Let’s make something better than Skype



It may seem paradoxical, but the rapid development of the Polish telecommunications market in recent years has been due to its initial backwardness. As a result, with the advent of the VoIP technology, which has spurred the on-going telecommunications revolution, Poland saw the emergence of a very innovative and rapidly expanding Internet phone sector. The main player on the Polish market for innovative telecom technologies is Datera SA, based in the coastal Tricity of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot. The company has operated since 2003. It is known best for its FreecoNet product, an award-winning VoIP platform which combines many existing telecom technologies.

The main idea behind FreecoNet is to provide people with an opportunity to talk for free, in whatever country they live and irrespective of their telecom operator. “The idea to develop something similar to Skype - but much better because available to users of fixed-line phones – emerged during our café conversations about the future of Internet technologies and about what we, Tricity specialists, could contribute in this respect. And so we moved from the idea to concrete action and developed FreecoNet,” says Krzysztof Malicki, the originator of FreecoNet and president of Datera SA.

FreecoNet was launched in the autumn of 2006. It is the world’s first and only telecom platform providing free phone calls between all its users, irrespective of the operator from whom they have their telephone number. And if the user calls a number unregistered on the platform the call may be handled by the regular operator or via the platform’s TelArena service, where five independent telecom operators – Crowley, Deutsche Telecom, Exatel, GTS Energis and Netia – compete for every call made by FreecoNet users. The call is handled by the operator who offers the lowest rate for calls in the required direction.



Voice calls are just the beginning



Across the world, the excitement over the opportunity to make phone calls for free or at negligible rates has soon turned into a war over who will offer more innovative add-on paid services and more of them. Most experts believe this is the field where the winners of the battle for a new order on the global telecom market will be decided. It comes as no surprise then that services offered by conventional operators at additional, relatively high rates – like for example the capability to block calls to selected numbers, redirect calls automatically to any number, and access lists of incoming and outgoing calls – have soon become standard services offered by VoIP telephony providers free of charge. But a real challenge has been to create new services and make the existing ones more innovative in order to turn individual fixed-line and mobile phones into a coherent and efficient system oriented at business goals.

Just how creative VoIP providers have been in their approach to this challenge is reflected in their invention of the virtual fax service, which allows customers to receive faxes to their e-mail boxes via the Internet. Thanks to this method, faxes do not get lost and can be conveniently browsed through and archived. The user also saves on paper and a fax machine, which is no longer needed. An additional advantage is the certainty that the fax will not fall into the wrong hands while waiting for its addressee in the front office. Another example is the virtual call centre, which allows companies to provide a professional service to calling customers without the need to make large outlays. A hosted call centre is very functional: a company’s consultants may be available both in the office or on a mobile phone at any place.

Another important direction in the development of add-on services and VoIP telephony in general is combining telecommunications with the Internet, often with the use of advanced speech synthesis techniques. In practice, this means for example integrating telephony with a company’s database systems and in consequence creating an additional channel for communication with customers. In this case, the system provides customers calling a company’s info line who enter specific commands through the keyboard with the voice information they need. Ready-to-use messages needed for the purpose of the service can be created and modified easily and swiftly with the use of the speech synthesis technology, which turns a text message typed using a computer keyboard into a speech message. This solution will certainly be useful for on-line shops and courier firms, where clients will have an opportunity to receive by phone instant information on the status of their order. But these advanced services will only mark a beginning because the potential for interaction between the world of telecommunications and the Internet is only limited by the imagination of those who create new solutions and those who use them. This is why many VoIP companies make their application programming interface (API) available to external users so that they can integrate their applications with the VoIP platform and at the same time create quite new services.



Hosted telecommunications of the future



Another direction in the development of IP telephony, closely connected with add-on VoIP services, is the hosted model of service provision. “There are already several companies in the world, including FreecoNet, that offer the functionality of traditional private branch exchanges (PBX) in this way. The companies provide a combination of unique features, including low costs of calls and lease, scalability and numerous add-on services,” says Jan Wyrwiński, president of FreecoNet SA. “These capabilities allow the business user to streamline communication, both within the organisation and with the outside world, and reduce its cost. The PBX also helps users improve customer service and increase labour efficiency. It does not matter whether the company employs five or 50 people: a hosted PBX ensures identical benefits to any business.”

A hosted PBX provides its business user with a wide range of innovative solutions, which help to turn the business in a more modern and better managed organisation. PBX functions make it possible to create extension numbers, forward voice messages to an e-mail address or automatically generate billing reports. Business users are also offered many other and more advanced services, like for example IVR (interactive voice response) and Call Centre. The user of a hosted PBX may start with a small number of functions, for example a simple IVR system, which allows those who call the company to dial extensions to individual staff members. New functions may be added as the company expands. The IVR system may be expanded to automate the handling of frequently asked questions to the customer service department or activate other add-on services, like for example a virtual fax service. All this is very simple and takes only a few minutes.

The features of hosted PBX systems - such as flexibility, ease of use and first of all attractive price – will determine a further direction in the development of all VoIP services for business. Nowadays, at a time of great uncertainty associated with the economic crisis, businesses are especially cautious and usually decide to delay their investment plans. This is why an ideal solution for them is hosted telecom services. They can choose services the company really needs and pay a small monthly charge for what the company really uses. “Savings for companies using a hosted PBX system may be substantial: there is no initial investment in hardware, no standing charges for service and the certainty that the hosted service, in contrast to hardware, will not become obsolete, which means no threat for the company that it will have to invest in telecom systems again within a few years’ time,” adds Krzysztof Malicki.

Datera engineers are constantly working on new telecom solutions. They create not only services and applications for the needs of VoIP telephony but also advanced systems intended for traditional telecom operators. By adding Datera’s modern products to their infrastructure, the operators have an opportunity to become more competitive on the market and offer clients new and useful telephone services.



Telephones of the future are already here



Visions of this kind are treated seriously today because VoIP companies have shown they have the potential to revolutionise the whole telecommunications sector. This is why the largest traditional operators and IT equipment producers are now taking part in the VoIP revolution in line with the folk wisdom that “if you cannot beat them, join them.” An example is France Telecom, which is now one of the largest VoIP operators. According to InfoCom estimates of January 2008, in June 2007 France Telecom, with 3.57 million VoIP subscribers, had a 14% share in the market. All of the other large operators, like British Telecom and Deutsche Telecom, go the same road. Hardware producers have also joined the revolution. These days, for example, one can hardly buy a PBX which does not support VoIP traffic. The IP PBX market is growing very rapidly and its value, according to Infonetics Research data, is to rise to USD11.9 billion by 2010. But IP PBX exchanges make up only one segment of the VoIP market. Individual and business users also buy more and more VoIP gateways, IP telephones and VoIP routers.

“The largest hardware producers are eager to work with new players. Such companies as Datera and FreecoNet are very important partners for us,” says José Costa e Silva, president of Gigaset Communications, the European leader on the market for DECT telephones. “It is thanks to their innovation that completely new user capabilities have been created, which also means demand for telecommunications equipment. In effect, phones are being developed which in practice are already able to fulfil the vision of the telecommunications of the future. It is worth stressing that the requirements set to them are incomparably greater today than a few years ago.”

The representative of the European hardware giant, which is creating a new telecommunications reality together with the young Polish companies, also describes the telephone of the future: cordless, with a built-in telephone book, enabling easy multi-line fixed-line and VoIP calls without a computer, providing access to news services such as weather forecast, alerting the user to incoming e-mails with their date, hour and topics shown on a large display and alerting the user to unanswered calls by means of text messages sent to the mobile phone or any other external number. Of course, the telephone of the future should also be energy-efficient and enable the user to send text messages and switch to the hands-free mode. “Such telephones already exist. I have simply described one of our latest models: the C470 IP. This shows that one can have the telecommunications of the future at home or in the office right now,” adds José Costa e Silva.

In the Polish “Silicon Valley”, there is no shortage of innovative telecommunications ideas. More and more ideas conceived by Polish engineers are put into practice. Looking at the telecommunications market in other, more developed parts of the world, Poland may be proud of its achievements in this area. And this is only a beginning.