Skype, which is now part of Microsoft has lost one of its key executives. Jonathan Christensen has left the company and has not disclosed his plans on what he will do next. Christensen till recently the vice president of emerging opportunities at Skype . Read More »
Remember the early days of VoIP when Sprint went after Vonage with a patent lawsuit relating to how Vonage handled voice calls on a data network? Sprint is pulling those patents out again, aiming its quest for license fees at the cable companies. Read More »
Gogii, the maker of popular messaging app TextPlus, is launching a service called TextPlus Free Calls that enables a host of devices, even Wi-Fi-only devices, to make and receive phone calls for free or very cheaply. Free Calls joins a growing number of IP-based communications competitors. … Read More »
Twilio, a cloud communication platform powering a wide array of apps, is capping off a huge year of growth with $17 million in Series funding from existing investors Union Square Ventures and Bessemer Ventures. The new money will be used to continue Twilio’s worldwide expansion. Read More »
AT&T is launching a new mobile app that allows its smartphone users to make international calls via VoIP. The new AT&T Call International will allow users to make calls overseas at cheap rates like 4 cents a minute to China, Germany, France and the UK. Read More »
Just how will Microsoft make money off Skype? It’s too early to say since the deal closed just last week, said Microsoft CFO Peter Klein. But he gave some broad-brush hints about plans for the VoIP fan favorite on Microsoft’s first-quarter earnings call Thursday night. Read More »
Juniper Research of the U.K. released a report that shows that by 2016 nearly four-fifths of 640 million mobile VoIP users will be making calls through apps downloaded on their smartphones, while the rest of the calls could be over phone company networks. Read More »
Voice is in the process of transitioning from providing the bulk of phone companies’ profits to becoming just another part of a data service that can be provided by web players, explained execs from voice-focused startups at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco on Monday. Read More »
Cisco’s ongoing retrenchment in its core markets looks like it may need a boost when it comes to enterprise telephony systems. The communications giant has lost market share in the IP telephony market to Avaya in the last few quarters. Read More »
Skype has acquired group messaging startup GroupMe for a rumored $85 million. The deal, while a good move on paper, isn’t going to be enough, as Skype itself is going through an identity crisis — whether it wants to be a consumer or an enterprise communications … Read More »
Twilio, which provides a service so companies and web services can add voice or SMS to their menu of options, now will offer developers the option to use all IP communications as well as the old-school phone and mobile networks. Read More »
On this new Alive Web, what we miss doesn’t matter. What matters is the connection and the interactions. And Google Hangouts, one of the features in Google+, is the killer app of the Alive Web. Read More »
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Skype, the Internet telephony company that is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft has one ambition — get to a billion users – even if it risks the company losing control over its customers. And that just is fine for Facebook. Read More »
A report shows that by 2018, the traditional phone system is going to be reaching less than 6 percent of U.S. residents. It’s perhaps time to rethink the very notion of what a phone is and what defines the classic phone network. Read More »
Facebook’s Skype integration involved a lot of slimming down of Skype’s native client and making it work in a browser, creating the back-end integration between Facebook and Skype and scaling up Skype’s network to handle the expected flood of traffic. Read More »
If you are someone who is always on the move and spends a lot of time on the phone, then those phone bills stack up. In this age of mobile VoIP that shouldn’t be the case, but it does. This infographic will get you started. Read More »
Skype quietly added some XMPP support to its most recentbeta last week. Adopting the open protocol helps Sype to integrate with Facebook, but it could also be used for interoperability with other IM platforms. Just don’t expect to call your Gtalk friends any time soon. Read More »
Skype CEO Tony Bates — and not the company’s private equity investors — were behind company’s decision to part ways with many of their senior mangers, a company spokesperson told GigaOM. Skype Journal reported earlier that a whole gaggle of senior-level executives had been cut from … Read More »
Skype added deeper Facebook integration to its latest software for Windows, bringing instant messaging, the ability to “like” a Facebook status from Skype and improved contact integration. This is just the start for a stronger partnership between the two and it doesn’t end on the desktop. Read More »
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gave the green light to Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, the Internet telephony company. Now there are reports that many key senior executives have left or have been asked to leave the company. Read More »
Nimbuzz, a Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Internet telephony company says it has signed up 50 million registered users across the globe. That’s minuscule when compared to Skype, but it’s still significant milestone for the upstart company which signs up 100,000 new users a day. Read More »
Now that the word is out on the Microsoft-Skype deal, the pick-up is still leaving many scratching their heads. Others, however, are seeing some of the wisdom in the move, though it still comes down to Microsoft making the deal work, which is far from given. … Read More »
Microsoft confirmed that it has agreed to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion and plans to integrate the Internet communications service into a wide array of products from Kinect and Windows Phone 7 to Lync, Outlook and Xbox Live. Read More »
Looks like Skype is in play, again. Unlike last time, both the suitors have good business reasons. Between Google and Facebook, the social networking giant makes perfect sense. We actually suggested this deal six months ago. Question is: why does Skype want to sell? Read More »
If there’s a cloud for compute, for storage and any other variation under the sun why shouldn’t there be a VoIP cloud to deliver telephony over the Internet? With the launch of Whistle, the 2600 Hertz Project will make building a VoIP cloud cheaper and easier. Read More »
Integrated voice calls to Facebook chat friends arrives today, but not from Skype, Google Voice or another usual suspect. Say hello to T-Mobile’s new Bobsled brand of solutions, the first of which is a free application that integrates with Facebook for voice calls. Read More »
Skype users, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, are getting a new powerful desktop tool that brings a lot of Google Voice management features to Skype. MySkypeOffice offers a host of in-bound call management tools for businesses that rely on Skype as their phone system. Read More »
Rebtel is hoping a new update to its BlackBerry app will help it make up some ground on VoIP leader Skype. The app now allows Rebtel BlackBerry users to make free international phone calls to other Rebtel users on BlackBerry and Android apps. Read More »
Skype voice traffic is expected to grow by 45 billion minutes in 2010 to more than twice the volume added by all the world’s phone companies combined, according to research firm Telegeography. That means one out of five voice minutes is now going to Skype. Read More »
China has reportedly moved to block private VoIP services such as Skype and will only allow China Telecom and China Unicom to offer such services. It’s unclear when this will take effect or if it means the outright ban of services such as Skype. Read More »
Skype, the Internet telephony service went on the blink last week, stranding millions who rely on it to communicate. In conversation, CEO Tony Bates revealed that the problem might be some errant Windows clients, but that only hinted at the true cause, which I explain here. Read More »
Skype CEO Tony Bates in a conversation gives us an update and status report on Skype’s outage. It seems like a majority of users in Europe and the East Coast of the U.S. are back online. Bates is sorry about the outage and will compensate users. … Read More »
Skype failed yesterday, and this morning, almost 24 hours after people first started complaining about not being able to log on, the VoIP provider disclosed that about 10 million people were back online: about 40 percent of its concurrent user base of 25 million. Read More »
If you are one of Skype’s many users who use the service to make a living or talking to your remote users, then you are straight out of luck. The service this morning is down and the outage is impacting millions of users. Read More »
First, Skype and Nimbuzz reported how well they are doing. Then there was the spectacular launch of Viber. And now fring is telling us that they are seeing their quarterly revenues grow at a rapid clip. Mobile VoIP is finally seeing its day under the sun. Read More »
Men, not the women they often say talk more than them, are the more likely users of international VoIP and video call services. With Americans spending $24 billion for international calls, alternative service providers should increase women’s awareness of such services to build their user base. Read More »
Consumers are using the Internet more often for more things, such as voice communication and streaming video, according to the Cisco Systems Visual Networking Index Study. Peak hours, when Internet traffic is up to 72 percent higher than average, could soon become the new prime time. Read More »
One in five broadband lines has a VoIP service attached to it, according to analyst firm Point Topic. They estimate nearly 22 percent of consumer broadband lines have a VoIP service. That’s about 112 million lines at the half-way mark in 2010. Read More »
Skype today released a brand new version of its software for Windows operating systems. The new Version 5 of the popular communications and Internet telephony software is inherently more social, thanks to integration with Facebook. These features are not available on Mac and Skype’s Mobile clients. Read More »
The Qualcomm Innovation Center today announced it has purchased iSkoot, a San Francisco-based startup that offers mobile application services primarily to feature phones. With the acquisition, Qualcomm can feed feature phones with data-friendly proxy services, RSS, email, VoIP functions, real-time notifications and social networking software. Read More »
T-Mobile USA says it will be launching UMA-based Wi-Fi calling on a select few Android handsets in coming days. Unlike in the past, Andorid phones will use an App for Wi-Fi calling. T-Mobile’s myTouch and new Motorola’s DEFY are likely to support UMA-based calling features. Read More »
Skype has expanded availability of its Internet calling service to most Android phones, though U.S. users are limited to Wi-Fi calls. Skype said today that a new client for Android phones running 2.1 or higher is now available for download in Android Market or at skype.com. Read More »
Ring2Skype, a free service that competes directly against the $60-per-year SkypeIn product, alleges it’s been blocked by Skype since Friday of last week. Is this a glitch, a case of he-said/she-said, or what it appears to be: a heavy-handed play by Skype? Read More »
FriendCaller, a browser-based click-to-call voice calling service developed by Dortmund, Germany-based startup C2Call, is once again showing that despite Skype’s monstrous market share, the game isn’t over just yet. The company is adding thousands of new users every day. Read More »
Skype is taking the beta tag off Skype Connect, its VoIP service that integrates into an enterprise PBX or Unified Communication solution. Why the push for business customers? Skype has to beat Google to the punch and start getting more of its customers to buy services. Read More »
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