fring may have been recently acquired by GENBAND, but that seems to have only accelerated the application’s growth as it announces a partnership with French operator Bouygues Telecom to provide that carrier’s customers with free phone calls and SMS on Wi-Fi while abroad.
Bouygues Telecom’s popular World & YOU service for their B&YOU brand will provide users the ability to communicate internationally without incurring the dreaded roaming charges, instead utilizing the app’s fringOut and native messaging capabilities.
“Our customers expect high quality, low cost mobile service which, thanks to the fring service, we can now extend beyond local French cellular coverage, allowing subscribers to enjoy international communication as if they were calling from within France,” said Benoît Torloting, Head of digital & B&YOU at Bouygues Telecom. “Leveraging the fring OTT solution, we eliminate cellular network roaming charges and deliver our commitment to quality-cost competitive advantage even when our customers are travelling worldwide.” Benoît Torloting continued, “Our World & YOU launch was a great success, with an increase in new users and substantial interest from the French market.”
“This successful offering with Bouygues Telecom demonstrates market demand for the fring Telco OTT solution, which enables telecom operators to provide their subscribers with cost-saving communications, a rich user experience and reduced churn to independent applications,” said Roy Timor-Rousso, former CEO of fring and current senior executive in GENBAND’s Multimedia Business Unit. “Leveraging our extensive experience in mobile applications and telco-grade cloud network, we were able to provide Bouygues Telecom with a complete solution – with rapid time-to-market within weeks of defining their unique needs.”
The Fring service is currently available for smartphones and tablets running iOS (including iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), Android OS, and Symbian. The service — unlike similar calling and IM services — works over slower mobile networks such as GPRS and EDGE in addition to the 3G and 4G networks and Wi-Fi. You can find the latest version of Fring here.