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Strategies & Market Trends : Cents and Sensibility - Kimberly and Friends' Consortium -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (14039)	8/18/1999 1:42:00 PM
From: Tassi	Respond to of 108040

I got this by E-mail... I am not sure if this will pick-up..but it's free service " maybe" ================================== Wednesday August 18, 8:04 am Eastern Time Company Press Release Innofone Launches Hotcaller: Free Worldwide Long Distance Service—PC To Phone—Via The Web TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 18, 1999--Innofone.Com Incorporated (OTC BB:INNFE) announces the introduction of Hotcaller™, the world's first and only free international long distance service using the Internet. Hotcaller™, in partnership with Innofone Canada Inc., has designed and built the first and only advertiser-sponsored free PC-to-Phone service in the Internet world. This means it offers advertisers the opportunity to have the consumer interact with the commercial messages using the most sophisticated targeting capabilities available today. Modeled in part on free email services such as Hotmail, which was purchased by Microsoft for approximately US$400 million, Hotcaller™ will provide its members with the ability to call free, to over 50 countries worldwide. Hotcaller™ is the next generation in online advertising, moving beyond simple banners to advertising in which the customer will see, hear and interact with commercial messaging. Using the widely accepted format for commercially supported network television and radio, Hotcaller's revenue is to be generated through advertising and other add-on services. Earlier this year Innofone launched its innovative Web-based long distance service which provides PC-to-Phone and Phone-to-Phone calling via gateways currently being set up throughout Canada. Hotcaller™ has developed a proprietary service that will allow anyone in the world with a computer, microphone and speakers and a connection to the Internet, to call free to any person who has a standard telephone, in any one of over 50 countries. This is called a PC-to-PHONE call. Only the caller requires a computer. The calling party must view and interact with a commercial message(s) that will determine the country they can call and the number of minutes that they can talk. Innofone Chairman Ron Crowe said, “Hotcaller™ revolutionizes the way consumers view Internet advertising. Advertisers and marketing partners will benefit from the high degree to which custom-tailored advertisements can be selectively targeted to various segments of our membership base. Ads can be targeted based not only on geography and patterns of computer use, but also according to such characteristics as age, gender, income, expected major purchases in any of 20 specified categories, hobbies, interests, family size, and/or educational attainment.” This data is obtained from the detailed “Member Profile” survey that all members to Hotcaller's basic free long distance service are required to complete. Interested subscribers will go to the Hotcaller™ website at www.hotcaller.com to complete the detailed questionnaire, which allows them to specify areas of interest for commercial messages. This allows Hotcaller™ to offer advertisers the most sophisticated, precisely targeted capability on the Internet. Members earn free long distance time in exchange for watching, and even interacting with these targeted messages. Hotcaller™ free long distance calling will begin on Sept. 15, 1999. It has been estimated that online advertising expenditures in the United States will increase from $551 million in 1997 to $4 billion by 2001. “We plan to capture a big piece of that market,” said Innofone President Larry Hunt. And by being first to offer free long distance PC-to-Phone calling to over 50 countries worldwide, Innofone expects to break the records of other free online services, signing on as many as 150,000 new subscribers per day. “We believe we could easily surpass the leading provider of free email which has over 35 million active subscribers worldwide,” Hunt said. Hotcaller™ is for anyone who makes long distance calls. Subscribers will participate in direct marketing campaigns in exchange for free long distance calling anywhere in the world. Hunt explained: “It is anticipated that students away at college will gravitate to the service first, but Hotcaller™ has many, many applications. For example, businesses could sponsor free long distance calling for their own customer base.” “Clearly, Hotcaller™ offers Innofone an enormous new channel for revenue generation,” Hunt concluded. “Our plan is to spin Hotcaller™ out as a separate business. Innofone will continue to hold a majority interest in the new business and at the same time we will provide the telephony service for Hotcaller™. We are all enormously excited about the many options this opens up for us.” About Innofone: Innofone markets traditional long distance telephone services to residential, small and medium sized businesses and the small office/home office (SOHO) market, offering its Guaranteed Lowest Rate Calling program GLR™. Innofone offers state-of-the-art voice, VOIP, fax and data services over its Fully Integrated Worldwide Network facilities; the company also offers wholesale ITSP services to other Canadian and US Telecommunications companies. Innofone's product line includes a portfolio of state-of-the-art “virtual office” products geared to the growing business/home office market which allows commercial users to consolidate voice and data into a single network with substantial savings. For additional information visit Innofone's World Wide Web Site at innofone.com Safe Harbor Statement: Assertions in this news release which look forward in time involve risks and uncertainties, including the risks associated with the effect of changing economic conditions, trends in the development of the Internet as a commercial medium and carrier of telephony traffic, market acceptance risks, technological development risks and other risk factors.