Text Messaging

Vyke targets Asian expats in UK

Pete Wylie — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:19:11 -0400

Vyke Communications, a London-based VoIP firm, has announced plans to target the Asian expatriate community in England. To validate the new marketing focus, the company cites an internal study that found 40 percent of expatriates keep in touch with friends and family in their home nation and often accrue huge cellular and text messaging bills in doing so.

Vyke seeks to offer this community VoIP services to reduce the cost of keeping up with loved ones. For instance, users of Vyke's FreeTxT application pay around 6 cents a text message, as opposed to 46 cents at standard cellular rates. Subscribers to Vyke's VoIP service get text messages for free.

The company has enlisted Indian-expatriate cricket star, Sourav Ganguly, to promote the Vyke VoIP service.

For more:
- netimperative.com reports on targeting Asia expats for VoIP

SMS growing five-fold in U.S.

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:59:54 -0500

SMS or text messaging does not have much to do with VoIP, but its stunning usage is a stark reminder that the simple often works best when it comes to personal communications. SMS is also a great example of an application no one saw coming.

The IP Carrier blog reports that CTIA researchers have found U.S. SMS traffic volumes have boomed over the last four years growing at 37 percent a month. "As of December 2006, over 18.5 billion text messages are sent every month and that number has grown by 250 percent each year for the last two years," the blog reports.

Some have predicted SMS may plateau as more and more phones are email and IM enabled. This is not so according to Verizon Wireless which is predicting text messages to grow nearly five times from 400 million per month in July 2005 to over two billion per month next year. The U.S. was relatively slow to the SMS phenomena but is wasting no time catching on.

For more:
- IP Carrier carries the report in its blog

Related articles:
- Carriers lose SMS revenue of $4.9B Report
- Worldwide SMS revenues to hit $67B Report

Unified comms jam traffic

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:59:57 -0400

Unified communications is all the rage in telecom, so naturally there's a down side. That would be bandwidth consumption. Network General Corp., a San Jose, Calif., quality-of-service provider released a study this week demonstrating how unified comms will increase pressure on an already crowded information Super traffic jam.

The idea behind unified comms is simple: to fold voice, instant messaging, texting, email and other forms of electronic communications into one application. That way, road warriors can check fixed line voicemail via text from a mobile handset, for example. Several big players, including Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens and Verizon are busking the unified comms market, which is starting to take off as businesses adopt the necessary VoIP systems.

In a survey of 576 Network General customers, 75 percent estimated a quarter of their network traffic over the last three months consisted of unified comms. Nearly 40 percent said they'd had software problems after implementing unified comms, while 20 percent weren't as certain of the source of similar problems. Only 9 percent of those who responded said they didn't have a unified communications system. Key to successful deployments is adequate planning and a very agreeable IT administrator.

For more:
- The Network General summary of its survey is here

Verizon unifies biz VoIP

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:59:56 -0400

The business unit of Verizon is launching unified communications VoIP enhancements for its Hosted IP Centrex systems. The Integrated Communications Package encompasses management of voicemail, phone calls, online presence, text messaging, contacts and calendars.

Verizon Business, based in Basking Ridge, N.J., said the package will become available next month to U.S. customers using its Hosted IP Centrex, and internationally later this year. The features will eventually be integrated with Verizon's multimedia conferencing and contact center services. The basic package is reported to start at $5.50 per user per month; an advanced version with a Microsoft Office plug-in will be $7.50.

The package extends the Verizon Business VoIP portfolio beyond network and exchange technology to individual users, just as unified communications catches fire. The idea is to marry instant messaging, phone calls, email, texting, etc., under a single management application, so far-flung offices can function in virtual proximity.

For More:
- The official word from Verizon Business is here
- PC World adds an analyst comment at the end of its news here

Related Stories:
Verizon Business, AT&T in new VoIP initiatives Report

Vyke is here to save the day

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:59:58 -0400

If Vyke Communications' execs haven't already considered it, let me offer them the idea of adopting the cartoon character Underdog as company mascot. Like Underdog, Vyke is here to save the day for people who've had it with mobile operators' attempts to thwart mobile VoIP. Vyke has announced that later this year it will introduce an upgrade to its mobile software that will give subscribers' handsets superpowers that can undo anything MNOs do to cripple their built-in VoIP capabilities. In a Vyke press release, CEO Kjetil Bøhn said, "Users need to remember that...attempts to keep mobile VoIP out of the market amount to nothing less than an announcement that the mobile operators intend to continue overcharging consumers for as long as they can."

For more on Vyke's end run around MNOs:
- read this article from VoIP Monitor

Related Articles:
Vyke adds text messaging to mobile VoIP client. Report
Truphone beefs up its service. Report
T-Mobile, Truphone tussle. Report
Truphone/Vodafone tiff expands. Report