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	home > customer care> company info my people: VoIP Features With a Difference February 7th, 2006 By Charlotte Wolter New Telephony The concept of VoIP delivering exciting new phone features for business and consumers alike has been for the most part just that: a concept. VoIP service providers simply have not thought outside the telco box enough to deliver features that aren’t readily available on the PSTN. Now, a new consumer VoIP provider, my people, is trying to break out of that box with features that try to focus on how consumers really want to use their communication devices. Launched this week, my people proposes to offer consumer VoIP services with features that are unique, as a way to attract consumers. “When we started a year ago we wanted to focus on feature functionality. We did not want a commodity deal,” said Alan Creighton, president and CEO of my people. “We wanted to compete at a different level. The pricing is $25 a month with all the usual features plus unlimited local and long-distance, so it’s on an even playing field with Vonage (Holdings Corp.) but with more functionality.” Developed by my people Vice President and CTO Hilaire deSa, the system has been in creation for more than a year. The additional functionality includes features such as: – An online calendar that can be used to activate features that incorporate the phone, such as setting wake-up calls to any phone number. The user can say “snooze” to the system’s interactive voice response and will be called back ten minutes later. In addition, wake-up calls can include content, such as the weather or news. Besides wake-up calls, the system can be used to set reminder calls with recorded reminder content. – One call, tell all: A message can be recorded and up to 25 numbers. The system can maintain up to 10 lists of 25 people each. – On-demand content ranging from weather and news to stocks and horoscopes. The customer can pick up the phone and interrupt the dial tone with a spoken command, such as “weather,” to receive the content. – Personal dial tone: The sound of the dial tone is customizable with music or other content available from the my people Web site. – VoIP out from mobile: The system can enable customers to make long-distance VoIP calls as local calls from a cell phone. The user dials his home number from his cell phone. The my people system asks if the user wants to “VoIP out” or complete the call. The user says “VoIP out” or “complete.” The feature can be turned on or off as needed. – Online content and email: the my people online account can be customized to deliver various kinds of content, such as news, and includes three email accounts. – Dial by name: The system’s IVR supports dialing by name to access frequently dialed numbers. – Emergency link: When schools or hospitals ask for emergency contact numbers, they can be given just the home number and told to dial “0" when it answers. Up to five phone numbers can be put on the emergency list and are dialed in order. Although VoIP makes it easier to replicate advanced phone features, Creighton believes it will be a challenge for other service providers to equal my people’s functionality. “Yes we have filed for some patents on this, but we’ve been working on it for a year. So we have a head start on the competition. It’s easier if you have this architecture in place starting from day one as opposed to bringing it in when you have 100,000 customers. Also we don’t want to stay stagnant, so we are also working on new applications.” my people is a sister company to Momentum Telecom, a CLEC operating in nine states in the southeastern United States. Momentum is privately funded and headquartered in Birmingham, Ala. Momentum Telecom (no Inc.) www.momentumtelecom.com my people (no Inc.) www.mypeople.com back
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