2008 February 27

We have some big news today. iotum's FREE Conference Call application on Facebook has gone global. In combination with our partners Truphone, Abbeynet, and Moi Telecom, we have provided options for people who want to use the FREE Conference Call application that will allow them to participate in a call from virtually every point on the planet.

Now, you have three calling options available to you:

Direct dial from home, office, or mobile, in the United States, Canada and France. Use this option when you're out of the office and need to call from your mobile, or if you just feel more comfortable using a telephone handset.
VoIP. From anywhere in the world, you can call using a PC. Use this option in countries where we don't have dial-in access, or if you don't want to tie up your home phoneline.
Call Back. From many countries in the world, you can select a phone number and get called back on your telephone. This is a great option if you have one of the many plans where you don't have to pay for incoming minutes.

If you have a look at the application on Facebook, this is what the call dashboard looks like now. Pretty easy, right?

As Andy Abramson noted, this is a great example of how relationships created in the blogging world pay dividends. My friend and Abbeynet CEO Luca Filigheddu and I have been talking for ages about how to do business together, but it wasn't until VON last fall that I did the initial meetings with companies who might be able to help us extend our footprint internationally. Those meetings were driven largely by relationships that Andy helped foster in the blogging world… a little wine never hurts the cause. And here we are four months later rolling out the services.

We also explicitly took a partnering approach to build out the FREE Conference Calls service. We did not want to build out a network the world over, nor did we have the expertise to interact with carriers all over the world. Instead, we chose to work with companies who had already built those relationships. Moreover, this is just the start. As we move forward look for more relationships like these that will help our users, wherever they are, have local access to what I think of as the best conference calling service on the market today.

And on a personal note, thank you to the iotum team; my great friend and business partner Howard Thaw plus Noam, Saad, Tom, Julien, Rob and our newest member, our Chairman Randall Howard, for the hard work that has gotten us here.

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