AOL Takes Softphone Service to New Level

AOL LLC, building on its popular instant messaging client, next week will announce a new soft-client voice service, called AIM Phoneline, which will offer users a free phone line for incoming calls and a range of call management features not usually found in soft-client services.

AIM Phoneline is integrated with the AIM (AOL Instant Messaging) client, which will now include instant messaging, e-mail, voice mail, and a phone number for unlimited inbound calls.

The new service is designed to work only as a PC-based service. It also will offer an unlimited outgoing call service for $9.95 per month during an introductory period, and $14.95 thereafter. The unlimited service includes local and long-distance calls in North America and to 30 other countries.

The incoming call service will be advertising-supported, with advertising on the call-management dashboard and on windows that will pop up for each incoming call.

AOL emphasized the service was based on extensive feedback from customers.

“The bottom line is that consumers really don’t want to give out a home and cell phone number to everyone. They want to have another number that they can give out,” said Alex Quilici, vice president of AOL Voice Services, who added that this is bolstered by the fact that many customers use only cell phones. The additional phone number could be used for specific business purposes or to shield a user from unwanted phone calls.

AOL also will continue to offer its existing VoIP service, which will be marketed as a standard fixed-phone home service complemented by the PC-based service.

AIM Phoneline includes a number of extra features, such as

–Call logs and an online dashboard to manage features and retrieve voice mail

–Click to dial for outbound calls

–The ability to monitor voice mail and to interrupt voice mail to pick up a call if desired.

–Caller ID can include name, city and state as well as phone number

–An SMS message to a mobile phone for each new voice mail.

–A “telespam” button that reports unwanted callers. The feedback is used to create a “community” listing of telespammers, which is noted on the caller ID feature of the service. Also with one click, users can block a particular caller.

–Nomadic E-911 that prompts users to enter a new address if the service moves to a new location (detected by IP address). Users can create lists of locations that are frequently used and can simply click to choose the correct address.

“The motivation for this feature is partly regulatory,” Quilici said. “Also, those with cell phones as their primary line can have a service over a broadband connection that gives them a choice of backup for E911.”

In the future, users will be able to use click-to-call within ads to contact vendors, a feature that is also starting to turn up in online yellow pages.

The service is backed by network services from Broadwing Communications LLC. Broadwing has developed a back-office platform that facilitates IP communication services such as PC-to-PC calls or smart phones, or “any communication device with a computer in it,” said Donovan Dillon, vice president of marketing, Broadwing, because “next-generation communication is increasingly between computers, not dumb phones.”

The platform Broadwing has developed include transport for VoIP traffic, including termination to the PSTN, as well as “an operations environment to provide information to customer systems to help them use the next-gen capabilities,” said Dillon. Essentially, Broadwing is exposing some of its back-office capabilities, using a Web services model, to service-provider customers that will adapt those capabilities to be part of their services. Those capabilities include provisioning, billing, phone number management and E911 services.

AOL LLC www.aol.com
Broadwing Communications LLC www.broadwing.com