Microsoft has acquired Teleo, a VoIP technology company, for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to augment Microsoft's investments in VoIP technology, opening opportunities to bring additional solutions to MSN Messenger and other MSN services. Microsoft and rivals AOL, Google and Yahoo all currently allow phone calls between computers, but not yet to a domestic or mobile handset.

Teleo's technology and services enable the placement of phone calls from PCs to traditional phones. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Francisco, Teleo is a privately held company whose initial planned service offering, also called Teleo, was designed to allow customers to use their PC to make phone calls to cell phones, regular phones or other PCs.

Through its integration with Microsoft's Outlook and Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Teleo service was designed to facilitate click-to-call dialling of any telephone number that appears on-screen, for example through a Web site or via search results or e-mail.

VoIP technology is already prominently featured in MSN Messenger as well as other Microsoft products and services. Microsoft plans to incorporate and expand upon Teleo technologies, integrating them into the infrastructure that supports MSN and ultimately projects delivering new VoIP consumer applications in future releases of MSN services.

'Teleo has great technology to deliver superior VoIP quality and an excellent overall customer experience,' said Blake Irving, corporate vice president of the MSN Communication Services and Member Platform group at Microsoft. 'This acquisition opens up infinite opportunities for Microsoft to enable even more relationship-centric communications experiences for our customers in the future.'

'It's going to be very exciting to see Teleo software extended into MSN products and services that millions of consumers worldwide rely upon every day for their information and communication needs,' said Wendell Brown, co-founder of Teleo. 'The union of our respective technologies and talents has the potential to deliver great value to customers.'

Yahoo is also in the process of introducing such a system, after it bought Internet phone company Dialpad two months ago.

BIOS, Aug 31, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Networking