OBi Mary meet Obivoice man
There is a new kid on the block attempting a unique approach of picking up new clients in what I can see is a niche market. Obihai created this market by convincing people to buy their OBi product bundled with the ability to use the free GV service.
This upstart seems to be around since 2010 operating under the name of Intelafone (Intelafone LLC/Intelafone.com). The obivoice brand seems to be a spinoff of the Intelafone service to capitalize on the pool of OBi/GV users out there. The choice of brand name is interesting. It begs the question if obihai will challenge them on the choice of name.
The services included in the price seems to be interesting. I'll let you read the features yourself (
http://www.obivoice.com/index.php ). At the moment it is offering free GV ports. This is an aggressive move to quickly swallow up the potential new customers before they decide to go with the more established voip offerings such as
voip.ms, Callcentric, etc.
Both entities use blogs to communicate to the public. The recent entry of the obihai blog implies that they are seeking voip partners after the May 15, 2014 GV switchoff, and obivoice mentions that they would like to develop a relationship with OBiTALK.
"Obivoice is looking to closely partner with OBiTalk in the new year to continue providing quality, affordable service to those who want to continue to use their Obihai devices as an alternative to standard home telephone service."
http://www.obivoice.com/blog/?cat=1The obivoice and the official OBiPLUS services seem to overlap somewhat as they seem to offer some business like PBX functionality.
Both obihai and intelafone have draconian Terms of Service. If you take the trouble to read it, it seems that they can kick you out at any time for any reason. I think that most service providers have similar TOS and that may be par for the course.
Terms of Service
https://intelafone.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1338220-terms-of-serviceThere may be other individuals involved, however it seems the main person behind this effort is Ryan Tilton.
"When I started a voip company in 2010 we started off with Google voice as a free service for our users as well."
Ryan Tilton
http://www.obivoice.com/blog/?cat=1Ryan, take advantage of this opportunity and introduce yourself officially to the community on the OBi forum. Please tell us who you are and what you are offering.