The city of Kitchener, in Canada, Ontario, is home of a new app called OpenPhone. Its ambition is to help small entrepreneurs stopping the blurred line between private and business phone calls. Many services already exist in this specific field, like Phone.com or Grasshopper, but OpenPhone’s main feature is to simplify the process and focus and ease of use. As of today, the app let user share one phone number across several phone, using VoIP technology. Still in its beta version and available on the Appstore since January, the company expects to launch in a couple of months a final version. An Android version hit the Google platform in June. OpenPhone will allow customers to make concurrent calls on several devices, transcribed voicemail and call forwarding. This way, small businesses will have the opportunity to have a better communication between customers and entrepreneurs.
The Russian News Agency TASS reported that Apple and Google have been asked by the Russian authorities to remove Telegram Messenger from their stores. The request has been made in April 17th after a court ordered four days earlier that Telegram be taken off, has the company issuing the app refused to comply with the FSB’s request. The FSB asked Telegram to share its data, a demand the company refused to accept. The Russian telecom watchdog sent a notification to users concerning the use of Telegram and issued a statement saying: “In order to anticipate Roskomnadzor’s likely response to the violations regarding the operation of the aforesaid Apple, Inc. services we are asking you to notify us within the tightest deadlines of the company’s further actions regarding the solution of these issues.”
Apple recently sent a message to all developers of apps on iOS that are available on the Chinese App Store. They informed them that they had to remove a tool called Callkit, that allows to implement VoIP calls into their app. Any app that uses Callkit is refused by apple for the Chinese market. The message stated: “Recently, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) requested that CallKit functionality be deactivated in all apps available on the China App Store.” Despite this announcement, VoIP is still allowed in China, but the ease of use of Callkit seems to be the issue. Some Human Rights activists suggest that even though China doesn’t want to officially ban VoIP, they want to make it more difficult to use. It is not the first time Apple had to comply with Chinese demands as they removed last year Microsoft’s Skype among other VoIP…