VOIP usage Jumps even higher!

Last April we reported that usage of IP Telephony is on the rise. The article VOIP IP Telephony: US consumer VOIP usage increases with Vonage leading the way gave the breakup of major companies.
Company......................................Market Share....Households
Vonage...........................................47.5%.......1,861000
Skype............................................11.8%.........463000
AT&T Call Vantage................................ 5.6%.........218000
Verizon Voice Wing................................5.0%.........196000
Google............................................2.5%..........97000
8x8 (Packet8).....................................1.7%..........67000
Other VoIP Providers (excluding cable companies) 25.9%.......1,013000
But now there is another research report is out!
The Subscriber rate has jumped 21% to 6.9 million in the second quarter, according to TeleGeography report issued on Wednesday.
Now Cable-TV companies are joining the foray. Even challenging the likes of Vonage and Skype.
Her is a brief summary;
Cable TV companies now account for 60 percent of VoIP subscribers, up from 52 percent in mid-2005. Vonage and other pure-play VoIP providers serve the remaining 40 percent, or about 2.8 million subscribers.
"Even more significantly, (cable companies) accounted for 68 percent of new subscribers added in the second quarter, a sign that (their) aggregate consumer VoIP market share will continue to grow in coming months," the report said.
Vonage still leads the way with 1.8 million subscriber lines. Time Warner Inc.'s cable TV business was second again at nearly 1.6 million. The companies added roughly the same number of accounts, with 243,000 for Vonage and 234,000 for Time Warner.
Cablevision Systems Corp is the third-largest provider, growing by 122,000 subscribers to 987,500, No. 4 Comcast Corp. posted a 73 percent jump in users during the second quarter, finishing with 721,000.
VoIP revenues for the second quarter were up 173 percent at $607 million across the United States, compared with a year-ago level of $221 million.

Asterisk Zero Configuration Service!

For all those that have been using fighting reinstalling or may be giving up of setting up an ASTERISK server or a PABX, you have a new tool! AZCS! Asterisk Zero Configuration Service. Not exactly the server configuration but the hand sets attached to it.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration Services (AZCS) provides a services for automating the configuration of handsets in a LAN environment even when handsets from different vendors are used.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration services also provides a means of modifying individual phones which may need access to a larger range of numbers (e.g. international dialing). The access rights of a given phone can be upgraded by dialing a specialized administration extension through which (given the right PIN) the phones access rights can be permanently upgraded. The new access rights will apply even if the phone is rebooted or moved to another location.
Alas it is not free and if you are still interested, you can get it here.
The Asterisk Zero Configuration Service is available for $3000 + GST and comes with support for a single type of manufacturers handset. Support for additional manufacturers and models can be purchased separately.

Let a chocolate sing songs for you! Verizon's LG VX8500

Geemodo: While Zune battles iPOD, VeriZon fights with LG VX8500 (LG-KG800)

Trixbox 1.1 and an update released!

If you were an asterisk@home fan, now it has become trixbox! So they have a new site but the sourceforge site is the same (asterisk@home).
What ever they do, they are doing a better job each time. If you are a developer/user (may be other way around) this is a site that must be on your list. Click on the header to go to their news site.
Here is the release note from the site;
trixbox 1.1 released today. The only new feature is Munin a system monitoring package. There are tones of small fixes. Zaptel and conferencing should be working. The latest SugarCRM is included. I will try to get a 1.1 upgrade script ready for next week but 1.0.3 that installs from the upgraded script now should have all the conferencing and zaptel fixes.
All of the non opensource packages have been removed from the ISO so if you use HUDlite you will need to type install-hudlite from command line.
The update news is here;
The new 1.1.1 update is available just type “trixbox-update.sh update” from the command line. This update adds all of the 1.1 functionality and also adds PHP 4.3.11 We were having a lot of problems with SugarCRM because the version of PHP that comes with CentOS is not supported by Sugar.

Got Skype? Get a wi-fi Phone!!

Belkin has announced a wi-fi phone with pre loaded Skype software. You can pre order at belkin's site.
From the description it seems easy for any user to use anywhere! As long as there is a wireless gateway.
the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone allows you to register for a free Skype account on the Phone. You can also use the Skype name that you have previously registered in any other Skype version (Skype for Windows®, Linux®, or Mac OS® X).
The Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype works anywhere in the world through your secured or open access to a Wi-Fi network—without a computer. Any home, office, cafe, or municipal wireless access point that does not require browser-based authentication will do.
Users can utilize Wired Equivalency Privacy (WEP), Wifi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2-Pre Shared Key (WPA2-PSK) security. The phone is pre-loaded with Skype software.
If you want find out "how it works!" click here! and make sure that your flash plug in works.