Comunicano

Sabse Technologies Inc. Acquires Mobivox for its Robust Voice-Activated Services Platform

Entrepreneurial VoIP Firm to Add Mobivox Voice-User Interface to its Telephony-as-a-Service (TAAS) Platform for Operators

 MONTREAL AND MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. (Sept. 24, 2009) – Sabse Technologies Inc., an innovative Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services company, today announced it is acquiring Montreal-based Mobivox for its market leading voice-activated services and solutions platform.

The acquisition, coming only two months after its acquisition of Jaxtr, will enable Sabse’s global network of carrier partners to rapidly deploy voice-activated services to their customers.

Sabse Technologies is led by entrepreneurs Yogesh Patel, who serves as CEO, and Sabeer Bhatia, its Chairman.  The company has combined a robust infrastructure and enhanced voice services set - including mobile VoIP, Hosted PBX and audio conferencing -  into a market-leading telephony-as-a-service (TAAS) platform that its partners around the world are deploying to improve ARPU and customer retention.

Eric Reiher, who founded Mobivox in 2005, said: “We’re very proud that Sabse Technologies values so highly the voice-services-development environment we’ve carefully nurtured.  We look forward to working closely with Yogesh and his team to bring voice-activated services to carriers and theirs customers around the world.”

The Mobivox platform and patent portfolio adds to Sabse’s offering by providing a proven voice- interface-programming language, in-the-cloud contact book storage along with network-agnostic telephony integration. Additionally, Mobivox brings a very deep team of speech developers that combined bring more than 100 years of expertise. The Mobivox Voice User Interface (VUI), available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese languages, is used by partners around the world.

Patel, who co-founded Sabse in 2007 and holds many patents himself views the Mobivox VUI as the superior platform to VoiceXML and CCXML. He added “Our carrier partners have already deployed Sabse’s TAAS platform and demonstrated repeated interest in bringing to market VUI-powered services.”

Sophie Forest of BrightSpark, one of the earliest venture-capital backers of Mobivox, said:  “It’s gratifying to see that Mobivox accomplished so many of its goals from day one. Mobivox changed the way people thought of VoIP, with the help of its easy-to-use, natural speech interface. We’re excited that our efforts have been recognized by two very successful international entrepreneurs like Yogesh and Sabeer.”

Sabeer, co-founder of Hotmail added, “Using Mobivox’s phone to Skype combined with Jaxtr’s free telephony platform, Sabse is on a fast track to become the largest free telephony provider from mobile to mobile and mobile to IM in the world.”

About SabSe Technologies Inc.

Based in Mountain View, Calif., SabSe Technologies was co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Yogesh Patel. SabSe's Telelphony-as-a-Service (TAAS) platform enables its carrier partners to deploy innovative consumer and small business applications around the world. Sabse operates two brands: Sabsebolo.com (audio conferencing, hosted PBX, fax-to-email) and Jaxtr.com (the world’s leading free telephony provider).

 

About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including worldwide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. Its voice-activated mobile services platform seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface; rich “in-the-cloud” contact storage; and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services to enhance revenue generation and user retention, while leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases, and in proprietary networks.

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Press Contact:

Sue Huss, for Mobivox

sue.huss@comunicano.com

+1 619-379-4396

Mobivox Voice-Activated Mobile Services to Complement New WorldAxxess Global E-Wallet System

Mobivox Launches Portuguese Language Capability for Brazilian Market

MONTRÉAL–May 11, 2009—Mobivox today announced an agreement to make its voice-activated mobile services platform the engine for the VoIP-services component of a new global online e-wallet system called WorldAxxess.

Under the agreement, MTC Telecom, a custom-voice-solutions company based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, plans to use Mobivox-powered international long-distance services to quickly attract customers and build revenue for MTC’s new WorldAxxess micropayments business, via cross marketing. Both service lines are to be introduced in August.

The WorldAxxess micropayment application will allow users to make small-metered online purchases of goods or services—such as newspapers, or downloaded music or ringtones—and pay from small amounts of currency they store online. A simple, easy-to-use online debit system is convenient for users and gives retailers an appealing alternative to processing credit-card payments for small purchases.

As a complement to the micropayment system, WorldAxxess users will be able to place low-cost international calls from and to virtually anywhere. WorldAxxess will rely on Mobivox for the full range of its platform’s capabilities, including voice-activated calling, online storage of users’ address books, and network origination and termination services.

“We wanted to introduce a combination of international VoIP services and micropayments based on tremendous synergies between the two offerings,” said Jan Kling, MTC Telecom owner. “We chose Mobivox after considering partnering with other VoIP providers or building our own platform. The Mobivox platform is a turnkey solution we can get up and running rapidly. It’s very sophisticated, yet easy to use.”

Using the Mobivox│PL platform to accelerate customer acquisition for a much-in-demand application in Brazil and Europe is another example of Mobivox helping service providers and online communities quickly develop, bring to market and monetize exciting new capabilities as extensions of traditional telecom services.

“We’re really pleased to be working with MTC Telecom and helping them deploy voice services to drive the growth of their new micropayments business,” Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich said. “We look forward to using our Mobivox│PL to help position WorldAxxess right at the forefront of the hot e-wallet trend.” 

Mobivox Adding Portuguese Capability
In announcing its agreement with MTC Telecom, Mobivox said it has added Brazilian Portuguese to the language capabilities of its sophisticated voice user interface. Available now for other partners, Portuguese joins English, French and Spanish as languages Mobivox│PL supports.

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About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including worldwide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. No complex PIN numbers or software downloads are required. The company’s voice-activated mobile services platform, Mobivox│PL, seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface; rich “in-the-cloud” contact storage; and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services as a way to quickly differentiate their offerings, enhance revenue generation and user retention, and leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases and proprietary networks.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Montréal. For more information, please visit http://www.mobivoxpl.com and http://www.mobivox.com.

About MTC Telecom
MTC Telecom provides multichannel customer interaction solutions and interactive telephone response systems that can increase customer satisfaction, decrease costs and generate new sources of income. MTC Telecom manages a large platform for telephony, voice, text and mobile data services in Europe and processes millions of customer interactions each year. We are a company that continuously develops to keep up with the market’s expanding needs and wishes. For more information, please visit
http://www.mtc-telecom.com.

Contact:
Laura Abbott, for Mobivox
+1 203-869-8217
laura.abbott@comunicano.com  

eCOMM 2009: COMUNICANO CLIENT PRESENTATIONS

This collection of presentations from eComm 2009 indicates the diverse expertise of our clients. From "deep dialing" to CRM over voice, from video on the iPhone to cloud telephony -- there's something for everyone's taste in tech.

Fonolo: Shai Berger's Presenation at eComm09

View more presentations from ShaiBerger.

Mobivox: Peter Diedrich’s Presentation at eComm 2009

View more presentations from eCommConf.

Global IP Solutions: Jan Linden’s Presentation at eComm 2009

View more presentations from eCommConf.

Alec Saunders’s Presentation at eComm 2009

View more presentations from eCommConf.

MOBIVOX UNVEILS ‘CRM OVER VOICE’

Mobile Services Platform Adds Key Customer Retention and Growth Tools

SAN FRANCISCO–March 3, 2009—Mobivox today announced that it has enriched the capabilities of its powerful voice-activated mobile services platform with CRM over Voice, an innovative set of business growth tools that makes Mobivox│PL all the more valuable to its growing community of service provider and online community partners.

Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich introduced CRM over Voice in a presentation at the Emerging Communications Conference (eComm2009) here today.

“Mobivox partners can now perform all-important CRM in the course of service delivery, rather than before or after it, by dynamically inserting context-sensitive, unobtrusive messaging into user interactions,” said Diedrich. He added that this latest Mobivox innovation allows its existing and future platform partners to make voice-based interactions a powerful tool for containing marketing costs, retaining users and growing revenue, while improving the overall user experience.

“Over time, the platform’s multilingual voice user interface, or VUI, establishes a unique and very cost-effective relationship with the user,” Diedrich said. “Our network-hosted address book and user database allow for insightful user profiling throughout the customer lifecycle. By mashing the VUI with rich and relevant behavioral database information, we have created an unprecedented set of highly contextual CRM processes, executed in real time.” 

In a white paper assessing Mobivox CRM over Voice, consultant and analyst Jon Arnold wrote that the Mobivox|PL solution—with its built-in CRM capabilities—“transform(s) the voice channel in a way that can render it as effective as a Web-based channel and complement the operator’s overall CRM efforts. 

“Mobivox|PL provides the added benefit of real-time touch points that engage subscribers in more meaningful ways, and it can add new revenue-generating services to the operator’s portfolio of offerings,” Arnold added.

Please see below to download a copy of Arnold’s white paper.

Diedrich said Mobivox has already proven-in these CRM over Voice capabilities in its own consumer voice-activated mobile services offer, a “living lab” with millions of voice-activated calls connected and messages delivered to date.

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About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including worldwide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. No complex PIN numbers or software downloads are required. Its voice-activated mobile services platform, Mobivox|PL, seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface; rich “in-the-cloud” contact storage; and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services as a way to quickly differentiate their offerings, enhance revenue generation and user retention, and leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases and proprietary networks.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Montréal. For more information, please visit http://www.mobivoxpl.com and http://www.mobivox.com.

Contact:
Laura Abbott, for Mobivox
+1 203-869-8217
laura.abbott@comunicano.com  

Download a PDF copy of "CRM Over Voice: Using Voice in New Ways for Service Providers to Retain Subscribers and Strengthen" by Jon Arnold.

TELECOM SERVICES FIRM TALK-OUT SELECTS MOBIVOX|PL TO POWER MARKET EXPANSION

Voice-Activated Platform Drives Talk-Out’s Growth, New Services

MONTRÉAL–Jan. 27, 2009—Mobivox today announced that Talk-Out, a business and consumer voice-services company, has chosen the powerful Mobivox|PL voice-activated mobile services platform as the engine for its growth and global expansion.

Talk-Out’s Mobivox-powered services will be available to Canadian consumers the second week of February and to U.S.-based consumers in late March. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“In Mobivox, we found a partner whose platform offers the turnkey, full-featured network management capabilities necessary to allow us to concentrate on expanding throughout North America and globally,” said Talk-Out President and CEO David J.F. Chin.

Patrick Mailloux, Talk-Out’s vice president of IT development, added:  “Mobivox|PL offers the value-added services and competitive edge we need to enhance and monetize the service line we offer businesses and consumers through our fast-growing network of independent representatives and resellers. This solution affords us a great deal of flexibility and quality, enabling us to expand both our service line and our reach around the world.”

Mailloux said Talk-Out had replaced its former platform and network partner with Mobivox|PL. Talk-Out will initially deploy the suite of voice-activated Mobivox|PL services in English and French, and eventually in Spanish.

Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich said the partnership with Talk-Out affirms Mobivox’s 2008 change in strategic direction to focus on offering its patent-pending Mobivox|PL platform to the service-provider market.

“For us, it’s satisfying validation when a company like Talk-Out, a retail provider with global ambitions that needs infrastructure, comes to us and we get them up and running within 30 days,” Diedrich said. “It shows how nimble and flexible we can be, especially in creating and tailoring their go-to-market retail offers.”

Mobivox|PL enables partners to deploy and monetize voice-activated person-to-person and person-to-group communications services. For all Mobivox services—including its inbound and outbound mobile VoIP and value-added services (VAS) offerings—end users simply speak names or commands to initiate, manage and control voice-based communications.

No other mobile voice-services platform has the feature richness or flexibility of Mobivox|PL. The platform’s open application programming interface easily enables “mashups” with other voice services and third party applications. Furthermore, its communications infrastructure is network-agnostic, meaning partners anywhere in the world can take advantage of it to deliver value-added voice-activated services to their users.

Mobivox services are also available to consumers at www.mobivox.com.

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About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including worldwide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. No complex PIN numbers or software downloads are required. Its voice-activated mobile services platform, Mobivox|PL, seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface; rich “in-the-cloud” contact storage; and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services as a way to quickly differentiate their offerings, enhance revenue generation and user retention, and leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases and proprietary networks.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Montréal. For more information, please visit http://www.mobivoxpl.com and http://www.mobivox.com.

About Talk-Out
Talk-Out, based in Montréal, is an e-commerce, B2B, B2C business in the telecom industry. The company provides a high-quality service-to-cost ratio, while developing new technologies with business partners and penetrating markets through its independent representatives and resellers, on national and international levels. Talk-Out’s business model is driven by a unique marketing strategy enabling independent representatives and resellers to achieve their financial goals through an e-commerce business integrating a B2B and B2C turnkey Web solution in tune with realities of the new economy, simplicity and efficiency. For more information, please visit http://www.talk-out.com.

Contact:
Laura Abbott, for Mobivox
+1 203-869-8217
laura.abbott@comunicano.com 

MOBIVOX ADDS FRENCH AND SPANISH LANGUAGES TO ITS VOICE-ACTIVATED MOBILE SERVICES PLATFORM

Extends Platform to Mobile and IP Telephony Operators Around the Globe

MONTRÉAL–Dec. 9, 2008—Mobivox today announced that its powerful voice-activated mobile services platform has been enhanced with the addition of French and Spanish language capabilities that carriers, other service providers and online communities can offer their customers immediately.

The patent-pending Mobivox|PL platform now interacts with names and spoken commands in French and Spanish, particularly the idiomatic Spanish spoken widely in Latin America. The platform soon will support the Spanish spoken in Spain, and the company plans to add a Portuguese-language capability early next year.

“Developing the ability to support speakers of French, Spanish and other languages is a logical next step in our drive to make our platform the clear international leader in voice-activated mobile services,” said Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich. “The platform’s ability to introduce high-population languages like these quickly enables our partners to serve more users in more places.”

Mobivox│PL enables partners to deploy and monetize voice-activated person-to-person and person-to-group communications services. For all Mobivox services – including its inbound and outbound mobile VoIP offerings – end users simply speak names or commands to initiate, manage and control voice-based communications.

Sebastien Brault, CEO and founder of UNYK.com, a Mobivox partner, said: “As we continue Unyk’s rapid growth internationally, we believe that making our Mobivox-powered Unyk by Phone service available to our users in their chosen language will accelerate its adoption. We selected the Mobivox│PL platform because it enables us to offer our audience value-added services they’re willing to pay for. Mobivox continues to add the tools and services we need to succeed.”

No other mobile voice-services platform has the feature richness or flexibility of Mobivox│PL. The platform’s open application programming interface easily enables “mashups” with other voice services. Furthermore, its communications infrastructure is network-agnostic, meaning partners anywhere in the world can take advantage of it to deliver value-added voice-activated services to their users.

Mobivox services are also available to consumers at www.mobivox.com.

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About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including worldwide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. No complex PIN numbers or software downloads are required. Its voice-activated mobile services platform, Mobivox|PL, seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface, rich “in-the-cloud” contact storage and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services as a way to quickly differentiate their offerings, enhance revenue generation and user retention, and leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases and proprietary networks.
The company is privately held and headquartered in Montréal. For more information, please visit http://blog.mobivox.com and http://www.mobivox.com.

Contact:
Laura Abbott, for Mobivox
+1 203-869-8217
laura.abbott@comunicano.com

Mobivox Strategy Explained

To gain a deeper understanding of the rich capabilities of the Mobivox mobile voice-services platform, the company’s market position and its shift in strategy to take advantage of opportunities to partner with networking services providers, we are making the following background material available for you here, which includes:
 
An AnalystDeck about the company’s market position and new strategic intent is here.
 
This WhitePaper describes in detail how the integration of a powerful voice user interface, a hosted address book and network-agnostic backend infrastructure leaves Mobivox uniquely able to help partners grow revenue and build user loyalty.
 
Again, after you have had a chance to familiarize yourself with the company’s strategy, please contact Jim Byrnes to arrange to speak with Mobivox CEO Peter Diedrich. Jim can be reached at 610-333-1794 or jbyrnes@comunicano.com.
 
 

VATOR.TV CAPTURES COMUNICANO CLIENTS AT "UNDER THE RADAR"

For those who couldn’t make it to yesterday’s “Under the Radar,” Vator.TV offers a chance to see what you missed. Check out Bambi Francisco's interviews of Comunicano clients iotum, Mobivox and Palringo.

• iotum’s Alec Saunders unveils iPhone capability for his company’s Calliflower conference-calling service.
• Peter Diedrich and Larry Lisser of Mobivox talk about the company’s business-model evolution, including recent partnerships.
• Palringo CEO Kerry Ritz tells viewers that Palringo makes instant messaging work on mobile, and explains why that’s so important.

iNUM IS FOCUS OF SQUAWK BOX PODCAST

iNum was the focus of the Nov. 11 Squawk Box podcast, featuring Rod Ullens from Voxbone—which just announced the availability of its iNum service, with the +883 global country code. Also on the call were Truphone’s Tom Carter and Peter Diedrich of Mobivox, representing two of the many providers that are integrating iNum into their own platforms. And of course, Calliflower—which is the conferencing service supporting Squawk Box—just announced it will also use Voxbone's iNum service for international calls. Check out the podcast here.

MOBIVOX MASHES VOXBONE’S NEW “883” EXCHANGE

Creates Value-Added-Services Communications Module in Platform for Mobile and IP Telephony Operators

MONTRÉAL–Nov. 11, 2008—Mobivox said today it has integrated Voxbone’s just released “883” global toll-free calling exchange into its innovative voice-activated mobile services platform as part of a new Inbound Communications Service module. These unique value-added services are available immediately to Mobivox service providers and online community partners.

The patent-pending Mobivox|PL platform enables partners to rapidly deploy and monetize voice-activated person-to-person and person-to-group communications services. For all Mobivox services—including its inbound and outbound Mobile VoIP offerings—end-users simply speak names or commands to initiate, manage and control voice-based communications.

“Integrating with Voxbone’s ‘883’ exchange is squarely in line with our strategy to make our full-featured Mobivox│PL platform a source of robust offers that mobile, IP telephony and calling card providers can extend to their customers to generate new sources of revenue and grow user loyalties,” said Mobivox President and CEO Peter Diedrich.

End-users will continue to take advantage of the platform’s intuitive and unique voice-user interface, referred to as the Mobivox Voice Assistant, to make the most of the inbound “883” service, including:
• Account management from the phone—Users call into their accounts from any phones and use their voices to dynamically direct or change where their “883” calls should be forwarded.
• Call screening—The Voice Assistant tells the call recipient how much inbound calls will cost and who is on the line, giving the user the option to accept or reject the call.
• In-call help and control—During each call, as with every call managed by the Mobivox platform, the user will have “always-on” access to the Voice Assistant to add others to the call, or transfer the call to another phone.

Earlier this year, Mobivox announced strategic collaborations with Jajah and Unyk to enhance their respective services through Mobivox│PL capabilities.

Diedrich added, “Integrating Mobivox│PL with Voxbone’s ‘883’ exchange is the latest example of the company extending the platform’s partner-ready innovative voice-activated range of functionalities to create new value-added service offers.”

Mobivox “883” services are also available to consumers at www.mobivox.com.

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About Mobivox
Mobivox provides its partners and customers a host of voice-activated mobile value-added services, including world-wide inbound and outbound calling, group communication and voice-to-text services. No complex PIN numbers or software downloads are required. Its voice-activated mobile services platform, Mobivox|PL, seamlessly combines an optimized voice user interface, rich 'in-the-cloud' contact storage and a comprehensive, network-agnostic telephony infrastructure. Carriers and communities alike rebrand and resell these services as a way to quickly differentiate their offerings and leverage existing investments in contact or customer databases and proprietary networks.
The company is privately held and headquartered in Montréal. For more information, please visit http://blog.mobivox.com and http://www.mobivox.com.