Here are some news stories that caught my eye, and some I want to explore in more depth.

VoIP Security Services Taking Hold
July 28, 2006 9:19AM

"Eavesdropping is taking place, and people don't realize it," says Stan Quintana, managed security services vice president for AT&T. Because companies don't always encrypt their VoIP traffic all the way to the end users, "there is substantial exposure to intercepting that conversational data and monitoring it," he adds.

Carriers are beefing up their VoIP security services, and demand for these offerings is growing as more VoIP vulnerabilities come to light.

High-profile attacks against VoIP systems are helping drive this market. In early June, for example, two men were arrested and charged with routing approximately 500,000 calls illegally over the network belonging to Net2Phone, a Newark, N.J., VoIP provider. Fifteen Internet phone companies reportedly were victims of the scam.

While the story itself is interesting. I find the quote used to set the stage quite troubling. The story, and the VoIP problem has nothing to do with eavesdropping at all. There's a lot of fear, uncertainly and doubt. And a lot to fanning the flames from folks who don't know the real story. They seem to wrote the inflammatory story that gets attention first, then quietly say oops later when they get called on it. That has to stop, or some of us in the know need to get much more vocal about slapping down the misinformers.

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Visualware got some extra visibility from new corners this week as several people pointed out their MyVoIPSpeed™ Internet Connection Test. It does a great job of quick line analysis to determine whether your connection can reasonably be expected to support a VoIP call. For those of us who travel and are often connected from a hotel or some unknown network, it could be a real handy assessment tool. Bookmark the link.

I was going to paste some sample reports, but go run the test for yourself and see what they give you in results.

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Yahoo buys VOIP service company Dialpad
Yahoo Inc. has bought VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service provider Dialpad Communications Inc. to use its technology in Yahoo's VOIP services, Dailpad said Tuesday.

Yahoo Inc. has bought VoIP service provider Dialpad Communications Inc. to use its technology in Yahoo's VOIP services, Dialpad said Tuesday.

The cost of the acquisition was not announced.

VOIP technology works by routing calls as data over broadband connections. Early VOIP technology allowed PC users to dial each other, but some current services allow callers to use standard phones or even mobile phones to make and receive calls.

I really enjoyed seeing this post. Look at that date for Dialpad. 1999 the were doing early VoIP. They and Net2Phone were elary important players and I'm glad to see them both still around.

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BT wants a million VoIP users within a year

Behemoth adopts self-cannibalisation strategy

By Martin Veitch: Friday 28 July 2006, 10:43

BT IS SEEKING to recruit a million net voice customers inside 12 months in an attempt to precede the inevitable decline in its fixed-line revenues and head off a wave of competition.

According to a report in The Times, the telecoms behemoth said that one in 10 of its voice customers could be VoIP users inside two years. Heavy marketing and the likely inclusion of net calling hardware and software in its broadband services are likely tactics to attract subscribers.

10% penetration projections ni 12 months seem pretty aggressive. The say they have nearly a half-million applications queued up already. Self cannibalization has never been widely appreciated as a business strategy.

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Here's a double whammy on VoIP quality

VoIP call quality trends called into question

28th July 2006

By Rhonda Ascierto

A new study by monitoring tool vendor Brix Networks Inc claims that the quality of VoIP calls has significantly deteriorated during the past 18 months.

However, the validity of the study has been questioned by some industry watchers who claim Brix's technology cannot conclusively determine actual call quality. Indeed, many in the industry argue VoIP calls have incrementally increased in quality recently.

"I wouldn't say I draw the same conclusion as the report has," said IDC research analyst for VoIP services Rebecca Swensen.

and this one

Quality of VoIP services dipped by about 5 percent in last 18 months: Study
The quality of VoIP services was never much competition for the traditional telephony systems. However even this quality seems to have dropped off by about 5 percent in the last 18 months, according to a new study by Brix Networks, a company, which makes monitoring, tools for service providers.

The company used data gathered from its website called TestYourVoip.com, which it created two years ago. The test allows users to know exactly what quality is offered by their VoIP services. Around 1 million VoIP connections were tested through the website. Brix found that 20 percent of these had unacceptable quality. This figure is up from the 15 percent reported a year ago.

What caught my eye here were just oddities. Many, including IDC don't quite buy the results. And I think that 5% decline in services they noted probably has a 15% margin of error.

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I spotted a headline Sigma Systems joins Level 3 VoIP program and went to investigate but it was behind a subscription paywall. Those things are so user unfriendly that they're dying on the vine. I interviewed Preston Gilmer, their VP of Product Marketing. I figure rather than deal with the paywall subscription, I'll cycle back around with Preston and see what ths news is. Level 3 has had some issues of late and Sigma Systems is a strong, reputable player in the OSS space. That could turn into an important alliance.

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There are some articles, here and there, that I will just have to come back to because they require focused thought. It's Friday afternoon, and focus is fading. Here are some things I want to revisit soon -

From Phoneboy

Is Net Neutrality a Diversion?

Andy Abramson had alerted me to the fact that while we have our panties in a twist about Network Neutrality, Qwest and the other ILECs are trying to kill Level 3 through the courts. Gordon Cook's piece on the matter has the best quote:

"Net Neutrality is a skillful diversion to draw our attention there while Qwest, ATT, Verizon and BellSouth stick the knife in at the court and PUC level and kill off the remaining services they don?t control. The crying shame is that no one knows what is going on outside a very very narrow circle of people."

I've thought a lot about net neutrality. I think it's a huge facade. A fabrication. A non-event. But I need to speel out all the reasons I feel that way.

From Rich Tehrani, Andy Abramson

Kazaa Pays $100 Million

Kazaa will be paying record companies $100 million dollars in damages. "Kazaa was an international engine of copyright theft which damaged the whole music sector and hampered our industry's efforts to grow a legitimate digital business," said John Kennedy, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), in a statement.

Kazaa Settlement Does It Mean....?

The settlement with the record labels may mean that the founders of Kazaa and Skype are now able to come to the USA.

Actually I'd like to explore through this step towards legitimacy in context of how the Kazaa founders mover on to Skype and it's current role as a rogue or renegade P2P VoIP tool in corporate networks. I wonder if this settlement could precitipate a new approach elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: VoIP, VoIP security, Visualware, Yahoo, Dialpad, Kazaa, Sigma Systems