New Voice Mailbox Service 

March 18, 2002 -- The CommWorks Message Delivery System is designed to let service providers offer voice mail services without investing in new hardware and software, and the system conserves network space by working "on the fly."

CommWorks Corporation, a company that builds softswitch-based networks, is offering its new voice mail service to service providers. CommWorks says that its voice mail service lets service providers offer voice mail services to its existing customers to increase revenue and doesn't require an investment in new hardware and software.

The CommWorks Message Delivery System is designed to let service providers offer fee-based voice messaging to their customers who want voice messaging without committing to monthly charges. Basically, the system creates a voice mailbox "on the fly" - from the time a message is left until the time it is retrieved.

When a call comes in to a line that's busy, or that a call recipient is unable to answer, the CommWorks Message Deliver System lets the caller leave a message. If the caller chooses to leave a message, a voice mailbox is created and the message is accepted and stored. Using the capabilities of the Signaling System 7 (SS7) network and Home Location Register (HLR) function, the system determines when the call recipient is back on the network. The CommWorks system rings the user and plays a brief announcement, which states that a message can be played for a small fee.

If the call recipient decides not to take the message, the fee is waived and the message is deleted. If the user chooses to accept the message, a call detail record (CDR) is sent to the provider's billing system and the subscriber's account is debited for the fee. The temporary mailbox is removed once the message is delivered.

The company says that for service providers, the message delivery system offers an opportunity to generate a constant new revenue stream from existing customers who are presently not using messaging services. CommWorks claims that one North American wireless service provider is using the CommWorks Message Delivery System and generating revenues of more than $200,000 per month - at a rate of 35 cents per call - from its fee-based messaging service.

CommWorks says that installation only requires a minimal expense compared to the cost of hardware and software that's needed to install a traditional voice messaging system. And because the call message delivery system includes location register capabilities that enable it to hold messages until a subscriber's line is free, a service provider's network resources may be preserved, which has the potential to save money. Also, subscriber-provisioning requirements may be minimal because the company says its Message Delivery System installs easily into a provider's existing billing and provisioning systems.

"The user has anytime, anywhere access to messages, along with the control to decide whether or not they want to hear messages," said John Leikness, director, enhanced services product management, CommWorks. "They select the time of message delivery by hour of the day, day of the week or other personal preferences. And they're billed only for the messages they receive."

Pricing
The software is licensed to the service provider. The system is sold in a variety of configurations and pricing is determined by the scale of deployment required by each customer.