Wengo

infobox company
name = Wengo
genre = peer-to-peer internet telephony
website = http://openwengo.org/

Wengo is a French company, subsidiary of French telecoms service provider Neuf Cegetel, employing 15 persons. It is now repositioned as an on-line personal and consulting services market place ["Wengo lève 6 millions d'euros pour développer sa place de marché de services", zdnet.fr, February 14 2008 [http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774,39378582,00.htm] ] .

Originally Wengo was supporting the development of a free and open source (GPL) VoIP (and video conferencingFact|date=March 2007, SMS and chat) softphone through which it offered PC to PSTN phone calls. This software used the free and open SIP protocol and was developed under the WengoPhone name name by the OpenWengo project. The VoIP service was presented on the French market as an attempt to compete with Skype, Yahoo and other virtual network service providers. However, the economic model of this activity was not sustainable. Considered as outside Wengo's core business, this activity was transferred, in February 2008, to a partner called MBDSYS (another French startup). WengoPhone and the OpenWengo community have since rebranded themselves as QuteCom.

History

The company was officially created in September 2004 and launched its service at the beginning of 2005 based on what is now know as the "Wengophone, classic edition". In September 2005 Wengo opened its visiophony service at the same time as Skype on a cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). In 2006 Wengo integrated the Gaim project into its software, allowing its users to communicate via Instant Messaging with other users on the MSN, Yahoo or Google Talk networks.

Wengo and Skype started offering free PSTN calls in 2006 which accelerated the commoditization of telephony calls. In June 2006 Wengo offered a two-month unlimited calling plan to several destinations including Belgium, Guadeloupe, India, Martinique, Poland and Vietnam. The offer was posted on many websites, including Fatwallet, and attracted many new customers. Wengo later suspended many of these accounts, in the company's interests, after many people began abusing the unlimited calling system.

In June 2006 Wengo launched Wdeal, a social marketplace that gives its users the opportunity to create toll-free telephone number and paying services so that they can sell their expertise over the phone.

In December 2006 Wengo launched [http://www.wengovisio.com wengovisio] a Flash-driven VoIP client that enables website owners to be called by their readers directly on their website, without any software installation.

In July 2007 Neuf Cegetel's Board of Directors approved the write off of Wengo's debt for €11 million and, at the same time, agreed that investors should be able to participate in Wengo's capital by means of a reserved increase in capital that could be made by a cash contribution of €12 million [Neuf Cegetel 2007 interim report [http://www.groupeneufcegetel.fr/dyn/File/publications/rapport%20financier%202007_EN.pdf] ] .

In February 2008 Wengo was able to secure a significant investment of €6 million. The VoIP activity was transferred to a partner called MBDSYS.

See also

* BeWip
* Ekiga
* VoIP
* OpenWengo
* P2P
* SightSpeed
* Skype

References

* [http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/21/wengo-video-chat-for-bloggers/ techcrunch December 21st, 2006: Wengo Video Chat for Bloggers]
* [http://slashdot.org/articles/06/12/16/2347200.shtml slashdot December 16th, 2006: Wengo Releases Flash Softphone For Web Pages]
* [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/25/1944242 slashdot June 25th, 2006: OpenWengo Code Camp]
* [http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/06/1345209 slashdot September 6th, 2005: Open Source Alternative for Skype]

External links

* [http://www.wengo.com Company home page]