LiveHive team joins Fibernetics (Freephoneline.ca)

CAMBRIDGE — The management team of LiveHive Systems, a Waterloo digital media startup, has joined Cambridge-based telecommunications company Fibernetics to run the division that provides the Freephoneline.ca service. 

Under the acquisition deal, LiveHive’s management team, including president Dave Bullock and chief technology officer Jean-Pierre Bhavnani, has taken charge of Fongo Inc., a company owned by Fibernetics that runs the Freephoneline service. They retain their titles as president and chief technology officer respectively in Fongo. 

John Stix, chief marketing officer of Fibernetics, said Freephoneline.ca has a base of about 100,000 users and is growing. 

Under the service, people get a phone line through their computers. It allows them to call anywhere in Canada for free, receive calls, get voice mail and set up a “follow me” feature that allows them to get their incoming calls transferred to other phones. Right now, the service is primarily delivered over the computer, but the company will soon be launching smartphone applications as well. 

The calls are free because the business gets its revenue from ads that appear on the top of the Freephoneline application on the computer.

Fibernetics needed people with digital media experience to drive new revenue and that sparked the interest in LiveHive, Stix said. “We realized that if we wanted to take this to the next level, we needed to acquire a digital media company with a proven track record in monetizing digital media and developing applications.”

LiveHive, founded in 2005, creates interactive media experiences for television shows. For example, people could use a LiveHive application to play along with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, answering the questions posed by the TV host while watching the show on a computer.

Even though telecommunications is a completely different industry, Fibernetics was interested in those digital media skills and ideas, Stix said. “We weren’t looking to acquire the technology, we were looking to acquire people,” he said. “We wanted the people who had built LiveHive into a successful story. So it was about finding good quality people to join our organization.” 

Oct 03, 2011 -

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/2590999-livehive-team-joins-fibernetics/