VoIP

Internet phone company Vonage is turning to a former Cingular Wireless to help guide it forward.

Vonage announced Wednesday that Marc Lefar, former chief marketing officer at Cingular, will become the Vonage's new CEO. Lefar, 44, will take over the top spot at the company from Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's founder who stepped in last year to help guide the company through its legal battles and financial issues.

Now that Vonage has made headway through these troubles, Lefar will take over to guide the company's long term strategy. Earlier this week, Vonage said it had gotten $215 million in debt financing … Read more

Internet phone company Vonage will name a new chief executive as early as next week, according to a story published in The Wall Street Journal Friday.

The newspaper cited people familiar with the situation. The news comes as Vonage secures funding to buy back some of its debt. On Thursday the company said it has a letter of commitment from the hedge fund Silver Point Finance to provide up to $215 million in private debt financing.

Vonage will use the cash, plus some of its own, to repurchase the remainder of its $253 million in convertible notes, the Journal story … Read more

Ixia, a leading company in IP performance testing, announced a competitive upgrade program today as part of its "Switch to Ixia" campaign.

The program will last through the end of September 2008. During this time, new and existing customers from all over the world can trade equipment from Ixia's competitors, including Spirent, Agilent, and Shenick, in for Ixia's latest test equipment and applications. Or they can earn up to a 50 percent credit toward a new purchase.

Ixia also offers IxFinancing Leasing, a special financing solution that allows you to pay for Ixia products, software, and … Read more

Internet calling provider Skype said Tuesday that it has hired Scott Durchslag, a former Motorola executive, to become its chief operating officer.

Durchslag spent more than five years at Motorola where he was most recently corporate vice president of global product and experience invention for the mobile devices business unit. Skype said that while in that position Durchslag "led product strategy, innovation, intellectual property, design, user interfaces, consumer experiences, partnerships, product marketing, and customer care."

The fact that Durchslag was in charge of "strategy" and "innovation" for Motorola's device business at a time when the company lost significant market share to competitors, … Read more

T-Mobile USA plans to announce Wednesday that its new @Home voice service will be available nationwide starting July 2.

The cell phone operator has been testing the new Internet telephony service since February in Dallas and Seattle. And now the new service, which is meant to replace traditional home phones, will be offered to any T-Mobile cell phone customer.

Subscribers will be able to connect any regular home telephone to a T-Mobile router that will send calls over the Internet much the same way as services like Vonage operate. The service costs $10 a month plus taxes and fees for … Read more

It's been a while since a major Skype release, and on Wednesday, the eBay-owned VoIP communication service will issue the first of several planned version 4.0 beta builds for Windows that are anticipated to drop over the next few months.

The biggest changes to come with Skype 4.0 beta (download) are visual and organizational. For the first time, the program contains complete prompts for running sound and Webcam checks within the program set-up. After two failed tests buffered by common troubleshooting suggestions, Skype will recommend hardware--like headsets and a Webcam--to reverse incompatibility errors.

Redesigned interface Skype 4.… Read more

Internet telephony company Vonage is getting back on track with improved quarterly earnings and a deal, announced Thursday, to resell broadband service from Covad, a DSL service provider.

The new service, called Vonage Broadband, will offer speeds of 3 megabits per second to 6 Mbps to residential and small-business customers. It will allow Vonage to bundle its Internet telephony services with broadband services. Until now, customers using Vonage would get their own broadband service from a cable company or phone company and then add the Vonage service on top.

The news of the deal comes as Vonage announces first-quarter 2008 … Read more

AOL said Tuesday it has opened the interface to AIM Call Out, a move that will let programmers more easily build products that tap into the service for making calls over the Internet to mobile or landline phones

The Open Voice API (application programming interface) is freely available. Building it into a device, such as a phone with Internet access or with support for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), can let people call using AOL's network and bypass much of the ordinary telephone infrastructure.

AOL charges fees for using the Call Out service, but the rates are compelling, the company … Read more

Has eBay about had it with Skype?

New eBay CEO John Donahoe told the Financial Times the online auctioneer will consider selling Skype if it can't find a way to make the service better help eBay's e-commerce business.

"What we're testing this year are the synergies," Donahoe told the Financial Times. "If the synergies are strong, we'll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we'll reassess it."

Donahoe did say Skype is doing well. It generated $126 million in the first quarter, up 61 percent from a year ago. This year, … Read more