Pacific Internet enters voice carrier mart

Pacific Internet, an internet communications service provider based out of Singapore, has announced its entry into the voice carrier market with the launch of PacNet Vocal, an IP telephony solution, in India.

Pacific Internet which is operating in eight countries, is planning to launch the service in Singapore on February 12 followed by the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia in the next two months.

PacNet Vocal is an enterprise-grade IP-based telephone service.

"Among the eight countries we operate in the Asia-Pacific region, India is the first country we are offering the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to capitalise on the rapid communications growth in a booming economy and tap the huge potential in the SME segment," said Lee Tian Yew, vice-president, Voice Business, Pacific Internet.

PacNet Vocal is an enterprise-grade IP-based telephone service that offers a suite of value-added services for business and residential customers.

The customers need to have a high-speed broadband connections to avail the services. Besides India, the company operates in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and Malaysia and provides integrated data, voice and video services to about 400,000 customers in the corporate and retail sectors.

According to an internal research by Pacific Internet, the IP-based telephony market in India stood at 400 million minutes in 2006 and is expected to be about one billion minutes in 2007.

The company is mainly targetting the retail, franchise, manufacturing and call centres segments across the growing SMB sector in India.

The company is planning to use both the online and off-line marketing strategy to market the product. The off-line strategy includes marketing through its own sales team, channel partners and system integrators, said Julie Cleeland Nicholls, vice president, group marketing, Pacific Internet.