Unwired offers fax, SMS and text to voice

Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 February 2007 05:04

Your IT - Home IT

Unwired has launched three new services, provided by Newsnet, that allow Unwired customers to send and receive faxes over the Unwired network, send SMS messages to any phone number worldwide, and send text-to-voice messages to national phone numbers. It has also named Harris Technology as a retailer and introduced free network optimisation software.

"The company has also announced Harris Technology as a new retail partner. "The launch of uFax and uSms services, as well as the addition of major retailer Harris Technology, increases Unwired's appeal, particularly to small office home office (SOHO) users," said Unwired CEO, David Spence. He said that more than 45 and 60 percent of Unwired customers had requested online fax and SMS services respectively."

The fax service comes with a dedicated phone number on which faxes can be received for delivery to the user's email box as a TIFF attachment. The service also attempts optical character recognition on the fax and sends any text recovered as a text file attachment as well.

The SMS service does not, unlike the Newsnet service, support return messages: the originating number displayed to the recipient is 'unwired SMS'. Newsnet's own customers for the service, however can sign up for a premium service and receive replies to their email box.

Unwired product manager Jeremy Deutsch told iTWire. "To provide the return service we would need a dedicated mobile number for each customer, and there is a cost involved with that. Our aim was to make the service as affordable as possible for residential and SOHO customers." For $10 per month users get access to fax (incoming and outgoing), SMS and text2voice. Outgoing fax messages are charged at 20 cents per page and incoming at 5 cents per page. All SMS are 20 cents each.

Deutsch said Unwired had investigated a number of possible services to resell. "We went with Newsnet because they have a good reputation - with a  ot of large corporate customers. Also they don't have a residential or small business offering, so we complement them very well."

The announcement coincided with the network-wide release of Unwired's free Optimiser software. As iTWire reported in October 2006  the software, supplied by Venturi Wireless, improves the way data is transferred over Unwired's network – resulting in improved performance for web browsing and streaming of audio and video.

"Initial feedback on Unwired's Optimiser has been terrific, with customers seeing a noticeable improvement in their service. Unwired Optimiser is also having a positive impact on the network, making best use of its resources," said Spence.

The addition of Harris Technology, a member of the Coles Group, will increase Unwired's retail network to more than 150 stores across Sydney and Melbourne. Unwired's wireless card and modem will go on sale in Harris stores and its online shop from the end of February.