Durham gets VOIP solution

FeatureTel Telecommunications, a North Carolina hosted VOIP telephone

services company, recently completed the installation of phones and related services for 1 815 users across the City of Durham operations, states Reuters.

The $1.63 million contract includes network equipment upgrades and a three-year service agreement.

"We had realised for some time our system was antiquated," said Michiyo Wagner, director of technology solutions for the City of Durham, the state's fourth largest municipality. "But the cost to upgrade had been prohibitive." In 2008, Wagner issued an RFP for a hosted VOIP solution within the department's existing budget.

Mobile VOIP is projected to become a $32.2 billion industry by 2013, largely driven by more than 278 million registered users worldwide, according to an In-Stat report, says TMCnet.

The report found the Asia-Pacific region is projected to be the largest market by 2013.

Mobile VOIP and Long Term Evolution (LTE) are soon to go hand-in- hand, while LTE is expected to replace 3G mobile telecommunications networks.

Sprint reported wireline revenues of $1.4 billion were down 10% year-over-year because of decreases in voice and legacy data services, states Fierce VOIP.

However, IXC's Internet revenues were up 5% due in part to increased demand in wholesale VOIP service.

At the end of the third quarter, Sprint revealed it's supporting 4.9 million users of their cable partners VOIP services. While traditional voice declined 14%, customers continued to migrate to IP-based services.