Comunicano

VOXBONE ADDS SUPPORT FOR FAX TO WORLDWIDE LOCAL VOICE NUMBER SERVICE

Foreign Customers, Prospects and Carrier Subscribers Can Now Fax Abroad To Local Numbers in 11 Countries, at Local Costs

BRUSSELS, Belgium–June 24, 2008—Voxbone, a leading provider of local telephone numbers and VoIP transport to communications service providers and businesses worldwide, today announced fax support for its local-number service in eleven initial countries. The new support for T.38, an international signaling standard that enables the reliable transmission of faxes across packet data networks, will allow documents to be faxed around the world for the same cost to the sender as Voxbone-DID voice calls: at very low, local per-minute rates or for free.

Voxbone’s fax support will begin in Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, El Salvador, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, effective today. Fax support will be carried over the same telephone numbers as voice numbers, if desired, and will incur no additional cost to number holders.

Using much the same concept through which voice is digitized and packetized for transport over IP networks, faxes sent over data networks are converted into packetized digital images, rather than tones representing images, as is done over traditional PSTN telephony. In the process, a transmitted fax signal can be compressed much further than voice without loss of quality. While best-quality voice transmission takes up 64 kbps and (in wideband applications) even more, T.38 reduces fax bandwidth to 14.4 kbps, keeping customers’ connectivity costs in check.

Customers can instantly lease and provision numbers through Voxbone’s self-care Web portal, turning the acquisition process from months to minutes.

Looking like a local
Voxbone’s DID (direct-inward dial) and toll-free numbers give its carrier, call center and major enterprise customers a way to establish a “local” presence in other countries, by being reachable through a local phone call and now, through local fax.
 
“A customer or prospect who sees an advertised local telephone number that costs little or nothing to dial will call or fax an overseas businesses as soon as any business physically located nearby or in-country,” says Rod Ullens, CEO and cofounder of Voxbone. “VoIP carriers will lease our U.K. numbers, for example, to give their English subscribers local access to their calling service. Voxbone delivers these incoming calls and faxes to the number holder/subscriber—the business or the carrier—through its global VoIP network.”

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About Voxbone

Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, Voxbone (www.voxbone.com) provides worldwide DID numbers and toll-free phone numbers over its own private intercontinental VoIP network. The all-IP architecture of the Voxbone core network enables customers to rapidly deploy new communications services with local presence, while simultaneously reducing costs. Voxbone leases international DID numbers and toll-free numbers via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. It delivers high-quality call origination and provides the global infrastructure that enables its customers to expand to international markets quickly and efficiently. Using these numbers, Voxbone customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls from 43 countries and faxes from 11. Founded in 2002, the company is privately held.

Contact:
Sue Huss, for Voxbone
sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1 619-379-4396

VOXBONE SUPPLIES THE NUMBERS AND NETWORK ACCESS BEHIND “TRUPHONE ANYWHERE”

Voxbone’s DIDs load into Truphone’s handset software for automatic entrée to free or low-cost calling from 34 countries – without WiFi

BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 28, 2008 -- Voxbone, a leading provider of local telephone numbers and VoIP transport to communications service providers and businesses worldwide, today announced that it has been tapped by Truphone to provide the access numbers for the mobile VoIP company’s new “Truphone Anywhere” service.

“Truphone Anywhere” is the latest addition to Truphone’s mobile VoIP handset software. It will work like an all-knowing, international calling card – without the card. When the Truphone-running phone is dialled and senses the presence of a WiFi network, it will convey the caller’s voice as data via the Internet.

Invisible access to the IP network
“Truphone Anywhere” enters the picture when no WiFi LAN is detected. In that case, the mobile phone determines the country in which it is currently being used. From there, the phone chooses the appropriate Voxbone local access number from its own internal database and dials it behind the scenes to the nearest Truphone server.  That server takes the user-entered digits and completes the call to the called party via the Internet. 

The Truphone Anywhere call has actually begun on the cellular network, switched to VoIP at the access number/gateway, and converted back out to the PSTN on a far-end gateway to reach the given PSTN number. By circumventing the PSTN for all but the first and last miles, the service has reduced costs from 25/50 cents or more to a few pennies per minute.  It saves the most where the caller incurs little or no charge for the domestic call made to the access number.

If no access numbers are locally available or are prohibitively expensive to dial, Truphone users have another option in “call-back” connectivity.  Here, the handset sends an SMS containing both calling party and called party numbers to Truphone’s server.  The Truphone server initiates a call back to the handset and once automatically answered, calls the called party and connects both calls together.  All this happens in the background; the user has simply dialled the number he wishes to reach, as usual.

An integrated feature in the latest (4.0) version of the Truphone service, Truphone Anywhere can be downloaded at the Truphone Web site or by sending an SMS message with the word ‘Tru’ to 202 683 8200 (from North America) or to +44 7978 88 11 11 (from everywhere else).

“Between the automatic WiFi usage of our VoIP software and the automatic access-number dialling across the cellular network, our domestic user never has to pay international calling charges,” says James Tagg, CEO, Truphone.  “Even users abroad stand to save.  While many solutions and services are available, they usually address only one type of calling scenario. The Truphone philosophy is different.  We believe that people should be able simply to dial and save.”

About Voxbone
Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, Voxbone provides worldwide DID numbers and toll-free phone numbers over its own private intercontinental VoIP network. The all-IP architecture of the Voxbone core network enables customers to rapidly deploy new communications services with local presence, while simultaneously reducing costs. Voxbone leases international DID numbers and toll-free numbers via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. It delivers high-quality call origination and provides the global infrastructure that enables its customers to expand to international markets quickly and efficiently. Using these numbers, Voxbone customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls from 43 countries. Founded in 2002, the company is privately held.

About Truphone
The first true Mobile Internet Network Operator (MINO), London-based Truphone allows users of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones to make and receive regular telephone calls and to send, and to receive SMS text messages, using only a Wi-Fi connection and the Internet. Although still in beta, it has already attracted tens of thousands of users in 149 countries. For more information, visit www.truphone.com and www.truphonepressoffice.com.

Truphone is the trading name of Software Cellular Network Limited.

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VOXBONE AWARDED LICENSES, NUMBERS IN SINGAPORE AND GREECE

Telephone Numbers Now Instantly Available to Give Singaporean, Greek Markets Local Access to Carriers and Businesses

BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 23, 2008 -- Voxbone, a leading provider of local telephone numbers and VoIP transport to communications service providers and businesses worldwide, today announced that it has been awarded licenses and numbering resources to operate telecommunications services in Singapore and Greece.

The new licenses, awarded by Singapore’s IDA (Infocomm Development Authority) and Greece’s EETT (National Telecommunications and Post Commission), bring the total number of Voxbone-accessible countries to 43. 

Voxbone’s DID (direct-inward dial) and toll-free numbers give its carrier, call center and major enterprise customers a way to establish a “local” presence in other countries, by being reachable through a local phone call.  Seeing an advertised telephone number that costs little or nothing to dial, end customers and prospects will call an overseas businesses as soon as any business physically located nearby or in-country. Voxbone delivers these incoming calls to the number holder/subscriber through its global VoIP network.

Customers can instantly lease and provision numbers through Voxbone’s self-care Web portal, turning the acquisition process from months to minutes.

“Voxbone is our source for local access numbers whenever we extend the reach of our free- and low-cost international calling service,” says Darren Yaphe, director of marketing at MOBIVOX, a Voxbone customer. “We rely on those local access numbers, as they enable our customers in over 40 countries to reach our dial-by-name IVR every time.”

Voxbone has partnered with local Singaporean and Greek telephone companies who are given their numbers by national regulators –- a purchase as close to the physical source as possible and in compliance with all national standards and regulations. This assures number holders of service as reliable as that of a local incumbent carrier.

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About Voxbone

Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, Voxbone provides worldwide DID numbers and toll-free phone numbers over its own private intercontinental VoIP network. The all-IP architecture of the Voxbone core network enables customers to rapidly deploy new communications services with local presence, while simultaneously reducing costs. Voxbone leases international DID numbers and toll-free numbers via VoIP to organizations in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific regions. It delivers high-quality call origination and provides the global infrastructure that enables its customers to expand to international markets quickly and efficiently. Using these numbers, Voxbone customers may receive inexpensive, locally dialed phone calls from 43 countries.  Founded in 2002, the company is privately held.

Contact:

Sue Huss, for Voxbone
sue.huss@comunicano.com
+1-619-379-4396