The FCC approved a rule yesterday that mandates that struggling VoIP companies must give customers and regulatory bodies “reasonable notice” before they shut down. The rule is meant to avoid a repeat of the sudden SunRocket shutdown in July 2007 that left thousands of customers without any phone service, including access to 911 and other emergency numbers.

But the FCC did not specify the amount of time a VoIP provider has to provide its warning, so for now the vague “reasonable notice” timeframe is up for interpretation.

While Nortel blamed much of the decline on its wireless segments, it’s likely that Nortel’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings impacted the VoIP part of the group’s earnings as well, as every division of the company saw a marked revenue decline for the quarter.

Company-wide, Nortel reported a net loss of $507 million for the quarter, as its $1.73 billion in revenue was off more than $1 billion from the $2.76 billion it recorded in the first quarter of 2008. The company said it is still in the midst of reorganizing its divisions, and it will begin reporting Carrier VoIP and Application Solutions earnings as a separate segment beginning in the third quarter of 2009.

On a bright note, the company announced that it has sold more than 1,000 units of its Business Communication Manager 450 product, which provides unified communications capabilities for small- and medium-sized businesses, since its launch in October 2008, making it the fastest-selling product in company history.

Unlike GV, a Phone.com customer can transfer an existing number to act as a Virtual Number or assign a new number. Customers can also upload their address book from most major email programs to program call routing information based on caller ID, as well as for use during click-to-call, call blocking and other tasks.

In addition customers are able to upload their address book from most major email programs; the contact information can be used to program call routing based on caller ID, and during click-to-call, call blocking, and additional tasks that can be assigned as needed.

Plans start at $4.88 per month, and customers get a price drop of $1 per referral until they get the service for free; additional referrals result in monthly credits usable for extra minutes and more features.

“Our goal is to give enterprises technology that improves the customer experience but also affords them the ultimate financial flexibility when deploying voice services,” said Jamie Bertasi, senior director of Business Solutions at Tellme. “From initial deployments we’re seeing impressive cost savings and results that we’re sure our customers will be excited about.”

Tellme’s automated answering platform also got updated in this release as a result of collaboration with Microsoft’s Speech Components Group.

Truphone 3.0 improves presence and IM capabilities by combining many popular IM applications like AIM, Skype, and Yahoo! Messenger on page for easier navigation. The 3.0 release also lets users know when other Truphone for iPhone users are available with presence icons.

Customers within AT&T’s service footprint are being asked to contact AT&T for alternative voice service, be it legacy wireline (probably not going to happen, given the continued decline in that service) or U-Verse voice over AT&T DSL. Out of region customers are being told that they have alternatives available with other service providers.

Internap didn’t waste time firing back at ooma, as spokeswoman Debra Forrester said the problem was not Internap’s fault, and that no other Internap customers experienced a connection failure, indicating the problem was within ooma’s system, not Internap’s.

Ooma Chief Marketing Officer Rich Buchanan wrote an email saying ooma had network logs to prove the disruption was due to an issue with Internap’s systems. Ooma representatives said the outage has prompted them to expedite plans to launch a second data center in the U.S. for emergency failover capabilities.

A complaint filed Monday in Miami federal court says that between November 2004 and May 2005, ex-VoIP inc. CFO and VP of Finance Osvaldo Pitters and GM Terrell Kuykendall recorded $1.4 million in fake revenue from the alleged sale of computer hardware and fees for management services. The inflated revenue raised the company’s overall figures for 2004 by 43 percent.

It is also alleged that VoIP Inc. CEO Steven Ivester knew the company was struggling and the company’s actual revenues were “substantially less” than its projections, said the complaint. He didn’t question the company’s financial statements, but resigned in October 2005 after unloading 4 million shares of the company’s stock to make a tidy $4.4 million in profits. The SEC also says he didn’t file the proper paperwork.

VoIP Inc.’s financial irregularities were discovered in March 2006, resulting in the resignation of Pitters and the subsequent firing of Kuykendall in April 2006.

The SEC is seeking for the three to lose the profits they made from their actions, pay a civil penalty and permanently bar them from acting as an officer or director of a publicly held company.

A large number of Android-toting devices are expected to be on display at CEATEC, Japan’s largest electronics show, including a prototype Android set-top box developed by Motorola for service provider KDDI.

The Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF) is rallying support for Android on non-phone devices. The OESF is a group of 25 companies who plan to have working groups on set-top boxes, VoIP, network and security, measurement and control, system core, application and services, marketing and education. Current members include ARM, KDDI, Japan Cable Laboratories, Alpine Electronics and Fujitsu Software Technologies, with other silicon companies contemplating participation.

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