New Mobivox customer adds value to voice

Talk-Out, a new breed of low-cost mobile provider making headway in Canada and the United States, has inked an agreement to use Mobivox's voice-activated platform for its business and consumer services. The deal fills out Montreal-based Talk-Out's services, which are supposed to be launched here in Canada this week and in the US next month. "Our advantage is fixed pricing for unlimited routes," says David Chin, Talk-Out's president and CEO. "We like Mobivox because they have a lot of good features on their system; they are a major player that can handle large volumes, and their vision supports our B2B, B2C, and e-commerce business model." Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it is possible that Mobivox has entered into a revenue sharing agreement with Talk-Out. It would fit with Talk-Out's business model, make the platform more affordable for the small company, and potentially offer Mobivox a long-term revenue stream. "Last fall we announced our move to a platform play," says Peter Diedrich, Mobivox's CEO. "Talk-Out was unimpressed with their current platform provider, and approached us. Our teams have been beavering away feverishly to transition to the platform, though most of the work is on their part." At least one analyst says that Mobivox has an interesting service without many competitors. "There are a lot of companies that do various things with voice-enabled applications for mobility," says Jon Arnold, an independent telecom analyst who has consulted for Mobivox. "However, Mobivox has an unusual focus - I don't really know of anyone who is doing what they do." Mobivox's application programming interface, dubbed Mobivox PL, allows for mashups with other voice services and third party applications, and Talk-Out's marketing research determined that adding such services to an unlimited approach would be easier for its customers to understand. "The mass market needs to understand simplicity," says Chin. "We are resellers working with a referral business model. This is a marketing method that we feel is helpful - it's the direction that we want to go in. Partnering with Mobivox was a good decision because it takes the technical problems off our shoulders and lets us focus on our business." One of Mobivox's central value propositions is its ability to monetize its products, specifically the voice-activated person-to-person and person-to-group communications services. "Billing is a critical first step to being able to monetize a solution," says Diedrich. "If you take a look at some of the social media networks, they have huge audiences but no billing infrastructure. They think advertising, but in a recession advertising is the first thing people look at ." As a result, Diedrich argues that a company like Talk Out can succeed in a tough economy by monetizing some of the unique features offered by Mobivox. "A lot of the Web 2.0 and voice 2.0 players don't have sophisticated billing systems whatsoever. We bring a battle tested billing capability." In fact, there are some technical challenges on Talk-Out's end that might delay the announced roll-out in Canada by a week or so, and push the US roll-out into April. "We are still designing our own program to fit with theirs," says Chin. "We have some programmers working on the APIs for real-time activation. Mobivox is on a per-minute model, whereas we have fixed pricing model with unlimited usage." The commoditization of voice should, however, raise some red flags about the viability of such a service that hinges on low-cost calling and messaging with additional services such as conferencing bolted on to improve average revenue per user (ARPU). "The Mobivox features may not be as attractive to a mainstream operator, but they would be to an MVNO or to a specific mobile segment or vertical," says Arnold. In Canada that may not be such a huge market, as the big players have their own brands: Bell Mobility Inc. has Solo, Telus Corp. has Koodo, and Rogers Communications has Fido. Virgin mobile Canada is the only MVNO of note in the Canadian market - though that doesn't leave out the possibility of new entrants. As well, Mobivox could include as potential customers some of the companies that picked up spectrum in last year's auction. That said, Mobivox seems to have its sights set outside of Canada. "MVNOs have been quite successful in Europe and are an interesting market segment," says Diedrich. "By adding our platform's services an operator could increase ARPU as well as retention."

New Mobivox customer adds value to voice

News | February 11, 2009

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