Barabu Enters The Wi-Fi VoIP Market

Barablu, a new British VoIP company is offering now Free calls for Mobile to Mobile, PC to Mobile, PC to PC, IP phone to Mobile and IP phone to IP phone.

The offerings are aimed at mobile internet phone users with the Wi-Fi internet hotspots becoming ever more popular means of establishing free internet calls.

The Barablu software supports the Microsoft as well as the Symbian mobile platforms and the system has been already tested with several portable phone platforms including the Nokia E60, 9300i, 9500 as well as i-mate SP5 and SP5s.

New Research Shows VoIP On An Uptrend

According to Juniper Research the sales of VoIP hardware are on the uptrend and to peak around the year 2007 with 5.5 billion dollars in sales after which a gradual leveling off to 3 billion per year is to occur towards the end of this decade.

The market for IP-PBX is to surpass $1.6 billion in 2007 while the sales of VoIP internet phone apps are to pass the $500 million mark by 2010.

Lycos Introduces Its New VoIP Application

Lycos Phone is the name of the new VoIP service and it comes with several features. In addition to the basic stuff it will also have video on demand and a built in MP3 player.

Also, it will bundle in for free some features that other VoIP providers like Skype, Yahoo, or MSN charge for. These include a US phone number, voice mail attachments and a fax function.

Lycos is also offering 100 free minutes of PC to phone time with incoming calls free and anything over that is to be under 1 cent per minute which is even less then Yahoo’s rate.

Partnering with Lycos is also Globe7, which provides sports news highlights, movie trailers and current video content from Bloomberg and Routers news services.

Global Crossing Upcoming Conference Call

There is a conference call scheduled for 30 March 2006 at 11 am Eastern Standard Time, in which Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC) will present fiscal results for the fourth quarter of 2005 as well as the whole year 2005.

You may join on the call by dialing 212-231-6046 preferably 15 minutes before the start. The conference call will be also webcasted at http://www.globalcrossing.com/xml/investors/index.xml. And the replay of the call will be available till 6 April 2006 at 402-977-9140 or 1-800-633-8284 with reservation number being 21283306.

Global Crossing is a British telecommunications company offering full range of managed telecommunications services, particularly for IP based business applications. Global Crossing does it by utilizing first in the world integrated global IP based network. In its core it links over 30 countries and 300 big cities worldwide. The company caters to 36 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. It also offers a full range of managed data and voice products with Global Crossing IP VPN Service, Global Crossing VoIP and Global Crossing Managed Services.

New Yahoo VoIP Messenger Beta

Yahoo! has just released its new messenger with voice. It allows calling as usual with the messengers – for free PC to PC and for a fee to landline and mobile phones. The rates look great with 1 cent per minute in the US and 2 cents per minute to over 30 other countries. And to receive calls from regular phones the cost is $2.49 a month.

In the words of Yahoo’s Vice President of communications Products, Brad Garlinghouse "Yahoo's top priority is to provide a stellar communications service through a variety of easy, fun and inexpensive ways to stay connected with others around the world. We look forward to further incorporating voice features into Yahoo's global services, from communications to search, to help simplify and improve the Internet experience for our hundreds of millions of users around the world."

As it is now the service is in beta and available in the US with calls to over 180 countries
Similar to Skype, the user can also have local phone number in one of selected world locations. Also for now the Messenger is available for Windows only and does not offer video chatting or conference calling.

Blackberry goes VoIP

Research In Motion has acquired Ascendent Systems, the maker of voice mobility software.

With that being done Research In Motion is getting ready to release a version of its ever popular Blackberry cell phone PDA that is also going to function as a fully featured Wi-Fi VoIP phone.

The new Blackberry integrated system is said to run smoothly with both the traditional PBX systems and then new IP based IP-PBX ones.

US VoIP Business Rapidly Expanding

In 2005 the VoIP subscribers list has grown in the US from 1.3 million to 4.5 million. Also in the first three months of this year now, the subscribers base has increased by 900,000 people, according to survey by TeleGeography.

The share of the internet phone market has also increased in the US cable companies sector, from 45 to 52 percent, making them currently the larges voice over internet providers in United States.

The US VoIP market is predicted to expand by another 3 million subscribers by the end of this year.

Sabeer Bhatia's New VoFi VoIP Software

Sabeer Bhatia, well known for the development of the Hotmail email system has now developed a new VoIP software to be released under VoFi Technologies label.

The VoFi internet telephony application is designed to operate much like Skype, Google Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger and with a twist incorporating a gaming platform into the application.

The release of this internet phone bundle is being conducted from India and run by the VoFi’s current 25 employees.

Star Talk Long Distance VoIP Phone Card

Northstar Communications has announced a new phone card that links over the VoIP to provide very discounted long distance rates to and from over 200 countries from any landline phone.

'StarTalk brings a new entrant into what is a highly competitive marketplace. Northstar Communications is dedicated to ensuring that we offer the most competitive rates available in the market and are committed to ensuring that we lead the rest in terms of price, quality and availability.' – said Jubran Abdulrahman, the director of Northstar Communications,

New Bluetooth Skype VoIP Phone

Elite Devices is readying to release to the market in April a brand new Bluetooth VoIP phone called Trendnet Clearsky. It will be compatible with Skype and major Internet Messengers such the MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.

The batteries on this internet phone are to be very good with 60 hours standby and 6 hours talk time. And the range of the Bluetooth transmission is rated at up to 100 meters (around 300 feet).