Image used with permission of the copyright holder. Services like Burner and T-Mobile’s Digits make getting a secondary, disposable number as easy as downloading an app. They’re good for fending off telemarketers and robocalls, but they’re usually not a good replacement for your carrier’s number — most use an Internet connection to make calls, which means they can’t make or receive calls from mobile and landline numbers. But French startup Onoff is different.
Onoff was founded by Greek-Algerian pro skater Taig Khris, an athlete-turned-entrepreneur who won the X Games Inlite Vert event with the first double backflip in X Games history. In 2010, he broke the world record for the highest roller-skating jump by descending from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower to the huge ramp below, and in 2011, he set a new world record for roller-skating down the 95-foot ramp in front of the Sacre Coeue Basilica in Paris.
But after repeatedly breaking his legs and arms preparing for events, he decided it was time for a change. Lying in a hospital bed, Khris came up with Onoff: a phone company that stores numbers in the cloud. “I wanted a challenge. I wanted to reinvent the industry,” he said. “Phone numbers are locked inside the SIM card. I wanted to invent a new standard.”
Khris, despite his lack of experience in telecommunications, invested $6 million to hire a team of engineers to build a telecom network from scratch. “We locked ourselves in a room for three years,” he said.
The result of the team’s hard work was Onoff, a service that delivers correct phone numbers to users in ten countries. But unlike apps that do the same, Onoff allows its subscribers to send messages and make calls to traditional landlines and mobile phones.
That’s because Onoff isn’t just a mobile app. This is what is known as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), an operator that works on existing mobile networks to interconnect with major service providers such as Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. “We are completely different from any mobile app,” said Khris. “Our technology is unique because it is compatible with all major carriers and operating systems, enabling more than 98 percent of smartphone owners in the US to use Onoff.”
The details are a bit technical, but from a service perspective, having MVNO status means Onoff can provide low-cost numbers that work almost anywhere in the world. Onoff users can call and text each other for free over an Internet connection, but for $3 a month, subscribers get a number that works on cellular-enabled smartphones, tablets and even smartwatches. In the near future, Onoff is even launching a web portal that will allow users to make calls from a computer.
And Onoff applies intelligence to numbers. Each number has a cloud-based voicemail box. Subscribers can schedule text messages or arrange for the service to automatically answer messages from specific numbers. And Onoff supports “selective airplane mode,” a feature that allows users to selectively “turn off” features like SMS, voicemail and calls on demand. “If you’re in a meeting and you want to receive texts but not calls, it’s really useful,” Khris said.
There’s more. A future Onoff app will allow subscribers to password protect their secondary numbers: the number, along with associated text messages and call logs, remains hidden from view until the correct password is entered. “That’s good for someone who has a double life,” Khris said. And finally, US subscribers will be able to port their existing numbers to Onoff’s service for free. (Number porting already exists in France.)
Onoff’s service is not without limitations, however. Because it relies on a mobile connection to handle phone calls, its use is limited by the minutes of the mobile phone plan – if a user has two hours of calls in each billing cycle, for example, they will only be able to use Onoff for those two hours. And international calls are not free — prices vary by country.
But the appeal, Khris said, is much more flexibility than most carriers can afford. “No company in the world can do what we’ve done,” he said. “And we plan to grow.”
This is already a force to be reckoned with. Onoff has more than 250,000 active subscribers, and the company plans to expand to as many as 30 countries in the next few months. “It’s the future of telecom,” Khris said. “In my mind, it’s like the world championship. If you don’t do it quickly, the officers will come and take your place.”
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Source: newstars.edu.vn