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