Radcom Ltd. (Nasdaq: RDCM) has landed itself a key role in BT Group plc's (NYSE: BTY; London: BTA) 21CN (21st century network) tests by providing the system that is monitoring the quality of the VOIP traffic running over the carrier's trial next-generation network (see BT Uses Radcom for 21CN Trial, BT Moves Ahead With Mega Project, and BT Trials IP Network).

The announcement comes amid a welter of VOIP testing announcements as vendors vie for business from the increasing number of carriers rolling out IP telephony services.

At BT, Radcom's Omni-Q platform is being used to check packet voice quality as it travels from the carrier's circuit-switched network onto, and across, the trial IP-based network. The product, which has TDM and packet interfaces, uses probes to monitor the quality of live traffic. It can also send simulated calls across the network and measure their quality.

Radcom's general manager of products and technologies, David Ripstein, says BT was already familiar with the product, as it is already being used to check on the quality of the calls at one of BT's largest enterprise VOIP deployments. "BT needed to make sure it was meeting its service-level agreements [SLAs] with that customer, and we were chosen for that job," says Ripstein.

The Radcom man says he's seeing a lot of activity in the VOIP testing sector, and as a result, "a lot of vendors that don't even have a VOIP test solution are re-positioning themselves in this market." He says Radcom started developing its product specifically for service providers about four years ago, "so we were actually too early to the market."

He's certainly right about the level of activity. Spirent plc (NYSE: SPM; London: SPT) has been busy at the Telecom '04 show in Las Vegas, where it boasted of a multi-million dollar deal with a major North American carrier, and added VOIP support to its CopperMax test products (see Spirent Adds VOIP Support and Spirent Wins IP/ATM Contract).

Spirent has also just announced support for Cisco Systems Inc.'s (Nasdaq: CSCO) "Skinny" VOIP protocol on its Abacus IP test platform (see Spirent Slims IP Telephony Test and ADSL, Take 2+).

Other headlines from the past few weeks include: