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.

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.

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 :-)