Truphone for Android phones

Truphone is everywhere. Just recently they had launched a client for iPod and iPhone, and now they are launching a client called Truphone Anywhere for Android phones, including the new G1. Using this client, customers can make low-cost international calls and send IMs on a variety of platforms. The client has been added to Android Market in the U.S and U.K, and will also be available in March in the new Adroid Market for Germany and Austria To coincide with T-Mobile's announcement earlier this week of the availability of the G1 mobile phone in March 2009, a German version of Truphone Anywhere for Android is available and will be the first native language multi-communications application in the Android Market in Germany and Austria when it launches at CeBIT 2009. Truphone Anywhere for Android delivers an all-in-one conversations hub that allows customers to take advantage of Truphone's low international call rates, in addition to the cost of a local call. In addition, Truphone customers can easily instant-message their friends across a variety of networks including MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk™ and Twitter from within one Android application. Customers can also call friends anywhere in the world on Google Talk for the price of a local call, and similarly will soon will be able to instant-message and call their friends on Skype. Here are some advantages of using Truphone Anywhere client: • Truphone Anywhere works in 33 countries around the world, saving Android users from those countries money on international calls made from their home country. The easy-to-use service works alongside domestic service providers, but reduces international call costs to as little as £0.03/$0.06 [UK/RoW] per minute. • Unlike a 'calling card', Truphone Anywhere doesn't require a user to remember what to do. Whenever an international number is dialled Truphone Anywhere simply asks whether he/she wants to make a Truphone call. The user simply accepts, and Truphone connects the call. Truphone is now available on Android, the Apple iPhone, the Apple iPod touch, Blackberry and Nokia devices. I guess the list pretty much covers most of the popular devices.

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Gizmo5 Launches OpenSky, Free Service to Call Skype From Any VoIP Phone

Gizmo5, the company behind the formerly known as SIPphone, is launching a new gateway that allows people using any VoIP service to call Skype users and vice versa. This free Skype gateway is called OpenSky. It is typical of Michael Robertson, the man behind Gizmo, to come up with a disruptive solution that removes the barriers between VoIP services and Skype. In an email, Robertson explains: What we've done is create a SIP alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call a Skype user named echo123 you simply dial echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com from any SIP aware device (which is just about every piece of VOIP equipment). Users can even have any SIP call forwarded to their Skype address using my.gizmo5.com. All calls up to five minutes are free, while longer calls are going to cost you money. For $20 annual fee you can make a call that can last up to two hours. There are many ways to connect. For instance, you can use the Gizmo softphone and dial skypename@opensky.gizmo5.com, or you can go to the web site to initiate calls. Robertson writes: I think the most popular user segment could be businesses not consumers. Whether businesses spend millions on a Cisco Call Manager system or install the free Asterisk based Trixbox they all share one thing in common - they cannot call to the Skype network. Now with OpenSky they can call businesses because they can use our gateway. The way I see it, the service will be particularly useful when dialing long distance to countries where the call rates are pretty high. A typical example would be where you can make a local call from the U.S. to a Skype user in India for a price that is cheaper than dirt. Beyond such international call scenarios, I am not quite sold just yet on the extra steps needed to make a call to a Skype user. Given that Skype-to-phone calls are not really that expensive, I wonder if non-techie consumers are really going to bother signing up for this service. My past experiences with Gizmo have been mixed - it is always innovating in terms of features but the quality has been somewhat lacking. I gave up on the service once the $99 unlimited wireless plans were introduced in the U.S., as they obviated the need to look for cheap calling options. The new OpenSky service would be great to call my Skype-using friends overseas from my mobile phone. Using any plain ole mobile phone, you send an SMS to OpenSky with the Skype name and seconds later the system calls you back and connects you to that Skype user

 

Free Calls to China

At VOIP Guide, we track every festival season for Free VOIP Offers. The CNY is over the weekend and we have some great free voip deals coming in from several VOIP Providers. Today, we look at how to make free calls to China with the ongoing VOIP promotions. Everybody knows that LocalPhone is our favorite VOIP Provider. They were voted as the best cheap international call provider in 2008 by our readers. LocalPhone today sent us a promotional giveaway email saying they will be running a free calls to china promotion during chinese new year. LocalPhone promotion for Free Calls to China is as follows: Localphone are giving away free calls each day of the Chinese New Year festival. Your first 20 minutes of calls to Chinese landlines or mobiles each day will be completely free, which comes to a massive 5 hours of free talk time over the 15 days. Important note regarding the free calls to china promotion: Please note that The Chinese New Year promotion begins at 00:00 China Standard Time (GMT +8) on 26th January and ends at 23:59:59 on 9th February 2009. Calls to China during this period will be charged at the standard rate of 0.8p per minute and after the promotion has completed you will receive a rebate in the form of Localphone credit for the first twenty minutes of call time used each day. Besides that LocalPhone has added three more countries to their access list Malta, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. That means localphone is probably not sets a new record for having highest numbers of access numbers all over the world. LocalPhone's total coverage now became an impressive 66,702 access numbers in 44 countries around the world. Thats huge. Trust me their access number service is extremely cool. You can assign upto 5 numbers for your contacts and they give you local numbers in your country. Just dial those numbers and your call is directly connected to the party. No crappy voice menus, PIN numbers to remember. Go make free calls to china with LocalPhone.

 

Nymgo VOIP SIP Configuration Settings

Nymgo has really taken off as a great VOIP Provider for long distance calls and are able to provider quality service (still need improvement though). However many people have asked how to Configure SIP with Nymgo on Mobile and SIP Phone. Hopefully this Nymgo SIP Configuration Guide should help you configure Nymgo on your SIP Phone. I would like to thank Wecaz and many others who contributed to this article through their comments. The most basic SIP Configuration of Nymgo which should work with third party SIP Softphones such as Xlite is as follows: SIP Server Or SIP Proxy Server: ata.nymgo.com SIP User ID: nymgo username Authenticate ID: nymgo username SIP password: nymgo password SIP Port: 5060 Codec Used: g729 STUN Server: stun.nymgo.com STUN port: 80 The tricky part is enabling Nymgo on your Nokia or any other SIP enabled Mobile Phone. Wecaz written an excellent comments regarding setting up Nymgo on Nokia E51 and The SIP settings he used to configure his E51. Public username : sip:myusername@nymgo.com Service profile : IETF Use compression : No Registration : When needed Use security : No Proxy address :sip:ata.nymgo.com Realm : ata.nymgo.com Username: username (without @ata.nymgo.com) Password: password Allow Loose routing :Yes Transport : UDP Port : 5060 Registrar address : sip:ata.nymgo.com Realm : ata.nymgo.com Username: username (without @ata.nymgo.com) Password: password Transport : UDP Port : 5060 Now Lets see the Nymgo SIP configuration on Linksys PAP2 or any other Linksys based IP Phones. Proxy: ata.nymgo.com Make call without Registration: No Answer call without Registration: No Register: YES Register expires: 3600 Display name: Your name and last name User ID:Nymgo username* Password: Nymgo password* Auth ID:Nymgo username* Use Auth ID:YES Preferred Codec:G729 Use Preferred Codec only:YES DTMF Tx Method:RFC2833 Silence Supp Enable:YES Fax CED Detect Enable:YES Now Lets see how you can configure Nymgo on Fring: STEP 1 Choose SIP from the list (press your joystick in to select items in the list) and press Next using your right soft key. STEP 2 A new screen appears choose "Other" from the list. STEP 3 Enter the following for Registrar Server settings: User ID Password SIP proxy your Nymgo username* your Nymgo account password * ata.nymgo.com * Your existing Nymgo username and password STEP 4 Once Fring is registered to make a SIP call: 1. Choose a contact in your address book and press "Options" using your left soft key. 2. From the Call submenu, choose "SIP call". Your call is made using the Nymgo account you have added. We hope this Nymgo SIP Configuration Guide will help you setup Nymgo with SIP. Let us know if you need further help with configuration.

 

Cheap Call to India at Recession Rates

Recession is taking a toll on everyone's personal finances. Making a Low cost call using international phone cards or even VOIP Providers can save some money off your international calling expenses. LocalPhone, winner of Best Cheap International Call Provider of 2008 award has reduced its calling rates to India even further to 3.3 cents only. I know its not the cheapest but as I always said, the best thing about LocalPhone is their Quality of Service, Prompt Customer Service and ease of use. They provide 66000 local access numbers in over 44 countries around the world. On top of it, they give you Free 5 Local numbers which you can directly forward to any phone number in the world. This feature is completely free, they only charge you for making calls to these numbers at their advertised rate. Trust me this comes in handy. I call home from anywhere in Singapore by just dialing the local number (Free as in included in local calls) and it automatically connects me to India number. No PINS no account numbers to remember. However, they also provide a calling card in built in your account which you can use anywhere in the world (44 countries). This calling card is assigned to your account and shares the same credit as your localphone account. If you are currently not using VOIP, you are loosing hell lot of money on international calling. Its time to switch to VOIP and start saving. You can get started with LocalPhone if you haven't already. We would also like to hear your thoughts on LocalPhone as existing user. Any improvements or feature request can be posted under comments and I will ensure that LocalPhone takes a note of it and starts working towards the feature.

 

OurFreePhone Review Not a free international calls Service

We have received lot of reader's email about reviewing OurFreePhone and find out exactly how these guys work and claim that they offer Free International Calls. After spending several days without any real success, I figured out that OurFreePhone is nothing more than a scam. Unfortunately I had to say this. They claim that they offer Free International Calls when you start using their VOIP service. Let me just outline how exactly I reviewed OurFreePhone. 1)I got a few emails from readers saying there is a new VOIP service OurFreePhone and they are claiming to offer worldwide free international calls. Aha, I stared investigating rightaway. Unlike,most other VOIP bloggers who just jump on any news which comes their way, I spend more time in finding out if that VOIP company is worth my and my readers time. If not, then I don't post reviews about them. 2) So I found a few press releases on OurFreePhone. Big claims, big dreams, it had it all. Eventually I figured out that OurFreePhone is a venture of Seven Rings International, a multi level marketing firm from Italy. MLM marketing is probably the best industry to be associated with scams lol. 3) OK. I still decided to go ahead and give them a try. I headed on to their website. After spending literally 45 minutes moving around their obsolete signup pages,I still couldn't sign up. By the way, they have like 3 different signup pages, its just way too crazy. On each signup page, OurFreePhone would basically ask you for OFP number of Introducer. I obviously didn't know the OFP number, so i started doing investigation on OFP number. I sent them email about OFP agency, no reply after 7 days now. 4)Whats a OFP number? As i said earlier, OurFreePhone is not a free international calls service. They first ask you become OurFreePhone's commercial agents who would sell their services to consumers and more consumers signup under you, you start making money which in turn you can use for free international calls. Is this a joke? lol. 5) OK. So I decided to actually signup for this OFP agent. Guess what? It costs around $220 to actually become a OFP agent. Great way to make money for OFP indeed. 6) Now consider, if at all you actually signup as OFP agent, will anyone even consider buying OFP VOIP service to make calls? Who has to do the hardwork of selling their VOIP service to the consumers? YOU, in this case me. However, I chose not to for the simple reason that i do not want to be associated with scam VOIP service. OurFreePhone is a pure money making MLM scam. Imagine, even if 1000 people (dream of making money through VOIP lol) signup to become agents, OFP already made 1000 X 220 = USD 220000. Forget about selling their VOIP service to you, this is easy money :-) My strong advice to all of you who want to use Our Free Phone or want to become their agents, STAY AWAY from ourFreePhone. Guess they can try to promote their service in nigeria, might work out better :-)

 

Vyke offers Unlimited Landline VOIP SIP Calls

Vyke VOIP Provider has been around for a while and has been making forays in Middle east VOIP markets. Vyke enjoys a huge user base in Middle east and some parts of asia. Vyke has started a new promotions for unlimited landline VOIP Calls to about 22 countries worldwide for a flat charge of 4 cents per minute. Vyke's offer is more like Pennytel used to offer as Flat charge for a untimed call. You can call any standard landline in the Vyke Zone(see below) and talk for as long as you want for just 4¢ per call. No matter where in the world you are calling from, you can now make unlimited length calls for just 4¢ per minute to any standard landline number in the following Vyke Zone countries: Austria Belgium Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Liechtenstein Luxembourg Monaco Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom USA Vyke offers competitive cheap international calling rates to other countries. However 4 cents per minute as flat untimed rate for calling the above countries sound really good. Another good thing about Vyke is they support SIP and allow external SIP devices to connect to their service. Vyke also supports IAX. You can use following Vyke SIP Settings to configure your SIP Phone/ VOIP Adpater: 1. NAT settings o NAT Keep Alive Enable = No 2. Proxy and Registration o Proxy = sip.vyke.com o Outbound proxy = [blank] o Register = Yes o Use Outbound proxy = No o Make Call Without Reg = No o Answer Call Without Reg = Yes 3. Subscriber information o User ID = [Your Vyke ID] o Password = [Your VYKE password] o Auth ID = [Your Vyke ID] o Use Auth ID = Yes 4. Supplementary Service Subscription o Three Way Call Serv = No 5. Audio Configuration o G729a Enable = YES o DTMF Tones = RFC2833

 

Pennytel VOIP Untimed Plan Update

Pennytel VOIP Phone Service was extremely popular for over a year due to immense popularity of their Untimed Plans which offers unlimited talktime for a flat charge. However, Pennytel has now made changes to their talk till you drop untimed plan and made it more in favor of them. Pennytel's Website says," From 1 Feb 09, we're changing the Talk Till You Drop plan. Calls to the 38.88c destinations will now be charged at PennyTel's low standard per minute rate (billed per second) for the first 38 minutes. The next 38 minutes is free! The following 38 minutes is charged at the per minute rate, and then the next 38 minutes is free. And so on. This keeps the charges low for short calls, but still delivers low charges (up to half price) for longer calls." What this means to you as a Pennytel User: Earlier, you used to pay 38 cents and talk unlimited. Now you have to pay the normal standard calling charge to all those destinations and only after you talk for 38 minutes, Pennytel will allot another 38 minutes credit for that call only. That means you will have to talk another 38 minutes to actually utilise the benefit. I would call this offer as literally milking the customers and pretty lame. I am confident that a smart customer will eventually go away from Pennytel to try other services such as LocalPhone or Nymgo, who in very short time gained a huge customer base and provided good quality service. Please note that these changes only apply to 38c destinations, the 8cents destinations remain unchanged and will continue to offer untimed plan. You can see Pennytel Official Details on the rate change.

 

Betamax SmartVoip SIP VOIP Offers free international VOIP Calls

Its time of the year again, the great Betamax VOIP Factory keeps rolling their new VOIP ventures almost every quarter and now launched a new VOIP Provider called SmartVoip. SmartVOIP like many other Betamax VOIP Services offers free international calls and cheap international calls. SmartVoip is offers free international voip calls to the following countries: Canada,USA,UK(Landline),Singapore,Taiwan,China,Portugal,Thailand,Spain,Russia. SmartVOIP is offering cheap international calls to India at only 1.5 eurocents per minute to India landline and 2 eurocents per minute to India mobile. Of course, if you are already using Nymgo or LocalPhone then you might not like to switch :-) Although, not a lot of free calling destinations, lets just hope smartvoip can offers some better international calling rates to certain destinations. One good thing about Smartvoip is they offer SIP support. Here are the SmartVOIP SIP Details: SIP port : 5060 Registrar : sip.smartvoip.com Proxy server : sip.smartvoip.com Outbound proxy server : leave empty Account name : your SmartVoip username Password : your SmartVoip password Display name/number : your SmartVoip username or voipnumber Stunserver (option) : stun.smartvoip.com SmartVOIP supported Codecs G.711 (64 kbps) G.726 (32 kbps) G.729 (8 kbps) G.723 (5.3 & 6.3 kbps) GSMFR (13.2 kbps) If you have audio problems: Use a STUN server (e.g. stun.smartvoip.com) with port 3478 (if supported by your device) Use the G.711 codec You can download SmartVOIP Softphone from their website. Let us know your feedback/comments on this new Betamax VOIP Provider, SmartVOIP.

 

Verizon Hub VOIP Phone Service Review

With strong reports of VOIP Phone Service sales might do even better in 2009, Verizon has launched their own VOIP Phone Service called the Verizon Hub. Verizon Wireless has launched Verizon Hub, a VOIP-based, Linux-powered home phone service last week. The Verizon Hub plugs into a home broadband line and acts as a VOIP Phone, family calendar, limited Web browser, messaging center, digital picture frame. Verizon's idea is to provider a full fledge video conference service on VOIP Phone with video calls. Verizon Hub is based on OpenPeak's OpenFrame design. The Verizon Hub is an 8-inch, 800x480 touchscreen device and has a single DECT 6.0 cordless phone. One very important thing that people are often confused. Do I have to buy Verizon FIOS Internet connection to use Verizon Hub? The answer is NO. Verizon Hub will work with any internet service provider. Some Key Features of Verizon Hub VOIP Phone Service: 1) Wifi Enabled Hub Phone 2) Available from Feb. 1 for $199 with a two-year contract and after a $50 mail-in rebate 3) Built in GPS like features to search for restaurants, bars, banks. 4) Large color touchscreen with Calender, Weather updates, Voicemails etc. 5) Verizon Hub goes social with features like movie trailers,you can buy tickets rightaway from your hub. 6) Compatibility with Verizon Wireless' "Chaperone" service 7) Unlimited domestic calling (including the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands) for $34.99 a month Now will there be any takers for Verizon Hub? As a Phone consumer in USA would you like to switch to this sexy Verizon Hub or stay with your current VOIP or Home Phone Provider?

 

FlashPhone VOIP became Flaphone

Rebranding and Repositioning your firm in this highly competitive marketplace is a necessity for many companyies. Flasphone has reliased that sticking to their russian VOIP company label wouldn't get them much attention on the international scene. Flashphone.ru is now official FlaPhone. A new website but the same service. However they made some good changes to their existing SIP Platform by adding support for Video Conference Calls using the latest Video Codecs. One of the reason I posted this because there are huge number of Flashphone.ru VOIP service users on VOIP guide and its important for them to know that all user data was moved to new service.That means all flashphone.ru users and their accounts, including SIP accounts moved to flaphone.com, they can login and continue using flaphone service. Flaphone is also one of the very first Flash based SIP service which is built using Adobe Air. You would surely need Adobe 10 Flash Player for FlaPhone. 1) Now users can use contact list. 2)You can add/edit/remove SIP accounts right in flash app 3)You can check call history. 4)can send and receive instant messages to each other and to/from SIP because flaphone supports SIP IM 5) flapone supports new flash player 10 feature - Speex audio codec, it supports h263/h263+/h264 codecs for SIP video calls, it supports fullscreen video chat. 6) Improved CallMe Widget now has DTMF tone recognition. We believe FlaPhone's new interface looks lot slick and easy to navigate. If only, their free calls to Russia offer works as advertised. Whenever I tried It never worked. I am not sure if this offer is valid anymore but would love to see it enabled for some quick user experience.

 

Not VOIP Hosted VOIP will rock 2009

We have noticed that several VOIP blogs around the world are claiming that VOIP usage especially in the SMB sector will surge in 2009 due to bad economy and cost cutting measures taken by businesses. We think otherwise. Making a simple equation as Bad Economy = Surge in VOIP usage is a wrong assumption. There are still 30-40% businesses worldwide who do not understand how VOIP is going to save any cost for them. VOIP is not POTS yet, period. However I still agree that VOIP will eventually go mainstream and in fact, traditional telecom will have to compete with VOIP at some time but still we aint there yet. On Paper, we can assume that a switch to VOIP will save your cost. However we need to be more rational, there is always a cost associated with a switch. You would need hardware,softwares etc. Many Small businesses or even enterprise level companis will think twice before making the shift. Look at all the credit crunch around us. Secondly, we should not forget the basics of budgeting cost. If the companies haven't budgeted any cost of switching to VOIP in 2009, they are most likely not going to add it as adhoc project cost. It's just way too stupid to even believe that. That means only those companies who made a budget for a switch to VOIP would look at the option of switching to VOIP. Again, they have a cheaper option of Hosted VOIP.(might not be cheaper in the long run.). However the startup cost for Hosted VOIP is far lower than buying your hardware yourself and maintaining it. You possibly save time and cost and of course resources. In our opinion, besides the residential VOIP market slated to expand this yea, we do not see any major shift in businesses adpoting to VOIP unless they already accounted for. Unfortunately, we might see many VOIP Providers going down this year. The sunrocket story might just be repeated. I wouldn't like to take names here,but I know a few feeling the pain. If you think otherwise, Please feel free to add comments or respond on your blog about this article.

 

Skype 4.0 audio: smooth as SILK

Image via CrunchBase Since early yesterday morning I've been running the Skype 4.0 final release on a number of my PC's. Skype announced the new software, and I grabbed it before heading to the office.  For several months now, I've also been running the Skype 4.0 betas in the same environment, except on my HP mini netbook, where the 4.0 UI was a little large for it's diminutive screen.  Skype 4.0 is the best Skype yet, bar none.  Skype has streamlined the user experience in multiple ways – from install, to call setup, IM, and more.  In the process they've made Skype more accessible to more users than ever before.   SkypeJournal has two detailed posts on the new Skype user experience and how it was designed which describe this in more detail than I will here. Perhaps the biggest improvement, though, is audio quality.  We all thought that Skype audio was great, right?  Skype's internally developed SILK codec slipped into the final release, despite not having been in prior betas. A wideband codec that delivers the goods at half the bitrate of prior codecs, SILK makes talking on Skype a pure pleasure.  I had calls yesterday from Andy Abramson at the ITEXPO show in Miami, and Jim Courtney from his home in Mississauga.  The difference is noticeable, and worth the download alone. Download Skype 4.0 here.

 

JAJAH on iPod Touch: a novel strategy.

JAJAH's announcement yesterday that they are bringing VoIP calling to the iPod Touch had an interesting twist to it.  The application will be offered to third parties who can brand it, and offer it as an additional service to their customers.  Imagine, for example, and AT&T branded softphone client for iPod Touch.  It's a novel idea which allows a carrier to extend it's brand onto non-phone devices. Given that the App Store is Apple's official channel, one wonders if there will suddenly be a proliferation of JAJAH softphones in the store, all branded differently.  Or are the folks in MountainView working another distribution strategy with the Cupertinians?

 

Wireless Internet (Wifi) coming to Japanese bullet trains

Americans may have WiFi-equipped buses and planes, but the Japanese are still leading the way when it comes to futuristic train travel: Soon you'll be able to log on at broadband speed while screaming between Tokyo and Osaka at 168 mph. Starting in March, telecom giant NTT Communications will provide its HotSpot service--already in effect at Japanese airports, restaurants and hotels--on certain Shinkansen by stringing wires alongside the tracks. Those coax cables will then beam the internet inside 700-series bullet trains. WiFi will also be added to 17 stations along the Tokaido line. Day passes will cost $6 while a monthly subscription to HotSpot is $19 at current exchange rates.