Equivoice Launches Two New MPLS Based Wireless Services for Chicago Area

Equivoice launched two new MPLS based wireless services to serve business customers in metropolitan Chicago. Equi-Wireless T1 back up provides standby wireless T-1 service and provides automatic, transparent backup, in the event of cable cuts or other outages. Equi-Wireless 2 Meg Primary is a 2 megabit full duplex service, expandable to 10 megabits, which supports voice, data and video applications. Both products can be customized.

Equi-Wireless services are robust and highly reliable. The highly scalable services utilize a mesh architecture with no common point of failure. Equi-Wireless services provide native IP addressing with no tunneling, QOS for voice services and do not traverse the open internet.

"Equi-Wireless combines the capabilities of our powerful MPLS network with the reliability and cost effectiveness of wireless, said Marcus McEwen, president of Equivoice Inc."

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) enables customers and carriers to build next-generation intelligent networks that deliver a wide variety of advanced, value-added services over a single infrastructure. This economical solution can be integrated seamlessly over any existing infrastructure, allowing subscribers with differing access links to aggregate an MPLS edge without changing their current environments.

Equivoice Inc. was founded by President/CEO, Marcus McEwen, a telecommunications entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience and CIO, Scott Grau, patent holder of "System and method for communication of audio data over a packet-based network" Document Type and Number: United States Patent 5526353.

Comcast to offer 4G wireless broadband service

The largest cable operator in the U.S. will launch the new service in Portland, Ore. And it will expand the service to other Comcast cities later in the year, including Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Comcast along with Google, Intel, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint Nextel, which gave Clearwire its 2.5GHz spectrum.

Clearwire's plan has been to roll out its service nationwide. The service is now up and running in a few cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, and Portland, Ore. And the company has plans to roll it out to 80 markets by the end of the year.

Some of the cities where it plans to launch the service include, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Seattle. And it plans to launch the network in cities such as New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area, in 2010.

Clearwire is using a technology called WiMax, which offers faster speeds than current 3G wireless technologies, but offers wider coverage than other high-speed wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi. Clearwire claims that it can provide up to 4Mbps for downloads and 500 kbps for uploading, which is more than double what consumers can expect using a 3G wireless connection.

Three indicted for hacking 2,500 company phone systems (PBX)

The acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey unsealed indictments Friday for three people in the Philippines charged with hacking the private branch exchanges (PBX) of more than 2,500 companies for stealing pass codes they sold to call center operators in Italy.

Italian officials allege the sale of the pass codes helped finance terrorist activities, IDG News Service reported. On Friday, Italian officials arrested at least five people in raids on 10 call centers.

The three indicted in the U.S. are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, unauthorized access to computers and other charges, according to U.S. attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr.

"The hackers we've charged enabled their conspirators in Italy and elsewhere to steal large amounts of telecommunications capacity, which could then be used to further or finance just about any sort of nefarious activity here or overseas," Marra said.

Pakistani nationals in Italy used the stolen codes to offer cheap calls to their clients on the PBXs of commercial companies in the United States, Australia and Europe.

Some of the profits from the scam were used to finance the activities of Islamist extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Italian officials said, according to the IDG News report.

Marra said the hackers dialed into the PBXs and used a process known as a brute force attack to hit vulnerable points of the PBX systems.

Verizon Wireless to slash 8,000 jobs

Verizon, the second-largest US telecoms group, is to cut a further 8,000 jobs in response to the recession and the loss of fixed-line business. The cuts, equivalent to 3.4 per cent of Verizon’s workforce, come on top of a similar sized reduction in headcount over the past 12 months and showed, said Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research, that “no company is immune to the severity of the current downturn”.

Discussing Verizon’s second-quarter results, which included a 7.2 per cent fall in net income to $3.2bn, John Killian, chief financial officer, said: “Clearly the broader economic issues are affecting the business.

“Although we are taking steps to mitigate the negative impacts of the economy in the short term, we also need to more significantly reduce the wireline cost structure over the next 12 to 18 months.”

Operating revenues in Verizon’s global enterprise business segment, which mainly serves big companies, fell 6.7 per cent to $3.7bn as customers reacted to the downturn. Wholesale revenues fell 7.5 per cent to $2.4bn.

Revenues in Verizon’s fixed-line business fell 5.2 per cent to $11.5bn in spite of growth in fibre optic-based video services and broadband services. The number of fixed lines served by Verizon fell by a further 630,000, or 12.3 per cent, to 19.7m, mostly reflecting wireless substitution.

Skype's voice encryption stumps German police

German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the Internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists, Germany's top police officer said on Thursday. Skype allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet from their computer to other Skype users free of charge.

Law enforcement agencies and intelligence services have used wiretaps since the telephone was invented, but implementing them is much more complex in the modern telecommunications market where the providers are often foreign companies.

"The encryption with Skype telephone software ... creates grave difficulties for us," Joerg Ziercke, president of Germany's Federal Police Office (BKA) told reporters at an annual gathering of security and law enforcement officials.

"We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance -- that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted."

Experts say Skype and other Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling software are difficult to intercept because they work by breaking up voice data into small packets and switching them along thousands of router paths instead of a constant circuit between two parties, as with a traditional call.

What Kind of Equipment Do I Need for voip call?

A broadband (high speed Internet) connection is required. This can be through a cable modem, or high speed services such as DSL or a local area network. A computer, adaptor, or specialized phone is required. Some VoIP services only work over your computer or a special VoIP phone, while other services allow you to use a traditional phone connected to a VoIP adapter. If you use your computer, you will need some software and an inexpensive microphone. Special VoIP phones plug directly into your broadband connection and operate largely like a traditional telephone. If you use a telephone with a VoIP adapter, you'll be able to dial just as you always have, and the service provider may also provide a dial tone.

What Are Some Advantages of VoIP?
Some VoIP services offer features and services that are not available with a traditional phone, or are available but only for an additional fee. You may also be able to avoid paying for both a broadband connection and a traditional telephone line.

What Are Some disadvantages of VoIP?
If you're considering replacing your traditional telephone service with VoIP, there are some possible differences:

VoIP offers more than cost savings

CHICAGO -- When it comes to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), there's more than one reason to accept the charges, so to speak.

During a presentation Thursday at TechTarget's Networking Decisions conference, Zeus Kerravala, vice president of enterprise infrastructure at the Yankee Group, a research firm based in Boston, argued that cost savings should not be the only reason that companies consider VoIP.

Granted, there are some cost savings to be gained from moving to VoIP, Kerravala said, including fewer toll calls and a possible reduction in a company's telecommunications staff. But Kerravala said that such cost savings would be minimal.

According to Kerravala, VoIP's biggest boon is increased functionality. There are thousands of possible applications for VoIP phones, and as companies open up their code to developers, more niche applications are likely to develop. With proper implementation and training, these systems can boost productivity for a broad range of companies.

The Yankee Group found that companies with VoIP systems are 25% to 35% more responsive to customers, and the productivity of their employees who spend a significant portion of the day on the phone rose by the same amount.

One benefit of converging voice and data is that is allows users to create a centralized place to store messages. Today people are contacted by phone, fax, e-mail, pager and cell phone, and checking all of these separate places for messages can be time consuming. With VoIP, all of these means of communication can be centralized using a single message box.

That's something that appeals to Carl Lucas, IS director for Union County, N.C. He said unified messaging would be a help to county employees and would likely boost productivity.

But for many, the potential for cost savings remains a key factor for any new technology purchase.

Leo Judge, MIS director at Indianapolis-based mortgage lender, The Money Station Inc., said that new applications and the possibility of unified messaging was not a factor in his consideration of VoIP.

Judge said his company, which has four remote locations, could benefit from avoiding toll calls, having easier remote system management and enabling employees who switch desks to simply pick up and move their own phones without help from the IT staff.

However, he said budgets are tight right now and that visible return on investment is the biggest priority. "The bottom line is that the technology has to save us money," Judge said.

Companies with that kind of bottom-line mentality may want to save money by migrating to full VoIP slowly, over time, Kerravala said. It rarely makes sense to rip out a functioning private branch exchange (PBX) in favor of a complete VoIP system, particularly for those companies that are hesitant about making the investment in the new systems and network upgrades that often accompany VoIP projects.

Lucas is considering IP-enabling some of his PBXs and continuing that process over the next year or two, as the need arises. With that approach, he said he can justify the smaller expenses along the way.

J. Todd Babcock, another IS director attending the conference, said he is not considering VoIP right now. Babcock, who works for Chicago's Museum of Science and Technology, said that the museum has only one location and it is in an old building. Any wiring changes in an older structure can be very expensive, he said.

Nonetheless, he said the museum is undergoing some strategic changes that could benefit from VoIP. Babcock said an effort is brewing to get Chicago's many museums to share resources, and a VoIP system based in multiple museums could be one way of doing that.

And that is Kerravala's point. No one is buying technology for technology's sake any more. He said it's time for companies to start thinking about how the technology can help them improve the way their businesses work.