Technology always finds ways of beating the rules. If VSNL has blocked all Internet phone sites, a US-based IT company has come up with an innovative way of sending voice- and e-mail for the price of a local call.Opensoft Infotech has introduced allyourmail.com, a unique service that enables users to access and send e-mail and voice-mail through a telephone and/or web browser. Voicemail left at the company's centre through a local phone call is shipped to the destination city without incurring long distance charges.
``Through this service, we lower the barriers to using Internet messaging by using a local telephone network. Consumers can reap the benefits of Internet e-mail, most notable amongst which is the cost reduction in one's communication bills,'' says OpenSoft CEO Vijay Singh.
A subscriber can access the services via a telephone or web browser. In its current implementation, the technology supports e-mail and voice-mail. ``We are developing a fax module that should be implemented by next month,'' Singh says.
``We have developed a proprietary technology and are offering a consumer and business service based on this technology. There are sections of our technology for which we have applied US patents,'' Singh says.
When a user signs up for the service, he is provided the following facilities:
An e-mail address,
An allyourmail extension number,
A numeric password, and
A local access phone number.Through a local call, a user can leave a three-minute message in his own town or in any other place in the world where OpenSoft has a centre. This results in tremendous savings on STD and international calls, says Anoop Singh, COO of OpenSoft Infotech.
According to him, a member can also send a message recorded in his/her voice to anybody in a city where the company has an office. ``You leave the message in your home town and the recipient picks it up in his/her city through the telephone,'' he explains.
The user can distribute his/her e-mail address and start communicating worldwide using this e-mail address. He can access his mailbox through a telephone or a web browser. For telephonic access, he will call the local access number. For web-based access, he visits the allyourmail website, further explains Singh.
In spite of its obvious benefits, a vast number of people are not yet using e-mail. In surveys like the Technology 1998 Summary by Pew Research Center, statistics indicate that only about 35 per cent of Americans are using e-mail (the percentage should be significantly lower in the developing countries). The prime reason is that e-mail has traditionally been a PC application, and it therefore inherited all the costs and complexities associated with PCs.
The market opportunity to enable non-PC owners to use e-mail has spawned a new class of products called the "information appliances" industry. Opensoft believes that a touch tone telephone is the ultimate e-mail appliance. ``It is highly ubiquitous, portable (quite a few non-PC devices like WebTV, screenphones are not portable) and people who own it know how to use it. The market opportunity to enable people to leverage the benefits of unified messaging through a telephone is huge,'' he adds.
A major application of such a service is the reduction in long-distance operating costs of businesses and individuals. Businesses incur these costs due to voice and fax calls. The above service accommodates this cost saving as illustrated by the following scenario:
The caller makes a local call to send a message (voice-mail or fax) rather than a long-distance call. Thus the need for a long-distance call is obviated, resulting in a cheaper rate. The service ships the message as an e-mail to the recipient's destination using the Internet as the backbone. In the case of a voice-mail/e-mail, the recipient is notified that a message is pending in his mailbox. The notification can be done via a notification ring, SMS message, pager message, etc. In case of a fax, the message is sent to the destination fax machine. The recipient calls the local access number and picks up his message. The recipient can also pick up his message through a web browser. Thus, for people sending messages outside India, it becomes really cheap and easy. Sending a one-minute voice-mail to the US will cost only Rs 5 as compared to Rs 60 for a one-minute direct call.``We anticipate this service to be very attractive to businessmen and consumers in India and that it will lead to a rapid acceptance of the service because in spite of the recent reductions in tariff by the government, domestic call charges in India are still among the highest in the world. Individuals rarely call from India.''
Opensoft has launched this service in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Jaipur and Indore at present. ``We should be adding Chennai, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Pune, Ahmedabad and Atlanta (this last will cover all of the US) in a month's time,'' says Singh.
At the moment, the service is being offered free of charge on an extended trial. This will continue till more centres are added. Ultimately though, it will be a charged service.
Opensoft offers three plans. First, there is the Monthly Plan costing Rs 125, wherein the user can receive 50 e-mails, send 50 preformatted text replies and send 25 voice-mails. The user can receive unlimited messages from other members. Then, there is the Six Monthly Plan. This costs Rs 695 for six times the number of messages allowed in the Monthly Plan. The third, which is the Yearly Plan, costs Rs 1,285, and the number of call allowed are correspondingly higher.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.