Vyke Pro Scoops Telephony Award

Vyke Communications has won Internet Telephony magazines Product of the Year award 2007 for its Vyke Pro free mobile community messaging service. The service, launched on 19 June last year, enables mobile users worldwide to send free or low-cost text messages, in addition to making low-cost international calls.
Vyke Pro is a downloadable mobile phone programme that is compatible with all recent Java-enabled handsets. It offers mobile users the opportunity to dramatically reduce their text messaging charges by using its smart message routing technology. This allows Vyke Pro users to send free text messages to other Vyke Pro users around the world, or to send normal text messages to non-Vyke Pro users for as little as 1p per message.
Vyke recognizes that a key part of text messagings appeal is its always-on-time delivery of messages. With this in mind, it has incorporated its wake up technology into Vyke Pro, to remotely start a users Vyke Pro software, and deliver an incoming message to it, when receiving a message from another Vyke Pro user. This important feature allows Vyke Pro to provide the same always-on-time delivery of messages, but at a significantly reduced cost.
Vyke Pro was developed to challenge what Vyke calls exorbitant text messaging prices. It notes that many UK consumers think of text messaging as a cheap and easy way to communicate, with a representative cost for a standard 160 character text message of approximately 0.12. When that cost is broken down and related to the actual amount of data being sent, however, the true cost of texting is revealed. Every character sent in a text message equates to 1 byte of data, says Vyke. So when translating this into a per- Megabyte (MB) cost, it becomes clear just how expensive it is in the UK to send text messages, with consumers paying approximately 750 per MB. (See Vykss calculation at the foot of the story.)
Vyke is delighted to receive this highly-acclaimed award, says Vyke VP of Product Management, Jan Fredrik Raknes. It is a testament to the tremendous effort the product management and development team have put into Vyke Pros market-leading technology.  The ultimate test of any product is its ability to impact end users, and I am very happy that Vyke Pro is now a recognized success both within the market as well as within industry review.”

Calculation:
If the user sends exactly 160 characters per SMS (the maximum allowed and the standard billing increment), then he/she will be sending 160 bytes of data. This means that the user must send 6250 SMS messages to equal one MB (megabyte) of data transfer. 6250 SMS messages (@ 12p per message) = 750 per MB