The phone is the size of a credit card.
It’s a mini CD that once popped into a computer with Internet connection uploads a telephone on the screen. On it, you can make international and local calls, forward calls, send text messages and do video conferencing.
The $300,000 patented technology was rolled out in South Korea this spring by TICS Inc., a decade-old software producer for the telecom industry. Now, the Korean company is bringing what it calls CD Phones to the United States.
The company has set up an office on Wilshire Boulevard and is on a hunt for a partnership with a phone carrier. It currently uses Hanaro Telecom Inc., one of the largest telecommunication and broadband companies in South Korea.
The fact that the product piggybacks on an actual phone line is what makes CD Phone unique. Once loaded onto a computer screen, it looks a lot like Skype, a popular free Web telephone service. But unlike Skype, or any other VoIP technology that routes conversations over an IP-based network, CD Phone’s sound quality is what’s expected on a landline system.
It’s also cheap. The CD retails at $1.50 and the phone calls are less than a cent a minute for any landline conversation around the world, or 7.8 cents a minute to a cell phone.
“Whether you’re sitting at a caf & #233; in Italy or at home in L.A., you pay the local rate and don’t have to worry about any roaming charges,” said John Pak, the company’s vice president and investor, who recently set up a U.S. headquarters here.
It’s also an effective advertising tool. The dial pad for the CD phone opens up with an additional screen for advertisements. Click on the phone number on the ad and the CD Phone automatically dials it.
Thousands of CD Phones were recently distributed at a business conference in Seoul with the conference sponsor’s advertisement programmed into the phone service. “That’s a pretty significant reach for a medium-size company in terms of brand promotion,” he said.
In South Korea, broadband penetration is 70 percent four times that of the United States and there’s an oversupply of high-quality free Internet phone calls. That’s why the company has opened offices in the United States, Hong Kong and China.
EAlert Mass e-Mailing
Beginning this month, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the area’s John F. Kennedy and La Guardia airports will be able to send up to a million e-mails at a time to commuters, alerting them of possible terrorist attacks and potential delays. All those e-mails will be sent from Burbank.
MIS Sciences Corp., a commercial Web hosting company that spun out a mass e-mail technology seven years ago, recently secured major contracts with the New York and New Jersey transportation hubs, each worth about $30,000 a year. The company is also implementing what’s called eAlert at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Commuters can sign up on the transportation authorities’ Web sites to receive the e-mails.
In addition to government contracts, MIS Sciences is finding a new breed of clientele in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech university in April, which left 33 dead.
“The newest revenue spike is from schools,” said Jeff Willis, the company’s vice president of technology. “After Virginia Tech, universities are finding it necessary to have a system in place to communicate with their students.”
Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Gannon University in Erie, and the University of Arkansas are the company’s newest clients. These contracts range from $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
Willis says what sets eAlert apart from other e-mail notification systems is the volume and speed at which the messages are delivered. Up to a million e-mails can be received in an hour, in eight different languages, including Spanish, Russian and Chinese.
CSC Delays Filings
Computer Sciences Corp.’s stock fared reasonably well last week, despite a downdraft in tech stocks and despite its announcement that it will not file first-quarter results on time because it hasn’t finished its accounting review.
The El Segundo-based information technology company had previously reported major accounting errors for tax liabilities in fiscal years 2000 through 2006. The company is also in the process of correcting accounting errors in software license sales. The errors amounted to a reduction of $22.2 million in net income for 2007 and $90.7 million in 2006.
The company said it cannot say when the report, due last Monday, will be filed.
Its stock, which had dipped below $50 a share on Aug. 9, firmed up and traded in the mid-$50s for much of last week. It may have been helped by the company’s mid-week announcement that it is one of 29 firms selected for a big federal IT contract, worth about $900 million to CSC.
More Money for InQ
Calabasas-based inQ Inc., a startup that provides live chat software for e-commerce Web sites, has raised $5 million from the firm’s existing investors.
The funding came from Emergence Capital Partners, Partech International, Dolphin Equity Partners and Hudson Ventures.
The money brings the company’s total amount of venture funds to $19.5 million. Founded in 1999, inQ provides live chat services targeted at increasing sales on retail Web sites.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at
[email protected]
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