VoIP Evolution

The Top 10 VoIP & Video Conferencing Developments of 2011

Video conferencing was a lot more interesting to watch in 2011 than was VoIP. It wasn't that nothing happened in VoIP during the year. It was just that a lot more happened in video conferencing. This was especially true in the SMB space. Early summer saw a slew of significant announcements from vendors and providers. These announcements figured prominently in the VoIP Evolution report "SMB Video Conferencing: Getting Beyond Clouds & Interoperability."

StartupCamp Winning Formula: Integrating Voice, Video and Social Networking

One of the great attractions of IP-based voice and video communication is their capacity for integration with other applications and services. Such integration becomes even more compelling when it involves social networks, which represent the hottest tech trend going. So it was no surprise when the winner of the recent StartupCamp Comms Edition was a company that had created a platform for integrating voice, video and chat with Facebook, as a tool to help students study better together.

Internet Traffic Study Points to Future of VoIP Peering

A new study shows that Internet traffic these days mostly bypasses the top transit providers. Instead, it travels through direct connections between traffic generators. The same thing will increasingly happen with VoIP traffic – that is, it will travel directly between VoIP providers without touching the PSTN (public switched telephone network). That will bring significant benefits for users.

CallSpark Offers Mobile Calling Search Engine

A mobile phone's built-in address book has limited usefulness. For instance, it only allows users to call people whose numbers they've already entered – which means people they know well. Directory assistance, on the other hand, is about reaching people or establishments one knows almost nothing about. But there's no easy way to deal with the vast territory in between – to reach people one knows only casually, or to learn more about people and companies one knows almost nothing about. San Francisco-based CallSpark, which presented at the recent DEMO conference, is trying to fill that gap.

OrganIP Turns Social Networks Into Phone Books

One of the more elusive dreams of emerging VoIP services is integration with social networks. The idea is compelling: if tens or hundreds of millions of people make calls to their social network "friends," someone will be able make a lot of money from it. So far, though, no one has had much success in appealing to such users. A startup that presented at the recent DEMO conference is trying to change that. OrganIP, run by France-based Digitrad, is trying to turn social networks into giant phone books.