a lawsuit against 131 companies that alleges they infringed on patents covering international text messaging. Technology Patents has named Microsoft, Yahoo, Motorola, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, AT&T and others in its suit. The company wants a permanent injunction against all infringing parties and to have all U.S. carriers shut down international text messaging capabilities and pay unspecified monetary damages. The two patents in question detail a method for delivering texts internationally by using the Internet as a packet-switched network to reach a broadcast mobile network in the destination country.

Switched video remains cable TV’s principle weapon against telco and satellite incursions and for many is the reason why IPTV will struggle to make inroads in the U.S. market. Hence, why everyone should take note of the alliance this week between TiVo and the cable lobby the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

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A regulator with Ireland’s Commission on Communications Regulation (CommReg) is expecting the Irish broadband market to top 800,000 subscribers by Christmas. About 100,000 of that total is anticipated to be made up of mobile broadband subscribers using high-speed downlink packet access technology, and the Comm Reg official also added that mobile broadband player may enter the wireline broadband sector to compliment their offerings.

The Federal Communications Commission reportedly has recommended a new framework for the Universal Service Fund. The agency acted on an earlier recommendation from its joint federal-state advisory board, which late last week urged that the USF be capped at about $4.5 billion, and that separate USF coverage accounts be established for both broadband services and mobile services. Though the agency at large will now move forward to devise the new framework, the idea will face further scrutiny before it is formally put into action.

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Tapping a VoIP call is one thing, but take pity on the German police who are complaining they can’t decipher Skype calls. “The encryption with Skype telephone software … creates grave difficulties for us,” Joerg Ziercke, president of Germany’s Federal Police Office said at a press conference for security and law enforcement officials. “We can’t decipher it. That’s why we’re talking about source telecommunication surveillance -that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it’s been decrypted.”

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PC Magazine has a telling survey on VoIP reliability and user issues in the US market. According to their latest “Trustworthy Tech” survey nearly one in three VoIP customers required tech support for their service. To be precise the industry average was 29 percent with their readers favorite, Cablevision’s Optimum, also having the lowest support rate of 18 percent. Twenty seven percent of Vonage users surveyed said they had required tech support. AT&T, Time Warner and Comcast all had service requests running at around 33 percent.