A new low-cost mobile service from Altech Autopage could soon be biting into the voice profits of the major cellphone providers.<\/p>\n
The Pooosh (http:\/\/pooosh.autopage.co.za\/) service from Autopage uses 3G and GPRS data connections to offer SMS, voice SMS, chat rooms, email and cheap calls in one application. The Java application runs on most mobile phones and can be downloaded for free.<\/p>\n
Once installed the Pooosh application includes free basic services such as IM, chat rooms and email. Using these services, users only pay their service provider for the cost of the data.<\/p>\n
Voice messages, call-backs and content downloads are charged services which can be bought in bundles from the Pooosh service.<\/p>\n
Premium service vouchers cost between R2 for one day’s access and R39 for a month’s access. Premium vouchers allow for unlimited voice chat, IM, chat room access, 25MB of file sharing and 5 free off-net SMSs.<\/p>\n
The IM portion of Pooosh includes support for GTalk, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, MSN and Pooosh protocols.<\/p>\n
The Pooosh service also offers an international call-back service.<\/p>\n
The benefit of Pooosh is that the application integrates a number of the services most used by mobile users – SMS, IM, email, into a single application. Users on the service get a free email address as part of the registration process and the Pooosh client treats this as a “push” email address that notifies users as soon as a new email is received.<\/p>\n
But the service most users are getting excited about is the voice chat feature which allows users to record voice messages and send these to contacts on the Pooosh network.<\/p>\n