If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Regular readers of my blog should know very well how fan I am of VoIP used not as a great way to make cheap calls only, but to provide new, innovative value added services to consumers and businesses (something my company has been doing for a few years now with our customer engagement service Sitofono). If the value of the service you provide is crystal clear, your customers are definitely willing to pay for it.

A few days ago I had the opportunity to talk to Peter Diedrich, CEO of Mobivox, and it turned to be a very interesting discussion, with Peter and me perfectly in the same wavelength. I  already wrote about Mobivox a couple of times in this blog, but this is the first time since the arrival of Peter with the role of CEO, previously held by Stephane Marceau, and of the contribution of Larry Lisser, a Telecom expert I had the opportunity to meet a couple of times during my trip to Silicon Valley.

In a nutshell, Mobivox is trying to leverage their voice recognition technology in order to provide users with much more than discounted phone calls. The key point is the way their are trying to reach a wide user base, that is by licensing their technology to big and small telecom operators, with different models depending on the operator they are dealing with. Peter called their technology a “Network Based Address Book” where users can easily call each other by simply dialing a local number and telling the name of the contact they want to call.
I asked him about the differences between Mobivox and similar (apparently) services, like Dial2Do, and Peter clarifies that they are rather focusing on the telephony/SMS side than integrating their service with social networks (Dial2Do lets you send a Tweet, for example) and thanks to an agreement with Voxbone, they have a  huge set of dial-in  numbers worldwide. They also launched the 883 iNum Exchange, “an innovative Global Toll Free VoIP exchange (883) enables users to receive reverse-charged calls from family, friends and colleagues”.

What’s particularly new here is that 883 is in fact a value-add service. One that supports an important social and business process (that of being reached anywhere), rather that one that simply and only reduces cost.

Moreover, Peter told me they are adding new services like group conferencing and also focusing on building sophisticated integrations with CRMs, making automation, usage statistics and users’ profiling a key component in their platform (Telecom CRM 2.0). A major benefit is also the ability to record the accent of the final user so that the system automatically self-trains to make sure the success in recognizing the user itself is above 99%.

They already have LOIs with different telecom operators - mobile operators / calling card players and we should expect major news in the following weeks.

I’ll definitely stay tuned for further developments and praise Mobivox for their efforts to finally take the label “cheap calls” and “free” away from VoIP.

Technorati Tags: Business, luca filigheddu, mobivox, Social network, Telecommunications, Telephony

One of the new attraction of the ITEXPO East taking place in Miami next February will be the “4G Wireless Evolution Conference” managed by one of the brightest minds in the Telco market, Mr Carl Ford.

Carl Ford together with Scott Kargman, former men behind the demised VON Conferences, are on stage again with TMCNet with the aim to bring innovative content to the eager IP Communications professionals. People familiar with the VON events are surely familiar with Scott and Carl as well, so these names, under the TMCNet umbrella, are the first guarantee for a very high-quality and “super” interesting event.

This new show is really promising and I highly encourage anyone involved in the Telecommunications space to take a look and actively participate to this event, whether in the role of attendee, speaker or sponsor/exhibitor.

Here is a preliminary overview of the content and the target audience for this event:

4GWE Conference Themes:

• The evolution to 4G and how cellular’s technology history to date will impact the evolution to new technologies and services.
• WiMAX and LTE – Is this really an either/or scenario or will the Mobile network of the future combine both technologies?  If so where do they integrate?
• What are the 4G Wireless killer applications for both consumer and business customer?
• How will content distribution evolve on 4G networks?.
• Key wireless technologies driving investment strategies
• Are smartphones the right way to define the 4G wireless category?  What are device manufacturers’ role in driving demand and marketshare?
• Will applications become a the MVNO driver in 4G business models?

 
Who will attend:

• Mobile Network Operators
• Network Services Provider/ISP/ILEC/CLEC/WISP/MSO
• Handset Manufacturers
• Mobile Internet Device Manufacturers
• Application Providers
• Investment Banking/Venture Capital/Private Equity
• Telecom Network Infrastructure Vendor

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sprint Nextel and Clearwire detail 4G plans
• Verizon decides on LTE for 4G wireless broadband
• A stroll through the MVNO graveyard
• Europe’s first mobile WiMax network goes live

Technorati Tags: 4g, carl ford, Cellular network, Mobile virtual network operator, scott kargman, Telecommunications, tmcnet, WiMAX

Image via Wikipedia

A few days ago I met Stuart Henshall, one of the minds behind Phweet, a service I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I don’t want to repeat what I already wrote about Phweet, but I only wanted to share some interesting ideas Stuart showcased to me, in particular the concept of “smart call”.

What is a smart call? A smart call is basically a call where both caller and called party “agree” about the call itself. How many times you are bothered by others who try to reach you on the phone while you are busy? Sometimes those calls could be important but you can’t know unless you take that call, loosing precious time.

A smart call is basically a call where you receive a “message” in advance of the call. Examples of content of this message could be the following:

Example1

Caller: John

Reason: That client signed the deal

Availability: now (CLICK HERE) or in 30 Minutes (CLICK THERE)

Example2

Caller: Girlfriend

Reason: I miss you

Availability: now (CLICK HERE)

Example3

Caller: Boss

Reason: Fired

Availability: now (CLICK HERE) next year (CLICK HERE)

Those above are just some examples and could be either SMS, IMs, Twitter messages or… name one! If you click the correspondent link, a call will be made/scheduled and the system will, for example, call both people and connect the call. You can also have a dial-in number that is automatically called when you click there, according to the device you chose to receive/make calls. From the caller perspective, there could be many different ways to “generate” a smart call, IM, SMS, Twitter… again different methods.

Is it smart? Oh yes, it is. Think of how much time you might save and how you can improve your productivity. Moreover, the recipients of those messages can be more than one so that a conference call is setup. Stuart & David’s service does this already, through Twitter, but this way to look at Phweet make it clear that there are tons of potential applications that could be built on top of it.

In conclusion, I strongly believe this concept would lead to a wide number of value added applications which bring telephony, web, unified messaging together, letting you improve your productivity and make a better usage of your time.

Ops, I must go, a smart call is waiting for me…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Twitter, what are YOU doing?
• Can SMS be a publishing medium?
• Texting as a Business Power Tool

Technorati Tags: David Beckemeyer, luca filigheddu, Mobile, phweet, smart calls, stuart henshall, Telecommunications, twitter