Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Mobivox Decides to Work with Service Providers

Mobivox, which has operated as an over-the-top application, is changing its business model. Rather than compete with other over-the-top VoIP providers, Montreal-based Mobivox, which allows people to make free or cheap phone calls, is increasingly interested in partnering with service providers. 

In particular, Mobivox is white-labeling its platform of services, such as voice-enabling calls and an online hosted address book. Jajah, for example, uses Mobivox to provide voice-enabled dialing.  The Jajah Concierge service activates a phone call to anyone in a user's address book.   

Mobivox can provider a number of features for service provider partners in addition to voice-assisted calling. It also can be used to support group communications for social and business users, allowing users to say the name of a predefined group in the
address book or use the voice assistant to add contacts to a live call. 

Mobivox also can enable voice-activated calls to Instant Messaging voice clients from any phone. 

The reverse charging feature can enable receiving calls from anywhere in the world at local termination rates. Call costing and screening tells users who is calling and what it will cost to accept a call.

The voice-to-text feature supports hands-free recording of messages from any device, the messages being transcribed into text for delivery as email or text messages.

The issue here is that Mobivox now is an example of a "VoIP 2.0" firm concluding that its business interests are better aligned with "VoIP 1.0 service provider partners" rather than battling them as a stand-alone entity. Voice is a scale business, and Mobivox seems to have concluded that scale can be gotten a lot faster working with service providers than going it alone. 

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