Truphone raises £12.5 million and suddenly becomes an 800lb VOIP / SIP Gorilla
Butter me in French jelly and call me Samantha!
TWELVE AND A HALF MILLION QUID!
That’s a bit of a push, eh? Although, if it was on my CV, I’d definitely put ‘Raised $25m dollars in 2007 for Truphone’. What’s a half million dollars between friends?
Here’s the news from their release:
Mobile Internet telephony start-up Truphone today announced a funding round of £12.5 million ($24.5m). The round is the European technology sector’s largest Series A venture funding of 2006. It was led by Wellington Partners (a leading pan-European VC), with Independent News & Media (a global media group) and Burda Digital Ventures (a global media group) joining existing investors Eden Ventures and business angels.
Independent News & Media, eh? Well I never.
Now a bit of background….
In 2006 Truphone introduced internet telephony (‘VoIP’) to mass market mobile phones, enabling users to make free calls from their handsets to other Truphone users and low internet-rate calls to any telephone worldwide.
In late 2006 this was extended to free phone calls to a range of VoIP services.
The new funding will provide Truphone with resources to execute its vision of fundamentally changing the economics of mobile communications and providing revolutionary new services to mobiles, increasing the base of handsets it supports and launching the Truphone service across the globe.
The new funding will also provide Truphone with a means to take SMS Text News readers out for lunches to demonstrate it’s services, right?
This will create a worldwide Mobile Internet Network Operator providing a critical mass of customers with a free/low-cost alternative to conventional cellular network service providers.
So this is super news, I reckon. Good for the VOIP / SIP industry. Good for encouraging investment by other groups along similar lines too.
Congratulations to all at Truphone!
Truphone Towers is, I’m sure, rocking tonight!
