NEWARK, NJ - June 28, 2000 - IDT Wireless is pleased to announce the launch of FREEWAY pager its unique caller party pays pager. FREEWAY will be available nationwide and is being launched with a media campaign initially targeting the New York Metropolitan area, including radio, print and outdoor advertising beginning the week of June 26, 2000. IDT Wireless is a business unit of IDT Corporation (NASDAQ:IDTC). IDT is a leading facilities-based multinational carrier, telephone company and Internet service provider.
The FREEWAY pager utilizes IDT's proprietary "caller party pays" technology, which means the calling party is charged a nominal fee to send a page. The person receiving a page on FREEWAY pays nothing. This eliminates the monthly fees, activation fees and contracts usually associated with paging service.
"It's always exciting to launch a new business, but it's absolutely exhilarating to reinvent an existing industry," said Howard Jonas, IDT Chairman and CEO. "Our wireless engineers have worked for more than four years at developing FREEWAY's calling party pays technology."
FREEWAY offers both numeric and text pagers. With the FREEWAY numeric, the calling party is charged 35 cents for each page. The FREEWAY text messaging pager lets a calling party send a text message of up to 120 characters for a 50 cents charge.
"FREEWAY is the way paging should be. Why should I have to pay when somebody wants to page me?" added Jonas. "Once you buy a FREEWAY pager, the only thing you'll ever have to pay for is new batteries."
FREEWAY pagers will be available through the same extensive retail distribution network that currently sells IDT Prepaid Calling Cards, as well as many national and regional retail chain stores. The Freeway numeric pager has a suggested retail price of $49.95 and $79.95 for the FREEWAY a text model.
"FREEWAY opens up paging to everyone, especially in urban youth and Hispanic markets, which up until now have been under served by the paging industry.. Just think about it, now parents can stay in touch with their teenagers without monthly fees, credit checks and signing expensive long term contracts," said Jim Courter, IDT President. "FREEWAY makes staying in touch with family and friends very affordable."
The IDT Wireless business unit was launched backed in March of this year. And on June 20, 2000 IDT Wireless announced the launch of its branded wireless program to be provided on the Sprint PCS? (NYSE:PCS) Nationwide wireless Network.
IDT is a leading facilities-based multinational carrier that combines its position as an international telecommunications operator with its experience as an Internet service provider to provide a broad range of telecommunications services to its wholesale and retail customers worldwide.
Through its own telecommunications backbone and network infrastructure IDT provides its customers with integrated and competitively priced international and domestic long distance, pre-paid calling cards, Internet access and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service. The Company's Ventures division is developing several innovative telecom and Internet related businesses.
Except for historical information, all of the expectations and assumptions contained in the foregoing are forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Act of 1934, involving risks and uncertainties. These statements refer to our plans to implement our growth strategy, improve our financial performance, expand our infrastructure, develop new products and services, expand our customer base and enter international markets. The forward looking statements also include our expectations concerning factors affecting the markets for our products, including the demand for long distance telecommunications, and Internet access services. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results that we anticipate. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those risks discussed in this release. In addition to the factors specifically noted in the forward looking statements, other important factors that could result in those differences include (a) general economic conditions in the telecommunications and Internet markets, including inflation, recession, interest rates, and other economic factors; (b) casualty to or other disruption of our facilities and operations; (c) those discussed in our Quarterly Report on Form 10Q for the period ended April 30, 2000; and (d) other factors that generally affect the business of telecommunications, Internet and other communications companies. We assume no obligation to update these forward looking statements or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward looking statements.
For Investor Relations inquiries or to be added or taken off the fax list, please contact:
Mary Jennings
IDT Investor Relations
(201) 928-2975
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