 Net2Phone preferred provider of Priceline's long distance
Priceline.com Teams Up With Industry Leaders In IP Telephony
Market To Revolutionize The Way Consumers And Small Businesses Buy
Long Distance Services
Anchor provider Net2Phone joined by deltathree.com and ZeroPlus.com
in Priceline Long Distance service NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May
24, 2000-- - New Priceline Long Distance service will bring the
benefits and savings of Internet Protocol (IP) long distance telephone
services to the mass market with nationwide TV ad campaign featuring
William Shatner
Now, consumers and small businesses have access to a long distance
service with no surcharges, hidden fees, membership costs or minimum
call times Priceline Long Distance offers segmented services with
benefits for small businesses, college students, and families with
relatives overseas or in the military Starting today, save up to
40% off most standard base rates on monthly long distance calling
Priceline Long Distance to receive multi-million-dollar participation
fees from participating providers With Priceline Long Distance,
all IP telephone calls are placed over managed networks and not
over the Internet
Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN - news), the Internet pricing system
that has revolutionized the way people buy airline tickets, hotel
rooms, new cars, home mortgages and more is doing it again - this
time for long distance calling.
Today, priceline.com announced the launch of a new service using
the company's well-known Name Your Own Price(sm) Internet pricing
system. Priceline Long Distance, a wholly owned priceline.com subsidiary,
is now making it possible for consumers and small businesses to
save up to 40% off most standard base rates on their monthly U.S.
and international long distance calls when they use the new service.
Priceline Long Distance launched today with a nationwide TV ad
campaign featuring William Shatner in his now-familiar role singing
the benefits of Name Your Own Price(sm) long distance calling.
Participating with Priceline Long Distance is Net2Phone (Nasdaq:
NTOP - news), the company's anchor IP telephony provider, deltathree.com
(Nasdaq: DDDC - news) and ZeroPlus.com (Nasdaq: ZPLS - news). Net2Phone
signed an agreement to participate in Priceline Long Distance late
last year, and signed up more than 10,000 new customers in its successful
beta test. ZeroPlus.com and deltathree.com announced their participation
in Priceline Long Distance today. In total, the three IP telephony
companies account for the majority of all IP telephone calls from
the U.S.
"As a fast-growing segment of the telecommunications market, IP
telephony now has the technology, quality and reliability to attract
broad consumer and small business appeal," said Daniel H. Schulman,
president and CEO of priceline.com. "The time has come for IP telephony
to go mass-market and Priceline Long Distance will leverage the
brand-recognition and marketing expertise of priceline.com to accomplish
that goal. Priceline Long Distance will offer a service with no
surcharges, hidden fees, membership costs or minimum call times
- just great savings."
Priceline Long Distance is very different from other long distance
services on the market. Customers simply come to priceline.com and
set the price they would be willing to pay per-minute for a block
of calling time. Priceline Long Distance then searches its private
database to determine if a customer's offer can be accepted. Customers
whose offers are accepted do not need a computer or an Internet
Service Provider in order to place long distance telephone calls
using the minutes purchased at Priceline Long Distance. Once a customer's
offer is accepted, Priceline Long Distance emails the customer with
the name of the participating provider who will supply service to
the customer. In order to place calls using purchased minutes, the
customer dials an access number from their home telephone or small
business, enters a four-digit personal identification number (PIN)
and completes the call. With Priceline Long Distance, customers
never have to switch their current long distance providers.
In market tests conducted earlier this year with Net2Phone, Priceline
Long Distance found that it could save customers up to 40% off most
standard base rates on their monthly long distance phone calls,
both inside the U.S. and on calls to foreign countries. In addition
to saving money for customers, Priceline Long Distance makes it
possible for participating long distance companies to generate incremental
revenue by making their excess capacity available to Priceline Long
Distance customers.
"Priceline Long Distance, utilizing Net2Phone's flexible and innovative
service, is a win-win solution for consumers and businesses alike
by enabling customers to realize significant savings on long distance.
For our beta tests, we have seen great demand for this new service,
and are pleased to be the anchor provider of long distance services
with Priceline Long Distance," said Cliff Sobel, Chairman of Net2Phone.
"We applaud Priceline Long Distance's aggressive launch of IP
telephony services with Net2Phone taking the lead, combining priceline.com's
pioneering marketing prowess with Net2Phone's cost-effective solutions.
We look forward to rolling out future programs with Priceline Long
Distance to benefit callers nationwide."
As part of the three-year marketing agreements with Net2Phone,
ZeroPlus.com, deltathree.com and other IP telephony companies, Priceline
Long Distance also receives multi-million-dollar participation fees
from participating providers.
In addition to its consumer services, business-to-business is
anticipated to be a growing part of Priceline Long Distance's services.
Priceline Long Distance intends to expand its long distance services
for businesses with a full suite of business-to-business calling
features.
"We expect Priceline Long Distance will deliver high-quality,
low-cost long distance services to a broad spectrum of consumers,
including families with relatives across the country or overseas,
parents or spouses with loved ones in military service overseas
and businesses wanting to reduce their ongoing communications costs,"
added Mr. Schulman.
"Internet telephony has come a long way in a short time. What
was once perceived - and dismissed - as a novelty technology is
now being embraced by individuals and businesses as an efficient
and affordable alternative to traditional telecommunications services,"
said Noam Bardin, President and CEO of deltathree.com. "And this
is just the beginning. Any device with Internet capabilities can
transport voice data, and with the advent of more and more Internet
appliances, we may soon see the day when Internet telephony is as
common as electricity."
"Since its creation, ZeroPlus.com has been committed to providing
a high-quality, low-cost way for consumers to place and receive
telephone calls through use of IP telephony," commented ZeroPlus.com
President and CEO, Robert A. Veschi. "It's a simple premise that
has revolutionized the way the world is communicating. By aligning
with Priceline Long Distance, we are able to precisely target and
'Connect' value-driven consumers and leverage the power of the priceline.com
brand to offer ZeroPlus.com to millions of potential new customers."
The Priceline Long Distance service is easy to use and lets you
set the price for blocks of calling time. You can buy your calling
time in three simple steps on the Web (www.priceline.com):
1) Give us the phone numbers you're calling from and select the
market (U.S. domestic, international or a specific country) where
you want to call.
2) Select the amount of time you want to buy and the price you
want to pay. In 60 seconds or less, you'll find out whether your
price was accepted. You'll also receive a special PIN number to
use when you make your call.
3) Dial an access number, type in your PIN, make your call and
save. When your block of time runs out, you can come back to Priceline
Long Distance and give us your price again.
To help customers save money, Priceline Long Distance has a special
monthly call-calculator feature that computes what customers are
typically paying on a per-minute basis, so the customer can then
choose what price to offer through Priceline Long Distance.
Priceline Long Distance can make these savings possible because
its Internet pricing system creates new network efficiencies for
telecommunications providers. For the first time, customers submit
guaranteed purchase offers for long distance calls before those
calls are made.
All Priceline Long Distance calls are routed over managed networks
and never over the Internet. These networks have significantly more
"fiber" to devote to incremental traffic. The use of managed networks
eliminates many of the quality shortfalls experienced when placing
IP telephone calls over the Internet. Priceline Long Distance's
participating providers' data traffic networks can support ordinary
telephone-to-telephone conversations ranging in quality from digital
wireless telephones to traditional long distance service.
About deltathree.com
deltathree.com is a global provider of IP telephony services and
other enhanced web-based communications services to individuals
and businesses worldwide. The company's interactive communications
portal, www.deltathree.com, is a single online source for the communications
needs of users anywhere in the world. By combining user-friendly,
web-based access with the advanced functionality of its privately-managed,
global IP telephony network, the company offers users a comprehensive
solution for high-quality, low-cost IP communications services.
Such services currently include: PC-to-phone; D3 Box(tm), a unified
messaging service; ClickIT(tm), an e-commerce tool; calling cards;
and global roaming for accessing the deltathree.com network from
locations throughout the world. deltathree.com is a subsidiary of
RSL Communications, Ltd. (Nasdaq: RSLC - news).
About Net2Phone
Net2Phone is a leading provider of voice-enhanced Internet communications
services to individuals and businesses worldwide. Net2Phone enables
people to place low-cost high-quality calls from their computer,
telephone, or fax machine to any telephone or fax machine in the
world. Net2Phone develops and markets technology and services for
IP voice and e-commerce solutions for the Web and other IP networks.
For more information about Net2Phone's products and services, please
visit net2phone.com.
About ZeroPlus.com
ZeroPlus.com, Inc. provides Internet telephony services to consumers
worldwide, including free PC-to-PC services, and fee-based PC-to-phone,
phone-to-PC and phone-to-phone services. The revolutionary aspect
of the company's consumer solution is it that customers choose a
unique Internet phone number that can be identical to their home
phone number, except that "0" is the first digit. Therefore, calls
made to PCs are dialed almost identically to calls made to traditional
telephone numbers. ZeroPlus.com consumer members also receive free
instant messaging and text chat. The company has also developed
an e-commerce solution, ZPCommerce, that enables companies to voice-enable
their websites. ZeroPlus.com can route calls from customers' PCs
to existing call centers entirely over the Internet, thereby drastically
reducing e-commerce companies' inbound 800-number service costs.
About priceline.com
Priceline.com, parent of Priceline Long Distance LLC, is the Name
Your Own Price(sm) patented Internet pricing system. Priceline.com
currently provides services across four broad product categories:
a travel service that offers leisure airline tickets, hotel rooms
and rental cars; a personal finance service that offers home mortgages,
refinancing and home equity loans through an independent licensee;
an automotive service that offers new cars, and a telecommunications
service that offer long distance calling services.
Priceline.com has agreed to license its business model to independent
licensees, including Priceline WebHouse Club, Inc., which offers
a Name Your Own Price service for groceries; PricelineMortgage,
a service that allows consumers to set their own terms for home
financing products; and Priceline Perfect YardSale, Inc., a local-market,
consumer-to-consumer selling service, and certain international
licensees.
In these arrangements, priceline.com generally receives royalties
for licensing its intellectual property. Priceline.com also holds
securities carrying the right to purchase a significant equity stake
in the licensees under certain conditions. Unless those rights are
exercised, the results of licensee operations will not be included
in priceline.com's financial statements.
Information about forward looking statements
This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Expressions
of future goals and similar expressions including, without limitation,
"may," "will," "should," "could," "expects," "does not currently
expect," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts,"
"potential," or "continue," reflecting something other than historical
fact are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The following
factors, among others, could cause the Company's actual results
to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking
statements: inability to successfully expand the Company's business
model both horizontally and geographically; management of the Company's
rapid growth; adverse changes in the Company's relationships with
airlines and other product and service providers; systems-related
failures; the Company's ability to protect its intellectual property
rights; the effects of increased competition; anticipated losses
by the Company and its licensees; legal and regulatory risks and
the ability to attract and retain qualified personnel. For a detailed
discussion of these and other factors that could cause the Company's
actual results to differ materially from those described in the
forward-looking statements, please refer to the Company's most recent
Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Contact:
Priceline.com
Brian Ek
203/299-8167
or Mike Darcy
203/299-8168
or
Net2Phone
Sarah Hofstetter
201/928-2882
or
Clifford Public Relations
(representing deltathree.com)
Josh Epstein or Hannah Shay
212/358-0800
or
Feldman Communications
(representing ZeroPlus.com)
John Dinsmore
410/571-8900
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