Deltathree.com expands messaging service to Europe, Asia

Deltathree.com is expanding its Web-based unified messaging service to Europe and Asia.

Internet phone company Deltathree.com offers a service, called unified messaging, that brings together email, voice mail and faxes. Subscribers can access these from a single mailbox, either from a telephone or a Web browser on a PC.

The service was previously only available in the United States. But Deltathree.com has installed local phone numbers in France and the United Kingdom, allowing travelers to dial in and check their messages over the phone. The company plans to add the rest of Europe and Asia by the end of the year, according to company chief executive Noam Bardin.

The service, called D3Box, includes new technology that can recognize if an email is written in a foreign language, including French, German, Italian, European Spanish and Latin American Spanish. It can read the email to subscribers over the phone using that language, Bardin said.

Deltathree.com, which allows people to make phone calls over the Net, competes against companies such as eFax, OneBox, JFax and Ureach in the emerging unified messaging market. Internet telephony rival Net2Phone plans to offer unified messaging by the end of this month.