Speakeasy, a Seattle based voice over ip services provider has announced a new ‘integrated’ offering which appears to allow the connection of existing telephony infrastructure (analog & digital) including PBXs to their network.

The advantage of the concept is that keeping your old hardware in place and just hooking it up to Speakeasy’s SIP based network will save significant expenditure on hardware procurement. It’s not a particularly new approach to the problem of voip deployment in the sense that analog to voip converters have been around since the first days of voip but the offering of an integrated product with support for fairly-large existing PBXs certainly is.

That’s all assuming I understood their press release correctly

Speakeasy press release: http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr030209b.php

NOTE: This article has been superceded by this update: http://www.voip-point.net/2009/02/27/eurojust-voip-interception-update/

EUROJUST, the European Union’s judicial cooperation unit, is to examine the possibilities of bugging voip calls within the EU.

This comes after news that Italian law-enforcement agencies have requested help from EUROJUST in tapping voip calls made by criminals in Italy.

EUROJUST mention Skype by name but also include their intention to examine other voip systems in their press release. In the case of Skype which uses a proprietary protocol and encryption system, EUROJUST would presumably need to coerce Skype who are incorporated in Luxembourg to hand over encryption keys or create a ‘back door’ in their software to allow government wiretapping.

In the alternate case of SIP or similar VoIP communications, many calls may currently be transmitted ‘in the clear’ and be easy to intercept by simply capturing the packet stream for later playback. In cases where encryption is employed either in the protocol or the connection level, wiretapping may prove to be considerably more difficult as even the fact that a call is being made over a normally-encrypted data connection may be difficult or impossible to detect.

Openmoko have launched the Neo Freerunner, it’s first mass-production open-source mobile handset.

Neo Freerunner does not yet have a VoIP application but with it’s built-in WiFi and linux based, open software architecture, it looks like it will only be a matter of time before a SIP compliant application is ported. Telepathy, a framework which allows IM and Voice over IP integration looks like a prime candidate.

The Neo Freerunner is designed with sensitive corporate environements in mind. The lack of camera and the possibility of a full code audit should put minds at ease in the board-room.

Specifications:

Connectivity:

• GSM
• Bluetooth 2.0
• GPRS
• AGPS
• WiFi (in final version)
• USB 1.1 slave and host
• 2.5-mm audio jack

Memory

• 128 MB SDRAM
• 256 MB NAND flash

Display

• 2.8 in. VGA (480×640) TFT

Dimensions

• 120.7mm × 62mm × 18.5mm

The Neo Freerunner is available now in North America, Europe and Asia with a MSRP of $399 US.

Snom is to release it’s M3 DECT / SIP handset system for the North American market and TMCNet has full details and review.

The Snom M3 allows for multiple DECT wireless handsets with full-color graphical displays to make and receive SIP calls over any compliant network.

The Snom M3 system involves a base-station which provides network and control facilities including a web confiiguration interface. Up to 8 individual wireless DECT handsets can be connected to each base-station. The base-station can handle up to three simultaneous calls.

Product video:

The Snom M3 is to be available in the USA as of June 2008.

Counterpath, makers of the Bria softphone client have launched Quick Conference, an apparently easy-to-use audio conferencing server.

When deployed, Bria (and presumably other SIP standard) users will be able to dial a four digit number to create a conference on the Quick Conference server.

Quick Conference features web-based administration, IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook calendar integration and remote management via PDA.