PortaOne News

PortaOne Extends PortaMDM Capabilities To Meet Smart Metering Needs Of Facility Managers

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Turnkey Smart Meter Software Platform for Energy and Water Use Now Supports All Major Meter Brands; Reporting and Analytics Expanded to Include Power Quality as Well as Billing

PortaOne today announced a series of upgrades and improvements to its PortaMDM metering and billing software platform for electric, gas, heating, water and sewer smart meters. Leading the improvements is an extended list of supported smart meters including models from Veris, Acuvim, Dent, Conzerv, Contrel, and Itron/Actaris; also included is an extension to PortaMDM�s data monitoring capabilities enabling customers to analyze and generate reports on power quality.

Other new functionality in PortaMDM includes support for the most common smart meter industry standards: DLMS/COSEM. DLMS (Device Language Message Specification) is a standard for modeling the functionality of a smart meter as defined by the DLMS User Association; COSEM (COmpanion Specification for Energy Metering) is the rule set governing the exchange of data with energy meters.

PortaMDM is a unified, real-time billing and SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) application that is tailored to the needs of small-to-medium smart metering networks and Automated Meter Reading (AMR) setups.
Ideal for use by contractors and facility management companies as well as utilities, PortaMDM gathers usage data from smart meters, processes the information, and then rates it according to the service provider�s particular billing configuration. The platform is designed to significantly increase consumption efficiency through real-time monitoring that drives better decision-making.

�Simply put, PortaMDM is a one-stop solution for every brand and every model of smart meter across all utility types�electricity, gas, heating, water and sewer,� said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. �With one software platform, customers can monitor virtually every aspect of their utility use with an eye toward lowering expenses, improving service, and helping to reduce consumption of scarce resources. Whether for office buildings, multi-tenant housing, shopping malls, factories or other facilities, PortaMDM provides powerful, comprehensive and easy-to-understand information.�

According to Khalenkov, PortaOne�s commitment to smart meter ubiquity extends to PortaMDM licensing. With each license, users are entitled to development time by PortaOne engineers for any smart meter brand or model not currently supported. The move ensures that all meters will integrate with the PortaMDM metering and billing platform.

Power Quality Analytics

PortaMDM�s versatile billing engine lets service providers and users alike view cost and consumption according to any rating scheme in practice, such as time of day, reactive energy, or committed volume. The engine can rate consumption according to whatever configuration, rules and tariffs set by the utility or, in commercial settings, the property manager.

In addition to billing data, however, PortaMDM can retrieve and monitor any other pertinent data a given meter provides. Users can choose which measurements will be retrieved from a particular meter, specify the sampling rate, and then view graphs for those measurements both in real time and over any past time period.

PortaMDM�s new power analytics capability is especially important for monitoring quality and consistency of power delivery. With the capability, users can measure true, reactive, and apparent power in the network as well as harmonics and short-duration voltage variation (e.g., voltage sags, voltage swells and interruptions). The software can also obtain data on voltage imbalance, frequency deviation and other power quality disturbances that may impact machinery or other sensitive equipment onsite.

Free 90-Day Trial License

Each PortaMDM commercial license includes initial configuration assistance, onsite or offsite training, customizable white-label statements, ten hours of complimentary plug-in development for any model or brand of smart meter, six months of premium PortaCare (24/7 phone, IM and email) technical support, and lifelong software updates with rollback capability.

Interested may also download a fully-functional, 90-day trial license for non-commercial use. Download and installation requires no registration. For complete details and product description, along with PortaMDM distributor/reseller opportunities, go to www.portamdm.com.

PortaOne to Conduct a Series of Webcasts on the New Functionality of PortaSwitch in Maintenance Release 24

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Starting this week, PortaOne engineering team will conduct a series of live online webcasts for all our customers and anybody interested in the new developments of our solutions for carriers and service providers. The webcast will be co-hosted by Mike Kidik, Senior Project Manager, Klaus Haertel, Technical Sales Manager, and Andriy Zhylenko, CTO.

There will be 3 sessions:

November 4th (Friday), 11am Singapore time (2pm Sydney);

November 8th (Tuesday), 9am London time (10am European, 11am South African, 1pm Dubai);

November 9th (Wednesday), 9am US Pacific time (12pm US Eastern, 5pm London time, 6pm European, 7pm South African).

During the webcasts, we will be reviewing the most important of the new features recently introduced into PortaSwitch in MR24.

To access the webcast, any browser with the flash plugin installed is enough. You can access it using this URL:

http://interactivedemo.portaone.com/
UpComingReleasesWebcast

Please choose "Enter as a Guest" and enter your name.

For the audio, please use the following conference bridge:

+1-913-227-1219 or
+1-888-296-6500 (toll free from North America and Skype)

The guest code for the conference bridge is 609746.

Please note that the conference bridge is muted for all attendees. You will however be able to ask questions via Chat/Q&A at the end of the webcast.

We are looking forward to your attendance starting this Friday!

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 24 Enters the Production Stage with MR24-1 Coming for Supported Customers

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

With the release of the build 1 for the Maintenance Release 24 in November, PortaOne customers can start upgrading their production systems to the latest version, which offers improved performance, stability and many new opportunities for expanding their business.

PortaOne will conduct several online web-casts to provide more details about the specific features that are available as a part of MR24. The web-casts are currently scheduled as follows:

November 4th, 11am Singapore time (2pm Sydney);

November 8th, 9am London time (10am Western European, 10am South African, 12pm Dubai);

November 9th, 9am US Pacific time (12pm US Eastern , 5pm London time, 6pm Western European).

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 24 includes:

Updated version of the operating system (Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.1);
New version of MySQL database server (5.1). Besides the general performance enhancements and improved handling of multiple CPUs/cores MySQL 5.1 this version also contains the table partitioning option, which significantly increases the speed of the most frequent data access operations on large tables like those storing xDR information;
New easy-to-use web interface for end-users for managing various service parameters, notably hosted IP PBX / IP Centrex settings;
Transparent clustering of multiple PortaBilling web servers to provide uninterrupted service for end-users or external applications via XML API;
Tariff override, which allows you to manage a large number of similar tariffs with minimum effort and a low probability of error;
Codec enforcement policies, so PortaSwitch administrators are able to control the acceptable / preferred codecs for each customer or a vendor;
Advanced capacity routing, which will gradually reduce the amount of calls sent to a carrier as the load on the connection exceeds the desired capacity limit;
Time-based bandwidth management for Internet access service;
Auto-provisioning for Cisco SPA-504G; Linksys PAP2T; Yealink SIP-T20, SIP-T22, SIP-T26, SIP-T28P IP phones;
Arabic and Italian languages for PortaUM IVRs;
"Deposit files" feature in the configuration server, which allows to ensure that some user-generated files (e.g. custom IVR prompts) are maintained on the system throughout any updates;
A new licensing module (part of the configuration server), which allows on-the-fly adding of the new servers/services to the configuration and eliminates the need for USB dongles in the rest of PortaSwitch servers;
Integration with TransferTo for cross-country mobile top-ups and airtime remittance.

All customers interested in scheduling an update should contact PortaOne support team (support@portaone.com).

PortaOne And Yealink Announce Interoperability Of Yealink IP Phones With PortaSwitch Telecom Management Platform

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Combination Assures Carriers Seamless IP Service Quality For Their Customers, from Handset to Billing

PortaOne and Yealink, a professional designer and manufacturer of VoIP Phones and IP Video Phones, today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing between PortaOne’s flagship PortaSwitch VoIP call control and subscriber management platform and Yealink’s full range of VoIP phones. Together, the two companies’ products provide a world-class VoIP telephony infrastructure suitable for all classes of enterprise use.

Yealink’s award-wining IP Phones, IP Video Phones and USB Phones are in use in over 100 countries around the world. As a professional VoIP terminal equipment manufacturer, Yealink constantly focuses on delivering IP products to extend the value of network communication. Yealink’s award-winning IP Phone portfolio, led by the SIP-T2x series enterprise HD IP Phones, is equipped with TI chipset and TI voice engine to ensure a better quality and high definition voice, and also embeds rich features including auto-provision, PoE, IPv6 and various value-added functions. Yealink IP Phone series benefits customers from its high quality, easy deployment, broad interoperability and attractive pricing.

About Yealink:
Founded in 2001, Yealink is the professional designer and manufacturer of IP Phones and IP Video Phones for the worldwide broadband telephony market. Yealink has focused on VoIP products characterized by high cost-performance, easy deployment and affordable price.
Yealink benefits customers from flexibility and broad interoperability with the major IP-PBX, softswitch and IMS in the market. Chosen by famous carriers, enterprises and clients from over 100 countries, Yealink provides SMB and diversified customers from all over the world a best choice to extend the value of network communication.

The interoperability of Yealink IP phones with PortaSwitch, one of the industry’s most reliable and popular integrated VoIP infrastructure systems, provides ISPs with an exceptional combination. The PortaSwitch family, which includes the PortaBilling customer management application, is capable of handling the complete call control, routing, proxying, and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and telecommunication service providers to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.

PortaSwitch consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and media applications that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

“Yealink and PortaOne share the same commitment to provide powerful VoIP solution to customers worldwide. We are very glad to have an ideal partner like PortaOne,” said Stone Lu, Vice President of Yealink. “Both of us focus on reliable product features unique communication value, and have gained strong followings on an international level. With the interoperability test, Yealink and PortaOne make the empowered solution available to worldwide customers.”

“The combination of technologies from PortaOne and Yealink creates a significant opportunity for VoIP service providers,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. “With competition stronger than ever, it becomes imperative for carriers to offer assured solutions that are customizable, cost-effective and of premium quality. We’re pleased that our carrier customers can now rely on Yealink and PortaSwitch.”

TransferTo And PortaOne Give New Advantage To Service Providers: Remote Worldwide Mobile Phone Top-Ups

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Successful Interoperability Testing Means End-Customers Can Recharge Prepaid Phones Of Loved Ones Back Home; 70 Countries, 185 Partner Operators, 3.6 Billion Users Covered

PortaOne and leading airtime remittance services provider TransferTo, today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing between PortaOne’s PortaBilling platform and the TransferTo service. Now, service providers using PortaBilling can offer their end-customers the powerful ability to top-up the prepaid phones of friends and relatives back home, enabling them to tap into a market currently responsible for $380 billion (USD) in asset transfers globally each year.

About TransferTo:

TransferTo is a Global Airtime Remittance Hub that interconnects mobile operators' prepaid systems to deliver end to end cross border top-up services. TransferTo is the only fast, convenient and reliable solution enabling the transfer of small amounts of value in the form of prepaid mobile credits, the ideal low cost, high value complement to cash remittances.

TransferTo has been designed for migrants and travelers, who can now remotely recharge the prepaid phones of their loved ones back home from their mobile phones, the Internet or at a retail location. TransferTo is a must have Value Added Service for Mobile Network Operators, Retailers, Money Transfer Operators and Financial Institutions targeting the ethnic market segment.

With a global reach over five continents, TransferTo is the leader in international prepaid airtime remittances, and enables real time prepaid top-up transfers to over 185 partner Mobile Network Operators in 70 countries, reaching 3.6 billion prepaid users.

TransferTo is part of Ingenico (Euronext: FR0000125346 - ING) the world's leading provider of payment solutions, with over 15 million terminals deployed in more than 125 countries. Its 3,000 employees worldwide support retailers, banks and service providers to optimize and secure their electronic payments solutions, develop their offer of services and increase their point of sales revenue.

Since 2005, TransferTo has been processing top-up transactions across national borders via its global airtime network. Designed to meet the needs of emigrants, travelers and other individuals living and working outside their homelands, TransferTo currently interconnects 185 partner mobile network operators in 70 countries. End-customers now make millions of transfers via TransferTo each month via mobile phones, the Internet and participating retail locations.

The interoperability of TransferTo with PortaBilling platform brings even greater value to one of the telecom industry’s most reliable billing, provisioning and customer management platforms. Capable of acting as the nerve center of a modern VoIP telecommunications network, PortaBilling supports the launching, pricing and provisioning of a full range of telecom services.

PortaBilling performs ratings for services, creates transaction records and automatically modifies customers’ balances; furthermore it provides a unified platform for multiple services, enabling clients to charge for their voice calls, messages, and data transfer, thus effectively deploying triple-play on a single network.

“The interoperability between PortaBilling and TransferTo will allow PortaOne customers to generate immediate additional revenues from the ethnic market. This beyond-voice, value-added service is specially designed for the migrant customer segment,” said Eric Barbier, TransferTo’s CEO . “While improving service provider’s ARUP, customer loyalty and brand visibility, remote top-up also solves a problem faced by most migrant customers. Not unlike classic money remittance channels, international top-ups are the ideal solution for cost-effective small value transfers.”

“Hundreds of millions of people worldwide seek the kind of service TransferTo provides, making its availability alongside PortaBilling a strong market advantage for our VoIP service providers,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. “We’re excited to be able to offer this powerful new service—one that will significantly enhance the competitive position of PortaBilling subscribers in countries around the world.”

PortaOne, MailVision Announce Interoperability Of PortaSwitch With PICO Mobile VoIP Platform

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PortaSwitch Telecom Management Products, Combined with PICO Client-Side Applications, Give Telcos and ISPs Ability to Offer Range of VoIP Services Via Most Popular Smartphones

PortaOne and MailVision, a provider of SIP mobile platforms for wireless and NGN service providers, today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing between PortaOne’s PortaSwitch VoIP call control/subscriber management platform and MailVision’s PICO Mobile VoIP Client Management System. The compatibility is a major advancement for VoIP telephony providers and their customers, enabling easy, inexpensive VoIP calling and value-added services on smart devices including iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, Android, Blackberry and Nokia smartphones.

MailVision’s PICO Mobile Client system supports private-branded delivery of high quality VoIP telephony and SMS via WiFi and 3G data networks. The PICO mobile client is distributed, managed, configured and upgraded remotely by the Client Management System (CMS) that gives telcos, NGNs, ITSPs and carriers a complete solution for managing business, residential and roaming customers.

About MailVision:
MailVision, founded in 1997, a private held company, a leading provider of Mobile VoIP SIP Solutions, with over 13 years of experience in providing mobile VoIP solutions to wireless, telcos, NGNs, ITSP and VoIP carriers.

MailVision’s Pico Mobile VoIP platform supports major mobile operating systems such as Apple iOS based OS, Google Android OS, Nokia Symbian OS and BlackBerry OS.
In addition to its PC Client supporting MS Windows OS, and its Web Client supporting Flash technology, telcos, Mobile Operators, ITSPs, NGNs and Leading VoIP worldwide carriers have chosen MailVision Pico Mobile VoIP Platform, including Vonage, Bezeq, Cellcom, Telefonica, OOMA, Bezeq International, and 013 NetVision.

“MailVision is pleased to announce its PICO Mobile VoIP platform integration with PortaOne’s PortaSwitch telephony system,” stated Ariel Pessah, VP/Professional Services at MailVision. “This collaboration provides a strategic, comprehensive solution for our customers utilizing WiFi or Data Cellular networks who aim to expand their telecommunication services such as voice and SMS services.”

Compatibility with PICO provides even greater value to PortaSwitch, one of the industry’s most reliable and popular integrated VoIP infrastructure systems. The PortaSwitch family, which includes the PortaBilling customer management application, is capable of handling the complete call control, routing, proxying, and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and telecommunication service providers to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.

“The interoperability of PICO Mobile with PortaSwitch is a huge development for established VoIP telcos and service providers,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. “PICO is a total mobile client management platform, offering providers a comprehensive calling and value-added services capability. The combination of our two systems allows an end-to-end, reliable and highly scalable product mix that can significantly grow the provider’s business.”

PortaOne Alerts Its Customers About Potential Grandstream HT502 and GXW-4008 Phone Vulnerability to Hackers� Attacks

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

As the VoIP industry grows and the ITSP around the world rapidly expand their networks of customers, there is also an increase in fraudulent activity in VoIP. Attackers attempt to gain access to the ITSP network by using the credentials of legitimate customers, and then inject traffic to expensive destinations such as premium-rate telephone numbers and mobile networks in developing countries.

PortaSwitch provides carrier-grade security and it is impossible for an unauthorized party to obtain customer credentials except by guessing a password. That would require trying all possible text combinations (so-called �brute-force password cracking�), and since PortaSwitch auto-generated passwords are �strong� (contain at least 8 digits and do not contain any easy-to-guess text strings such as qwerty), the process of cracking the password would require an extremely high number of attempts.

There have been a few recent security incidents though, where attackers obtained the required credentials using a security weakness in end-user equipment such as IP phones. Many IP phones contain a built-in configuration web server, used to remotely manage phone settings. The Grandstream HT502 phone provides such a configuration web interface with access to this interface protected by an administrator password.

The default administrator password for this user interface is well-known, so if a phone with a default configuration is connected to the Internet using a public IP address, anyone (including an attacker) can log in there and see the configuration settings. As shocking as it may seem, the clear-text password is openly displayed on this interface along with the other required credentials (SIP proxy address and username). Therefore an attacker can immediately see the password and use it on any VoIP equipment they own.

Currently only Grandstream HT502 and GXW-4008 phones are confirmed to have this vulnerability � but hackers may use this approach to retrieve the credentials from any other end-user system (such as Asterisk server or Trixbox), where the default administrator login is either well known or not secure enough.

Customers are urged to:

Immediately review the activity of end-users using the affected models of phones
Check whether this problem may exist in other third-party IP phones used on your network
Use IP phone auto-provisioning tools in PortaBilling to allow easy management of IP phone configuration and eliminate the need for enabling the IP phone�s internal web-server
Ensure that the administrator�s default password for the phone�s built-in web interface is frequently changed (either using PortaSwitch phone auto-provisioning or manually)

In order to proactively fight VoIP fraud attempts, PortaOne is deploying additional tools to analyze suspicious activity on your network. These tools are available for all supported PortaOne customers running PortaSwitch MR21 or any later version as a part of PortaCare service at no extra cost.

Please contact the PortaOne support team for more details.

End of Technical Support for MR19 and All Other Older Maintenance Releases

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

In order to provide better service for the currently active versions of the software, PortaOne will no longer provide technical support for Maintenance Release 19 and older versions of PortaSwitch after January 1, 2012.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19 was initially released over 2 years ago in April 2009, and the last build (MR19-3) was released in March 2010. Maintenance Release 19 and older releases are now outdated, and can expose customers to various problems that have already been fixed in newer versions of the software.

This measure does not affect the software functionality � after January 1st all existing PortaSwitch systems running MR19 (or an older release) will continue operating normally. The only difference is that after January 1, 2012 the PortaOne technical support team will not be able to assist with any use, configuration or troubleshooting issues.

The existing documentation will continue to be available through the dedicated archive page.

We recommend that all customers running Maintenance Release 19 perform an upgrade to MR20 (the last release using FreeBSD OS considered to be stable) and then upgrade to MR22 (the latest stable release with Oracle Enterprise Linux, central configuration server and fail-safe software update procedure).

Customers are encouraged to contact PortaOne�s support team to discuss and plan a migration schedule for updating to MR20 at their earliest possible convenience, since this process requires an extended period of time in order to be planned and executed properly, with the required amount of preparation and testing.

PortaOne Announces Availability Of Skrill�s Global Online Payment Service For PortaSwitch

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Compatibility with PortaOne’s VoIP Subscriber Management Platform Means Service Providers Gain Worldwide Fraud Protection Plus Support for 41 Currencies, 100 Payment Options

PortaOne today announced it has successfully completed interoperability testing of its flagship PortaSwitch VoIP call control and subscriber management platform with Moneybookers, one of the world’s largest online payment providers.
The availability of Moneybookers, operated by Skrill Holdings, as a subscriber payment option for PortaSwitch means VoIP service providers have a powerful new capability to both dramatically reduce the incidence of fraud-related revenue losses, and to market their services in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

“Due to the global reach of VoIP, service providers are unusually vulnerable to subscriber payments made with unauthorized or stolen credit cards,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. “Skrill’s full chargeback protection is a major step forward in this regard, bringing peace of mind to customers and providers alike. But even more, Skrill is respected around the world as a premier payment service. Wherever our VoIP telephony clients choose to do business, chances are Skrill is already there providing convenient and secure payment options.”

Currently employed by over 90,000 merchants globally and owned by London-based Skrill Holdings with offices in New York, Moneybookers offers more than 100 payment options in 41 different currencies and is available in over 200 countries and territories.

Its services are protected under UK, European Union and U.S. state laws and the company has been ranked as the Number One fastest growing private equity-backed company in the UK, based on profits.

The proven interoperability of Moneybookers with PortaSwitch brings even greater appeal to PortaOne’s innovative platform. Capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, PortaSwitch consists of a real-time billing system, class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

“Moneybookers will bring low transaction cost to PortaSwitch customers, and convenience and security to these companies’ end users,” said Ralf Wenzel, COO of Skrill Holdings. “Our eighteen million-plus account holders have discovered the appeal of making online payments without having to repeatedly enter credit card numbers, expiry dates and other unnecessary details. This kind of freedom, combined with our broad global payment support, will result in significant new business opportunities for PortaOne’s business partners.”

PortaOne Enables Global Telecom Ifoon To Succeed In Every Segment Of VoIP Via Single Softswitch Solution

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Consumer Retail, Business Telephony, ISP Hosting, Call Shop Wholesaling�Ifoon Does It All, Including Local Payment Systems/Support Around the World, with PortaOne�s PortaSwitch

PortaOne, Inc. announced today that Ifoon, a diverse European VoIP services provider, uses PortaOne�s PortaSwitch VoIP billing and subscriber management platform to deliver an impressive array of telecommunication services to VoIP telecoms, businesses, and consumer end-users around the world. Ifoon has succeeded in virtually every segment of the VoIP services industry, from Singapore to Cameroon, using only PortaSwitch as its core telecommunications and account management software.

Based in Belgium, Ifoon�s basic business case is to enable any new operator to start a VoIP service business without any capital investment in equipment and network construction. In recent years, the company has diversified its revenue stream by launching a string of retail VoIP service companies addressing specific countries and customer bases. These consumer businesses � www.applecall.net, www.diamondcall.eu, www.ola123.com, www.logiccall.net and others � are complementing Ifoon�s strong wholesale hosting capabilities and improving margins in a competitive telecom environment.

�For our operator partners, the advantage we offer is the independence to run their businesses so that they are most attractive to their customers. PortaSwitch allows us to do this,� said Satya Mekala, Chief Executive Officer of Ifoon. �Our partners can do routing and rating themselves. Moreover, they can localize their businesses per country to address the needs of local residents, making them preferable over an unknown Internet entity.�

PortaSwitch�s stability, scalability and ability to customize services to local market needs were all factors in Ifoon�s choice. �I have been in the telecom field for a long time, so I wrote a very clear description of what I wanted for Ifoon,� recalled Mekala. �PortaOne�s platform was very close to the specifications. Once I contacted and met some of PortaOne�s customers and received very good feedback, the decision became very easy.�

As PortaOne�s flagship product, PortaSwitch is a premier telecommunications services and subscriber management platform for telephony service providers. The product is capable of handling the complete call control, routing, proxying, and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and telecommunication service providers to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.

�The way we use PortaSwitch is very interesting. The automatic provisioning system is securely connected to PortaSwitch, allowing the customer to order and receive services very easily,� commented Mekala. �We developed complete, real-time VoIP billing for callshops that works in tandem with PortaSwitch. Customers from Denmark to Portugal are using it.�

As Ifoon has expended both its wholesale and retail businesses, PortaSwitch�s ability to support a broad range of services, business models, and localized payment systems has given the company unique advantages in many global markets. It also sees PortaSwitch�s reliability and support as major factors in its success.

�The important thing for me with PortaSwitch is its stability. The downtime during updates is very low, and PortaOne manages upgrades very well. We are not worried about big crashes,� Mekala stated.

�As Ifoon has learned, PortaSwitch is able to support the evolving needs of not only the service provider�s customers, but its own business interests as well,� said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. �It�s exciting to see Ifoon thrive in so many markets and with so many classes of customers through the effective use of PortaSwitch.�

PortaOne Has Released Build 1 of Maintenance Release 23

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

This is to announce to all our supported customers that we have released MR23-1 today. The build 1 of PortaSwitch newest maintenance release 23 is now ready to be installed on your systems.

We have fixed over 460 minor issues reported during the rigorous 3-month field tests on staging installations, and added 162 various improvements and features. MR23-1 is now a stable version that we recommend to install on production systems.

Please contact your technical support team to schedule the upgrade and enjoy new features of PortaSwitch MR23.

Pre-Release Announcement: PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 24 New Features

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

This is a pre-release announcement of the changes and new features anticipated with PortaSwitch maintenance Release 24. MR24 is expected to be available in June 2011. Please note that some of the newest features and changes may not be available in the build 0 at the time of the initial release.

New versions of Linux and MySQL

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 24 will utilize Oracle Enterprise Linux version 6. Oracle Enterprise Linux version 6 includes a new version of kernel and updated collection of applications:

it delivers faster performance,
provides better support for modern hardware and
offers higher reliability.

Maintenance Release 24 also introduces the latest stable version of MySQL database server (5.1), which besides important performance and stability improvements includes an important feature: table partitioning. This significantly increases the speed of the most frequent data access operations on large tables like those storing xDR information, since just a small portion of a large table needs to be accessed.

Tariff override

This feature allows you to manage a large number of similar tariffs (those containing nearly identical sets of rates, except for a few destinations) with minimum effort and a low probability of error.

Override tariff is the one derived from a �master� tariff, so it only contains the actual differences to the master tariff. This allows PortaSwitch to manage �generic� sets of rates within a single tariff, and then create override tariffs adjusting the master rates for any particular destinations based on the requirements of the specific product or customer.

Codec enforcement policies

PortaSwitch administrators will be able to define the list of acceptable / preferred codecs for each customer connected to a vendor.

When a call is processed by PortaSwitch, the policy settings prevent �undesirable� codecs from being used and then permit only the carriers with a compatible set of codecs to route the call. T.38 capabilities provide another option for this policy, making it is possible to specifically mark the carriers capable of providing T.38 � and then selling the �T.38 guaranteed� routing plan as a premium service.

Advanced routing with regard to the connection load

Multiple available routes traditionally fill up according to their precedence, i.e. if the first route has the capacity for 100 simultaneous calls � only when this route has been completely utilized (there are actually 100 established calls), calls will go via other routes.

A service provider normally wants to have a balanced distribution of calls among multiple vendors. Maxing out call capacity on a single route is considered undesirable from a business perspective.

The new feature in the load-balancing routing module does not simply allow ceasing the calls routing to a specific connection when the available capacity is exhausted. Instead, it will gradually reduce the amount of calls sent to a carrier as the load on the connection approaches its limit. This allows better utilization of multiple available connections and establishes efficient load-sharing among multiple vendors.

Time-based bandwidth management

In addition to the ability to provision the allowed bandwidth for Internet access (via WiMAX or similar hi-speed Internet access services), it is now possible to design a flexible definition and assign a specific amount of bandwidth to time intervals such as day-time or night-time hours, thereby optimizing network usage.

When a time period changes, PortaSwitch automatically provisions the new value of the bandwidth to the currently active sessions using a RADIUS CoA request. The change is automatic and undetected by the end-user.

SIP device handling policies

Sadly, many IP phones available today are not fully RFC-compliant. Communicating to such devices requires special handling on the PortaSIP side with regard to the syntax and content of SIP messages. Moreover, each equipment type from different manufacturers typically has to be handled separately.

PortaSwitch allows now to assign handling policies to individual accounts, thereby applying the required handling policy to a specific device. This way various non-RFC-compliant IP phones can simultaneously work with PortaSwitch.

Handling PortaUM options via the unified self-care interface

With maintenance release 24, all configurations of the unified messaging service (e.g. settings for voice mailbox, auto-attendant, call queues, etc.) will be accessible in the new self-care interface along with other hosted IP PBX features.

This will simplify service provisioning for PortaSwitch end-users and administrators.

Followup on This Week Online Webcasts: New PortaSwitch Features Introduced in MR22 and MR23

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne team would like to thank all those people who have attended the webcasts on new PortaSwitch features this week!

We hope you found it useful in learning more about the recently introduced features, performance improvements and usability enhancements as well as exciting features planned for the upcoming release.

We are excited about the turnout over the last two session and the many constructive feedback questions! You will find an abstract of the questions asked, and their answers attached below.

As always, please feel free to share your feedback via the known channels: either via our Customer Relationship Manager or via sales@portaone.com.

Q & A

1. Which hardware was used to handle 7500 simultaneous calls on a single PortaSIP node?

- We used Dell PowerEdge R710: 2xQuad Core Xeon E5620 2.4GHz; RAM 12G DDR3 1066MHz; Disk: RAID card H700 512MB cache, 2x146G 15k rpm SAS RAID0.

Essentially, you need to pay attention to have "server-grade" components in your production system. Entry-level servers are often sold with inferior components (RAID, NICs).

2. Is MR23 ready for production?

- Yes, MR23-1 should be released this week.

3. Does PortaPhone supports SIP over TLS?

- Please check directly with PortaOne technical support engineers - there might be a need for some additional modules.

4. When will the new Self-care Interface (IP Centrex) be available?

- It is planned for MR23-2 (June 2011), MR24-0 (May 2011).

5. Was the override tariff/Delta Tariffs a PortaOne initiative or a feature request?

- It was planned from our side for a while though as well, so we heavily subsidized this particular feature request.

6. Any change in operating system been used in the system?

- Yes, as of MR21 we switched from FreeBSD to Oracle Enterprise Linux v5; and with MR24 we are moving to Oracle Enterprise Linux v6.

Actually with the new update system we have implemented in MR21 (when a new version is installed on a separate partition), any future OS changes or upgrades are just a routine procedure and do not create any extra challenges during the upgrade.

7. Is it possible to have a web interface for sending Fax, or Email-to-Fax solution?

- It's not planned at this point, it might be better to use a 3rd party for this.

The main reason is that a lot of fax servers/drivers are Windows based and we would rather not bundle that with our platform at this point. We are interested and actively looking for potential 3rd party solutions to integrate.

8. The projection of 7500 concurrent calls in new PortaSIP: How does that change if RTP proxy is used?

- We were able to process 2,000 simultaneous calls on a single server and with the new multi-threaded architecture for RTP proxy in MR24 we expect to handle even more.

9. Are you planning to support H.323 directly?

- No, we are not planning to do that at this point. It's much more economical to use an SBC such as Cisco UBEs (previously IPIPGW) for this.

10. Is there a DB backward compatibility between releases (MR22,23,24)?

- The database is compatible going forward for at least one release (e.g. MR22 application can work with MR23 database). However since most of the changes are "non-destructive" (i.e. we would add a new column, but is some column is not used anymore, so it is not removed immediately), applications such as custom reports, which were developed for MR20, should function with MR21,22 and 23.

11. Are there any plans at all on working on an IPhone/Mobile applications?

- We are about to complete interop with MailVision (they have all the mobile clients for platforms such as iPhone, Android, Symbian, etc. and much more importantly the provisioning system that goes with it) and we will add other companies as technology partners in this area.

12. Is there a White paper or best practice document on how to handle incoming calls rating?

- We are working on this, it will hopefully be released soon.

13. Could you already share some details on the Service Provisioning Framework? What is the difference between SOAP API/Web services and this new framework?

- The framework is a complementary tool for XML API. Basically, it is a server which invokes a certain program/module each time there is an event of the specific type (e.g. change which affects service configuration of an account). After that, the program uses XML API to retrieve the required information about the modified object (e.g. blocked/active status, or configuration of a specific service).

14. With override tariff, will we be able to do a surcharge for 0800 number instead of having to have 2 different tariffs, one for Local Access and another for 0800 access?

- No, you would still require 2 tariffs for this at the moment, but the override tariff functionality is a basis for simplification in this regard too. So this can be implemented much more easier with a fairly minor customization.

15. There was a Porta Softphone in the list of clients, are these softphone terminals now available?

- Yes, PortaPhone is available. Please contact technical support for it.

16. What about Aperto Wimax solutions, can it be supported?

- Yes, certainly! The WiMAX ASNs seem to be reasonably similar to each other, but an official interop might still be required. Please contact us in sales@ about this.

17. The On-Demand recording, is this already included in MR22? Or from MR23?

- The latest update from the development team indicates that we are still doing internal testing to provide the best "user experience", since the end users prefer to just press the key combination during the conversation to activate the recording.

This unfortunately requires to proxy the media for each call via PortaSIP to extract the DTMF. So we are considering using phones with the "record" button as the better alternative. The final version of the code will most likely appear in MR24.

18. Can payback rates be distinguished from on-net calls? I.e. if a premium number is called on-net it is not charged as such.

- Yes, it is possible.

19. Will you open the IVR part to the end users? For example, give us the ability to write our own VXML apps without PortaOne's development effort?

- The source code, and everything else required is already available. However, there is no VXML interpreter available as part of PortaUM. Most of our client's subscribers would not want to venture that deeply into the technical territory.

20. How did you manage such a large increase of concurrent calls in MR22 PortaUM?

- The factors which contributed were 64bit operating system (and ability to use more RAM), internal code re-factoring and mainly large amount of tuning and optimization.

21. Is a billing module included in the RT? So I can charge customers when I answered a ticket?

- Interesting idea! It has not come up yet at this point, but should be fairly easy to implement using an "import billing events" functionality in PortaBilling.

22. Is the slow start/late offer-answer model on the roadmap?

- Not at this point, it will require quite some extensive modifications of the internal architecture of B2BUA in PortaSIP. Since as a work-around it is possible to use some basic and inexpensive SBC (such as Cisco UBE) between the IP PBX, which only supports late offer-answer, and PortaSIP - we would rather allocate this engineering resources to develop some other functionality, such as clustering with live fail-over, which would benefit all PortaOne customers.

23. Will there be some improvements to the Web-API (SOAP) so more administrative tasks could be done via SOAP rather than the admin-webinterface?

- Yes, absolutely! There were some additions to XML API in MR23 to support the new self-care interface and for sure we are always looking to expand that functionality. Please let us know which ones you are interested in sales@portaone.com or contact technical support.

24. Codec enforcement - IVR currently uses g711, if IVR answers and codec enforcement is set to g729, would this not cause issues?

- No, codec enforcement policies apply to outgoing connections only. It does not apply to internal PortaSIP/PortaUM connections.

25. Have you published an upgrade guideline for a safe and quick upgrade to MR-22 on a running production system? How much downtime do you estimate?

- Each system is different, so we suggest to discuss that with your technical support group directly. They are the experts and will be able to suggest the best approach and prepare the detailed migration plan for you.

26. Any plans for Dutch IVRs?

- Not at this point. Any IVRs that we added were done as request basis from customers.

27. Will the new web interface provide more flexibility in regard to translations (i18n)? E.g. ability to translate Destination Description or Country names?

- Not at this point.

28. What about the ability to manually terminate an active call?

- This is already available.

30. Is it possible to integrate more IP phones into PortaBilling for auto-provisioning?

- Yes, certainly. Due to the fluent nature of different models, they will be done on a per-request basis.

31. Is it possible to lock an account from his soft/hard phone?

- Yes, this can be done as custom feature development.

32. Call recording on demand. My SNOM phone has a RECORD button, which is meant to be pressed DURING the call, not before dialing. Is that possible?

- Yes, but we will have to see what SIP message gets generated by this RECORD button.

Virtual Communications, Offering Local Calls between Latin America and the U.S., Selects PortaSwitch As Core Platform

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne’s Real-Time Billing and Softswitch Technology Powers Key Functions Including Service Provisioning, Call Management, Enhanced Services, and Customer Management

PortaOne today announced that Virtual Communications LLC, a Sunrise, Florida-based VoIP telecommunications company, has placed PortaOne’s PortaSwitch VoIP billing and subscriber management platform at the center of its unique business model. Virtual Communications, which offers its U.S. customers virtual local land lines from Latin America without the need for out-of-country prefixes, uses PortaSwitch to fulfill nearly all of the company’s critical call management and business functions including advanced routing, value-added services, customer service and much more.

Virtual Communications LLC is well-known among Latino customers in the U.S. for its El Teléfono Rojo (The Red Phone) service. The service enables customers to make and receive calls in the US dialed to and from a local number in Colombia, Venezuela and other Latin American countries, using only the call recipient’s seven-digit local phone number. The capability provides not only simplicity for families and friends of all ages, but also unmatched convenience for businesses who make and receive calls frequently from Central and South America.

“PortaSwitch is a reliable, flexible, scalable and end-to-end technology platform that is at the very center of our business,” said Javier Pinzon, President of Virtual Communications LLC. “It drives our day-to-day operations on multiple levels, from technical design to customer service and even accounts payable. And because PortaSwitch is a Web-based, integrated platform, it makes people throughout our organization, from customer service to accounting, more efficient.”

PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s flagship product, is a premier telecommunications services and subscriber management platform for telephony service providers. Capable of handling the complete call control, routing, proxying, and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, PortaSwitch allows wholesale VoIP carriers and telecommunication service providers to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.

As a comprehensive product, PortaSwitch consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Virtual Communications differentiates itself by offering a complete range of calling plans and device options including VoIP, calling plans and inbound/outbound services, making PortaSwitch’s flexibility a necessity.

“Virtual Communications is a perfect example of how flexibly PortaSwitch enables new concepts and new models in the telecommunications field,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. “Where its competitors usually offer one range of options, Virtual Communications can offer a set of ranges. This not only gives Virtual’s customers the perfect fit for their needs, but also more reliability in terms of the support and billing accuracy they receive.”

Virtual Communications’ PortaSwitch services are enhanced by the support it receives through PortaOne’s Premium PortaCare 24/7 technical support and maintenance updates service. As PortaOne’s ultimate support option, Premium PortaCare includes preferred 24/7 phone center support, regular enhanced training sessions and on-site configuration assistance.

PortaOne to Showcase New PortaSwitch Features Introduced in MR22 and MR23 During Two Online Webcasts Next Week

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Next week, PortaOne team will conduct a live online webcast for all our customers and anybody interested in the new developments of our solutions for carriers and service providers. During the webcasts, we will be reviewing the most important new features recently introduced into PortaSwitch in maintenance releases 22 and 23, discuss the future plans for product enhancement as well as answer your questions.

The webcast will be co-hosted by Klaus Haertel, Technical Sales Manager and Andriy Zhylenko, CTO.

There will be two sessions:

March 22nd, 5pm Central European time (12pm EST, 9am PST)
March 23rd, 10am Central European time (5pm Singapore)

To access the webcast, any browser with the flash plugin installed is enough. You can access it using this URL:

http://interactivedemo.portaone.com/UpComingReleasesWebcast

Please choose "Enter as a Guest" and enter your name.

For the audio, please use the following conference bridge:
+1-888-296-6500 or +1-913-227-1219 / guest code: 609746

Please note that the conference bridge is muted for all attendees. You will however be able to ask questions via Chat/Q&A at the end of the webcast.

We are looking forward to your attendance next week!

Introducing PortaMDM: Utility Meter Data Management And Billing That�s Unified, Intelligent�And Profitable

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne Unveils Turnkey Software Platform For Smart Meter Networks; Solution Offers Flexible Rating Schemes, Google PowerMeter Support

PortaOne today unveiled PortaMDM, a pioneering meter data management and billing software platform for electricity, gas, water and sewer utilities. Compatible with all major brands of smart meters, PortaMDM is a unified, real-time billing and SCADA (Supervisory control And Data Acquisition) application that brings new innovation and flexibility to smart metering networks, driving increased end-user efficiency and creating powerfully enhanced profit opportunities.

PortaMDM is an all-in-one solution, tailored to the needs of medium-to-large smart metering networks and automated meter reading (AMR) setups. Also suitable for residential, commercial and industrial sub-metering systems, the platform gathers and accumulates usage data from smart meters, processes the data, and then rates it according to the service provider�s particular billing configuration. PortaMDM also supports Google PowerMeter, enabling users and providers alike to view energy consumption from any Web browser, in real time.

�PortaOne has nearly 15 years of experience delivering world-class, battle tested billing and customer management software to network service providers. All of our knowledge has been applied to PortaMDM, with the goal of making it the best and most forward-thinking product of its kind,� said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director for PortaOne. �PortaMDM not only scales to meet any size customer base, but also provides the flexible business rules and product features that drive both income and customer convenience.�

Flexible, Customizable

PortaMDM is compatible with all major meter brands including Veris, Acuvim, Dent, Contrel and Conzerv. Its versatile billing engine allows service providers to bill customers directly according to any rating scheme the provider chooses; different rates, for example, can be applied based on time of day, reactive energy, or committed volume. Customers are able to manage many aspects of their provisioning and account maintenance themselves, thanks to PortaMDM�s easy-to-use self care pages. Providers and customers alike can dynamically monitor usage in real time�and through the interface, providers can introduce relevant, customized energy conservation tips that both manage and optimize consumption throughout the service day.

On the billing side, PortaMDM includes an extremely flexible billing engine that can rate consumption data according to the configuration, rules and tariffs set by the utility or, in commercial settings, the property manager. Statements can be used for invoicing, accounting, and payments; customer notices and statements can be delivered automatically via email.

Commercial, Industrial and Wholesale Scenarios

PortaMDM creates broad opportunities for utilities, independent power producers, non-utility generators and power generation co-ops, as well as commercial and residential property owners and management, to offer new and more creative approaches to optimize consumption, revenue and profits. For example, PortaMDM can gather and manage electricity, gas, heating and water usage data in multi-tenant office buildings, shopping malls, commercial plazas, industrial buildings and workshops. Any combination of meter brands, data formats and measurement units can be collected and mediated under one unified system.

With the proliferation of renewable energy sources (wind, hydropower, biogas, biomass, solar power, etc.), Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Non-Utility Generators (NUGs) have emerged. PortaMDM allows these entities to set up Net Energy Metering (NEM) with incumbent utilities to reduce operations costs. For those companies that have guaranteed access to the grid with long-term contracts and whose power generation sales are not just by-products, PortaMDM can separate home-generated energy consumption, calculating Feed-In Tariffs (FiT) to introduce an additional source of revenue. Additional benefits are possible for small IPPs and NUGs united in utility cooperatives or power generation co-ops.

Free 90-Day Trial License

To sample the power and flexibility of PortaMDM, interested businesses are able to download a fully-functional, 90-day trial license for non-commercial use. Download and installation requires no registration.

For complete details and product description, along with PortaMDM distributor/reseller opportunities, go to www.portamdm.com.

PortaOne Exhibited at ITEXPO East 2011 in Miami Beach, FL Featuring PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 23

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne sales and engineering team has completed 3 days of intensive meetings with multiple current and potential clients from around the world: US, Latin America, and Europe.

PortaOne will next be showcasing its PortaSwitch technology for carriers and services providers at International Communication Week (ITW2011) in Washington, DC on 23 - 25 May 2011. Please visit our booth 566 in Hall C at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

Velocity VoIP, LLC Selects PortaSwitch Procinctus MR23 To Power Its Hosted Solutions For Resellers

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne�s Ultimate High Capacity Telecom Service/Subscriber Management Platform Gives Velocity�s Wholesale Customers a Full Menu of the Latest IP Telephony Services.

PortaOne today announced that Velocity VoIP, LLC., a leading U.S. provider of hosted VoIP telecom infrastructure, has selected PortaSwitch Procinctus as its core convergent VoIP billing software. PortaSwitch Procinctus, now in Maintenance Release 23 (MR23), allows Velocity to offer its Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) customers the ultimate combination of all available IP telephony services.

PortaSwitch Procinctus, PortaOne�s premier infrastructure product, allows carriers and service providers to unify voice, data, fax content, SMS and Internet traffic within a single converged network. The platform is the highest combination of all available PortaOne products and technologies, built around a converged VoIP billing software platform. Together the components achieve a maximum level of performance and reliability.

About Velocity
Velocity is a trusted partner of telecom service providers offering private label hosted VoIP reseller partnerships and VoIP carrier services.

The company licenses and operates on the PortaSwitch Procinctus, providing a complete telecom platform with expert technical staff. Velocity enables telecommunication companies to avoid large capital investments to achieve rapid growth and development on state-of-the-art technology.

Velocity is based in Boca Raton, FL and has multiple points of presence across the United States.

PortaSwitch Procinctus makes Velocity a Class 5 telecom infrastructure provider, referring to the highest possible customer capacity. Moreover, by installing PortaSwitch Procinctus MR23, Velocity and its customers benefit from additional capabilities including:

Support for T.38 faxes to a user�s Unified Messaging mailbox
A newly designed customer self-care Web interface featuring even greater simplicity and intuitive navigation
Increased SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) performance
Support for the new TLS (Transport Level Security) interface
Production of multiple xDR records for converged billing and split-session billing
The ability to deploy several Web servers and distribute the load between them

�The VoIP marketplace remains highly competitive because of ever-changing technologies, and our company adapts to market changes very quickly,� said Jason Silverman, Director of Sales at Velocity. �PortaOne�s PortaSwitch Procinctus allows Velocity to clearly provide optimum value to our wholesale customers and top quality to their end users.�

With PortaSwitch Procinctus at its core, Velocity offers its private label resellers the full suite of VoIP services. The menu includes residential and business VoIP, IP telephony solutions, IP PBX and Centrex solutions, calling card and prepaid services, IP multimedia services and other in-demand offerings. Velocity�s Private Label Hosted Reseller Program allows resellers to brand their own VoIP services without having to invest in advanced VoIP infrastructure. The leased capacity avoids the technical, logistical and regulatory headaches typically often associated with infrastructure ownership.

�The pace of change in the VoIP services marketplace continues to accelerate,� noted said Andriy Zhylenko, chief technical officer for PortaOne. �PortaSwitch Procinctus gives infrastructure providers like Velocity�as well as Velocity�s reseller base�the ability to stay one step ahead of the competition with the most flexible platform of its kind in the industry.�

For more information about PortaSwitch Procinctus, email PortaOne at contact@portaone.com or call 866 SIP VOIP (866 747 8647) or +1 604 628 2508 outside North America.

PortaOne Announces Maintenance Release 23 with the Initial Build Ready for Staging Deployments

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 23 successfully completed the internal testing process in December. The initial build (MR23-0) has been officially released, and is currently installed on the staging systems of PortaOne customers for a period of extended testing in “real-life” conditions. MR23 brings a lot of new functionality and substantial performance improvements to PortaSwitch. Here are selected new features available in MR23:

WiMAX service support

Internet connectivity via WiMAX is becoming more and more popular in all parts of the world. WiMAX allows voice and data services to be supplied directly to customers without the need for any infrastructure on the customer side (e.g. existing phone line). Service providers utilizing WiMAX can thus gain a significant amount of new customers among “mobile” users or in rural or underdeveloped regions, where other broadband Internet options are not available.

PortaOne has performed interoperability testing for PortaBilling with the Huawei ASN gateway WASN9770 and successfully deployed it in production. PortaBilling is used as a RADIUS AAA for authentication of user sessions, provisioning service flows and available bandwidth, collecting real-time usage data, and charging customers for services used. This solution enables providing both prepaid and postpaid services and a variety of service plans (unlimited or capped download quotas, time limits, hot-lining, etc.).

Improved performance of PortaSIP

A single PortaSIP instance can spawn multiple B2BUA, each of which can process requests independently of the others (this is very similar to the symmetric multi-processing technology used in PortaBilling). This allows efficient utilization of multiple CPU or cores, thus increasing by 150-200% the amount of call requests per second which a single PortaSIP instance can handle. Therefore, starting with the new release, a single PortaSIP server may handle up to 7,500 concurrent calls. For customers, who used to run multiple PortaSIP instances for load-sharing this will allow to reduce the number of used instances (and IP addresses) and consolidate the service infrastructure.

Scalability and performance improvements

Service providers who anticipate a large number of users accessing their web interface may benefit from the ability to deploy several web servers and distribute the load between them. It is also possible to divide the online web load (generated by users accessing online web pages) and calculations (such as producing invoices or configuration profiles for IP phones) between several available web servers.

T.38 incoming fax support in PortaUM

In addition to the support for T.38 faxes already available in PortaSIP (in case a call is originated or received by a fax machine connected to a SIP adapter), it is now possible to receive an incoming fax to a user’s PortaUM mailbox via the T.38 protocol. This enhances the overall quality of the service provided to customers, since the T.38 protocol is more resilient to network problems than the default G.711 pass-through protocol, and also allows the number of interconnect carriers to be extended.

No changes are required on the user side, as PortaUM will automatically use the T.38 protocol if it is supported by the remote party.

Converged billing: split-session billing

PortaBilling offers an extremely flexible system of dynamically adjusted rates, so that rates can be based on time of day, amount of service used, or other parameters. It may happen that a session (e.g. voice call or broadband Internet connection) spans several rating periods. Until now, such a session would generate a single xDR record (reflecting the fact that the customer actually used the service just once), and the total charged amount would be calculated based on the rates/discounts applicable for each individual portion of the session and the duration of each portion.

Starting with MR23, such a PortaBilling session produces multiple xDR records, each linked to the applicable discount level/rate. This makes it very easy for both administrators and end-users to check the accuracy of all transactions billed.

Redesigned Self-care Web Interface

Maintenance Release 23 will include a prototype of the new interface for end-users to access their profile data, check billing information, download invoices and, most importantly, manage their IP Centrex settings. The main focus of this new interface redesign is simplicity and intuitive navigation for the end-user. This includes an easy-to-use structure of menus and controls, graphical icons and improved presentation of information, and a different approach for managing several important components (e.g. hunt-groups).

We expect the new interface to allow service providers to significantly reduce their helpdesk workload, since customers will be able to perform virtually all configuration tasks for their hosted IP Centrex environment themselves.

The new interface is only in the prototype phase, and does not contain the complete set of functionality. We are currently seeking suggestions, comments and any other type of feedback from PortaSwitch users regarding the new interface. This will enable us to produce the best possible final version of it.

The old interface is still being provided for full backward compatibility. You may choose to activate access to the new interface for specific customers or accounts.

Service provisioning framework

To simplify integration with external systems (e.g. IPTV platform or website hosting server) which receive their service configuration from PortaBilling, a dedicated interface is created so that all provisioning tasks can be controlled from a single location and managed in the same fashion. Every modification of an object such as an account or customer in PortaBilling is recorded as an event. An updated service configuration for that account is then pushed out to one or several provisioning plug-ins. Each of these plug-ins provides an interface for supplying data to a specific external system. This could be a text configuration file for a legacy application, or an XML API provisioning interface for a state-of-the-art service platform.

The extensible framework (available in MR23-1) allows service provisioning for new platforms to be added quickly and with minimal effort.

TLS support

In many countries VoIP is still prohibited and standard SIP communications blocked by ISPs, so the only way to use this service is via an encrypted tunnel, connecting a user’s local PC with a remote SIP server. PortaSIP now supports the TLS (Transport Level Security) interface, whereby a remote SIP phone can securely connect to the PortaSIP server directly, and no tunnel software or equipment on the service provider side is required.

TLS technology may also benefit users in countries where VoIP is allowed, since they can use it to enforce privacy when using the service on public networks.

Support for New Languages

As of Maintenance Release 23, PortaUM includes support for IVRs in Swedish, and support for Arabic is currently in development and is expected in the next build (MR23-1).

Invoice payment minimum

A new feature in the invoicing module allows the collection process for invoices whose total is below a certain threshold to be deferred. For instance, instead of diligently demanding payment for $0.37 and even blocking the account if no payment is made, the system will simply transfer this balance to the next invoice, then to the next one, and so on, until the amount due on a new invoice is greater than the specified threshold (e.g. $5), and the whole amount becomes due at that time.

MySQL and Linux updates

Unfortunately, RedHat version 6 was released only once PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 23 was already out of the development zone and in the process of release testing, so an upgrade of the Linux version is postponed until Maintenance Release 24.

This also postpones migration to MySQL 5.1, since many third-party Linux packages are dependent on MySQL – and MySQL 5.1 has only became a “default” standard in RedHat version 6.

PortaOne is Planning to Participate in Gitex 2010 after Exhibiting at ITEXPO West in LA

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Last week PortaOne participated again in the ITEXPO West in Los Angeles, CA. This time it was the largest ITEXPO ever.

October this year is very busy with the trade shows for PortaOne. In a week time we are heading to Dubai, UAE to join the crowd at Gitex, the largest telecommunication exhibition in the Middle East. Please meet PortaOne team on October 17-21 in in the International Convention & Exhibition Centre in Dubai. We will be with Canadian Pavilion in Hall 2, Booth D2-48.

Pre-Release Announcement: PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 23 New Features

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

This is a pre-release announcement of the changes and new features anticipated with PortaSwitch maintenance Release 23. MR23 is expected to be available in December 2010. Please note that some of the newest features and changes may not be available at the time of the initial release.

Converged billing: split session billing

PortaBilling offers an extremely flexible system of dynamically adjusted rates, so that rates can be based on time of day, amount of service used, or other parameters. It may happen that a session (e.g. voice call or broadband Internet connection) spans several rating periods. Until now, such a session would generate a single xDR record (reflecting the fact that the customer actually used the service just once), and the total charged amount would be calculated based on the rates/discounts applicable for each individual portion of the session and the duration of each portion.

Starting with PortaBilling MR23, such a session will produce multiple xDR records, each linked to the applicable discount level/rate. This makes it very easy to check the accuracy of all transactions billed for both administrators and end-users.

Scalability and performance improvements

Subject to the timely release of RedHat 6, PortaBilling Maintenance Release 23 will utilize the latest version of MySQL (5.1), including table partitioning on large tables like those storing xDR information. This significantly increases the speed of the most frequent data access operations, such as “show the customer’s xDRs for the past day”, since just a small portion of a large table needs to be accessed.

Service providers who anticipate a large number of users accessing their web interface may benefit from the ability to deploy several web servers and distribute the load between them. It is also possible to divide the online web load (generated by users accessing online web pages) and calculations (such as producing invoices or configuration profiles for IP phones) between several available web servers.

Redesigned Self-care Web Interface

The old interface is still being provided for full backward compatibility. You may choose to activate access to the new interface for specific customers or accounts.

Service provisioning framework

To simplify integration with external systems (e.g. IPTV platform or website hosting server) which receive their service configuration from PortaBilling, a dedicated interface is created so that all provisioning tasks can be controlled from a single location and managed in the same fashion. Every modification of an object such as an account or customer in PortaBilling is recorded as an event. An updated service configuration for that account is then pushed out to one or several provisioning plug-ins. Each of these plug-ins provides an interface for supplying data to a specific external system. This could be a text configuration file for a legacy application, or an XML API provisioning interface for a state-of-the-art service platform.

The extensible framework allows service provisioning for new platforms to be added quickly and with minimal effort.

WiMAX service support

PortaOne has performed interoperability testing with Huawei ASN gateway WASN9770, so that PortaBilling can be used as a RADIUS AAA for authentication of user sessions, provisioning service flows, collecting real-time usage data, and charging customers for services used.

Invoice payment minimum

A new feature in the invoicing module allows the collection process for invoices whose total is below a certain threshold to be deferred. For instance, instead of diligently demanding payment for $0.37 and even blocking the account if no payment is made, the system will simply transfer this balance to the next invoice, then to the next one, and so on, until the amount due on a new invoice is greater than the specified threshold (e.g. $5), and the whole amount becomes due at that time.

Redesigned PortaSIP architecture for improved performance

A single PortaSIP instance can spawn multiple B2BUA, each of which can process requests independently of the others (this is very similar to the symmetric multi-processing technology used in PortaBilling Advanced). This allows efficient utilization of multiple CPU or cores, thus increasing by 150-200% the amount of call requests per second which a single PortaSIP server can handle. Therefore, starting with the new release, a single PortaSIP server can handle up to 6,000 concurrent calls.

TLS support

In many countries VoIP is still prohibited and standard SIP communications blocked by ISPs, so the only way to use this service is via an encrypted tunnel, connecting a user’s local PC with a remote SIP server. PortaSIP now supports the TLS (Transport Level Security) interface, whereby a remote SIP phone can securely connect to the PortaSIP server directly, so there is no need for tunnel software or equipment on the service provider side.

TLS technology may also benefit users in countries where VoIP is allowed, since they can use it to enforce privacy when using the service on public networks.

T.38 incoming fax support in PortaUM

No changes are required on the user side, as PortaUM will automatically use the T.38 protocol if it is supported by the remote party.

Using PortaSwitch in a Virtualized Environment: Pros & Cons Overview and Recommendations

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Virtualization and cloud computing have become extremely popular these days as tools for reducing infrastructure costs and simplifying application management. Let’s discuss how virtualization applies to PortaSwitch and what the actual benefits of using virtualization are in this case. First, let�s take a look at the most commonly named reasons for migrating to a virtualized environment and see what the implications are in the case of PortaSwitch.

Server Consolidation

One of the major benefits offered by virtual environments is the option for pooling common infrastructure resources and breaking the “one application to one server” model with server consolidation.

Well, you can do exactly this with PortaSwitch, even without virtualization: the configuration framework allows you to assign roles (e.g. RADIUS, PortaSIP, web server,�etc.) to each physical server and you can run multiple instances of different types on the same server. So yes, it is possible to run, for example, PortaSIP and PortaBilling RADIUS on the same server. The next question is, �Should you do it?�

VM Environments for Low Load Applications. Virtualization provides tremendous results in the case of combining several different applications with relatively low loads. For example, if a company is running a payroll application, a website for communicating with distributors and an Intranet website for document exchange at the same time, each on separate servers – they can all be migrated to a single server and run in separate virtual environments. There will be sufficient resources available since most of the time these applications are used (and thus generate loads on the server) at different times. And even if someone tries to upload new data to the website while the accountant is running reports � a delay in processing will not be critical. So in this case, the performance of each individual application inside of the virtual machine comes close to equalling the performance of that application on a dedicated server.

Professional Telco Apps Require Full Server Capacity. It is natural for telecommunications services that most of the PortaSwitch applications generate constant processing load, and normally for every transaction (e.g. a phone call) to be processed on several servers simultaneously (an incoming call request is processed on PortaSIP, the request is then sent to the PortaBilling RADIUS server, which in turn generates database activity, etc.). Each physical server has a limited amount of processing power (determined by the amount of CPU and CPU cores, memory amount, frequency of CPU and data bus, etc.), so it only has the capability to perform a certain number of operations per second. Obviously, if we place two or more resource-intensive applications inside of virtual machines on the same physical server, the total processing power will be divided among the virtual machines and each of them will receive just a fraction of it. So with PortaSIP and PortaBilling, when working on separate servers if your network was processing 25 calls per second � then running them on the same server will result in a decreased total performance of 12 calls per second. In this case, saving money on an extra server would come at the cost of reduced performance.

Delays Are Critical for Telco Apps. Also, in our first example about the payroll, website and document exchange applications the delay in processing caused by the simultaneous activity of several applications was negligible. If it takes the accountant a few seconds more to produce his report, or a distributor opens a web page half a second later � nobody is going to notice. In the case of real-time communication delays, a mere fraction of a second will affect the sound quality dramatically.

No Need

Considering virtualization for PortaSwitch one must contemplate the following:

Server consolidation (ability to run several services on the same physical server) is already available via the configuration framework, so virtualization is not required.

Since most of the services in PortaSwitch are highly resource-intensive and sensitive to processing delays, combining them on a single server would dramatically reduce their performance. Thus, for a service provider with a more or less sizeable network (so the performance is kept to an adequate level) there will be no reduction in the total amount of servers.

So although it is possible � the server consolidation is rarely used on production PortaSwitch systems.

Operational Flexibility

Other benefits of virtualization are dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning, and improved desktop and application deployment. VM is also a better management tool that allows you to improve your server to admin ratio so that personnel requirements are reduced as well.

Automatic Installation and Configuration Process. All of the above are true for a company managing multiple �old-style� applications, where installations of the operating system,the applications and their required libraries, configuration, etc. are separate tasks performed manually. Contemporary PortaSwitch architecture represents something quite different from this archaic approach. The servers are installed from a jump-start installation DVD in less than 10 minutes and the system is fully operational after that. The PortaSwitch configuration server automatically applies all further changes to the application configuration, including the relocation of services from one physical server to another, plus software updates, etc. via its web interface.

Minimal Benefits

PortaSwitch provides a unified framework for the provisioning of servers and maintenance of application configurations, so the benefits of using a virtual environment on top of that are minimal.

Increased Availability

Virtual environments allow you to relocate a virtual machine from one physical server to another, and this is undeniably extremely useful for running applications that were not designed according to high-availability principles.

Clustering for High Availability. In the case of PortaSwitch, clustering and high-availability are already built-in, plus by clustering PortaBilling, PortaSIP or PortaUM, you don�t just enable disaster recovery, but also load-sharing. By using the PortaSwitch configuration framework one can easily relocate the services to another physical server should a server fail.

Already There

With PortaSwitch, which already has clustering and service relocation capabilities, a virtual environment provides an insignificant increase in terms of availability.

Summary

So while it is of course possible to run PortaSwitch in an environment such as VMware vSphere, one must realize that it will not provide any major reduction in terms of hardware costs or significant improvements in terms of server management compared to the options already available in PortaSwitch.

PortaOne Announces PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 22, Unveils �Long-Life� Designation For Qualifying Releases

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

MR22 Brings Visible Call Forwarding, Registration Authentication Caching, MP3 Voicemail And More to VoIPCall Control/Billing Platform; Now Available for Staging System Deployment

PortaOne today announced PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 22 (MR22), a major new release of the company’s flagship VoIP call control and subscriber management platform. Featuring a number of important upgrades that add value and performance for customers and service providers alike, MR22 is now available to current PortaSwitch owners for field testing, with no additional license fee required.

Concurrent with today�s announcement, PortaOne is also unveiling a new “long-life” designation for sanctioned prior releases of PortaSwitch. �Long-Life� denotes the most stable version of PortaSwitch that will be supported with bug fixes, minor improvements and other software support for an extended period of time, enabling customers to better plan the evolution of their PortaSwitch systems.

�Long-life� status will be assigned to certain maintenance releases only after extensive field test in real commercial operations. A new maintenance release, such as MR22, may gain �long-life� status after going through several consecutive builds and providing its long-term stability. Effective immediately, the �long-life� designation is applied to Maintenance Release 20, the last version of PortaSwitch to run on the FreeBSD operating system.

PortaSwitch MR22 brings a number of new performance features to PortaOne�s innovative platform that is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company. The 64-bit Oracle Enterprise Linux product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

New to PortaSwitch via Maintenance Release 22 are the following:

Users can now see where a forwarded call comes from

Going far beyond the typical Caller ID readout, Visible Call Forwarding allows hosted IP PBX users to see the source of forwarded calls. Operators and receptionists who receive calls for multiple companies, for example, are now able to greet callers with the correct information based on the intended corporate destination of the call; employees who are substituting for colleagues can answer a call from a sales queue differently from calls forwarded from a technical support queue.

PortaSwitch capacity to process registration attempts doubles

A new capability in the SIP proxy for PortaSIP, PortaSwitch�s Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) softswitch, enables caching of successful registration information. Under normal circumstances, when an IP phone goes online it provides PortaSwitch with information about its current location on the Internet; the new capability doubles PortaSwitch�s ability to process registration attempts on a per-second basis, thus better protecting the system from a �registration storm� that is either unintended or part of a denial-of-service attack. Please read more on caching authentication during IP phone registration in the dedicated article.

iPhone users can playback their voicemails

A convenient new feature for businesspeople, MP3 voicemail is an addition to traditional WAV recording that allows voicemails attached to outgoing email to be played on new MP3-compliant platforms such as iPhones. A license for three �ports� will be provided by PortaOne free of charge to all customers upgrading to MR22, enabling up to three voicemails to be converted to the MP3 format simultaneously (licenses for additional ports can be obtained by contacting the PortaOne sales team).

PIN-less customers will enjoy higher level of security

A new layer of protection for residential VoIP users, password protection ensures that popular PIN-less dialing services based on outgoing ANI or CLI are not spoofed. Part of the PortaUM prepaid calling component of PortaSwitch, the new feature prompts customers for their password before allowing access to such services. The improvement allows service providers to gain a competitive advantage when rolling out dialing services and to offer these services to a larger customer group.

User reports improve

This new feature enables users to quickly see desired subtotals in the system�s custom reports. It is very useful for situations including cost/revenue summaries where providers wish to see breakouts for each customer.

Service providers can share revenue with their customers

Payback rates enable service providers to attract customers by allowing them to receive credits for incoming calls from other PSTN networks. In the payback scenario, service providers receive revenue from other telcos for terminating a call to the provider�s network, thus allowing them to share revenue with the end-user.

Clients can call through PortaSwitch directly from their mobile phones

Thanks to a new partnership with WLCom, PortaSwitch now interoperates with the WLCom Mobile Communication Client, enabling calls to be made from the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms. The addition lets end users employ a single phone and unified list of contacts while still saving on long distance and international calls.

The detailed description of all new features incorporated in PortaSwitch MR22 can be reviewed in the PortaSwitch New Features Guide.

�PortaOne�s service goal has always been to keep our customers at the very forefront of the fast-changing VoIP industry. We believe the debut of MR22, as well as our new ‘long-term� designation, will provide a comprehensive and powerful development path for any PortaSwitch user,� said Andriy Zhylenko, chief technical officer for PortaOne.

All current PortaSwitch owners whose staging platforms are covered by PortaOne�s PortaCare technical support program are eligible to obtain MR22 for testing purposes. Minimum hardware requirements, listed at http://portaone.com/hw , are the same as for full commercial installations.

Users who already have a staging license can simply contact their PortaOne support team; to order a new staging license, interested users should write to sales@portaone.com.

Caching Authentication during IP Phone Registration Introduced with MR22 Results in 100% PortaSwitch Performance Increase

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

A new feature for caching authentication results allows service providers to double PortaSwitch's capacity in terms of registration attempts processed per second, and to protect the system from a “registration storm” (whether unintended or part of a denial-of-service attack).

Under normal circumstances, when an IP phone goes online it provides PortaSwitch with information about its current location on the Internet (in SIP terms, this is called registration). It then periodically repeats this so as to keep the contact information updated (this is called re-registration, although technically the information exchanged between the IP phone and PortaSwitch is not any different from that exchanged during initial registration). Subsequent registrations occur at the interval programmed into the IP phone, which is usually somewhere between 10 minutes and one hour.

Since the IP phone is the initiator of the registration, there is really nothing PortaSwitch can do to control the process and make re-registrations more or less frequent. (It can, however, advise the IP phone of a time to re-register again, but nothing prevents the IP phone from ignoring this and sending another registration request sooner).

Example

Let’s assume, 30,000 properly configured IP phones (which re-register every 30 minutes) would generate about 17 requests per second for processing by both PortaSIP (parsing SIP messages and generating responses) and PortaBilling (performing account authentication).

Yet just 500 IP phones registering too often (e.g. once every 30 seconds) due to a mis-configuration or a firmware bug would result in the same load on the system – and what happens when the number of such �impatient� phones starts growing is easy to imagine.

When dealing with a network which contains a large number of IP phones whose re-registration interval is not automatically provisioned from PortaSwitch along with other configuration settings, the average rate of registration is a significant concern.

In order to prevent a situation where a few �rogue� IP phones create a significant load on PortaSwitch, the SIP proxy in PortaSIP performs caching of successful registration information.

During the initial registration, the credentials provided by an IP phone are validated in PortaBilling as usual, and this information is stored in the database following successful registration. Later, when a new registration request arrives from an IP phone, PortaSIP first checks its location database to see whether there is already a registration for that phone number, with the matching contact data (IP address and port on which it is accessible).

If a previous registration exists and occurred recently, then PortaSIP simply replies back to the IP phone confirming successful registration. This saves resources on the PortaSIP side (since this process is much shorter than the normal dialog for handling a SIP REGISTER request) and creates zero load on the billing engine (since no authentication request is sent).

This process is repeated upon subsequent re-registrations, until eventually the registration information becomes �too old� or the IP address and/or port provided in the request do not match the ones stored in the database (i.e. the IP phone is attempting to register from a new location). At that time the normal registration process will take place: the IP phone receives a challenge request, it sends back a reply calculated using its username and password, and an authentication request is then sent to the billing engine for verification.

In spite of how this may sound, simply confirming registration without verification by billing carries absolutely no security risks in this scenario. If an �evil hacker� sends a REGISTER request spoofing the real customer�s IP address and port, he will only accomplish a reconfirmation of the original customer�s location. If he uses a different IP address or port in an attempt to intercept the customer�s incoming call, the cached information will not be used, and thus he would have to provide valid password information.

The �caching interval� is set to one half of the �recommended registration� interval, so this does not really create more �stale� sessions (where a phone is considered to be online when it has actually already disconnected from the Internet) than the normal scenario. The performance increase is tremendous: on a system with a 5-minute caching time, the amount of registrations per second that a single PortaSIP instance can handle increases 100% (from 400 per second to 800).

The detailed description of this and other features incorporated in PortaSwitch MR22 can be reviewed in the PortaSwitch New Features Guide.

For more information about PortaSwitch and its features please contact your support team or application engineers.

Codatel Networks Uses PortaSwitch To Introduce Regionally-Hosted Wholesale Call Termination Services To Asia-Pac Carriers

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:01:00 -0700

Partitioned Hosting On Australia-Based Equipment Lowers Acquisition Cost, Minimizes Call Latency; Codatel Networks’ Industry-Leading PortaSwitch Platform Delivers Optimal Performance.

Codatel Networks, an Australian IP telephony and converged communications systems provider, today announced the immediate availability of regionally-hosted wholesale and retail billing partitioning services to VoIP carriers and service providers. The capability, driven by the advanced and proven PortaSwitch VoIP call control/billing platform and hosted on Australian infrastructure, assures carriers in the Asia-Pacific region access to one of the best telecom systems on the market with no upfront capital investment.

Codatel develops, markets and supports innovative IP telephony and multi-platform converged communications systems to the full range of carriers, from Tier One to small and midsized companies. The privately-owned company, which also serves a range of retail customers, is well situated for helping IP-focused telecoms compete effectively in the Asia-Pacific region at minimal cost.

About Codatel Networks

Codatel Networks develops, markets, and supports innovative IP telephony and multi-platform converged communications systems, using the latest technologies to provide practical, user-friendly solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, home-office entrepreneurs, professionals, middle managers and executives.

The company is a privately-owned corporation and is rapidly expanding into the Asian Pacific region to better cover new emerging markets. The company's head office is located in Melbourne, Australia.

Today, Codatel Networks is established in market niches that hold a great potential to enhance how business communication is conducted.

Codatel Networks is continually working to improve existing products and services and to introduce new ones to satisfy existing, as well as new, customer needs.

“For virtually all new or existing telecoms in this part of the world, tapping into next-generation IP infrastructure meant going to wholesale providers in Europe or North America. Such distant solutions often introduce voice latency into customer calls—not a preferable situation by any means,” said Zafer Khodr, General Manager of Codatel Networks. �Our PortaSwitch system, positioned much closer to our carriers� intended client base, minimizes or eliminates this problem altogether.�

The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Codatel Network�s implementation of PortaSwitch is further enhanced with the inclusion of PortaOne�s PortaBilling100 Advanced application. PortaBilling100 Advanced features simultaneous multiprocessing and a dedicated database architecture to improve performance within the core billing server.

�Choosing PortaSwitch for this service offering was not a hard decision. It will clearly provide optimum value to our wholesale customers, and top quality to their end users,� Zafer continued. �PortaSwitch has the reliability and robustness of very high-end systems that can cost millions to deploy�yet it is very competitively priced. For a telco to be competitive today, it must be able to adapt to market changes very quickly. PortaSwitch will allow us, and our customers, to deliver any kind of new service�simple or complex�with very little fuss or ongoing maintenance.�

PortaOne�s Softswitch and VoIP Billing Platform Enables Consistent Monthly Growth For Pure IP In 17 Countries

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

London-Based Telecommunications Company Relies On PortaOne’s Flagship Product To Deliver Suite of Hosted IPPBX Services Across South Africa, Middle East, Australia and Europe.

When Iceland�s Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in Spring 2010, grounded planes were only the beginning of the headaches. Many business functions were brought to a complete halt, including product deliveries and professional conferences. Key employees, stranded far from home, were forced into disaster recovery mode to maintain critical services.

With such scenarios straining vital communications links throughout Europe, one company—Pure IP�kept its customers in business. And at its core was PortaOne�s PortaSwitch VoIP services platform.

“Both our resellers and corporate customers benefitted from PortaSwitch�s ability to run diverse services during disaster recovery situations like the volcanic eruption and the snowstorms earlier this year,” said Gary Forrest, Pure IP managing director. �PortaSwitch allows us to build our network on the premise of redundancy at multiple points.�

Pure IP, headquartered in London, is part of a new breed of VoIP telecommunications providers that outperform global giants by nimbly servicing wholesale and retail business customers wherever they may be, using next generation solutions. Using telehouse network facilities in London, Johannesburg and Auckland, Pure IP provides 24/7 service and support to customers in 17 countries via a system that extends from New York City to Sydney, Australia.

�We operate a state-of-the-art network powered by Cisco and Quintum to ensure maximum redundancy and quality of service provisioning,� stated Forrest. �But our billing, customer management and softswitching functions rest exclusively with PortaSwitch.�

PortaSwitch is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and ITSPs to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

�PortaSwitch allows us to give our customers a full suite of hosted VoIP services including SIP trunking, international numbering, conference bridges and MPLS connectivity,� Forrest explained. �We�ve been very impressed with the flexibility PortaSwitch provides, as well as its scalability�particularly in respect of new services such as callback, conferencing and the like.�

Pure IP had looked at Digitalk and other billing and call management platforms before selecting PortaSwitch. As Forrest noted, however, PortaSwitch offered a totally different level of flexibility. �We were also pleased with the sales process, which was managed in an honest, direct and attentive way,� he stated, adding that PortaOne�s Premium PortaCare has been an excellent technical support and maintenance service. �The quality of technical support is very good, particularly when looking at more complex issues or new services,� he commented.

Since adopting PortaOne�s VoIP product nearly two years ago, Pure IP has seen its business volume grow each month. Forrest attributes a large share of his company�s success to the stability and strong feature set PortaSwitch provides.

�At Pure IP, we take pride in differentiating our services through speed of implementation, stability and excellent aftercare support,� he said. �PortaSwitch is a feature-rich solution that services customers well�in Gibraltar, New Zealand, Iraq, South Africa, or anywhere else we choose to compete.�

PortaOne is Heading to Participate in CommunicAsia After Exhibiting at ITW 2010 in Washington, DC

Thu, 27 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Yesterday was the last of three busy days at Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC where PortaOne exhibited participating in the International Telecommunication Week 2010.

Please meet PortaOne team in three weeks at CommunicAsia 2010 in Singapore. For four days, on June 15-18, we will be at our booth 3H1-10 located at Hall 3 of Singapore Expo within the Canadian Pavilion.

PortaOne Announces Interoperability of PortaSwitch with TelcoBridges Tmedia� Gateways

Wed, 26 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Combination of PortaOne’s VoIP Call Control/Billing Platform and TelcoBridges’ VoIP Gateway Line Gives Service Providers Exceptional Performance Plus Room for Growth

PortaOne today announced a new partnership with TelcoBridges™, maker of Tmedia™ VoIP gateways, following successful interoperability testing between Tmedia products and PortaOne’s PortaSwitch VoIP call control and billing management software platform. The announcement, made at International Telecommunications Week 2010, assures telecom service providers not only of seamless operation between the products, but also a combination of reliability, scalability and system flexibility suitable for today’s most demanding network and market requirements.

A recognized leader in the design and manufacture of telecommunications hardware, TelcoBridges has developed Tmedia, the industry’s highest density VoIP gateways that deliver exceptional performance, energy efficiency and interoperability. Based on a unified technical architecture, each Tmedia VoIP/media gateway integrates T1/E1/J1, DS-3 and OC3/STM-1 connectivity and multiple concurrent signaling protocols such as SS7, ISDN, SIP, SIGTRAN, and H.248 in the same unique device. Carriers and service providers in over 50 countries use TelcoBridges’ VoIP gateways to drive network convergence, consolidate multiple disparate devices, and more cost-effectively expand their network footprints.

“TelcoBridges Tmedia VoIP/media gateways are renowned for their density, their support for multiple signaling and transcoding protocols in the same device, and their extremely low power requirements.The proven interoperability of Tmedia gateways with PortaSwitch provides an unsurpassed environment for service providers.”

Roman Khalenkov
PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director

By integrating with PortaSwitch, Tmedia gateways ensure the highest levels of performance are maintained. PortaSwitch, a Class 5-level product, is able to handle the full range of call control and billing functions of a diversified digital services company, from billing and provisioning to advanced call features, monitoring and reporting. The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Tmedia gateways offer a high system density for systems with limited rack availability. In a single 1U or 2U gateway, Tmedia supports up to 2048 voice channels; it also reduces SS7 costs by having multiple point codes in a single box, or multiple boxes with a single SS7 point code. The product’s non-blocking capabilities ensure that multiple signal protocols, as well as multiple codecs, can be run at the same time.

To both lower operating costs and provide a greener infrastructure, Tmedia gateways run on up to 2/3 less power than other gateway devices of similar capacity. Power, cooling and data center co-location costs are all reduced, thanks to the green design.

PortaOne at ITW 2010

PortaOne is showcasing its PortaSwitch platform during International Telecommunications Week 2010, May 24-26, from its exhibit at Booth 812 in the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

About TelcoBridges

TelcoBridges is clearly defining the future of telecommunications technologies. With the industry’s premier unified hardware platform for network convergence, value-added services, and performance management, TelcoBridges is enabling service providers to meet and exceed their service goals while ensuring exceptional operating cost-efficiency. TelcoBridges’ channel partners, including value-added resellers, system integrators and solution developers, have delivered and deployed carrier-grade solutions in over 50 countries around the world. These include VoIP gateways, mobile value-added services, unified communications, network monitoring, lawful intercept, location-based services, and many others. TelcoBridges is a recognized leader within the telecom industry, ranked as #175 within the 2009 Deloitte North American Fast 500, thanks to its revenue growth, which exceeded 777% during the period spanning 2004-2008. For additional information, please visit http://www.telcobridges.com.

Maintenance Release 21 Introduces New Clustered Architecture to PortaSwitch Procinctus

Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

MR21 Provides New Capacity and Redundancy to PortaSwitch Procinctus, PortaOne’s Ultimate Telecom Services and Subscriber Management Product.

PortaSwitch Procinctus, PortaOne’s ultimate high capacity telecommunications services and subscriber management software platform, has gained a completely redesigned and fully clustered architecture. The new architecture, made possible by PortaOne’s Maintenance Release 21 (MR21), places the business critical elements of the system in a cluster that runs in parallel on multiple servers.

PortaSwitch Procinctus, PortaOne’s premier infrastructure product, enables carriers and service providers to unify voice, data, fax, content, SMS, and Internet traffic within a single converged network. The platform is the highest combination of all available PortaOne products and technologies, built around a comprehensive, converged VoIP billing software platform. Together, these components achieve a maximum level of performance and reliability.

Previously, PortaSwitch Procinctus distributed the various billing engine functions (e.g., authorization, registration, and routing control) among multiple dedicated servers in order to leverage the power of several machines and boost overall performance. The new clustering architecture delivers exceptional redundancy of these essential functions; in addition, transparent load-sharing increases the capacity level of the whole system.

In addition to PortaSIP (Class 4 and 5 softswitch) and PortaUM (unified messaging and IVR platform) that already run in cluster on multiple servers in parallel as a part of PortaSwitch Procinctus, MR21 introduces the RADIUS billing cluster, an exact replica of the architecture implemented in PortaOne’s high-end PortaBilling Oracularius product.

“With VoIP adoption growing exponentially in worldwide, the need for world-class durability, scalability and failover protection has become a prime requirement. The introduction of MR21, and a new clustering architecture, to PortaSwitch Procinctus accomplishes this,” said Andriy Zhylenko, chief technical officer for PortaOne.

Previously, the distributed architecture of PortaBilling100 Advanced included seven servers, with specific functions attributed to each: master and standby master servers; registration and authorization servers; Web server; and two dedicated database servers. The redesigned clustered architecture of PortaBilling100 Advanced in the new PortaSwitch Procinctus consists of three closely integrated segments:

Three servers in the RADIUS billing cluster that ensures no service outage in case one of the servers fails
Three database servers: a master DB, a standby DB for operational redundancy, and the replica DB for data redundancy and data processing for statistics and reporting
A Web server to provide the service provisioning interface for administration as well as customer self-care pages

As in the older version, PortaSwitch Procinctus also includes two PortaSIP servers and two PortaUM servers with a PortaBridge. PortaSIP and PortaUM servers can run in a cluster, creating an unbreakable redundancy setup or be used for load balancing.

The configuration server, a new MR21 addition to all PortaSwitch installations, is a single point for managing and upgrading the whole PortaSwitch Procinctus set up. It is also used as a logging storage to remove the analytical task loads from the servers directly involved in the operational processes.

PortaOne offers the upgrade to MR21 to its customers as a part of PortaCare at no additional cost. For more information about new redesigned architecture of PortaSwitch Procinctus please contact PortaOne team.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 21 Uses an Innovative New Version Updating Process with the Introduction of Configuration Server

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

With MR21, PortaSwitch utilizes an innovative system of maintaining and modifying the software code on each server, allowing service providers to properly address all potential upgrade issues, and enables to:

Migrate quickly to a new maintenance release, without any problems on the way and obtain the system that operates 100% according to how it is intended to operate.
Safely rollback to exactly the same version of the software used prior to the update, in case there are any issues with the functionality of the new release.

PortaSwitch deploys a dual software version management system that eliminates both the risk of incompatibility between the updated components and dangerous situations when the update fails and the system ends up without any operable software becoming totally unusable.

At any given moment one of 3 partitions is considered active: upon the start-up, the server uses this specific partition to boot up while the application code, located within it, is used to operate the service.
When the system is being prepared for an update to a new release, another partition is cleared and the new version of the code is installed there. This is done while the system is still operating under the current version of the software, without any service interruption.
As a result, the server has all required data to operate with the new release – moreover, since the new release is installed as a set of binary packages, it ensures that this is exactly the same code (the same version of operating system, the same version of kernel and the same bytes in every single utility or file!) that was used in PortaOne’s labs during the testing period, that was deployed on staging systems during the field testing, and that is currently being used by other PortaOne customers worldwide.

The disk subsystem on each PortaSwitch server contains 3 separate partitions:

One partition stores the actual application data.
Two other partitions are equal in size and can contain the full set of the software “code” required to operate the server: operating system, third-party libraries and modules and the actual code for a specific application.

The configuration agent updates the “local” files based on the system’s configuration stored in the configuration server. At the specific time the new partition is automatically marked as “active” the server is restarted using the new version of the code. The potential downtime is minimal, just to complete the restart. Nothing is changed in the “old” partition. So if a rollback is required, it only requires a reboot from that partition and the server is back to the old, “stable” release.

After some time when an update to an even newer release is desired, this partition is wiped clean and the new version of the code is loaded into the recently emptied location. Then the process described above repeats. The same process is used to update to a new maintenance release or to a newer software build within the current release.

PortaSwitch relies on a large set of previously accumulated data to make decisions about how the service should be provided. All the data accumulated by the old software release are available to the new one after the upgrade to ensure the system’s proper operation. This involves changing the data files, database structures and data to accommodate the new release. Therefore, the update process includes 2 extra steps:

Non-blocking data modifications are done as part of the “preparation” process, when the new release is already installed to the new partition, but before it becomes active.
Blocking data modifications are those that may affect the system’s performance while they are being carried out. Therefore, those are done during off-peak periods.

This process allows the data modifications to be performed while the system still operates using the current release. During that time, the “older” version of the release operates with the “newer” version of the data. The same situation would happen if in performing a rollback to the older release. The PortaOne development and testing processes are specifically aimed to make this possible however we can only guarantee this inter-operability for the adjoining releases.

Please find more detailed information about the new updating process in PortaBilling Administrator Guide (look for Updating the System to a New Version section on page 17). This MR21 guide is available on the Documentation page along with other constantly renewed handbooks and manuals.

Redworks Selects PortaSwitch To Power All Its Integrated VoIP And Hosted IP PBX Services

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne’s Converged VoIP Billing and Service Management Platform will Drive Dutch Telecom’s Solutions for SMBs, Enterprises, and Retail Stores.

PortaOne announced today that Redworks, a Netherland-based diversified provider of telephony, Internet and data services, has selected PortaSwitch as its core telecommunications services and subscriber management platform. PortaSwitch will drive not only Redworks’ integrated VoIP and hosted IP PBX services for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and larger enterprises, but also its IP payment solutions for retail businesses.

PortaSwitch, a Class 5-level product, is able to handle the full range of call control and billing functions of a heterogeneous digital services company, from billing and service provisioning to advanced call features, monitoring and reporting. The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, Class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and service provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Redworks chose PortaSwitch based on its experiences with the system through a third-party telecom systems infrastructure provider. “We were using a hosted partition of PortaSwitch and were impressed with its dependability and complete feature set,” said Leslie Herps, Redworks director. “PortaSwitch is able to handle the sophisticated routing we need to terminate calls based on cost, ASR or other factors. Its high availability and easy mobility suits the wide range of needs required by our business and retail customers.”

“PortaSwitch will enable Redworks to remain very competitive in a rapidly changing Dutch telecommunications marketplace,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. “As business customers in the Netherlands continue to seek lower cost alternatives to expensive fixed telephony systems, Redworks will be able to rely on PortaSwitch to deliver exceptional reliability and quality of service within the VoIP environment.”

Redworks is one of the Netherland’s fastest-growing telecommunications companies. Amid a challenging global economy, the government-approved telecom has experienced remarkable 25% month-over-month growth; its 2009 revenues, in fact, marked a 1,200% increase over the prior year. The company attributes its success to its unique bundling of Internet, VoIP and call handling services that help businesses of many sizes and types become more efficient while reducing their communications costs.

In addition to hosted IP PBX capability and VoIP calls, the company offers IP-based transaction processing for retailers as well as network, Internet, website hosting and data backup/restore services. To ensure quality of service over its IP networks, Redworks deploys innovative line monitoring scripts that constantly monitor availability and performance. The scripts trigger alarms and if necessary, automatic reinstatement if service is jeopardized.

Also unique to Redworks is its commitment to redundancy and reliability throughout its infrastructure. It has invested in redundant server power supplies, multiple redundant circuit uplinks, a high availability server platform, and redundant tier providers in multiple international locations. Should a failure take place at one point of presence, another will replicate in fractions of a millisecond to ensure uninterrupted service.

PortaSwitch is designed to reinforce redundant systems like Redworks’, notes Khalenkov. “Redundancy and high availability are considered very important at PortaOne. Even basic PortaBilling100 and PortaSwitch setups include data redundancy by default: the product architecture assumes there is constant data replication between Master and Slave databases,” he said. “Fully redundant solutions like PortaSwitch Procinctus, where every business critical component is clustered, are also available to ensure the highest service availability essential for modern telecommunication providers and carriers.”

PortaSwitch MR21 Documentation for Converged Residential and Wholesale VoIP, IP Centrex, Prepaid, and Unified Messaging Services

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The brand new set of documentation for the PortaSwitch newest maintenance release 21 is now available for download from the Documentation page.

New documents include:

Administrator and web reference guides for PortaBilling
New series of PortaSwitch handbooks dedicated to residential VoIP, IP Centrex, prepaid, converged voice, IPTV and Internet / Wifi, unified communication, and wholesale VoIP services.

For more information on how to use these documents and about MR21, please contact our sales team.

PortaSwitch Procinctus Provides Class 5 Hosted IP On Three Continents For Cordia Communications

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Global Communications Leader Able to Support Complete Range of Office Telephony Services Via Single Solution

Global communications software company PortaOne, Inc. today announced that Cordia Corporation (CORG.PK), an international provider of traditional CLEC and VoIP technologies, has deployed PortaOne’s PortaSwitch Procinctus platform in Brazil and the United States, with future plans for deployment in India. Through its two regional installations of PortaSwitch Procinctus, PortaOne’s ultimate, high-capacity telecom services and subscriber management product, Cordia is able to support an exhaustive menu of IP telephony services, lowering costs and ensuring reliable Class 5 operation for its business customers in multiple markets.

Through its subsidiaries, Cordia provides traditional wireline and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calling services to business and residential customers in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Latin America, the Philippines, and the United States. The Winter Garden, Florida-based global communications company also offers shared and dedicated DSL, international phone numbers, and wholesale telephony services. Cordia’s VoIP and international phone number services are some of the most extensive in the market today, with customers in over 45 countries around the world.

Cordia originally selected PortaOne nearly three years ago when it was seeking to upgrade its hosted IP services. “Our experience with PortaSwitch Procinctus has been very positive. The platform has the capacity, redundancy and complete feature set Cordia needed to aggressively expand its hosted VoIP business offerings,” said Kevin Griffo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cordia Corporation. “We have used PortaSwitch Procinctus to help build our IP business on a global scale, and plan on future deployment as we continue expanding our global footprint.”

PortaSwitch Procinctus is comprised of three main components:

PortaBilling100 Advanced, enabling high-volume carriers to price, launch and provision their VoIP services;
PortaSIP cluster, a highly scalable SIP softswitch; and
PortaUM cluster, a unified messaging platform and a media server application that handles voice mail, fax, and regular e-mail messages.

Designed with a distributed architecture for high performance, Procinctus offers simultaneous multiprocessing (SMP) technology to increase billing engine capacity, as well as built-in redundancy and load balancing to ensure reliable operation even under periods of peak demand.

With PortaSwitch Procinctus, Cordia was able to achieve a total PBX feature set including:

Call Forwarding (Busy/No-Answer/Unconditional);
Call Hunting;
Call Forking (ringing multiple devices simultaneously);
Pre-Paid Service;
Voicemail (Dial-In/Email Notification);
Selective Call Blocking;
Selective Call Dialing;
Caller ID;
Call Waiting;
Group Calling (dialing extension numbers masked in groups);
Call Detail Record Output; and
UA/ATA/IAD/Soft Phone compatibility.

Cordia’s initial purchase was for PortaOne’s primary PortaSwitch platform. Soon after, Cordia added several secondary PortaSIP servers to enhance redundancy and increase capacity, and a staging system for internal development and testing. Its adoption of PortaSwitch Procinctus involved two installs in the past year. Today, the provider operates a total of four PortaSwitch systems:

PortaSwitch with servers in the U.S.;
a U.S.-based staging PortaSwitch install; and
two separate PortaSwitch Procinctus systems in Brazil and India.

“The source code which comes as a part of all PortaSwitch licenses makes it easy for Cordia to create and verify its own products in-house, shortening time-to-market for new services and saving the cost of outside development,” said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “By deploying PortaSwitch Procinctus—the ultimate combination of PortaSwitch products and technologies—Cordia is able to stay ahead of its competition and give its customers a world-class quality of service.”

About Cordia Corporation

Cordia Corporation, through its operating subsidiaries, Cordia Communications Corp., CordiaIP Corp., Cordia Prepaid, Corp., My Tel Co, Inc., Northstar Telecom, Inc., and Cordia International Corp. offers business, residential, and wholesale customers local and long distance telecommunications services in more than sixty (60) countries utilizing traditional wireline and Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) technologies. In addition, Cordia develops and provides a suite of proprietary web-based billing software and outsourced services to local, long distance and VoIP telecommunications providers.

Telinta Provides Unique Benefits For Telecom Service Providers Via World�s Largest Hosted PortaSwitch Installation

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Telecom Companies on Six Continents, from Startups to Global Wholesale Carriers, Profit from Telinta’s Services Tailored to Each Company’s Size, Business Model and Service Menu

When the founders of Telinta, Inc. set out to create a VoIP infrastructure flexible enough to drive the service offerings of dozens of telecoms in every corner of the world, they knew their core management platform would have to be uniquely powerful. Their choice was PortaOne’s PortaSwitch.

“Very few manufacturers make a billing and customer management platform that allows for unique customization,” said Alex Ferdman, CEO of Telinta. “PortaSwitch enables us to tailor our telecom customers needs, yet still retain the upgrades and support PortaOne provides.”

Since 2002, Telinta has offered a complete turnkey billing, switching, and customer management platform on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis to large and small telecommunications companies around the world. The privately owned company is headquartered in Springfield, New Jersey, with overseas offices in Switzerland and Ukraine. Today, Telinta is the world’s largest hosted PortaSwitch installation, serving a customer base that ranges from telecom startups to VoIP wholesalers, call shop operators, softswitch resellers and many large business and residential VoIP service providers.

“PortaSwitch has a number of capabilities that made it perfect for our needs,” said Ferdman. “In addition to its full source code, PortaSwitch can be partitioned independently. This allows our customers to run separate and distinct businesses with their own VoIP terminating vendors, routing and billing rules, logos and portals.” PortaSwitch, a Class 5-level product, is able to handle the full range of call control and billing functions of a diversified digital services company, from billing and provisioning to advanced call features, monitoring and reporting.

The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

With PortaSwitch as its core VoIP management infrastructure, Telinta is able to customize its service environment as needed to meet the needs of individual telecoms. Over the years, Telinta has developed various plug-ins and internal tools to support these features. Examples include:

H.323-to-SIP translation;
customized online signup;
PayPal, Liberty Reserve and CacheU payment systems;
workaround for non-compliant third-party devices;
customized reports and IP phone profiles;
Ajax APIs;
live call monitoring of customer and vendor ASR, ALOC, Cost and revenue;
advanced branded call shop interfaces;
personalized domain name and SSL certificate management; and
custom IVRs.

Telinta’s customers view Telinta as their source for not only private-label, customized telephony services, but also for virtually unlimited capacity. Customers pay only for the resources they use, no matter how great or small—and as they grow, Telinta remains one step ahead of their needs through its PortaSwitch-powered system.

“Our clients are able to concentrate on rapidly building their business, all without worrying about capacity limitations or switch uptime,” Ferdman said. “With PortaSwitch as our key platform, we have been able to build and establish a track record of helping telecoms achieve profit, regardless of the state of the worldwide economy.”

About Telinta, Inc.: Founded in 2002, Telinta, Inc. is the trusted partner of telecom service providers around the globe. The company owns and operates the largest PortaSwitch installation in the world, providing a complete and proven out-of-the-box telecom platform together with always-available expert 24/7 technical staff, enabling telecommunications companies to avoid capital investments while achieving rapid growth and development. Serving telecom operators across six continents, Telinta, Inc. has offices in the USA and Europe.

Innovative SS7 to VoIP Solution Successfully Inter-ops Against Market Leading VoIP Billing Package

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Squire Technologies and PortaOne sign-off a successful product inter-op.

Squire Technologies, the SS7 to VoIP Signaling Specialists and PortaOne, a leading global vendor of carrier grade software for modern telecommunication service providers successfully complete a formal inter-op between the SVI_MGC SS7 Media Gateway Controller and the PortaOne's PortaBilling100, a converged rating, billing, and service provisioning platform.

RADIUS AAA integration between SVI_MGC and PortaBilling100 allows real-time call authorization. In practical terms, this enables wholesale carriers and Internet telephony service providers to offer a mixture of pre-paid or post-paid telephony services with minimal financial risks exposure.

The CDR information is processed immediately after the call completion using PortaBilling100 flexible rating engine and the results are available to administrators via web interface or to customers through the self-care portal. The joint performance of SVI_MGC and PortaBilling100 optimizes most of the processes a service provider has to deal with, such as rate upload and management, invoice generation, reporting, and reconciliation.

Andrew Cooper, Managing Director, Squire Technologies, “We have deployed the SVI_MGC on a number of occasions with clients who are using PortaBilling100 – it has always been a smooth process. Strategically we wanted to arrange a formal inter-op with PortaOne to align ourselves with the industry leading converged VoIP billing product and to insure any existing customers wanting to move to this platform a smooth migration process.”

Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director, PortaOne, “We were happy to add Squire Technologies’ innovative SS7 to VoIP solution to the stable of products that inter-op with PortaBilling100, our market leading converged VoIP billing and service provisioning system. I hope we can continue to provide our mutual customers with the dual benefit of these innovative market leading products.”

About Squire Technologies

Specialist provider of carrier-class signaling, SS7 and VoIP products and services, Squire Technologies supplies cost-effective solutions to carriers, service providers and ISPs globally. The mature SVI_MGC SS7 Media Gateway Controller provides seamless interconnection between different networks running different types and versions of VoIP and PSTN protocols. It supports varied protocols with SS7, H.323 and SIP as standard, it opens up the PSTN network to all MGCP and H.248 enabled media gateways and provides all call control protocol termination.

PortaOne Exhibited at CeBIT 2010, the World's Foremost Tradeshow for the Digital Industry in Hannover, Germany

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne showcased its converged VoIP billing and softswitch platform at CeBIT last week. CeBIT has been one of the major exhibitions in Europe for many years; and this is not the first time when PortaOne participated in the event: PortaOne exhibited at CeBIT events in 2007 and 2008. The shows gave us an exciting opportunities to meet new customers all around Europe.

Please meet us at International Telecommunication Week 2010 on May 24-26 in Washington, DC. PortaOne will be at Booth 812 in Marriott Wardman Park Hotel at 2660 Woodley Road NW, Washington, DC.

Zapatero, Merkel Visited PortaOne Booth at CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Today is the first day at CeBIT 2010, the major telecommunication event in Hanover, Germany. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the President of the Government of Spain have visited PortaOne booth at CeBIT.

Please visit our booth D15 in Hall 13 from today till Saturday, March 6, 2010.

PortaOne Launches Billing Channel on TMCnet to Promote PortaBilling, a Converged VoIP Billing Software Solution

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that the Billing channel, sponsored by PortaOne, Inc., has been launched as the newest addition to the TMCnet Billing channel program.

PortaOne's core product, PortaBilling is a customer management and converged VoIP billing platform that enables carriers and IP Telephony service providers to launch, price and provision VoIP services. With PortaOne’s converged VoIP billing application, companies are offered a solution that allows ITSPs to increase revenue stream potential through a wide array of usage-based billing options. Whether it’s postpaid billing applications, or prepaid billing solutions, PortaOne offers its customers the ability to select a product that fits their professional goals.

PortaBilling is a part of a much larger carrier grade platform called PortaSwitch. PortaSwitch is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and ITSPs to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. With PortaSwitch, PortaBilling is fully integrated with a class 4/5 SIP softswitch and media servers that deliver unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IPPBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

The new channel can be found at: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/billing

TMCnet’s channels are micro-targeted information portals where readers can find topic-specific news, articles, feature stories and product reviews. TMCnet has more than 100 channels covering important topics in the IP Communications, VoIP, IP Telephony, Cloud Computing, Smart Grid and Information Technology industries.

“PortaOne is pleased to begin its collaboration with TMC, the leader of communications and technology media,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director at PortaOne. “Taking advantage of TMCnet’s industry-specific credibility and expertise in driving customer traffic will reinforce our branding and distinguish PortaOne as the leader in billing applications.”

Established in 1997, PortaOne Inc. began as an in-house VoIP billing software project for a leading European ISP. Evolving into its own dynamic enterprise, PortaOne Inc.’s mission is to remove high capital requirements for companies aiming to transition to the global carrier-grade service provider market. The open architecture of PortaOne’s solutions make it possible for enterprises to communicate and cooperate with each other, no matter what system they use, what language they speak or what currency they conduct their business.

The Billing channel will serve as the primary source for industry news on leading information on how to improve your business through correctly organizing and maintaining your billing system.

“TMCnet welcomes PortaOne’s Billing channel into our program,” said Dave Rodriguez, president of TMC. “PortaOne is a well-respected communications infrastructure vendor that shares our vision in the advancement of new technologies. Our channel program is a community-building vehicle assisting our partners in building their brand, while contributing to the vast array of valuable content which drives customer and prospect traffic to TMCnet, the most-visited communications and technology Web site in the world.”

TMCnet is the leader in the communications and technology media space, boasting more than 10 million unique visitors and 300 million page views annually.

Service Providers and Carriers in Egypt Met PortaOne Team at Cairo ICT

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Cairo ICT is the major telecommunication and IT event in Egypt and in the whole M. East region and Africa.

This year was the first but really inspiring time for PortaOne to exhibit in Egypt. We already have customers in Egypt using our converged VoIP billing and carrier grade softswitch of class 4-5 solutions and we hope to extend our success in this country.

In three weeks, PortaOne will meet its European clients exhibiting at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany. Please meet us at Hall 13, Booth D15, on March 2-6.

PortaSwitch Telecom Subscriber Management Platform Now Includes RT: Request Tracker CRM/Ticketing System

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Leading Enterprise-Grade Ticketing Product Gives PortaSwitch Users Ability to Manage Subscriber Issues from Customer Info Screen; Creating New Ticket Requires Single Click

PortaOne, Inc. and Best Practical Solutions LLC, makers of issue tracking system RT: Request Tracker (RT), today announced the integration of RT into PortaOne’s PortaSwitch telecommunications services and subscriber management platform for telephony service providers. The integration gives PortaSwitch service providers a powerful new tool for improving both issue resolution and overall customer satisfaction.

RT: Request Tracker, the world’s leading open-source issue-tracking system, has been proven since 1996 in thousands of companies around the world, from Fortune 100 companies to small non-profits.Starting with PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 21 (MR21), the tool comes with no additional license fee as a free feature upgrade for the current subscribers of PortaSwitch�s PortaCare 24/7 technical support and maintenance program (an extra PortaCare contract is required for the additional server to host the RT system).

RT is suitable for tracking customer service inquiries as well as a wide range of other business processes. It manages key tasks such as issue identification, prioritization, assignment, resolution and notification, and delivers the essential information necessary for fast and professional help desk, CRM and Network Operations Center (NOC) ticketing.

“Using RT can dramatically simplify and improve customer service workflows, giving service providers a pathway for major performance increases,” said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “PortaOne has used RT internally for over five years for its own issue tracking needs. We understand its value not only through our own daily use, but also through the positive feedback we’ve received from our own customers.”

“ PortaSwitch is an ideal application for RT. Users can provide a welcome communication path for end users, and its interface has been fully internationalized in ten major world languages,” said Keri Shaughnessy, Sales Manager from Best Practical Solutions. “Internally, the platform allows customer service personal to track a ticket’s full history and establish metadata in order to better retain knowledge and analyze service trends. We believe PortaSwitch users will greatly benefit from this technology partnership.”

RT is integrated into the PortaSwitch CRM/ticketing system as a seamless part of PortaSwitch’s PortaBilling100, a converged VoIP billing and customer management platform. Users access RT via the Customer Info screen in PortaBilling100, which directly links to the ticketing interface. Once accessed, RT displays a list of the customer’s open tickets where they can be easily accessed, all on one screen. Creating a new ticket from the display requires only a single click.

PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s flagship product, is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and ITSPs to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Free PortaClient iPhone App Makes VoIP Calls, Account Management Easy For PortaSwitch Users

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Demo Version Now Available Via Apple AppStore; App Allows Users to Check Account Balance, Change Settings, Initiate Calls Using PortaSwitch Callback Engine and More

PortaOne, Inc. today announced the availability of its new PortaClient app for the Apple iPhone — an application promising new convenience to customers of VoIP service providers using PortaOne’s PortaSwitch platform. PortaClient, now available at no cost in a demo version, lets iPhone end-users access their account information and usage data, check balances, manage their service settings, and even initiate low-cost VoIP calls using the PortaSwitch callback engine (callback feature disabled in demo version).

Effective immediately, VoIP service providers and telecom operators can request a customized version of PortaClient supporting their customer base from Spoledge, a PortaOne business partner and developer of PortaClient. The PortaClient demo app is now available for download at no cost from the iPhone AppStore; to obtain the app, go to the PortaClient page.

“PortaOne’s new PortaClient iPhone app delivers benefits to end-users and service providers alike,” said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “For any ITSP running PortaSwitch, PortaClient is a powerful mobile enhancement for current and prospective subscribers. For any end customer who uses an iPhone, PortaClient is a terrifically convenient way to not only make low-cost VoIP calls on the go, but also to access their account information anytime.”

PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s flagship product, is a premier telecommunications services and subscriber management platform for telephony service providers. Capable of handling the complete call control and VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, PortaSwitch allows wholesale VoIP carriers and Internet Telephony Service Providers to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.

The PortaClient iPhone app offers a full range of users including:

customer information (balance, status and payment status);
account information (contact, status, balance and validity);
call processing (set ups for ring, call forwarding and voicemail);
call list (showing five most recent calls);and
VoIP calling via PortaSwitch’s callback feature (to make a VoIP call, the user supplies the requested number to the PortaSwitch engine, which then calls the user back and initiates the connection).

Spoledge (aka Společně s.r.o.), developer of the PortaClient app, is a longtime PortaOne partner. The diversified software company develops telecom infrastructure solutions as well as productivity and educational applications for the Apple iPhone. In addition to its development activities, Spoledge provides consulting, analysis and integration services to telecoms and affiliated infrastructure providers. Spoledge will provide a customized version of PortaClient to PortaOne clients and for their resellers that use PortaSwitch partitions or virtual environment.

PortaOne Has Exhibited at ITEXPO 2010 East in Miami Beach, FL

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Today was the last of three days of extensive communication among the industry crowd at ITEXPO 2010 East in Miami Beach, FL. PortaOne has been exhibiting at ITEXPO for many years now; and this one was probably the tenth show in a row.

As always, ITEXPO has fully served its purpose: we met many new clients and had very successful meetings with many of our current customers from around the globe.

Interview with Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director.

Please meet PortaOne team in Cairo in less than two weeks from now. We are going to be exhibiting at Cairo ICT on February 7-10 in Cairo, Egypt. PortaOne will be in Hall 3, booth 3A1.

Apollo Communications Chooses Most Advanced PortaOne Billing Platform For New VoIP PBX Offering

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne’s PortaBilling Oracularius to Provide Tier 1 Scalability and Reliability as well as Full Complement of Provisioning and Pricing Options; Solution to Extend to Consumer Business

PortaOne today announced from ITEXPO East 2010 in Miami that Apollo Communications, one of Europe’s most progressive VoIP telecom providers, has selected PortaOne’s PortaBilling Oracularius to power its new Junex VoIP PBX product. PortaBilling Oracularius will give Junex a full complement of launching, pricing and provisioning capabilities combined with virtually unlimited scalability and assured reliability in Oracle Real Application Cluster environments.

Apollo Communications, based in Saint Petersburg, Russia and with U.S. offices in New York City, is a provider of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services to both individuals and companies. It offers international calling as well as long distance/international calling cards and services customers in both Russia and the United States.

Apollo’s new Junex VoIP PBX (Private Branch eXchange) product will give companies a state-of-the-art calling system including all conventional PBX features such as voicemail, auto attendant and conference calling, at a cost far below that of conventional PBX systems.

PortaBilling Oracularius will complement the onsite advantages of Junex by providing the industry’s most powerfully advanced VoIP billing infrastructure. PortaBilling Oracularius is a ready-to-use product that offers both unlimited scalability and full redundancy. Its innovative features include:

Real-time mediation and rating
Multiple services billing
Event-based, usage-based and periodic charging
Reseller and distributor channels
E-commerce and customer self-care interface
Support for resellers and distributors
Custom charging formulas and programmable discount plans
Prepaid/postpaid business models
Support for the full billing cycle, from service provisioning to invoicing and collection.

“In order to adopt PortaBilling Oracularius, we needed to migrate from our legacy MySQL database structure to the Oracle Real Application Cluster which supports Oracularius. PortaOne’s engineers helped us to plan the migration and were there every step of the way,” said Jeffrey Platt, Vice President of Apollo Communications. “The transition was well planned and flawless. We made the conversion without a minute of downtime. It was seamless to our customers.”

“As one of our first customers, Apollo Communications has been a valued part of our company’s success. We’re extremely pleased that our relationship is continuing to grow through Apollo’s migration to PortaBilling Oracularius,” said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “The adoption of Oracularius will allow Apollo to not only offer one of the best ranges of hosted IP PBX billing options and services anywhere, but also rapidly expand its call volume to tens of millions of minutes per day as its Junex business develops.”

In addition to its proven reliability and flexibility, PortaBilling Oracularius is set apart in the industry through its unlimited perpetual license which includes embedded license for Oracle Real Application Cluster. The feature allows users to grow quickly through an all-in-one product, without having to renegotiate or reconfigure their customer support platform.

PortaOne Brings New Features, Even Greater Durability To PortaSwitch Via New Maintenance Release 21

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Maintenance Release 21 Marks System’s Migration to 64-Bit Oracle Enterprise Linux; Upgrades Include CRM Integration, Call Recording, Configuration/Logging Server and More

PortaOne announces today PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 21 (MR21), a significant new version of our telecommunication services and subscriber management platform for telephony service providers. With PortaSwitch MR21, PortaOne delivers to its customers a number of new opportunities and benefits that bring greater robustness, easier management and operation, and enhanced profitability to their core telecom operations.

PortaSwitch MR21 is expected to be made available before the end of the year at no charge to subscribers of the company’s PortaCare 24/7 technical support and maintenance program. The upgraded product will be available to new PortaSwitch customers in January. Selected new features include:

64-Bit Oracle Enterprise Linux OS

With MR21, PortaSwitch migrates from the FreeBSD operating system to 64-bit Oracle Enterprise Linux, a professional-grade operating system that will bring an even higher level of robustness to the PortaSwitch platform. PortaSwitch users will benefit from the same OS used in PortaOne’s premium PortaBilling Oracularius product, along with carrier-grade support for ultra-modern hardware platforms and the ability to drastically increase performance by using large amounts of RAM.

Call Recording

PortaSwitch MR21’s call recording capability gives service providers an exciting new feature to offer their enterprise and SMB end-users. The capability, especially useful for medical or legal offices, can be deployed to any hosted IPPBX or IP Centrex system, and supports recording and playback on both incoming and outgoing calls. Recording can even be initiated in the middle of a call by dialing a special key combination on the phone’s keypad.

Softphone Client

PortaSwitch MR21 debuts PortaPhone, a new PC dialer/softphone client that supports PC-to-phone dialing. PortaPhone allows end-users to easily dial and receive calls from their computer screen, and gives service providers a strong feature base for increasingly popular PC-to-phone or Skype-like services .

New Configuration And Logging Server With Seamless Update

PortaSwitch MR21 introduces a brand-new unified management interface that also stores all configuration information. Through one interface, users can now control all other servers that compose PortaSwitch, even in large-scale deployments.

All new releases and builds of PortaSwitch can now be seamlessly distributed from the configuration server to individual servers — PortaSIP, for example — as an image, like the firmware images used in products such as Cisco gateways. Images can be applied to the server without affecting the current operation, becoming effective after reboot. Using the image procedure, migrations can be executed extremely quickly and with minimal downtime; what’s more, the previous image is preserved in case a rollback is required.

In addition to executing operations such as migrating applications from one server to another, the configuration server provides the ability to collect, process and store session logs (e.g. SIP messages exchanged between IP phones and the server) and other business critical data. This creates a useful analysis tool with no extra load on the production system.

CRM Integration

For some time, PortaOne customers have enjoyed the convenience of a CRM/ticketing system when communicating with the PortaOne support team. Now PortaSwitch offers the same capability for ITSPs managing trouble tickets involving end-users, thanks to the integrated bundling of RT (Request Tracker), an enterprise-grade ticketing system from Best Practical Solutions. RT manages customer requests via the Customer Info screen in PortaBilling100, where a list of the customer’s open tickets can be seen and accessed. Creating a new ticket requires just a single click .

“Maintenance upgrades for telecom products usually involve a few bug fixes and relatively mild performance improvements. PortaSwitch MR21 demonstrates our commitment to keep PortaSwitch at the top of the pack in reliability, usability and end-user value,” said Andriy Zhylenko, chief technical officer for PortaOne. “We believe our customers will appreciate the list of tangible features that will have real impact in their day-to-day operations.”

PortaSwitch is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company, enabling wholesale VoIP carriers and ITSPs to deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive product consists of a real-time billing system, class 4/5 SIP softswitch, and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

Please contact us if you need more technical or pricing information about our PortaSwitch.

Finnish VoIP Network Leader IXO Systems Succeeds In Competitive Market Using Flexible PortaOne Platforms

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

PortaBilling100 Billing & Customer Management and PortaSIP Call Control Packages Are Core Elements of Company’s Offerings to Wholesale and Residential Customers

PortaOne today announced its PortaBilling100 and PortaSIP products have been installed as core technologies in the VoIP infrastructure of IXO Systems Oy, a Porvoo, Finland-based provider of IP-based telephony and multimedia services for resellers and service providers as well as retail customers. Using PortaOne’s products, IXO Systems is able to quickly generate a broad range of customer-facing features and services that help keep it atop the Finnish and Russian telecom marketplaces.

Founded in 2005 and acquired by a team of international telecom experts earlier this year, IXO Systems provides turnkey solutions enabling service providers and resellers of all sizes to go to market with state-of-the-art VoIP networks and/or product offerings. The company also provides wholesale VoIP trunking and DID (Direct Inward Dial) services. The retail division, IziVox, offers SIP telephony and related services for residential and business customers in Finland, Russia and elsewhere.

“The variety of IP telecom segments in which we operate demands a communications infrastructure that is not only reliable and scalable, but also able to respond to a constantly changing VoIP market landscape,” said Alexei Palii, Chief Technical Officer of IXO Systems Oy. “With PortaBilling100 and PortaSIP, IXO and IziVox have both gained a reputation for innovative and proactive solutions. With these software platforms, PortaOne supports us with regular feature upgrades and exceptionally short time-to-market.”

PortaBilling100, PortaOne’s carrier-grade service management and converged VoIP billing software platform, allows IP telephony providers to launch, price and provision their services immediately. PortaBilling100 uses a real-time authorization, authentication and VoIP billing engine to provide AAA services via the RADIUS protocol. It supports Caller-ID (ANI) based billing, information on priority-based and least-cost routing, CDR processing, and advanced statistics such as cost/revenue and ASR. PortaBilling100 can also be used by wholesale VoIP carriers who terminate VoIP calls for other providers.

PortaSIP, a class 4/5 softswitch, supports IXO’s service model by allowing instant messaging, call parking, group pickup, NAT transversal and other advanced calling capabilities. With PortaSIP, services that combine elements from telephony and other Web applications such as e-mail, messaging, Internet and video streaming can be easily created. The product’s short planning and implementation cycle allows it to respond quickly to market changes.

“IXO Systems is unique in its insistence on technologies that are robust, inherently compatible, and built to answer the needs of people in the real world. PortaBilling100 and PortaSIP, combined with our open and responsive technical support team, provide the flexibility IXO Systems seeks,” said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “PortaSIP and PortaBilling100 give IXO Systems a unified, customizable core infrastructure from which to serve its diverse and growing mix of customers.”

WTL And PortaOne Provide Xplorium With Nimble, Expandable Next-Generation Network On Five Continents

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

International VoIP Carrier Benefits from WTL’s High-Compression SS7-to-VoIP Gateway, Tightly Integrated with PortaOne’s PortaSwitch Softswitch and Converged VoIP Billing Software

Global communications infrastructure companies PortaOne, Inc. and World Telecom Labs (WTL) today announced their respective flagship technologies have been deployed at Xplorium, an international VoIP carrier operating in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, South America and Africa. Using the two vendors’ tightly integrated platforms, Xplorium is able to easily connect SS7 and VoIP networks, establish new points of presence, compress network traffic while maintaining call quality, and achieve complex billing scenarios, among other benefits.

Xplorium’s billing and switching infrastructure achieves Next-Generation Network (NGN) status via the deployment of WTL’s SoIP product and PortaOne’s PortaSwitch telecom service management platform. SoIP (SS7 over IP) is a compact, high performance and cost effective SS7 to IP gateway providing signaling and media gateway capabilities in a single box. Ideal for ISPs, pure-play VoIP operators or for adding VoIP connectivity to legacy switches, SoIP also employs WTL’s Network Optimization Protocol (NOP) — a VoIP compression technique that delivers up to 16:1 compression to increase traffic capacity without sacrificing voice quality.

PortaOne’s PortaSwitch is capable of handling the complete call control and converged VoIP billing functions of a diversified digital services company. PortaSwitch lets IP telephony service providers deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive product consists of a class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch and application servers that deliver converged VoIP billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, callback management, IVRs, conferencing and more.

“Xplorium is committed to continually improving its core network with best-of-breed infrastructure. WTL and PortaOne clearly meet these standards,” said Mr. Karim el Charif, Technical Director of Xplorium. “WTL switches allow us to reach and expand our services by easily generating new points of presence as needed, while the WTL compression technique helps us increase our traffic capacity. With PortaOne, we can furnish full scale Class 5 communications services including IP Centrex and unified communication, along with very reliable and flexible VoIP billing scenarios.”

“It’s exciting to see a valued partner like Xplorium optimize its service offering using WTL SoIP and NOP technologies,” noted Simon Pearson, Business Development Director of WTL. “Our NOP delivers great bandwidth, and therefore reduced cost, on Xplorium’s long distance links from Africa and the Middle East. What’s more, Xplorium’s customers report full satisfaction with their call quality, even though each call requires as little as 6 Kbps. And WTL equipment is very easy for Xplorium engineers to set up and manage remotely — a real benefit for a company that serves such a broad geographic area.”

Xplorium has standardized on WTL equipment for all its remote Points of Presence (PoPs) as well as at its headquarters site in Paris, France. The same WTL technology is used at all remote sites, whether the site has SS7, Q931 or VoIP connections.

Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director, commented on the ability of his company’s PortaSwitch to interoperate with WTL’s SoIP SS7-to-VoIP switch. “Together, PortaSwitch and SoIP comprise a proven and extremely nimble solution,” he said. Not only does SoIP make reliable VoIP-to-PSTN connectivity a reality, but in concert with PortaSwitch, it is possible to offer the range of value-added features business customers expect.”

PortaOne Returned to Exhibiting at Gitex Last Week in Dubai, UAE

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Last week was a very intensive time for PortaOne sales and marketing team: we were in Dubai, UAE exhibiting at Gitex 2009, the major telecommunication and IT trade show in the Middle East.

This was the second time for us at Gitex. We were there presenting our VoIP billing and carrier softswitch solutions three years ago at Gitex 2006.

The show was so successful that we decided to participate at the 30th Gitex next year right there in our booth within Canadian pavilion.

Please meet us at ITEXPO East in Miami Beach, FL on January 21-22, 2010. Our booth is 424.

Pre-Release New Features Announcement and Overview: PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 21

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The MR21 will be available for installation on the staging systems in November this year. Please find below a short overview of the PortaSwitch new features that are going to be available with MR21:

64-Bit Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4	This maintenance release 21 utilizes a state-of-the-art operating system with support for many types of modern hardware platforms. Besides numerous improvements to internal design and security, the 64bit architecture allows the use of large amounts of RAM, thus dramatically increasing overall system performance.
Configuration Management	In order to simplify management of large-scale PortaSwitch deployments containing multiple servers, configuration of the PortaSwitch system itself will be managed via a single, unified web interface. Administrators can manage the available hardware servers, assign or change their roles, and modify parameters like IP addresses or other options which affect the way the system operates. The configuration is stored on a designated server, and can be applied to all other servers without any intervention by the administrator. This allows to perform such operations as application migration from one server to another in just a few minutes. Also, the configuration management GUI retains a history of configuration changes, making it easy to roll back to the last stable set-up.
Distributors	This new entity is designed to expand sales activities by involving extra agents and enlarging the point-of–sale network. A distributor can create new customers or accounts and accept payments on behalf of an ITSP. The system automatically controls credit limits (each account activation is immediately reflected in the distributor’s balance) and calculates commissions. Distributors can be also be used by resellers, thus adding another level to the distribution scheme.
CRM Ticketing System	As a part of the PortaSwitch functionality, PortaOne customers will have access to the RT ticketing system, enabling robust management of customer trouble tickets. While running on a separate server, RT is fully integrated with PortaBilling. Thus a list of the customer’s open tickets is visible on the “Customer Info” screen in PortaBilling, while creating a new ticket requires just a single click.
Improved Rate Upload	An interactive process enables you to process and review the rate file, apply changes to it, and perform associated operations such as creating new prefixes and assigning them to destination groups. All of this is done in an intuitive, step-by-step process which takes less time and eliminates possible errors.
Call Recording	Users are able to automatically record and replay all incoming or outgoing calls. Alternatively, they can start recording a call in progress by dialing a special key combination on the phone keypad.
RFC4244 and RFC3325	The support of history information and asserted identity within trusted networks will satisfy the interconnection requirements often imposed by large national telco operators.
SIP over TCP	The support of SIP over TCP allows ITSPs to provide SIP trunking services to new groups of customers, particularly those using Microsoft OCS.
GUI for PortaUM Application Configuration	Individual application parameters, such as whether ANI authentication should be performed, or announcing the available balance to the customer, are now configured via the PortaBilling web interface, and changes can be applied automatically.

Please note that this is a preliminary announcement and the list above is not 100% complete and confirmed yet. For more information please contact us.

Andriy Zhylenko, PortaOne CTO Spoke at VON on Wholesale VoIP and the New Testing Technologies

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Andriy Zhylenko, CTO at PortaOne has delivered two very well received presentations this week at VON Conference & Expo 2009 in South Beach, FL this week.

Andriy spoke about the challenges many carriers face on the international wholesale voice market. His second presentation named "From QoS to QoE: New Technologies for Testing IP Networks" was mainly focussed on how PortaOne customers use the PortaSwitch quality measurement tools.

This was the first time PortaOne exhibited at a newly revived VON show. We have met with our Florida customers and partners and successfully introduced PortaOne solutions to many new carriers and service providers from across the US and Latin America.

Mr. Zhylenko will share his extensive experience of participating at a international trade show at ISDEF Conference next week in Moscow, Russia.

PortaOne will also exhibit at another major trade show this year: Gitex Business Solutions on October 18-22, 2009 in Dubai, UAE. Please meet PortaOne team in Dubai International Conference and Exhibition Centre, Hall 2, Canadian Pavilion, Booth A2-36.

PortaOne Has Met New And Current Clients at Internet Telephony Conference And Expo West 2009 in Los Angeles, CA

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Here is the end of the second very intensive day at ITEXPO West 2009 in smoky Los Angeles September of 2009. It has been a good tradition for many years for PortaOne to come to Southern California at this time of year to meet with our customers, mingle with industry professionals, and meet new people and companies yet to become our clients.

We will participate in another show shortly, just in less than three weeks from now. Please meet us in South Beach, FL at VON 2009 in Miami Beach Convention Center on September 21-22, 2009. Our booth is 1408.

PortaOne Announces DIDXchange Interoperability, Enabling Access To Global DID Phone Number Marketplace

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Users of PortaOne’s PortaSwitch IP Call Control/Billing Subsystem Can Now Offer Their PBX Customers Direct Inward Dialing (DID) Numbers from Over 60 Countries

PortaOne and DIDX, operator of the DIDXchange and a service of Super Technologies, Inc., today announced the successful interoperability of PortaOne’s PortaSwitch IP multimedia subsystem with the DIDXchange routing and provisioning application. The combination allows PortaSwitch VoIP users to purchase and provision their customers with local DID (Direct Inward Dialing) phone numbers in over 60 countries around the world, thereby giving those users a strong competitive advantage in the VoIP PBX segment.

DIDXchange, begun in 2005 by Super Technologies, is an online wholesale marketplace for DID phone numbers. The popular exchange allows CLECs, ILECs and other local telecommunications companies to sell their allocated and unused DID numbers to telecom service providers internationally. Pensacola, Florida-based DIDXchange has 12,500 member companies in 170 countries, and is one of the only true online marketplaces for buying, selling and trading local DID numbers.

Direct Inward Dialing numbers are a staple of Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs), the core telephony system found at most businesses and other workplaces. Employees with a DID phone number can be called directly by outside without going through a receptionist or company operator.

Through its support for the DIDXchange software switch, PortaOne brings new value and flexibility to PortaSwitch users. PortaSwitch is a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution that lets IP telephony service providers deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, conferencing and more.

“Some of the most innovative companies and entrepreneurs are leveraging PortaOne’s compatibility with major equipment vendors such as Cisco, NexTone, and Quintum. Before this interop with PortaSwitch, many of PortaOne’s clients were approaching DIDX separately or even going to individual carriers to purchase DID numbers,” said Suzanne Bowen, vice president of marketing for Super Technologies, Inc. “Today’s announcement will be welcome news for PortaSwitch users. We look forward to working with PortaOne to greatly simplify the process of buying and distributing DIDs on a global basis.”

“Obtaining DIDs is an important, even vital, aspect of modern VoIP service offerings. Having direct access to the DIDXchange will be of great convenience for PortaSwitch users,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. “This partnership with DIDX brings additional value to the PortaSwitch feature set and helps our customers be increasingly competitive in their respective markets.”

PortaSwitch Customers Have New Option: �Billion Phone� VoIP Softphone That Displays Customer Balance Onscreen

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Successful Interoperability Testing Brings ProfInfoTech’s Innovative Downloadable Softphone to PortaOne Customers and Their End-Users; Private Label Branding Also Available

Global communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc. today announced it has successfully concluded interoperability testing with the Billion Phone SIP-softphone freeware application. Created and marketed by VoIP software developer Professional Information Technologies, Ltd. (ProfInfoTech), the unique application differentiates a service provider’s offerings by giving their end-users a way to monitor their account balance onscreen while they make VoIP calls over their PC. The software can be customized and branded to suit the service provider’s needs.

PortaOne’s demonstrated interoperability is between Billion Phone and PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s IP multimedia subsystem. PortaSwitch, a Class 5-level product, is able to handle the full range of call control and billing functions from billing and provisioning to advanced call features, monitoring and reporting. The platform includes a complete API, along with an open and easily-understood source code, to facilitate customization of services to any business partner’s needs.

Billion Phone is a compact and easily downloadable application that creates an easy-to-use onscreen tool for making and receiving VoIP calls. In addition to displaying account balance, the application includes contact list capability as well as call history, speaker/microphone volume controls and other settings.

“As a well-known VoIP infrastructure software company, PortaOne is an ideal technology partner for ProfInfoTech and Billion Phone. The reliability, scalability, and feature-rich design of PortaSwitch, combined with its carrier-grade billing and customer management capabilities, makes our two companies’ joint offerings an excellent combined choice for service providers and their customers,” said Anton Kanailov, Chief Executive Officer of ProfInfoTech.

“Billion Phone is an innovative product that can help set apart a service provider’s offerings. Whether offered as a retail value-add, or as part of a hosted IP PBX, IP Centrex or other networked package, Billion Phone is a tool end-users will appreciate,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. “With Billion Phone, PortaSwitch customers have a low-cost strategy for making the VoIP calling process even more convenient.”

Billion Phone is offered as freeware, with charges incurred only when services are customized. Because it can be branded for the customer, Billion Phone makes the provider’s services more recognizable and helps build stronger relationships with subscribers. To further enhance provider branding, PortaSwitch offers a white label interface for customer self-care Web pages.

DIDX, PortaOne Record a Podcast to Discuss the Unique Advantages of PortaSwitch: Source Code, 24/7 Technical Support and Maintenance

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

DIDX offers DID (Direct Inward Dialing) phone numbers to Internet telephony service providers, wireless operators, competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC), incumbent local exchange carriers, and communications entrepreneurs.

Suzanne Bowen, VP Marketing at DIDX and Roman Khalenkov, Sales & Marketing Director at PortaOne recorded a short podcast while discussing the current trends of the modern telecommunications and how PortaOne addresses ever changing needs of the industry players.

Learn more about billing and other software products offered by PortaOne along with full source code and PortaCare, a 24/7 technical support and maintenance, by listening the podcast below:

PortaOne, MERA Systems Announce Interoperability Of MVTS Pro And PortaBilling100

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Combination of MERA Systems’ Softswitch plus Session Border Controller with PortaOne’s Billing/Customer Management Platform Provide End-to-End VoIP Traffic Solution

Global communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc. and carrier-grade VoIP solutions provider MERA Systems Inc. today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing for two of the companies’ key VoIP network products, MERA VoIP Transit Softswitch Pro (MVTS Pro) and PortaBilling100. Working together, the two products provide an ultra-scalable, flexible and end-to-end platform for handling VoIP transit traffic, combining high-performance management of VoIP traffic with a total billing and customer management solution.

Unveiled in Q2 of 2008, MVTS Pro is MERA Systems’ class 4 softswitch and session border controller platform. Designed to fit a carrier’s growing demands for scalability, redundancy and protocol support, MVTS Pro provides collection, switching and transcoding of VoIP traffic; management of signaling and media data streams; and border access control. Able to process up to 1,000 new calls per second, the product provides carriers with elaborate analysis tools for network control and resolution of quality of service (QoS) problems.

PortaBilling100, PortaOne’s carrier-grade service management and billing solution, allows IP telephony providers to launch, price and provision their services immediately. PortaBilling100 uses a real-time authorization, authentication and billing engine to provide AAA services via the RADIUS protocol. It supports Caller-ID (ANI) based billing, information on priority-based and least-cost routing, CDR processing, and advanced statistics such as cost/revenue and ASR. PortaBilling100 can also be used by wholesale providers who terminate VoIP calls for other providers.

“MERA Systems and PortaOne have a long history of successful ooperation. Our two companies have demonstrated a joint commitment to providing customers with cost-effective, reliable and up-to-date solutions that develop our customers’ businesses,” said Konstantin Nikashov, the CEO of MERA Systems, Inc. “In this challenging economic environment, it’s vitally important for carriers to benefit from traffic handling. The combination of highly reliable solutions from top-name vendors is a cornerstone of any business success.”

“PortaBilling100 and MVTS Pro offer an unusually strong fit for carriers and service providers. Their features complement each others perfectly, creating a scalable, easy-to-manage environment with painless integration using open protocols,” noted Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne.

MERA Systems and PortaOne have a partnership history dating back nearly four years.

PortaSwitch New Features Animated Flash Presentation for MR19 and MR20: Billing, Softswitch, and Unified Messaging

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The newest maintenance releases of PortaSwitch are MR19 and MR20. We continue posting the animated flash presentations that describe the newest features developed by PortaOne in a very easy to understand format: please find it on the top of the Documentation page .

VoIP Core Services Provider ICC Networks Gains Ability To Tailor Billing/Service Offerings Via PortaSwitch

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Flexible, Fully-Featured VoIP Platform Allows ICC Networks To Brand and Customize Turn-Key Solutions for Partners and Resellers

As VoIP service and business models continue to proliferate, the need for flexible, reliable core VoIP telephony services continues to grow. ICC Networks, a UK-based Core Network Service provider, has become a leader in this segment by supplying wholesale and virtual VoIP services to VoIP service providers and resellers who are addressing specialist and niche telephony markets.

The variety of deployment situations encountered by ICC Networks demands a versatile, easily-tailored services and subscriber management platform. “Our business partners, typically operators and resellers, rely on us to provide fast, reliable services that match the unique factors relating to their chosen markets,” said Rav Rehal, director of business development for ICC Networks. “It’s important that we be able to control our platform directly, in order to help our partners meet their different sales, marketing and end user customer service requirements.”

Last year, ICC Networks began using PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s software-based IP multimedia subsystem, to help provide these vital capabilities. PortaSwitch, a Class 5-level product, is able to handle a full range of call control and billing functions. Its softswitch and application servers deliver an entire VoIP technical and business infrastructure from billing and provisioning to advanced call features, monitoring and reporting. Moreover, PortaOne offers a complete API, along with an open and easily-understood source code, to facilitate customization of services to any business partner’s needs.

“After performing a feasibility study on PortaSwitch and its competitors involving SWOT analysis and a review of each vendor’s support team, we realized PortaSwitch could satisfy our needs,” Rehal noted. “PortaSwitch is a secure, high quality and resilient carrier-grade platform.”

ICC Networks has a strong reputation for delivering and maintaining complete solutions that encompass the entire range of network, interconnect, billing, security and technical service issues. Using PortaSwitch’s API, ICC Networks can offer a highly tailored, customer-facing service set that contributes a high level of value to its customers’ brands.

One of the key ways in which ICC Networks uses PortaSwitch, is to provide detailed and flexible billing systems. “The virtual VoIP area of our business has grown substantially. As we have expanded our support from a handful of customers to include several global GSM providers, the billing capabilities of PortaSwitch allow us to provide termination billing, prepaid/postpaid, flexible peak/off-peak rating and other features,” Rehal said.

As a wholesale provider of telecommunication solutions, ICC Networks offers its business partners a complete portfolio of VoIP products and services with the option to brand at any stage. Operators pay for their tailored services only on a per call or per channel basis; furthermore, the company’s flexible, secure range of services eliminate the need for a reseller to lock into termination services, giving them the freedom to choose a termination partner as desired.

PortaSIP, the class 4/5 softswitch in PortaSwitch, supports ICC Network’s service model by allowing instant messaging, call parking, group pickup, NAT transversal and other advanced calling capabilities. PortaUM, the unified messaging portion, supplies valuable end-user features like voicemail, hunt groups, follow me, auto attendant and much more.

Because ICC Networks adheres to pre-defined service level agreements with all its customers, it is critical for the company to have a billing and call management platform that provided the necessary reporting and operation support systems for SLA support. “PortaSwitch has the load balancing and high availability technologies in place to ensure SLA,” Rehal noted. “Its lineup of monitoring reports also help us keep track of service levels and analyze network performance.”

“Together with PortaOne, ICC Networks is able to give our customers unique solutions and compelling offerings,” stated Steve Rowles, ICC Networks managing director. “PortaSwitch, with the direct involvement of our in-house development team, gives our customers the advanced features and services needed to differentiate themselves from their competition.”

PortaOne Has Successfully Participated in a Major Telecom Show in Asia-Pacific: CommunicAsia 2009 in Singapore

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

This was the fourth successful trade show in Singapore for PortaOne. We have been exhibiting at CommunicAsia since 2006 every year. We plan to continue this practice by participating in CommunicAsia 2010 as well.

The event is a major crossroad point for the telecom professionals not only from Asia-Pacific region but also from all over the world.

We were glad to welcome to our booth both new prospects looking for the best converged billing system and softswitching technology for service providers and our old customers who arrived to spend time with PortaOne team.

Please meet us at Internet Telephony West in Los Angeles, CA on September 2-3. Our booth is 427.

Bubble Achieves Convergent Voice/Broadband Billing Via PortaSwitch, Enabling Unique Expat Business Model

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Spanish Company Lowers Costs of Telephone and Internet Services for Local British Clientele; Versatile PortaSwitch Billing/Call Management Supports Broad Mix of Services

As large and diverse as the worldwide digital services marketplace has become, opportunities abound for companies savvy enough to spot and develop profitable niches. Bubble, based in Torrevieja, Spain, has grown such a niche, thanks to unique insight—and the right technology.

“A sufficient number of Anglos live and work in Spain to build a business model around,” said Christophe Pauwels, Chief Technology Officer for Bubble World S.L. “We realized we could capture a significant number of these expatriates by lowering the cost of digital services—particularly the cost of communicating with friends, family and business partners back home in the U.K.”

With this vision in mind, Bubble has quickly become the preferred provider for thousands of English households, and businesses with strong U.K. connections, throughout Spain. To make its mix of telephony and ADSL-based wireless/fixed broadband services possible, however, Bubble had to keep its billing and call management services nimble, scalable and affordable. Its solution for such a flexible and cost-effective platform was PortaSwitch, from communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc.

“My previous experience with PortaSwitch at a previous company made the choice easy,” Pauwels said. “PortaSwitch had shown itself to be both reliable and scalable. Plus it has the advanced billing engine features we need to accommodate all the directions we expect our company to grow into.”

PortaSwitch is an IP multimedia subsystem capable of handling the complete call control and billing functions of a diversified digital services company. Its combination of softswitch and application servers forms the basis for a broad range of services at Class 5 QoS levels, from VoIP-based PBX and residential calling to broadband Internet access. When coupled with a Cisco Gateway, PortaSwitch provides access to the IP Centrex/IP PBX feature set on Internet telephone and/or circuit-switch technologies.

From the beginning, Bubble depended on PortaSwitch to provide convergent voice/broadband billing. The company uses PortaBilling100 (master, slave, and standby servers to ensure redundancy) to provision and bill customers, as well as multiple PortaSIP servers to control and route the calls and PortaUM for unified messaging and IVRs.

“With PortaSwitch we can combine voice, ADSL and wireless services in one monthly bill for our customers. Very few products on the market can accomplish this,” noted Pauwels. “Having PortaSwitch on our side enables us to improve our service quality and compete effectively in a crowded digital services marketplace.”

As Bubble’s business model evolves, it has the potential to develop new classes of customers as well as relationships with resellers, agents and various other service providers. PortaSwitch, through its support for origination and termination partner agreements, can deliver the partner management and settlement mechanisms that will ensure steady streams of revenue. What’s more, Pauwels says the platform has the capability to accommodate his company’s planned product roadmap.

“We foresee expanding into other services such as GSM-based mobile, TV on demand and more,” added Pauwels. “Five years from now we expect to be many times larger than we are now, in both the residential and enterprise segments. However we evolve, we know that PortaSwitch will be able to handle the growth.”

For more about Bubble, go to their website.

PortaOne Participated in International Telecommunication Week (ITW 2009) in Washington, DC This Week

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has successfully exhibited at the annual ITW show (International Telecommunication Week) in Washington, DC.

International Telecoms Week is the meeting point for the international telecoms wholesale community where companies from all over the world meet in Washington, DC to buy and sell both voice and data products and services.

PortaOne has presented its newest product, PortaBilling Oracularius, a converged billing platform designed specifically for the ultimate reliability, performance and virtually unlimited scalability in Oracle Real Application Cluster environments.

ITW attracts the entire industry with participants from all areas of the wholesale industry Tier 1, 2 and 3 carriers, mobile / wireless operators, ISPs, VoIP providers and ITSPs, voice, data, satellite, sub sea and fixed-line markets.

ITW also provides the platform for extensive networking opportunities with many social networking opportunities including numerous parties and social events taking place during the three days.

PortaSwitch Billing/Call Control Platform Allows Morodo Ltd. To Compete Globally Against Mobile Telephony Giants

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

UK-Based Morodo Uses Internet to Provide Ultra-Low Cost International Calling To Mobile Customers; Service Succeeds Thanks to PortaSwitch’s Reliability and Scalability.

For legions of mobile phone users around the world, MO-Call isn’t just a service—it’s a lifeline. MO-Call, from UK-based Morodo Ltd., is a virtual mobile network that lets people make international calls from their mobile phone at a fraction of the cost charged by their mobile telephony provider. The secret: a software add-in, downloaded from the MO-Call Web site to the user’s mobile handset. The add-in shifts outgoing calls directly to Morodo’s VoIP network for completion; savings can be as much as 90% below existing mobile network international tariffs.

As early as its pre-launch testing phase several years back, Morodo knew its service would be hugely popular. Morodo quickly realized its proprietary billing system and vendor call management software would not scale quickly enough to meet the heavy demand.

“We began seeking a robust, feature-rich billing and call control platform,” said James Barnes, Chief Technical Officer for Morodo Ltd. “After evaluating products from several vendors, we found that only PortaSwitch had the combination of reliability, scalability, features, call management capability, and product support we needed.”

PortaSwitch is a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution that lets IP telephony service providers deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, conferencing and more.

“PortaSwitch is flexible enough to support MO-Call’s multiple means of call set-up, call routing, billing—including multi-currency support—and multiple vendor management, plus other features such as Helpdesk ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response),” Barnes noted.

Morodo uses every product included in PortaSwitch: PortaBilling100, PortaSIP, and PortaUM (unified messaging platform), and PortaBridge, a conference server. Morodo’s pre-assessment of MO-Call’s popularity—and system stress—was evident as soon as PortaSwitch was installed in 2007. Thankfully, according to Barnes, PortaOne’s technical team has performed when needed.

“Our R&D has demanded much of PortaOne, frequently requesting support for new and innovative features in support of the MO-Call One Account communication service,” he stated. “Because we originate the majority of calls from cell phones using the MO-Call application suite, we have stretched the capabilities of PortaSwitch and the PortaSwitch development team. But they have always delivered for us.”

Since its rollout, PortaSwitch has improved Morodo’s business by making it faster and easier to manage call traffic, as well as to develop call features and calling products. The company has since introduced additional services including Web callbacks for PCs, mobiles and iPhones; instant messaging; free PC-to-PC calls, and low-cost international PC-to-phone calling. Barnes said PortaSwitch has not only alleviated the risk that is inherent in growing a broadly-focused, global telecom business, but also helped it compete head-to-head against Skype and the large mobile telephony providers.

“PortaSwitch’s billing just works. It’s the simplest thing—but the hardest to get right,” he said. “I have worked in the telecom industry for fifteen years for carriers on three continents, and have never used a billing platform with so few bugs or errors. It’s quite an achievement.”

For more about MO-Call, log on to www.mo-call.com; additional information about Morodo Ltd. can be found at www.morodogroup.com.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19 Is Ready for Commercial Deployment Following the Build 1 Release Today

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19 (Build 1) has been released today. The Build 1 incorporates multiple fixes and improvements and is based on feedback from the customers that has been received during the field tests of MR19 since early March 2009.

Based on the test results, the Maintenance Release 19-1 is now recommended for the general production deployment. MR19-1 contains various new features to enhance the services provided by carriers and telecommunication service providers.

Please contact your PortaOne support team to schedule the update.

Pre-Release New Features Announcement and Overview: PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 20

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The MR20 will be available for installation on the staging systems later in August.

Please find below a short overview of the new features that are going to be available with MR20:

New FreeBSD version	All installation CDs are now built using FreeBSD 6.4, which contains an updated set of device drivers, as well as performance and security enhancements.

Advanced ISP billing	New features include real-time charges for data transfer services, flexible definition of upload/download speed and the ability to apply time-based speed limits, data transfer quotas, automated service cut-off, and many more.
Access number routing	Ability to define from the web interface how calls to specific access numbers (DIDs) should be processed. For example, one access number should be routed to PortaUM for a prepaid card IVR, while another should go to PortaBridge for conferencing services. This greatly simplifies management of the different applications and services provided on your network.
Improved tariff upload procedure	It is now possible to process rows in the data file which contain multiple prefixes in the same column. Also, a new configuration option allows a rate, which has the “effective from” date in the past (and thus cannot be uploaded), to be automatically mapped to a rate “effective immediately” during upload.
Improvements in the invoicing module	The “void invoice” and “invoice recalculation” tasks can now be directly performed from an easy-to-use PortaBilling web interface.
RT integration for call detail submission	Gathering all the required information regarding “problem” calls can be a tedious process. Having all the required information in the initial request would greatly speed up problem resolution. Now it is possible to submit a new ticket to PortaOne support directly from the PortaBilling call information screen, with all the required information automatically attached.
Flexible discount plan lookup	When searching for an applicable discount plan, PortaBilling can now pattern-match a dialed phone number against all destinations used in the volume discount definition (similar to how this is done in call rating, i.e. matching the phone number against the destinations included in the tariff).
Node management	Simplified “Node” management screen for easier operations.

Call scenarios management	It is now possible to specify from the PortaBilling web interface what rules defining a call handling scenario (e.g. digest or IP-based authentication) are to be applied to a call. Rules can be based on remote IP addresses, device identification strings, and the like.

French and Portuguese language support	In order to allow ITSPs using PortaSwitch to expand their customer base even further, PortaUM now offers language support for French (for all IVR applications and the web interface) and Brazilian Portuguese (for applications such as calling card and balance recharge).

PortaOne Develops Dynamic Overdraft Protection Tools in PortaBilling to Make Sure the Server Providers Loose No Money

Mon, 11 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

When user attempts to use the service, the two most important questions are “Is he allowed to do so?” and “How much is he allowed to consume?”

The traditional authorization scheme, in which the system checks the amount of available funds at the beginning of a call, has many drawbacks. For one, the system does not react to balance changes (refunds, payments, or charges) made while the call is in progress. Since every session is authorized based on the total amount of resources available, overdrafts are possible in the case of multiple concurrent sessions and the like.

This is why PortaBilling (starting with ) now offers you the ability to dynamically lock the funds required to pay for a certain amount of a service before that service is used.

When a session (e.g. a voice call) starts or is in progress, the system “reserves” a small portion of the available funds to cover the next time interval (e.g. 5 minutes). As the end of this interval comes near, the system attempts to reserve funds to cover the next interval, and so on.

If no remaining funds are available, the call is disconnected. So if a customer sends an SMS message during a phone call (decreasing the available funds), or makes a credit card payment (increasing the available funds), this will immediately affect the call – either it will be disconnected sooner, or the maximum allowed call time will increase.

This allows to provide prepaid voice, video and data services with value-based add-ons (e.g. SMS messaging) to your customers in a pre-paid basis with a minimum risk of account overdraft.

You can find more details in PortaBilling Administrator Guide and in the Flash presentation.

PortaOne Releases the Full Set of Updated Administrator Guides for PortaSwitch MR19

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The MR19 updated versions of the Administrator Guides are available for the download now:

- PortaBilling100
- PortaSIP
- PortaUM

The guides provide PortaSwitch users with the most common examples and guidelines for setting up a VoIP network or enhancing a network with services such as IP TV. The last section of the document answers the most frequent questions users ask after running PortaSwitch for the first time.

The administrator guides can be found on the Documentation page.

PortaOne Exhibited at Billing & OSS in Las Vegas, NV and Planning for ITW in Washington, DC on June 1-2

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne team has participated in the Billing & OSS Conference and Expo, the major event focusing on the business and operations support systems requirements for next-generation communications networks.

Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director, meeting visitors at PortaOne's Booth.

Please meet us during the International Telecom Week in Washington, DC on June 1-2. Our booth is 800.

Radius Communications Selects PortaOne's PortaSwitch to Drive Its VoIP Business on Four Continents

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Scalability and Stability of PortaOne's IP Multimedia Subsystem Cited by Radius; Solution Will Support Consumer/Business Services in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe

Global VoIP service provider Radius Communications and communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc. today announced that Radius has chosen PortaOne's PortaSwitch IP multimedia subsystem as the main software platform to drive its wholesale and residential/business VoIP services. Radius executives explained that PortaSwitch, which replaces an earlier platform, will provide the stability and unlimited scalability Radius needs as it expands its VoIP business operations in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe.

With North American operations located in New York City, Radius Communications is a global telecommunications company providing VoIP services and integrated solutions to residential and business customers as well as to wholesalers, carriers and other business partners. Radius, which was founded in Nepal and still maintains headquarters offices there, currently has points of presence in the U.K. and U.S. It intends to soon expand its operations into Europe and Australia, with a goal of capturing market share on each of those continents.

As Radius Communications' new IP multimedia subsystem, PortaSwitch will provide the necessary infrastructure for Radius to aggressively enhance its existing services and grow its subscriber base beyond its current business locales. The company intends to leverage PortaSwitch for a number of purposes including:

Hosted softswitch-based IP and IP billing
Callshop and hosted callshop
VoIP termination
Wholesale carrier services
Corporate VoIP services
White-label VoIP services via resellers
Prepaid and postpaid calling cards

PortaSwitch is an integrated communication services and subscriber management solution that allows IP telephony services providers to unify voice, data and fax traffic within a single network. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and hosted IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, billing and provisioning, and much more.

"Our research revealed that PortaOne is considered best-in-market for IP subsystems," said Hemanta Sharma, chief executive officer of Radius Communications. "Existing customers told us that PortaSwitch offers not only a high degree of stability and scalability, but also very professional customer care, strong product support, and a promise of sustainable product delivery."

"Radius Communications is a forward-thinking company that is intent on providing a full range of IP services in multiple regions of the world. PortaSwitch is able to support virtually all critical services--from VoIP to wireless hot spots, calling cards to teleconferencing and hosted IP PBX," said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. "With PortaSwitch, Radius will be able to offer more minutes, and more services, to more customers in more places than ever before."

Sharma added that Radius Communications has already completed installation of PortaSwitch at the company's operations center in Queens, New York. "The training and support provided by PortaOne was consistent, structured and professional," he stated. "In partnership with PortaOne, our in-house developers are already working on providing enhanced products and services to satisfy our customers' requirements."

About Radius Communications:

Radius Communications is a leading Voice over IP (VoIP) solution provider and system integrator. The company is dedicated to delivering customer management and billing solutions for entrepreneurs, carriers, VoIP calling card operators and other VoIP service companies. In addition, Radius provides VoIP termination, wholesale termination, VoIP reseller, callshop reseller, A-Z termination and other kinds of VoIP solutions. Radius offers international voice termination services through its points of presence in the USA, United Kingdom and Nepal, and it directly interconnected with all major voice and data carriers worldwide including North and South America for Tier-1 VoIP termination.

New Documentation on PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19 Are Available for Download

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

We have just published the newest documents on the recent Maintenance Release 19:

New Features Guide, and
Web Reference Guide

As quite obvious from the titles, the documents review the new features of PortaSwitch available with Maintenance Release 19 and update the information on the PortaBilling100 administrator web interface.

Both guides can be downloaded from the Documentation page.

New Document Available for Download. PortaSwitch Handbook: SIP Services for Maintenance Release 18

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

We have just published the updated version of PortaSwitch Handbook: SIP Services for Maintenance Release 18 (Part I and Part II). The handbook provides PortaSwitch users with the most common examples and guidelines for setting up a VoIP network.

Main topics include:

- Standard SIP and PSTN-to-SIP Services
- Calls Between SIP Phones
- Auto-provisioning of IP Phones
- Wholesale Traffic Exchange
- Using DID Inventory
- Discount Plans

The last section of the document answers the most frequent questions users ask after running PortaSwitch for the first time.

Both parts of the document can be found on the Documentation Page.

PortaBilling Oracularius Concepts Guide Is Available for Service Providers Looking for the Most Scalable and Redundant Billing Solution

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has just published PortaBilling Oracularius Concepts Guide, a detailed document that provides PortaBilling Oracularius users with information about system architecture, basic concepts, and other matters required in order to deploy it to manage and rate communication services.

PortaBilling Oracularius, a billing software platform powered by Oracle Real Application Cluster, is specially designed to address the needs of the most demanding customers looking for the ultimately reliable and scalable platform that can meet the highest redundancy and performance standards.

Oracularius Concepts Guide can be downloaded from the Documentation page.

Pre-Release Announcement of PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19: Selected New Features Preview

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

M19 PortaOne Q&A Department is finishing testing of the PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 19.
This release will be available in the early March for field tests and expected to be fully available for commercial deployment in April 2009.


Routing plan selection	Multiple routing plans can now be associated with a single product. A specific tariff can be assigned to each routing plan. This tariff will be used when a customer subscribed to a specific plan places a call. In this case, a customer chooses to pay more for premium routes or to pay less less for cheaper routes. A default routing plan may be associated with a specific account, or the end-user may select a specific routing plan “on-the-fly” by dialing a special selection code before the number.
Dynamic re-authorization	The traditional authorization scheme - the system checks an amount of available funds at the end of each call - has many drawbacks. For example, the system does not react to balance changes (refunds, payments, or charges) made while the call is in progress. There is also a possibility of overdrafts in case when multiple simultaneous calls are allowed. PortaBilling now offers the ability to dynamically re-authorize the user’s activity. While a session (e.g. voice call) is in progress, the system “reserves” a small portion of the available funds to cover the next short time interval (e.g. 1 minute). As the end of this interval comes near, the system attempts to reserve funds to cover the next interval, and so on. If no remaining funds are available, the call is disconnected. So when a customer sends an SMS message during a phone call (decreasing the available funds), or makes a credit card payment (increasing the available funds), this immediately affects the call: it will be either disconnected sooner, or the maximum allowed call time will increase.
Subscriptions charged in advance	This feature allows to bad debt reduction and improves ITSP's cash-flow. Recurring charges can now be applied to future billing periods (e.g. subscription charges for March will be included on the invoice which the customer receives in February).
Alias generator	It is now possible to generate multiple aliases (e.g. DID numbers for a SIP trunking customer) under one account, in the same convenient way as when generating multiple accounts under a customer.
Account migration tool	Based on popular demand, a new function has been introduced in the XML API. This allows you to “move” an account from one customer to another, replicating the entire service configuration (account ID, password, service features, follow-me, and other related settings) and subscriptions on the new account, and terminating the old one (a copy of all old activity – CDRs, payments, etc. – thus remains available). This allows quick transfers in case of a data cleanup (e.g. customer merge).
Internet access service	PortaBilling now fully supports the provisioning of an Internet access service (DSL, ADSL, PPPoE) for Cisco BRAS and other compatible equipment. A PortaBilling administrator can provision the amount of available bandwidth per product or individual account, and also perform static IP allocation for certain accounts.

BLF support	This highly popular IP Centrex feature extends PortaSIP’s presence capability to popular modes of “business” IP phones (e.g. Polycom), so that a secretary can see the line status of other extensions.

Voice-to-text service	PortaUM is now integrated with the GotVoice service, which converts recorded voice mails into text messages, which can then be read from an email client or mobile phone. VoIP providers using PortaSwitch can now reliably offer subscribers the ability to read their voice mails and process information instantly.

PortaOne, FVN Alliance Inc. Partner To Offer Universal Phone Numbers To PBX Users

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

FVN Alliance Gives PortaOne’s PBXpress End Users One Phone Number For Inbound Calls From Anywhere Worldwide; Routing Supports Any Network, Real or Virtual

PortaOne, Inc. and Free Virtual Number (FVN) technology leader FVN Alliance Inc. today announced a partnership that will enable users of the PBXpress VoIP Private Branch eXchange (PBX) to enjoy universal personal phone number capability. The combination of technologies from the two companies will result in significantly greater convenience and productivity for PBXpress users, as well as for outside callers who communicate with them from across the street or around the world.

FVN Alliance’s FVN technology allows users to have a single, universal personal phone number good for inbound calls from all networks, real or virtual. By associating a phone number with an individual rather than a geographic location, it becomes easier for customers, clients and even co-workers to find employees. Call effectiveness is improved and communication networks—often the biggest barrier to workplace productivity—is optimized.

The FVN network from FVN Alliance supports cell phones, VoIP and land line networks. Users can route calls from the universal FVN environment to their current real number automatically or manually. Free virtual numbers are an ideal complement to PBXpress, a next-generation IP-based corporate branch exchange that allows enterprises to conduct all their call traffic using VoIP. In addition to dramatically reducing local, long distance and international calling costs, PBXpress offers call recording—a differentiating feature in the VoIP PBX segment.

PBXpress is a product of PBXpress Communications, Inc. PortaOne, a PBXpress distributor, is the only outside reseller that supplies 24/7 technical support for PBXpress. Support is provided by the same team that backs PortaOne’s carrier-grade IP multimedia subsystem, PortaSwitch.

“In today’s world where instant communication is essential, universal phone numbers are a major business advantage. By partnering with FVN Alliance, PortaOne is able to add this powerful capability to one of the best VoIP-based PBX platforms available,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne.

“Connecting the FVN concept to a Web-based branch exchange creates a structured solution that will benefit virtually any enterprise on the move,” said Valery Donchenko, president of FVN Alliance, Inc. “From law firms and consulting practices to sales organizations and software companies, the FVN network and PBXpress can change customer perceptions and generate a compelling service advantage.”

FVN Alliance’s universal personal phone number technology spans all real and virtual networks. Users are given an 11-digit global number (1 00X YYY ZZZZ) where X is the project index, YYY is the zone number, and ZZZZ is the individual phone number. The FVN network automatically routes the incoming call through its universal call environment to the specified location, normalizing the call regardless of its origin in a real or virtual network.

Enterprises with multiple points of presence in a single region can order FVN with Direct Inward Dialing (DID), enabling all calls to be funneled into one office. Users can also set a follow-me hierarchy that allows inbound calls to pursue a prioritized sequence (for example, office number, alternate office number, cell phone, home number) until the user is found. Sequences can be set manually or automatically via Web interface or through the system’s phone management features.

As an addition to PBXpress, the FVN network enhances other features of the IP branch exchange product including call recording, auto-detection and auto-provisioning of IP phones, auto-attendant, operator console, clustering, Web administration and self-care. The system also provides a PTSN fallback in case of Internet failure, allowing calls to be completed using traditional telecom phone lines.

For more information about FVN Network, log on to www.fvn-net.org.

About FVN Alliance Inc.: FVN Alliance Inc. is a highly professional international company with headquarters in Canada, regional offices in Europe and Latin America and a partner network that comprises 1000+ companies worldwide. Having well-established relations with telecom equipment manufacturers, FVN Alliance performs comprehensive equipment testing, certification and distribution with subsequent technical and consulting support.

PortaOne Announces PortaSwitch Support For GotVoice, Enabling VoIP Providers To Offer Voicemail-To-Text

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

GotVoice Combines Unparalleled Voicemail Transcription Accuracy with Delivery To Email or Wireless Devices; Telcos Gain New Revenue Stream, Competitive Advantage

PortaOne, Inc. today announced the successful integration between its PortaSwitch IP multimedia subsystem and the GotVoice G2 voicemail transcription platform. With GotVoice, VoIP providers using PortaSwitch can now reliably offer their subscribers the ability to read their voicemails and process the information instantly.

GotVoice, available to carriers on a pay-as-you-go basis, is a revolutionary technology designed specifically to convert voicemail into text. Having already processed millions of messages, the GotVoice service provides the highest voicemail-to-text quality in the industry.

“The addition of GotVoice gives PortaSwitch users a highly flexible and strategic service option,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne, Inc. “GotVoice can create a new revenue stream as a value-add for subscribers, or it can be offered at no cost as a way to attract or retain customers. In whichever form, this service is a unique differentiator—one with proven and lasting appeal for both business and non-business users in today’s competitive VoIP marketplace.”

The integrated GotVoice offering with the PortaSwitch platform requires no infrastructure upgrades or capital outlays, making it an affordable complement that’s easily enabled. PortaSwitch, a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution, lets IP telephony service providers unify their voice, data and fax traffic within a single network. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, conferencing, billing and provisioning and much more.

“One of the highest marketing priorities for any VoIP provider is to set itself apart from its competitors by offering valuable services that people want. The combination of PortaSwitch and GotVoice clearly satisfies this need,” said Colin Lamont, vice president of marketing for GotVoice. “PortaSwitch users will also appreciate the rapid time-to-market assured by the integration between both of our platforms.”

Carriers who employ GotVoice as a revenue-generating service are free to create billing plans with any number of options. Voicemail-to-text services can be charged on a per-use, monthly or unlimited basis; in addition, PortaSwitch will support additional options including discounts and packages based on bundled services. PortaSwitch is able to display charges in real-time via the Web on the subscriber’s account page, as well as in a monthly bill.

PortaOne will be exhibiting at Internet Telephony Expo (IT EXPO) East on February 2-4, 2009, Booth 826 in the Miami Beach Convention Center; to initiate the unique GotVoice offering within PortaSwitch, contact either company.

About GotVoice, Inc.: A pioneer in the integration of voice messaging services, GotVoice enables the convergence of everyday voice into the digital world. Its patented white label communications platform empowers consumers, businesses and service providers to receive, consume and unify voice communications utilizing email clients, through their mobile phone interface or via the GotVoice Website. With popular features such as Voicemail-to-Text, Visual Voicemail, the ability to share voice messages as digital audio files and the unification of wireless, landline, PBX and VoIP voicemail, GotVoice makes seamless communication possible, anywhere. Founded in 2003 by industry veterans with backgrounds from RealNetworks, Microsoft, Starwave, AT&T and Corbis, GotVoice works with all major business and residential carriers.

PortaOne Participated in Internet Telephony Conference & Expo East in Miami, FL

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne has successfully exhibited at ITEXPO East showcasing our VoIP billing, softswitch, and media server products for three days of the show. We consider this event to be the busiest and most successful for PortaOne in the last 18 months.

Andriy Zhylenko, CTO at PortaOne delivered a very well accepted “Service Provider IP Telephony: Considerations” presentation at the conference session dedicated to the service providers. Hу examineв a wide range of topics important to ITSPs including business model intricacies, choosing the right tools for the job (billing applications, class 5 softswitches, media servers to play IVRs, etc.), and planning the project properly.

PortaOne will be exhibiting at the next TMC show, ITEXPO West in Los Angeles, CA. Please visit our booth 427 in Los Angeles Convention Center on October 27-29, 2009.

PortaOne Announces Interoperability Of IP-Based PBXpress And Sangoma Telephony Cards

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Internet Telephony Service Providers Can Offer End-to-End Customer Premises Solution for Connecting IP PBX with Public Telephone Networks

PortaOne, Inc. announced today the interoperability of Sangoma’s A101/A102/A200 telephony cards with the PBXpress VoIP Private Branch eXchange (PBX), an advanced IP PBX platform that includes call recording.

PortaOne, a PBXpress distributor that also offers 24/7 technical support, considers the Sangoma/PBXpress combination a complete and highly reliable solution for ITSPs seeking to install an interconnected IP/PSTN PBX infrastructure.

PBXpress, the flagship product from PBXpress Communications Inc., brings traditional PBX into the Internet age. The unit allows enterprises to conduct all call traffic using VoIP, dramatically reducing local, long distance, and international calling costs.

In addition to many advanced IP PBX features available in PBXpress, such as call recording, auto-detection and auto-provisioning of IP phones, auto-attendant, operator console, clustering, Web administration and self-care, the system also provides a PTSN fallback in case of Internet failure, allowing calls to be completed using traditional telecom phone lines.

Sangoma’s digital telephony cards support both voice and data communications with Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs), including on-premises analog telephones. The company’s products, which mount on the PBXpress, feature telco-grade voice quality and hardware echo canceller Digital Signal Processors.

PortaOne has affirmed interoperability between PBXpress and three Sangoma products: the A101, single port card supporting up to 30 voice calls or 2.048 Mbps over a single T1/E1/J1 line; the A102, for up to 60 voice calls or 4.096 Mbps over two T1/E1/J1 lines; and the A200, a scalable FXO/FXS telephony card that expands to directly connect from 2 to 24 analog telephones.

“PBXpress and Sangoma cards make a dynamic combination able to support today’s heterogeneous telecom landscape,” said Kathleen Reed, Marketing Director of Sangoma. “Small to mid-sized companies seeking to incorporate the benefits of IP PBX into their existing telecom infrastructure will be pleased with the call quality, easy connectivity, and unparalleled reliability afforded by PBXpress and Sangoma.”

“Internet Telephony Service Providers need best-in-class IP PBX options for a wide range of customers,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. “PBXpress and Sangoma are an ideal solution for a great many of these users. Add in the 24/7 technical support provided by PortaOne, and ITSPs have an unbeatable competitive package. PortaOne is also proud to offer carrier-grade consulting and after-sale support for PBXpress. Our technical staff delivers the peace-of-mind that makes PBXpress and Sangoma the premier solution for ITSPs and their enterprise IP PBX customers.”

Sangoma is the premium provider of software-centric media and signal processing hardware. The company develops and manufactures the most scalable and reliable voice and Wide Area Network data cards in the industry, including the award-winning Advanced Flexible Telecommunications (AFT) product line. By offering the building blocks for all processing in any architecture, Sangoma gateways are tightly integrated and easily scalable. The result is a comprehensive toolset for creating cost-effective, powerful and flexible solutions. Founded in 1984, Sangoma Technologies Corporation is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX VENTURE:STC).

PortaOne CTO Andriy Zhylenko To Present Session For IT Service Providers At IT EXPO East On February 2, 2009

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

“Service Provider IP Telephony: Considerations” Will Address Many Business And Technical Challenges Facing Emerging Internet Telephony Service Providers

Andriy Zhylenko, chief technical officer, will present “Service Provider IP Telephony: Considerations” at TMC’s INTERNET TELEPHONY® Conference & EXPO East 2009. The conference session, to take place Monday, February 2, at 12PM in Room B211 of the Miami Beach Convention Center, will help new Internet telephony service providers understand the many business and technical pitfalls and opportunities available to them as they embark on their VoIP service offerings.

“Andriy Zhylenko offers a truly global perspective on the business of IP telephony. His expertise and know-how will be of immense benefit to businesses in the process of deploying a VoIP service package,” said Oleksandr Kapitanenko, president and chief executive officer of PortaOne. “We’re pleased that TMC has invited Andriy to present in such a prestigious setting as IT EXPO East 2009.”

“Service Provider IP Telephony: Considerations” will examine a wide range of topics important to VoIP service providers including business model intricacies, choosing the right tools for the job, and planning the project properly.

“We are very pleased that Andriy Zhylenko will be participating in this year’s IT EXPO East. PortaOne is widely recognized and respected in the VoIP infrastructure space as an industry leader,” said TMC president and conference chairman Rich Tehrani. “In fact, we are seeing a significant number of senior-level executives attending INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO as a means of learning about PortaOne technology so they may take advantage of its benefits.”

IT EXPO 2009, February 2-4, 2009, is the world’s largest and best attended IP communications trade show. At the 2008 East coast event last January, the show drew over 7,000 buyers and sellers of IP communications products and services.

PortaOne will be showcasing its IP multimedia subsystem, PortaSwitch, and other technologies during IT EXPO East from its exhibit, Booth 826 in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

PortaOne, InnoSystems Confirm Interoperability оf InnoSystems Softphone With PortaSwitch IP Services Platform

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Combination Allows Telecoms to Offer Personal/Business Customers Free Or Low-Cost Phone Calling from Customer PCs Using Only a Headset.

PortaOne and diversified telecom/media systems provider Innovative Systems of Communication LLC (InnoSystems) today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing between PortaOne's PortaSwitch IP multimedia subsystem and Flashphone, InnoSystems' softphone client. The interoperability gives IP service providers an assured, reliable peer-to-peer and peer-to-anyone phone call solution that can help initiate and preserve customer relationships.

Flashphone, based on InnoSystems' ZingayaT Media Server VoIP gateway, is a "call via Web site" solution for free or low-cost IP telephony. For end-users, Flashphone requires nothing more than a Web browser and sufficient bandwidth, along with a PC headset and the free Adobe Flash Player plug-in. The service can be offered free for peer-to-peer calls, or at low cost for calls to regular phone numbers.

InnoSystems' Flashphone is a market-ready softphone enhancement for PortaSwitch, PortaOne's flagship VoIP services platform. PortaSwitch is a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution that allows IP telephony services providers to unify voice, data and fax traffic within a single network. The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, billing and provisioning and much more.

"With both consumers and organizations of all sizes looking for ways to reduce costs, a 'call via Web site' capability is a highly attractive offering in today's global economy," said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. "The mutual support of PortaSwitch and Flashphone creates an instant value-add for service providers that can build loyalty and increase revenues."

"PortaOne and Flashphone is a powerful combination that can be offered both as an end-user product and a solution for e-Commerce, businesses or call centers," stated Alexey Aylarov, project manager of InnoSystems. "Interoperability with PortaOne demonstrates Flashphone's flexibility and reliability in supporting leading-edge IP multimedia systems."

InnoSystems, a global solutions provider for telecom, media and technology companies, has an extensive roster of clients that include France Telecom (Orange), isonet, digitrad.com, Max Telecom, FreeConferenceCall.com, Saatchi & Saatchi and Galaxy, among others.

PortaOne Extends Reliability and Scalability of PortaBilling100 via New PortaBilling Oracularius Using Oracle Real Application Cluster

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Product of Industry-Leading VoIP Customer Management and Billing Platform Gives Tier 1 And Fast-Growing Tier 2 Providers Virtually Unlimited Performance and Capacity Scalability.

COQUITLAM, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Global communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc. today announced a new product, which continues the evolution of its PortaBilling100 VoIP billing and customer management platform, designed especially for communication service providers who need an increased reliability, performance and scalability. The new product, PortaBilling Oracularius, meets the needs of Tier 1 and large, fast-growing Tier 2 providers, giving them a full complement of launching, pricing and provisioning capabilities combined with virtually unlimited scalability and assured reliability in Oracle Real Application Cluster environments.

PortaBilling Oracularius extends the proven flexibility and comprehensive functionality of PortaBilling100, PortaOne's highly popular and flexible B/OSS management solution, to an entirely new scale of reliable deployment. The full-featured result is a next-generation billing product which supports a new range of capabilities including real-time mediation and rating; multiple services billing; event-based, usage-based and periodic charging; reseller and distributor channels; e-commerce and customer self-care interface; support for resellers and distributors; custom charging formulas and programmable discount plans; prepaid/postpaid business models; and a support for full billing cycle, from service provisioning to invoicing and collection.

PortaBilling Oracularius is a converged billing system, making it easy to bundle:

Residential, IP Centrex and wholesale phone services
Data access services
IPTV
Mobile services
Value-added services (messaging, content download, etc.)

The system supports this level of bundling while keeping the centralized control of customer's funds and providing him with a consolidated bill. In addition, PortaBilling Oracularius offers an open architecture, easy integration with third-party systems via XML API, and uniquely offers its product source code to users in order to allow customization by PortaOne customers and/or third-party developers.

System Architecture

PortaBilling Oracularius uses Oracle Real Application Cluster(RAC) as a back-end data storage, while deploying the real-time billing logic on a cluster of multiple billing servers. This ensures that the system continues to operate even if any server experiences a hardware malfunction and allows to scale up the performance by simply adding more servers to the cluster.

"PortaBilling100 has an unparalleled reputation for reliability, built on deployments in hundreds of Tier 2 and Tier 3 telco environments. With PortaBilling Oracularius, larger providers can be assured of industry-leading performance and stability," said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. "As quickly as the VoIP industry is changing, providers need to know their management infrastructure can grow with them. PortaBilling Oracularius is able to answer that requirement."

Reliable, Flexible

PortaBilling Oracularius' real-time billing engine can work in conjunction with a wide range of telecommunication network equipment (both TDM and VoIP including NexTone) for user authorization, flexible call routing (LCR, time-of-day routing, dynamic routing based on ASR and call quality, profit-guarantee routing, customized routing plans) and CDR mediation and rating.

The product, built on Oracle Enterprise Linux server architecture, is proven as a highly reliable and secure carrier-grade solution. What's more, it is pre-integrated with PortaOne's PortaSIP (class 4/5 softswitch) for quick and low-cost standards-based implementation, as well as PortaOne's PortaUM Unified Messaging System and PortaBridge conferencing server as an out-of-the-box solution for residential and SMB-hosted IPPBX/Centrex services.

Email, Phone Support Options

"As with all its products, PortaOne supports PortaBilling Oracularius with the best technical support in the industry, covering both email and phone support options," Khalenkov stated. "Nearly half of our corporate resources are invested in tech support, with an additional third devoted to R&D. We stand ready to help our users make the most of their software investment by answering questions, adding or changing features, or providing guidance and consultation where needed."

Unlimited Perpetual License

In addition to its proven reliability and flexibility, PortaBilling Oracularius as with PortaBilling100, is set apart in the industry through its unlimited perpetual license. The powerful advantage allows users to grow quickly through an all-in-one product, without having to renegotiate or reconfigure their customer support platform. With the embedded license for O Oracle Real Application Cluster, supplied with PortaBilling Oracularius, all required Oracle licenses are included into the cost of PortaBilling Oracularius - this provides drastic savings comparing to the cost of purchasing the Oracle licenses separately.

PortaOne offers a full range of support services for PortaBilling Oracularius including technology and integration consulting, training and more. For more information about PortaBilling Oracularius or any of PortaOne's carrier-grade infrastructure products contact our sales team.

New Features Guide and Flash Presentation for MR17 & MR18

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Maintenance Release 18: New Features Guide and a brand new flash presentation of the new features available in the latest maintenance releases (MR17 and MR18) of PortaSwitch are available on PortaOne website:

For more information about new features of PortaSwitch please visit the Documentation page or contact our sales team.

PortaOne Has Presented its Billing and VoIP Software Products to the Professional Telecommunications Community at Vietnam Telecomp 2008

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Today was the third day of a very busy trade show marathon at Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon where PortaOne team is participating at Vietnam Telecomp 2008, the major regional telecommunication exhibition.

We have been exposed to Vietnam for a few years already and several Vietnamese companies are proud to be PortaOne customers. However, the show in Saigon attracts not only local companies but also potential customers from all over Asia-Pacific: Taiwan, Cambodia, Singapore, and many more.

Vietnam Telecomp proved to be a successful exhibition and we are very confident in further rapid development of this market

PortaOne, MobileMax Announce Interoperability of Mobile Solutions Supporting International Calling/Billing

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

PortaSwitch IP Multimedia Subsystem and MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client Work Together to Create Reduced-Rate Option for Service Providers and Subscribers

COQUITLAM, British Columbia and PLANO, Texas, -- Global communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc. and Mobilemax(TASE: MBMX)today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing between PortaOne's PortaSwitch software-based billing and customer management platform and the MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client. Together, the two technologies create an assured, end-to-end business solution that supports automatic and seamless least-cost international calls via virtually any popular mobile handset.

MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client is a client-side software application enabling wireless subscribers to make international calls from their handset with minimal keystrokes using a VoIP network, powered by PortaSwitch, instead of the mobile operator network. As a result the end user avoids high rates for international calls imposed by mobile operators; instead, the individual only uses ordinary domestic mobile phone minutes, and is charged by the VoIP operator at a low rate for the international portion of the call.

When the call is connected to the PortaSwitch media server, the MobileMax application supplies the user's credentials and the destination number to the PortaSwitch so there is no need for the end-user to enter any additional information. The user's balance is verified in PortaBilling and then the call is routed to one of the international carriers using PortaSwitch real-time routing capabilities (LCR, adaptive routing, etc.). Upon the completion of the call, the user's account in PortaBilling is charged according to the international call rate of the ITSP.

"While the number of mobile users worldwide continue to grow, the number of landline users is continually dropping. Mobile carriers are attempting to lock customers into an exclusive relationship for international calls," said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director for PortaOne. "MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client allows an independent ITSP to provide international calls to mobile subscribers without entering into any cumbersome agreements with mobile carriers, while keeping the service easy-to-use comparing to the pre-paid calling card operators. At the same time, PortaSwitch allows service providers to monetize this opportunity by creating a broad customer base and charging for the international calls from cell phones. This offers a considerable competitive advantage and secures a large market segment. The assured operation of PortaSwitch and the MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client makes our two technologies a reliable, cost-effective solution that can create real differentiation in the marketplace."

"Time to market is critical in the mobile industry, which is why MobileMax is continuously working to provide rock-solid solutions that can be deployed quickly," noted Perry Nalevka, MobileMax director of business development. "These two technologies provide our carrier and service provider customers with a standards-based platform for smooth, low-cost international calling that also encourages subscribers to use their infrastructure on a continuous basis."

The MobileMax Personal Edition Mobile Client currently supports more than 500 popular handset models, with new models added continually.

For more information, please write to sales@portaone.com or call 866.747.8647.

About MobileMax:

MobileMax (TASE: MBMX), founded in 2004, is a key player in the Unified Communication (UC) arena. Its unique patent-pending Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) solutions enable seamless call routing -- essentially extending the enterprise's real-time communication functionality to the mobile device, enabling users to have one device with one number, one address book and one voice mailbox, always using the lowest cost network for connectivity.

MobileMax licenses its solutions to telecom service providers, carriers and unified communication providers.

The MobileMax technology-agnostic solution is comprised of two components; the Provisioning Server and the Personal/Enterprise Mobile Client. The server generates Mobile Client applications on the fly -- configured to customers' requirements -- and sends them to end user's mobile phones. The Client resides in the user's mobile device, routes outgoing calls to alternative networks and provides enterprise communication features.

The solution supports over 500 mobile phone devices and easily integrates into any existing PBX, VoIP or other telecommunications systems.

PortaOne Presented Telecommunication Software Products for New Generation Service Providers at ITEXPO West 2008

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has finished today an intensive 2-day marathon of unstoppable meetings with clients, partners, and telecommunication industry professionals at ITEXPO West 2008 in Los Angeles, CA.

Now when the VON shows are gone, ITEXPO events remain one of the most important forums of the next generation telecommunication professionals in the North America.

PortaOne will also exhibit at the 12th International Exhibition in Vietnam on Telecommunications and Information Technology Vietnam Telecomp 2008 in HoChiMinh City in November 26 -29 this year. We will proudly present our billing, softswitch, and unified messaging products to the Vietnamese emerging market. Please visit our booth 3B35 at HoChiMinh City International Exhibition and Convention Centre.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 18

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

This is an official announcement of PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 18.

PortaOne support team now starts installing it to the staging systems of selected clients. Please contact support to schedule the update of your system.

Below is a short summary of the new features available in the MR18:


Support for "email" account IDs	To simplify deployment of converged communication services, where the same ID is used for email, instant messaging and calls, PortaBilling now supports the use of an email address instead of an E.164 number for SIP services. Such IDs can now be employed for services where users were previously limited to a "phone number", e.g. a forwarding list in the follow-me configuration.
Service configuration in product	With MR18 you gain the ability to specify default service configuration parameters as part of a product's definition. This allows you to apply the same settings (e.g. maximum bandwidth, availability of unified communications service, etc.) for all accounts that have this product.
Mass change of subscription plans	If you decide to change the mandatory subscriptions included in a certain product, you can now propagate changes to all accounts with this product in a single click.
Routing to domain name	You can now specify the domain address of the gateway/proxy in the outgoing connection configuration, and PortaSwitch will dynamically resolve it to the IP address.
New and improved monitoring system	The new system includes an extended set of monitoring probes, enabling you to monitor not just system parameters like CPU load or disk space, but also PortaBilling-specific functionalities such as the execution of periodic tasks. The monitoring system provides advanced control over various alerts via a web GUI. This enables easy, efficient supervision of all aspects of PortaSwitch operations by PortaOne staff. (The new monitoring system will also be made available to customers running PortaSwitch releases MR16 and MR17.)
Provisioning bandwidth allocation	Available bandwidth for data transfer services (such as WiFi) can now be controlled via the PortaBilling web interface with a service attribute in the account configuration.
Billing engine log viewer	The GUI for browsing call processing logs generated by the billing engine for easier troubleshooting has been improved. These logs are now presented with text indentation and color highlighting for enhanced clarity. Embedded XML formatting allows easy integration with third-party applications for log processing. MR18 also introduces log indexing, which can be done on a dedicated server for customers with large log volumes. This allows rapid retrieval of the required information with a minimum load on the server's CPU and disk system.
Improved cost/revenue report	The built-in cost/revenue report now provides sub-totals for individual services.

Instant messaging	PortaSIP now includes an advanced messaging module that enables online messaging, message storage on the server side for offline users (so they can receive messages later), and the option of keeping a full message history on the server
Call waiting	PortaSwitch can now control delivery of the call waiting feature to IP phones. This ensures that it is only supplied to users who have it activated on the PortaSwitch side (regardless of whether it is enabled on the IP phone itself). This enables you to offer "Call Waiting" as an add-on service.
RTP proxy control at the account level	In addition to the option of media proxying based on a specific vendor's proxying policy, it is now possible to activate full media proxying for a specific account (phone line). This can be used to force NAT traversal on the PortaSwitch side in complex network configurations, or to provide users with an extra level of privacy.
Multi-DID control	If multiple DIDs have been allocated to a single user via the "Account Alias" feature, the PortaSwitch administrator can define which of these will be allowed independent SIP registrations (i.e. they can be used on different phones) and which can be used only in conjunction with the main account. This extends the available service options to hosted IP PBX and SIP trunking services.
Log indexing	MR18 also introduces indexing of SIP communication logs - this significantly reduces time required to build a visual call flow diagram and load on the server's CPU and disk system while doing it.

Personalization IVR	Users can now perform account self-configuration via the IVR menu (such as managing their forwarding mode and follow-me numbers) or receive extra information (e.g. hearing the last calls made or received on their phone line).
Hebrew language support for IVR	Users can now access PortaUM IVRs (personalization, check balance, pre-paid card application and others) in Hebrew.

PortaOne Has Exhibited at ITU Telecom Asia 2008

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Today was the last day of ITU Telecom Asia 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand, one of the largest
telecommunication shows in Asia Pacific region. The event features the
latest technologies and innovations, and an extensive forum that explores
key technologies, policies and applications driving Asia's ICT sector.

This is not the first time PortaOne participates in trade shows organized by
International Telecommunication Union. We already successfully exhibited
at ITU Telecom World 2006 in Hong Kong, China in December 2006.

Despite of recent political turmoil in Thailand that somewhat effected the
flow of participants during the show days, we consider ITU Telecom Asia 2008
a definite success: we met new clients and prospects interested in billing,
softswitches, and other applications for converged communication services,
established contacts with local telecom community, and even signed a
contract, a rare thing at this kind of events.

The next show where PortaOne will be participating is going to happen in
less than two weeks in Los Angeles, CA. Meet us at ITEXPO West 2008 on Wednesday, September 17 (4:00pm - 8:00pm) and on Thursday, September 18 (11:00am - 5:00pm)

PortaCare Flash Presentation

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The presentation provides detailed information on the contents of the
technical support and maintenance services, support organization and
processes, as well as other inside information about PortaCare and the team
that serves or customers 24/7.

PortaBilling100 Gets a Performance Boost with a New Dedicated 64-bit Database Server

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The recent development in PortaBilling100 architecture now enables performance savvy customers to have their database on a dedicated server. This distributed architecture employs the capacity of a dedicated server to run resource intensive tasks such as statistics queries and web interface requests and operations.

All database functions can now run on a separate server, which uses 64-bit FreeBSD version 7.0. In addition to many performance improvements (especially in the area of multi-processing) done in the operating system, 64-bit architecture allows to use more than 4GB of RAM in the server. This extra memory, used by MySQL for caching, drastically reduces the execution time for SQL queries. So overall this greatly enhances the call processing capacity of your PortaBilling100 Master server, the performance improvement for some complex systems and sophisticated businesses can be up to 200%.

PortaOne customers can also use a dedicated 64-bit database server to run the PortaBilling100 slave database, this provides more performance capacity on your slave server for web requests or XML API and reduces time for SQL queries execution, resulting in faster web GUI for your administrators and end-users.

The 64-bit database servers can be part of your existing PortaBilling100 system and does not require an additional license. A separate PortaCare contract is required to cover this server. Please contact your sales manager for a quote to order a separate database server.

CommunicAsia 2008 is Over

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Today was the last day of a very busy show at PortaOne’s booth in Canadian pavilion in Singapore.

The nest event PortaOne will be participating at is ITU Telecom Asia 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. The expo will take place in September 2-5, 2008; and our booth number at IMPACT Center is D11.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 17

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

	This is an official announcement of PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 17.
PortaOne support team now starts installing it to the staging systems of selected clients. Please contact support to schedule the update of your system

Below is a short summary of the new features available in the MR17:


Adaptive routing	Dynamic measurement of vendor’s quality parameters (ASR, ALOC, PDD, etc.) with ability to receive alarms or remove a route from the routing plan when quality falls below the specified threshold
Customized account/customer info	Administrator’s ability to define, edit, and validate a set of extra attributes (e.g. driver’s license ID or tax code) to extend any standard PortaBilling100 information
Improved customer self-care interface	Dashboard for the customer self-care interface, to conveniently present the most important billing and service information (with the special focus on various IP Centrex features)
Enhanced account management	Ability to manually terminate a whole customer with all its accounts

Group pickup	Ability to answer a call ringing on another’s phone by dialing a special code from your phone
Web administration improvements	Web administration page for creation and management of virtual PortaSIP instances
Presence services	This allows users to keep others informed of their status, availability, and how they may be contacted – all before a communication session even begins.

Call forward management	IVR application for self-managemant of the call forwarding by an end-user
Improved callback application	Callback application to automatically register your CLI in the system for the future use
Spanish language support	Support for the Spanish language in the PortaUM management IVRs and pre-paid card application

A complete copy of the MR17 New Features Guide can be found on the top of the Documentation page.

PortaOne is Exhibiting at CommunicAsia 2008 in Singapore

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

This is the third time for PortaOne to exhibit at the major Asia-Pacific telecommunication event. CommunicAsia has been taking place in Singapore since 1979 and PortaOne exhibited here last year and in 2006. This year our booth is in Canadian pavilion.

The show will continue till Friday and will be open for public from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm on Wednesday and Thursday, and from 10:30 am to 4:00 pm on Friday. Our booth number is 3L1-01 in Hall 3.

No VON.x Conference & Expo in Europe This Year

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

We have been recently informed by our former account manager at VON.x organizer that the numerous rumors about Pulvermedia ’s financial problems, total staff lay-offs, and inability to continue running the scheduled shows this year are in fact true. We did not manage to receive any comments on this from TICC Capital Group, the investor to Pulvermedia.

We assume that the show in Amsterdam will not happen at all, and therefore regret to inform our customers and interested prospects that under these circumstances PortaOne will not exhibit at VON.x in Amsterdam in June this year.

Since 2005, PortaOne has invested a lot to participate in every major VON event in the USA and Europe. We now have our booths booked for Amsterdam and Boston shows this year and even San Jose expo in 2009. Unfortunately, it is our understanding at the moment that these shows will not happen either.

PortaOne is Exhibiting at Billing & OSS World in Chicago, IL

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Today was the first and very busy day at 2008 Billing & OSS World Conference and Expo in Chicago, IL. Here are several pictures of PortaOne’s booth:

Our current customers and everybody else who has a particular interest in VoIP business applications still have a chance tomorrow to meet our team and see a live demo of our products at our booth 606 in McCormick Place from 12 pm to 4 pm.

Two New Installation Guides for Maintenace Release 16: PortaSIP & PortaUM

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The MR16 Installation Guides for both PortaSIP and PortaUM are now available on the Documentation Page. As it is quite obvious from the documents’ names, their main purpose is to provide a full step-by-step explanation of the installation process for PortaSIP and PortaUM.

PortaUM Administrator Guide: Maintenance Release 16

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaUM Administrator Guide: Maintenance Release 16, a document that provides a general overview of PortaUM as a platform for the delivery of enhanced business and residential communications services, is now available for download from our Documentation page.

The MR16 includes several new features and improvements for PortaUM:

Stand-by PortaUM
Distributed call processing with multiple PortaUM servers
Improvements in dial-by-name auto attendant menu
Flexible configuration options for prepaid card IVR application

PortaBilling100 Installation Guide: Maintenance Release 16

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaBilling100 Installation Guide for Maintenance Release 16, a document that provides a general overview of the PortaBilling100 installation process, is now available for download from our Documentation page.

PortaBilling100 can potentially run on most modern UNIX operating systems, assuming these are equipped with such basic items as an ANSI C compiler. However, it might be difficult for an inexperienced system administrator to install and configure the operating system in such a way as to meet all the requirements and provide the best performance.

Installing all the prerequisite software (libraries, Perl modules, MySQL server) might also be a time-consuming task, with a high risk of making some hard-to-trace error.

That is why the PortaBilling100 JumpStart installation CD provides a quick and seamless way to perform a complete server installation from scratch, in less than 15 minutes. It contains installation media for FreeBSD 6.3, with all the necessary packages and PortaBilling100 itself. The standardized installation procedure also simplifies further system maintenance.

Premium PortaCare is Introduced to Expand the Services Provided to PortaOne Customers

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has introduced Premium PortaCare, an extended list of services available to the current PortaCare subscribers. In addition to all standard PortaCare features and services, an annual Premium PortaCare includes:

24/7×365 unlimited access to the dedicated PortaOne call center
Priority assessment, research, and quoting for the custom development assignments
Complimentary one-day training session at one of PortaOne offices in North America or Europe
Optional two-day on-site configuration assistance visit by a PortaOne support engineer (travel related expenses not included)

For more information about Premium PortaCare support and maintenance program please contact our sales team.

PortaSwitch Handbook: Prepaid & Postpaid Billing for MR16

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has just published the newest version of PortaSwitch Handbook: Prepaid and Postpaid Billing for MR16. This document is aimed to provide PortaSwitch users with step-by-step instructions and examples for setting up various prepaid and postpaid services on a VoIP network.

Part I (Prepaid Billing) and Part II (Postpaid Billing) of the Handbook are available on the Documentation page

PortaSwitch Handbook: Prepaid & Postpaid Billing for MR16

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Part I (Prepaid Billing) and Part II (Postpaid Billing) of the Handbook are available on the Documentation page.

Free Expo Pass to Billing & OSS World in Chicago, IL

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Billing World & OSS 2008 Conference and Expo is the premier event for business and operations support systems.

As a courtesy for our current and potential clients, PortaOne distributes free expo passes for those who would like to visit our booth 606 on April 29 - May 2, 2008 in Chicago, IL.

Please contact us to receive the pass in advance before the show.

Maintenance Release 17 Pre-Release Feature Announcement

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

This is a pre-release announcement of the new features to become available for our customers with the Maintenance Release 17.

The MR17 is scheduled for April this year.


Adaptive routing	Dynamic measurement of vendor’s quality parameters (ASR, ALOC, PDD, etc.) with ability to receive alarms or remove a route from the routing plan when quality falls below the specified threshold
Customized account/customer info	Administrator’s ability to define, edit, and validate a set of extra attributes (e.g. driver’s license ID or tax code) to extend any standard PortaBilling100 information
Improved customer self-care interface	Dashboard for the customer self-care interface, to conveniently present the most important billing and service information (with the special focus on various IP Centrex features)
Enhanced account management	Ability to manually terminate a whole customer with all its accounts

Group pickup	Ability to answer a call ringing on another’s phone by dialing a special code from your phone
Web administration improvements	Web administration page for creation and management of virtual PortaSIP instances

Call forward management	IVR application for self-managemant of the call forwarding by an end-user
Improved callback application	Callback application to automatically register your CLI in the system for the future use
Spanish support	Support for the Spanish language in the PortaUM management IVRs and pre-paid card application

Please note that this is a preliminary announcement and the list above is not 100% complete and confirmed. For more information please contact us

Spring VON.x is Over, Meet PortaOne at Billing & OSS World in Chicago

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There were two busy days at Spring VON.x in San Jose, CA this year. Here are some pictures from the show:

The next show PortaOne participates in is Billing & OSS World in Chicago, IL on April 30 - May 1, 2008. It will take place in McCormick Place, and our booth will be located at lot 606.

PortaOne is Exhibiting at Spring 2008 VON.x in San Jose, CA

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Today is the first day of Spring VON.x exhibition in San Jose, CA this year.

PortaOne’s booth number is 927. Please visit us to meet our sales and engineering team and see the live demo of our products.

PortaSwitch Handbook: SIP Services for Maintenance Release 16

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne has just published the newest version of PortaSwitch Handbook: SIP Services for MR16. This document is aimed to provide PortaSwitch users with the most common examples and guidelines for setting up a VoIP network. The last section of the document answers the most frequent questions users ask after running PortaSwitch for the first time.

Part I (SIP Services) and Part II (Advanced SIP Services) of the Handbook are available on the Documentation page.

PortaOne is Exhibiting at CeBIT 2008 in Hanover, Germany

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

This week our sales team is busy exhibiting at the largest IT expo in the world, CeBIT 2008 in Hanover, Germany. Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director at PortaOne, today delivered a presentation on the Do’s and Dont’s when Selecting a Billing Application. The presentation was well received at the IP Central and Wireless World @ CeBIT.

Our team will be at CeBIT till Sunday, March 9. Please stop by at our booth D34 (Hall 13, IP Central).

Covergence, PortaOne Interoperability Enables First Joint Customer BandTel to Offer VoIP and Other Real-Time Communications

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

BandTel Chooses Covergence and PortaOne for Secure and Manageable Access to VoIP, and Secure, Reliable SIP Trunks

MAYNARD, Mass., March 3, 2008 – Covergence®, the leading provider of next generation Session Border Control solutions, today announced the successful completion of interoperability testing with PortaOne, a leading global vendor of carrier grade billing and provisioning software for Internet Telephony Service Providers such as BandTel, the first customer to make use of this interoperability. The testing confirms compatibility between the award-winning Covergence Session Manager and the PortaOne PortaSwitch.

As the communications landscape quickly evolves, service providers need next generation networking equipment that offers a clear and cost-effective transition path between traditional voice services and IP-based networks. Providers must ready their networks to support the real-time services like video, voice, presence and IM, that users demand.

As a part of this evolution, BandTel delivers SIP trunking solutions to customers as an affordable, high quality alternative to traditional leased line services. Because of its sophisticated network infrastructure which is now enhanced by the Covergence and PortaOne relationships, BandTel is helping customers realize the benefits of VoIP and SIP trunking. Value, quality and policy enforcement are critical success factors for BandTel and its customers.

“By combining the capabilities of the Covergence Session Manager with the flexible routing control provided by PortaSwitch, BandTel can control all aspects of an Internet telephony session,” said Chris Dunk, CEO at BandTel. “The flexibility of the solution has allowed our technical experts to create custom applications that contribute to BandTel’s highly configurable, highly controllable, fully redundant worldwide SIP network.”

PortaOne enables service providers like BandTel to quickly and efficiently implement, manage and deliver a wide range of solutions with PortaSwitch, a single set of software products that include such applications as VoIP billing and provisioning, class 4 and 5 SIP softswitch, unified messaging and conferencing applications, and IP PBX software. The completion of interoperability testing with Covergence further affirms PortaOne’s capabilities to offer complex and flexible solutions to customers like BandTel.

“With proven interoperability between the Covergence Session Manager and the PortaSwitch, we can strongly support the converged services that customers are beginning to demand,” said Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director at PortaOne. “While billing and softswitch solutions included in PortaSwitch support inter alia various routing scenarios, real time billing, and highly sophisticated customer and vendor provisioning, the testing with Covergence has allowed us to ensure proper security for next-generation services like encryption, message authentication, and replay protection to data.”

“Telecommunications is moving beyond voice to include multi-media services, and leading vendors like PortaOne need to guarantee a proven solution for delivering these services,” said Bob O’Neil, president and CEO for Covergence. “The Covergence Session Manager works with PortaOne’s offerings to make next-generation communications a reality for customers like BandTel.”

The Covergence Session Manager was developed to meet a full range of needs; from those of the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market all the way up to the world’s largest service provider. The solution is available from Covergence immediately and can be purchased by contacting sales@covergence.com or by calling 978.823.5200.

PortaSwitch is an IP Multimedia Subsystem or a software-based communication services platform allowing modern communication providers to unify voice, data and fax traffic within a single network. PortaOne customers that include emerging ITSPs, SIP trunking wholesalers, and tier 1 national carriers benefit from 24/7 technical support, onsite training, and flexibility of the software source code provided with unlimited and perpetual license.

For more information, please write to sales@portaone.com or call 866.747.8647.

About Covergence
Covergence is the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services. The award-winning Covergence Session Manager combines traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools. The Covergence Session Manager is purpose-built to securely and reliably connect users to VoIP and multi-media services while giving organizations the complete control and visibility they require. www.covergence.com.

About PortaOne
PortaOne is a leading global communications infrastructure vendor enabling ITSPs (Internet telephony service providers) and voice network operators to quickly and efficiently implement, manage and deliver a wide range of billing and softswitch solutions for IP telephony services. The company’s products provide a comprehensive range of applications, including calling cards, Hosted IPPBX, IP Centrex, Vonage-like and Skype-like services.

Established in 1997, PortaOne is a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada with sales, support, and development offices around the globe.

About BandTel
BandTel is a leading worldwide provider of SIP Trunking services. The company is dedicated to ensuring its customers and partners alike have access to the most reliable, end-to-end VoIP service available on the market today. Its N-Plus™ architecture is designed to solve the throughput and redundancy problems on high-capacity SIP-based networks and eliminate any single point of failure. BandTel is headquartered in Newport Beach, California.

Covergence and Covergence Session Manager are registered trademarks of Covergence. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Covergence: Heather Sill, 781.789.8907, hsill@covergence.com
Media Relations: Mike Reilly, 617.758.4154, covergence@famapr.com
PortaOne: Roman Khalenkov, 604.628.2508, contact@portaone.com

PortaBilling External System Interfaces Guide

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

We have published an updated version of the PortaBilling External System Interfaces Guide.

This document is now compliant with MR16 and provides information for developers who want to interface their applications and systems with PortaBilling100.

Internet Telephony Conference & Expo in Miami, FL is Over

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Today was the last day of another successful exhibition at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo in Miami, FL.

As this is our fifth time participating in ITEXPO, PortaOne is regular exhibitor at TMC events.

This show made our team very busy with potential clients meetings and live product demonstration.

The next ITEXPO will take place in Los Angeles, CA on September 17-18, 2008. You can find us in Los Angeles Convention Center at Booth 431.

However, you do not to have to wait until September to speak to us personally. We will be exhibiting at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany in less then two months on March 4-9. Please stop by at our Booth D34 (Hall 13, IP Central).

The Second PortaSwitch MR16 New Features Web Cast

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

All PortaOne customers (primely those located in Europe, Middle East and the Eastern parts of the US and Canada) and everybody else who is interested in PortaOne’s products development are invited to attend the second web cast dedicated to the new features of PortaSwitch.

When:

The web cast will take place on Tuesday next week, January 29, 2008 at

3 PM GMT (UK and Portugal), or
4 PM CET (Western and Central Europe), or
10 AM EST (America’s East Coast).

Why:

We urge all PortaOne customers to participate in this PortaSwitch MR16 Web cast presentation and are confident that you will find value add feature benefits which can become new sources of revenue to your organization including our enhanced PortaOne product platform features for your exiting customer base and potential new sales.

What:

Converged Billing: Services & Service Types
Account Aliases
Favorite Number Billing Support
CDR Re-Rating Tool
Multiple Tariffs Applied to Reseller
Other Improvements

Conditional Call Processing
SIP TAPI Support
Efficiency Improvements

Improvements
New Features
PortaBridge

Upon completion of our presentation there will be a short Q&A session.

How:

Here are some details on how access the webcast:

Go to https://soc.webex.com/soc/j.php?ED=99860422&UID=0
Click “Join”
Enter Name, meeting password “porta1″ and email address
If you don’t find it, you may search by meeting number: 594 442 187
Especially on Vista you may have to install the meeting manager before: http://support.webex.com/support/downloads.html

For audio:

Dial to 1-888-296-6500 (or +1-913-227-1219)
Enter guest code 168027

WebEx will automatically setup Meeting Manager for Windows the first time you join a meeting. To save time, you can setup prior to the meeting. For Help or Support please go to WebEx, click Assistance, then Click Help or click Support. You can also add this meeting to your calendar program (for example Microsoft Outlook).

The host requests that you check for compatibility of rich media players for Universal Communications Format (UCF) before you join the session. UCF allows you to view multimedia during the session.

PortaSwitch MR16 New Features Web Cast

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

All PortaOne customers and everybody else who is interested in PortaOne’s products development are invited to attend a web cast dedicated to the new features of PortaSwitch.

When:

The webcast will take place on Wednesday next week, January 23, 2008 at 5 PM Pacific Standard Time (for our clients in Asia and Pacific it is going to be on Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 9 AM in Singapore and Hong Kong, and at noon in Sydney, Australia).

We will have another webcast on January 29, 2008 for our clients located in European and Middle East time zones. We will separately notify on the exact timing of it.

Why:

What:

Converged Billing: Services & Service Types
Account Aliases
Favorite Number Billing Support
CDR Re-Rating Tool
Multiple Tariffs Applied to Reseller
Other Improvements

Conditional Call Processing
SIP TAPI Support
Efficiency Improvements

Improvements
New Features
PortaBridge

Upon completion of our presentation there will be a short Q&A session.

How:

Here are some details on how access the webcast:

Go to https://soc.webex.com/soc/j.php?ED=99860422&UID=0
Click “Join”
Enter Name, meeting password “porta1″ and email address
If you don’t find it, you may search by meeting number: 594 442 187
Especially on Vista you may have to install the meeting manager before: http://support.webex.com/support/downloads.html

For audio:

Dial to 1-888-296-6500 (or +1-913-227-1219)
Enter guest code 168027

The host requests that you check for compatibility of rich media players for Universal Communications Format (UCF) before you join the session. UCF allows you to view multimedia during the session.

PortaSwitch MR16 New Features Web Cast

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

All PortaOne customers and everybody else who is interested in PortaOne’s products development are invited to attend a web cast dedicated to the new features of PortaSwitch.

When:

We will have another webcast on January 29, 2008 for our clients located in European and Middle East time zones. We will separately notify on the exact timing of it.

Why:

What:

Converged Billing: Services & Service Types
Account Aliases
Favorite Number Billing Support
CDR Re-Rating Tool
Multiple Tariffs Applied to Reseller
Other Improvements

Conditional Call Processing
SIP TAPI Support
Efficiency Improvements

Improvements
New Features
PortaBridge

Upon completion of our presentation there will be a short Q&A session.

How:

Here are some details on how access the webcast:

Go to https://soc.webex.com/soc/j.php?ED=99860422&UID=0
Click “Join”
Enter Name, meeting password “porta1″ and email address
If you don’t find it, you may search by meeting number: 594 442 187
Especially on Vista you may have to install the meeting manager before: http://support.webex.com/support/downloads.html

For audio:

Dial to 1-888-296-6500 (or +1-913-227-1219)
Enter guest code 168027

The host requests that you check for compatibility of rich media players for Universal Communications Format (UCF) before you join the session. UCF allows you to view multimedia during the session.

Free VIP Pass to the Internet Telephony Expo in Miami, FL

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne is preparing to participate in the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo that will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, FL in almost two weeks from now.

Our current and prospective clients can meet PortaOne sales team at our Booth 726 for a live demo of our products during the exhibit hours:

Thursday, January 24 (11:30 am - 5:00 pm), and
Friday, January 25 (11:00 am - 2:30 pm).

Free VIP Pass

For you convenience, PortaOne provides you with a free VIP pass to the exhibit hall. Please download and print it out to use during the registration.

Please contact our sales team if you want to schedule a specific time to meet during the show.

New Features Guide for the Maintenance Release 16

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne has published the New Features Gide for the Maintenance Release 16. This document provides information for PortaOne users regarding new features that will appear in PortaSwitch MR16.

Below is a short summary of what you can find in the document.

Service Type Vs. Service

The introduction of this new concept even further develops PortaBilling100 as a converged billing platform. PortaBilling100 enables ITSPs to offer multiple services to their customers while providing clear transaction and invoice information.

A service type is a physical service provided to an end-user; at the same time a service is a description of the user’s activities from a business perspective.

Multiple Tariffs for Resellers

Maintenance Release 16 introduces an ability to apply multiple tariffs to the same resellers. This allows to:

Charge resellers different rates based on their sub-customers’ products.
Apply different charges based on the service used by the reseller’s sub-customers.
Apply different rates based on the service scenario.

Product Cloning

Product configuration is an important step that specifies all accessibility entries to ensure the correct functionality. To minimize the amount of work to create a new product, PortaBilling100 allows to configure a new product as a clone of an existing one.

Account Aliases

The new MR16 includes a new feature called “account aliases” where an alias serves as a link or pointer to the main account. When a customer uses an alias ID for authentication, PortaBilling100 retrieves information about the main account and uses its balance, product type and other parameters for all further operations.

xDR Re-rating

MR16 introduces a re-feed alternative designed to fix the most common problem: incorrect pricing information in a tariff. Operating from the web interface, the administrator specifies the “original” (incorrect) tariff and the new “correct” tariff, and narrows the set of xDRs to be processed by time interval and specific customer.

Favorite Numbers Billing

This feature - when enabled for a specific account - allows to offer customers a “call friends & family cheaper”-type service.

ACLs for Resellers

The MR16 adds a new option now: the ACLs for sub-customers may be marked as ‘Visible To’ the reseller (or a group of resellers). Afterwards, the ‘Access only to ACLs visible to the reseller’ component is included into the ACL applied to the reseller. The resellers then will be able to assign to their sub-customers only the ACLs marked as “visible”.

Selective Call Processing

This feature allows defining a set of rules to be applied to every incoming call. Each rule may include a set of conditions based on the calling number status, called number condition or the time when the call is made. When an incoming call matches a certain rule, one of several possible call processing scenarios will be executed – for instance “reject call”, “forward this call to voicemail without ringing the phone”, “ring on the IP phone, but do not engage any of the follow-me destinations”, etc..

Click2dial

The MR16 now includes the SIP TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface) which is a driver that enables the SIP click2dial functionality for TAPI applications (like MS Outlook).

RTP Proxy Server

It is possible now with MR16 to transfer the RTP proxying function to a separate server for those systems where a high number of proxied calls is required.

This allows to efficiently prioritize transmission of IP packets carrying the voice media and prevent any resource-intensive operations on the SIP side from affecting the voice quality.

RADIUS Network Interface

MR16 supports the use of a separate network interface for communications with the billing system. This allows PortaSIP server to run the actual voice traffic via one network interface, while another network interface can be used for secure communications with the billing.

Improved Auto-Attendant Controls that allow recording of a separate prompt when a user did not press any keys.
Debit Card Application Improvements to run multiple instances of the debit card application on the same PortaUM server.
The French language support for debit card application.
Stand-by Server to improve reliability of the voicemail or auto-attendant service.
Distributed Architecture that enables ITSPs to serve more customers with several PortaUM servers simultaneously.

Please refer to the New Features Guide for detailed information on the above topics. Our sales managers and the technical support team are always available to answer your questions as well.

PortaOne Global Customer Map: December 2007 Update

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

We have decided to update our global customer map right before the end of 2007. PortaOne customers deploy our billing, softswitch, and unified messaging solutions in 60 different countries on all five inhabited continents.

To date, PortaOne has issued approximately 700 licenses that empower our customers to make profit on the cutting edge of telecommunication technology around the globe today.

MR16 Documentation Update

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

Following the official announcement of Maintenance Release 16 over two weeks ago, we have now published newly updated versions of several manuals and guides which are currently available on the PortaOne website’s documentation page.

The following documents are now updated to MR16:

Please contact our support team to schedule the upgrade of your system to MR16.

PortaBridge, a Conferencing Server is Availabe for PortaUM Customers with MR16

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne launches a new product with the Maintenance Release 16. PortaBridge is a conferencing server that provides a capability for several users to communicate through the phone at the same time.

Conference services provided with PortaBridge are especially important for your enterprise level clients that need help with multiple locations, dispersed customers or large sales forces to work together more efficiently.

Although PortaBridge is a separate product and requires a separate server to run on, it is an integral part of PortaUM and is available for our PortaUM clients only.

As all other PortaSwitch licenses, PortaBridge license is unlimited and perpetual, and includes the source code. When purchased along with PortaSwitch, the license will also include post-installation monitoring and on-site training.

Moreover, PortaBridge license is absolutely free for our PortaUM customers. However, as it runs on a separate server which is different from PortaUM, an extra PortaCare contract is required.

For more information about PortaBridge capabilities and applications please contact our sales team.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 16

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

The Maintenance Release 16 is available for testing starting next week. Please contact our technical support team to schedule the upgrade.

Here is a short review of what is new in the MR16:

Account aliases	Extra flexibility for your business model. An account in PortaBillling100, and thus available funds, can be linked to several multiple identities (e.g. ANI number, DID number, PIN, etc.).
CDR re-rating tool	Higher efficiency. Here comes a robust and easy-to-use web-based alternative to the command-line CDR re-feed tool.
Web Singup	Automation tool with improved usability for your clients. With this faster and more secure web singup function your clients are able to chose from available DIDs and UAs during the first registration as well as provide credentials for instant account creation, provisioning and payment collection.

Conditional call forwarding	Another cool feature for your clients. This allows to set rules for call forwarding.
SIP TAPI	Integration with e-mail client. You customers can now click to dial in MS Outlook.

Stand-by server	Improved redundancy. With MR16 our clients can run both primary and stand-by PortaUM servers to ensure high level of redundancy and service availability.
PortaBridge - a conferencing server	An excellent way to stand out and improve you bottom line. This feature will allow your customers to enjoy conferencing service, inviting up to 40 callers in one virtual conference room to discuss common business project or just chat between friends and relatives.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 16

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

The Maintenance Release 16 is available for testing starting next week. Please contact our technical support team to schedule the upgrade.

Here is a short review of what is new in the MR16:

Account aliases	Extra flexibility for your business model. An account in PortaBillling100, and thus available funds, can be linked to several multiple identities (e.g. ANI number, DID number, PIN, etc.).
CDR re-rating tool	Higher efficiency. Here comes a robust and easy-to-use web-based alternative to the command-line CDR re-feed tool.
Web Singup	Automation tool with improved usability for your clients. With this faster and more secure web singup function your clients are able to chose from available DIDs and UAs during the first registration as well as provide credentials for instant account creation, provisioning and payment collection.

Conditional call forwarding	Another cool feature for your clients. This allows to set rules for call forwarding.
SIP TAPI	Integration with e-mail client. You customers can now click to dial in MS Outlook.

Stand-by server	Improved redundancy. With MR16 our clients can run both primary and stand-by PortaUM servers to ensure high level of redundancy and service availability.
PortaBridge - a conferencing server	An excellent way to stand out and improve you bottom line. This feature will allow your customers to enjoy conferencing service, inviting up to 40 callers in one virtual conference room to discuss common business project or just chat between friends and relatives.

PortaOne Helps to Publish a Book on Troubleshooting Techniques

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne has sponsored the translation and publication of Steve Litt’s Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful Technologist, a book which is by far the most complete and authoritative source of information on the process of technological troubleshooting.

This book of over 300 pages contains a massive amount of information on the process of technological troubleshooting, for example:

Universal troubleshooting process (UTP) and diagnostic tests optimization
Binary search: theory and practice.
Intermittent-busting tactics and theory
Using the UTP to boost your career
Methods to boost ongoing troubleshooting throughput
Computers and networks diagnostics and source code debugging

The Russian version of the book will be distributed among the students of the National Technical University of Ukraine in Kiev.

This school founded over a 100 years ago is one of the main sources of young developers and support engineers for PortaOne’s offices in Ukraine.

In 2007, the University and PortaOne opened a joint SIP laboratory in Kiev where students can take IP telephony related courses. The students will use the book as a reference source in their studies.

PortaUM Features and Usability Flash Presentation

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

A new flash presentation of the PortaUM features and usability is available now on PortaOne website.

The presentation provides a detailed coverage for various topics such as PortaUM performance and architecture, voice- and webmail, fax2emai and auto-attendant, prepaid IVR and teleconferencing, and many more.

The presentation is an executable file (.EXE) which requires Windows 2000/XP/Vista to run. Please save the file locally, and then launch it by double-clicking on the file in the Windows Explorer.

Screencasts Demostrating PortaSwitch Features Are on the PortaOne�s Website

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0800

PortaOne has just published the series of screencasts (5 to 6 minutes each) showing the PortaSwitch capabilities in order to facilitate the demo account experience available to all of our qualified prospects.

We provide a demo account access to demonstrate the real look and feel of our software. This demo has administrative privileges, so you can create accounts, generate cards, configure your VoIP network, and even make outgoing calls to the US and Canada destinations. We provide access to a PortaSIP server as well, so you can also test SIP related services.

Three screencasts feature a step-by-step process of:

setting-up the demo account,
registering the ATA or softphone,
creating customer tariffs,
uploading the rates into an existing tariff, and
some other advanced features useful for a prepaid calling card businesses in particular.

In order to get your access to the PortaSwitch demo account please contact our sales team

2008 Event Calendar

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne will participate in many telecommunication expos and trade shows in 2008. Current and prospective clients will be able to meet us in person and see live product presentations in various regions of the world.

Here is the calendar of events where PortaOne plans to participate:

Event	Dates	Booth #
Internet Telephony in Miami Beach, FL	January 24-25	726
CeBit in Hanover, Germany	March 4-9	D34 @ Hall 13
VON Spring in San Jose, CA	March 18-19	927
Billing & OSS World in Chicago, IL	April 30 - May 1	606
CommunicAsia in Singapore	June 17-20	3L1-01
ITU Telecom Asia in Bangkok, Thailand	September 2-5	D11
Internet Telephony in Los Angeles, CA	September 17-18	431
Vietnam Telecomp in HoChiMinh City, Vietnam	November 26-29	3B35

Update: PortaOne had plans to participate in VON.x shows in Amsterdam in June, in Boston in October, and in San Jose next year. Unfortunately these events were canceled due to the changes in Pulvermedia, the owner of VON conferences.

PortaOne Presents its VoIP Solutions for ITSPs at Fall VON in Boston, MA

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Today PortaOne team can be found in Boston, MA at VON, the largest, longest running and most well respected IP communications event in the industry.

Running for 11 years, this dedicated conference and expo is the epicenter of the market’s buying, selling and networking activities.

We are excited to meet our partners, customers, and industry experts here.

The next show where PortaOne will participate is next year. It is Internet Telephony Conference and Expo in Miami Beach, FL on January 24-25, 2008. Meet us there at our booth 726.

For more information about shows and expos next year please refer to our 2008 Event Calendar.

Andriy Zhylenko Delivered His Presentation at ISDEF in Moscow, Russia

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Andriy Zhylenko, PortaOne’s CTO delivered his presentation at ISDEF 2007 Conference in Moscow, Russia last week. ISDEF is the Independent Software Developers Forum that supports and improves the processes of software development and market introduction and promotion.

This is not the first time PortaOne participates in the forum. We do it every year on a regular basis to share PortaOne’s success stories and our unique experience with emerging software companies.

This time Andriy spoke about challenges of managing people located in separate offices in different countries. Particularly, he focused on the following topics:

Different time zones challenges
Overcoming cultural differences and importance of face-to-face communications
Information flow in the organization and using virtual office tools

You can meet Andriy and other members of PortaOne team at the Fall VON in Boston, MA next week on November 30-31. Please stop by at our booth 1243 for live demos of our products.

PortaOne�s CTO to Participate in ISDEF in Moscow, Russia

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Andriy Zhylenko, CTO at PortaOne will participate in the annual Independent Software Developers Forum in Moscow, Russia later this week.

Andriy will present his speech on how to manage personnel located in other cities and countries. Here are a few points covered in Anrdiy’s ISDEF presentation:

Going beyond the “everyone knows that”: information flow in your organization, people must see the whole picture
Different time zones: would you like to have “24 hours operation” or “no one is ever there”?
“Peculiarities of the national hunting” and other cultural differences
“It is easy to see an enemy behind the email lines”, the importance of face-to-face communications
Communication and collaboration tools to organize a single “virtual” office

The Independent Software Developers Forum (ISDEF) represents and protects the interests of software developers and other software industry participants. The primary function of ISDEF is to support and improve the processes of software development and market introduction and promotion. To this end, the ISDEF:

organizes seminars, conferences and other forums for the exchange of expertise
arranges events tackling the problem of computer piracy
facilitates the creation and promotion of new software products.

The ISDEF 2007 Conference will take place in Foresta Tropicana Hotel in Moscow on October 18-22.

Meet PortaOne in Istanbul, Turkey at CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia 2007

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne is now exhibiting at CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia, a major telecommunication event in Turkey. For this show we have partnered with WorldCall, a communication operator from Belgium.

Please meet WorldCall and PortaOne’s representatives at Hall 9, Booth 324 today, tomorrow and on Sunday.

PortaOne to Take Part in CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne will participate in a major telecommunication event in Turkey and Middle East this October. CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia attracted 140,000 people last year.

This autumn it will be take place in Istanbul, Turkey at Tüyap Fair, Convention and Congress Center.

Please meet PortaOne’s representatives at Hall 9, Booth 324 on October 4-7, 2007.

PortaOne Has Developed an Updated RADIUS Module for Asterisk 1.4

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

As yet another courtesy contribution to the Asterisk community PortaOne created a general public license client that brings RADIUS AAA capabilities to Asterisk 1.4. This piece of software is mainly written in Perl. Therefore, it is 100% portable and easy to understand and customize.

RADIUS attributes are used according to Cisco VSA Voice Implementation Guide which provides compatibility with billing platforms, including PortaBilling100. The new RADIUS module is issued right before AstriCon 2007 in Pheonix, AZ where PortaOne will present it to the general public.

PortaOne RADIUS client consists of three parts: Asterisk patches, accounting part and authentication/authorization part.

Patches

After adaptation to asterisk 1.4.11, patches bring the following functionality:

SipGetHeader application to chan_sip (required for SIP authorization)
DNID variable in manager events (for accounting)
“externalauth” options for sip.conf

Accounting

Accounting manager implemented as standalone daemon ast-rad-acc.pl and should be included into startup sequence. It utilizes the Asterisk Manager API to get notifications about call start and stop events, and then generates radius accounting packets of respective type.

Authorization/Authentication

Script accepts following options:

AuthorizeBy is either SIP or Account
IfFailed if set to DoNotHangup script does not issue Hangup command in case of negative response from Radius server and leaves an opportunity of notifiying the calling part of call failure reasons
Password — is used as password if AuthorizedBy is set to Account
Routing — if set to SIP, requests Routing information from PortaBilling100

More information about this RADIUS client, its installation and configuration examples can be found on the VoIP Wiki.

PortaOne Exhibits at ITEXPO West in Los Angeles, CA

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Today is the second day of ITEXPO West in Los Angeles, CA. ITEXPO is the event to help enterprises, SMBs, and Government Agencies to select and deploy IP-based voice, video, fax, and unified communications. It is where service providers learn how to profitably roll out services their subscribers are clamoring for.

The PortaOne team uses this opportunity to meet our current and potential customers to show how PortaSwitch can assist them in their VoIP business.

The next large event this year where there will be an opportunity to meet PortaOne people in person is Fall VON in Boston, MA. Please visit PortaOne booth 1243 on October 30-31, 2007 at Boston Convention Center.

Hardware Requirements Update

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne today has updated the hardware requirements for PortaSwitch and its components. Please visit the Hardware Requirements page for more information.

Press Release: WTL and PortaOne Connect to Provide a Combined SS7 to VoIP / Billing and Switching Solution

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Internet telephony service providers will benefit from a joint offer of WTL’s SS7 to VoIP gateway and PortaOne’s softswitch and billing software.

Coquitlam, British Columbia and Brussels, Belgium, September 6, 2007 - WTL and PortaOne are pleased to announce today the successful completion of interoperability testing of their products. Testing was done between WTL’s SoIP product (a scaleable SS7 to VoIP Media and Signaling Gateway) and PortaSwitch, PortaOne’s IP Multimedia Subsystem that consists of a Class 5 soft-switch, billing and provisioning solution, and unified messaging application.

As a result both companies will list the other as a reference solution and will take part in joint marketing activities. The newly announced co-operation means that customers can now confidently combine the industry-leading switching capabilities of WTL with the unique range of subscriber features supported by PortaSwitch.

Telecom operators need to offer their subscribers more and more sophisticated sets of features to attract and retain them, It makes network design sense to separate these from the underlying switching core. Fundamental network functions such as call authentication, call routing and carrier interconnect, SS7 signaling and CDR generation will continue to be handled by the WTL switch. End-user features like caller-ID, call waiting, 3-way calling, follow-me, voice mail, unified messaging, a whole range of IPPBX and, of course, carrier grade billing will be offered by PortaOne. WTL equipment has always been known for it’s higher than average reliability and enormous flexibility and this can now be matched by an application hosting environment to match.

Simon Pearson, Business Development Director of WTL commented, “PortaOne and WTL have a couple of joint customers already so it made sense to formalize the relationship. We have always made clear that we do not offer Class 5 features on our switches but we will interwork with the best-of-breed solutions in the market. This agreement means that our customers can deploy the added-value services they need for their residential and business customers knowing that this is a proven combination of technologies.”

“We recognized that WTL had a lot to offer in the area of linking the legacy, TDM telecom world to the VoIP world and many of our customers need this”, said Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne Sales and Marketing Director. “WTL customers will also benefit from this agreement – it is going to make it a lot easier for them to launch new services. We have a claim that a new customer can launch residential IP service with calls from IP phones, ATAs and softphones in a matter of days.”

About PortaSwitch

PortaSwitch is an IP Multimedia Subsystem or a software-based communication services and subscriber management platform allowing modern communication network providers to unify voice, data and fax traffic within a single network. A ready replacement for Class 5 switches, PortaSwitch consists of a soft-switch (PortaSIP), billing and provisioning solution (PortaBilling100) and unified messaging application (PortaUM). PortaSwitch is provided with unlimited perpetual license, source code, on-site training, and 6 months of 24/7 technical support and upgrades. More info can be found at http://portaone.com/products/portaswitch/overview/

About PortaOne

PortaOne is a leading global communications infrastructure vendor enabling ITSPs (Internet telephony service providers) and voice network operators to quickly and efficiently implement, manage and deliver a wide range of billing and softsiwtch solutions for IP telephony services. The company’s products provide a comprehensive range of applications, including Hosted PBX, IP Centrex, and Voice VPN. Established in 1997, PortaOne is a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada with sales, support, and development offices around the globe.

About the SoIP Gateway

SoIP (SS7 over IP) connects the VoIP and PSTN worlds. It is a compact, high performance and cost effective SS7 to IP Gateway:- a Signalling & Media Gateway in one box. The product is ideal for ISPs, pure-play VoIP operators or for adding VoIP connectivity to legacy switches.

SoIP is scalable supporting 1 to 16 Signalling Link Pairs, 1 to 32 E1 trunks and 30 to 960 VoIP calls. This product is based on the field proven WTL SIP, H323 and SS7 signalling software installed in more than 100 operators with support for many country / carrier variants.

SoIP gives an easy to use, cost effective way of connecting VoIP based traffic to SS7 networks.

About WTL

World Telecom Labs is a Belgium-based company which has long been a leader in the provision of VoIP switches, Pre-Paid applications and signaling gateways for emerging carriers and telecom service operators. WTL has an installed base of 100,000s of voice ports with service providers worldwide switching billions of minutes of VoIP traffic using WTL equipment. For more information about WTL and its products, please visit www.wtl.be or email sales@wtl.be.

World Telecom Labs:
Simon Pearson
Business Development Director
Tel: +32 272 272 00
Email: sales@wtl.be
www.wtl.be

PortaOne, Inc.:
Roman Khalenkov
Sales and Marketing Director
Tel: +1 866 747 8647
Email: contact@portaone.com
http://portaone.com/

Press Release: PortaOne and Paradial Announce Interoperability of the RealTunnel� Firewall and NAT Traversal Solution with PortaOne Solutions

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Paradial connectivity solution enables PortaOne services to work automatically and securely across firewalls, NATs, and web proxies.

Coquitlam, British Columbia and Oslo, Norway, September 4, 2007 – PortaOne and Paradial announced that Paradial’s award winning RealTunnel© firewall and NAT traversal product is interoperable with PortaOne software billing and softswitch solutions (PortaSwitch) for ITSPs. The solution allows PortaOne customers to deploy IP-media services with no worries about firewalls, NAT devices and web proxies that otherwise prevent end-users from accessing communication services.

The end-user experience of IP-media services, such as VoIP, is often disappointing due to the lack of connectivity resulting from firewalls and NAT devices interfering with SIP and H.323 traffic. The interoperable PortaOne and RealTunnel solution allow SIP and H.323 solutions to work across any firewall, NAT and web proxy without the need to reconfigure those devices. QoS is maintained and cost is kept down as RealTunnel always establishes the most efficient communication path available.

“Service providers will benefit from this announcement by being able to deploy VoIP services that meet the service availability and QoS expectations of end-users”, says Paradial CEO Ingvar Aaberg. “Being able to deploy VoIP services that always work – independent of where the end user is located – allows providers to focus on business objectives and lower support and production cost.”

“As VoIP evolves in the enterprise market, it is essential for billing and softswitch developers to be able to offer a solution that removes the complexities of VoIP deployment, such as security, reliability and interoperability”, adds Roman Khalenkov, Sales and Marketing Director at PortaOne. ”Our PortaSIP class 5 softswitch has already provided NAT traversal solutions. Today, the combination of Paradial’s RealTunnel© with PortaOne’s VoIP billing and switching products further enhances ITSP network management capabilities to meet the market challenges.”

About RealTunnel

Paradial RealTunnel is probably the world’s most comprehensive traversal product for FW/NAT (Firewall / Network Address Translation) and web proxies. RealTUnnel works with virtually any SIP, H.323 and H.460 clients as well as any FW/NAT device - including strict corporate firewalls - without requiring FW/NAT or network reconfiguration. RealTunnel consists of RealTunnel clients and RealTunnel Servers. Paradial also offers the RealSIP Conferencing Unit (MCU). Please visit www.paradial.com for more product information.

About Paradial

Paradial is a software company that provides market leading connectivity solutions to IP telephony, Instant Messaging (IM), video conferencing vendors and service providers. Paradial’s patented firewall/NAT traversal & media tunnelling technology, RealTunnel, is probably the most comprehensive solution in the market. Paradial also provides software-based multi-party conferencing and click-to-call solutions.

About PortaSwitch

About PortaOne

Trademarks

Paradial, RealTunnel, Real Connectivity and RealSIP are registered trademarks of Paradial AS and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Paradial:
Ingvar Aaberg
CEO
Tel: +47 22980055
E-mail: pr@paradial.com
http://www.paradial.com

PortaOne, Inc.:
Roman Khalenkov
Sales and Marketing Director
Tel: +1 866 747 8647
Email: contact@portaone.com
http://portaone.com/

PortaSIP Features and Usability Flash Presentation

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0700

A new flash presentation of the PortaSIP features and usability is available now on PortaOne website. The presentation covers various topics such as PortaSIP performance and network deployment, class 5 features and automated IP phone provisioning, and many more.

The presentation is an executable file (.EXE) which requires Windows XP/2000/Vista to run. Please save the file locally, and then launch it by double-clicking on the file in the Windows Explorer.

PortaSwitch Maintenance Release 16 Feature List (Pre-Release Announcement)

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0700

This is a pre-release announcement of the new features to become available for our customers with the Maintenance Release 16.

The MR16 is scheduled for November this year.

There are two major changes related to the overall PortaSwitch architecture:

FreeBSD 6.2	High level of flexibility. In addition to the product specific features we expect to start providing installation CDs based on FreeBSD 6.2 for both 32bit and 64bit systems.
Grid	Improved performance and scalability. Starting from MR16 PortaBilling100 can be scaled up horizontally. This will allow running several PortaBilling100 instances in parallel.

Account aliases	Extra flexibility for your business model. An account in PortaBillling100, and thus available funds, can be linked to several multiple identities (e.g. ANI number, DID number, PIN, etc.).
CDR re-rating tool	Higher efficiency. Here comes a robust and easy-to-use web-based alternative to the command-line CDR re-feed tool.
Web Singup	Automation tool with improved usability for your clients. With this faster and more secure web singup function your clients are able to chose from available DIDs and UAs during the first registration as well as provide credentials for instant account creation, provisioning and payment collection.

Conditional call forwarding	Another cool feature for your clients. This allows to set rules for call forwarding.
SIP TAPI	Integration with e-mail client. You customers can now click to dial in MS Outlook.

Stand-by server	Improved redundancy. With MR16 our clients can run both primary and stand-by PortaUM servers to ensure high level of redundancy and service availability.
Conferencing service	An excellent way to stand out and improve you bottom line. This feature will allow your customers to enjoy conferencing service, inviting up to 40 callers in one virtual conference room to discuss common business project or just chat between friends and relatives.

Please note that this is a preliminary announcement and the list above is not 100% complete and confirmed. For more information please contact us.

PortaOne Has Successfuly Exhibited at CommunicAsia 2007

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

Today was the last day of CommunicAsia 2007. CommunicAsia 2007 covers not only VoIP but the whole spectrum of the ICT industry, creating a vibrant marketplace where sellers and buyers congregate at Asia’s most comprehensive info-communications event.

This is the second time PortaOne exhibits here at Singapore to promote our products and services to the Asian and Pacific markets. This time we had four days of intensive meetings with potential and existing clients to discuss our new developments and future plans.

We will most definitely participate in CommunicAsia next year while the next opportunity to meet PortaOne in person will be in Los Angeles, CA at ITEXPO West 2007 in September 11-12.

Andriy Zhylenko, PortaOne’s CTO and Ryan Laurin, Sales Manager at PortaOne booth during the show:

NexTone and PortaOne Joint to Offer VoIP Providers an Integrated SIP-H.323 Switching and Billing Solution

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

NexTone/PortaOne Solution Enables Creation of Flexible, Scalable, High-quality, and Secure VoIP Networks

NXTCOMM, CHICAGO, June 21, 2007 - NexTone®, a leader in session border controllers and scalable solutions for VoIP, multimedia, and IMS network interconnects, announced an interworking initiative with PortaOne, Inc., the global carrier-grade billing and provisioning vendor, to provide carriers and service providers worldwide with an integrated billing and SIP-H.323 switching solution.

The NexTone MSX (Multi-protocol Session Exchange), when used together with PortaBilling100 for NexTone, allows service providers to create a flexible and scalable VoIP network while ensuring consistent service quality, protection, and security. By applying its signaling intelligence at the edge of the network, the NexTone MSX adapts session signaling to enable carriers to interconnect their SIP and H.323 networks, while PortaBilling100 for NexTone provides call authentication and authorization as well as billing information.

“We’ve created PortaBilling100 for NexTone as an advanced version of our flagship product, PortaBilling100, to allow a perfect interoperability with the NexTone MSX,” said Roman Khalenkov, sales and marketing director at PortaOne. “In addition to the standard features of PortaBilling100, such as full prepaid and postpaid billing support, an e-commerce module (credit card clearing, customized invoices), multilingual web interface, and other advanced features, PortaBilling100 for NexTone provides real-time authorization for credit accounts and toll-free calls. Like other products in the PortaOne portfolio, PortaBilling100 for NexTone is provided with source code and an unlimited perpetual license. We also provide customized training at customer premises as well as 24/7 support and maintenance.”

With its most recent enhancements to the NexTone Real-time Session Manager (RSM), NexTone extended Least Cost Routing (LCR) functionality to Lossless LCR to permit margin-based routing decisions. The NexTone MSX continually streams session detail record data collected at interconnects back to the RSM for analysis of session performance. Users can extract performance reports based on route ASR, cost/revenue, and more from the RSM.

“Achieva Networks is proud to be the first Tier 2 wholesale carrier in Asia to deploy NexTone with PortaBilling in a Quintum-based network,” said Timothy Ngiam, executive director and co-founder, Achieva Networks (Hong Kong) Ltd. “As a long time PortaOne user and the only reselling partner in Asia, we understand the challenges with VoIP interconnects. Migrating at least 80 million monthly pan-Asia network voice traffic minutes to NexTone’s SBC technology architecture for routes servicing North Asia, India Subcontinent, and ASEAN, will help us maximize our profits.”

“NexTone continues to invest its session management and routing platform with intelligence to apply policies at the network edge,” said Rocco DiCarlo, vice president of product management for NexTone. “We’ll also continue to expand upon the capabilities of our IntelliConnect® product family, including the MSX and the RSM, by interworking with specialized platforms such as PortaBilling100 for NexTone to provide carriers with critical session data.”

About PortaBilling100

PortaBilling100 is a carrier-grade VoIP billing and customer management platform that enables IP telephony providers to launch, price and provision their services immediately. Being a part of PortaSwitch, an IP multimedia subsystem that also includes a class 5 softswitch and unified messaging application, PortaBilling100 is provided with unlimited perpetual license, source code, on-site training, and 6 months of 24/7 technical support and upgrades. More info can be found at http://portaone.com/products/portabilling/pb100.

About PortOne

PortaOne is a leading global communications infrastructure vendor enabling Internet telephony service providers (ITSPs) and voice network operators to quickly and efficiently implement, manage and deliver a wide range of billing solutions for IP telephony services. The company’s products provide a comprehensive range of applications, including Hosted PBX, IP Centrex, and Voice VPN. Established in 1997, PortaOne is a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada with sales, support, and development offices around the globe. Additional information can be found at http://portaone.com.

About Achieva Networks (Hong Kong) Limited

Achieva Networks (Hong Kong) Limited is a leading Tier 2 pan Asia communication wholesale carrier, providing voice services to global telecommunications wholesale and retail carriers. Achieva Networks is a fully owned subsidiary of Achieva Networks Pte Limited, an associate company and investment funding from Achieva Limited, a main-board listed company in Singapore.

About the NexTone IntelliConnect®Family of Products

NexTone’s SBC is a high-performance session border controller that provides security, network normalization and interworking, SLA assurance and call admission control, and Lawful Intercept support to meet regulatory compliance requirements. The NexTone SBC is based on a very flexible architecture and provides high levels of performance to meet service providers’ growing VoIP needs. NexTone’s MSX or Multi-protocol Session Exchange enables the provisioning of advanced IP-IP session routing, session policy enforcement, flexible dial plan management, and least cost routing support with over two million route options. SBC functionality is available as an option. NexTone’s RSM is a real-time session management platform that gives service providers visibility at the session layer by providing QoS metrics analysis, route analysis, and dynamic policy management. The RSM also provides traffic profiling, re-routing options, alarming, element management-based provisioning, events and statistics, adaptive routing, business analysis, and least cost routing with over two million route options. Reports are generated from session detail records that capture over 80 fields of information and can be provided to OSS systems via XML and SOAP interfaces.

About NexTone

NexTone® develops intelligent session management and interconnect systems for service providers who want to rapidly expand their reach and accelerate VoIP and multimedia revenues. NexTone’s IntelliConnect® System provides service providers with visibility and intelligence to exchange, optimize, secure and bill for voice and multimedia sessions flowing across diverse IP and IMS network boundaries. More than 550 service providers and enterprises worldwide have used NexTone’s IntelliConnect System to manage technical complexities, optimize business economics, and remove partnership hurdles. NexTone is a recipient of the Maryland Technology Champions Awards for 2006. The company ranks number one in Deloitte’s 2006 Technology Fast 50 Program for Maryland, and is one of the Top 50 companies for Deloitte’s 2006 Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, and life sciences companies in North America. NexTone is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, with domestic and international offices worldwide.

For more information:

Stephanie Gallagher
Engage PR for NexTone Communications
+1 (703) 531-9771
stephanie@engagepr.com

Roman Khalenkov
Sales and Marketing Director, PortaOne, Inc.
+1-866-747-8647
contact@portaone.com

CallBlue GSM Selects PortaOne As Its Converged Billing Software Vendor

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

CallBlue GSM, the new wireless roaming operator, today announced that it has chosen PortaOne, a leading global communications and VoIP billing software vendor, to provide it with a custom-built billing system.

Already a specialist provider of VoIP billing solutions, PortaOne has made several developments to its PortaBilling100 VoIP billing system, tailored especially to the needs of CallBlue GSM. PortaBilling100 enables CallBlue GSM to offer authorization, provisioning and detailed billing for its roaming calls as well as other non-airtime related services such as SMS text messages. This also means customers will receive instant SMS-updates on their balance status after each call.

"This is an important step for CallBlue GSM in the run-up to our launch next month," commented Jay Shah, CEO of CallBlue GSM. "PortaBilling100 ensures accurate accounting and revenue reassurance for our users and shareholders."

Al Rehmtulla, CallBlue GSM's Chief Technical Officer added, "PortaOne is the leading provider of global billing solutions and together with Tecore, who will provide our HLR and Gateway-MSC, show that we are serious about offering the best product, value and customer experience possible."

Roman Khalenkov, PortaOne's Sales and Marketing Director, added: "Our partnership with CallBlue GSM is an excellent example of what PortaBilling100 can do for modern innovative ITSPs and GSM operators. These operators are progressively moving away from simple per-minute charges to advanced value added services where a converged billing platform like PortaBIlling100 is essential to enable event based charges"

VON Europe Spring 2007 is Over

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0700

PortaOne participated for the first time in European VON this year. Two days of very intensive meetings in Stockholm, Sweden are over and our sales team is preparing now for CommunicAsia 2007 in Singapore next week.

Please visit our booth 4F2-07 at Singapore Expo during CommunicAsia June 19-22.