America Online Announces Three-Year Internet Telephony Agreement With Net2Phone for AOL Instant Messenger.DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 1999-- Services to Enable AIM Users to Place and Receive Calls Between Computers, Phones and Fax Machines Global Phenomenon Continues to Grow as AOL Instant Messenger See AIM. Surpasses 37 Million Registered Users America Online See AOL. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : AOL (A division of Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, www.aol.com) The world's largest online information service with access to the Internet, e-mail, chat rooms and a variety of databases and services. ), the world's leading interactive services company, today announced a three-year agreement with Net2Phone, Inc. (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on : NTOP NTOP Nt Option Pack ), the leading provider of Internet telephony Another term for IP telephony and VoIP. In the late 1990s, some people made a distinction between Internet Telephony and VoIP: Internet telephony referred to voice over the public Internet, while VoIP referred to voice over private IP networks. services, that will provide AOL Instant Messenger(TM) (AIM) users with Net2Phone-powered Internet telephony communications services. Under the terms of the agreement, America Online will work with Net2Phone to create AIM-branded Internet telephony products and services, including an AIM-branded card that offers AIM users low-cost Internet Telephony. These new products and services will bring low-cost, convenient communications services to the more than 37 million AIM users and allow them to place and receive telephone calls in a number of different ways: PC-to-Phone: This option will allow an AIM user to place a call from his or her Internet-enabled PC to another telephone user listening and speaking through a traditional telephone; Phone-to-PC: This option will allow an AIM user to place a call from a traditional phone to another user's Internet enabled PC (equipped with standard computer speakers and a microphone); Conference Calling: Multiple callers on a single call, accessing via phones or PC clients; PC-to-Fax and Fax-to-PC: Documents on a PC can be sent to fax machines. Through the AIM client, the user can also receive and view faxes from a fax machine. Barry Schuler Barry Martin Schuler (born September 7, 1953 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is American Internet pioneer, perhaps best known for making the Internet easy to use consumers while working for America Online for seven years, and being the CEO for three years. , President of AOL Interactive Services, said, "With this agreement, we are significantly building the tremendous value of our popular AOL Instant Messenger product that is revolutionizing online communications. Combining instant messaging Exchanging text messages in real time between two or more people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service. Instant messaging is more interactive than e-mail because messages are sent immediately, whereas e-mail messages can be queued up in a mail server for seconds or with spoken conversation will bring even more convenience to our AOL Instant Messenger users." AOL Instant Messenger recently surpassed 37 million registered users -- up from 10 million in November 1998 -- and continues to show staggering growth with approximately 700,000 registrations per week. The average AIM user spends approximately 2.5 - 3 hours on the service each day and peak simultaneous usage recently surpassed 700,000 users. According to Media Metrix, AIM is the number one ranked chat application with a more than 27 percent share of the marketplace. Today, the Buddy List Network of AOL and AIM users includes more than 75 million members who send approximately 720 million messages a day. AOL Instant Messenger users can communicate with friends, family and colleagues on AOL and vice-versa. The AIM Internet telephony services will be available to anyone with an AOL Instant Messenger registration, standard computer speakers and a microphone. In addition to its agreement with Net2Phone, AOL, Inc. has agreements with Apple, Lycos, TV Guide, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , RealNetworks, Apple, EarthLink, MindSpring, Juno and Novell to develop and launch co-branded versions of AOL Instant Messenger. Mr. Schuler added: "These exciting new services promise to make the AOL Instant Messenger service even more central to people's everyday lives. And, once we extend the AOL Instant Messenger service to mobile devices beyond the PC -- as part of our 'AOL Anywhere' strategy -- these new communications services will provide even more convenience and value." Net2Phone also has an existing four-year agreement to provide Internet telephony services for America Online's ICQ ("I Seek You") A conferencing program for the Internet from Mirabilis, Tel Aviv, Israel (www.icq.com). It provides interactive chat, e-mail and file transfer and can alert you when someone on your predefined list has also come online. service, which has more than 50 million register users, and a two-year agreement to provide Internet telephony calling card services for the CompuServe service. AOL, Inc. and Net2Phone will also work together to develop open standards for IP telephony. About America Online Founded in 1985, America Online, Inc., based in Dulles, Virginia, is the world's leader in interactive services, web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services. America Online, Inc. operates: two worldwide Internet services, America Online, with more than 19 million members, and CompuServe, with more than 2.2 million members; several leading Internet brands including ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, Digital City Inc.; the Netscape Netcenter and AOL.COM portals; Netscape Navigator and Communicator browsers; AOL MovieFone; Spinner.com (1) (Computer Output Microfilm) Creating microfilm or microfiche from the computer. A COM machine receives print-image output from the computer either online or via tape or disk and creates a film image of each page. , Winamp and SHOUTcast. Through its strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems, the company develops and offers easy-to-deploy, end-to-end e-commerce and enterprise solutions for companies operating in the Net Economy. |
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