Sonetel's mobile app now handles incoming calls — first public beta

Sonetel's new mobile app is now in beta for iOS and Android. Two things are new: a call to a Sonetel number can now be answered directly in the app, and the apps have been rebuilt from the ground up.

What's new

Previously, a call to a Sonetel number had to be forwarded to the customer's mobile or another phone. That forwarding cost money. The call now goes straight to the app over Wi-Fi or mobile data, with no forwarding cost. It is the change customers have asked for most.

The apps themselves are also new. The previous ones were written in 2019 for a business model the company has since left. They were slow and hard to use: incoming calls did not work at all, and outgoing calls were cumbersome too. The old apps were among the most common complaints in negative customer reviews.

For a numbering service, it goes without saying that a number should be able to make and receive calls. Technically, though, that is hard to do well. It requires real-time signalling across both IP networks and traditional telecom networks, in many variants. The new apps solve both: incoming calls work, and outgoing calls are fast.

The same release also adds receiving SMS to the business number in the app, holding a call, Bluetooth audio, and showing the price of an international call before it connects.

Why it matters for investors

Sonetel gives a small business its own phone number, local to the country where it wants to be established. The number can be reached from any ordinary phone. Most of Sonetel's 34,000+ paying customers have a number in a country other than where they are based. Buying a foreign number to be reachable locally is the company's core use case.

The weak point has long been the last step: actually receiving the calls. In some markets, the cost of that has made Sonetel's solution too expensive for the customer. In parts of Europe, a call forwarded from outside the EU can cost several times more than a local one. In cost-sensitive markets such as India, it becomes too expensive to pay for every received call. Customer service has long named this cost as the most common reason customers give for leaving. Answering in the app, over data, removes it.

The company does not yet know how this affects churn and makes no forecast. But the feature tackles the weakness customers have most often raised. The hope is that the effect is material. A number that is cheap and easy to keep everywhere is also more worth keeping. Recurring number subscriptions are the company's largest source of revenue (ARR).

What is hard to copy is both the telephony behind the app — local numbers in 80+ countries, built over many years of carrier agreements and regulatory work — and the app itself, where real-time functions are interwoven with the telecom platform. The app becomes the place where a business handles the calls and messages tied to its numbers. That makes the next step possible.

Where it is headed

Sonetel ships updates every few weeks. With incoming calls now working in the app, the groundwork is there to add intelligence on top of the communication.

On the roadmap — as direction, not finished features — are call summaries and drafted follow-up emails, recording and transcription, voicemail as text, and sending SMS from the business number.

The order matters for investors: first the basics — making and receiving calls and messages — then the intelligence. Sonetel sits in the middle of the customer's communication. By capturing it and, in a next step, using AI, the company can create real value for customers. But the basics have to be in place first.

The development behind it

Developing the new apps took just over a year, which the company credits to a deliberate shift to AI-assisted software development.

Sonetel has been running since 2009, has paying customers in 170+ countries, and has been listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market Stockholm since 2017.

Read more

• More about the app, and what is rolling out next
• The press release on Cision, and the company's latest financial reports, via Cision