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Pingo® Prepaid Calling Service Goes Global with Low Rates, Multiple Languages, Currencies, and Support for International Credit Cards
Growing Service from iBasis Brings Competitive Pricing on International Calling to International Markets; Reduces Calling Rates By Up to 30 Percent
BURLINGTON, MA- October 16, 2006 -
iBasis (NASDAQ: IBAS), the global VoIP company™, today announced major enhancements to Pingo® (www.pingo.com), its online prepaid calling card service. Now customers around the world can purchase the Pingo service with international credit cards, make payments in four currencies, view Pingo rates in more than 38 other currencies, and interact with the Pingo website and hear automated voice prompts in five languages.
With the new features, Pingo becomes a global prepaid calling product, bringing to international markets the same competitive rates and convenience features that have fueled its growth in the U.S. Also, Pingo announced that it has reduced calling rates to 125 countries by as much as 30 percent. The enhancements and rate reductions make Pingo the most competitively priced, easy-to-use service of its kind, providing consumers in the more than 35 countries where Pingo is available a convenient way to save money on international calling.
"With Pingo, iBasis offers consumers around the globe the highest quality and most convenient pre-paid international calling service in the world," said Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis. "The world's largest telephone providers already save money by putting much of their international voice traffic on the iBasis Network. With Pingo, consumers all over the world can also directly benefit from our low-cost, high-quality VoIP service."
iBasis, one of the world's leading carriers of international telephone calls, operates the most extensive international Voice over IP (VoIP) network with direct service to more than 100 countries and offering voice quality equal to, and often exceeding the traditional phone network. In addition to taking advantage of iBasis' superior purchasing power to offer low calling rates, Pingo provides easy-to-use features such as PINpass PIN-less dialing, on-line call history reporting, automatic recharging, which can be set by the customer, and Refer-a-Friend program that offers Pingo customers $5 bonuses when they refer a friend who joins the service.
New features recently added to Pingo include:
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Multi-lingual Website and Phone Prompts: Customers can now select one of five languages, English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Portuguese, as their default language when viewing the Pingo website and for the automated phone prompts when they use the Pingo calling platform;
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Global Credit Card Processing: Residents anywhere in the world can now purchase the Pingo service with valid credit cards or other payment services such as PayPal®.
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Billing in Multiple Currencies: Consumers can now choose to be billed for Pingo usage in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, British Pounds or Euros;
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Rate Listings In Multiple Currencies: Calling rates may be viewed in more than 40 different currencies, allowing consumers to easily compare Pingo's low rates to other services;
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Reduced rates to more than 125 destinations worldwide. Examples of rate decreases include calls from the US to India , reduced 30% to 8 cents per minute; United Kingdom to Pakistan, reduced 49 % to 5.2 pence per minute; Israel to the US reduced 24% to .436 ILS; and Canada to France Mobile, reduced 28% to .163 CAD. For a full listing of Pingo's low rates, go to www.pingo.com;
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 PayPay, at 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® web-based offering (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 7.8 billion minutes of international voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in 2005, and is one of the largest carriers of international voice traffic in the world1. For four consecutive years service providers have named iBasis the best international wholesale carrier in ATLANTIC-ACM's annual International Wholesale Carrier Report
Card2. The Company can be reached at its worldwide headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA at 781-505-7500 or on the Internet at www.ibasis.com.
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