A deal has been signed between Centennial de Puerto Rico and Citel, an IP equipment vendor. According to this deal, Portico telephone VoIP adapters will be supplied for Centennial’s Aptus Service, which is geared primarily for business users.

Citel Portico TVA allows businesses to migrate to VoIP, which is aided by the existing infrastructure. Citel has also stated that for host IP telephony, the Aptus network is being connected.

Also, Citel has announced that the Broadworks telephony platform will be supplied to Centennial. This triumverate is expected to assist migration to VoIP for Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Akamai, an internet infrastructure services provider says it delivers around 15-20% of the world’s web traffic on a given day.

Recently, Akamai launched a facinating (and free) fleet of services that let you see real-time traffic patterns about activity and demand for general internet connections, music download facilitation, retail transaction and other features.

This screenshot shows general net traffic just after midnight on Friday:

This week Rebtel launched a new mobile site that offers the Rebtel VoIP service, comparable to Skype.

All new users need to do is open an account and start accessing VoIP services on their mobile phones. There are no special requirements or dowloads. Customers can make low cost calls to Rebtel uses in 37 countries.

To use Rebtel, go to rebtel.com/getstarted and submit your phone number, name and location. Once you enter the info about where you’d like to call, Rebtel sets up local numbers for you and the recipient.

Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel CEO, explains the new Rebtel site,

We are providing a truly mobile service so anyone with a data connection from any type of mobile device — PDA, smartphone, regular mobile phone — on any network can stay in touch with family and friends while on-the-go.

Though the Apple iPhone does not officially go on sale until June 29, there are quite a few eBay sellers offering pre-order items in anticipation of the upcoming iPhone release.

Currently, some bids are at or just below $1,000, nearly double the iPhone’s price of $499-$599. Take a look for yourself.

I’m not really sure how these sellers have become so confident that they will have the needed units –maybe they have AT&T or Apple sources.

Released this morning, a Google patent application called Social and Interactive Applications for Mass Media stands to instantly trigger communications to user’s social networks based on the type of audio recognition of certain phrases the user encounters in multimedia or broadcast applications they are listening to or watching.

By mapping the path of how a user responds with their messaging program or social network, after wathcing an event on television, for example, Google makes the case for the patent in the backgroudn section of the patent application:

Another social and interactive television application that is lacking with conventional interactive television systems is the ability to dynamically link a viewer with an ad hoc social peer community (e.g., a discussion group, chat room, etc.) in real-time. Imagine that you are watching the latest episode of “Friends” on television and discover that the character “Monica” is pregnant.

You want to chat, comment or read other viewers’ responses to the scene in real-time. One option would be to log on your computer, type in the name of “Friends” or other related terms into a search engine, and perform a search to find a discussion group on “Friends.”

Such required action by the viewer, however, would diminish the passive experience offered by mass media and would not enable the viewer to dynamically interact (e.g., comment, chat, etc.) with other viewers who are watching the program at the same time.

For more information about the new patent and what it means, take a look at this ZDNet article.

The FCC says that it, along with the FBI, are ready and willing to work with operators that find third-party solutions to be too expensive. What this help consists of generally, is helping operators to find services that will work with their level of expected surveillance and budget. For example, many rural carriers haven’t had wiretap requests for decades.

The government’s announcement can be summed up to “just because CALEA compliance is too expensive doesn’t mean you can’t make an effort”. While there are not too many specifics as laid out by govermental agencies, the FBI’s www.askcalea.com. site has quite a bit of information.

A big rural VoIP campaign has been planned in New Zealand yb VoIP providers Bay City Communications and WorldxChange, according to Peter Griffin of the New Zealand Herald. Geoff Hun of Kordia tells Peter that there are about 2,000 users on the networks, but there’s room for ten times that number.

Peter thinks that WorldxChange VoIP will be delivered via broadband rather than through a dedicated channel, and that this is likelier to be attractive to New Zealand residents in the area.

Peter notes that WorldxChange’s Paul Clarkin says there have been dozens of people successfully using it for months as part of a trial,

The problem is that new users are still faced with that big upfront cost ($800) of installing the equipment that connects their house or business wirelessly to the Kordia transmission tower,” Peter writes. “That is still a significant barrier to uptake. But now that customers can actually ditch their $40 a month Telecom phone line the economics of the service work out better for everyone concerned.

One way of dealing with CALEA compliance is to outsource the entire job of bringing your network up to par. Companies like VeriSign and NeuStar do just this kind of work.

What happens is they’ll put equipment in your network that can isolate the call or data traffic that you need to capture. All the monitoring is done remotely. These companies are also able to make sure that relevant calls get forwarded to the related law enforcement or government agencies. All the taps that are provided are the minimum that is required by law, meaning they won’t violate anyone’s rights.

Too Expensive?

If third-party solutions are too expensive, you can find part time help. For example, NeuStar has a type of timeshare agreement where you are sent the necessary software. When a surveillance order comes in you are shipped the server needed to capture the relevant information, then you send it back.

There’s also Intercept On Demand, which functions like the above service, with the exception that you buy the server, but only turn on surveillance when a legal order comes in. See NeuStar for Intercept On Demand services.

It can be a nuisance -to say the least- trying to comply with CALEA. Why not let someone who knows all the ins and outs take care of it for you?

According to Gizmodo AT&T is in the middle of undertaking a major upgrade of its EDGE network in anticipation of a demand surge for bandwidth once the iPhone goes on sale.

During the upgrade project (estimated to be ocmpleted on or around June 15) extra attention is being paid to the backend and to the tower configuration for allocation of bandwidth for calls and data.

AT&T wants to drop more T1’s into poorly performing towers. The goal being to get the slow 40kbps performance of these towers up to a minimum of 80kpbs.

Before the CLAEA compliance deadline many people were waiting for legal interception before deciding to make a move toward compliance, as the possibility of fines seemed remote. Now that the notice has gone out: comply or suffer the consequences, it could mean big trouble for those that choose not to comply.

Help From Vendors

You can choose products from vendors like ETI Connect, Aqsacom, SS8, Solera or Verint. These vendors have the software and hardware necessary to single out the cals or data you might need to suuply to law enforcement agencies.

Naturally, you’ll still want help figuring out how to respond to court orders, subpoenas and the like, but finding the software, hardware and VoIP service that is able to comply with CALEA is certainly a good place to start.