Pingo&174;, the online prepaid calling card of iBasis (NASDAQ: IBAS), today announced free calls to China and Vietnam from February 18 through March 4, 2007 to celebrate the Lunar New Year Festival season. Also known as Chinese New Year and the Spring Festival, the fifteen day period annually prompts the largest volume of travel and long-distance calling to those countries as Chinese and Vietnamese people worldwide honor the holiday’s traditional emphasis on family gatherings.
Pingo calls are carried over The iBasis Network-- the most extensive international Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network in existence directly serving more than 100 countries and enabling customers to enjoy the cost-savings of Internet telephony while using regular fixed and mobile phones.
“Pingo can help families that are separated by many miles to stay close throughout the year by enabling them to call more often and talk longer,said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. “Because of the efficiency of our network and our buying power as a leading wholesale carrier we’re able to offer this special incentive to encourage those with family in China or Vietnam to join them for the holidays, at least over the phone, and then continue saving with Pingo.
Pingo customers in the U.S. can use Pingo’s local access numbers to call landline phones in China and Vietnam for free from February 18 through March 4. Customers using Pingo’s toll-free access, which is available in 35 countries (including the U.S.), or calling mobile phones in China and Vietnam will incur a nominal surcharge.
Available worldwide via credit card or PayPal exclusively through its multi-lingual website, Pingo’s calling card is a truly international product. Consumers can reach the Pingo platform and save on calls from 35 countries, view rates in more than 38 currencies, and make payments in four currencies. Pingo’s voice prompts are in five languages (English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Portuguese). Pingo online calling card also provides easy-to-use features such as PINpassPIN-less dialing, on-line call history reporting, and automatic recharging. A Refer-a-Friend program also offers customers a $5 bonus when someone they refer joins the service.
Pingo users also benefit from the service’s unique RateWatcherfeature, by which iBasis continually seeks opportunities to lower its costs of international termination and pass the savings on to its Pingo international calling card customers. For example, in October of 2006, RateWatcher enabled Pingo to reduce calling rates to 125 countries by as much as 30 percent, and in January reduced rates to the Philippines, helping to make Pingo “the last calling card you’ll ever need.
iBasis, the Global VoIP company is one of the world&39;s leading wholesale carriers of international long distance telephone calls. Based on Telegeography projections and iBasiscurrent annual run rate of approximately 12 billion minutes of traffic, the company carries an estimated 20 percent of the world’s international VoIP traffic&185;. Record traffic periods, which regularly occur during major religious and national holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s, MothersDay, Ramadan, Eid, Diwali, and Chinese New Year, demonstrate the scalability of The iBasis Network. Phone traffic over the iBasis network on these holidays typically increases by 30 percent or more over non-holiday traffic.
About Pingo
Taking advantage of The iBasis Network, Pingo enables consumers to realize the cost-savings of VoIP or Internet telephony from regular fixed or mobile phones without any need for additional hardware or software. Pingo offers consumers high-quality long distance service on a prepaid basis, along with a host of convenient usability features. Pingo customers save on calls to both landline and mobile phones in almost every country. Mobile phone users in particular can save as much as 90 percent on international calls by using Pingo’s toll-free access and lower rates. Pingo minutes can be purchased with credit and debit cards, as well as PayPal, at http://www.pingo.com. Customers can access Pingo from toll-free and local access numbers in 35 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Canada, China, the U.K., France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Russia, and Thailand.
About iBasis
Founded in 1996, iBasis (NASDAQ:IBAS) is a leading wholesale carrier of international long distance telephone calls and a provider of retail prepaid calling services, including the Pingo&174; web-based offering (http://www.pingo.com) and disposable calling cards that are sold through major distributors and available at retail stores throughout the U.S. iBasis customers include many of the largest telecommunications carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, China Unicom, IDT, Qwest, Skype, Telecom Italia, and Telefonica. iBasis carried more than 11 billion minutes of international voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in 2006, and is one of the largest carriers of international voice traffic in the world&178;. The Company can be reached at its worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA at 781-505-7500 or on the Internet at http://www.ibasis.com.
&185; Telegeography 2006
&178;Telegeography 2006 data compared with iBasis 2006 traffic volume.
iBasis and Pingo are registered marks, The iBasis Network and the global VoIP company are trademarks of iBasis, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Except for historical information, all of the expectations, plans and assumptions contained in the foregoing press release constitute forward-looking statements under Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, (i) the Company&39;s ability to execute its business plan; (ii) the extent of adoption of the Company&39;s services and the timing and amount of revenue and gross profit generated by these services; (iii) fluctuations in the market for and pricing of these services; (iv) the other factors described in the Company&39;s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for its most recently completed fiscal quarter and Annual Report on Form 10-K for its most recently completed fiscal year all of which are available at http://www.sec.gov. Such forward-looking statements are only as of the date they are made, and we have no current intention to update any forward-looking statements.
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