Girls In Tech

With $110 million in revenue last year and selling for only $40, the YMax Corporation’s Gen2 MagicJack allows cell phone users to bypass their carriers’ charges for long-distant calls. The product plugs into a computer which then communicates with recognizable cell phones in range (even locked phones); enter a code and then your long-distance calls are ready for routing over the internet!

In running a startup, every penny counts and since most of us have been ripped off by huge cell phone charges at some time or another, MagicJack sounds cool and like a new paradigm that companies will begin following. Though femtocells preceded this Gen2 MagicJack, the cell phone companies were still charging big bucks for this technology as much as $250 per unit. By allowing callers to circumvent big company charges, the YMax product is more like the Napster of the cell phone industry.

Let’s just hope that its engineer, Dan Borislow, won’t face the same fate that programmers Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker had to face after being featured on the cover of Wired ten years ago.  For the time being, Borislow’s forty-dollar-a-unit technology is legal. So, enjoy free long distance calls as long as you can—move over Skpye!