The new SLA guarantees a MOS score of 4.0 – up from 3.8 – and introduces a new four-hour mean-time-to-repair metric if you’re willing to pay for it. Currently, the SLA is available for all [...]]]>

Verizon Business (www.verizonbusiness.com) has upgraded its VoIP SLA for businesses and introduced Switzerland to its VoIP portfolio of services.

The new SLA guarantees a MOS score of 4.0 – up from 3.8 – and introduces a new four-hour mean-time-to-repair metric if you’re willing to pay for it. Currently, the SLA is available for all new and existing U.S. Verizon VoIP customers using the company’s Private IP and Internet Dedicated Access services; Europe will get a VoIP SLA in the first half of 2011.

Switzerland gets the full Verizon Business VoIP portfolio throughout the country (but no SLA yet, see above), including hosted IP centrex, IP trunking and IP integrated access.  Verizon now offers service in a total of 11 European countries.

One day in the future, all Verizon Business VoIP services will be treated the same around the world, but Verizon has to move all regions of the world to the same platform; right now, the U.S. is on one while Asia is on another.

The company’s XO IP Flex service was launched in April 2005.  Depending on how you want to slice the numbers, Frost & Sullivan says says XO is the VoIP access services market leader [...]]]>

XO Communications (www.xo.com) says it serving over one million business VoIP end-user customers.  So much for voice and VoIP being dead.

The company’s XO IP Flex service was launched in April 2005.  Depending on how you want to slice the numbers, Frost & Sullivan says says XO is the VoIP access services market leader with 22.2 percent of the market, with 1 in 300 people in the US using VoIP services delivered by XO; I’m assuming this is for business, rather than consumer since Vonage said it has 2.4 million consumer lines in operation as of June 30, 2010.

Be interesting to see how XO does going forward.  The cable companies want more SMB and enterprise customers and they aren’t shy about it.  8×8 (www.8×8.com) is in hog heaven with continued profitability and a stock buyback plan, plus continues to pick up traction with larger businesses.

Data point one comes from 8×8’s (www.8×8.com) annual shareholder meeting presentation on August 31, 2010.  Slide [...]]]>

While Wall Street and the mainstream media have become, well, bored of Voice over IP (yes, VoIP), two of the most financially successful companies in the space say that IP voice’s greatest potential has yet to come.

Data point one comes from 8×8’s (www.8×8.com) annual shareholder meeting presentation on August 31, 2010.  Slide 5 of the deck (data from 2008 Atlantic ACM) shows that Business VoIP is only a $1.6 billion business – with circuit-switched business voice at $40 billion.

8×8 reported that its last quarter (ending June 30, 2010) of $16.8 million was the largest quarterly revenue figure in the company’s 23 year history.  Further, 8×8 reports it has both generated net income in 10 of the last 11 quarters and increased cash and cash equivalents 11 of the last 12 quarters.

On June 30, 2010, the company had more than $18 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debit.  Topping it all off, the company repurchased nearly 500, 000 shares during the month of August and plans to buy back another $3 million shares.

Total business customers at the end of June was over 21,000; going back two year to June 2008, that number was a hair short of 12,000 – in two years through a down economy, 8×8 has nearly DOUBLED their business customer count.

Average revenue per business customer took a hit between September 2008 ($220) – when the economy went to hell – but is now currently on the upswing, between $205 and $210.

Data point two is from the “Define your Decade” folks: Metaswitch sees a big opportunity as carriers in many cases just start to migrate out of TDM to an all-IP world.    Over the next two years, the company’s expansion motto is “Going Global, going mobile.”

Metaswitch doesn’t need to rush into an IPO; it’s got enough cash and profitability to fund its expansion at a steady pace on a financially solid basis and its investors are in not in a dot.com hurry.  The company will ultimately go public, but it is not going to happen in the next 12 month is my bet.

When Metaswitch does go public, it will do so because it will need liquid stock to facilitate other mergers.  But there won’t be a lot of those, because of the company’s core values; Metaswitch will want the “right” fit in terms of supplementing/adding to its existing product lines.

Bottom line here is that there are two very financially successful companies in the VoIP space who are bullish on the IP voice future.  And their fortunes are likely to increase as 1) Businesses look for healthy firms for services and products 2) Everybody migrates to IP communications and 3) Other VoIP/IP communication firms start to lose customers due to financial woes and bad service.

More specifically, you need a Gmail account and calls through your computer to American and Canadian numbers are free through “at least” [...]]]>

Making free phone calls just got easier through Google(www.google.com) (so long we all remember that “free” is not really free, but subsidized through someone else’s money) via “Voice Calls from Gmail.” 

More specifically, you need a Gmail account and calls through your computer to American and Canadian numbers are free through “at least” January 2011.  As is typical in the Great VoIP shell game, calls to other countries start at around 2 cents a minute to landlines, 15 cents a minute to cell phones.

One can get inbound calls through Gmail if you have  (free) Google Voice account.

Timing on this offer is everything, but when you pull up the comparison between Google’s rates and “Leading internet telephony provider,” The Goog’s per minute rates are equal to or better than “Leading.” 

If the folks at Skype haven’t already figured it out, Google is NOT their friend.

Phone.com (www.phone.com) has cranked out a whole bunch of mobile features for its SMB service, including clients for the iPhone and Apple plus SMB send support on phone.com phone numbers.

Released in June, Phone.com added the Phone.com Mobile VoIP client for the iPhone and the [...]]]>

Note: Phone.com is an advertiser on HD Voice News

Phone.com (www.phone.com) has cranked out a whole bunch of mobile features for its SMB service, including clients for the iPhone and Apple plus SMB send support on phone.com phone numbers.

Released in June, Phone.com added the Phone.com Mobile VoIP client for the iPhone and the Phone.com Mobile Office Client for Android.  The Mobile VoIP client enables iDevice users to use their Phone.com virtual account to place VoIP calls over either a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. 

The Mobile Office Android client provides a user interface to enable Phone.com users to listen to/manage/read voicemail, view received faxes, review call history, block calls from unwanted or unidentified numbers, send and receive SMS messages, click-to-connect to a private conference bridge and (of course) use Phone.com to make low cost international calls.

Both apps show the user’s Phone.com number as the caller ID when calls are made and both apps can be downloaded free from their respective app store sites.

SMS send and receive is now included with all Phone.com local numbers and plans, so anyone can send an SMS text message directly to a local Phone.com number.  The new feature is free of charge and included in every Phone.com plan.

New VoIP enhancements and features planned this year include the development of “more robust” VoIP network interfaces in Europe, caller-provided CLI and greater integration into customer portals.

Cable companies are looking to buy more capable softswitches for business services deployment. In addition, many companies are looking at their first-generation VoIP systems – anywhere from 5 to 8 years [...]]]>

Los Angeles – In a quick briefing at The Cable Show, Metaswitch (www.metaswitch.com) sees two opportunities to sell into the cable industry.

Cable companies are looking to buy more capable softswitches for business services deployment. In addition, many companies are looking at their first-generation VoIP systems – anywhere from 5 to 8 years old – and seeing them at end-of-life and/or not having the capability for more sophisticated applications.

Deploying Metaswtich in combination with the MetaSphere applications software framework/suite provides an integrated, turnkey solution for business and consumer-based applications.

A spokesperson for Metaswitch said the firm had 7 out of the top 30 cable companies as customers.

According to Verizon, it is the only “major provider” offering IPSec, adding an additional layer of standardized security goodness without requiring vendor-specific security [...]]]>

Verizon (www.verizon.com) Global Wholesale has added IPsec tunneling to its SIP Gateway Service, toll free IP termination, and carrier IP termination transport.  All three services can share a single IPsec connection.

According to Verizon, it is the only “major provider” offering IPSec, adding an additional layer of standardized security goodness without requiring vendor-specific security protocols.

Verizon says its SIP Gateway service carriers billions of minutes of use per quarter.