The abbreviation IPRS stands for "International Premium Rate Services" – a technology born in Hong Kong way back in 1994 when a small group of entrepreneurial Brits approached the then incumbent Hong Kong Telecom with a simple but brilliant idea: If they sent the phone company (telephony) traffic, then they would expect a proportion of the so-called and often secretive "settlement rate" used by global phone carriers to pay for international telephone calls amongst themselves.

Hong Kong Telecom agreed, and thus a new multi-million dollar business was born.

Arguably one of the first forms of e-commerce, IPRS flourished not least since the countries in which such services were offered either did not have a domestic premium rate market or, as was the case with Germany, IPRS was used as a way of circumventing the more stringent rules and regulations governing local premium rate (1-900) services.

The explosion of supply bandwidth for international telephony in recent years has put the payout rates under pressure. Simply put, making international phone calls has never been so cheap and technologies such as VoiP will only add to that downward pressure.

However, thanks to the internet, IPRS is experiencing something of a renaissance. International numbers are being used as a billing mechanism for surfers to gain access to web content for limited amounts of time. In the new, globalised, flat 24/7 'always on' world in which we live, an international call has to terminate somewhere, so it only makes sense to send that call to a carrier with whom one has a revenue share agreement in place.

This way, web content owners can start making money from literally everywhere, including the 'sleeping giants' of Brazil, Russia, India and China with a combined population of some 2.7bn. Most of these people do not have a credit card. One thing they all have though is access to a phone or cell.

It could be argued that the term International Premium Rate is somewhat misleading. Remember, the surfer is making a regular IDD (International Direct Dial) call in order to gain access to your site.

And since this probably represents a small fraction of the overall calls he makes, he will pay his phone bill in full – after all, the telephone remains an essential utility to most people – which is why the incidence of chargebacks in conjunction with IPRS remains negligible.

Since typically these surfers have no other way of paying you, if you have compelling content, the chances are they will keep coming back for more.

Thanks to IPRS, you can therefore start making money on a global scale from surfers that were visiting your sites anyway – a new revenue stream designed to squeeze every last cent from your international traffic.

Given the fact that 60 percent of the world's population lives in Asia and that the Internet is a global medium, the profit potential from there is clearly enormous.

For example, according to www.internetworldstats.com, Iraq has an Internet penetration of just 0.1 percent. During the last year, we paid just under $3000 in sales from there.

Since U.S. Internet penetration stands at 69.1 percent, that would have been over $2m in sales if Iraq had the same usage as in North America.

And Iraq represents a small fraction of the massive Asian market, with whom our phone billing is proving to be particularly popular. Recent data confirms this, showing a 120 percent increase in sales from there during the past year.

Another country showing impressive growth is Kazakhstan. With Internet penetration of just 2.7 percent, there is only one way for this market to go.

This success in end-user uptake can in part be attributed to the ubiquity of the phone – practically everyone has access to one. In fact, cellphone penetration in many developing markets outstrips that of land-lines and rivals penetration levels of much more developed ones (there are now more cellphones in the UK than people). This, combined with the anonymous nature of the purchase, is what makes our solution so popular with end-users.

Combine this with a geo-targeted call-to-action in a language they understand (their own), and you have yourself a website fit for the twenty-first century.

Whilst increasing numbers of webmasters are beginning to implement geo-IP, more often that not they are employing only a handful of predominantly European Languages.

Clearly, to convert Asian surfers into paying customers, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew and Thai need to be deployed as part of the language mix.

Where possible, to reinforce the "feel-good" factor, we have used the voices that are heard when calling to purchase a password of national celebrities, making surfers more comfortable paying you this way.

Since the surfer buys time in advance, the billing clock is no longer ticking once within the member's area. This makes the surfer more likely to return at a later stage. Indeed, recent analysis of our platform stats earlier this year revealed that 17 percent of callers were repeat customers in a single day.

Whilst such billing is not recurring by default, when used in conjunction with compelling content, it will have surfer's worldwide coming back for more. Including our friends in Iraq and elsewhere in Asia.

In the credit-card-centric western world, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the majority of the world's population do not actually own one. However, one thing that practically ALL surfers have access to is a phone or cell - the key to start making money on a global scale.

Premium-rate telephone numbers are telephone numbers for telephone calls during which certain services are provided, and for which prices higher than normal are charged. Unlike a normal call, part of the call charge is paid to the service provider, thus enabling businesses to be funded via the calls. Charges are presented as part of the normal telephone bill, so the original purchase is usually on credit - "enjoy now, pay later…"

Historically regarded as the "bad boy" of the telecoms sector due the initial abundance of phone sex services, premium rate has gone mainstream in several markets in recent years and has established itself as a key revenue generator for telecoms and media companies.

Indeed, the phenomenally successful "Who wants to be a millionaire?" TV show which has a global franchise is financed by viewers dialling such numbers in an attempt to become contestants.

In the UK, birthplace of premium rate and the world's most mature and regulated market, several satellite TV stations have recently emerged, inviting viewers to call such numbers by answering often absurdly easy questions that they see on-screen.

European MTV and youth channels have long been pumping out ads for cell-phone "tuning" products such as ringtones, all of which uses premium rate or it's relatively new variant, Premium SMS, to collect payment.

As with mobile services, the U.S. is lagging behind Europe when it comes to such (1-900) numbers, and is practically the only market that any significant chargeback issues associated with them.

This having been said, the world is a big place and given the open architecture of the web - it's not called "world wide" for nothing - premium rate phone billing is the key to webmasters squeezing every last cent from their foreign traffic.

The now redundant dialler utilised premium rate as its underlying billing mechanism and whilst the dialler is dead, premium rate telephony on which it was based is still very much alive and kicking.

The solution needed in order to monetize your foreign traffic therefore is so-called IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Billing. The surfer dials a premium number in order receive the password needed to gain access to your members' area for a limited amount of time, as determined by you.

Several "solutions" exist out there that grant surfers' access for the time that their phone is connected to such a number, so that they pay you on a per-minute basis. However, given that the surfer still needs a phone line for access to the web; such billing is wholly inadequate since the majority of surfers simply do not have the luxury of a second phone line.

To resolve this, our system allows surfers to purchase a password which buys them a block of time which they are free to use either immediately, or at a later stage. This way, the army of single line phone users will be able to enjoy the content at a time of their choosing. The "hold time" for the caller in order to generate said password is fixed at just over five minutes. So, no horrendous phone bills for the surfer and whilst they enjoy the content, the clock is no longer ticking - making the them feel more comfortable paying you this way and therefore more likely to come back for more at a later stage.

In all those counties where local numbers can be used, we employ them. More often than not, the phone companies dictate the end-user call charge, not us. Typically, we use the highest tariff available. A surfer in Austria, therefore, will pay more for his password than his Spanish counterpart. But consequently, the payout to you will be higher (For Austria, you receive $10 for each password sold).

In those markets than do not have domestic premium rate, the surfer in invited to make a regular international (IDD) call, the cost of which varies enormously since it depends on the carrier and price plan that the end user has with their phone company to make such calls.

We have revenue share agreements in place with the so-called "terminating" Telco's, i.e. the phone company to which the call is made. Whilst the payouts are not as high, at least this way you have a new revenue stream from Brazil, Russia, India, China and beyond.

The phone companies are reliable but notoriously slow payers when it comes to premium rate since usually they wait until they have collected they money from their subscribers before passing it on to us.

To this end, we factor payment and pay you long before we get paid by them and we absorb the (small) risk of chargebacks - so the money you see in your realtime stats is the money you get - every two weeks by wire, check or ePassporte.

Globally, more and more countries are only just beginning to introduce premium rate, with Telco's keen to generate revenues from this tried-and-tested billing method, whilst traditional voice revenues continue to come under pressure from VoIP and increasing fierce competition.

The addition of premium rate billing will therefore hand you a revenue-stream both now, and or many years to come.