What? A travel app designed to provide international travellers with far lower phone charges than through traditional roaming services. Users can be reached either on their regular number or on a personal ‘local’ number from any of 70-plus countries in the world.
The app takes advantage of unused local fixed line telephone capacity over high-quality telephony networks, rather than the variable quality of the internet, as per traditional VoIP (voice over internet protocol).
The World Phone won two categories in the recent WAITTA Awards – best new product, and best consumer product.
Where ? Search for ‘World Phone’ in iTunes or the App Store, optimised for iPhone 5 and later. (An Android version is coming soon.) More information on http://norwoodsystems.com.
Who ? Chairman, CEO and co-founder Paul Ostergaard and CTO and co-founder David Wilson. The Norwood Systems team reformed in 2011, after an original idea back in 1999.
Quotation ~ “Just about every frequent traveller can tell you stories about global roaming ‘bill shock’. Whilst there are options involving swapping SIM cards and the like, ideally business travellers want to be available on a certain number, wherever they are." -Paul Ostergaard.
$ ~ Norwood raised $5.5 million in association with its recent ASX listing (ASX: NOR).
Market ~ Informa Telecom estimates that mobile operators today bill more than $US55 billion annually in roaming charges, which is forecast to grow to more than $80 billion by 2018 (Juniper Research report, 2014).
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Norwood Systems is currently ranked #33 by total shareholder return on the BNiQ Public Companies list: https://www.businessnews.com.au/total-shareholder-returns
