SIP Trunking Week in Review

SIP trunking news this week reaches into the realms of partnerships, pricing, a host of new regulations, innovations for the trading floor, and the granting of patents. EchoFirst has partnered with Arkaya to enhance its communications systems; a technical forum in the U.K. is seeking to improve communications standards within its home country; Fonality (News - Alert) is taking the telephony market by storm with its change to a pay-as-you-go pricing model; Speakerbus is enhancing its iSeries platform to improve its products used by the trading community, and Vonage (News - Alert) was granted two more patents related to its VoIP services.

EchoFirst, a solar panel manufacturer, recently announced its partnership with IT solutions company Arkaya. EchoFirst reportedly considered microwave systems for its VoIP and file transfer needs, but it found that latency, packet loss, and quality were drawbacks to that type of system. Instead, it reportedly chose Arkaya for its low cost and high quality. Arkaya will also be able to scale with EchoFirst as it grows while maintaining the same level of service.

The U.K. technical forum, NICC, is working on improving guidelines for several telecommunications service areas. First, TMC (News - Alert) notes that it is attempting to standardize 999 calls within the country and migrating from ISUP technology to a pure SIP network that will handle emergency calls. The organization is also trying to track calls more effectively so it can identify companies creating nuisance calls. In addition, it is also working to improve CPE interoperability guidelines that should increase compatibility in the fields of telecare and security.

Fonality, an SMB telephony solutions provider, is experimenting with pay-as-you-go pricing models for all its product lines. Although this is uncommon in the industry, Fonality reportedly sees the model as appealing to businesses because they can focus on running their operations rather than paying for a glut of services up front.

Voice solutions provider Speakerbus is now reportedly focusing on the trading community by improving its iSeries communications platform. This includes improvements to the iManager Centralized Management System and Communications Server, the iTurret dealerboard, and the iSeries Media Gateway (News - Alert). The company has added the new feature, Automated Resource Management, that helps users manage services and that will improve the functionality of its “always available” trading environment that runs on its voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications platform.

Lastly, the USPTO has awarded two new patents to VoIP calling service provider Vonage. In its bid to provide customers with the best international calling features, Vonage applied for U.S. Pat. No. 8,744,422, "Systems and Methods for Terminating Telephony Communications to Mobile Telephony Devices." This patent, part of the company's ReachMe Roaming service, allows callers to dial the mobile number of a person who is out of country and reach them through simple call forwarding. With ReachMe Roaming, anyone receiving a call who is also connected to Wi-Fi can complete such incoming calls for free. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 8,731,162, "Systems and Methods for Matching Call Detail Records for the Same Communication Generated by Different Elements of an IP Telephony System,” allows Vonage to improve its customer service by recognizing that an incoming call that is transferred is a single call and not two different calls.