A commentator to my last post "Why Truphone and Gizmo5 applaud that Nokia turns it's back on mobile VoIP" doubts my argumentation by asking:

I thought Truphone is based on the built-in SIP client? Then it would seem unlikely that Truphone applauds Nokia dropping the mobile VoIP stack from certain models.

My answer is the following:

Yes, Truphone until now works on top of the built-in SIP client. But the Truphone software develops more and more into a standalone application: with the inclusion of SMS, callthrough where no Wifi is available, presence information and so forth. They aren't afraid of building their own SIP app since it ties the customer even more to them. Therefore Gigaom wrote:

Truphone isn’t waiting around for Nokia to do something. A company spokesman told us: “From Truphone’s perspective Nokia has removed the VoIP client from all the N-Series phones for the planned future. We are putting in a replacement client functionality so that existing customers are not orphaned.”

Don't forget that Truphone has a very high pricing for Wifi calls! Their software is convenient to install, but many other VoIP companies are three times cheaper. That's why they would be very happy to be your only mobile VoIP provider. Vyke already launched their own client, as you can read here, and Gizmo5's CEO Michael Robertson officially applauded Nokia's move in a FierceVoIP article.

The only losers are the cellphone users, since these 3rd party apps are much more difficult to use than the native SIP client. Read this insightful comment, posted at Phoneyboy's blog:

"I’m using VOIP on Nokia’s phone via my own asterisk server. How can Nokia expect me to develop my own Internet telephony application so that I can continue to use it? There are simply thousands of small users out there for whom this is beyond what they could do. This will leave them out in cold.

And further comment. Any third party application will have hard time to match the comfort of integrated symbian UI, where normal and internet calls are integrated together and one push of a button decides which one to make. Just compare this with Fring whose UI is just terrible."

We tinkerers who use Asterisk, Voxalot, Voipstunt, PBXes and Iptel.org are out of the game for the new Nseries devices. I am afraid that the Nokia E71 is the last cool device for a VoIP aficionado like me. Hopefully the Android devices will have more to give. Phoneboy calls us, who use 10 VoIP providers on our Nokia devices, a "minority". Nevertheless he "understands the frustration". Thank you!

But still I think that he is wrong, or maybe just blue-eyed, when he says: "It sounds like the problem is only limited to these two handsets". The problem affects all Symbian Series 60 3rd generation Feature Pack 2 (S60 3.2)! This means: All new handsets from now on are affected. Nokia's VoIP isn't revolutionary disruptive anymore, but has changed to a big boys' only business.

P. D.: I have just found a new Gigaom article about the topic: "Nokia Clarifies Its Future N-Series VoIP Plans". Thanks for quoting my thoughts.

Labels: Asterisk, Callthrough, Gizmo5, Mobile VoIP, Nokia, PBXes, SIP, SMS, Symbian, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot, Vyke

                                      

Do you remember my blog post "A SIP address for Skype? Better the other way around!"? This mission has now been accomplished. As of yesterday you can call me on Skype and I will answer this call on my desk phone or cell phone using SIP VoIP telephony. As I always try to achieve, this is a totally free solution.

I have joined Voxeo's developer program for their Evolution application, a visual design tool for interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Part of the deal is that you get a strange phone number with a +990 country code. There is no country associated with this code and Skype users can call these numbers for free. My Skype account is now being forwarded over Voxeo to a SIP address from Gizmo Project which I manage on Voxalot to make use of it's call connection rules and voice mail.

Have a peek on my settings:

A better explanation can be found at the Voxeo support forum. I wonder what VOIPSA's Dan York would say. In January he started a discussion with his blog post "Skype says "No" to VoIP interoperability - *because customers aren't asking for it!* - Well, I am!". He is, by the way, working for Voxeo and this partly solution for his problem comes from his own company. So I guess he was always aware of this trick.

I am happy now that people can call me with Skype and I don't have to keep me computer running or buy a special Skype phone for this purpose. That's the reason why I nearly never used Skype. I don't like applications which keep me tied to my computer in order to receive messages or phone calls, like Skype or the MagicJack normally do. Let's see which other solutions I can develop with Voxeo. Their visual tool makes the design of VoiceXML fairly easy.

Labels: free phone calls, Gizmo Project, Gizmo5, MagicJack, SIP, Skype, VoiceXML, VoIP, Voxalot, Voxeo

                                      

One of the most reliable VoIP services I know is Tpad. Not only that it worked flawlessly for more than one year, they even credited $10 to my account when I found an error this weekend. Needless to say that Tpad never got any money from me penny pincher, because I use their service only to receive calls.

Long before Jajah Direct, Wifimobile or Gizmocall started similar services, Tpad already had break-in numbers in 39 countries. It's an entire callthrough system: You can dial whichever of these 79 numbers and the number of my Tpad account to reach me for the price of a local call. That's much more reliable than the other services, which depend on the Caller ID to connect the call. In poor countries with bad networks this Caller ID often cannot be transmitted for technical glitches. I am permanently connected to Tpad with my SIP ATA so that my Peruvian friends in Lima can always call me for the price of a local call.

Today it's more than one year that I started to write about Tpad and I have used it since then. But some days ago I realized that my SIP devices could not connect to the Tpad server anymore. Not from my ATA, not from Voxalot, not from a Nokia E61, not from a Nokia N810. Other German friends had the same problem. What was wrong? I asked in their forum and learned that Tpad had cancelled my account because they thought I didn't use it anymore:

Tpad performed a cleanup of "dormant" accounts, without remembering that call records are only captured for calls that use the Tpad softphone. Since you use Tpad exclusively from an ATA or non-Tpad softphone, your call activity is not remembered. So, it is very likely that your account was improperly considered dormant and was suspended. Tpad should be able to restore it for you pretty quickly.

What really impressed me was that the forum admin immediately wrote "Send me a PM of your Tpad Number(s) and we will fix asap". What a difference to other VoIP services! His answer, apology and $10 to my account arrived the same Saturday. On Sunday they fixed the problem. What a great service!

I think I should charge some money to my Tpad account as a gesture of gratefulness. If only it was necessary! With $10 I can call for more than ten hours to Germany and this credit never expires. That's another big difference of Tpad to other VoIP companies.

Labels: ATA, Callthrough, Gizmocall, Jajah, Nokia, SIP, Tpad, VoIP, Voxalot, Wifimobile

                                      

In the last weeks I received many messages from people who want to start a lawsuit against the VoIP company Betamax from Cologne, Germany. They feel betrayed by the mothership of Voipstunt, Voipcheap, Sparvoip, Lowratevoip, Nonoh and other offers. Something must have gone wrong with their billing or they believe that Betamax wrongfully charged too much. Aside from the problem that Betamax themselves are apparently victim of a scam, I can only say that for me everything works flawlessly. But I get the impression that many users don't understand the company's Terms of Service. This morning a Betamax user called Robert wrote:

The company I work for happens to be in Moscow so I call them regularly. Why do they suddenly want to charge me for these calls? It doesn't make any difference whether I call the U.S.A., Italy or Russia. They are all free and perhaps I call Moscow three times a day but perhaps twice a week.

I told him to first look at the website http://backsla.sh/betamax. There you can always see the latest prices and you will realize that with most Betamax companies you can call Russia's landline phones for free, within a Fair Use Policy (FUP) of 300 minutes per week. This FUP seems very fair to me. I never exceed it, so Betamax' normally works like a flatrate for me.

In fact I am very surprised about their cheap prices for Russia, because I know that connections outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow are very expensive to buy in wholesale markets. Therefore e. g. Rebtel users have to pay $0.019 Cents to Moscow and St. Petersburg landlines - but $0.079 Cents to other Russian cities. So Betamax' $0.00 Cent is a great bargain. For the German company it makes a big price difference whether they terminate calls in the U.S.A., Italy or in Russia. Although it might be difficult to explain to the average user like Robert.

Now I see that calls, which were originally free, are now being charged under the 'fair use policy'. This I don't understand.

There can be two reasons for that:

1.) Robert calls for more then 300 minutes per week.

2.) He shares his IP number with other users, so that Betamax thinks that it's only one user. That's what happened at Voxalot, a virtual internet PBX: All Voxalot users had the same IP number to Betamax. Therefore they jointly exceeded the FUP very fast. Voxalot managed to strike an agreement with Betamax to pass the original IP number, so that every user now has his own FUP.

So, if Betamax charges for actual free calls, there might be a technical problem. Otherwise it seems a great bargain to me to get 1.200 minutes per month from Betamax for just €2.50. (Taking into account that that you have to pay €10 every four months to get the €0.00 to Russian landlines.) People should also consider what user satphoneguy wrote in Voxalot's forum:

having lived in many parts of the world I think that a lot of what is happening is relate to cultural differences and expectation of customer service. from what i have read the vast majority of complaints are coming from the USA. here in the USA it is somewhat expected that if you are unhappy with a service or feel deceived by misleading marketing that you should be eligible for refund on what you spent. most American companies do indeed give 100% refunds to their customers no questions asked when they complain. i do know from having lived overseas that is not the business etiquette everyplace. there are a number of reasons why many people may feel deceived since the betamax 'fair use policies' are not very clear. in particular concerning additional charges for use of SIP devices on some services. it is all exasperated in that americans also feel that every company should have a customer service line where they can call with questions(or complaints) or at very least email support with a quick turnaround to response(same day)

i do have to say though that it seems many people who complain about numerous betamax companies continue to try the others. this is very similar to what i dealt with working for a very large retail company - some of the biggest complainers and returners of products for refunds were also some of the biggest shoppers; i would see them on nearly a daily basis.

i personally have never had a billing issue with betamax. although in recent months my only funded account is nonoh; since the rates are so much less for the mobile destinations that i call than with any of the SIP options and i have unlimited calls to NA and most landlines through another provider.

Many people in Europe accept a lousy service, as long as it's cheap. But others expect a great service although they pay nearly nothing. That's just not possible to deliver for a company. Good service always has its price, especially in a country with sky-high wages like Germany. People who want more than just plain phone minutes should subscribe to companies like PhoneGnome, Packet8 or Sipgate which have real hotlines by phone and email for their clients. That's what I also told Robert, who finally admitted:

I suppose, like most people, I never fully read the 'Terms of Use', although in these terms there is no exact reason mentioned and more than that, there is no exact time limit per country or city mentioned where this might be relatively easy as an adder to the price information.

Please always have a look at the small print at the end of every Betamax web page!

* Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days and per unique IP address. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded the normal rates apply. With your FREE DAYS you can call for free to all the destinations listed as free! When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply. You can get extra Freedays by buying credit

They say it very clear that free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week and IP address. That's not too difficult to understand, isn't it? What still remains a mistery to me, is the sentence „When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply“.

What are these normal rates after 300 minutes? I couldn't find them either.

Labels: Betamax, Packet8, PhoneGnome, Rebtel, Sipgate, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

It seems that the VoIP provider Betamax has to be relieved from fraud allegations which spread across the web in the last weeks. Alec Saunders had pointed to a story from MyVoIPProvider.com which said that the mother company of Voipstunt, Voipbuster, Voipcheap, Nonoh and much more VoIP services was fraudulently charching money to credit cards and Paypal accounts of members and nonmembers. MyVoIPProvider.com had issued a public warning:

Over the past 18 - 24 months we have had dozens, if not hundreds of complaints about the Betamax group, all from users and even non-users trying to find an outlet to vent their anger or trying to find a means of contacting the company in Germany.

In all cases the modus operandi is the same: Users who have never used the VoIP services of any of the Betamax VoIP websites find that small amounts averaging between between US$10 and US$35 are charged to their credit cards. In every single instance the credit card charge description was - BETAMAX VOIP CREDIT COLOGNE - (Cologne is the English name of Köln - the apparent headquarters of the group in Germany) and Betamax are the beneficiaries of these fraudulent charges.

At the Voxalot forum most of us couldn't believe these charges, since most of these penny pinchers there are quite satisfied with Betamax' offers. Of course their customer service is terrible. If you have a problem there's no one to call and the email support is just a joke, as I already told in "WTF is Betamax (VoIP)?". But then, there are heartbreaking stories to read in Ebay's user forum for Paypal:

jlmoore0 (7 ) View Listings | Report Jan-31-08 05:43 PST 22 of 28

I have never heard o Betamax GmbH & Co.KG HOWEVER I have just been charged Ł383 on my credit card by PAYPAL. I stopped my credit card & contacted Paypal - who tried to imply that someone in my household had used my account!! This seems incredible owing to the amount of complaints about this company. I am not impressed & when resolved won't be using paypal again!!

Unfortunately it turns out that Betamax is not responsible for all the wrongdoings but a victim itself, as a Paypal representative declared yesterday:

ericj@paypal.com View Listings | Report Jan-31-08 14:08 PST 23 of 28

Hi All,

If you are seeing fraudulent charges in your PayPal accounts, your login information has been compromised. Please contact us ASAP and an agent will assist you with reporting the fraudulent transactions and resetting your login information.

Its also important to keep in mind that while this company is showing on the charges, they are a victim as well. It's quite unlikely they are behind the fraud itself. Rather it would be the spoofers who gained access to your accounts.

I apologize for the inconvenience and will pass this information onto the necessary individuals for review.

Thanks,
Eric

Betamax was caught in a trap: Their terrible customer service has made the fraud charges highly believable, although they are not very plausible. Few people wondered how Betamax could have charged a Paypal account secretly a second time, when the customer only gave a one time authorization. Even more unlikely was the allegation that they charged people who didn't even know the company.

From where should they have had these credit card data?

It seems that the company and these poor people fell victim to a phising attack. But I have to repeat my claim to Betamax: Please be more open! Get a press department! Talk to your customers!

Don't leave room for conspiracy theories!

Labels: Betamax, Ebay, Paypal, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

In the last weeks I was displeased with the state of VoIP on mobile handsets. Wifi coverage is spotty and callback services like Jajah require two phone calls at the same time, which makes them too expensive for penny pinchers like me. That's why I am a fan of callthrough applications which involve only one call leg. The call goes to a local number where a server converts it into a VoIP call. But unfortunately this needs numerous key strokes in addition to the destination number and makes callthrough a cumbersome activity.

Software like MobileTalk from Packet8 would help, but it is bound to just one VoIP provider and could be done much better. Unfortunately the underlying software from Mobilemax gets distributed only to companies and not to end users. So people have to wait until their VoIP provider of choice implements it.

But salvation is near, at least for iPhone users: RingFree let's you use every VoIP provider or even your own Asterisk / SIP server for outbound calls on Apple's "Invention of the year 2007" (according to Time Magazine). iPhone Atlas has the story:

Here, in a nutshell, is how the app works: A user registers with RingFree, entering his iPhone number and providing some other information. The user is then prompted to call a country-local number to confirm their information by entering a PIN. Once logged into the site, the user selects from a list of pre-defined VoIP providers (including VoicePulse, Gizmo Project, PhoneGnome and others) or defines his own by entering a proxy address, username and password.

After selecting or defining a provider, the user can access the Web app’s keypad, which looks something like the iPhone’s standard dialer, selects the preferred VoIP provider from a menu, and hits “Call.” The call sends a bit of JavaScript over EDGE to retrieve a local number from the VoIP provider, which the user is prompted to dial with the iPhone’s native phone application. When this number is dialed, the VoIP provider is triggered to dial the number entered in the Web app, and the call goes through.

RingFree is basically a website with a virtual dialer. It is linked to VoIP providers of choice and uses standard voice minutes to make VoIP calls. Therefore it doesn’t require any hacking or jailbreaking, nor does it require the presence of a WiFi network. Only a small amount of data is transferred over the EDGE network to signalize the call. The voice quality is reportedly good, and calls go through without too much delay so that a commentator at IntoMobile states:

Thank you for this. This is the most useful iPhone application yet. I set it up in less than 2 minutes and I made a call to Ireland using Gizmo Project. Sweet and simple. I am happy and would be jumping up and down with joy if it let me call Skypers.

That's exactly what I was looking for. RingFree is free in the first month, then it costs $30/year. You can also call Google Talk, Yahoo or MSN contacts from the iPhone. I wonder when someone will launch a similar service for other platforms, such as Symbian. It could be a great new feature for Voxalot, whose mobile callback I often use with my own VoIP providers. It costs €0.01 of data or less to establish the call, but still it demands two simultaneous phone calls.

Labels: Apple, Asterisk, Callthrough, EDGE, Gizmo Project, Google Talk, iPhone, Jajah, Mobile, Mobilemax, Mobiletalk, MSN messenger, Packet8, PhoneGnome, Ringfree, SIP, Skype, VoIP, Voxalot, Yahoo

                                      

Last year I was nagging that "Packet8 MobileTalk could be done much better", and I was right. I could learn that now when the Israeli company Mobilemax installed for me on a cellphone the underlying software which powers Packet8's MobileTalk. It is a real mobile VoIP wonder weapon which I covered in an article for Areamobile. Companies like Truphone, Gizmo5, Wifimobile and Tpad should make its features a part of their mobile services to make them work also outside of the spare Wifi areas.

Internet telephony could be a killer application for mobile phones. But it has it quirks, shows a series of articles I wrote. In most cases you need at least a cell phone which can open mobile websites. It let's you do a mobile callback with VoIP providers like Jajah or Voxalot. After entering the phone numbers of the caller and the callee on a mobile website, a server rings up both and connects them over the internet. Of course this also costs double, but for international calls it's still cheaper than the own cell phone provider's prices. Only Wifi cell phone calls are less expensive. They only cost a few cents per minutes and often they are free. But Wifi isn't always available.

Mobilemax thus developed a software which automatically sends mobile phone calls the less expensive way over the internet whenever that's cheaper than normal calls. No need to open mobile websites on the phone or to trigger callbacks by SMS or instant messaging. The software simply sits unobtrusively in the background and automatically determines the way in which the call is connected. The user only needs to enter the number.

Establishing a call with VoIP software from Mobilemax

The program works on about 500 phones with Palm, BlackBerry, Symbian or Windows Mobile operating systems and last month it has been deployed for the first time by the US VoIP provider Packet8. Once a number has a foreign area code, the software starts to act and connects via a landline number to the server by Packet8. The server connects the telephone conversation with the other party over the VoIP network. Calls from the United States to Asia or Europe cost only a 2 to 5 US cents per minute more than the price of a local call. The American mobile operators normally charge up to three dollar minute. German companies like Running Mobile or Cellity offer similar solutions.

But the Israeli software has much more functions which the competitors lack and also Packet8 doesn't use. The program could also automatically decide to connect a phone call as a callback or over Wifi. Even VoIP calls over 3G will soon be possible, although all German mobile network operators seem to block them now I realized in some self-experiments. Mobilemax' software is a real miracle weapon for mobile VoIP and the handling is particularly pleasant, because no extra buttons have to be pressed. The software even senses in which country the user is and automatically chooses a local number for callthrough or callback. What a pity that consumers cannot have it. Mobilemax distributes the software only to companies. "We don't see ourselves providing the underlying service of the application and compete with our customers", said Mobilemax' Director of Business Development, Perry Nalevka, to me in an interview. The Packet8 customers pay $10 per month only to use it. In addition they get the VoIP telephone minutes billed.

Configuration also allows other VoIP flavours

Other companies want to follow the same business model, Nalevka said, which started as a one-touch-dialing solution for calling card users and roamers who had to use tens of access numbers, PINs and dial flows to make a call without being ripped off by the mobile operators. Six different service providers worldwide and several IPBX and enterprise mobility providers are now testing the software. So far several tens of thousands of licenses purchased.


Other companies who use it:

• Reliance - Indian provider launching in 8 countries soon.
• Gamma Telecom, UK - launched the Crosslink service targeting SMBs and enterprise users
• Tellink, Belgium - callback provider for SMBs and roamers
• Tel3, Miami FL - residential provider
• Boomering - SMB mobility & callback solutions for roamers
  

Today it supports the following configurations:

• Callthrough with PIN or PINless (CLI based).
• Roaming location based callthrough with multiple access numbers automatically selects the relevant access number according to the user's location.
• Seamless callback triggered by: DID, USSD, SMS, IP. The application triggers the callback, answers the incoming call and if needed sends the destination number.
• Dial around replacing prefixes in the dialed number (1010).
  

Further developments:

• Support additional phone models as they are released.
• Add new routes to seamlessly divert calls to: VoWIFI, Vo3G (to SIP or termination).
• Adding in-call Mobility features.

You can find more information about the software in Rich Tehrani's interview with Perry Nalevka: "MobileMax: Bullish on Fixed Mobile Convergence" (December 31, 2007).

Labels: 3G, Callthrough, Cellity, Gizmo5, Jajah, Mobile, Mobilemax, Mobiletalk, Packet8, Runningmobile, SMS, Tpad, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot, Wifimobile

                                      

Since my last post "Call me for free with Tringme!" I get funny calls from Senegal and other far away countries. They go through Tringme, but also my click to call widgets from Voxalot and Sitňfono. Somebody must have spread the word that I give support on certain VoIP services and devices. No wonder that people call me, since it's for free.

I am OK with such calls, but please understand that I can only answer during working hours in my time zone. The rest of the calls goes to the voice mail box. The yesterday's caller didn't even understand that he was talking to an answering machine. He thought that I was on the phone with him but refusing to answer, so he got a little upset. Also I had serious problems to understand his Englisch and the e-mail address he left.

I think for such purposes it's still the best option to contact me over the contact form on my website. The last caller who came through caught me on my cell phone in a department store when I couldn't help him at all.

Labels: Devices, free phone calls, Sitňfono, Tringme, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

Much has been said about startups like Ribbit, Tringme or Flashphone which use the Flash browser plugin for click to call widgets. Aswath Rao even declares 2008 the Year of Flash based VoIP Clients. I can only say that you don't have to wait till next year to call me for free using Flash. I love my Tringme call widget:

These calls are entirely free to you, because the caller speaks into the Flash widget on my website using a headset or the laptop's built in phone and speaker. On Linux the sound is a little bit weird. The automatic voice, which says "please wait while we connect your call" before every connection, sounds like a 45 rpm record played on 33. The phone call itself sounds like Mickey Mouse, but still the the words are understandable. On Windows everything works just perfect.

Also to me these calls are entirely free. Other than my widgets from Sitňfono and Voxalot where I have to pay to call the person who wants to contact me.

I achieve this by using FWD as SIP provider to power the Tringme widget. The Tringme account website says "Connect my phone and voicemail widget to Phone number or extension". Unfortunately it accepts only numbers and no SIP addresses in this input mask, but as a workaround I have simply put my FWD number there. In the "TringPhone SIP Settings" part of the account configuration I left my FWD login data. Which means that every Tringme call is in fact a free FWD on net call. You can probably do the same with Gizmo Project's SIP account data and phone numbers, as well as with many other VoIP providers.

Also there is another widget for people who don't want to talk to me, but just leave a voicemail.

Only seconds later I get a call and a voice says "You have a Tringme" before it plays the message. The Tringme widgets are much better than Gizmocall which also allows free calls from a website.

You could call me for free by simply typing http://www.gizmocall.com/mgoebel in your browser's address bar. This website also uses Flash, but additionally you have to install a plugin for Windows or Mac. For ten months yet Gizmo owes us a Linux plugin. Although the company's CEO, Michael Robertson, even has his own Linux distribution, Linspire.

But why bother? The Flash browser plugin gets more and more versatile and works on all platforms. It's a new way to disrupt the telco industry, circumventing the PSTN and offering a new option for free phone calls that so many people appreciate.

So, if you want, please give me a Tringme call!

And, before you ask: No, I couldn't get Truphone's Facebook application running, which should basically do the same like Tringme, only that it uses Java. After one week of tinkering I gave up. But congratulations for winning the "Red Herring 100 Global" Award.

Labels: Flashphone, free phone calls, FWD, Gizmo Project, Gizmocall, Linux, PSTN, Ribbit, Sitňfono, Tringme, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot, Web_2.0

                                      

You know that I bashed Facebook very hard for being a terrible time sucker. Many Web 2.0 applications need too much attention, compared to their value. But there are some utilizations that make me smile, because the unleash the potential of Web 2.0 without wasting my precious time and money. Like Voxalot's latest Facebook application, VoxCall for Facebook, that really disrupts telecommunications. It let's me make free phone calls without touching the PSTN. Read the announcement:

On Monday 19th Nov 2007 Voxalot will be officially launching our new social communications application for Facebook called VoxCall.

VoxCall is an exciting new initiative from Voxalot that allows Facebook users to click on their friends and initiate phone calls. The beauty of VoxCall is that it is self-organising in that if your VoxCall friend changes their contact phone number, you don't even have to be notified... VoxCall will use whatever number they have registered.

VoxCall also offers both public and private chat rooms where VoxCall friends can get together for a group discussion.

The underlying technology that VoxCall uses to connect calls is Voice over IP addresses (often known as SIP URIs). When you add the VoxCall application, you will be prompted to enter your SIP URI. To ensure that you are the rightful owner of that number, VoxCall will display a PIN number on the screen and then call the number you entered. Your phone will ring and you will be prompted to enter the PIN, which is validated.

As such, VoxCall supports calls between friends that belong to *any* "open" voice network (not just Voxalot).

The beauty is that VoxCall uses VoIP without touching the PSTN. My buddies just enter their SIP URI and I can call them with just one click in Facebook. When they change their SIP address I don't have to bother to update my data since their Facebook button stays the same. We stay connected for free from SIP to SIP.

I find this much more nifty than the Facebook apps from Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, Rebtel, IVR Technologies, iotum, Sitófono or Grandcentral. They also connect people on Facebook and let them call me for free, in most cases. But there is always a telephone number involved, so that someone has to pay an incumbent telco which provides them.

Labels: Facebook, Grandcentral, iotum, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, PSTN, Rebtel, SIP, Sitňfono, VoIP, Voxalot, Voxcall, Web_2.0

                                      

I always wondered about the power of Comunicano. That's the marketing communications company of Andy Abramson, one of the most intesting bloggers in the VoIP industry. From some of his blog posts I already had gotten the vague feeling that he must be some kind of mastermind.

Many of my blog posts lead back to information that Comunicano spread. But I could realize that only recently, because Comunicano's website is nearly empty. No press releases, no list of clients - while Andy, the company's founder and head, is one of the most influential bloggers in the VoIP industry.

Some weeks ago I wrote how I feel about this situation:

Especially the VoIP area, which became a main focus of this blog, is dominated by blogs of entrepreneurs who have an interest in maximizing their profits. Luca, Andy, David, Alec, Pat and others run great websites, but there you will hardly find tipps on how to hack their companies' services for free phone calls. They use their blog as a business tool.

Today I realized that my blog is full of Comunicano's clients: Covad, Entriq, IntelePeer, iotum, Junction Networks, Mobivox, Nokia, PhoneGnome, SightSpeed, TalkPlus, Thomas Howe, Truphone, Voxalot and Vringo. Comunicano has set up a blog with their latest press releases and finally published their list of clients.

Thank you for this disclosure, Andy. I feel better now. It helps me to judge the posts on your blog which often are starting points for my own articles. I would have written these texts anyway because the topics were interesting. But it's always better to know precisely who is feeding you an information.

Also now it's easier to get first hand information about these companies without delay. Kudos to Comunicano for interesting and not annoying press relations so far!

I appreciate openness.

Labels: Comunicano, Covad, Entriq, Intelepeer, iotum, Junction Networks, Media, Mobivox, Nokia, PhoneGnome, Sightspeed, Talkplus, Thomas Howe, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot, Vringo

                                      

FierceVoIP has an interview with Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Ooma. We can learn something, but it's mostly PR blabla for Ooma. Much more interesting are, again, the comments to this article.

Maybe Andrew shouldn't have answered the question "How is ooma different from PhoneGnome, aside from the physical aspect?". It causes an outrage of devoted PhoneGnome users, calling his answer "completely misleading" and presuming that he didn't understand how PhoneGnome works.

In steps Dennis Peng, director product management at Ooma, making an even more comprehensive comparation of the two devices. He asserts that PhoneGnome doesn't have two phone lines, like Ooma does, but just "one and a half". What does that mean? Maybe a half phone line is shorter than a full line? Peng gets it worse from the next commentator who says "Dennis, with all due respect to your position at Ooma, you need to do a little more homework", before he strips down his argumentation.

Too sad that most comments are anonymous, because they give pretty much insight and are funny to read. I hope that Mr. Blog himself, PhoneGnome's CEO David Beckemeyer, will find this article soon and also leave a comment.

I was personally shocked to read that poor Americans pay $65-70 monthly just to get two phone lines from AT&T and PhoneGnome. With the necessary broadband connection it sums up to $100 every month.

I just pay $40 monthly for broadband and VoIP, of course having two phones lines. Two people can call my Sipgate number at the same time. If the first phone is already in use the other rings. Also twofold dial out is possible. Betamax' SparVoIP allows this without hassle, using my Sipgate number as caller ID and letting me call my favourite countries for free for just $3 per month. On top of that I can use 10 different VoIP providers on my Fritz!Box, having lots of inbound numbers from different countries and arbitrating for the best price on outgoing calls. At Voxalot I can install 30 more providers.

I can switch easily if one provider goes belly up or messes with their rates, without getting a new box or changing anything hardware-wise. Ooma guarantees only three years of free service and nobody knows what happens to the box if they go bankrupt.


UPDATE:

David Beckemeyer, designer and proprietor of PhoneGnome, aka "Mr. Blog," aka former chief technology officer and co-founder of EarthLink, has officially requested the opportunity to respond to Andrew Frame's comparison of Ooma and PhoneGnome.

You can read more about that in today's FierceVoIP article "ooma versus PhoneGnome". But his response will not be featured untile the Monday, Sept. 10 edition of FierceVoIP.

Too sad we have to wait so long.

Labels: Betamax, free phone calls, Ooma, PhoneGnome, Sipgate, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

Luca was so nice to invite all members of the Sitňfono group on Facebook to try out his service for free. For one year I am a Sitňfono 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 Sitňfono 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 Sitňfono 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 Sitňfono 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, Sitňfono, 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, Sitňfono, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

Jeff Pulver and Ken Camp are bored from what they've seen in VoIP lately. That's why Jeff startet a "challenge for innovative disruptors with regards to the voice applications industry":

Think about presence and voice and instant messaging, take a look at the APIs of twitter and Facebook and pitch me on the service that you want to create. Those who get my attention might end up with the early-early seed capital needed to turn their dream into a reality.

So what could that be? Jeff doesn’t want to hear about a service that's simply a variation on Call Forwarding and/or Voicemail. It has to be something really different. Something cool. Something that truly helps to redefine communications.

I am really courious to see the winner of this competition. I don't know why Jeff is so excited about Twitter and Facebook. To me these applications are mostly a waste of time. But what I would love to have is a "Hosted Fring with Grandcentral's filter rules and international mobile callforward over GSM".

What does that mean?

I like Fring because it connects me with just one program to my contacts at Skype, MSN messenger and Google Talk. Lately it also works as a VoIP client. But only on my Nokia mobile phone!

Why isn't there a website that does the same like Fring? Why isn't Fring a hosted service? I would love to leave my login data for all these services on their website and connect to it over SIP from my ATA. A kind of Voxalot, but extended with Skype, MSN messenger and Google Talk.

Whenever somebody contacts me, my phone should ring. Outgoing calls to Skype, MSN, Google or phone numbers should also be made with my normal phone. The server would decide automatically how to connect the call, because it has call rules for that - like Voxalot has.

Incoming calls would be filtered like at Grandcentral. Annoying people could only leave a voicemail and good friends could ring my phone day and night.

This service should of course not only work over an ATA but also over the mobile phone network. Internationally! There are more and more international MVNOs slashing roaming charges and giving local fixed line numbers to mobile phones. This means they already have an own SIP infrastructure and GSM gateways in every country. If they can give me a local fixed line number in a country, they can also deliver cheaply the described calls from Skype, MSN, Google and my home VoIP providers over GSM.

Outgoing calls should be done the Nimbuzz way:

Call your IM buddies on their mobile or on their PC. At the cost of a local call, worldwide. No credits needed.

A small application on my mobile phone would always know which cheap number to call in every country to connect to the described network.

I am sure, that the despicted layout is possible. The guys at Fring, Grandcentral, Gtalk2VoIP, Skip2PBX and Roam4Free have already pieces of it in their hands.

More coverage about the challenge:

Andy Abramson, Jon Arnold, Pat Phelan, Aswath Rao, Alec Saunders, Russell Shaw and TIA Communities.

Labels: Fring, Google Talk, Grandcentral, Gtalk2VoIP, MSN messenger, Nimbuzz, Nokia, Roam4Free, Skip2PBX, Skype, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

Voxalot is one of my favourite web based PBXes. I like it very much for its ease of use and because it was free. But not anymore for the services I need.

From 16th of July, 2007, they charge US$25 for an annual subscription to the VoxPremium account which offers Web Callback, Call Forwarding and enables to set up to five providers for in-bound connections and DID registrations. You can read it here.

"We will, of course, continue to offer a free service called VoxBasic to those members who want to use the basic functions", says Voxalot's information.

Too sad that these basic functions don't cover the ones I need!

Actually I have about 20 providers registered at Voxalot for in-bound connections. In-bound is much more important to me than out-bound. A small relief for heavy users, like me, could be this:

For those users who need more than 5 SIP registrations you can opt for VoxPremium(+5), which will cost US$40, and provides an additional 5 SIP registrations for a total of 10 SIP registrations.

So I would still have to pay US$80 per year for Voxalot. That's too much for me, who uses Voxalot mainly for testing purposes.

I guess it's time to install my own Asterisk server.

Labels: Asterisk, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

The VoIP world is full of pleasant surprises which let you save lots of money with your phone:

Free calls, free incoming DID numbers from many countries to receive calls, free VoIP access numbers that let you call the entire world for local prices and PBX services which filter your calls, forward them to other phones or send them to voice mail.

I found a great overview about the best services in Voxalot's user forum.

Labels: free phone calls, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

The Swiss investment company Qino Flagship has announced that they bought more than 1 million stocks of Jajah (2,81 per cent), thus holding now nearly 8 per cent (directly and indirectly) of the internet callback service company. That's the interesting news of today.

But what even more my interest was captured the background information: Jajah is already worth 2.9 billion dollars, calculated RRS Capital Strategies Services from Vienna yet in may after the investments by Deutsche Telekom and Intel. They deduct this virtual price from Jajah's user data and the conditions under which Skype had been sold to Ebay in 2005. Based on that Qino's first Jajah investment of 56.000 Euros is already worth more than 100 million Euros. I couldn't find much information on RRS since they don't even have a website, but just a phone number and an email address. But their numbers have been quoted on some trader websites.

Jajah plans to go public on Nasdaq next year, said founder Daniel Mattes in an interview. That's when Intel, Deutsche Telekom, Qino and others get their money back. The company is just a year old! Skype cost Ebay 4,1 billion dollars, but at least they had an own advanced technology. Jajah instead can be copied easily.

The 2.9 billion dollars rating is quite impressive for Jajah's rather simple internet callback service that you can also have in similar shape from companies like Nikotalk, Smart2Talk, Raketu, MINO, Webcalldirect (and all the other Betamax companies), Sitňfono - and probably soon from Yahoo. Sometimes even for free, like at Peterzahlt.de.

Or you can build your own Jajah at Voxalot.

Labels: Betamax, Jajah, MINO, Peterzahlt, Sitňfono, Skype, Smart2Talk, VoIP, Voxalot, Yahoo

                                      

Sipgate is one of the best quality VoIP providers I know for Germany, Austria and the UK. They give free inbound numbers and, with rare exceptions, they always work. Last friday they were down for a half hour, but this was no big problem.

Until people started to realize that Sipgate behaves strangely since then. As I tested Sipgate is blocking all the free "always connected" web based PBXes I know:Voxalot, PBXes.com and simplyConnect. That's really annoying since those websites do a great job. You can deposit there all your login data for the many SIP accounts you got from different companies. Then you need only one account, for example Voxalot's, to receive phone calls to all your different VoIP numbers on one device. Also you can define dial plans for least cost routing. Then Voxalot uses for instance provider A for phone calls to country number 1 and provider B for country number 2, always taking advantage of the cheapest connection.

Thats nice for VoIP devices which can hold only one SIP account, such as certain mobile phones or the Fring software, which recently got very important for mobile VoIP users in Great Britain. With Fring you can avoid the problem that for Orange UK and Vodaphone UK are blocking VoIP on the brand new Nokia N95 mobile phone. As an external Symbian program Frings makes SIP calls possible on these crippled N95, but holds only one SIP account. Which should be Voxalot or something similar if you have different providers. I already use more than 20 VoIP providers.

It seems that Sipgate doesn't like the described least cost routing, since their prices aren't cheap compared with other providers. Poor Sipgate! Mean Germans use them only to receive calls on Sipgate's free incoming numbers, but for outgoing calls they use free VoIP services from companies like Betamax. Nothing is cheaper than free, and even Sipgate's flatrate for Europe cannot compete with it. Maybe Sipgate did not like it that the their Voice Mail answered all calls to my dozens of different VoIP accounts that I have installed at Voxalot. Even if you called my FWD or Gizmo account the Sipgate Voice Mail kicked in. This was a nice feature since I had to deal with only one Voice Mail box for all my VoIP and fixed line calls.

It seems that Sipgate wants to work like a normal PSTN telco and tries to be as much separated from the SIP world as possible. Only if people use Sipgate for their outgoing phone calls and do not free ride their services they can sponsor the free incoming numbers. I, for instance, use Sipgate's number and Voice Mail yet for years but never paid them any money, since all my outgoing calls go for nearly free over the Betamax company Voipstunt. People from England do the same, as you can read in Voxalot's forum.

I suppose that Sipgate prefers to be their clients only VoIP provider and therefore it blocks more and more interoperability options. This started already months ago when they began to block phone calls from other VoIP providers to their SIP adresses. SIP to SIP is normally free. But now the only option is to call the phone number of a Sipgate user, which is only free within the Sipgate network or for calls from their spare peering partners.

The hottest discussion about the PBX blocking I found in Voxalot's forum. Sipgate clients are disgruntled that they cannot use the service with Voxalot anymore and give tips about alternative providers. One user even threatened the Sipgate support to cancel his account and got surprised that they did not try to hold him back, but explained in a polite way how to do it.

Originally Posted by sipgate
You can delete your account under "Settings" -> "Contract".
Best regards,
Frederik van Koningshoven

Sipgate's official explication is the following:

login details must not be given to 3rd parties. the provider mentioned above (note: voxalot is ment) attracted attention due to nonserious business practices. for our customers safety we try to remedy potential abuse through this corporation.

Other Voxalot clients got a clearer answer from the Sipgate support:

Originally Posted by sipgate
we block Voxalot and similar services, because our customer has to give them the login details.
This is a security problem.
Best regards,
Frederik van Koningshoven

Later it got more personally against Voxalot:

Originally Posted by sipgate
Unfortunately, we don't consider them as trustworthy.
This decision will not be changed in near future.
Best regards,
Frederik van Koningshoven

Poor Voxalot! What did they do? How should the company behave in this situation?

Voxalot's support worker Martin says that he "would be interested to know if this is an across the board "security rule" or if simply Voxalot was "singled out".....". An interesting question, because Fring seems to work very well with Sipgate, although Fring also requires the user to give his Sipgate login details to a 3rd party.

Why isn't Sipgate blocking Fring as well?

In fact this is a general problem: With every time more services moving into the web people have to provide every time more secret login data to 3rd parties. It reminds me of a former post that I wrote in april in Voxalot's forum, "Theoretically Voxalot could steal all our VoIP minutes".

But it's not only Voxalot. It's also PBXes.com, simplyConnect, Fring, Barablu, Nimbuzz, Talkster, Mobivox, Iskoot, Skip2PBX,... Dozens of companies are in the same situation. There has to be a more intelligent solution than just blocking Voxalot. What's missing is a secure way to share login data.

Maybe OpenID is the answer?



CORRECTION: Sipgate now at least seems to work OK with PBXes.

Labels: Betamax, Fring, FWD, Gizmo Project, Iskoot, Mobivox, Nimbuzz, Nokia, OpenID, PBXes, Sipgate, Skip2PBX, Talkster, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

The Gizmo Project works on a new feature that seems to be still in heavy beta, but sounds quite interesting: Free Local Numbers for their website Gizmo Call. As I am always looking for a free inbound number from Peru I browsed their forum and thought that this could be a solution.

What are Free Local Numbers and how do they work?
A "Free Local Number" is a new feature of Gizmo Call that allows people around the world to call you by dialing a local number from their mobile phone or land line which you can answer on your computer at no cost to you.
[...]
Here's how it works:
When you call someone using Gizmo Call, a number will display on your screen. This number is what we refer to as a Free Local Number, which will be a local phone number in either the same region of the person you are calling or a number in the least expensive neighboring region for them to call. The next step for you is to tell the person you called to call you back at the Free Local Number on your screen. Optionally, you can email the number or send an SMS to the person's mobile using Gizmo SMS. The Free Local Number will also appear in the caller ID history of the person you called. Once the person you called has this Free Local Number, they can call you anytime at no charge or at a low cost. You can receive calls on your computer, mobile, or land line phone. To receive calls on your computer, you must first be logged in to Gizmo Call. ...

There is a little more information at the „Free Local Numbers FAQ“. But I have to admit that yesterday I did not get it running. I called a friend in Lima from Gizmo Call. But on the website no „free local number“ appeared, as described, that he could have called back.

Gizmo says „The Free Local Number will also appear in the caller ID history of the person you called“. To prove this I dialed my German Sipgate number from Gizmo Call. The incoming caller ID was „00858XXXXXXX“. What kind of number is this? Which country has „00858“ as international code? Definitely not Germany. I suppose it is a net only number blog, similar to the numbers you get from the ENUM provider e164.org. At least I did not find a country for this code. North Korea uses 00850, but I don't think that Gizmo has a branch in Kim Il Sung's country.

So I went on trying and called my US-american Truphone number from Gizmo Call to have a little talk with myself. The protocol says that the caller (Me, but from the Gizmo Call website, where I was logged in with my login data from GizmoProject) had the number „00185886XXXXX“.

What number is this?

When I called it back I heard only advertising. A female voice said that the caller had used Gizmo Call to dial my Truphone number. Then she spelled the word „Gizmo Call“ before she started again with the same advertising text. Is „00185886XXXXX“ my free local number for my US number at Truphone? Why can't I call it then? I was still logged in at Gizmo Call when I dialed it.

To me it seems that Gizmo's new feature has a great potential but I don't understand it yet. Also it seems that they want it to work only with their website application Gizmo Call. As we know Gizmo Call allows only a few minutes of free calls from their website. This time shall be used to tell the callee your free local number so that he can call when the time is over.

But maybe this stuff will also work as inbound number for the Gizmo Project? How do they want to distinguish between Gizmo Project and Gizmo Call, which have the same login data? I have Gizmo Project installed in my Voxalot account. My aim is to use this „Free Local Numbers“ feature to ring my Voxalot account, which I can answer on my mobile and my landline phone. A normal Peruvian Call In Number costs 233 dollars annually at Gizmo Project. But maybe the new feature can be a workaround? Other people are also courious about the free local numbers, as you can see in this answer from „jfinlayson “ in Gizmo's forum:

They indicated that the would be rolling out a beta in "the next few days". I had assumed that when it is ready for testing that it would:

1) Accompany another announcement to that effect, and
2) Either be deployed on a separate server or require you to set a switch somewhere to enable it, so that other Gizmo Call users are unaffected.

That's traditionally what "beta" has meant, anyway. On the other hand, the software industry's definition of "beta" seems to have shifted in the past few years, thanks largely to Google, where most offerings are "beta" in perpetuity.

Meanwhile, the strange caller id you're seeing has me curious, too.

Even more interesting seems what Martin from Voxalot says:

We are currently working with the SIPphone guys on GizmoCall.

All I can say is watch this space.
__________________
Martin

He is the moderator of Voxalot's forum and a member of the staff. For instance he announces Voxalot's new features. So his voice is quite important and his words make me even more courious.

Stay tuned!



More info: Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments: How Gizmo Project's free local numbers save me 230 dollars annually

Labels: ENUM, Gizmo Project, Gizmocall, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

It seems that the fellows at Tpad are eager to open the telecommunications industry's Pandora's box a little bit more. If they really follow this trail, it will be one step more to a worldwide breakdown of phone call margins. A sickness that's highly contagious from VoIP companies to incumbent carries to even mobile operators. I sometimes feel like an epidemic doctor and today I found another sign of deterioriation at the patient: Tpad, which offers local break in numbers for its VoIP services in many countries, wants use toll free numbers now.

Do you know what that means?
Free phone calls from nearly every country to every country!

Jajah, Rebtel, Truphone, Vonage and the like can go home then. And Tpad pays the phone bill. No need for a computer, a Wifi phone or an ATA. Just plain 0800 numbers that everyone can call for free from his landline or cell phone. Even people who don't have a computer or technical skills can make their calls for free.

The setup is quite easy. Just define your Tpad account as incoming number in a hosted PBX, which you can get for free at PBXes.com. Or you install the free Asterisk in your webspace. Unfortunately my preferred company Voxalot doesn't provide the necessary features yet, but they are working on it.

For the outgoing calls I recommend Voipstunt, which offers free calls to 40 countries, or another company of their mothership Betamax. After that you can virtually throw away your computer, ATA, Wifi phone or whatever you have used for VoIP. Just call the toll free Tpad number of your country, then dial your Tpad account number, your PBX calltrough PIN and the number you want to call. The call enters on the free Tpad number and will be connected for free via Voipstunt.

Well, I admit that this seems a lot of numbers to dial. But you can automatize it by installing the mobile callthrough manager from Runningmobile on your cell phone. Just tell the program once your account numbers and then start making your phone calls. The cell phone behaves as always, only that it dials in the background some more numbers, which you don't notice.

You can even share this free service with your friends. Just tell them which toll free number they have to dial and how it works! Of course you should setup some rules in your PBX to prevent that someone calls a country that isn't free. I for instance have as of today 248 freedays in my Voipstunt account. This means 248 days of free calls to any regular landline in: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong (+mobile), Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico (+mobile), Russian Federation, Singapore (+mobile), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States (+mobile). And the rest of the world they offer quite cheap.

If that's not enough and you also want to do free calls to mobile phones then install Tpad as incoming number in a PBX with free calls to cell phones, such as 4S newcom's. They can equip their IP PBX with SIM cards of all mobile phone providers of your country. Of course with flat rate tariffs, so that you can call all mobile phones for free.

In fact the described free calling service is in itself nothing new. Vonage also offers similar toll free numbers, but only for subscribers of their service, which costs 25 dollars a month. Tpad's accounts are free.

Reviewing this scheme I start to doubt that Tpad will really implement these toll free numbers. I understand why they are planning it: So that people can use Tpad for their calls without even having a computer. Tpad is very strong in countries like Pakistan and India where many poor people live. The company counts on that these clients will use Tpad also for the outgoing calls to the PSTN. And therefore they sponsor the toll free number.

But that's not necessary if you know to creatively use the SIP standard.

Labels: 4s newcom, Asterisk, Betamax, Jajah, PBXes, Rebtel, Tpad, Truphone, VoIP, Vonage, Voxalot

                                      

Yesterday I told under the headline „Why mobile and landline phone calls will soon be free“ my outlook on the future of telecommunications. I am sure that per minute charges for landline and mobile phone calls will soon be a thing of the past. Even a 29 dollar monthly flatrate for all calls will seem too expensive. But not because the companies change their business models. It's the clients who find ways to circumvent the paid networks. They leverage their phone costs by using the SIP standard which can be seen as a Pandora's box to the industry.

Today I want to show you some other examples how I would do it. I'll also try to explain how the companies try to avoid these tricks. Skype and Truphone for instance try to stay out of the rat race by avoiding to implement the whole functionality of the SIP standard. Skype more than Truphone, obviously. Rebtel tries to tie up their clients to pay 1 Dollar a week for their incoming numbers. Jajah wants you to deposit at least 5 dollars on your account to charge you for their callback service. But they all can be beaten.


Connect Skype to a normal phone:

Skype relies on its own closed communication standard and until now there were no easy ways to use Skype on your normal phone. But maybe these days are over.

The VoSKY Exchange from abpTECH alleges to be the world's first product to seamlessly bridge an existing PBX to the Skype network. It adds four Skype lines to your PBX, and extends the benefit of Skype to every extension in your office.

At CeBIT the Italian company PCService presented in march their Linux software Skip2PBX, which serves as an addition to a company's existing PBX. Installed on a Linux machine, which can also be virtual, it controls up to 30 Skype accounts at one time, using different sessions of the Skype program. When a Skype call arrives it's being redirected to a phone. The Users can call their Skype contacts for free by using short numbers on their phone.

But the easiest way is certainly to use Fring on a mobile phone. Why hassle with the PBX when there is a phone software that communicates with all kind of messengers and SIP phone networks? Fring works on Wifi and 3G.


Get a cheap incoming phone number for Truphone:

Truphone has another interesting way to assure their income. They give free calls to 40 countries worldwide until end of June, but maybe this special offer will last forever. It's not only a marketing gag, they just have another source of income. The Truphone numbers in the UK are mobile phone numbers. To call them is quite pricey and Truphone takes its share from the incoming calls, as a Truphone network engineer affirms.

But there is an easy way to avoid these costs:

Install Sipgate as a second SIP provider in your mobile phone. So people can call you on your free Sipgate landline number. You can even set up a call forward from the Sipgate number. Just install Sipgate on Voxalot and make a call forward to your Truphone SIP address which has the form 447624XXXXXX@truphone.com. Your friends can call you always on your Sipgate number, but poor Truphone (which you will probably use for the free outbound calls) will not earn on the inbound leg from PSTN anymore.

Truphone always tried to prevent this kind of tweaking by not showing to their costumers their own SIP password. Truphone's software leaves it encrypted on the Nokia mobile phone to prevent that people use the service on other devices, circumventing the Truphone network. So do the Sipgate workaround! Calls between Sipgate and their partner networks are free, that's understood.


Get lots of inbound numbers like at Rebtel:

One business of Rebtel is to give you local incoming phone numbers in many countries and charge a dollar a week for that. But why should you pay when there are free incoming numbers? I, for instance, have dozens of SIP accounts with their respective inbound numbers from different countries concentrated at Voxalot. No matter which number you call, they all ring on the same phone. The thing gets even more funny because my Voxalot account works with Sipbroker and Tpad. They have inbound number in nearly every country of the world. You can call them at a local rate, dial the account number and my phone will ring.


Free Jajah like web callback:

Voxalot even has a Jajah like web callback. But other than Jajah these calls can cost you nothing if you use free VoIP providers on both legs of the call. There is also a version for cell phones at mobile.voxalot.com which costs nearly nothing for the mobile data. Enjoy your free calls!


Of course the described services also work on mobile phones outside Wifi, using an IP PBX with GSM SIM cards as 4S newcom offers.

Labels: 4s newcom, Fring, Jajah, Nokia, Rebtel, Sipbroker, Sipgate, Skype, Tpad, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot

                                      

At GigaOM there is an interesting survey going on under the title "Does your house VoIP?". Om Malik asks:

Regardless, time to ask the community what kind of a VoIP users are you? Cable kind, or someone who uses soft clients or do have still doing the Vonage styled ATA-based VoIP calling?

This cuestions finally made me get a general idea about all the services I use. And, god, it's a lot of them!

Actually I am using 20 VoIP accounts, out of couriosity and because of the different services they offer. But maybe I am subscribed to even more, but just forgot it. My goal is to make free calls and use arbitrage possibilities between the different VoIP services. I use the different VoIP providers on my desk phone that's connected to the Fritz!Box fon ATA and on my mobile phone, Nokia E61, that can hold several SIP accounts. Also I use Fring on the E61, because it can hold my accounts on Skype, MSN messenger, Google Talk and also one SIP account.

Here is why I use so many different services:

Voipstunt: For free or super cheap calls worldwide. This services I use most. It's installed on my desk phone and on my mobile phone, Nokia E61. So I can make free calls from Wifi hotspots.

Sipgate: Is use Sipgate as an answering machine. Incoming calls to my ATA are forwarded for free to the Sipgate mailbox if not answered in 30 seconds. For that purpose we have two Sipgate accounts at home.

Tpad: Because of their BreakIn numbers worldwide. My friends from Peru can call me so in Berlin for the cost of a local call without having a computer.

Truphone: To check it out on my mobile phone and because of their new offer that gives me landlines nearly worldwide for free in the next two months.

Several services for testing purposes and out of couriosity: GMX, Voipbuster, FWD, dus.net, Sip2sip.info, Ekiga.net, Openwengo, iptel.org, Rebtel, 4S newcom ...

Voxalot: Every time my Fritz!Box fon ATA gets too full, because it can only hold 10 VoIP accounts, I move the one I don't use to call out anymore to Voxalot. This service works like an ATA in the net: It's logged in to the VoIP services I don't use so much anymore. So I can keep them and receive calls on their SIP addresses or phone numbers. For instance if somebody calls my unused Gizmo account (I have several of them) my Voxalot account in my Fritz!Box fon ATA rings.

Gizmocall: I have set up a special web link to my address at Gizmo Project. So people can call me unlimitedly from a web page.

Ageet: That's probably the world's smallest PBX. It works as a Activex plugin in Internet Explorer and has a link from my website. If people open this page the PBX loads and they can call me from their browser. This was really cool until I discovered Gizmocall one week later.

The large quantity of the services I use is not so much a sign that I might be tech crazy. It's just an indication of how much the VoIP sector is still evolving. The industry consist of thousands of different companies that offer basically the same: Cheap phone calls over the internet. But if you look closer you see that they differ in the added services: cheap break in numbers, calls from a website, use the old PSTN number as VoIP number, administrate your other VoIP accounts,...

So probably I will have soon 30 VoIP providers. For instance I am interested in a Peruvian VoIP number that my friends in Lima can call for price of a local call. Tpad is already doing a good job with their callin number and the extension. But sometimes this does not work and a real Peruvian phone number would be much more elegant. But still the Peruvian VoIP market is underdeveloped and these numbers are too expensive to me.

Labels: Ageet, Betamax, Fring, Gizmo Project, Gizmocall, Google Talk, MSN messenger, Nokia, Sipgate, Skype, Tpad, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot