Wie gehts?

A few minutes ago I got a press release (not yet on either company's website) saying that Cable & Wireless is working with ComBOTS. It starts like this:

"Cable & Wireless today announced that it has connected the data centre of ComBOTS AG over a 10 Gig Ethernet IP access port in Frankfurt directly to its own IP network. ComBOTS AG, which is currently preparing for the introduction of new products within the 'Personal Digital Communication' market, has set up one of the largest data centres in Europe at the company’s central headquarters in Karlsruhe. Its co-operation with Cable & Wireless represents a milestone in how companies handle the transfer of large data volumes."

ComBOTS may be unfamiliar to many, but this group was behind the highly successful Web.DE portal, which still kicks butt in the German internet market (parent company United Internet is ranked fourth as at this writing, behind only eBay, Microsoft and Google), and also was (to my knowledge), the first European sort-of-internet-telephony play with the launch of Com.Win back in late 2002.

I'm intrigued as to what they're working on, because let's say that statements to date have been somewhat less than clear. What I find interesting about the press release I have received, and this previous one, is the fact that connectivity is stated in terms of numbers of photos which can be exchanged between users in an hour - 72m prior to today's release, and 100m after the deal with C&W, and there is also a prominent reference to photos in the vision statement. I would guess that ComBOTS is working on some more social aspects to the VoIP experience than perhaps we have seen so far, but I haven't a clue. The company has committed to a launch of ComBOTS by 12 July at the latest, to coincide with the AGM, and it's doing a helluva lot of hiring apparently. If any German mega-value readers out there have any insight, please don't hold back!