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.