VoIP News: September 2008

VoIP virtualisation will be easier on the next range of CPUs from Intel, according to the chip manufacturer. The new processors will be based on the upcoming Nehalem core architecture and will be aimed at the virtualisation and communications sectors, reports Comms Dealer. Currently, many IT departments do not want to virtualise VoIP and other critical applications like unified communications because of worries over performance and reliability.

New proposals will be announced by Gordon Brown today, which will see poorer families receive vouchers to help them get a broadband connection, potentially allowing them to save more by using VoIP phones. The prime minister will unveil the measures at the Labour party conference, which will see vouchers worth up to £700 handed out which can then be used for broadband costs, technical support and even computers.

The number of VoIP solutions in Europe is increasing at an incredible rate, according to research from an analyst firm. TeleGeography believes that at the end of last year there were 25. 3 million consumer VoIP lines in Western Europe, an increase from 15 million in 2006 and almost four times as many as in 2005 (6.

Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) technology has been successfully tested under everyday conditions for the first time, T-Mobile and Norton have announced. Long Term Evolution (LTE) was used as an example for the trial, which involved sending data to and from a vehicle driving through Bonn, between the T-Mobile building on the right of the Rhine and Deutsche Telekom's on the left. Transmission took place smoothly across the whole four-kilometre test track, with no quality loss across different cells, which the companies say is an important factor for a mobile communications network.

The European Commission has begun a public consultation which will look at fundamental regulations for EU members to apply to Next Generation Access broadband networks (NGA). It is hoped that having the same regulatory principles in each member will allow a consistent treatment of providers in the union, ensuring the required regulatory predictability for investment. A draft recommendation is being used as the basis for the consultation, which suggests creating agreed definitions for categories of services, risk premiums and rates of return.