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Yak Yak Yak On VoIP
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
CounterPath Solutions, Inc., formerly Xten Networks, Inc., a provider of VoIP, Video over IP, Instant Messaging and Presence-enabled SIP softphones, has entered into an agreement with Yak Communications Inc. allowing Yak to launch a new voice and video peer-to-peer VoIP service worldwide.
Yak expects to launch its "yakForFree" VoIP service in mid November.
YakForFree is being billed as allowing users to make free voice and video calls "to anyone on the Internet who is also a yak member of yakForFree." Yak will be licensing some of CounterPath's core softphone technologies.
Charles Zwebner, Yak's Chairman and CEO thinks the program has "the potential to reach millions of people worldwide… to assist Yak to transition from a legacy telephony company into a next generation, Internet based communications and commerce company."
David Hurwitz, President of Yak's VoIP initiatives explained that the business strategy is to invite yakForFree members to recruit their friends and families, "and encourage them to upgrade to one or more of our paying programs -- yakToAnyone, a PC-to-Phone, talk and video Pre-Paid service, or yakBasic or yakUnlimited subscription plans, that allows subscribers to make and receive calls over high speed DSL or cable internet access to virtually any telephone or cell phone worldwide."
Mark Bruk, Chairman and CEO of CounterPath said CounterPath's softphones for Windows, MAC OS X, Pocket PC and now Linux are software applications, which run on devices such as personal computers or personal digital assistants, or can be integrated into set-top boxes, embedded devices, instant messenger applications and the like.
When a CounterPath softphone is connected to a service provider's network, the user can make and receive calls to and from other "on-net" callers (IP-to-IP) and/or "off-net" callers (IP-to-PSTN/Cellular) "with the same quality of service they would expect from an IP handset."
Yak Communications Inc. claims it currently serves approximately 900,000 customers for its traditional telecom services. The company will hold its Annual Meeting of Shareholders Monday, December 12, 2005 at the offices of Adorno & Yoss LLP, the Company's corporate counsel, in Miami. Yak has recently hired Ernst & Young as its auditor, the Toronto-based telco saying Ernst & Young replaces Horwath Orenstein LLP.
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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
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