Protus IP Solutions says its new MyFax Affiliate Program, a campaign designed to further expand its presence within the
Internet-based messaging (or fax) marketplace, is the company’s first big push at aligning itself with as many partners as it can.
One of the Ottawa-based application service provider’s flagship products – MyFax.com – is aimed primarily at small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and small office-home office (SOHO) customers. Thus the sizeable Canadian SMB market is of utmost importance to Protus, though the Internet-based MyFax.com service is being pitched Stateside also.
According to Steve Adams, vice-president of marketing for Protus, mobility, emerging privacy regulations, the simplicity of the MyFax service, and a compelling return-on-investment are what’s driving Protus’ business.
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The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)
Eskinder Michael
Addis Ababa
The Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation yesterday announced that it had made tariff adjustments on long distance mobile phone calls and Broadband multimedia service.
Ato Abdurahim Mohammed, ETC’s Communication Affairs General Manager stated that the tariff for calling from a mobile phone to another and from a mobile phone to a land line and vice versa will be 0.72 cents per minute — a 0.03 cent reduction — when the call is made within the tariff zone (a tariff zone consists of a list of towns under a specific zone).
The tariff for calling a mobile phone from one town to another is the same if and only if the two towns are listed under the same tariff zone). There are four tariff Zones — Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Mekele and Dire Dawa.
Jimma, Nekemte, Awasa, Shashemene, Nazareth, Asela and Ziway are listed under the Addis Zone; Mekele, Dessie and Kombolcha are listed under the Mekele zone; Dire Dawa, Harar and Jigiga are listed under the Dire Dawa zone while Bahir Dar and Gondar are listed under the Bahir Dar zone.
Meanwhile the tariff for calling from a mobile phone to another and from a mobile phone to a land line and vice versa from one tariff zone to another will be 1.50 birr per minute (the previous traffic being 2.72 birr).
Ato Abdurahim also stated that the tariff for the Broadband multimedia service that was introduced in July of this year was reduced by 100%.
Ato Amare Alemayehu, Director of Higher Technical section of mobile phones said that the tariff for calling from a mobile phone to land line and vice versa was reduced because ETC believes that the 3 cents previously charged by ETC while calling land lines would be made up for from the growing number of mobile users.
Also explaining why there was trouble in the network about two weeks ago, «There was congestion on the network due to the misunderstanding between the software installed by the Eriksson and ZTE companies engaged in giving their services to the ETC. But we have now found the source of the problem and we have fixed it last week,»
«Whenever new resources are added to the mobile phone network, there are some instabilities detected on the network and that could cause some of the problems until the resources are dealt with. Unless it is peak hours, the network is now performing well.» he added.
In related news, Ato Abdurahim also stated that the issuing of mobile phones stopped because ETC has finished giving out the 200,000 mobile phone lines that were planned for the ending Ethiopian fiscal year.
«We will start issuing more lines in the 104 towns in Ethiopia and other main roads that connect Ethiopia to neighboring countries in the coming Ethiopian fiscal year as soon as the project for issuing 350,000 + mobile phones is finished,» he said.
The tariff rates were put into effect as of yesterday, August 9, 2004, according to Ato Abdurahim.
by Tony Hallett
US market may get competition injection, says analyst
Alternative telecoms operators in the US are likely to be among the first to benefit from the rise of WiMax wireless technology.
A research note from Meta Group points to WiMax — just now becoming known as a broadband wireless standard that works over wide areas — as a way for some telcos to compete with incumbent local operators for voice services. It means they don’t have to use copper lines or voice over IP technology.
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Ina Steiner
AuctionBytes.com
Smartpay Jieyin Ltd. announced the completion of a $65 million round of equity financing that will be used to further expand the deployment of its Smartpay’s electronic payment services in China. Under the terms of the financing, 2b Holdings will lead a group of strategic investors and existing shareholders in providing $65 million in equity financing for Smartpay. 2b Holdings, an investment and advisory services concern, was an initial investor in EachNet, China’s leading auction and e-commerce Web site acquired by eBay. In addition, a significant percentage of the capital raised in this round was contributed by Lunar Group alongside existing shareholders and directors of the Company.
Smartpay’s CEO, Eric Rosenblum, said «The opportunity to establish an integrated electronic payments service is amongst the most significant in China, and will result in the creation of a highly valuable market leader. Smartpay has established an initial lead in this sector and this current round of financing will allow us to further consolidate and extend our leadership position.»
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LA JOLLA, Calif.
(Business Wire) Aug. 10, 2004 -- Global Vision Holdings, Inc., (Pink Sheets:GVHL), a developer and worldwide wholesale marketer of a new generation of prepaid financial service products, today announced the launch of «Global Discounted Healthcare» — another prepaid product for debit cardholders and consumers at large. GVHL is the master distributor of the plan, having entered into an agreement with Infinity Benefits U. S., LLC, of Florida, who will administer the program.
Under the terms of the agreement, GVHL will function as the program’s mass-distribution marketer and set up major channel distributors. Global Discounted Healthcare distributors will earn a percentage of the prepaid monthly membership fees as commissions. The targeted distributors are the current credit and debit/stored value card distributors and high traffic volume Web site operators already in place in the industry. Infinity Benefits U. S. will assemble and administer the plan from various healthcare areas, and provide the reporting, business and customer support infrastructures.
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