Interview: James Wanless Co Founder of Talkster.com

Earlier today I had the privilege of speaking with James Wanless from Talkster.  Talkster is a multi featured free international calling site which offers other services such as cheap international texting and picture messaging besides their well equipped voice services. You can visit them here, and for the mobile application/lite application click here. Thanks to James for the interview!

Jeff: How is it that Talkster is able to offer International calls free of charge?

James Wanless: Talkster is offering a freemium pricing model. The free world dialing is an ad supported application providing our customers with long distance and international calling. More and more of our customers are looking for more than just a free call. Typically they have a core group of friends that they set up Free World Dialing numbers for, but they also have a lot of other people that they communicate with and for this use the paid part of our service to make calls and text these other people that they communicate with perhaps on a less frequent basis.

Jeff: Can you explain what the new feature Talki is and how it’s used?

James Wanless: Talki is an Application that you can install onto your mobile phone and there is also a lite version that can be accessed via the mobile device’s browser. Talki is an easy to use application that offers the following features:

-Cheap calls to anywhere in the world
-Options to send cheap text and picture messages to anywhere in the world (prices range from 2-5 cents a text)
If your friend also has Talki on their mobile phone you can send messages back and forth free of charge, You only have to pay for the small amount of data used.

Talkster began with the free world dialing service; but customers wanted more. What more? They don’t want a new number for every person that they call. So we decided to make it even simpler. Talkster introduced a paid calling service that consumers can use to make cheap calls to any number. But customers wanted more communication options such as text and picture messaging also. Talki is a combination of all the things that our customers asked for in one place.

Jeff: Does Talkster have any new features that will be rolling out anytime soon?

James Wanless: We will soon begin offering our communication platform to 3^rd parties to white label it for themselves. Branded companies will soon be using the Talkster platform to communicate with their networks using the Talkster functionality.

Jeff: Does Talkster plan to release any applications for the iPhone or the Google Android platforms?

James Wanless: Yes, Talkster will soon be releasing applications for the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices and Android devices besides our current Java application.

Jeff: How do you feel about competitors such as Rebtel,Jahjah and others?

James Wanless: Unlike Talkster, Rebtel is very focused on just calling; they have chosen this as their area. Jajah which is making their network open to many different companies to transport calls but in reality Jajah is competing more with phone companies than anything else.

Jeff: The communications industry has seen amazing leaps in technological advances in the last 10-15 years.  What innovations can you imagine in the next 10-15 years that could change the market as we know it today?

James Wanless: Technology really is a means to an end. Consumers care nothing about technology; they only care about the service that they can derive from the use of technology. Price continues to be driven down and people use the services more and more because of the lower prices. Soon all communications will be available on a single and most importantly mobile device. There will be better access to texting, voice calling, video calling and more.

I think the problem today is that people aren’t wowed by technology anymore. There used to be that when someone called from California to New York, everyone would run to the phone and be amazed that they were talking to someone from such a long distance away. Now that is not the case, texting has turned into the main mode of communication. The wow factor needs to be brought back to the simple telephone call. Hopefully with 3^rd generation and 4^th generation networks which will provide voice and data session simultaneously will accomplish that. Someone could be browsing the web and sending pictures to a friend while on the phone. The integration of texting and a voice conversation included with simultaneous data sessions will revolutionize the market and the way we communicate.