It will launch its first commercial service this month for small businesses with 100 employees or less. Small businesses can use the service, a virtual key system, instead of buying a PBX, says Tony Surak, executive vice president of sales and marketing. Like many competitive providers, TalkingNets has had to forge interconnection agreements with incumbents to terminate traffic in various markets. Voice ASP CallWave plans to announce its first service provider partner this month, but so far it has given its Internet Answering Machine away for free. When a call comes in, the user is notified both on the screen and through the PC speakers of the caller's number or even a real-time voice message.
Users can disconnect and take the call or send a message back.
Our platform isn't designed to displace the primary phone line in someone's home. We built it to add value to the routing and completion of calls, says CallWave president and cofounder David Hofstatter. Forwarded calls are routed through the PSTN like any inbound toll-free call, but they are terminated on CallWave's softswitch. The softswitch then alerts the user of an incoming call. FireTalk doesn't interact with the PSTN today, but its applications may in the future, says Matthew Hall, vice president of business development.