Who knew? Last we’d heard, the VoIP and Web-based calling business was fading, with companies like Vonage having a hard time competing and upstarts like Jangl calling it quits.

But all of a sudden, VoIP news seems to be everywhere, and almost all of it good. Skype, of course, selling out at a price that values the company at $2.75 billion, more than the $2.6 billion eBay paid for it (a seeming minor miracle).  Vonage’s stock soaring last week, then falling back slightly, before heading upward again as its iPhone app was officially approved. VoIP Web calling and SIP backbone player Jajah inking a deal with Microsoft. The profile of Google Voice rising at last, at least in part due to its much-noted trouble getting in to the iPhone store.

So why is VoIP suddenly so hot?

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Verizon (NYSE:VZ) announced today it is joining the RVU Alliance, a non-profit organization aimed at developing a specification for a new ‘pixel accurate’ remote user interface (RUI), as its fifth Founding Promoter and first telco member. The alliance also includes Broadcom, Cisco, DirecTV and Samsung among its members. more

If you work on a Mac, you probably are familiar with Parallels, the company and software that lets Mac users run the Windows operating system and applications in so-called “virtualized” fashion. In recent weeks, the privately-held Parallels announced a new app to help making a Windows-to-Mac switch easier and another update helping users run Windows and Linux side-by-side.

But for all the attention the vendor’s desktop virtualization business gets — including its success fueling visions of a possible IPO sometime soon –  Parallels also does a healthy business providing hosting companies, including telecom service providers, with an industrial strength platform for automating, virtualizing and provisioning managed services and new cloud computing applications.

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Blessed with a treasure trove of information about their users — including down to the IP level thanks to technologies like deep packet inspection — most large telecom service providers have advertising at least somewhere on their new service revenue white boards.

Don’t count the pennies on those (potentially billions of) impressions too early. more

Nokia used its Nokia World 2009 event, going on this week in Stuttgart, to introduce new hardware, a slew of new services and a new division aimed at showing the power of combining the two. more

As broadband stimulus funds flow into public/private partnerships, they are sure to reveal cracks that still exist in our understanding of how to balance public and private interests in telecom successfully.

Tonight the city council in Provo, Utah will discuss whether to grant a request to reduce monthly payment obligations from Broadweave Networks, which acquired the city’s struggling fiber-to-the-home network last year.

Broadweave argued it could turn the fiber operations around by replacing its open, wholesale-only model with one in which it played both the role of service provider and network operator. It’s not clear yet that the strategy will be successful. Now Broadweave wants to merge with one of the service providers on the network, Veracity Communications, using the temporary break in payments to the city — $1.5 million over two years – to get the combined operation up to speed. And that plea for financial help is raising concerns. more

Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) is hoping to add to its WiMax build plan this year with the help of some federal dollars. It revealed today it has applied for a “modest” but undisclosed amount of broadband stimulus fundsto deploy 4G networks in under-served areas in Detroit and Puerto Rico, two markets that currently are not part of Clearwire’s business plan. In addition, Clearwire is affiliating itself with a few other grant applications, agreeing to share spectrum or network assets in five states if the unnamed broadband providers secure funding. more

The M2M partnerships keep rolling in. After a summer that saw AT&T (NYSE:T) partner with Jasper Wireless and Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) form a joint venture to target the mobile telematics market, Sprint (NYSE:S) kicked off by announcing a multi-year partnership with M2M DataSmart, a machine-to-machine service aggregator that specializes in tailoring airtime plans for start-ups with new and unique applications. more