VoIP News: August 2008

The category of Best Short Contract Broadband at the Top 10 Broadband awards has been won by AOL. AOL was up against companies like Plusnet and Be Broadband but won through in the awards ceremony, organised by the independent broadband comparison site Top 10 Broadband. The company's shorter length "Flexi" packages came in for particular praise by the judges, with factors like cost, speed, download allowance and quality service all looked at on top of length.

The customer premises equipment (CPE) market has seen growth because of the increasing up take of broadband, according to research. Analyst firm In-Stat has found that sales of CPE, which consists of items like routers and residential gateway equipment, will continue to be positive until the year 2012 as broadband continues to see growth. Worldwide CPE unit shipments grew 15 per cent last year to reach 149 million, according to figures from the company.

Orange has relaunced its fixed-line broadband and is attempting to target customers interested in phone deals, according to reports. The company has been working to improve its service and is offering free home broadband to new contract customers - specifically those who sign up to contracts worth £30 per month or more. Orange's consumer customer team vice president, Mike Newnham, explained the decision to Mobile News: "We stopped marketing the service aggressively late last year so we could focus on improving the basics.

The VoIP provider equipment market showed a slight decline for the second quarter of 2008 but is expected to recover well, according to Infonetics Research. A drop of four per cent was recorded in the overall worldwide market, led by larger declines in the session border controller (SBC) and softswitch areas. This was the first sequential decline for SBC ever recorded by Infonetics, dropping 14 per cent from the first quarter of the year to the second.

The use of VoIP PBX is causing communication in business to take "new shapes", according to a commentator. Kristen Kiya, writing on Best Syndication News, writes that the technology offers high-end services to business establishments as well as corporate clients. "Switching over to the VoIP PBX solutions definitely boosts the growth of any organisations," she writes.