Newcall ringing out changes

By ADAM GIFFORD

Listed telecommunications company Newcall is rolling out a batch of new services made possible by a business development agreement with Wherever.net, based in Hong Kong.

Newcall director of technology Grant Crawshay said that the first step would be to join Newcall to Wherever.net's VoIP (voice-over internet protocol) network, a managed internet service which guarantees higher service levels than the public internet.

This would allow Newcall to offer VoIP, virtual private networks (VPN), global personal numbers and IP phone cards.

Mr Crawshay said while many of these services would be introduced first in the company's Singapore operation, they would not be long in coming here. "Newcall has already launched its calling card service in Singapore.

"By integrating those with the Wherever.net services, we will be able to offer roaming calling card use throughout Asia."

By combining traditional circuit switches and IP, calls could be delivered seamlessly to customers at competitive rates. The cards also allowed users to buy internet access wherever they were.

"We find that in Asia and developing countries with poor telecommunications infrastructure, the new VoIP services are more reliable than old telecoms.

"In China, we get better call completion with VoIP than traditional telephony," Mr Crawshay said.

Linking to Wherever.net's VPN service would give customers direct voice and fax access to overseas subsidiary offices throughout the world.

The service will allow people to have one number from which they can make or receive calls wherever they are worldwide, as long as they are within range of a Wherever.net point-of-presence (POP).

The company, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, at present has 105 POPs, including links in the United States, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Britain and the Netherlands.

Mr Crawshay said the deal gave the company access to Newcall's POPs in New Zealand.

"They want to terminate traffic in New Zealand that comes from POPs around the world.

"What we can do is offer them very good interconnection rates, because they don't have the volume purchasing power we have here.

"New Zealand also gets good rates to the rest of the world, particularly the Pacific rim, and Pacific Island countries, where we can offer better pricing out of New Zealand than any other country."

Newcall was also developing services and intellectual property which could be sold through the Wherever.net network.

It was talking to multinational companies about establishing call centres in New Zealand.

The company reported a loss of $4.26 million on turnover of $8 million for the six months to June 30, with no dividend declared.

Buying the internet service provider Iprolink for $3.6 million and 75 per cent of Energy Online for $600,000 had helped boost assets to $20.2 million, the company said.

Shares are trading at 20c, compared with a high of 70c at the beginning of the year.