Monday, June 25: Internet service provider America Online (AOL) has announced new online video initiatives for the US market.    Details>>

Monday, July16: Telstra Incorporated, a leading global provider of advanced communications services to multinational corporations, announced the availability of T-VoIP, its global VoIP offering.

T-VoIP provides multinational corporations with a quality solution to control, manage and reduce global telecommunications costs. "T-VoIP is based on Telstra's global IP VPN platform that is backed by our service level agreements (SLAs), delivering highly reliable, integrated IP packetized voice service," said Dan Kerth, President and COO, Telstra Incorporated. "Companies can combine voice and data traffic to maximize their return on investment and through lower off-net rates, reduce the cost once associated with sending on-net and off-net voice traffic over a public switched network."

Through the use of T-VOIP, companies are able to interconnect geographically dispersed PBXs over a "virtual private network", thus avoiding the high price of international toll calls between office locations.

Companies with small branch offices up to very large sites can be supported with access speeds ranging from 128 Kbps through 155 Mbps. In a converged scenario, voice and data traffic share the same local access loop, reducing the number of access loops required to obtain services

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Monday, July 9: AOL is hoping that what will set AIM Mail apart is its tight integration with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), from where it gets its name. The mail service is being offered as a free download as part of the latest upgrade of the messaging platform, known as AIM 5.9.

AIM Mail offers free unlimited storage to AOL members and gives 2 GB of storage free to any Internet user of AOL Instant Messaging. The service, which also includes anti-spam and antivirus filters, is based on technology from Mailblocks, which AOL bought in July of last year.

That puts it on par with similar offerings, including Gmail from Google, MSN's Hotmail and Yahoo's mail service.


AOL indicated it would heavily promote AIM Mail, with anyone who registers eligible for various sweepstakes prizes including Apple iPods and Sony PlayStation Portables. All 22 million existing AIM users will be invited to accept the upgrade and activate a mail account, the company said.

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Monday, June 25: Internet service provider America Online (AOL) has announced new online video initiatives for the US market.

This will make it easy for users to find, explore and experience videos on the web. Building on its popular video search service, AOL has launched a new, best-in-class video search product available through the AOL service, AOLSearch.com, and on AOL.com, including the new web portal available in beta.

The new video search service will deliver a repository of high-quality video content online in key categories from entertainment to news. Its database draws from the industry-leading AOLVideo on-demand archive of more than 15,000 licensed and originally produced video assets, including from broadcast television; more than 1.5 million video assets available on the Internet indexed through search engine Singingfish and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds from the top video streaming sites.

This combined approach lets people search from one place for high-quality, current online video spanning popular music videos, movie features, television clips, news coverage, sports highlights, independently produced videos and more.

AOL is also previewing an enhanced version of the AOL video player. This product integrates search and programming and supports major file formats to deliver inline playback for most videos through a single, consistent experience. In addition to its integration with AOL's new video search this video player will also provide a unified platform for video programming across the AOL network of web brands, including the AOL.com portal and the AOL Instant Messenger and Netscape services.

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Monday, June18: A newly launched ISP called Be Unlimited will shortly roll out ADSL2 broadband services with speeds of up to 24Mbps, the fastest ever offered by a commercial service in the UK.

Boris Ivanovic, founder of Be Unlimited, broke records in 2001 when he bought Swedish ISP Bostream and launched that country's fastest service at 26Mbps.

In just three years Bostream's customer base rose from 2,000 to 100,000, and revenues soared from $1m to $55m.

The service will be trialled in London initially and extended to the rest of the country.

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