October 10, 2008
By Ted Stevenson
It was only late last month that VoIPplanet first covered Mobivox, a Montréal-based developer and provider of VoIP services—in particular, voice-activated telephony. The news then was that Mobivox was opening its VoIP services platform, MOBIVOX|PL, to communications partners across the Internet and telephony communities.
This week the company announced the first such major partnership—with fellow Montréal-based company Unyk, which offers a very Web 2.0-ish application: intelligent on-line contact directories.
Here's how it works: People wishing to be able to store and access their phone/address books online, register (for free) at the Unyk website, supplying the contact information they wish to make available to friends and colleagues. They are given a unique (unyk?) user ID, which serves as a login for accessing their private address books or changing their personal contact information or profile.
Unyk, which supports 6 languages, claims 10 million active users and manages around 480 individual contact records.
Users compile Unyk address books from the population of active Unyk users and/or import them from existing address books—like Gmail or Outlook—the aim being a single, all-inclusive address book that can be accessed from anywhere there's an Internet connection.
As each Unyk user updates his/her personal information, those updates are reflected in all the other users' personal phone books in which s/he appears as a contact—so everyone's information is up to date.
The implementation of MOBIVOX|PL brings two benefits to Unyk's user base: First, they will now have access to low-cost IP-based telephony services, which work with any phone, on any network. And second, they will now be able to access their phone/address book information—using a natural voice interface—over the phone.
"Introducing a voice interface to the address book tracks closely with our objectives to offer full mobility and customized services to our users," said Sebastien Brault, CEO and founder of UNYK.com. "You'll be able to access your Unyk address book no matter where you are, and to take advantage of the communications services we can offer in partnership with Mobivox."
Mobivox CEO, Peter Diedrich, said "We are delighted with the opportunity to bring MOBIVOX|PL to a new partner with a growing online audience of users." He went on to observe that the deployment will be a 'great proof point' for the Mobivox platform, demonstrating its scalability and robustness, as well as its flexibility and speed of roll-out.
The new Mobivox functionality will be available in a limited beta release, starting in November, with worldwide general availability planned for January 2009.
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