From CNNFN, via newsbytes Net2Phone Set To Offer E-Mail By Phone Service February 04, 1999: 4:01 p.m. ET
HACKENSACK, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A.
(NB) -- By Sylvia Dennis, Newsbytes. IDT's
[NASDAQ:IDTC] Net2Phone, the Internet
telephony firm, has signed a key agreement
with MailCall that will see the company
offering free e-mail accounts to users of the
Net2Phone service.
Perhaps more revolutionary for users of
the Net telephony service, however, will be
the ability to listen to e-mail across the
Net2Phone Direct phone-to-phone service.
Unlike the firm's PC-to-phone service,
which requires subscribers to use their PCs
to access the Net2Phone service, Net2Phone
Direct allows users to route their voice calls
on a phone-2-phone basis, using a technique
similar to a telephone calling card.
Calls are still routed across the Internet,
Newsbytes notes, but transparently so. To
use the service, subscribers dial an access
number, enter their account number, and the
number they wish to dial. According to
Net2Phone, if users want to retrieve their
e-mail, they can enter a code in order to
retrieve messages.
Perhaps most intriguingly of all,
Net2Phone says that users who would like to
retrieve e-mail from an account other than
the free Net2Phone Direct account will be
able to change their preferences on a
designated secure Web site. Users will
receive a free Net2Phone e-mail account
when they first make use of the MailCall
option.
Net2Phone says that, after activating the
service, users hear the headers for each of
their e-mail messages, after which they have
several options for managing their e-mail.
Subscribers can choose to listen to the text
of the message (in English or Spanish), have
a hard copy of the message sent to any fax
machine in the US, Canada, or Mexico, or
reply to the message using one of several
advanced features.
Plans call for the extra services to be available
from February 15 onwards, at a cost of 25
cents a minute with no subscription charges.
According to David Greenblatt,
Ne2Phone's chief operating officer, the
company has always been committed to
offering unique and innovative services to its
users,
"Computerless e-mail retrieval is one of
many products we plan to bring to the
market," he explained, adding that, by
introducing value- added services to the
firm's Internet telephony suite of services,
Net2Phone will continue to lead the market
sector with innovative services for
consumers.
Net2Phone's Web site is at
net2phone.com . |
