Firm's telecoms service could rival big players

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Tim Panton, director of technology consultancy Westhawk.

1:00 am, May 12, 2008
Firm's telecoms service could rival big players

But it needs to attract around £350,000 of funding to get off the ground BY JOANNE BIRTWISTLE

A Manchester-based technology consultancy has developed an internet telecoms service which it claims has the potential to be bigger than Skype if it attracts the funding it needs from investors.

Tim Panton, director of Manchester-based technology consultancy Westhawk, has launched Phonefromhere.com which allows users to make voice calls over the internet simply by clicking on a web page. Panton said its advantage over Skype is that users do not have to create accounts or install software. He said that the obvious application for the product is in sales and customer services, with the call being free to users and website owners being charged either per call or per minute.

“This technology allows for immediacy. If a customer is looking at a product or service online and has a question, they can click on the website and their call will be put straight through,” said Panton. “An incoming voice call with a qualified lead is worth a lot.”

Panton sees further applications in the clandestine world of recruitment, or even dating, where a degree of anonymity is often preferred. Other applications could be for estate agency or price comparison sites.

Westhawk, which turns over £200,000, and Panton have invested a combined £90,000 in the concept thus far, but he said the venture will need a further investment of around £350,000 in order to effectively market the service.

He told Crain's that would be prepared to offer a “substantial stake” and is open to negotiation, but would not want to give away a majority share of the business unless the potential investor wrote a “very big cheque”.

“We want the money for growth. The first year to 18 months won't be about making money, it will be about rounding up two million or more users, and we need investment to make this happen, or there is a risk we might miss the boat,” he said.

The firm is currently trying to raise awareness of the brand by bearing the cost of free calls offered to users of iGoogle and MySpace, as well as via Tesco's internet phone service.

It is also working with early-stage US business Twiddla, which offers a virtual meeting space via its website. “Tim gets the idea of having a no- friction website,” said Ben Satterfield, co-founder of Twiddla. “His service allows people to click into a voice meeting with no passwords.”

The product can be adapted to let site owners allow mobile phone users to call free of charge from their handsets via web browsers — a feature which Manchester Metropolitan University's Digital Marketing Communications' course leader, David Bird, believes could prove invaluable.

“If you can surf to a site via your mobile and then click and use your mobile as a handset, then that really is a seamless proposition,” he said.

COMMENTS? jbirtwistle@crain.com