Skype rival Fring offers free calls for mobile phone users

Israeli startup Fring, backed by founders of instant messenger ICQ, is bringing free video calls to mobile phones and offering wireless services similar to those of Skype Technologies SA.

“We overlap with what Skype does, but our starting point is different,” said Chief Executive Officer Avi Shechter. Skype lets users call each other for free via the Internet. “We don’t even have a computer solution,” said Shechter, who previously headed ICQ, sold to AOL for $287 million in 1998. “We believe in mobile and that mobile is where the growth will be.”

Fring is adding more than 500,000 users a month and allows them to call, message, and chat with each other over mobile phones. The average user is on Bnei Brak-based Fring’s service for four hours a day, Shechter said in an interview.

“The company has a good chance of coming into a market dominated by Skype by offering something marginally better,” said Gilad Alper, an analyst at Tel Aviv-based Excellence Investments Ltd. He added that it could take years “to become very important in terms of mass adoption.”

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