A newly formed Singaporean company, 2bSure.com Pte. Ltd., has developed an integrated communications service which will enable users to enjoy voicemail, fax and e-mail services at Internet charges.
The company,
which announced its business plans Wednesday, is among the vast number of
companies springing up in the republic to tap opportunities in the
burgeoning Internet market place.
The company, backed by venture capital funds, will start its inaugural
service later this month and will set up similar service hubs in the region over the next few months, it said in an announcement.
In a nutshell, 2bSure.com’s service is an all-in-one messaging system that allows users to enjoy various services with one account.
Users can stay
connected anytime at any point in the world and retrieve their messages 24
hours a day through 2bSure’s call center or via a PC access to the company’s website.
Users calling into 2bSure’s call center can also leave toll-free voice and
fax messages for their counterparts worldwide, the company said. The Singapore call center will go live later this month and users can
register at www.2bSURE.com.
They can sign up for free now for the three
basic services. Later this year, the company plans to launch several other
services, including: Listening to e-mails and faxes using 2bSure’s text-to-speech conversion technology; calendar reminders, Palm Pilot hotsync capability; and instant message notification through ICQs, pagers or short messaging services.
Beyond Singapore, the company will set up other hubs in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul and Silicon Valley, California. The purpose for these hubs is to enable, for example, a Singaporean user who flies to Hong Kong to communicate or retrieve messages at a cost of a local Hong Kong call, company founder and CEO Jerry Wu said.
“The new service will bridge the gap between telephone users and web users, between the wired and the unwired,” he said.
The company, which will do a major promotion push to the Singapore public
next week, said it is targeting its service to travelers, web users, young adopters, amongst others.
“The potential customer base for such a service is already enormous and is
expected to grow rapidly. Asia presents an especially attractive market
because it is one of the highest concentrations of cellular phone users and one of the fastest growing penetration rates of the Internet,” said Wu.