Luca was so nice to invite all members of the Sitòfono group on Facebook to try out his service for free. For one year I am a Sitòfono user too and you can call me for nothing by clicking this button:


The bill for these calls pay Luca Filigheddu and his company Abbeynet. Normally the service costs € 499 / year (about $669) and I already have compared it to Voxalot's Virtuall Toll Free in a former blog post, called "Who needs Sitófono when he can have that for free from Voxalot?". Now I will be able to answer this cuestion by myself.

I already tried to hack it by putting a number that I want to call and waiting for Sitòfono to connect us. But it didn't work, although Voxalot's click-to-call button can be used for that. Luca is planning something similar anyway, as he states in Facebook:

Luca Filigheddu (Italy) wrote on Aug 24, 2007 at 12:29 AM
In the following weeks Sitòfono is going to become much more than what it is now. Today customers are using it to receive unlimited calls from any part of the world from their website's visitors. This is helping them to convert more visitors into paying customers.

The idea is to let them use Sitòfono from their backoffice area in order to MAKE unlimited calls to their customers worldwide. For the same annual fee, they can RECEIVE and MAKE calls from and to their customers.

Do you think this feature can increase the perceived value of the service ?

Well, of course I think so, Luca. € 499 / $669 is quite a lot of money and I guess that you can easily cover a fair use flatrate for outgoing calls with it too.

Labels: Abbeynet, Facebook, free phone calls, Sitòfono, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

The PhoneBoy writes at The VoipWeblog about Sitófono, the click-to-call solution from Abbeynet.

Sitofono is a rather unique product in the VoIP marketplace. It enables customers to click on a button on your website and they can connect with you. All a customer has to do is input their phone number into the computer and their phone rings, connecting you! Meanwhile, Luca Filifgheddu, the CEO of Abbeynet, let's us know on his personal blog that getting a Sitofono is even easier than it used to be. Four steps and a few hundred Euros later, and you've got click-to-call on your web site for a year.

Why pay a few hundred Euros for click-to-call? I have it just set up for free with Voxalot, powered by free VoIP providers of my choice which are automatically selected by a dial plan:

This is a real phone service. Think twice before you call me at night or try to annoy me with this click-to-call! I live in the Central European Time zone and have those calls filtered, so that my phone rings only at reasonable times. Also I have a nice call log where I can see all the callers' numbers and might call you back.

Labels: Abbeynet, Sitòfono, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

So Luca from Abbeynet has responded to my last comment, in which I stated that free phone calls in fact are a great thing, although he as representative of a VoIP company hates them.

Well, maybe I would have prefered from him a message like "dear competitors, please don't offer anymore free phone calls because we all can die from that". Instead of saying "please, don't give me more FREE calls. I don't want them" - which sounded as if an average end user was speaking, that he isn't.

Just a plain call for an oligopoly! A constellation that companies prefer when they cannot build up a monopoly. This would have seemed more honest to me.

I must admit that in his new blog post Luca has some strong arguments which make me think. But still it seems suspicious that most VoIP news sources are company driven and opt for higher prices. They tend to just tell what's good for their companies and not what's good for the customer. At least I would like to see a disclosure under such articles (as we see it often at GigaOM) which explains your company's interests.

People arrive at those websites via search engines and think it's an independent news source. But it's a marketing tool. That's why you see there news like "higher prices are good for you" while in user forums you find much more appealing messages like "how to make free phone calls from Pakistan to the UK".

That's the kind of information I like. :)

I dream about a worldwide SIP peering where everyone can call everyone for free. People would just have to pay their broadband connection and nothing for the calls, like they pay nothing for their emails.

That's technically possible and it basically was like this when the SIP movement started. But now I see every time more SIP blocking. Calls, which where free before, have to take paid routes. That annoys me.

Somebody has to say that too. There is a natural antagonism between companies and customers. Obviously the companies want the highest possible prices and the customers would love to get everything for free.

Every side has to make their points. Also the end users. That's why I responded like I did.

Also the VoIP flatrates, that Luca proposes as a solution, aren't always the best thing. In Germany they normally cost 10 Euros per month for national calls. When I pay 1 Cent per minute, which is a standard price of many providers, I usually spend 4 Euros monthly for my phone calls. So I would have overpaid using a flatrate.

Another example of the difficult relationships between VoIP users and providing companies.

Labels: Abbeynet, VoIP

                                      

Luca-Filigheddu, from Italy's Abbeynet, makers of Sitofono, writes as guest blogger in the Skype Journal and makes a comment that looks strange at first sight.

Dear VoIP players out there,

I would like to ask you a big favor. Please, please, don't give me more FREE calls. I don't want them. I have always been used to pay for phone calls, it's not a problem. Fair rates of course, but not free. I don't want it. And you can save your VC's money. It's a bargain for me and for you. Please, don't keep offering me FREE calls. ...

Other well known opinion leaders of the VoIP industry, like Andy Abramson and Alec Saunders directly agree, which gives Luca's opinion even more weight and let's it seem very reasonable.

That's the catch of the weird situation in VoIP, where the majority of interesting news sources are blogs from people who have a personal business interest. Two of them (Luca and Alec) run companies in the area and the third does public relations for telecommunication companies. That's a pretty obvious reason why they are against free calls.

The customers point of view got again swept under the carpet. I am pretty sure that most people love free calls and cannot afford more that 200 dollars monthly for communication, like Luca does and thinks that it's normal.

That's why I wrote this reply:

Luca, I disagree.

You seem to be just rich with all the services you can afford. But not everyone has these possibilities.

I really like free calls. I pay 45 dollars monthly for a 16 Mbps DSL connection and try to only do free phone calls. That's a fair price.

But it could be even cheaper, regarding that people in poorer countries also want to talk. The real scandal is that I can call Peru for free or 1,5 Euro Cent. But Peruvians have to pay up to 10 times more for a local call on their fixed line.

Telefónica de España is squeezing them out while they behave in our markets as a price breaker.

I whish these people had the same possibilities as I have, since their wages are up to ten times lower, even if they belong to the middle class. So I always recommend them to use their internet connection also for phone calls. Unfortunately many still don't understand VoIP.

I am really looking forward to the time when all calls are SIP to SIP - and free like emails. People should pay only for the data pipe, everything else should be included. The communication should be free, regardless whether it's by email, instant messenger or phone.

Until we arrive at this point I try to reach exactly this scenario by playing around with the cheapest VoIP providers and looking for free Break-In numbers. So that my fellows from abroad can at least call me for local prices. What I liked most in the last time are Gizmocalls free local numbers.

The coolest thing I knew lately is a GSM gateway. It forwards calls to a VoIP number for free to a mobile phone. Also it lets you make free international calls from your cell phone by calltrough.

So you can use VoIP even without internet.

Best regards,
Markus Göbel

What do you, my dear readers, think? Are phone calls already cheap enough and companies should abolish their free offers?

Or should we smoothly move into an environment where every phone call is as free as an email?

Your comments are very welcome.

Labels: Abbeynet, free phone calls, VoIP