Starhub going global with converged comms product
pfingo launched to take on Yahoo! Google, MSN
Singapore operator Starhub wants to become a global brand with the launch of a converged, web based, communications service backed by white label services provider Outblaze.
The operator has launched a combined email, mobile and VoIP service under the brand name pfingo, which stands for Phone, Fingers, Internet,On the Go.
Richard Bye, vp sales and corporate development, EMEA, Outblaze, said that the service was, “one of the first real examples of the convergence of mobile and internet together to provide combination communications services”.
“Starhub is operating a combined VoIP, mobile email and messaging service - one of the first of its kind. We built it for them, and what they wanted to do was get to market with an alternative offer to what you could find with Yahoo!, Google etc - taking the brand worldwide, to in the long term compete with Hotmail and so on.”
The service is device agnostic, with a VoIP client for mobile and PC, providing a three tier offering of email, mobile and VoIP. Outblaze is providing all the messaging and online SMS facilities. It is also the main centre for synchronisation across all devices, synching changes of content information across all devices immediately.
The service can also consolidate up to 5 POP external accounts.
“The POP service we’ve created is completely unique, no-one else is doing that. We automatically POP external accounts even if the user is logged in or not, over regular time periods.
Outblaze’s background is as a provider of white labelled messaging, social networking and social media services.
Bye said the future plan for pfingo is to evolve to social media at some point.
Pfingo provides users with email (on mobile, PC and webmail), instant messaging, mobile VoIP service, contacts sychronisation, news feeds and 400 MB storage space per user – as well as premium options. The pfingo launch follows a public trial started in April 2007. More than 30,000 users worldwide signed up then and installed the pfingo client onto phone or PC.
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