ITWire

Freshtel's flagship customer is UK retail giant Tesco which sells the Freshtel service under its own brand name and there has been much speculation that Freshtel will strike a similar deal with a similar organisation in Australia. This announcement increases te likelihood of such a move, but acting CEO Peter Warner would not be drawn this week on whether any such deal was in the pipeline.

Freshtel claims that the new V2 Voicedot network "delivers enhanced scalability, reliability and security to provide the foundation for Freshtel to significantly grow its customer base and enhance product functionality." It has been rolled out across Australia and Freshtel's UK network will be upgraded shortly.

According to Freshtel, V2 has been its major R&D focus over the last 12 months. Freshtel does not reveal its R&D spend but the scale of this is evident from its statement, in its half year results announcement earlier this year, that, of its total 63 headcount, approximately 50 percent were involved in R&D. It claimed then that "R&D capability is a critical enabler for future success and Freshtel's R&D expertise is well supported by the appropriate systems, infrastructure and expertise to deliver the products to successful commercialisation."

Warner describe V2 as "a critical piece of infrastructure which will become our technical platform from which we grow into new markets and secure new white label partners." He added: "Scalability has been a central design feature, allowing Freshtel to cater for a rapid increase in our subscriber base, without disruption to service or the requirement for excessive capital expenditure to grow and maintain the network."

One of the key features claimed for V2 is that it is "a distributed style network, rather than one that relies on a centralised infrastructure; similar to the concept of grid computing."