Lightbridge delivers AOL’s new voice conferencing

America Online launched a conference and Web meeting service for business customers today called AIM Business Services. Providing that service on a hosted basis will be Burlington, Mass-based Lightbridge and partner WebEx.

AIM Voice Conferencing by Lightbridge will use Lightbridge’s new GroupTalk on-demand voice conferencing product, which was also introduced today. The service combines voice conferencing, instant messaging and Web meetings.

GroupTalk is a full-service carrier grade hosted platform that in addition to outbound teleconferencing functionality incorporated Lightbridge’s traditional transaction services for billing and payment processing.

"We think GroupTalk represents the next generation in voice conferencing and brings to groups that need to communicate, an immediacy of communication and collaboration that has been unavailable heretofore," said Pamela Reeve, president and CEO at Lightbridge.

GroupTalk also features ad hoc conferencing (pre-built call lists or on-the-fly outbound calling), Integrated Voice Response integration and Web management.

"That combination of capabilities fits nicely with what AOL is doing in its messaging group to monetize its subscriber base with additional services," Reeve said.

The service also lets the user establish access controls before and during a call using dynamic configuration through an IVR, Web browser or desktop application.

"It gives you an immediate and very effective collaboration that is not being controlled by the great telephony administrator in the sky or by some list master somewhere. It is controlled by end-user, Reeve said.

AOL is Lightbridge’s first public customer for GroupTalk, however the company expects traditional service providers to utilize the service as well.

With 15 years focusing on transaction management solutions, Lightbridge has been on a mission to expand into new market segments. The company started in earnest earlier this year with its $82 million acquisition of Authorize.net, a subsidiary of InfoSpace that provides IP-based payment gateways for small to medium-sized businesses.

"We’ve been saying for some time we will secure our position in wireless, but also grow and diversify our revenue stream as a company," Reeve said. "This AOL announcement is a representation of an internal effort to do that. The Authorize.net acquisition was an external step on that strategy."

The new AOL service is available to all AIM users on-demand and can be launched from the AIM buddy list.