Ccube Click to Call Free VOIP Calls

Lately, we have noticed a sudden increase in click to call solutions. Almost every new provider is eager to do Click to Call. Of course, its easy to maintain and work with.

Thanks to Rohin Adalja who sent over this news about CCube. Ccube is a social click to call service mainly targetted to visitors who wants to keep their phone numbers anonymous when they go over the internet. As they say, Ccube lets you talk to social friends, buyers, sellers, service providers, and anyone else on the phone, without revealing your number. All this is possible with their Click to Callwidget, which you need to install on your website/blog or just give a url to your friend.

CCube offers FREE 60 nationwide (US and Canada) minutes each month. You can earn 30 extra minutes for each person referred to Ccube.

Their registration is a bit tricky, so let me run you through.

1) Go to CCube Join now.
2) Enter your account details.
3) After submitting your Phone numbers, CCube will assign you a Voicekey.
4) You need to verify your number by calling their toll-free number 1-866-990-NEWZ (6399).

You can refer other friends, for each referral signup they will credit 30 minutes to your account.

Overall a good old click 2 call solution. Nothing fancy, most VOIP providers do it. The only good thing is its callback for Phone, so handy for people who like to talk Phone to Phone from USA to Canada or within the states.

Ether VOIP Hack for Free Calls

We just heard over at the Tipsity forums about a new service which will let you make free calls to many countries including UAE. All thanks to Satphoneguy for finding this new service.

The service is run by AT & T and its called Ether. However don't get misleaded by their homepage. Ether is actually a paid to talk service, where experts can charge people to talk to them. Like for example, I can setup a account on Ether with the following description.

Listing Name: VOIP Expert
Tags: Setting up VOIP phone, SIP networks, Telephony, VOIP
Pricing Plan: Free until "*"; $0.01 per minute; Repeat

That means I can help you setup your VOIP at your home or business. If you want to contact me, just dial my ether number 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 02703XXX. So consider you live in Michigan, have a old sunrocket gizmo and want to hook up a SIP service with that. However you have little or no knowledge about SIP or VOIP, of course you have no clue how Sunrocket Gizmo can be unlocked. There you need some expert help, so you can contact me and I will charge you 0.01 cents per minute. Ether takes 15% commission.

Now this is all what Ether told you right. Now here is the ultimate hack to convert this to a totally Free Calling Haven. Lets see how we do it.

1) Go to Ether and register.
2) Add a phone number. currently Ether offers about 20 odd countries. No India sorrry. UAE is accepted which is extremely surprising.
3) While you add a number, rememeber to chose the option,
Allow customers to start the call for free. The rate below will begin when you press *.
Now this is the hack. Remember this.
4) Now Ether will assign you a extension number like 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 02703XXX.
5) If someone wants to talk to you, give them this number, 1-888-MY-ETHER (1-888-69-38437) and ask them to enter your extension at the prompt.
6) your call will be connected but remember dont press *, coz that will trigger the billing :-)

Talk as much as you want, its all FREE. The only worry is it's a USA number, however they are various ways to call USA number for Free. You can use Earthcaller, icall or Truphone to make calls to that Ether number.

Satphoneguy has tested the service have successfully called up UK Mobile, Germany and USA. UK Mobile is never given away for FREE. This is a great opportunity to use Ether to make free calls.

Let us know where you made Free calls with this Ultimate new way.

IfbyPhone Free Click to Call VOIP

Almost every other VOIP provider today offers Click to Call solutions. It's easy to maintain and of course there is a higher possibility that people will be consuming it, since the owner doesnt have much control over the activity.

Click to call traditionally is a business VOIP solution. More targetted towards business users, however you can use it on your SOHO website or even personal blog.
IfbyPhone is currently offering free 100 minutes of talktime per month on their new click to call VOIP service called "Phone-me-now". The good thing about phone-me-now click to call VOIP service is you can use it on your webpage or even in Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents. It works everything. Its a plain simple click to call url link. Whenever someone clicks on it, the user is prompted to enter their phone number. Ifbyphone calls them first and then connect your number.

Click to call services directly compete with Toll-Free services. Since Toll-free numbers literally cost thousands of dollars, often click to call hosted service can be as cheap as couple of $ per month. Its really is a great saving for SOHO or small business VOIP users.

Ifbyphone's Phone-me-now is currently offering 100 minutes free talktime for limited period only. If you don't want to miss on this one, you can signup today.

We have noticed they accept USA numbers ONLY. However they do mention international format which makes us think they might accepting other numbers but there is a limit of 10 digits. If you country code fits 10 digits, you might want to give it a try.

Companies like Tringme, also offers click to call VOIP hosted solutions on their TringSwitch platform, if you are interested in knowing about Tringme's hosted VOIP solution shoot me a email at shivkokroo(AT)tringme.com

VOIP hack to make free worldwide calls

We posted about the ultimate VOIP hack a few days back. It seems that the Jaxtr guys fixed that bug. I guess they should pay us for finding bugs in their VOIP applications :-)

Moving on, our regular reader Sriram has sent us another great hack for Jaxtr. Lets see how we can use this to make free voip calls worldwide.

1) Download iCall softphone (u get 5mins free calls to US n Canada per call)
2) Register for an account with iCall.
3) Goto ur friend's profile in Jaxtr. Click Call Me button. Select United States in country list.
4) Now enter the iCall PhoneOut number 6464657602. Click Get Number button.
5) You'll get a US phone number to dial. (like 1-646-xxx-xxxx) Save that number somewhere.
6) Now, login to iCall softphone.
7) Enter the number u got from Jaxtr here and dial.
8) iCall allows free 5min calls to US and Canada per call. (iCall Pro users get unlimited free minutes to US n Canada.)
9) Talk for 5mins. Ur call will get disconnected after that. (iCall Pro users can talk longer).
10) U can redial the same number untill you are taken to the voicemail box. :-)

You could possibly use this with other Free VOIP services which gives you Free incoming US number. The trick is jaxtr should recognise that number while dialing in.

Good luck making free worldwide calls!

Tephno offers free VOIP calls

It seems the "Easter" is bringing back the old glory to the VOIP market. We found yet another interesting "FREE VOIP" provider who can save your money instantly by giving you unlimited free calls to over 20 countries.

Tephno, A US based VOIP provider is porting international numbers to a usa number and allowing you make free international callsto your friends and family in over 20 countries.

You can currently call these countries:

Argentina
Australia
Austria
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
France
Germany
Greece
Hong
Hungary
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Korea
Malaysia
Mexico
Monaco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Peru
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
USA
UK

Now let me clarify this, It will only work if you have a USA number. So either you live in USA or you have a free incoming number in USA. You can try Toktumi which offer free usa incoming number.

Lets see how you can use it.

1) Go to Tephno Registration Page
2)Enter your phone number in step 1. Note: This must be a USA number. Either your USA landline/mobile or one of the free incoming usa numbers.
3)Enter the number you want to call in step 2. This is your party's number. Lets say your girlfriend lives in hong kong and her number is +852 26521234. So you enter that number.
4) Pick a location for your Tephno number that is a local call from your phone in step 3. This currently defaulted to 732 area code (NJ, USA).
5) Click the "Get my Tephno" button. Tephno will give you a local 732 area code number to dial each time you want to contact your GF. Note it down.
6) Make a local call to your Tephno number from your phone and you'll connect to the international number. Talk as much as you want.

Important Note: Tephno must receive a caller-id that matches what you enter in "Step 1 - Enter your phone number" for their services to work for you.

You can create as many tephno numbers you want for each of your contact.

Go make those "Easter" Calls to your friends and family across the globe.

Toktumi SOHO VOIP service

We first heard about Toktumi on Free VoIP Hacks forums. Later, looked up and did a research on this new VOIP company offering free usa incoming phone number and Forwarding service.

Toktumi categorise themselves as Home Office and Small Business VOIP service. The most exciting feature of Toktumi is "Free USA incoming number", which is given to you instantly when you register for the service.

For Small Busineses, Toktumi lets you set up an entire office in minutes - one line per PC. Start with one line add more any time. All this is offered FREE. You can even use voicemail, auto-attendant, Conferencing.

The registration however is a bit complicated. You need to download Toktumi Client and install it on your machine. This downloading and installation seem to take enormous time (over 15 minutes). Toktumi guys really need to fix this. During registration process they issue a free incoming usa number and attach it to your account. You need to verify your account with activation code and then you are live with toktumi. People can immediately start calling you on your number. You can also buy a toktumi adapter which they sell for $19.95 which will let you port Toktumi number to normal landline phone. Basically, you can get a Free USA number with a proper landline phone line.

Toktumi can be a great alternative to Skypein number. Why pay for skypein number when you get a Toktumi number free which people can call you on. I tried calling myself using Truphone and it worked pretty ok. There was a bit of delay in voice quality and some echo sound. I suspect it could be due to my microphone. Otherwise, the call went through OK. If you happed to test the audio quality on Toktumi, do let us know.

Overall a great addition to the VOIP market, Having a USA number is always handy.

Now Make VOIP Calls from any mobile

Don't have the latest Nokia handset? Your handset not supported by Mobile VOIP providers? Still using good old Nokia handset bought in 90s? No worries. Now Tringme has got you covered.

Tringme today launched a revolutionary (Patent Pending) Mobile VOIP service which will enable anyone to make VOIP calls using any handset (absolutely any handsets even reliance and tata indcom handsets will work) with just a simple SMS to Tringme Gateway. If you look at the markets like India, this is going to be one of the significant and valuable service for a common man who have no other mean to access VoIP.

Till today, we had Fring and Truphone leading the Mobile VOIP scene however there are restrictions. They only support selected handsets. Now with Tringme, this goes to a new level altogether with almost anyone can use Mobile VOIP as long as they have a mobile and can send SMS :-)

Again Yusuf (Tringme's Founder and my close friend) said in his writeup, "In developing countries like India, more than 80% mobile users do not have data connection on their mobile. And for the remaining ones who have it, data connection is poor to have any effective real time communication like VoIP. We strongly believe that to make Mobile-VoIP a common-place technology, it needs to cater to the lowest-end mobile devices, devices which can just make voice-calls and do SMS." (source: TRAI). Secondly, Smartphones only constituted 10% of the total mobiles sold last year (source: Symbian market share data).

So almost 90% of mobile users (which translates to millions of users) – a fairly big share of market – are devoid of using Mobile-VoIP via their existing mobile devices.

Lets see how you can use the service.

It’s very easy to use this service. The alpha pilot is currently only available in India. You can send an SMS to 91- 9980153695 to try out this service. Please follow the instructions below:

1 - Register with TringMe if you haven’t already.

2- Register the mobile with TringMe from which one wants to make the low cost worldwide call. User can register their mobile with their TringMe account by sending an SMS as follows:
tringme reg
3) A confirmation message will be received about success of the registration.


Making Calls

Once registered, user can make worldwide calls, not only to the phones but to Gtalk, SIP URI etc by merely sending an SMS as follows:
tringme
for example, to call a US number 1-(858)-555-1212, one only need to send a SMS "tringme 18585551212"

Users can also call millions of worldwide SIP users just by using SIP URI as follows:
tringme

To make a call to a registered TringMe user, send an SMS as follows:
tringme

This will establish a call from the originator’s mobile device to the caller’s currently configured termination device. For example, if user has chose to receive call on Gtalk, sending above SMS will connect your phone to his or her Gtalk.

You can even schedule a call for later time, say for a business meeting or conference. TringMe understand time in plain english and you can specify absolute date and time or in relative terms. You can schedule it in one of several ways:
tringme 18585551212 next week 11:30AM
tringme 18585551212 March 17, 2008 11:30AM
tringme 18585551212 tomorrow 11:30AM

As many of you know, I work closely with Tringme, so your feedback is much appreciated. Secondly, we got a big annoucement. We reduced the rates by over 20-25% to many destionations including India. Now Calls to India are at 3.99c per minute only. This is India wide Landline + Mobile any network.

Go register at Tringme and make cheap calls around the world.

Voixio offers free worldwide calls

Someone asked me if the Ad-based free calling model work any good for VOIP providers? I would well it seems it does. We found a great new provider who is offering free international calls to anywhere in the world in lieu of advertisements.

First up, Thanks to aditya Sood (Ontario, Canada) for sending over the news. The new VOIP provider is Voixio.
Voixio offers a flash based interface with panels seperated with functionality. One panel is dedicated to advertisements and one panel is dedicated for Making calls. They also offer Video call facility whereby you can make calls using your webcam for video feed.

In plain english, Voixio offers free international calls anywhere in the world in leiu of advertisements. The moment you hit the call button, an advertisement starts running the Advertisement panel. Once the ad is over, the call is placed to the other party.

Lets see how you ca use Voixio to make free calls.

1) when you go to Voixio, a screen will pop-up to enter your username/password, is where you log in by inputting youremail address and password and clicking the LOGIN button and also given an option to register.

2) Voixio will detect the webcams and microphones that are available on your computer and these will bedisplayed when you click the “Camera & Mic” button located under the main video window and to theright of the volume slider bar.

3) You can make calls to Standard domestic and international, landline and mobile telephone numbers or other Voixio users or any SIP address.

4) Of course you can choose to receive calls on Voixio from any other users or SIP address. When you receive a call (either audio or video) the keyboard area is replaced by answer or ignorebuttons for you to select.

5) You can free conference calls between voixio users. You can add callers to an existing conversation (or conference) by making a call to an additional user,thus inviting him/her to the conference.

At this stage, its not very clear about the length of the call. When we tried, our call wasn't placed properly. The call got cut immediately after ringing for about 30 seconds. Although, when we tried USA it worked fine for about 5 minutes. We cut the call ourselves.

This should work just fine for countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

So if advertising dont bother you much, free calls are at your doostep with Voixio. Give them a try and let us know how it went.

Ultimate Hack for Free Worldwide Calls

Alright. I have gone through all the comments lately about VOIP Guide loosing that "old touch" of being the most unique FREE VOIP blog. Finally decided to post a hack to make free international calls. This should work for India as well. I didnt test it. I hope the large reader base here would test and post the results.

Thanks to Sriram V who sent me the hack. Although, I didnt post it last time. Here you go now. This Jaxtr hack is completed unedited, am sure Sriram would be around to give you nominal support if you need any.

1) Register a new account at jaxtr with ur mobile mumber (landline will do, i believe!!).
2) You get 100 jax for just registering.
3) Ask your friends to call you thru this account till you have no jaxtr remaining.
4) Goto your add/remove phone settings. remove your number. (yeah, remove it)
5) now register a new jaxtr account with another email id.
6) give your number here (yes, the removed one!). jaxtr wont tell you that this number is already in use!! (actually this is the main hack)
7) give this account id to ur friends
8) do this as many times you want!!
9) happy calling.. :-)

As I already said, i can't promise if the hack works or not. You guys test the hack and post your results under comments.

If you know any interesting working VOIP hacks, don't hesitate to send across to me at shivkokroo@gmail.com

I would also like form a team/community of people who would work together to find interesting VOIP hacks/workarounds. If anyone is interested do drop me an email or post a forum topic at Free VoIP Hacks Forum.

Fring inviting VOIP Provider Partnerships

Fring is now taking a interesting way forward towards becoming a Mobile VOIP application with multi VOIP provider partnerships. It was about time for them to start providing more focussed services through partnerships rather than directly competing with other Mobile VOIP operators such as Truphone.

One of the things they’ve just come up with is the fring Affiliate Program (which means Fring is happy to have almost any one as fring partner).

The program gives players such as SIP, Broadband VoIP ISPs & WiFi providers, a way to offer their services easily to mobile phone users. In return, it allows our partners & fring users to use their account seamlessly and without any manual configuration.

If you are one of the VOIP providers who would like to new customers or extend your service to Mobile VOIP market, this is a great opportunity to work with best mobile voip application developer, Fring.

You can join "Fring Partner Program" through their Partner Page.

It’s another example of fring’s openness and freedom. Anyone can come and play and offer fring’s freedom of choice to their customers. This is seriously a great way to expand your customer base. Fring will also promote your service on their partner pages.

Lingo 3 months FREE VOIP service coupon

We received confirmed news that Lingo VOIP 3 months FREE Service coupon code is set to expire on 8th March. That's only 2 days to go. After 4 days, you will no longer get the same promotion. You will not only have to more but you would not get 3 months totally free service.

If you want to check out the review of the service, We reviewed Lingo VOIP last month. Lingo VOIP has good reputation and its no non-sense service. Offers good old VOIP telephony at affordable rates.
For quick reference, here are the Lingo VOIP Plans:







With the 3 months FREE Promotion, you would also get:

1) FREE unlimited calling to other In-Network Lingo subscribers
2) Local Number Portability so you can keep your existing phone number
3) Lingo Phone Adapter/ Lingo Router (Linksys Adapter given away to you for FREE)

Go get Lingo VOIP Today.

Cheapest Calls to India and Indonesia

This is a must-read for everyone. This will beat your good old Betamax, for that matter anything that you might have used earlier. You can make Unlimited calls (per call no limit) to India using this service.

Pennytel is back with the "Talk till you drop" promotion. If you haven't been using Pennytel, then you are seriously wasting your money on other VOIP providers. There are really some great reasons to use Pennytel as your preferred VOIP provider not just for India but for many countries.

Under the "Talk till you drop" promotion which is now extended, however prices have changed. It still looks by far the best and most cheapest way to call India.

Pennytel is offering 8c untimed (You can talk as much as you want, no limit on call time) destinations to over 70 destinations, which does not include India but includes some of the most priced destionations such as Indonesia. To make calls to Indonesia from Singapore is a nightmare, almost $1 per minute. I can't imagine pennytel is offering Indonesia for 8 c per call. This is by far the cheapest call to Indonesia.

Now, Pennytel is also offering the rest of destionations at 38.88c per call (Its AUD so its around 36.5 USD cents per call, which is great). This rate applies to countries such as India. If you talk for more than 10 minutes, you already beat Betamax rates.

Lets see why this is cheapest call to india.

Imagine you talking for over 60 minutes to India. With Betamax, considering rates of 3 cents per minute, you would have paid 60 x 3= 1.80 USD. With Pennytel, you would only be spending 36.5 cents, thats almost a saving of over 1.10 dollars.

The more you talk, the more you benefit coz once the call starts, you just need to pay 36.5 cents. So remember not to talk for less than 10 minutes or you could be loosing against betamax.

On top of all this, they are throwing in some great goodies.

1. 50 Free SMS Monthly!
2. Free Traditional Phone Number!
3. No commitment, contract or minimum terms
4. No flagfall or connection fees
5. Free PennyTel to PennyTel Calls
6. Per second billing - for destinations that are not untimed

Remember, you can configure Pennytel on your SIP softphone or you can use it using Mobile VOIP or you can download their softphone.

Those who love to talk for long hours will benefit a lot. Happy talking to your friends and family.

Truphone extends Free Calls till June 1st

only yesterday we were wondering if Truphone will continue to offer free calls or just get into the "paid" model. Apparently they did both, they continued with Free Calls to 40 countries however launched a Paid Calls model silently targetting new customers.

If you one of those lucky truphone users who signed up before 29th February 2008, then thank god for it. You almost missed "Truphone Free Offer", coz truphone is ONLY offering free calls to those people who signed up before 29th February. If you haven't done it before 29th, you are pretty much screwed :-)

I almost gave up hopes looking at their homepage on 1st March. It didnt state anything about "free calls" offer extension. In fact it was just about the paid model and some enermous cost to make calls to certain destionations such as india (almost 9.92 cents per minute). WOW, i almost about to uninstall truphone, but well miracles happen. I received Truphone's email just in time. Here is copy for everyone, some of you might not have received.

Today, Truphone is introducing the Tru Zone - simple, low-cost calling from anywhere on the planet.

We’ve abolished roaming charges. That means it doesn’t matter where you are or where you travel to, you’ll pay the same easy to understand rate to make Wi-Fi calls to domestic and international numbers. And there are no inbound charges either.

You can call any of the 40 countries in the Tru Zone for a tiny 6c to landlines and 30c to mobiles. Some countries such as the USA, Canada and China are double special. Calls to both landlines and mobiles are a flat 6c! Calls to much of the rest of the world are flat and simple too – just 10c to landlines and 30c to mobiles.

New customers from now on will get the Tru Zone offer. However, as a big thank you for being one of our early supporters, you can continue to enjoy your existing Launch Offer pricing (that means free calls to 40 countries) until June 1st. Of course, if you want to switch to the Tru Zone pricing for low rates to everywhere, just let us know via support@truphone.com

Well I would like to thank Truphone team for listening to everyone's request to continue with the free calls offer. I would again like to say, Truphone owns when it comes to making free mobile voip calls. It's easy, you can use your mobile, what else you want?

We wish truphone all the very best with their paid model, of course thats the only money maker for them to cover up losses in "Free Calls" model.

How to use Flashphone and Nonoh for free calls

We discussed about Flashphone last week and how they restarted their "free calls" service. Unfortunately the service somehow never worked for anyone. We told Flasphone team about this bug and waiting for them to update us on this.

In the mean time, Flashphone team has shared with us a video tutorial to use Flashphone with Nonoh to make free calls.

Here is the video tutorial :




The video unfortunately doesn't have audio enabled (only occasional). However its pretty much self-explanatory.

To quickly summarise, I am putting down some key steps.

1) You need to register at Flashphone
2) You need to then visit your Flashphone account Manager.
3) Now Add Nonoh SIP account details.
Nonoh SIP server: sip.nonoh.net. Use your Nonoh username and password.
4) Once added, you would see a new SIP provider profile in account page.
5) Now go back to flashphone homepage and login.
6) Flash phone will launch. Enter your number and make calls.

Note: Nonoh calling rates will apply. Please check nonoh fair usage policy if you exceed free calls limit.

On a sidenote, you can achieve the same thing with Tringme and Gtalk2voip. Both works absolutely similar to Flashphone. In gtalk2voip, you can even set dialing pattern for each country.

Hope you enjoy the Flashphone Tutorial. If you have any suggestions, Please drop under comments. Flashphone team visit VOIP Guide often and should be more than happy to implement some of them.

Will truphone extend free voip calls offer ?

Its already 29th February in Singapore but till now, there is no official news on whether Truphone will extend their "successful" FREE VOIP Calls to over 40 countries offer.

The question remains open as we slowly wait for Truphone to update their website or officially declare in a press conference or release. I myself have been using Truphoe on N95 for about 3-4 months now. It's seriously the best mobile voip provider (Fring is still the best movile voip application developer, also see talkonaut)when it comes to giving away free calls. Great voice quality and FREE. Two things you typically look for in a VOIP provider is given to you by Truphone.

Now the big question is "is the honeymoon over?". Just for knowledge sake, let me educate some readers here about the "Free VOIP Calls" gimmick. People always complain about providers not offering free calls to their favorite destination and wonder why.

There are actually no "Free Calls". If a provider is offering you free calls, he is taking the hit. He has to pay for the calls but instead offer you the service for FREE. Whats the benefit of offering such service? Basically brand building and those who buy credits might help maintain the free service.

Truphone i suppose works mostly off the "VC funded" money. However, there is always a limit to what you can spend. It would be interesting to see if truphone has already spent that limit and going to stop the service.

For truphone as a company, it would be beneficial to offer cheap rates and not free calls anymore. However for users, it could be just another start to find their next FREE Mobile VOIP provider.

Life goes on and with our blog around the corner, you don't have to worry too much about finding a new mobile voip provider. We will however wait till Truphone announces their plans.

Talkonaut native Symbian S60 Mobile VOIP Client released

The good old Fring and Truphone is about to get some serious competition from the new players
such as Tringme and now Talkonaut. Tringme Mobile VOIP client is almost ready and currently being tested in-house. Today we discuss about Talkonaut native (SIS) Symbian S60 edition.

Now you must be wondering why we should install another Mobile VOIP application when I already have Fring and Truphone? Well the reason being, each mobile voip application has it's advantages and disadvantages. Largely, I would disqualify Truphone being a Mobile VOIP application developer for the simple reason that their application doesn't work with other providers. The reality is truphone is a mobile voip provider and heck they are good at it. Fring is a truly mobile voip application developer and now Talkonaut (sounds like a russian name to me) will directly compete with them.

As Ruslan (Founder of Gtalk2voip & Talkonaut)noted down,

"During last 6 months our team had been working on two major improvments to our Talkonaut mobile application:

1. Moving Talkonaut application to native Symbian S60 platform, and
2. implementing real VoIP stack that allows Talkonaut users to make voice calls over most data connections your mobile phone might have, such as: GPRS, EDGE, 3G and WIFI. With this new 4th release of Talkonaut we present our achievments in these directions, we believe all they make Talkonaut more consistant, outstanding and break-through mobile VoIP + Chat application ever available.

Lets look at what features they offer in Talkonaut:

1) Talkonaut 4.0 was entirely rewritten in C/C++ and now runs on Symbian S60 2nd and 3rd edition based Nokia smart-phones. Moving from Java to native platform allowed to reduce memory usage, improved speed and to add some functionalities that were not previously available for Jave applications, like VoIP, access to file local system (improved file transfer) and interaction with other applications (Web Browser for opening URLs right from chat window).

2) Using a set of narrow-band Speex codecs and relying on Jingle Audio extension to XMPP protocol (same as implemented in Google Talk), Talkonaut now brings to the world a very powerful combination of IM chat, Presence and VoIP calls made over data connection. Unlike standard SIP stack, that is available on some Nokia smart-phones, Talkonaut is not bound to WIFI only, and can make calls over GPRS, EDGE, 3G or WIFI. Talkonaut does not require to do any VoIP configuration and overcomes all the hassle with SIP settings.

3) Talkonaut 4.0 allows to make or receive free VoIP calls to Google Talk users, to SIP phones, to MSN, Yahoo, AIM and ICQ voice capable IM clients, as well as to other Talkonaut fellows.

4)*Highly Recommend Feature*: Talkonaut 4.0 allows to define any number of SIP accounts and use them to make free or cheap calls over third-party VoIP/SIP carriers. A flexible Dialing Plan feature is helpful for choosing routes to destinations between different carriers.

5) Talkonaut 4.0 runs on the following sets of Symbian S60 based Nokia smart-phones:

2nd Edition: 3230, 6260, 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6682, 6682, 7610, N70, N72, N90 3rd Edition: 3250, 5500, 5700, 6110, 6120, 6121, 6290, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, E90, N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95, N95 8GB

Besides the standard Mobile VOIP client feature, Talkonaut really impressed me with their Flexible dialing plan feature. I still remember using Gtalk2voip dialing plans to make free or cheap worldwide calls. You don't have to maintain 10000 SIP accounts and of course you can route your calls via specific provider for specific country. Great feature.

If you are already bounching on your chair to try talkonaut, then give them a shot. Download Talkonaut from Mobile
Download talkonaut from Web

Jaxtr VoIP offers free calls worldwide

It seems more VoIp companies are trying to attract people to their services.Jaxtr, a service we have known about for a long time now provides free calls to many countries.

It is to make calls with jaxtr-

1.Go register at Jaxtr.

2.Put a widget on your blog/site/profile.

3.Now, just enter your number and make a call.

I've tried it myself.I was able to make a call for 8 minutes.However, the voice quality was not good. Still i'll rate it 7/10.Many users reported issues with Jaxtr.

Email me about your reviews.

Get Free Calls And Free SMS From VoIP Raider

Get free calls and free SMS from VOIP RAIDER.
All you have to do is Just download and install their application. You will be charged nothing if you are calling any land line in one of their free destinations, or any of your online friends.

The countries which you can call for free are-:
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
China (land line and mobile)
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russian Federation
South Africa
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States (land line and mobile)

Don't forget the FREE SMS
The countries where you can do free sms are-:
Australia
Belgium
Bulgaria
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
India
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russian Federation
Spain Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States

Fonality PBXtra Business Phone Systems Review

We often get email from Business VOIP users that we don't review Small or large business Phone systems. These business users don't mind paying a right price for the right product, so here is something for them.

Fonality a renowned Business VOIP products company has multiple products under it's hood. With products such as TrixBox, fonality already has enough eyeballs on them. They also have a Award-Winning VoIP Phone System for Small Business called PBXTra.

PBXTra basically gives you a flexibility to use large business VOIP system at small business price. Means you get more for your buck. During past, we discussed about FREE PBX systems, however these PBX systems might not be suitable for businesses which often has high demands and need unparallel network traffic. This can be achieved with a stable product such as PBXtra.

Lets look at the feature list of PBXtra :

1) Unified Communications.
2) Outlook Integration.
3) Unlimited Extensions: Enjoy unlimited extensions with all editions of PBXtra. Customize each extension with direct phone lines (Direct Inward Dialing or DID), outbound caller-ID, spell-by-name directory listing, voicemail settings, and more.
4) Branch Office Support: If you have a multi-office business, you can easily link satellite locations using low-cost PBXtra servers. With linked servers, you benefit from free office-to-office calling via VoIP, and the ability to forward or transfer calls to any extension across the system.
6) Auto-Attendant.
7) Work from Anywhere
8) Automated Conference Bridges: Host conference calls with zero setup. PBXtra comes preconfigured with conference bridges that support unlimited internal participants and as many external participants as you have phone lines.

The price of PBXtra starts from $995 onwards. There are 3 editions, Standard, Professional and Call center.

If you run a small business and interested in setting up a PBX based VOIP system, Fonality's PBXtra is worth each penny. Rather than spending on low quality VOIP systems and handling issues for months together, it's always better to go for a reliable product. Fonality is known to be a great business VOIP product with award winning products in the market.

Fonality is offering FREE PBX consultation and personal demo. You just need to send basic information for them to contact you. Go request for more information on PBXtra.

GrandCentral VOIP open to Public Testing

After being in beta for a extended period of time, almost 6-8 months and during this time getting acquired by Google, put GrandCentral right on top of many other VOIP companies.

Grandcentral is a great way to make free US calls and of course, if used intelligently can serve as a great virtual PBX system. You can also club it with other services such as RingBranch which provided Auto attendant and PBX services for FREE.

GrandCentral is now official open to Public. What that means is you don't need a invite for GrandCentral anymore. However It's only available to people in the USA, so if you are not in USA and still want to test the service with Virtual Numbers you should first get a free incoming number and then use a USA proxy to get grandcentral account.

Google's official PR says,

With GrandCentral, a free service from Google, you can receive phone calls and post voicemails right on your blog. WebCall Button
When you add GrandCentral’s WebCall button to your blog, your readers can easily call your phone or leave voicemails without ever seeing your telephone number.

Honestly, GrandCentral is a great tool. You can get a free incoming number and then just attach your landline/Mobile numbers to the account. You don't have to give your regular numbers to people anymore. Setup your preferred settings and where you want to be reached. Its all FREE.

Now the way in Free USA calling business is ON and only best things are in store for customers. We are looking forward to the day when GrandCentral will be launched internationally. I however doubt it will ever come to India :-(

Go try GrandCentral

Jaduka DukaDial offers Free north america calls

Do you remember the good old times when we posted the "Ultimate Jaduka Hack"? I still remember the wild crowd this blog received during that time. With over 50,000 people and over 130,000 PV within 3 days, Jaduka was a instant hit. Of course our hack was used by over 30000-40000 people around the world to make totally free calls including India. It worked for the entire world actually. Alas, the good times don't last long. On special request of the company, we took down the post.

However Jaduka kept coming back with innovative products such as Earthcaller which was totally free for over 6-8 months since it's launch and was also posted FIRST on VOIP Guide. We broke the news to the world. We also released a sneak workaround to make totally free calls anywhere in the world with Earthcaller :-) They fixed that bug later.

Now they launched another product called DukaDial which basically is a free calling service for north america residents. Lets see how you can use DukaDial to make Free Calls.

1) Register at DukaDial
2) Enter the number of the person you wish to call.
3) Click the "Start your call" button.

DukaDial will call you first and then dial your party's number. All for FREE. You enjoy Phone to Phone calls for free.

You should be able to make calls to all North America numbers ( i guess mobile won't work?)

Of course, this will only work for people with US numbers

FlashPhone relaunched Free Calls

Remember making free calls to India for 5 minutes back in November using Flashphone? FlashPhone later stopped offering free calls due to huge cost involved in maintaining the service.

However It seems they found a solution to absorbing the cost. Immediately after registering on Flashphone sites, users will be able to make totally free calls to Free calls to Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg)Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland landlines and China mobiles are available after registration.

We spoke to Skip, Founder of Flashphone today about how he managed to relaunch the Free Calling offer. Well currently its not sponsored by anyone however they are usig the Free calls offers provided by other VOIP providers and hook up their SIP services to Flashphone. This way no one actually pays for a call. There is no time limit for the calls however the actual provider might cut calls after about 3600 seconds (about 60 minutes).This could largely vary with destinations.

He also shared a secret with us that you can make calls to other destinations for FREE although each call is only 1 min long. People can try and let us know if this actually works especially for India. Although we doubt it would work for India.

When we asked about Futurephone's future plans, Skip told us that they will try to get servers everywhere - North America, South America, Europe, Russia and Asia to reduce delay. Of course, trying to get more sponsors to reduce the operating cost and pass the benefit to users by providing totally FREE Calls.

We wish Flashphone all the very best with their "Free Calls" venture and hope it lasts long so we all can make the most of it.

Since this is mostly beta, we would love to hear your feedback on this service. Let us know if this works for you. How long you could make calls and to which country. Collective feedback will then improve the flashphone service.

Rebtel VOIP foul play ?

We all know Rebtel is a popular Mobile VOIP, well actually VOIP on mobile service. Here on Free Voip Hacks, we mentioned about Rebtel numerous times. However Recently, we received a negative review which might interest Rebtel Management to review their policies.

A visitor on VOIP Guide posted a comment on one of our older post which really got my attention. It's worth reading.

Ironically, the name of the comment posted was Rebyell :-) Still don't get it?

Here is the Rebtel VOIP (negative) Review:

I was a huge rebtel fan, operative word being WAS there. Here is my story, I will try to be factual and leave the emotion out as hard as that may be.

My in laws are from Russia, my wife like talking to her family. It is very important to me that she be able to communicate with them on a regular basis since it helps with her overall sense of well being.

Many months ago I saw CNN do a story on the top 10 next big companies and one was rebtel, they even show you how to make free international calls. So I looked into. I went to their website and looked at the posted rates, which were 1.9 for Russia. I thought wow this is great. So I signed up and told my wife the great news, she could call even more often now because these rates are awesome. Fast forward approximately 4 months. First thing I notice is that all my contacts went from being labled Russia to Kazahkstan, now my inlaws do not live in Kazahkstan they live in Russia, on of the older cities in Russia. At first I thought well computers are not perfect so maybe it was just a glitch, until my wife made a call and we were charged quadruple (a new rate of 7.9 cents a minute) what we had been on previous calls. Apparently Rebtel now designated my Russian inlaws as living in Kazahkstan even though they live in Russia, neat trick. So I did what any one would do I contacted them and asked what happen and why were my in laws being listed as Kazahkstan when they live in Russia. I didn't get an answer to my Kazahkstan question but the politely told me that they are constantly buying time from different vendors and sometimes the rates change, when this happens it is just too monumental to try and notify every user. The customer service rep also pointed out that the TOS state that rates can change with no advanced warning.

Now I thought ok I dont like it but yes they can change any time without advance notice and their TOS state this. So I look into this a bit further and find that the advertised rate for Kazahkstan is 4.8 cents a minute and Russia is still listed as 1.9 cents a minute yet my inlaws who are listed as kazahkstan have a rate of 7.8 cents a minute. WOW is this what you call a bait and switch, where I come from this gets your business license pulled and everyone filiing law suits.

I hope Rebtel guys read this and post a clarification.

Why I posted this?

Because, I believe Free Voip Hacks is a strong medium to communicate to the companies about their possible flaws/issues. We have proven in the past that it works. I remember hearing from Betmax when we posted about Nonoh Billing Issues.

We hope this platform will solve your worries about being cheated or ripped off by a VOIP Company. Do let us know your stories/review. Of course not just the negative ones. By the way before you try to write a negative competitor review, Let me tell you It won't be published. Only honest reviews are welcome. So go ahead and send in your reviews at shivkokroo@gmail.com

ooVoo VOIP offers Free Calls

There is always something in store for people looking for Free Calls. Almost every other provider today offers USA and Canada free calls. OoVoo is promoting their VOIP service offering free calls to USA and Canada.

ooVoo is a complete suite of communication. VOIP with high quality Video conferencing is the core base of ooVoo. OoVoo is infact very similar to Paltalk - World's No.1 Video Conferencing solution.

OoVoo however has a impressive set of feature list.

1) Record Video Conference Calls: You can save your video conference calls as AVI, FLV or HTML embedded video.

2) Free Phone Calls to USA and Canada: You can make upto up to 120 minutes of FREE
phone calls.

3)Video Conferencing: You can do multi-people video conference. Paltalk has similar features.

ooVoo is in short a Social VOIP Video conferencing solution which tries to go one step ahead of traditional VOIP softphones such as Skype. It tries to give users a much needed Voice 2.0 experience with high quality video streaming needed for high quality conference calls.

You can add ooVoo to your blog/website and let people call you.

We suggest you give ooVoo a try (Download ooVoo) and see how it works. Of course, don't forget to use 120 minutes of free calls to USA and Canada. Let us know the VOIP quality and Video conferencing capability. If you are looking for a great alternative to ooVoo, you may try Paltalk.

Call from Google Talk with Tringme VOIP

Is Web based or Soft phone based calls stopping you from using VOIP? are you

going mad at downloading large SIP softphones to make free voip or cheap calls? The time has come, now you can make calls via your Google Talk. There is no need to download any additional softphones or add-ons to make calls.

TringMe now allows making calls from Gtalk. Gtalk doesn't have native support for making phone (PSTN/Mobile) calls. This is yet another feature which underlines TringMe's core philosophy of not requiring any software installation for purposes of using TringMe. If you already have Gtalk installed, then with this capability, making a worldwide call to any phone or SIP URI from Gtalk is as simple as sending a message using Gtalk. Calls made from Gtalk can be terminated on all devices that TringMe currently supports.

Although this feature is currently under test and is scheduled to be commercially released by February end, it's available for you to try it. Please note that you will need to sign up at TringMe with a gmail ID so that we can associate a TringMe account when you make a call from Gtalk (signup with TringMe using same email id as Gtalk). As you may already know, worldwide calling rates offered by TringMe are very competitive and almost half than Skype or other VoIP providers.

Lets see how you can use TringMe from Google Talk.

Note: This will only work for Tringme users signed up with gmail.com IDs. This wont work with Yahoo/AOL userids. You need to have a Tringme Account in order to use Tringme service. Go get a TringMe account if you don't have one.

1) Sign in to Google talk and add tringme@gmail.com as friend. Within 10 seconds, you would notice a new friend Tringme@gmail.com in your google talk contact list.

2)To make a call, all you need to do is send a message to tringme@gmail.com from Gtalk. To make a call to a number, merely send a message - call - to tringme@gmail.com. For e.g. call 18585551212 would initiate a call to 1-858-555-1212.

3)You can also call other TringMe users by merely using their email address. For e.g., call abc@xyz.com would connect user abc@xyz.com to whatever destination the user has chosen to terminate upon.

4) You can reach more than 40 million worldwide SIP users using Gtalk just by typing their SIP URI. For e.g call greg@somesipserver.com will connect you to Greg’s SIP server.

In all cases, you will get an inbound call from TringMe and once you answer, the call to the intended party will be initiated. This also opens a new way for developers to integrate core TringMe functionalities using Google or Jabber APIs.

Tringme offers industry leading Softswitch solution which is core engine behind Tringme VOIP service. TringSwitch is a commercial product available to small, medium and large businessed to integrate VOIP into portals, voip businesses and you can kick start your own VOIP business within a short timeframe.

To know more about TringSwitch for Business, you can email me at vinay (AT)tringme.com. I officially handle marketing at Tringme.

VoipWise gives free unlimited international calls

VoipWise another Voip Provider is offering free international calls to the following destinations.

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Canada

Chile

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece
Greenland

Hungary

Iceland

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Luxembourg

Netherlands

New Zealand

Norway

Portugal

Singapore

Slovak Republic

Slovenia

South Korea

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

United Kingdom

United States (+mobile)

As usual download the software from their website. Click here to download it.

Download the free Voipwise software!
System requirements:
- PC running Windows Vista, XP or 2000 (with SP2)
- 300 MHz processor
- 128 MB RAM
- 10 MB free disk space on your hard drive
- Sound Card, and headset with microphone
- Internet Connection broadband: Cable, DSL, with
minimum 64 kbit/s up/downstream)

If you are new to Voip You can visit here to see the instructions how to use this dialler.

RingBranch Launches Auto Attendant Services

We recently covered an article on Free PBX systems, which became extremely popular among our visitors and have received extensive media coverage. Today, we discuss how a simple FREE auto attendant service can be used as an effective PBX system and at the same time, can make calls to any USA number for FREE.

Ring Branch
is a new free PBX auto attendant and call forwarding service available to USA residents. What RingBranch simple does is they give you a free incoming number in USA which can be dialed

using any landline and mobile phone in USA or abroad. We will discuss a hack to use this from out of USA.

Let's first understand What's RingBranch, which could be used as a effective small business phone system

RingBranch is a Personal Auto-Attendant and Call-Connection service that overlays on to your existing phone service. Just pick up your phone, call your RingBranch number and be connected to your contacts. There is no special software to download. All you need is a phone and a dial tone to use RingBranch.

It's all vitually hosted and managed by RingBranch. The whole idea is in USA, many providers offer free calling minutes to 1-2 numbers per month. Till today, you were using that to make unlimited calls to only those numbers now with RingBranch you can multiply that and make calls to over 400 contacts using your mobile free inclusive minutes. It's a classic example of a FREE PBX system being used as free call forwarding system.

You just need to add your RingBranch number to your mobile plan under "unlimited call plan". You are done. Just hop over to RingBranch and setup your contact list.

To sum it up, RingBranch gives you following.

1) A geographic phone number in USA.
2) You can add upto 3 numbers to call your auto-attendant. Your auto-attendent will only be reached via these 3 numbers.

How do you make free calls to usa?

Just dial your geographic number from your Phone (must be added in your account). The auto-attendant service will welcome you and ask to choose a contact from the contact list. Just select the contact and RingBranch will dial out to your friend for FREE.

Now you understood that you can make calls out to your friends in USA but how about they call you? Yes, even that's possible. You can give your RingBranch number to them and they can just dial that number. The call will be automatically forwarded to your Primary number set in your account. You can change your primary or secondary numbers from your account anytime you wish.

When your friends call your number, they don't get access to your auto-attendant. The auto-attendant service verifies Caller ID and its only available via 3 numbers setup in your account.

The best part of the service is, no special software to download. No complicated SIP/VOIP setups. It's as easy as signing up for a service.

If you are in USA, its a must-try! Go signup at RingBranch

RingBranch currently allow 1000 minutes of FREE Talktime per month under it's beta release.

Fring VOIP releases new version

The undisputed leader in Mobile VOIP applications market, Fring has released a new version of their client adding more features to the already bulky feature list.

Fring's new version now makes Fring Mobile VOIP application a file transfer utility. The new version allows fringsters to swap music tracks, pictures, video clips and other files between each other, from mobile to mobile and mobile to PC quickly and reliably without the need for MMS, cable, Bluetooth, or Infrared connections and without additional cost as it uses the phone's internet connection.

As you may already know, Fring integrates almost all popular IM client such as Google Talk, Yahoo messenger and Skype. On top of it, Fring allows you to setup a SIP provider and make calls via that SIP provider. Technically extending the Fring Mobile VOIP capability to make calls to PSTN and Mobile networks.

Fring Team released 3.30 and later found issues with WIFI connectivity. They immediately released a newer version called 3.30.6. The latest version 3.30.6 addresses the issue they had with WiFi connectivity.

I myself didn't yet test the latest version but will be doing so next week. My VOIP testing lab is currently full with huge list of VOIP products/services to be tested.
My good old N95 crashes sometimes when it can't take the load of latest beta releases :-) Fring has however never crashed my N95, Fringers crossed :-)

I will soon be posting my wish-list for Fring including some of the latest Mobile VOIP products/services.

So if you want to test the new Fring Mobile VOIP before i do, Hop over the Fring and Download Fring 3.30.6

Paltalk VOIP Video conferencing solution

Many of us use Skype, Yahoo Voice or any other voice messengers for making PC to PC phone calls. While some of the softwares scores in Voice quality they lack in video conferencing or vice versa. Today we discuss about Paltalk, a extremely popular VOIP and largest Video conferencing solution.

PaltalkScene directly competes with Yahoo Voice, Skype and the likes in the VOIP and Video conferencing solutions market. However Pal talk till date have been only successful in USA and Canada. The growth has been limited for them to these regions. However now they are expanding their product line by offering some of the industry's first solutions. They recently moved into Social conferencing business and now offer Screening Rooms adds video streams to special PalTalk chat rooms where up to 5,000 users can watch videos simultaneously. The screening rooms show Free live performances and chat sessions.

Screening Rooms works mostly like Skypecasts, however add video conferencing as a primary feature of the screencast. Skypecasts currently do not office video conferencing in skypecasts. The best part of streaming content over video conferencing is you can host your own screening room and stream content over the internet. Imagine millions streaming their favorite stuff on Video conferencing and you can view all that for free including movies, TV shows.

If you are already using Yahoo messenger or Skype, Paltalk is another must-have VOIP video conferencing application.

Go get Paltalk and enjoy conferencing with millions of others.

Virtual Number with Call Forwarding

Do you ever wanted to own a number in a country of your choice? Ever wanted to do business in other countries but lack of communication and local phone numbers becoming a hurdle? The time has come, now you can issue a local phone number in any country of your choice and then forward it anywhere in the world.

JetNumbers, a leading virtual numbers provider in the world, is offering some great products and services. Jetnumbers let you pickup any geographic phone number and then forward the call to any country of your choice. It's as easy as making a sandwich.

Now why would you use it? there has to be good reason for people to utilise the service. Well there are in fact several reasons, many businesses today operate globally but not necessarily based out of a certain country. Lets take an example, you own a business in India but offer products in USA. If your customers in USA want to call you, will they dial your India number and pay for international calls? No never. They need a US number to call. This will not only improve your brand in US but you will get some immediate leads which you were loosing on.

There are tremendous benefits for individuals as well. Imagine, you live in Australia but want family and friends to call you at local rate? Get a number in US and forward it to Australia and you are done.

The best part of using a call forwarding facility is that you can forward your calls anywhere in the world and to any medium, be it your landline, mobile phone or even Skype. They recently started an innovative call forwarding facility which lets you forward calls to your Skype account. No need to buy a seperate Skypein number, just get a Jetnumber and you are done.

Unlike other services like Skypein which supports only 18 countries, Jetnumbers offers their service in over 50 countries. That means you can issue a local number in over 50 countries in the world. You can also get a Pakistan number and forward to any phone anywhere in the world.

Considering price perspective, I would say Jetnumbers for Skype is a Great Deal. Lets discuss about how Jetnumbers for Skype can be used.

You can have a virtual phone number in Spain, and receive the calls in your Skype account in your personal computer. Your friends and family in Spain will call you at local call rates and then calls are auto forwarded to your Skype account. All this instantly. No special extension, codes or any other jargon involved. The moment you call the number, it gets forwarded to your Skype account. The best part of the deal is that you get Unlimited Minutes for just $6.99 per month (the price vary depending on the country where you want the virtual number to be).

Of course, you can also buy one of the call forwarding products which start from Basic Plan ($19.99 per month) to more premium accounts of $29.99 or $49.99. For businesses, $49.99 per month with the Company Plan makes a lot of sense. For individuals, I highly recommend the Skype Plan starting at $6.99.

We did a test on Jetnumbers for last 2 weeks before writing this review and our findings in a nutshell are as follows:

1) Great Voice Quality : A Singapore number was forwarded to Mumbai Mobile (hutch) number.

2) Easy account management: You can change your forwarding number any time you like from the easy account management page.

3) No need of Internet or special VOIP devices: Extremely easy for people who ain't good with this stuff. Mostly parents who are not PRO users. Just tell them a number to call and the call gets auto-forwarded to you. Imagine your parents in pakistan calling you using a local pakistan number. It's extremely simple and easy to use.

4) Get a virtual number in countries where others can't issue a number. For e.g: You can issue a Spanish number and forward to any phone number you want.

Overall I would say, Jetnumbers is definitely worth a try. If you are keen on using a call forwarding facility, its essential that you make this seamless and easy. Jetnumbers does it all for you. Pay local and go global.

Go get yourself a Jetnumber and Let your friends/family/clients call you

Blyk offers UK free calls

Not many companies in today's market offer free UK calls, really hardly any. Those who do have to cover their cost via funding or advertising. The ad based VOIP model has been tested in the past but doesnt seem like working good for those VOIP providers.

Thanks to Sriram, our regular reader to share a new provider called Blyk. So whats Blyk? Its a mobile service which lets you send 217 free texts and 43 free minutes, to any UK network.

How can you join the service?
- Be 16-24 years old
- Live in mainland Britain
- Have an unlocked mobile phone with picture messaging (MMS)
- Have a Blyk invite code

If anyone has a Blyk code, please share with others. Overall, this looks promising of they give UK mobile free calling minutes. Blyk is not a mobile VOIP service, its just a good old advertising model plugged into Mobile.

Remember Blyk makes money through advertising so when you share your mobile number, be ready to receive ads through SMS and MMS. I hope they do voice based advertising to really bug you :-)

Betamax VOIP freezes accounts

During Last one week, I have received increasing number of email from Betamax VOIP services users claiming that betamax has involuntarily stopped their services and they can't login/use the services anymore. Its not just 1 or 2 people but the number is huge.

At first, I thought it could be a glitch in their system but now it seems betamax is showing their true colours? Are they trying to nab your $$$ and run away?

People claimed that, "Hi All, I had no problems with nonoh until Jan 08. I have 7.70euros in my nonoh acount and I cant make my calls. It keeps saying disconnected due to unknown error. The worst part is they froze my voipcheapcom account as well and I had 4.31euros in that account. I discovered nonoh and voipcheapcom are run by the same company. I have contacted their customer service but got no response. Has anyone had a similar problem and got it resolved? Any help will be greately appreciated."

Another one, "NONOH is started their fraudent nature? Now a days they charged the free destination too . Eg: If you live in US and call in US within your freecall days they are charging now a days. They calling it as 'FUP'- This Phone-to-Phone conversation has exceeded our FUP (Fair Use Policy) therefore you have been charge our standard rates for this call . However i send couple mail to their customer service no reply yet. I recently top up the account so there is no chance to cross the freecall days. anyone have this kind of experience with NoNOH ?"

And this one, "I put money too, after that i did make free calls, but after another 1week, i couldn't make free call, every call was charged 2 Euro cents ,saying "This Phone-to-Phone conversation has exceeded our FUP (Fair Use Policy) therefore you have been charge our standard rates for this call"

Apparently increasing number of people are claiming that Betamax is shutting down their account without any warning and they are loosing all the money. There is also a discussion thread on Tipsity about something fishy about Betamax I didn't hear anything from the betamax resellers yet, I hope they are OK for now.

So Whats the story behind this sudden increase in banning users off their VOIP platforms? Overusage Patterns? Not following FUP? Can't afford to offer services at this low price?

Can someone from betamax please stand up and answer this?

I also heard over at Tipsity that some people are forming a group and going to sue betamax in court. I don't know what will be the outcome but this looks more than natural to me :-)

MTNL offers 1 Rs VOIP Calls

With more and more VOIP companies offering cheap rates, the pressure was building on Indian Telecommunication Industry to match up to the people's expectations.

MTNL, India's leading telecom provider has now cut rates to Rs.1 for its Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) customers to about 100 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Japan, Malaysia and Kuwait.

MTNL already provider VOIP calls at Rs. 1 to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. This makes MTNL the cheapest way to call almost anywhere in the world. The mobile companies offer around Rs.3-6 to most international destinations.

Rs. 1 is almost 2.5 USD cents per minute which by far the cheapest rate to call international destinations. MTNL will surely give foreign VOIP providers a run for it's money. However with increasing competition, the consumers will see more rate cuts in future. I guess we don't have to wait for too long to see 1 cent per minute calls which is about 50 paise per minute to most destinations.

This will not only make India one of the cheapest countries to call from but will put India on a global VOIP roadmap. The biggest hurdle is however the costly termination charges which needs to be iradicated by TRAI. Its time to make india about 2-3 cents per minute with low termination charges. This will not only iradicate grey market VOIP operators but in turn help local telecom providers to make significant money for increasing volume based business.

MTNL however has strange policies as part of their program and we criticised their TOS which says, SIP to SIP calls are not Free. Which is actually a joke.

1 million free calling minutes

The festive season is knocking the doors in China, as more and more VOIP providers are trying to cash on the opportunity and rake in more $$$. However a few generous ones are actually giving away some FREE CALLS in a bid to gain large customer base.

Rebtel a leading Mobile VOIP provider is offering 1 million free minutes to China from anywhere in the world and calls from Shanghai to the USA and Canada during 7-21 Feb.

If you already have a rebtel account, you don't have to anything fancy just sit and wait for 7th Feb. You will get the free minutes automatically on 7th Feb onwards till 21st Feb. Those who do not have a rebtel account, there is another good reason to Signup

For newbies, lets see how Rebtel works.

1) Rebtel give us the phone number of a friend in another country, and they give you a local number for them.

2) Save this number on your mobile so you can call your friend whenever you want, for a fraction of your normal international rate.

Also remember according to campaign TOS,

- All users are eligible to participate in the Chinese New Year Campaign. (Thumps Up for this one)
- Each user is entitled to a maximum of five hours of calls
- Please note that Rebtel may terminate this Campaign at any time prior to 21st of February 2008 (00:00:00; GMT+8) at Rebtel’s sole discretion.

A professional way to say don't abuse or else we will kick your a$$ :-)

At the end of the day, Remeber Rebtel costs you a Local Call + Rebtel Rates. So effectively during the chinese new year, you would be calling your friends in china or in usa/canada at local calling rate.

If any VOIP provider is offering similar offers, please contact us. Last but not the least, Kung Hei Fat ChoY!!! GONG XI FA CAI!!! Woot Woot I learned chinese finally :-)

Indian VOIP affected due to Internet outage

I just got some confirmed news from internal sources and also from News sources, that India is currently badly affected by a nation-wide Internet Outage this also includes an outage to VOIP service in India since VOIP traffic is routed via Internet.

Extensive damage to two undersea cables has thrown Internet activity across large parts of India, Asia and the Middle East, out of gear. According to reports, a ship anchoring off Egypt's Alexandria coast cut through the Indian-owned FLAG and also the SEA-ME-WE cable on Wednesday, leading to an unprecedented disruption in international connectivity.

How soon will they fix it?

"The repair will take another 15-20 days," Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said.

Sounds like people in India will suffer for next 2 weeks. Along with Internet, VOIP will suffer as it's by product.

This raises some questions how effective is VOIP when it comes to Internet Outage? Well, VOIP is still perceived as secondary choice of communication in less developed countries. Honestly, only US consumers take VOIP more seriously than anywhere else in the world. The picture is however changing.

If you are affected by today's internet outage and still able to post here, please let us know your story :-)

Qtel launches Free Callback service in Qatar

A good news for our Qatar readers. Qtel, the largest Telecom operator in Qatar has launched the "Call me back" service which allows pre-paid (Hala) customers to send a "Call me back" text regardless of their calling credit.

Qtel chief operating officer, Sheikh Fahad bin Jassim al-Thani said: "The service is free and simple to use. It applies to all Hala customers, regardless of their balance or account status, even within the grace period for service extension. Up to three such text messages can be sent a day from any Hala account."

He further added: "Qtel is deeply committed to ensuring our customers are able to maintain communication, regardless of the funds available. The introduction of 'Call me back' service has again demonstrated that Qtel understands its customers' needs."

To use the service, one must dial *103* followed by the mobile number of the person they would like to contact. Qtel will then send an SMS asking "Please call me back" in English and Arabic to that number free of charge.

At first, we thought its a free callback service which could be used by Qatar residents but its seems it more of a SMS service. Although, we hope it helps. There are hardly any news for middle east readers so this one is dedicated to them for their humble support for Free VoIP Hacks.

Pennytel extends Unlimited Call offer

Another great news coming our way. Currently the most efficient and cost effective way to call is pennytel with their rock bottom fixed price for a untimed call. They also include India is this cheap untimed calling promotion

Yes, you heard it right. Pennytel have been offering a untimed (talk as much as you want) call for only 28.88 australian cents (25.46 USD cents. However the promotion was supposed to be over by 31st Jan.

Pennytel has extended the offer now to 29/02/2008. So its one more month of cheap untimed calls. Imagine you calling your friends or family in India (the cheapest could be around 3-4 USD cents) and talk for over (60 minutes). You will end up paying 3 * 60 = $1.80. If you use pennytel, you will save $1.80- $0.25= $1.55.

You can call India, Malaysia mobile, Bahrain, bangladesh, Cyperus south, cambodia, macau, malawi, iran, laos, russia, taiwan, vietnam and australia mobile under the "Talk till you drop" 28.88 cents offer.

Pennytel also offers 8 cent flat rate calls to certain destinations. Overall pennytel is worth every cent. It works, delivery where it should. However recently I heard people are getting lower voice quality, it could be due to overcrowding of voice calls and less server resources. Well you can't crib about everything in life afterall :-)

Go take a hop at Pennytel

Free Virtual Hosted PBX systems

Yesterday we discussed about SIP Softphones and how some of these softphones are making your life easier with multiple SIP providers. It will be increasingly difficult for users as FREE VOIP becomes a key feature or its hard to manage multiple VOIP providers.

Today, we are going to discuss about Free Virtual Hosted PBX system which gives you hosted PBX features for FREE. Isn't it great to have a FREE PBX system hosted online for you and you manage it with a few clicks.

This article is sent in by our regular reader, Wilson Lacerda (from Brazil). William is expert in PBX system and runs a Orkut community in Portugese. I have added more description to the original article so it's helpful for everyone.

William has compiled some of the best FREE Virtual Hosted PBX systems list (not in any particular order):

Quick Notes:
- All of PBX services are Virtual/online: that means no need to install anything!
- All are free or offer free plan.
-Some of them are very simple (good for newbies), other more feature rich and powerful: multiple trunks/extensions, complex dial plans, callback, pstn gateway, skype/MSN/Gtalk/other integration, callme widget, etc.
-For SOHO use usually they are more reliable, easier to use, powerful and cost saving than have a PBX running in your own machine.
-With some smart settings you can combine 2 or more of them and this way have a free and very powerful virtual PBX.

1) PBXes: PBXes is a hosted PBX service which runs like a voicemail service or an email server in a data center. PBXes provider a Free and premium PBX service. The free PBX account has limitation of 10 GB traffic and up to 2 con-current calls. PBXes has gained a lot of attention lately. One of our regular reader Emoci loves it :-)

2) VoXaLot: Perhaps the most popular Free PBX system online. However after they went into premium membership, they lost a lot of users to other free pbx systems. They still offer a compact version of Free PBX. It users SIP broker service to so you can use 200+ access numbers around the world to call Voxalot and over 2000+ SIP Networks (millions of VoIP users) for free!

3) MySipSwitch: Another excellent PBX service available in the market. it allows you to route multiple SIP accounts from different suppliers through a single SIP login. Simply put this means you can channel phone calls from several different VoIP providers through to one piece of hardware like an IP phone or an ATA.Its a KISS (Keep it simple stupid) system. However lately, I have seen some internal pages throw exception errors. I really wish they could fix it. MysipSwitch has great potential.

4) LiberaILVoip: Their website is all italin. However, the best i could figure out was, they offer a commercial network by increasing your ability to communicate without any extra cost. You can enjoy all the benefits and functionality of a PBX IP specifically designed to be used by a residential needs.

5) simplyConnect: Anoother non-english provider. It's a german PBX service. I seriously couldn't figure out much. I am leaving this here for your experiment sake. Maybe our german readers can confirm if this indeed is a Free PBX service.

6) Oigaa: This really look interesting at first look and definately a good find. There are no limit on number of PBX extensions. You can map your extensions into your IP Phone and they also offer 60 minutes of free calling for new users. They are also throwing in one free DID number :-)

7) GTalk2Voip: One of my all time favorites, another Keep it simple product. One of the older bunch of online PBX system, which have stabilised over time. One of the serious missing features, people often don't understand how to get to the account page. The command line usage is complicated for below average newbie users. Hope they simply the interface. Works absolutely great and highly recommended.

8) FlashPhone: A new entrant in the industry and does the dirty work for online PBX. Nothing fancy about it just good old PBX stuff.

For more professional users who want more control over PBX, there are lots of Asterisk based ones that runs under Linux (or under Windows with a little help of VMWare or MS Virtual PC). One of the leading windows based PBX system is 3CX PBX system.

5 SIP Softphones you must download

SIP is now a standard protocol for almost every VOIP Provider. Most of the VOIP service providers are now sharing their SIP settings in public. This trend is inceasing. VOIP providers do not mind if you use a third party SIP softphone, ATA or VOIP adapter to connect to their service as long as you use their service and make some money for them. after its a business proposition.

Slowly even non-SIP settings VOIP providers will open up as more and more people get educated about SIP and VOIP. The kind of flexibility SIP gives you will definately change the trend sooner or later.

Now We have already seen how to configure SIP on SIP softphone.

Today, we will be looking at some must-have SIP softphones. Of course, you won't be using all them. Still these SIP softphones are handy and kind of fun to play around with. Every softphone has some unique functionality to improve your VOIP experience.

1)X-lite: Perhaps the most popular SIP/VOIP/IAX softphone in the world. It has all the features you need in a perfect SIP softphone however lacks on number of SIP service you can run at once. You can only use one SIP account at a time.

2) EyeBeam: Another great product from Counterpath, the same company that gave you X-lite. Eyebeam is a upgraded version of X-lite. Gives you more flexibility which lacks in X-lite such as using multiple SIP accounts at once. However It's a paid product.

Tip to get Eyebeam for FREE: Owtalk offers a free eyebeam softphone. However it's restricted to use as Owtalk service only. See if you can crack it :-)

3) Ekiga: Formely known as GnomeMeeting, is an open source VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME. Ekiga uses both the H.323 and SIP protocols. It supports audio and video codecs, and is interoperable with other SIP compliant software and also with Microsoft NetMeeting. Ekiga also offers their very own SIP service and you can get yourself a SIP account under address (AT) ekiga.net.

The best feature of ekiga, open source and allows Simultaneously Register to Several Accounts. It also supports DTMF and ENOM.

4) YATE : YATE (Yet Another Telephony Engine) is a next-generation telephony engine. YATE can be used as a VOIP server as well as VOIP client and has some great advanced features such as Call center server, IVR engine, Prepaid and/or postpaid cards system Jingle server, PC2Phone and Phone2PC gateway, VoIP to PSTN gateway. YATE is highly recommended for professional VOIP users to get more out of VOIP systems.

5) Twinkle: This might not be extremely popular however we found this to be good old simple SIP softphone that newbies can play with. Twinkle is a softphone for your voice over IP and instant messaging communcations using the SIP protocol. It allows upto 2 simulateneous lines. It uses Secure voice communication by ZRTP/SRTP and MD5 digest authentication support for all SIP requests. Twinkle is definately worth exploring for its unique security features.

We will try to cover PBX softwares in our next article. If you have a PBX system and want us to consider you in the list, Please drop us an email (shivkokroo@gmail.com) with feature list of your PBX system.