Spanish incumbent Telefónica has launched a cloud-based telephony offering, giving users access to a second number and a range of services, including visual voicemail, call registers and advanced call screening. Spanish cloud player fonYou supplied the Online Mobile Telephony platform on which the services are based.

Mike Hibberd

March 2, 2011

2 Min Read
Telefónica Spain debuts cloud services from fonYou

Spanish incumbent Telefónica has launched a cloud-based telephony offering, giving users access to a second number and a range of services, including visual voicemail, call registers and advanced call screening. Spanish cloud player fonYou supplied the Online Mobile Telephony platform on which the services are based.

The deal, which will see Telefónica offering a service dubbed ‘Second Line’, represents the first tier-one customer win for fonYou, which had previously announced a deployment with South African carrier Cell-C.

The cloud player has developed a range of services that it seeks to white label to carriers as a competitive defence against the rise of over the top players like Google. FonYou does have its own MVNO in Spain, which is hosted by Telefónica, although a spokesman said that this D2C offering is “not promoted heavily” and is “treated as a testbed and a showcase for what the services can do.

“Mobile operators have seen the trend and reacted,” said fonYou CEO Fernando Núñez-Mendoza. “They know that they must not leave this field open to new and challenging competitors such as Google Voice or Skype. They must get involved and compete themselves.”

The deal may raise questions about Telefónica’s commitment to Jajah, the IP telephony player it bought late in 2009. While the fonYou deployment is understood to be a local rather than group initiative, there is some overlap between what it provides and the service offering developed by Jajah, for which Telefónica paid €145m a little over a year ago.

At the time of the acquisition Matthew Key, Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Europe, said: “The acquisition of Jahah broadens the scope of our communications offering and opens up new capabilities in the voice

communication space.  People using social networking sites such as Twitter now have an even wider range of communications channels available – and have the option of speaking directly to each other as well as communicating by text or keyboard.”

The firm launched an internet international calling service based on the Jajah platform in July 2010.

We spoke to Fernando Núñez-Mendoza at last month’s Mobile World Congress, prior to this announcement going out. To see the interview click here.

About the Author(s)

Mike Hibberd

Mike Hibberd was previously editorial director at Telecoms.com, Mobile Communications International magazine and Banking Technology | Follow him @telecomshibberd

You May Also Like