VoIP News: August 2007

Experts are reacting to concern over recently publicised VoIP security issues, insisting that the new technology is still safer than the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). "IP systems are more exposed, but you have more security that you can install," Ari Takanen, founder and CTO of Codenomicon said. PSTN, by comparison, can easily fall victim to such security flaws as caller ID spoofing against which little can be done.

Communications provider Polycom has announced that it will be able to make a range of its technology products more compatible with Microsoft software packages, following news of a licensing agreement between the two companies. Polycom will now have access to the RT Audio Codec - an encryption method that converts analogue sounds into secure digital packets, which can then be transmitted and decoded back into audible sound.

The UK is lagging behind the US, Europe and Australia in the adoption of unified communication (UC) technology, it has been claimed. According to research commissioned by VAR Dimension Data, just a third of UK firms have switched to using internet-based communications, comparing poorly to the 60 per cent reported in the US. In fact the UK was only ahead of Switzerland in adoption of IP telephony out of the seven western countries surveyed.

London and the south-west of England boast the biggest rates of internet connection take-up in the country, according to official statistics. Some 69 per cent of households in both the capital and the south-west were found to have a connection to the web in new figures from the Office of National Statistics. They were closely followed by the east of England on 67 per cent of households connected to the internet, the south-east with 65 per cent and Scotland with 60 per cent.

A voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony service installed at the UK government's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is handling more than one million calls a day. Over 35,000 staff at 435 sites around the country are using the technology which connects their voice and data networks, allowing information to be shared and easy communication between offices. The Integrated Communications Network Services (Icons) project being installed at the DWP is reportedly one of the largest converged network programmes in northern Europe.