CallWave plays numbers game

As more mobile users cut the cord on their wireline phones, social trends seem to be accomplishing what the wireless industry has been trying to for years: that wireless networks have the availability and reliability to allow users to consolidate various phone numbers into a single point of wireless contact.

With cord-cutting finally kicking in, it goes without saying that wireless call volumes will increase for users. Ironically, one company's answer to managing all those incoming calls is to give users one more phone number.

CallWave, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., is an application service provider that hosts voice-over-IP applications for carriers and users from a server located in northern Nevada and connected to the rest of the world via IP transport.

The company recently announced two new IP-based applications that are leveraged on issuing mobile users a VoIP phone number to complement existing mobile numbers, said Dave Hofstatter, president and CEO of CallWave.

Mobile Call Screening allows wireless users to listen to voice mail messages while callers are leaving them and also allows users to interrupt the message to accept the call. Mobile Call Transfer allows users to transfer a call from a cell phone to a landline phone by touching one button on their keypads (see diagram). Behind the scenes, the calls are transported with the help of CallWave's VoIP/public network bridge to the CallWave applications server in Nevada, which handles the functions.

“Since the calls travel back and forth on IP transport, it's a very efficient and inexpensive service,” Hofstatter said

CallWave developed Mobile Call Screening and Mobile Call Transfer over the past several months after conducting research on its existing customer base of about 800,000 users.

“We found they really needed more help in managing their cell phone calls,” he said. “Seventy-nine percent of them actually conduct cell phone calls within a few feet of a landline home or office phone.”

The applications sell for $3.95 per month through CallWave's Web site, and the company also is offering a 30-day free trial. CallWave can continue to market direct to users online, but Hofstatter said the company also would like to align with carriers for distribution.

As CallWave looks to add Mobile Call Screening and Mobile Call Transfer to carriers' service roster, Hofstatter knows the company's solution must satisfy three key tenets: “It has to be a software-only approach, with no additional hardware installation; it must have cost leadership because users won't pay a lot of money for something they haven't tried before; and it must be a very precisely featured service, something that addresses a very specific problem that many people can relate to.”

The prospect of adding yet another contact number to their business cards might sound like a burden to some customers, but Hofstatter said the applications are most likely to appeal to users who want their wireless information widely advertised — or to households in which three or four people could use a single CallWave number.

One CallWave user who signed up for the screening and transfer applications last fall told Wireless Review he was initially skeptical of adding another number. However, the free trial and his experience as a residential VoIP user convinced him to try the applications.

“I realized it was actually a good number to use when registering on e-commerce sites and for putting down on financial forms and applications,” he said. “You get calls from people about fairly important things, but it's just not a good time to talk, and this is a way to weed through all that.”

BY THE NUMBERS

$42.5 BILLION

Projected value of the 2005 global MMS market, generated primarily from messages between mobile users

$8.3 BILLION

Global MMS revenues for 2004, with most coming from server-to-mobile traffic

Source: Jupiter Research