France Telecom SA, Europe's third- largest phone company, said first-half profit unexpectedly rose 41 percent because of lower taxes and increased broadband Internet subscribers in its home market. The shares had their biggest gain in nine months after the company said net income rose to 3.31 billion euros ($4.5 billion) from 2.35 billion euros a year earlier. Earnings had been expected to decline to 2.28 billion euros, based on the median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - A Silicon Valley startup wants to shake up the telecommunications industry with a $399 gizmo that provides free, unlimited domestic phone calls for homes with broadband Internet service. Ooma Inc. also will offer a free second line, conference calling, voice-mail service and an online "lounge" where users may change their preferences or get voice mail in an e-mail format. The company will start selling the devices with an invitation-only offer to select U.S. residents.

For China's high-flying manufacturers of telecom equipment, the U.S. market has always been a no-go zone. The Chinese government wants its companies to go global, but for Huawei Technologies and ZTE, that has meant heading to the developing world. Customers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America have all been receptive to Chinese-made equipment that performs almost as well and costs far less than comparable gear from Cisco (CSCO), Nortel (NT), and Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). And while the Chinese made some forays into Western Europe they stayed clear of the U.S. after an embarrassing legal challenge by Cisco in 2002 cast an unflattering light on Huawei for alleged copying.

deltathree, Inc. (Nasdaq:DDDC), a leading provider of SIP-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions for service providers and consumers worldwide, announced that tomorrow Market America, an online shopping and One-to-One Marketing company, will launch its new Voitel(tm) VoIP Home Phone Service powered by deltathree's Hosted Consumer VoIP Solution platform. Voitel(tm) VoIP Home Phone Service will provide Market America's distributors a cost-effective and high quality communications service alternative to traditional telephony. The Voitel(tm) offering will be unveiled tomorrow at Market America's Annual International Convention, being held at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex in North Carolina. Voitel(tm) service will be immediately available to Market America's over 150,000 distributors, who reach millions of customers worldwide.

IPsmarx Technology Inc., a leading provider of full-featured, turnkey Voice Over IP (VoIP) solutions to Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs), entrepreneurs, VoIP Calling Card Operators and ISPs, today announces that its clients, especially service providers who own an IPsmarx softswitch solution, can now offer VoIP-based services to users of the popular iPhone. "We are proud to support our clients as they roll out VoIP services for the iPhone end users," states IPsmarx President and CEO Arash Vahidnia. "Our ability to support this new technology underscores IPsmarx's aggressive commitment to quickly and nimbly respond to the ever-changing communications' landscape, and to proactively address the emerging technology needs of our customers."

Audio conference calling specialist Vapps on Friday said it received a $2.5 million cash infusion from Azure Capital and a couple of its original angel investors. It is the first VC investment for the four-year-old Hoboken, New Jersey-based startup, which offers Internet telephony and public network conference calling services. The company markets free and for-pay conference calling services to small businesses, non-profits, and non-governmental organizations, among others.

One ring to rule them all: Services like GrandCentral :- recently acquired by Google - offer you a single number that rings all your phone numbers (VoIP, cell or PSTN), plus a single voice-mail box that all those phones' messages go to. GrandCentral also treats calls differently depending on whether you want specific callers to ring through to you, or go straight to voice mail. It also lists voice messages in an e-mail-like format on your mobile, allowing you to listen to the one you really want to hear first. VoIP makes calling cheap; GrandCentral makes how you use VoIP and legacy telecom technologies easier and more transparent for you.

Want to hear the real scoop about your company? Sure you do. We all do. When we value-oriented Millionaire Zone investors buy stocks, it's as if we are buying the whole company. So management reports to us. Management tells us -- or should tell us -- what's going on. And we as owners should understand it. So, as shareholders, do managers in fact really talk to us? Generally speaking, no. Sure, there are press releases and annual reports. But these are documents, and they're assembled by communications specialists, not the managers. So you may have to confront a lot of spin to get the real scoop, if you can get it at all.

To make it easier for businesses and government agencies to enhance employee mobility and productivity, Verizon is introducing three new fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) services. The services help on-the-go professionals seamlessly bridge wireline and wireless networks. The services, unveiled today at the NXTcomm trade show in Chicago, are: Wireless Office, PBX Mobile Extension and Mobile Conference Connection. Features include: a single phone number that simultaneously rings to an office, home and cell phone; a unified mailbox that consolidates voicemail from multiple devices; and instant conference calls that can be organized and initiated with just a few clicks on any Research in Motion BlackBerry or Microsoft Windows Mobile smart phone or PDA.

Conference phones manufacturer Polycom recently announced upcoming availability of four new high-definition phones for use with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. The company, a Gold Level member of Microsoft's partner program, is developing the products as a way to expand its support for OCS. Polycom's product family now includes CX100 (a portable speakerphone peripheral), CX200 (speakerphone and handset), CX400 (cordless desktop handset) and CX700 . These new conference phone products take advantage of OCS' streamlined communications features, which make it easier for users to find and communicate with their contacts, using their favorite desktop applications. OCS also includes software-based VoIP , Web conferencing and enterprise-grade instant messaging. This is all possible without expensive infrastructure or network upgrades.