The US government has announced it will replace Huawei telecoms equipment installed at 13 sites across Panama, in a move it says is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Americas.

Approximately US$8 million will be invested in the project, which will be carried out in partnership with Panama’s Ministry of Public Security. The initiative is expected to be completed within two years and will include the installation of seven new towers across four provinces – resulting in significantly improved coverage, according to the US government, and strengthening shared security between the US and Panama.

The US government also stated that the project will support Panamanian security forces in efforts to combat drug and arms trafficking, human smuggling, and other forms of organised crime.

It added that it is working to safeguard the national security of countries across the Western Hemisphere and described the Chinese Communist Party as a threat.

Zoom has expanded its Zoom Phone service to additional locations in India after receiving approval from the country’s telecom regulator – a move the US-based company says enables coverage of key business hubs.

The B2B cloud-based VoIP service is now available in the telecom circles of Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Karnataka (Bengaluru), and Andhra Pradesh & Telangana (Hyderabad). This builds on Zoom’s initial deployment in the Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu telecom circles in February 2025.

Sameer Raje, General Manager and Head of Zoom India & SAARC, said Zoom Phone is now available in “six of India’s most prominent business and technology hubs”.

Zoom Phone enables enterprises to replace legacy private branch exchange (PBX) systems and consolidate communications on a single platform – Zoom Workplace – which also features AI enhancements.

Vodafone Idea will launch 5G services in Bengaluru tomorrow (11 June), marking the latest step in its phased rollout across India. The operator is aiming to reach 17 cities with commercial 5G services by August.

To attract new users, Vodafone Idea is offering unlimited data on 5G plans priced at INR299 and above. The service is already live in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Patna, and Chandigarh.

Samsung has supplied equipment for the operator’s 5G network. Vodafone Idea noted it is using “AI-powered Self-Organising Networks (SON)” to optimise performance and improve energy efficiency.

In tandem with the 5G launch, the company has upgraded its 4G infrastructure in Karnataka. It has deployed 900MHz spectrum on nearly 3,000 sites to boost indoor coverage, doubled 2,100MHz spectrum capacity at 1,800 sites, and added 2,100MHz spectrum to a further 1,000 locations.

Additionally, more than 4,100 sites were upgraded with increased 1,800MHz capacity, resulting in better coverage and improved data throughput. These upgrades have delivered a 46% increase in capacity since March 2024.

Anand Dani, Business Head for Karnataka at Vodafone Idea, said: “Encouraged by the strong response and robust performance in our launched markets, we are committed to expanding our 5G footprint in line with growing demand and 5G handset adoption.”

7.5’s focus was centered around making our easy-to-use apps even more intuitive through the addition of many quality-of-life features that aim to eliminate needless app navigation time and let you both access and use the app at the snap of your fingers.

PBXware

Single Sign-On (SSO) Authentication Implementation

The first addition coming to PBXware with 7.5 is the introduction of SSO to the platform, allowing users to use one set of credentials to log into any part of the Bicom Systems product suite that the account is eligible for, across any device.

On top of improved ease of access, the main benefit of SSO authentication is to enhance security levels, as well as making user management easier for service providers. 

Compliance With Alyssa’s Law

With the integration of the CyberData SIP Call Button with the PBX platform, PBXware has helped bring its emergency response capabilities up to snuff with those outlined in Alyssa’s Law.

This device will, when activated, trigger a pre-configured call and play a recorded message, ensuring immediate alert dissemination.

It acts as a reliable safety solution for many public facilities that require such a silent and quick-acting alert system that enables quicker response times from local law enforcement during potentially life-threatening situations.

Enabling Custom HTTP Requests Through The Event Manager

Next on our list of new additions coming with 7.5 is the Event Manager which allows PBXware admins to do the configurations needed and the system to trigger custom HTTP requests based on already defined system events.

This enables them to use parameters for dynamic data that makes it a great deal easier to monitor these events going forward.

Automatic Call Recording Transcriptions

AI technology still remains largely unexplored, but it has seen some great applications in helping improve everyday communication and business workflows.

To that end, we’ve added a new functionality that requires integration with third-party services,  with the added feature to either automatically transcribe customer call recordings in order, or to prioritize a more recent transcription, one can do so on-demand from the PBXware GUI.

They can be accessed from the GUI or by using the API.

Access to these transcriptions can greatly improve future customer and end user interactions, and should prove a great asset in further improving CX overall.

SMS Rating

7.5 also introduces SMS rating, allowing PBXware admins to rate SMS messages sent from extensions based on the Service Plan assigned to them and charged accordingly.

The feature allows them to define custom SMS and MMS rates for both national and international messages, ensuring flexible pricing that reflects real-world costs.

The system is equipped to distinguish between national and international messages automatically.

This feature also comes with the Inclusive SMS & MMS features, allowing admins to set up a number of free SMS and MMS messages that can be sent individually or through bulk messaging without charge depending on the Service Plan that the extension is assigned to, and to give users a flexible, real-world billing experience.

MOS (Mean Opinion Score)

An optional feature, but a relatively important one still is the MOS (Mean Opinion Score) one, coming with v7.5.

With the newest version, call reports will include the MOS metric by default, allowing users to more easily monitor call quality for individual calls, uncover potential issues and fix them before they escalate any further.

The gloCOM Suite

SSO

PBXware’s inclusion of the Single-Sign On Authentication feature extends to the gloCOM suite as well, enhancing security and enabling faster login processes.

Better Communication Organisation With Chat Threads

7.5 brings with itself an improvement in chat organization in the form of Chat Threads, little subsections of chat conversations that can be created for more topical discussion and accessed with ease without having to scroll through previous conversations to reach it, available to you at any time through a simple button press.

Editing Your Chat Messages

For those of you who tend to make a typo in chat every now and then and dislike having to write extra lines of text in order to remedy it, this feature is for you.

In order to help keep chats cleaner and more focused, 7.5 is introducing the ability to edit your existing chat messages, thus eliminating the need to send any extra lines of text.

 Microsoft Teams Presence

This addition helps expand gloCOM’s flexibility by streamlining its use to an even greater number of people, and allows those utilizing Teams and gloCOM in their daily workflow to sync their presence status from Teams to gloCOM.

The inclusion of MS Teams Presence will greatly increase the value of the upcoming gloCOM for Teams app.

Meeting Integration

With v7.5, gloCOM Web users can now enjoy a seamless Meeting experience directly within the app, thanks to the integration of gloCOM Meeting Web as a built-in module.

To support this, we’ve redesigned the interface for a more intuitive and streamlined experience.

All core meeting controls—like inviting participants, assigning co-organizers, and managing privacy settings—are now fully available within gloCOM Web.

From this version forward, there is no longer a separate gloCOM Meeting Web app; everything is unified under one roof.

Contact Center

Agent Auto Logout

In order to better workforce management and system efficiency, we have introduced the Agent Auto Logout feature with the release of 7.5.

As its name implies, the feature tracks a Scheduled Timer through subsequent system check intervals, ensuring that Agents are logged out at a set time with up to a 5 minute grace period if the Agent is on an active call.

This helps keep operating times punctual and makes sure that agents don’t accidentally log additional work hours because they forgot to log out, which would lead to inaccuracies in generated statistics.

Additionally, should agents forget to log off manually, the system will do the process for them during the next system check interval.

IMAP Mailbox Fields – Omnichannel

In order to facilitate better email filtering, we have implemented IMAP mailbox fields into Omnichannel which allow users to specify a custom email folder from which emails will be downloaded and, consequently, email requests will be created.

This ensures that only select emails are processed and turned into tickets, improving organisation and agent efficiency.

sipPROT

SIP INVITEs Rate Limiter

With the release of sipPROT 5.4 Standalone, sipPROT comes with a few new features of its own, with the SIP INVITEs rate limiter being one of them.

It provides administrators with the ability to better manage spam invites and offers them greater control over incoming SIP traffic.

Additionally, despite being rejected, these invites are still logged in the attack log to allow for further monitoring and action against them if needed.

IPv6 Address Detection

With v5.4, sipPROT gains the capability to detect IPv6 addresses used for malicious actions on the system.

This detection also extends to its dynamic blocking capabilities, improving your level of security against bad actors.

And More…

These are only some of the more notable changes that have been introduced with the release of 7.5.

As always, plenty of other bug fixes, quality of life changes and feature updates have also been implemented to ensure smoother workflows and less tedium during app interaction

These changes should further streamline your experience with the Bicom product suite as a whole, as well as make your work easier going forward.

We look forward to seeing your feedback on these new additions and hope that the changes in v7.5 have increased your overall enjoyment of our products. If you have any extra questions, feel free to Contact Us.

Indian operator Bharti Airtel has awarded technology giant Ericsson a multi-year network operations centre (NOC) managed services (MS) contract.

Under this agreement, Ericsson will enable intent-based operations, powered by its centralised NOC, to manage Airtel services across 4G, 5G NSA, 5G SA, fixed wireless access (FWA), private networks, and network slicing.

This partnership will see Ericsson manage Airtel’s pan-India network through its state-of-the-art NOC while scaling FWA and network slicing across the country.

Ericsson says its long-standing partnership with Bharti Airtel spans over 25 years and encompasses multiple generations of mobile communications technology.

This announcement follows hard on the heels of Bharti Airtel’s recently announced collaboration with Ericsson on 5G core to drive 5G evolution, and of course last year’s multi-billion-dollar deal, reported here, to supply 4G and 5G equipment and solutions to Bharti Airtel. That multi-year agreement includes the deployment of centralised RAN and open RAN-ready solutions.

Little further information has so far been made public. However, Randeep Sekhon, CTO Bharti Airtel, says: “We believe that these innovative technologies will empower us to meet the growing data demands of consumers in a digitally connected India.” 

Andres Vicente, Head of Market Area Southeast Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson, explains: “By leveraging intent-based NOC operations, we will enable Airtel to unlock wider service diversification to meet customer needs, thereby enabling new revenue opportunities for Airtel.”

The landscape of communications safety sees constant change and Bicom Systems ensures that you can always stay on top of it.

One such change is coming on June 20th, 2025 regarding the STIR/SHAKEN protocols where the FCC wants to take a more proactive approach in combatting robocalls by making each VoIP provider fully responsible for signing outbound calls from their network.

The Bicom Product Suite will make that possible for all VSPs who utilize it, ensuring continued operations in the US market.

What Is STIR/SHAKEN?

STIR/SHAKEN is a set of protocols whose aim is to digitally sign and authenticate caller IDs in an effort to reduce the impact that spam and robocalls make on the everyday customer.

They do this by providing a digital signature to a call through the service provider, one that’s encrypted using a private key.

With Bicom Systems’ PBXware, the process of signing and verifying outgoing calls comes as a built-in implementation that allows VSPs to do both for outbound and inbound calls, enabling them to both authenticate certificates and verify called IDs.

It also facilitates compliance with the FCC’s updated regulations that are being put into effect on June 20th.

The Importance Of Implementing STIR/SHAKEN

As mentioned above, STIR/SHAKEN’s main goal is to reduce the effects of the ever-present nuisance of spam calls, phishing and robocalls by adding an additional layer of security in the form of call attestation.

This should make it easier for the end user to identify potentially fraudulent calls and ignore them, giving them peace of mind and keeping their personal details (and, summarily, their other belongings) safe from the hands of malicious actors.

However, there’s benefit for legitimate businesses here too as the overall level of customer trust will improve with their calls now showing up as verified, improving the rate of successful calls.

What Exactly Are The New Requirements For VoIP Providers?

The newest update in regards to STIR/SHAKEN by the FCC aims to eliminate the use of third-party certificates for call signing and to shift accountability back to the VoIP providers themselves.

To accomplish this, they’re demanding that VSPs must:

• Handle call signing for calls originating from their own networks directly
• Handle the call attestation for all outbound calls
• Obtain an SPC token and their own certificate based on that token

This is done to not only improve the effectiveness of robocall prevention methods, but also to assign full responsibility to the VoIP service providers themselves rather than third parties, ensuring a more accurate VSP legitimacy process.

The VSP must also be properly registered with the STIR/SHAKEN policy administrator.

All of this takes effect on June 20th, 2025, and those found not complying with new regulations in time are likely to be faced with penalties that can go as far as being removed from the Robocall Mitigation Database, and other carriers potentially blocking traffic from them.

Keeping The (Phone) Lines Safe

While STIR/SHAKEN isn’t the be-all and end-all of scam call security, it’s a necessary measure in combatting the threat that it poses, and a step toward the problem’s hopeful elimination in the future.

Bicom Systems firmly believes in the concept of call security and will make sure to do everything in its power to facilitate better call safety at every step.

Get in touch with us and let’s secure a safer telephony experience for your customers, together.

With the release of v7.5, Bicom Systems is becoming compliant with Alyssa’s Law, a U.S. legislation aimed at improving law enforcement response and subsequent threat resolution times in public schools during life-threatening situations.

Its goal is to save lives and minimize casualties, and our goal is to make implementing the systems required to support it quick, easy, and affordable.

What Exactly Is Alyssa’s Law?

Alyssa’s Law is a critical legislation that addresses the issue of law enforcement response time during life-threatening emergencies by striving to improve it. It was first adopted in the state of New Jersey in February, 2019 and has since been adopted by a number of states across the nation (currently 6) with more states working toward getting the law passed and put into effect.

In simpler terms, Alyssa’s Law states that all public elementary and secondary schools are required to have a silent panic alarm connected directly to law enforcement.

The law itself was proposed by Lori Alhadeff, mother of Alyssa Alhadeff who was one of the victims of the Parkland school shooting of 2018 in Florida.

This was done in an effort to try and minimize and, ideally, prevent, any further needless loss of life in places of public education, especially young life, an ongoing problem in the States.

While it was initially met with pushback with claims that such a reform would be too costly on existing budgets, it has proven, through practice, that the pros far outweighed the financial cons.

The Importance Of Alyssa’s Law

As stated earlier, the main goal of Alyssa’s Law is to either prevent, or at the very least, minimize casualties during life-threatening events in public schools, however, the goal is much broader than that:

Improving Law Enforcement Response Times

A second can be the difference between life and death in extreme situations, and Alyssa’s Law aims to allow them to skip the line of a standard 911 call, expediting law enforcement response times.

We at Bicom Systems recognized this and have enabled our PBX system, PBXware, with v7.5 onward, to utilize tools compliant with Alyssa’s Law in order to provide a cost effective solution for Public Schools that adheres to the requirements imposed by the Law in question, helping further combat any potential pushback on the financial front.

It does so by utilizing a device that, once activated, triggers a pre-configured call and plays a recorded message on the other end, ensuring that the alert is clear and to the point, allowing emergency services to act quickly and appropriately.

Maintaining Communication Clarity

During life-threatening situations, it’s not uncommon for people to act panicked and irrational, which can lead to needless delays in law enforcement reaction due to a delay in information.

Additionally, the people in danger may not have access to a communications device at all times which can also delay or entirely prevent law enforcement from being informed on time.

However, the devices installed that comply with Alyssa’s Law aim to eliminate these factors entirely by having them pre-installed at public schools and always connected to law enforcement, regardless of circumstance.

The tools that PBXware provide aim to do this as well, utilizing clear and concise messaging to adequately alert emergency services with the alert alone and by always providing access to the device, regardless of emergency.

This is done with the help of the CyberData SIP Call Button which is now integrated with PBXware, enhancing emergency response capabilities and ensuring compliance with Alyssa’s Law.

Enhancing Overall School Safety Infrastructure

Alyssa’s Law sets a precedent for a more modern level of safety infrastructure in schools, showcasing the flaws in existing safety protocols with the hopes that more legislations follow suit in order to provide a safer environment for children and educators alike to both learn and work in.

Building A Less Stressful Environment For Everyone

With all of these safety measures in place, parents, students and school staff alike can breathe easier knowing that the schools are well equipped to handle any life-threatening situations should it ever come to one.

Securing A Safer And Brighter Future For The Next Generation

Ultimately, the goal of Alyssa’s Law is to emphasize the sense of urgency during these life-threatening situations when they occur, to expedite law enforcement response time, to introduce clear accountability for every party involved, and to, hopefully, prevent these events in the future through its sheer presence.

Bicom Systems supports the safety of American youth and is ready to provide the tools necessary to make Alyssa’s Law take effect across the country as a whole in due time. Let’s work towards a brighter and safer future, together.