Bayan Telecommunications Launches Voice SMS in Philippines on Kirusa Platform

First Ever Deployment of Convergent Voice SMS in Philippines

Quezon City, Philippines and New Providence, NJ, Friday, December 18, 2009: Bayan Telecommunications Inc. (Bayan), one of the leading telecommunications service providers in Philippines, announced that it has launched Voice SMS service across Philippines for both its fixed line and wireless landline subscribers. The Voice SMS solution has been sourced from Kirusa, the world’s leading vendor of Voice SMS and a leading developer of mobile value added services. This is the first ever deployment of Convergent Voice SMS in Philippines wherein fixed line and wireless landline subscribers can send and receive Voice SMS messages.

Voice SMS allows subscribers to send messages by voice, eliminating the need to type. Subscribers can communicate faster, with greater ease, and convey emotions as compared to limitations of text messages. Use of Voice SMS by mobile subscribers has spread rapidly across the globe.

Bayan Telecommunications has decided to capitalize on the Voice SMS service by offering their subscribers an interesting Voice SMS based application: ‘Boto Mo I-Patrol Mo’ which means ‘Take Care of Your Vote.’ In this forum, Bayan subscribers as well as subscribers of other carriers in Philippines will be able to voice their opinions on various subjects in time for the elections going to be held in 2010, through Voice SMS. Selected Voice SMS messages sent by subscribers will be showcased on national television as well.

Bayan subscribers pay a price of PHP 1.50 (approximately USD 0.03) for sending Voice SMS to on-net and off-net subscribers within Philippines. To compose a Voice SMS, a bayanWIRELESS landline subscriber just has to dial ‘*’ followed by the area code and the number of the person they wish to send the message to, speak a short message for 30 seconds in any language and send. BayanPHONE subscribers, on the other hand, will dial ‘990+Area code+Tel number’. If the recipient is a bayanWIRELESS landline subscriber, the recipient will get a text SMS notification and can dial *0* to hear a new Voice SMS. Old Voice SMS can be retrieved by dialing *1*. A bayanPHONE or bayan fixed line subscriber will get an outbound call for delivery of Voice SMS. They also have the option of replying, forwarding, saving or deleting the Voice SMS messages. Replies and forwards are charged at PHP 1.50/msg.

Subscribers of other carriers in Philippines can also use the Bayan Voice SMS service, by dialing 02-412-9621, and following the prompts to send a Voice SMS to any other subscriber in Philippines. Standard call charges will apply.

On the occasion of this launch, Joevel E. Rivera, Vice President - Product Development & Management of Bayan Telecommunications, said, “We are quite upbeat about offering the Voice SMS service to our subscribers. We hope that they find value in the offering and use the innovative service extensively for communicating. The response to the ‘Boto Mo I-Patrol Mo’ campaign has been phenomenal, and we see several other Voice SMS based applications being introduced in the market. We chose Kirusa for this launch as it has a large number of deployments across the world with a good reach in the market. Their Voice SMS is very robust, can support applications, and will be useful in increasing our ARPU.”

“We are thrilled to have deployed the first ever convergent Voice SMS solution in the Philippines. Bayan has been credited with many firsts in the past and we are proud that they decided to add this path-breaking product in their portfolio. We hope the Filipino market will respond with whole hearted support to our endeavors in bringing them closer,” said Kirusa CEO and Founder, Inderpal Singh Mumick. 

About Bayan Telecommunications

Bayan Telecommunications (Bayan), a member of the Lopez Group of Companies and one of the top companies in the Philippines in terms of gross revenues, is a major provider of a wide range of voice and Internet applications to residential customers nationwide. The company is also a leading provider of data communications services, such as dedicated domestic and international leased lines, frame relay and Internet access, to companies in strategic industries such as banks, manufacturing, business process outsourcing, among others.

For more information visit: www.bayan.com.ph

About Kirusa

Kirusa is one of the leading global developers of Mobile Social Media and Value Added Services enabling mobile subscribers to reach out to their family and friends. Kirusa’s solutions include the hugely successful Kirusa Voice SMS service, the world’s most advanced Voice SMS solution, used by over 30 carriers around the world. Kirusa has pioneered a suite of social media applications that facilitate mobile subscribers to interact through voice, including the Call-n-Tweet application which helps users update their Twitter status using voice. Kirusa provides an open platform with APIs to enable third parties to offer mobile applications services to mobile subscribers. Used by mobile subscribers millions of times daily, Kirusa solutions are built on its patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable and scalable open multimodal platform. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 100 technology companies by Silicon India, and one of top 25 emerging technology companies by Smart Techie magazine. Headquartered in New Jersey and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives and technologists, Kirusa has offices in three continents. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS,’ is a trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information visit: www.kirusa.com.

Media Contacts

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Kirusa
Navneet Anand
GreyMatters Communications
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