Wireless software solutions provider Atelier and Philip Zimmermann, the creator of Pretty Good Privacy - the most widely used email encryption software in the world - announced that they are working together to secure VoIP technology on Symbian phones. The result of the partnership is the Zfone software for the S60 and UIQ platforms that automatically encrypts voice calls made over the Internet.

"Today, we're seeing VoIP telephony's stellar growth and acceptance in the mass market, but users do not realize their Internet calls are more likely and easily intercepted than with standard telephony", said Marc Menschenfreund, CEO of Atelier. "With Phil Zimmermann's Zfone for Symbian OS, we're bringing to the masses the same level of privacy to VoIP calls that Pretty Good Privacy brought to email."

Zfone for Symbian OS integrates with the Internet protocol stack of the operating system and intercepts VoIP packets as they go in and out of the phone, encrypting voice data on the fly. The encryption technology is based on the new ZRTP protocol which uses 128 and 256-bit AES encryption. Zfone is compatible with all SIP/RTP-based VoIP clients. Also, it has been designed to work with its desktop counterparts (currently available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) making it possible to make encrypted calls between a Symbian phone and a PC.

"Zfone is the easy and smart way to provide privacy to VoIP calls and it is a ready-to-go technology that can be widely deployed," said Phil Zimmermann. "Atelier's expertise enabled Zfone to be very tightly integrated into the Symbian platform, allowing secure VoIP communications to reach critical mass faster by transforming millions of existing and forthcoming Symbian smartphones based on S60 and UIQ platforms into secure Internet phones."

Atelier will demonstrate Zfone running on Symbian smartphones and its interoperability with PC-based encrypted Internet telephony software during the Symbian Smartphone Show in London UK, October 16-17, 2007.