India clamps down on 'illegal' VOIP

The Indian government is clamping down on business process outsourcers over what it believes is the illegal use of Internet telephony, according to India's Economic Times.

"It (the government) is giving final touches to a proposal under which ITES companies must furnish the names of authorised service providers from whom bandwidth and Internet telephony minutes have been taken. The companies will also have to give an undertaking that they will not use the services of unlicensed foreign service providers such as Net2Phone, Vonage, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet, Euros, Skype and Yahoo," the article explains.

The Indian Department of Telecommunications estimates that such unlicensed service companies provide 30 million minutes of Internet telephony per month to corporations, call centres and BPOs in the country.

Eastern Telecom has signed a contract with Nokia to strengthen its presence in the Philippines, writes SDA Asia.

"Nokia said it would renew Eastern Telecom's fixed network with a VOIP-capable next-generation network (NGN) and fixed-line broadband access system," notes the article.

The contract includes the Nokia MSC Server System (the mobile softswitch), along with the Nokia VOIP Server, enabling personalised voice telephony. Nokia will supply Eastern Telecom with both ADSL2+ and PSTN lines using the D500 access node as well as broadband wireless access capabilities using the Nokia high speed packet access technology.

Taiwan-based Genius has announced the release of Genius Navigator 380, a VOIP mouse, according to a report at TechTree.com.

"The Navigator 380 is a chic mouse exhibiting a commendable integration of mouse and Internet phone functions. This VOIP mouse software can support up to six instant messengers (Skype, MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, QQ, and AIM) and combine these IMs into one window," explains the article.

There are seven buttons in Navigator 380 especially for the phone functions - phone on/off, list up/down, volume up/down, and OK for IM window.