VoIP Category: VoIP

France-Russia

Russian fund to invest €20 million in French startups as Russian-French tech ties grow

By East-West Digital News / May 09, 2012 / 1 Comment

The Russian high tech fund New Generation Investment (NGI) announced last week that it will launch a €20 million division dedicated to French startups, the French business daily Les Echos reported. “We are focusing on telecoms, web technolgies and tech-oriented media,” said NGI shareholder Leonid Reiman.

France will serve as a testing ground for one of NGI’s most ambitious projects –  a VoIP and video conference service that would compete with Skype.

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Yandex + Skype

Yandex and Skype to support each other on the Russian market

By East-West Digital News / Feb 07, 2012

Last week, Yandex, the Russian company that dominates the domestic search market, announced a partnership with Skype to promote their respective services among their users, news agency RIA Novosti reported. Users dowloading Skype software will be prompted to install a Yandex search bar add-on on their web browser and make Yandex their default search engine.

The Yandex Bar will include a Skype button that allows Skype users to replenish their account for paid services using ‘Yandex.Money’, the electronic currency of Yandex.

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Mail.ru Group

Mail.Ru Group to challenge Skype in Russia

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Nov 25, 2011

Russian Internet giant Mail.ru Group, which went public last year in London, could launch a VoIP service as soon as early 2012, the group’s CTO Vladimir Gabrielyan told news agency Interfax, Gazeta.ru reported last week. The product, created in a special lab set up in August to develop the technology, is already complete. “We’re working on removing the remaining bugs. The product must be better than Skype,” Gabrielyan said.

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Sipnet

Russian VoIP service Sipnet stronger than Skype on the domestic market

By Ekaterina Preobrazhenskaya, East-West Digital News / Oct 25, 2011

Sipnet, a Russian VoIP service provider, reached a 52% share of the Russian VoIP market in 2010 in value, according to J’son & Partners, a telecom market research and financial consulting firm operating in Eastern Europe. Skype held second place in Russia with a 32% market share. The total market size for VoIP doubled since 2010 and is now estimated to be $29.2 million.

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VTB Capital

VTB Capital develops IT portfolio with web conferencing startup

By East-West Digital News / Jun 17, 2011

VTB Capital Asset Management announced last week it has invested in COMDI, a leading player on the Russian video conferencing market. Founded in 2009, COMDI specializes in web conferences as well as online training and broadcasts.

Before this round of financing, COMDI was funded by its founders and an undisclosed business angel.

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Microsoft

Microsoft waffles, then denies offering Skype encryption code to FSB

By East-West Digital News / Jun 09, 2011

Microsoft has denied any intention to hand over Skype encryption algorithms to the FSB, Russia’s Security Service.

At a press conference held yesterday morning, Microsoft’s representative in Russia, Nikolai Pryanishnikov, made an ambiguous statement about such a possibility, saying “I would be glad to do it” after Skype is integrated into the company, reported several Russian news agencies.

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Efim Bushmanov2

Efim Bushmanov: “Good products can’t stay proprietary for long”

An exclusive interview with Skype reverse engineer by East-West Digital News / Jun 05, 2011 / 3 Comments

Tucked away in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic some 1,400 km northeast of Moscow, Russian programming researcher Efim Bushmanov is getting a lot of attention. Having reverse engineered Skype protocols and then made his research available to the public via his blog just a few days ago on June 2, search queries bearing his name now generate over 10,000 responses on Google. In this interview with EWDN – his first ever exchange with the press – the 30 year old Bushmanov reveals some of what he’s been up to over the past three years while working to replicate Skype’s ‘blackbox.’ While praising Skype for its “unbelievable quality,” he responds to accusations of copyright violations and shares his vision of an open-source VoIP future.

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Skype

Skype reverse-engineered by Russian geek

By East-West Digital News / Jun 04, 2011 / 1 Comment

30 year-old Efim Bushmanov from Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic some 1,400 km north-east of Moscow, a self described “free lance researcher,” claims he is on the way to completely reverse-engineer Skype’s proprietary protocol and encryption systems.

“My aim is to make Skype open source and find friends who can spend many hours to completely reverse it,” writes Bushmanov on his blog, where he made the protocols available for download on June 2.

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Vimpelcom

VimpelCom to prepare a Skype-like VoIP offer

By East-West Digital News / Apr 25, 2011

VimpelCom, a major Russian mobile operator, is talking with outsourcing companies about developing an IP telephony product functionally similar to Skype. The news, provided by unnamed sources, was reported last week by CNews.ru, a Russian site covering IT and telecom issues.

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fsb

FSB proposed banning Skype, Gmail, and Hotmail — then recanted

By East-West Digital News / Apr 11, 2011 / 1 Comment

Federal Security Service (FSB) senior official Alexander Andreyechkin complained last Friday during a government meeting that “the uncontrollable use of Gmail, Hotmail, and Skype [in particular] could lead to a major threat to Russia’s security.”

FSB is “more and more concerned about these services using foreign-made cryptographic means” that Russia’s security services cannot access, he added.

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