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.

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.

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.