Small Business > CommunicationsEssentials

NEC has launched new products with the aim of increasing its share of the small and medium business unified communications market and being more friendly with third-party products.

Telco Optus has launched two mobile phone plans that allow unlimited calls on local, national and GSM networks in Australia and thrown in a bit of mobile data access.

Mobile carrier Vodafone has launched an aggressive push into the unified communications space with the launch of Vodafone Business One, a partnership with Cisco and BlackBerry to offer unified communications to small and medium businesses.

Skype has announced a flat rate for international calls, further showing how difficult it is to make money from telephony, according to analysts.

It seems these days that every Tom, Dick and Harry -- or, more accurately, every Dell, Acer and Apple -- wants to get into the mobile phone/handset business.

Telstra's NextG service is about to get even speedier. Its 3G customers will soon be offered downloads speeds that near and then surpass what is currently available to users on the ultra fast wired ADSL2+ service.