We all know VoIP and wireless networks are hot, so Azimuth's Voice Over WLAN testing platform which is a testing tool for VoIP over wireless will no doubt be the first of many VoWLAN testing tools to hit the market.

Check out an excerpt of the release…
Full Suite of Benchmark Tests Validates Both VoWLAN Handsets and Wi-Fi Infrastructure for Application Robustness

Azimuth Systems, innovators in scalable, automated wireless network test systems, today announced a new benchmark test suite specifically designed for testing VoIP in the Wi-Fi environment. Azimuth's W-Series wireless LAN test platform is the leading system test solution for 802.11 network vendors, providing a reliable, scalable and automated test environment for performance, functionality, interoperability, conformance and certification testing.

Azimuth's new test suite focuses on two key VoWLAN system components. The first component, the VoWi-Fi Benchmark Test for Wireless VoIP Handset, validates the 802.11 behavior of the client handset during motion – ranging and roaming – and analyzes this behavior relative to the voice quality as measured by both MOS and R-Factor. The tests can be run with and without background data traffic.

Deltathree today announced the launch of six new Broadband Phone consumer and business calling plans for its retail division, iConnectHere. Each calling plan includes local, long distance and international calling with advanced features such as voicemail, caller ID, 3-way calling, call forwarding and real-time call records. The service also provides end-users with a choice of phone numbers from the United States, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel or the United Kingdom. The new iConnectHere Broadband Phone calling plans are available today and include a free adaptor.

Andy Abramson likes AT&T CallVantage over Vonage for several reasons which he lists in this blog entry:
Office Depot Gets The Vantage

Go check it out. It's an interesting analysis, especially the marketing push and financial backing behind AT&T's CallVantage. His analysis is spot on and one which I agree with.

Skibare pointed out this Wall Street Journal article: WSJ.com - Cablevision's Loss Narrows With Strength in Advertising

I used to have CableVision when I lived in Norwalk and was pretty pleased with their service - they were one of the first cable companies in the Northeast to offer cable broadband. Competing satellite providers and other "ventures" have hurt CableVision over the past few years, but they seem to be getting some legs under them with the help of voice over Internet services.

According to the article, Cablevision's Internet phone service got 74,142 new sign-ups. Wow, that's nearly 75,000 VoIP customers. The article doesn't state how many "old" VoIP customers Cablevision has - so the total is unclear.

I headed up to Bedford, Massachusetts this past Friday to visit with Empirix and get the latest scoop on their new testing products. TMC Labs has been using Empirix's hardware for over 7 years to test telcom products and I have always been impressed with Empirix's ability to "evolve" their products. For instance, 5-7 years ago (then called Hammer Technologies), Empirix's strength was "load testing" traditional PSTN technologies, such as T1/E1/analog PBXs. Their system, affectionately called "The Hammer" could inititiate several dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous PSTN calls at once to a system under test.

Hammer XMS VoIP Testing Tool Well, with the explosion of VoIP, Empirix has launched several products to address VoIP testing.

Interesting story about VoIP (they term it Web Calls) being more popular than previously thought: Yahoo! News - Web Calls May Be More Popular Than Thought - Survey

Here's an excerpt:
Making cheap telephone calls over the Internet could be much more popular among consumers than previously estimated, leaving incumbent telecom service providers highly vulnerable, a survey revealed on Thursday.

Over 50 million western European consumers with a broadband Internet connection at home may use telephony software and special phones by 2008, British research group Analysys found.

"The impact on traditional telephony providers' revenues could reach 6.4 billion euros in 2008, representing 13 percent of the residential fixed-line voice market," said analyst Stephen Sale, adding this was a worst case scenario drawn up for operators who want to know how badly they can be hit.

Previous estimates forecast that up to five percent of revenues could be eaten away by Internet telephony.

Popular Telephony's Peerio GNUP is live - kinda, sorta. I am going to request some volunteers/fans of VoIP to aid in Peerio's initial deployment, which I'll get into in a bit.

First, let me share this from Popular Telephony's GNUP website:
A Free Global Numbering Plan, Peerio GNUP provides interconnectivity between all existing peer-to-peer, PSTN, Standards-based and proprietary VoIP applications.

GNUP is the first solution that will let VoIP users receive calls from other applications, phones and devices. This communication necessity is unique to Peerio serverless communications technology introduced earlier by Popular Telephony.

Rich Tehrani, publisher of Internet Telephony and Customer Interaction Solutions has made a major announcement regarding TMC's publications. We're going digital! Yep, that's right - digital. That is, you'll be able to download Acrobat PDF versions of our print magazines. This is great for several reasons, not the least of which, this opens the door for our print magazines to reach the international community.