VOIP smartphone supports WiMax

Beceem Communications, D2 Technologies, and ECS have formed an alliance to build a VOIP smartphone based on Google's Android operating system, says Telecom Tiger. The smartphone will support WiMax as well as other IP communication technologies.

“With the industry actively working toward the creation and delivery of a WiMax infrastructure, manufacturers will need to develop mobile devices that take advantage of the greater bandwidth, range and other benefits of this technology,” said Doug Makishima, chief operating officer at D2 Technologies.

“Together with Beceem and ECS, we've shown how a complete ecosystem dedicated to mobile VOIP over WiMax can help device manufacturers and unified communications/VOIP providers get new products to market more quickly, efficiently and effectively.”

Vodafone has gained recognition from Microsoft for its competency in unified communications (UC). Among other things, this enables Vodafone to integrate and deliver VOIP, says GoMo News.

Vodafone's UC competency includes its ability to integrate and deliver VOIP, instant messaging, voice and videoconferencing, and unified messaging to devices and productivity tools.

Employees of Cambridgeshire County Council have recently benefited from a Vodafone UC solution. The council's 5 000 government employees now have a UC platform from Vodafone. “This enables them to communicate, share and interact together from anywhere at anytime,” Vodafone says.

An upgrade to the phone system at Ottawa Regional Hospital and Healthcare Centre became a badly needed network overhaul that lowered costs and included a conversion to VOIP, says Computerworld.

The Ottawa-based centre was running an analogue phone system fed by T-1s and a separate 10/100 Ethernet data network that wouldn't support an IP phone system, let alone the battery of high-bandwidth medical applications that are becoming more and more necessary, says Curt Sesto, director of facilities, construction management and electronics for the centre.

Now, Ottawa Regional has installed a 10Gbps fibre ring on its 31-acre campus and is busy switching over all its phones to IP with the capacity to turn on UC features, he says. The ageing 14-year-old Siemens-ROLM PBX has been replaced with a VOIP service outsourced to Siemens that is based on Siemens gear in Level 3 Communications collocation facilities.