Fring has come a long way since 2008!

  Jake Levant is vice president of marketing for fring. He and Suzanne Bowen of DIDX and Techistan discuss on podcast interview the trend of rich communications expectations, mobilization expertise, fring’s variety of online service aggregation, and what the consumer really wants. Listen to part one and part two, browse the questions and topics submitted by others and read the complete transcript below.

He’s a Canadian from the cold western provinces currently in Tel Aviv where he goes to fun every day at fring headquarters.

All questions for most of DIDX podcasts are posed by individuals, early adopters, developers, SMB owners and team members, and telecom-related or even technology, social media or networking or travel related service providers. A synopsis of the questions and topics posed for this part one podcast:

1. What do you believe is driving the growth, this desire for rich communications on the go?

2. Fring’s mobilization expertise, across leading platforms, optimized for mobile devices, the battery, the screen, the data, the video…

3. Tsahi Levent-Levi of RadVision asks, “How do you manage to run on so large a variety of platforms?”  Another question which was similar is: Tell us about the integration and aggregration of multiple online services that..

4.  Steve Cayona, an Asterisk developer asks, “How is fring different from Truphone?”

5. Syed Murtaza Saleem, a call center project manager asks, “How will SIP expand fring possibilities?”

6.  Another question asked by Tsahi Levent-Levi and a similar one by Luca Filigheddu, “What is your opinion about recent acquisitions such as Jajah, Gizmo5, Jaxtr, and so on?”

7. What do you think about the new Maemo phone platform starting with the N900? The question is from Bernd Wiegmann, a two time Nokia phone competition winner.

Full transcript follows

Fring’s Jake Levant on Mobile Expertise Part 2:

Suzanne Bowen: Welcome to DIDX podcast media channel where we bring you the expertise of IP communications leaders from around the world. I’m your host Suzanne Bowen, and I have with us Jake Levant of fring. He is the vice president of marketing. Nice to meet you, Jake. Tell us about yourself.

Jake Levant: Sure, Suzanne. Thanks so much for having me. As you can hear, I have that famous Canadian twang. Ever since living in the cold western provinces of Canada, I always felt the need to connect with various people. I’ve been big into communications and the Internet. I’ve since moved around a lot in Europe and recently to Tel Aviv. I don’t even call it work. I call it… I go to fun every day… fring. Talk about an innovator in communications and mobile space! Fring is an exciting place for me because I’ve always been into consumer technology. This really epitomizes the forefront of innovation in that sphere. That’s me. I’m a Canadian transplant many times around the world and now having a gay old time here with fring.

Suzanne Bowen: After a discussion with some people yesterday, letting them know I was going to interview you, I received a slew of questions for you as fring is extremely popular. To start with, even to look at the website www.fring.com… it’s just fun looking. You just want to click around and you feel welcome. You feel a part of some kind of cool community. Your web developers are doing a good job.

One question we had is “what do you believe is driving the growth, this desire for rich communications on the go?”

Jake Levant: We’ve seen over the last couple years a couple phenomena. One is plugged in. People are always connected, trend one. The other is that people are on the fly. They live much more of a mobile life, commuting, working remotely. They’re having fun from different places.

It is the right time for mobile telecommunications. What fring has done well is to provide the choice for fringsters to choose how they want to keep in touch with all their friends… how they are going to share those online experiences. Up to now, they’ve been locked to a PC.

You can communicate with someone via chat, calls, and we’ve created some other innovations. If it is one network or two like Skype or MSN or Facebook or Twitter… we’ve brought together all these in one unified contact list. I think that in the over four years that we’ve been here, we’ve been the pioneer in mobile voIP, subsequently adding the social networking and communications. These have been the pillars that have driven our phenomenal growth and you see it continues.

Recently we’ve added new compelling ways where people can enjoy mobile communications. For example, with our launch of video via fring and from Skype. You can call me. I’m not logged in at my PC. I could have taken the discussion in my car. That’s what is driving it. People want to be plugged in. People are on the go and we’ve provided the choice of how you can merge those two worlds we’ve given to the consumer to choose.

Suzanne Bowen: Another topic is fring’s mobilization expertise, across leading platforms, optimized for mobile devices, the battery, the screen, the data, the video we experienced a while ago.

Jake Levant: This is the DNA of the company. We are mobile-based. There are many communications experts. They start from the web and maybe later added a mobile version. What defines fring is that our expertise starts from mobile. We think about how we can optimize Internet and mobile experience to create a thin mobile client, mobile-centric technology, on the most popular devices… 3G, GPRS, WiFi… When you are on a mobile device, you are really thinking this is a mobile computer and you need an expertise that’s focused on this.

Otherwise, we’ve heard from people with experience with other applications. They drain the battery. It causes crashes. This is not the fring way. Fring is first and foremost the mobile experts. We make sure that in everything we do, that reflects.

Suzanne Bowen: This brings me to another question that I’ve seen two times in suggestions to me. Tell us about the integration and aggregration of multiple online services that. Tsahi Levent-Levi of RadVision asks, “How do you manage to run on so large a variety of platforms?”

Jake Levant: We’ll give credit to the team in the back with kudos on that. I think that in that comment you had two points. One was running and aggregating multiple online services and then technologically, how is that done?

When you have a much smaller screen and from a consumer point of view, you need to be an expert as to what information to show, and how to make it easily accessible on the mobile device. This is opposed to a PC where people have much more time, patience, and screen. We have to find the right application. It’s really a core value here that we optimize the mobile device especially because we are bringing in so many different services to the consumer.

So how it is done? The credit goes to our strong development and architect team. In terms of technology behind it, I best not comment. This is the foundational element in our company. We are mobile first. We are doing a server side technology with very light and thin client to optimize the user experience.

Fring’s Jake Levant on Mobile Expertise Part 2

Suzanne Bowen: We’re back live with Jack Levant of fring.com. As you know, I’m Suzanne Bowen with the
DIDX podcast media channel. We have a few more questions for Jack from fring users as well as SMBs, companies in IP communications, and a gentleman who is a two time Nokia phone competition winner. Jake, glad to have you back for part two.

Jake Levant: I missed you, Suzanne.

Suzanne Bowen: Hey, me, too. Would you discuss the ground-breaking IP innovations including the new mobile video solution?

Jake Levant: We are not even four years old yet. We are a very young company. In this short span of lifetime, we’ve done a lot to revolutionize mobile voIP. It’s exciting when you think about how far we’ve come in voice over IP world. Look at household names like Vonage and Skype. Just a short while ago, we were an unknown. Now, you look at the mobile space. A throwback to February 2007, when we pioneered the first voice over IP on Symbian as the operating platform on Nokia, Samsung and others.

Then in April 2008, we had an explosion with our first voice over IP for iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Twitter is a household name right now. At first, it incurred an SMS cost. We allowed people to do “tweeting” over IP. In November 2009, we introduced Skype and fring video calls to voice over IP on Symbian devices. Then, the following month, we did the first video calls over IP with iPhone and iPod Touch.

It’s been a chronology in quick succession of ground-breaking IP innovations on mobile devices.

Suzanne Bowen: I never even paid any attention to Twitter until I was able to use a cell phone data/Internet side to pass tweets back and forth. I’m no fool. So fring saves money, and it’s fun.

Steve Cayona, who works for Techistan online magazine, asks, “How is fring different from Truphone?” Both are excellent services.

Jake Levant: Truphone appears to be a virtual operator. It is a very well-packaged SIP provider. Fring is quite different from that, more about mobile communications freedom with chat and video calling. One of the options we provide is the ability to use SIP providers within fring.

We have pre-configured a list of five SIP providers. You are welcome to add your own. Meanwhile, you are welcome to use fring and choose Truphone as your SIP provider. That is the epitome of mobile communications freedom. To sharpen it, fring is very mindful to provide users with communications choices on the fly. Maybe Truphone is one of those choices as a very well put together SIP provider.

Suzanne Bowen: Awesome answer. I have great respect for both companies. A fring user Syed Murtaza Saleem asks, “How will SIP expand fring possibilities?”

Jake Levant: Just as I highlighted before, SIP is already an integral part of the fring offering. It plays to that freedom of choice to enable people to communicate when and how they want. Fring gives people the ability to talk with those others who are already on their existing network: fring, Skype, MSN, Yahoo!, Twitter, Facebook and perhaps within those networks, ICQ, GoogleTalk, or without those networks through SIP providers with SkypeOut or what have you. It’s more about providing freedom of choice for our user base.

Suzanne Bowen: Next question… thanks for being brave. What is your opinion about recent acquisitions such as Jajah, Gizmo5, Jaxtr, and so on? This question came from Tsahi Levent-Levi of Radvision.

Jake Levant: It points to how exciting this base is. It’s about online communications, two about mobility, three about voice over IP. Wrap it together, and more and more consumers are flocking to this because of its tremendous value to them. They can communicate with friends and family no matter where they are. This reflects what we’ve been hearing from users for years. This is where they want to go. It’s exciting to see big Internet players who are starting to take a stronghold into communications.

Suzanne Bowen: Right. It provides more validity to what our industry, in general, offers the world. What do you think about the new Maemo phone platform starting with the N900? The question is from Bernd Wiegmann.

Jake Levant: So many exciting developments in this space. The Maemo is no different. We love that it is open. It further pushes innovation, so visit the site www.fring.com and tell us what you think of it.

Suzanne Bowen: Yes, fring.com. I love saying, “Frrrring!” I appreciate it. Great meeting you. I know the listeners will enjoy listening, learning from you and trying fring out.

Jake Levant: Fring you later!