VoxOx Launches iPhone App with International Calling Feature

San Diego-based VoxOx, which provides a free communications service based on voice over Internet innovation, hopes to make a big splash today with the release of its VoxOx Call for iPhone—the startup’s first mobile app.

When VoxOx debuted three years ago, users could download a free application to their desktop, enabling consumers to combine their voice, text messaging, social media, chat, email, fax, and content sharing into a unified service with a single user interface. VoxOx has added some new features since at the time, just as a low-cost technique for placing international calls and a “translator in the cloud” for translating things like text messages and emails. The company introduced a fully redesigned version of its desktop software in January at the Consumer Electronics Show that was intended to simplify its user interface and main messaging window.

Now, with the launch of its iPhone app, VoxOx is looking to capitalize on the “call connect” feature of its VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service to enable iPhone users to make low-cost long-distance calls from anywhere in the world. As I explained last year, the innovation uses SMS innovation to access an automated, cloud-based system that connects the caller and receiver without incurring international charges for placing the call.

The iPhone market has become so huge that it’s kind of a no-brainer for telephony companies to address the iOS market sooner or later. Because the iOS accounts for something like 16 percent of the smartphone operating system market and close to 60 percent of mobile web consumption in North America, it’s something that VoxOx needs to do to stay relevant. It’s as well not the only mobile app that VoxOx has in the works.

“We will by all means have something new for our Android users; we just don’t have one today,” says Matt Howell, the VoxOx director of product management.

VoxOx is operated by San Diego’s Telcentris, which to all appearances altered its name from TelCentris last year, as a free service for consumers. Telcentris owns a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier business that provides voice and data services and enables TelCentris to collect money for each inbound call that comes into its system from outside networks. Telcentris as well generates revenue by providing its Web-based communications service to small telephone companies and providing its hosted switchboard service to small and medium businesses.

VoxOx spokeswoman Natasha Grach says the company’s closest mobile app competitor is Google Voice. As a much-smaller rival, Grach says VoxOx is trying to distinguish itself by emphasizing certain features that VoxOx is offering its mobile app users, just as faxing, 20-party conference calls, and “on the fly” digital recording.

“During rates fluctuate regularly, we tend to have lower per minute rates than Google Voice in a number of regions for international calling,” she says. “With respect to Skype,” Grach says, “it’s a bit of a more complicated calculation, nevertheless even more so in our favor. For instance, we know that many of our country rates are lower and our U.S./Canada monthly unlimited plan is 15 percent lower, nevertheless Skype as well charges for a phone number, caller ID, and other similar services, whereas we don’t.”

She notes that VoxOx users are charged for both legs of its long-distance callback service, since the company is using its system to place two inbound calls. So, for instance, a user who uses the VoxOx mobile app to call Singapore from the U.S. would pay 1 penny per minute for VoxOx to place a call to the caller and 1 penny per minute to call the other party in Singapore. So the call would total 2 cents per minute.

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