Looking to emulate the highly successful Asterisk ecosystem business model, IP-PBX pioneer ShoreTel has launched a partner program to extend the choice of integrated solutions available to customers.

Skype Inside: First, an agreement between Toshiba and Skype will build Skype into Toshiba notebooks. Second, German mobile software company Shape Services has launched beta versions of IM+ for Skype software for Java phones, Symbian S60 and Palm OS.

Home networking pioneer Netgear announced a new collaboration with British Ubiquisys to build a residential gateway that integrates a DSL modem, Wi-Fi, VoIP and a femtocell 3G access point. (Femtocells are being promoted for fixed-mobile convergence.) It seems like a natural progression for the company that first made it possible for the average Joe to connect to the Internet. A side benefit is that your cell phone will also work better at home.

For those of you who wish you could take your VoIP service with you when you leave home or office, Chinese manufacturer ATCOM announced a new Mini ATA AG110 that fits in your packet. The company’s website is less than helpful to the English speaker, with howlers like this: “With the powerful R&D capability, ATCOM will keep lunching all kinds of VoIP terminals and devices….” Sounds like Godzilla.

When you take your VoIP service on the road, you’re going to need a broadband connection. Boingo is helping road warriors escape being nickeled-and-dimed to death by WiFi service providers with its global, flat rate, unlimited use service. The company claims to have about 100,000 hot spots. U.S. price is about $40 a month. Earthlink and Nokia are also aiming to let travelers roam free by equipping the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet with Earthlink’s WiFi service at no charge.

Polycom’s Spectralink WiFi phones now comply with the federal government’s security specifications for ’sensitive’ — but not classified — communications. This is the first WiFi phone to achieve this, according to the press release. But it is secure enough for Vice President Strangelove?

If you’ve ever wished you had that great picture of your Maui vacation right there on your cell phone, wish no more. Glide Mobile lets you bring all your files to your phone — even documents. All for free. You’d never guess this from parent company TransMedia’s description of its business: “TransMedia is leading the emergence of rights and identity based, compatible and integrated multipurpose software and services for corporations and consumers.” Huh? Anyway, you can read Glide Mobile’s press release here. (It’s not on the website — go figure.)

With only 2 days left until “i” Day, Ajax software company Backbase is prepping its Ajax framework and developers kit for the Apple Safari 3 browser, Apple’s chosen avenue for value-added applications. Backbase says that its framework will run on the Apple iPhone without modification. You can give it a test run here.

And speaking of tech’s Cabbage Patch Kid, how many people are actually planning to buy one? Not many, according to an online survey at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. As of this writing, only five percent of the people taking the survey say they’re going to buy one “immediately.” At the other end of the spectrum, 16 percent say they will “never” buy one, 11 percent say “not as long as it’s tied to AT&T for service,” and 27 percent — the largest cohort — say “not while it’s so much more expensive than other options.” You can weigh in here.

P.S. Gartner says the iPhone doesn’t belong in the enterprise.

In life it’s often the small stuff that makes the biggest difference. Virtual Hold Technology has taken on a gripe we all have – waiting on hold. While the company’s eponymous system can’t eliminate the wait, it makes it easier by holding your place in line while you hang up and get on with your life. When you’re at the head of the list, the system calls you up. The company sells the technology to contact centers, promoting its ability to increase customer satisfaction and reducing costs.

Working on the theory that all of us together are smarter than each of us alone, yesterday Polycom announced the Polycom ARENA “ecosystem,” a collaboration platform that will let partners develop, test and certify interoperability between their solutions and the Polycom voice, video and content collaborative solutions.

AT&T is getting into the mobile video game with AT&T Video Share, which lets users to share live video concurrently with voice calls. The service sounds like a true Age of IP service. But the billing is strictly Ma Bell. AT&T is offering Video Share for $4.99 per month for 25 minutes of usage, or $9.99 for 60 minutes. Not so bad, you say. Well every minute after that is 35 cents.

Unlike baseball, in IPTV the three strikes rule doesn’t hold apparently, with Microsoft debuting its fourth — or is it sixth? — IPTV brand, Mediaroom. Scott Fulton of BetaNews offers an analysis.

Be afraid, be very afraid is the message of Sipera VIPER Lab’s threat advisory for SIP-based soft phones from AOL(R), Avaya, MSN(R) and Nortel(TM), and Avaya SIP-based hard phones.

Sun Microsystems and Mitel are getting cozy with an agreement to integrate Mitel’s call management software into Sun servers. One objective is to make it easier to converge voice and data applications.

Raketu’s press release announcing its new peer-to-peer VoIP service is a sterling example of how not to write a press release headline.

It passed by me yesterday: “Raketu Now Offers Combined Features Of Skype And JaJah Tied To A Single RakOut Dial Out VoIP Account.” I confess, I yawned. Skype and JAJAH are interesting because they were first. More choices are nice, but they’re not necessarily news. If Marcelo hadn’t emailed me about it, I wouldn’t have taken a second look.

But I digress.

What’s interesting about Raketu is not even in the release; namely that Raketu offers Web-based converged communications that works on your computer and your smartphone. You don’t even have to install the Raketu desktop client.

It reminds me of something from the early days of the Web: a portal. Portals were supposed to be the single place where users connected to everything they wanted. So I might call Raketu a Web 2.0 communications portal.

Making phone calls is only the beginning — although the company consolidates the Skype and JAHJAH approaches nicely. You can also make conference calls with up to five people for free.

You can connect with Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, ICQ, Skype, Jabber and Google buddies without loading any of those clients. You can also conference across services and send offline messages. (This last one, I confess, perplexes me. Isn’t that called email?)

You can send emails and low-price SMS text messages from the RakWeb site to anyone on your contact list. You can also send them files.

And that’s just the communications piece.

Raketu also offers the framework for IP entertainment, including an integrated media player, online gaming, IPTV and Video on Demand. I say “framework” because there’s not much content; I doubt that the Czech outdoor channel on offer will draw too many viewers. Like kyte.tv, Raketu has incorporated social networking into the viewing experience.

The service also integrates RSS feeds and podcasts, and even a travel planner.

Raketu has a good concept. But it’s pretty obvious from the spotty website operation that this is still rough — and not just around the edges.

But it’s a promising development and one that encourages me that, someday soon, unifying communications won’t require changing or installing software or devices. It will just be a matter of signing up.

For more, the VoIP Service Blog has a detailed evaluation of Raketu’s service.

Postscript: So, how should Raketu have made its announcement? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Raketu Adds Web-Based VoIP — Building One-Stop Shop for VoIP, IM/SMS, Conferencing, Email, VoD, IPTV

New Web-based VoIP Makes Raketu an Express Route to Communications: VoIP, IM/SMS, Conferencing, Email, VoD, IPTV

European peer-to-peer IPTV network Babelgum launched its public beta. The angle here is full-screen, broadcast quality, personalized TV. TechDigest offers a hands-on review. Bottom line, right now the offerings are minor league.

Nokia is investing in Web video sharing site kyte.tv, joining Swisscom, German media company Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck and Skype founder Niklas Zennström’s investment company Atomico Investment Holdings.

The number of websites offering video jumped this year from about 200 to over 300, according to a study by Baton Rouge, LA-based Rider Research, publisher of the digital media newsletter The Online Reporter. Quantity isn’t quality, of course. But where the audience is the quality will follow. Remember TV in the 1940s? There were probably plenty of media people then saying the poor quality pictures would never catch on.

Quick: The Apple iPhone is open to third party applicatiions? If you said “yes and no,” you’re right. Gizmodo thinks allowing third party “Web 2.0″ Apple iPhone applications — in other words, applications running via Safari — doesn’t make the much-hyped device open.

And BTW, now you can chat with AIM and MSN buddies via Gizmodo’s network.

SIP phone maker Snom’s North American visibility is going up with a new distribution agreement with GenTek.

Natural disasters these days tend be followed by a flurry of Satellite IP stories, which inevitably subside shortly after like a storm surge. Asevotech of Tampa, FL is taking aim at the as-yet unproven market potential of satellite IP communications with its Disaster Lease Program (DLP) for SMBs, giving these companies the disaster protection benefit of assured satellite IPO communications backup without the upfront cost. The key, for both customers and Asevotech’s business model, is that you buy it before you need it.

Apple iChat, the “next wave of VoIP?” I’m not sold, but Network World’s Greg Royal is and explains why here.

When you needed special equipment to do it, it was called video conferencing. When you did it on a futuristic gizmo with a handset and a dialpad, it was called video phone calling. Now that IP has made this a distinction without a difference, newly-launched ooVoo is calling it video conversation. Whatever you call it, ooVoo lets you do it for at a price that’s right: free. The service also offers video messaging and a directory that lets people ooVoo you from MySpace pages, websites, and emails. Currently the downloadable beta client is only available for Windows. Release of the Mac version is expected in a few weeks.

Hope on the horizon department: In the U.S. we might see personal broadband soon. DigitalBridge Communications is launching its BridgeMaxx WiMax service, with both fixed and mobile service. The only catch right now: it’s currently available only to 7,000 addresses in Rexberg Idaho. Cudos go to a forward-looking City for promoting the first U.S. commercial WiMax Internet service.

The lowdown on enterprise telephony is more of a low-up, with pure IP PBX systems sales growth of 3 percent in the first quarter of 2007, up 76 percent from last quarter, according to Infonetics Research. In the meantime, traditional TDM PBX system sales feebly lifted its head, after five quarters running of losses, showing a flash of life in a declining picture, marked by a sorry medical chart at the foot of its bed — negative 45 percent over the last five years.

You can see which way the wind is blowing, but where exactly is the take-off for IP PBX? The launch of Microsoft’s unified communications product — Office Communicator 2007 — a spate of vendor consolidation with Inter-Tel and Mitel and Avaya as the players, and ShoreTel’s imminent IPO are the focus of current interest in the industry’s upswing.

I asked Infonetics Research Analyst Mathias Machowinski to expand on the report’s findings.

Voxilla.com: Why aren’t buyers abandoning their PBX’s for a pure unified system?

Machowinski: Just inertia. Change takes time. I think if companies will adopt OCS, they’ll keep their PBX system in place and layer OCS on top of that. It’s not like they are perfect matches for each other’s features. If a company needs some of the nice features OCS offers like presence, messaging, collaboration tools, then they’ll go there.

Voxilla.com: What kind of impact will vendor consolidation and the Avaya acquisition have?

Machowinski: Well, first with consolidation, like with Mitel and Inter-Tel, there will be fewer competitors in a very crowded market. Then, the acquisition of a public company like Avaya by a couple of private equity firms changes the landscape. Too much cutthroat competition isn’t good, because the market is at the end of the competition picture where having so many companies isn’t good for the customers and isn’t too great for the companies either. In this crowded a field, mergers like this will produce stronger more efficient companies. We’re far far from the point where you have to worry about companies becoming monopolistic behemoths.

Voxilla.com: What does ShoreTel’s IPO mean in terms of IP PBX sales?

Machowinski: This is the reverse dynamic, where ShoreTel, a private company, will be going public. Being private in its early days let Shoretel focus on developing its product without a lot of interference, and develop a strong product which was good for them. But now they’re ready to go public. The access to capital will let them expand more. So far, they’ve focused on the North American market, but this move will let them grow their distribution overseas.

Voxilla.com: In the mass of information your report gives, what most interests or surprises you?

Machowinski: That the TDM market grew at all. And that the IP phone market is growing so slowly, especially on the softphone side. I expected that to sell more strongly, especially because manufacturers can sell additional phones, almost double, for every desk phone. Not all employees need that softphone, but still many could use it. That’s where I expected more action.

Highlights from Infonetics PBX Report:

• Overall enterprise telephony revenue is on track for another year of double-digit growth.
• In 1Q07, worldwide total PBX/KTS system sales inched up 1% sequentially, and are up 8% from a year ago in 1Q06.
• The overall market will total $11.9 billion in 2010.
• Hybrid PBX systems represent 63% of all PBX/KTS system line shipments worldwide in 1Q07, and will increase to 72% by 2010.
• The enterprise telephony market was flat in North America in 1Q07, weak in Europe, and strong in Asia Pacific.
• Avaya is the market share leader for worldwide IP PBX revenue in 1Q07, followed closely by Cisco and Siemens.
• Cisco maintains a strong lead in IP deskphone and IP softphone sales, accounting for almost half the units shipped worldwide in 1Q07.

Find more data and a .jpg chart at the Infonetics Research press portal in the Enterprise Voice & Data section at http://www.info.infonetics.com.