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Efonica Announces Strategic China Deal |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Monday, 28 August 2006 |
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Page 1 of 2
Fusion Telecommunications will market its Efonica brand of
VoIP services into the China
market through a newly formed relationship with Jinti, a Chinese community
services site.
With around half a million registered users Jinti attracts more
than 3 million unique Chinese visitors each month, providing a handy marketing
solution for the dial-up capable Efonica VoIP service.
VoIP News spoke to Matthew Rosen, President and CEO of
Fusion about the company's entry into the free VoIP market after the company
announced it had attracted more than 400,000 subscribers in its first two
months of operation.
Rosen said the Efonica brand, which competes closely with
the widely known market leader, Skype, would have a couple of different
marketing strategies, but partnering would be an important one.
I think we are the most VoIP launch around the world to
date, said Rosen who said the combination of a traditional online marketing
campaign and (think global act local style) public relations had helped the
company surpass its user milestones on launch.
Rosen, who started life as an investment banker in the healthcare
technology field, joined Fusion back in the pre-dotcom train wreck days and has
spent a "fair amount of time surviving" since then.
He told VoIP News the company strongly believes the key to
success in retail telephony is to acknowledge that the market is a global one -
something he said U.S.
cable companies have yet to come to grips with.
"I think the vast number don't get it. They are selling VoIP
as a new service to existing customers. We are going about it differently," he
said.
Efonica plans to target emerging markets for its future
growth, Rosen explained, but this includes building a strong user base in the United States
as well. It is just as important to access the ethnic communities living in mature
markets, he said, as they tend to communicate on an international level to a
greater degree than other sectors of the community.
"We wanted to come up with something that would disrupt the
global telco service industry," said Rosen. "The secret was in leveraging current
calling habits. These communities are used to dialling a regular phone and with
Efonica they can do that. They are not required to use their pc."
Fusion has a Patent application in process for the idea of
using what it calls a global internet area code. By simply adding the digits 10
to a standard phone number, Efonica users can make a low-cost VoIP call as
easily as they would dial a regular PSTN number.
The Patent application actually covers three attributes of
the so-called internet area code. First, the concept of using a prefix as a
world wide area code; second the use of existing phone numbers, while the third
is a more technical process of authenticating the number.
At present, users need to register phone numbers at the
Efonica website. Once registered, the Efonica system automatically calls the
number and the receiving party needs to enter a registration code - so the
initial set up is a little kludgy.
Once that is done though, users can access Efonica services
using either the company's softphone, a regular SIP-based IP phone, or a
standard analogue handset with a telephone adapter.
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