Long Beach, CA (March 12, 2008) - WYDE Voice, a new startup venture backed by Free Conferencing Corp. founder and CEO David Erickson, today launched the industry's first real-time voice conferencing appliances that support 16-bit, 16 kHz voice quality for an unparalleled user experience. Leveraging the Asterisk^® platform, the new WYDE 16 kHz wide-band voice solution offers service providers and enterprise organizations the capability to deliver a broad range of affordable, high-quality audio conferencing solutions. 

cInvesting in innovation has always been my mantra," said David Erickson, Founder and CEO, Free Conferencing Corporation of America. "When presented with the opportunity to offer an affordable, high-end 16 kHz voice quality product that bridges the gap between PSTN and VoIP, it made total sense to create this technology spin-off. WYDE Voice introduces a new level of conferencing technology with unparalleled flexibility and reliability."

WYDE Voice is the culmination of two years of research and development, and it brings high-quality voice to complex, multi-speaker and multi-listener environments. Utilizing Asterisk�, the new WYDE Voice appliances offer unsurpassed flexibility without sacrificing performance.

"We have developed these products to accommodate the needs of both service providers and enterprises to deliver conference services and applications that were once cost prohibitive," said Michael Eastman, Vice President of Global Sales for WYDE Voice. "We are truly pushing the envelope with these turnkey products that will offer customizable features at the most cost effective price point on the market."

According to Eastman, the new models are available now with pricing for the VM1000 model starting at $160/port and $140/port for the VM3000 - a fraction of the cost of competitive bridges. In addition, preset modes such as reservation-less conferencing are installed on each appliance and can be easily tailored to meet business needs including specialized call flow or advanced features such as real-time conference control.

"This new product has the potential to really "disrupt" and push the industry towards adopting newer technologies. The advent of wideband audio will have widespread appeal and fill a real need in the market," said Marc Beattie, Partner & CSP Practice Manager, Wainhouse Research, LLC. "From a pure cost per port perspective, the WYDE Voice product could really shake things up, and that alone would be a disruptor."

Eastman envisions a multitude of applications for the new WYDE Voice products including premium audio conferencing services, social networking site con calls, distance learning and online collaboration tools for webcasts, among others. "We will support this launch with an aggressive reseller program with attractive pricing for service providers, systems integrators, and VARs," he added. "In addition, enterprises can easily take a WYDE Voice product and integrate it seamlessly within their organizations to conduct internal conference calling, especially those that are high volume users." The new WYDE Voice models can accommodate from 500 to 7000 concurrent G.711 callers and up to 3000 16 bit/16 kHz iSAC callers.

Other groundbreaking features of the WYDE Voice products include:

• Instantaneous active speaker update
• Real-time conference control via SIP
• Web service API for integration with 3rd party applications or sites
• Preconfigured call-flows
  • Free and authenticated conferences
  • Recording and playback
  • Mute/Hold participant or group of participants
  • Lecture type conferences
  • Entry/Exit tones
  • Custom greetings
  • Roll call
  • Question and answer sessions
  • Dial out
• Integration and support for a wide range of authentication protocols, such as RADIUS

WYDE Voice will showcase its new conferencing appliances at Spring 2008 VON.x in San Jose at Booth #1238. Additionally, Mr. Eastman will participate in a panel discussion at VON sister conference Digium | Asterisk World titled: Best Business Practices in Implementing Asterisk-based Open Source Telephony Solutions, on March 18 at 11:15am.

WYDE develops 16 kHz, wide-band voice applications for organizations of sizes. The company offers turnkey products with customizable features at the most cost effective price point on the market. WYDE specializes in bringing high-quality voice to complex, multi-speaker and multi-listener environments. For more information, call 866.508.9020.