VoIP News: November 2008

Broadband must be considered when creating policy on public service funding, the communications minister Stephen Carter has said. The former chief executive of communications watchdog Ofcom explained that he believes any news provider should be able to seek money from the government. He told the Guardian that if the country does not "equate broadcasting and broadband in our policymaking" then it is at risk of being "left behind".

There will be more than 100 million WiMAX subscribers by 2013, but HSPA will still be ahead with more than a billion, according to a new report. Research from Informa Telecoms and Media revealed that there will be 103 million WiMAX subscribers in five years time, with the battle between it and HSPA a 'tale of two markets'. WiMAX is currently having a mixed time, as it has achieved large growth in the last year, but the problem for it is its rival has had even more success, while another new technology, LTE, has also received support from some big companies.

Virgin America, the airline company, has introduced Wi-Fi internet to a number of its flights. The company, a separate entity from Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic, is using the Gogo service, from Aircell, to provide connectivity to its passengers. In order to publicise the news, Virgin America has teamed up with online video sharing site YouTube, to create the first air-to-ground video stream of YouTube Live.

The outlook for the VoIP provider market is "decent" in light of the global economic turmoil, a new report has indicated. Figures from Infonetics Research revealed that the worldwide VoIP provider market dropped eight per cent sequentially during the third quarter of the year to $816 million (£554 million). However, this was partly due to the downturn in the world's economies, causing Infonetics to highlight that the outlook was not as bad as some industries.

Organisations are using unified communications (UC) to lower their costs, according to a security solutions provider. Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management at Facetime, which develops security for 'greynet applications' such as instant messaging and VoIP, explained to TMCnet. com that a wide variety of groups are taking advantage of the burgeoning 'work from anywhere' mentality.