April 7, 2010 - Cable and Internet giant Comcast has won a legal decision that could have big implications for the future of the Internet. The Federal Communications Commission tried to punish Comcast for selectively blocking some traffic on its network. But a federal appeals court says the FCC was overstepping its authority. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic on their networks. The decision also has serious implications for the FCC's massive national broadband plan. The agency needs authority to regulate broadband to push ahead with some its key recommendations, including one to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes phone service in poor and rural areas. [+]

As the FCC looks at revamping the current Universal Service Fund (USF), Representative Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and the Internet, has introduced a new bill that would provide discounted Internet access service pricing to poor and underserved subscribers. Currently, the FCC is looking at how to restructure the USF, which is used to pay phone companies and cable operators providing phone service. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that it would incorporate potential changes for the USF as it develops its national broadband plan for Congress. Matsui's proposed bill, the Broadband Affordability Act of 2009, would have the FCC "establish a broadband program that provides low-income Americans living in rural and urban areas with assistance in subscribing to affordable broadband internet service." The new legislation would in effect expand the USF's [+]

This afternoon at eComm 2009, Skype will formally announce that it is making its in-house developed SILK wideband voice codec available royalty-free. Yes, free, for incorporation into any third-party application or device. By offering SILK broadly in a very "open way, royalty free" to any third party developer, Skype thinks it can "unlock one of the major obstacles in the migration from narrowband video," said Skype GM Jonathan Christensen. SILK is designed as an Internet-specific speech codec able to work with variable bit rates. At its highest "superwideband" rates, it samples at 24 kHz, providing 12 kHz effective voice. It's designed to be scalable from 6 Kbps to 40 Kbps with very low delay, low CPU and memory consumption, and it's designed to be "very robust" for jitter and packet loss. The codec is written in fixed-point ANSI C, so it can [+]

SaskTel is terminating its WebCall VoIP service after five years. The company said that there were only 130 WebCall customers in Saskatchewan and 270 outside of the province. A spokesperson for SaskTel said WebCall had "limited marketing success" and had been operating "at a significant loss" as a result. WebCall customer were informed of the service termination in January and were told to find an alternative solution prior to March 1. Customers may have some headaches transferring their numbers, depending on where they live and who they transfer service to; doubly so if they have waited until the last minute to find another provider. SaskTel joins a number of larger phone companies that have pulled the plug on VoIP services, but given the small number of customers that were using its service, it is unlikely the company will be launching a new [+]

Is cable triple play taking customers from Vonage? This is a tough market and expenses make families find a 'comfort zone' above which they don't want to spend more. Consider what happens if you have no Internet service, but rely on Vonage for phone service. On the other hand, if you contract with your cable company for triple play - cable, internet, and telephone - you might sacrifice one without giving up the other. Vonage reported a mixed bag of results in its fourth-quarter and full-year 2008 earnings report. The company had its first year of generating positive cash flow from operations, seeing a revenue increase of 9 percent to $900 million for the year. However, the company reported a net decline in subscribers, losing a net of 14,700 customers for the quarter. The net decline in customers says [+]

JAJAH, a mobile VoIP company based in Mountain View, Calif., announced the launch of new white-label VoIP services for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile operating systems Thursday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The solutions will enable VoIP calls over WiFi and cellular networks, and they are being pitched to carriers who can offer the services under their own brand. JAJAH has already rolled out its platform for the iPod Touch and the iPhone, and the addition of these mobile operating systems dramatically expands the solution's potential reach. JAJAH is touting the white-label solutions as end-to-end applications that carriers can brand and launch with very little development expense. "Every carrier faces pressure to develop new services to keep hold of their subscriber base," JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy said. "JAJAH gives carriers the ability to roll out these proven, simple to [+]

As VoIP transitions to more bandwidth, a world-wide 883 country code and high def (HD) our staff will bring you the most current news. We also specialize in PBX system news, conferencing, voip software, WiMax, and much more. Three new things are happening with VoIP. One is the 883 country code. All voice over internet will have it's own country. Following that development is the fact that more bandwidth for voip, now called VoIP HD, will help sound quality. HD - high definition - simply means more bandwidth. A typical telephone conversation on land lines (the old telephone service) uses half of the bandwidth used by VoIP HD. To follow these new developments, and to track our voip articles, downloads, and providers, we are transitioning all of our previous material to VoIP 883 HD's website. [+]