Gtalk2VoIP enables free voip international calls to 34 countries

One of our closest friends in VOIP Industry, Gtalk2VoIP has once again came out with a great free international voip calls offer to over 30 countries in association with Talkster- free international calls provider.

Gtalk2Voip as you all know is a simple messenger based VOIP platform. You can use any SIP provider with Gtalk2voip and make cheap calls or free calls based on your SIP provider subscription plan. Many people find difficulties in using SIP softphones such as X-lite, With Gtalk2VOIP gateway you can use VOIP via Google Talk etc.

After Talkster's partnership with GTalk2VoIP extends the company's ad-supported free international calling service from 34 countries to cover the entire globe. Now, if the country you are calling to or from is not included in Talkster's network of more than 30 countries worldwide, you can simply use Google Talk to call the Talkster number provided to make your portion of the call completely free.

Lets see quickly how you can use Gtalk2VOIP to make free voip international calls to over 34 countries.

How to use Talkster with GTalk2VoIP from your computer:

1) Launch Google Talk on your desktop (assuming you already have Gtalk account)
2) Add friends as you normally would: click on the "Add" button to add
a friend.
3) Type in the phone number of the person you want to call in the
following format, using their full phone number including country
code and area code.e.g: phonenumber@talkster.gtalk2voip.com
4) Talkster generates a local number for your friend in the country
you are calling. Your friend will use this phone number to call-in
to be connected with you.
5) If you are calling your friend on a mobile phone, they will receive
an SMS with their Talkster call-in number for you. Otherwise, let
them know the Talkster number by IM or email.

You can also use Gtalk2VOIP services via their mobile VOIP client Talkanaut. Ruslan has prepared an excellent guide on Talkster Integration. You might want to read it here.

Just to let you know, All calls are ad-supported, so you don't pay long distance or international calling charges and can talk as long as they like for the cost of a single local call. The cost would be incurred by the other party since they will be calling a local number and not you. This is important to understand when you are calling any party. Please check Talkster Calling Countries.

You can do much more with Gtalk2VOIP, if interested read our Ultimate VOIP solution for Free Calls. You might get some hints.
Go ahead and make free voip international call. Do let us know your feedback on this service.

Video Conference Calls Services

Web Conferencing is a huge market and will continue to be one especially for business VOIP customers. Now the market is moving towards Video Conferencing. Video Conference Calls are going to take over the teleconference calls market.

Traditionally Web conferencing was limited to Teleconferencing but with broadband becoming cheaper day by day, People now moving towards Video Conferencing as a primary platform. Video Conference Calls are now being used more than ever. The challenge however is to allow Video Conference Call via SIP. It seems companies such as Flashphone have done it via Flash based SIP phones.

Flashphone's Zingaya Media Server is now able to make video calls from flash to SIP soft/hardphones which support H.263 video codec. The next step is to allow multiple participants to Video conference via FlashPhone.

We did a test run with Alexey of Flashphone and it worked great. The Video Quality was good (if not great). I am sure there is more to do to improve the quality of Video conference calls. Unfortunately, at this stage Mobile VOIP is not fully supported by Video conference Calls. I am confident companies like Fring are working to build that in their next version.

A few other Interesting online video conferencing solutions:

1) We discussed about EkkoTV a cool web based video conferencing solution. It can support upto 3 people in a Video conference call. You don't need to download any special video conferencing software to use this.

2) TokBox: a great new way to make video conference calls via Web. Tokbox is very similar to EkkoTV and doesn't need any special Video conference softwares to work. Pure Web based Video conferencing service.

3) OoVoo: Unlike other web based conference solutions, OoVoo is application based. You can do multi-people video conference. Offers free calls to USA. Works very similar to Paltalk.

4) DimDim: Open Source Web Based Video Conference service. You need to download their Web Conferencing plug-in the very first time you use their service. Flawless and excellent Video Conferencing solution. On top of it, it does what other web conferencing solution do. Sharing Documents, Presentation works great with DimDim. Its open source and Free.

If you know any other Video Conference Call Service, do let us know.

MyGlobalTalk offers free voip international call

Lately there hasn't been much action on the FREE VOIP market. Many companies such as Jaxtr are now moving to Paid Calls model realising that Free International Call strategy might not be good enough to survive in the competitive market.

However it's important that you promote your product and establish a VOIP brand. To do that, one great way is to offer totally free international calls.

MyGlobalTalk is doing just that. They are offering free voip international call to first 1000 people who signup for their service.The only condition, you must have a blackberry phone and you should be one of the first 1000 people to signup for this promotional free international phone calls freebie.

MyGlobalTalk will be offering about $50 of free international calls to USA Only. We did some more research about this promotion and found out some terms.

1) When you register you will be immediately credited with $50.00 in your account and can make international calls as long as you still have money in your account. Per minute charges at MGT's international rates will be automatically deducted from your account

2) Your MGT beta account will automatically end at the earlier of 90 days from registration or the usage of your $50.00 credit. That means this $50 has to be used within 3 months from signing up or the credit will be void.

3)You can only make free international calls to US cell phone numbers.

So if you have a blackberry, who not Register for $50 of Free Calls. Let us know your feedback on their service.

1 hour of Free Calls to India

As promised earlier, we are always on the lookout for Free Calls, especially India or other asian countries. Extremely sorry for not posting this for some time. Don't miss this great free calling offer to India.

Thanks to Rohin for sending us the tipRebtelis currently offering 60 minutes of free calls to India for their New customers. Yes, this will only work for new registrations. If you are a old customer, you might want to try registering again :-).

Few things to remember, Free Calls talktime will be credited to your only when you use the rebtel voucher code : voipguide. You have to use it while registering. On the registration page, there is a option Have a voucher code?: Enter the voucher code here.

Although, we agree that Rebtel is a good service. We had several issues with them in the past. As per our analysis, Almost 5000+ members were signed up through VOIP Guide till date but Rebtel kept on telling us that all the users were using fraud credit cards?. This was one of the reason, we decided not to promote Rebtel offers anymore. However due to overwhelming demand for Free calls to India, we thought about posting this article.

We hope you make the most of the free calls to India offer.

Cheap calls in india

India is slowly making it's way towards making VOIP as Tier 1 type of communication medium. This is really big news for everyone who wants to make cheap calls to India.

We have confirm news that The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) have asked the government to premit unrestricted domestic internet telephony. That means VOIP can be totally legal in India. This will get rid of illgal grey routes and STD calls can be offered at 15 paise/minute and local calls can be free on the same network. Imagine making free calls within India :)

VOIP Providers can offer free local calls in India in case of own network (that is, within the network of a particular internet service provider) and 10 paise per minute for calls on other VOIP network. International call rates can further come down to 50 paise per minute on same IP network, and in other IP network 75 paise. And if you want to call on a mobile or fixed line from an IP phone, STD call rates can be offered at 50 paise per minute. I can't imagine what grey route operators would do with this setup :) They can literally offer at 25 paise per minute and route all calls via single IP network and still make 10 paise/per minute.

Actually speaking, all local in-network calls never hit the PSTN/Cellular lines. They are all routed via own IP network. Remember Tata and Reliance offers? Call to other reliance phone customer is FREE coz in network IP calls are always free (minus maintaince cost of course). Its like calling via SIP network. No Wonder ADAG doing good:)

Interestingly, a $2.5 (Rs 100) calling card offers a 30 minute call to India from US which comes to a per minute rate of Rs 3.33 for an ISD call from US to India. Whereas in India, the mobile operators offer the same call at double the price for a call to the US. Look whos making money?

We really hope that govt allows full VOIP connectivity for all local and international calls including VOIP to PSTN and PSTN to VOIP terminations. This would allow VOIP providers like Tpad to setup their gateways in India and offer access number based cheap international calls. Lets hope the customers get the best rate.

According to our analysis, Calls to India will be as low as 1-1.5 cent per minute by 2010. This assumes VOIP being legal in india and market growth of over 20%-40% per year in international and domestic calls.

Hoiio launches cheap international calling service

Lately, there hasn't been much action on the free long distance calling market. It seems companies have now realised the important of positive revenue and growth. Today we discuss about a new VOIP provider called Hoiio.

Hoiio contacted us before the CommunicAsia 2008 in Singapore. Unfortunately we couldn't attend it. However we analysed their service and had a few question/answers sessions to understand what Hoiio promised to provide as a cheap international calling service.

Hoiio is a singapore based VOIP provider and have some interesting concepts to start with. Hoiio wants to run their VOIP service via Access Numbers. Currently most VOIP provider doesnt have access numbers in Singapore or most part of Asia. Of course, the international calling card companies offer access numbers.

At the first look, we thought Hoiio is a interesting but not so competitive when it comes to calling rates. We asked a few questions to Hoiio during our email interview.

1) Why countries such as India are above 20 cents per min?

Hoiio: Currently, we are focusing our service in the following market: Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hongkong, Taiwan and Indonesia. To be frank, the reason that our rate for India is still above the average is because we haven't analysed it as much as other countries I mentioned previously. On the other hand, for SMS, which is very popular among our Indian users, we have a flat rate (for most of the destinations) which is quite competitive. So, for users who find that our rate is above the average, they still use our SMS service.


2) Your access number can only be used from a singapore landline/Mobile? Can someone with singapore virtual number use your service? Those numbers typically start with 3X series. (We asked this question since I personally have 2 singapore virtual numbers which are forwarded to various destinations. Many people buy virtual numbers in different countries.)

Hoiio: At the moment, Hoiio Direct (access number) can only be accessed in Singapore. In coming months, we are thinking of having Hoiio Direct in several countries in Asia. Yes, it can be called by 3xxxx numbers from Singapore


3) Just a observation, your rates are on the higher side compared to other VOIP/Calling card services. Any specific reason?

Hoiio: At the moment, we are focusing on the countries I mentioned above.

Hoiio access number service is what we thought is intesting concept. We would really like to see Hoiio expand this to other asian countries including India and Pakistan. With millions of users in India and Pakistan, there will be ample opportunities for VOIP providers such as Hoiio.

To summarise, Hoiio offers their cheap international calls service via the following routes:

1) Hoiio Mobile: mobile application that supports Symbian, Windows Mobile phones, and phones that can run Java
2) Hoiio Web: Hoiio solution that can be accessed by users from www or wap
3) Hoiio Direct: Hoiio access number like the way Jajah direct works. Currently, it is only available in Singapore.

To try out their service,

They have some interesting calling rates for Indonesia at 10 cents per min. Indonesia as you may know is one of the costliest destination to call. Phillipines and Indonesia are 2 high rate destinations in Asia. With more asian VOIP providers coming in the market, we hope this change the asian VOIP scene and lower the rates to 2-3 cents per min for all asian destination. This should happen by 2010. Lets hope :-)

Free Calls to Singapore

As Promised, we are kicking off the free international calls series. Today we are discussing various ways to make free calls to Singapore.

As most of you know, I live in singapore. There are huge number of people abroad who make international calls to Singapore. Almost 80% of these users are totally unaware of VOIP Providers who offer free international calls to Singapore. Lets make there life easier.

Lets look at VOIP Providers who offers free calls to Singapore:

1) MediaRingTalk: Mediaring is a Singapore based VOIP/Telecom provider. Mediaring offers totally free calls to any singapore landline or mobile number via their service MediaRingtalk. They offer unlimited calls but each call only last for 10 mins. You can however call the same number unlimited times. No need to add any credit to your account.

2)There are host of other Betamax Services which offers free calls to Singapore. a)VoipWise b) VoipDiscount c)VoipBuster

3)Peterzahlt:If you live in Germany, then you can use PeterZhalt to make totally free international calls to Singapore. Its a interesting service which offers almost 30 mins per call using Phone to Phone in lieu of Advertisements. Works only in Germany.

4)If you are not interested in Free International Calls to Singapore but rather get cheap international calls at good price, you might like to try Skype International calling plans starting at 4.54 Euro incl. VAT. They will let you make 10000 minutes of free international calls to Singapore landline + Mobile.

There were many other VOIP Providers offering free calls to singapore but later stopped the service.

Free Voip International Calls

VOIP Guide is probably the largest archive of Free international calls. However over last 1 and half year, most of the valuable information regarding Free voip international calls is hidden in the archive.

I have seen many new readers asking questions about free call to specific countries. This information is readily availably on VOIP Guide however scattered across multiple VOIP providers. We have been reviewing VOIP providers as and when they are available. We are now launching with a new project called "Free Call Series". I will make series of post over the coming days and cover almost every country which can be called for FREE.

There are many post which are still relevant and can be helpful for people who are looking for make free voip international calls to these countries.

1) Free Calls to Russia: A great way to make free calls to russia. We will add more alternate VOIP Providers to make free calls to russia.

2) Free Calls to Pakistan: We will keep a close watch on Pakistan and have some great new way to make free or cheap calls to pakistan. Will keep this updated.

3) Free Calls to Canada: This needs to be consolidated with multiple VOIP providers offers free international calls to Canada.

This project should be extremely helpful since people can simply look for information based on the country they want to call for free rather than finding VOIP provider and then looking for free calls offered by that voip service.

Let us know your views on this initiative and if you have any suggestions.

EvaPhone offers free voip calls

It's interesting to see that many small VOIP providers are ready to experiment with FREE VOIP calls. We found a VOIP service who is offering Free voip calls in lieu of advertisements.

EvaPhone is a free voip calling service to make totally free international calls to over 40 countries. EvaPhone is simple, no registration, no VOIP softphones to download. Just go to EvaPhone and make free calls. EvaPhone offers these free calls in lieu of Advertisements. Every time you make a call, they play about 10-15 secs ad before your call begins. Once the ad ends, your calls is immediately connected.

Lets see how we can use EvaPhone.

1) Go to EvaPhone.
2) Let the flash widget load.
3) To make a free call through the EVAPHONE system, enter the number.
4) Press the call button. Now you have to watch a short promo video.

Note: The duration and number of calls is limited in time and per IP-address.

When we tried calling a singapore mobile number, It only offered about 2 mins of free call time. We wonder if this can change based on country of origination and termination of the VOIP call. EvaPhone doesn't mention any fixed minutes they offer each call, keeping it open.

If you want to make free calls to United states or free calls to UK, EvaPhone could be a good option to use. Let us know your thoughts on this new free voip service.

Free Call offers cheap international calls

We discussed about Intervoip-a great new way to make cheap international calls. We promised that we will find more such VOIP providers with cheap calling rates.

Today we discuss about FreeCall, a betamax company once again. They have lowered their international calling rates for some countries including India.

Note: FreeCall also offers free international calls to over 40 countries.

The new cheap international calling rates are as follows:

India Fix - 2.5 cpm
India Mobile - 3 cpm
Israel Fix - 1 cpm
Latvia Fix - 1 cpm
Turkey Fix - 2 cpm
(where cpm- is cents per minute)

I know it's not cheaper than Intervoip but definately not bad. We heard from many readers that Intervoip is facing some VOIP billing software issues and can't accept payment via paypal etc.

I guess you can give FreeCall a try since they have been in VOIP business for long and should have stable voip billing platform. 2.5 cents per minute to India landine is competitive if not the best cheap international calling rate.

Those who want to make cheap calls to turkey and cheap calls to isreal are getting some real deal at 1 cent per minute. Secondly freecall also offers calls via SIP, so you can use SIP Phone/VOIP Adapter to connect to freecall.

Let us know your feedback on FreeCall

Free Trial International Calls

VOIP Guide gets massive amount of VOIP articles. Thanks for everyone for sending in cheap international calls or free international calls offers. We often try and cover interesting VOIP providers but some are still missed out.

We have some more interesting cheap VOIP providers coming up in next few days. Before that we thought lets give out some information on Free Trial International Call offers.

We infact have 2 free trial international call offers with us:

1) This one was sent in by Rohin Adajla (canada).

Call61 offers 10 free minutes to any Australian Landiline or Mobile number. This works only from USA or Canada. Its phone to Phone service that means they will first call you and then connect to party.

2) We found this one ourselves.

NobleCom a prepaid online Phone Cards company is giving away 15 minutes talking to many countries worldwide including India. You need to have a USA number and they would verify your number for calling. So if you have multiple USA numbers, you can possibly use this multiple times :-)

So Make the most of it and enjoy yourself. We have some interesting cheap calling offers and cheap VOIP providers on our desk. We will soon start posting them here.

If you know any VOIP Provider offering free trial calls, Please share under comments.

Intervoip offers cheapest international calls

Do you want to make Cheap international calls to India. Then don't miss this post. This is by far the cheapest international calls provider we found lately.

Thanks to Murtaza, a regular reader and betamax reseller from Egypt shared a new VOIP provider InterVOIP. InterVOIP looks like another betamax product however it beats all other competitor betamax services such as voipcheap, dialnow, nonoh, voipraider etc when it comes to cheap international calls.

Although if you are expecting InterVOIP to provider free international calls, you would be disappointed. Intervoip doesnt provider free calls to any destination, however their rates are definately very competitive, I would say cheapest calling rates.

Lets consider Cheapest international call to India just costs about 1.5 cents (with VAT, 1.7 cents) per minute on InterVOIP. If you know any VOIP provider offering anything better, do let us know. As far as my knowledge goes, this is the best and most cheapest international calling rate to India.

You can also make calls via Access Numbers, however access numbers are only available in about 9 countries which doesn't include USA and Canada. However Intervoip offers PC to Phone, Phone to Phone. Most importantly they have full support for SIP. You can either use Mobile VOIP, SIP Phone, VOIP ATA or IP phone.

InterVOIP SIP Settings:

SIP port : 5060
Registrar : sip.intervoip.com
Proxy server : sip.intervoip.com
Outbound proxy server : leave empty
Account name : your InterVoip username
Password : your InterVoip password
Display name/number : your InterVoip username or voipnumber
Stunserver (option) : stun.intervoip.com

If you are using Intervoip, do let us know your feedback on this cheapest VOIP provider. Rest of you guys, give them a try.

AussieCall offers free international calls

After Yupee Phone and SwiftCom, we were eager to find the next big VOIP provider who can give us free international calls to India and many other countries. We finally found one who would give totally free calls. However It's important you read our guide.

AussieCall is a australian free international callsprovider and its a part of FreeCallPlanet, a US based free calls company. Although FreeCallplanet offers India at around 5 cents per minute on average on various plans, AussieCall is the real deal for now.

Let me clarify a few points before you jump all over :-) AussieCall will only work for Australia. Currently they do not allow calls coming from SIP Softphones/VOIP Phones etc. However you might want to give it a try using a Callback number, Services such as Nonoh. Remember their access number is australian mobile, It could be costly.

Lets understand how we can use aussiecall to make free international calls from australia. Many of us have mobile plans which often have included free minutes bundle. You can use this to callng minutes to dial their access number.

1) Dial 0424 215 122
2) When prompted, dial 0011 and the international number (including the country code)
3) DONT hit SEND/CALL button or else you call will be diverted via your mobile provider

Now you can talk as much as you want. With this, You can make Free International Calls to 74 Countries including India (Landline+ mobile). Enjoy till this works.

Fring VOIP on Symbian 9 and Windows Mobile

Fring has been a clear leader in Mobile VOIP application development. They have been consistently adding new features and adapting to new technology almost every quarter.

Fring has now released their new mobile VOIP version with added features for all Symbian 9 devices and also for Windows Mobile. VOIP on Windows Mobile was limited to certain features but now they can do as good as any other Symbian VOIP enabled phone.

With great features such as seamless auto-roaming when you switch between Wifi points. Its actually very handy. The future is all about mobile VOIP and there will be lot more action coming up in this space once we have Mobile VOIP providers offering Video conferencing calls for FREE. That should hit 3G video business hard.

There is no end to what you can do with Mobile VOIP applications, however with many more Mobile VOIP providers bring innovative solutions to the table. We have build our very own list of things which should be a part of Mobile VOIP applications.

1) Ability do do Video Conference Calls
2) Free Conference Calls with over 20+ Participants
3) PC anywhere solution built into Mobile VOIP, so you can do stuff on the move.
4) All in one communications solutions with SMS/Phone/VOIP/SIP/IAX/PBX/Conference Calling features.

Although our wish list isnt too big, It might take 2008-2009 for us to see something like that in action. However am confident Mobile VOIP application developers will take things seriously. We got some great news on the SIP based Video Conferencing and should be writing a detail article soon.

Let us know what's your wishlist on Mobile VOIP

Skype VOIP Call Recorder Comparison

VOIP has become an integral part of life for many. With millions of call being routed via VOIP everyday, its becoming the third biggest medium of communication only next to traditional Phone and Mobile.

In initial phase, VOIP made its way into homes via Skype. Even today, people relate VOIP calls to skype, even though Skype is just a VOIP provider/VOIP application. With many more important business calls being made via VOIP. Be it business VOIP solutions or personal VOIP, calls are sometimes extremely important. Businesses might need them for audit purposes and personal users might use them to trackback their important calls. Skype being the most widely used VOIP service there are many VOIP recording softwares which can record your Skype calls.

Lets look at some of Skype VOIP recording softwares.

1) Call Graph: Call Graph is a call recorder for Skype. It records your Skype calls in an mp3 file and indexes them for search. The best part is the search function. When you have large collection of Skype VOIP calls, it would be hard to find them. You can tag the calls as well. Works with all type of skype calls: Skyepein, Skypeout, Skype calls and even skype conference calls. Totally FREE to use.

2) MX Skype Recorder: MX Skype Recorder is a new tool that works in conjunction with Skype for recording Skype calls. Does the basic function of Skype calls recording, you can use this with Yahoo Voice as well. However doesn't seem to have search function. Its paid version.

3)HotRecorder: Another Paid to use (free trial available) VOIP recording software. The good thing is it can be used with almost any VOIP application, be it Net2Phone, Google Talk, Skype or any other VOIP/SIP softphone.

4) Easy VOIP Recorder: Another paid to use VOIP recording application which supports wide range of VOIP applications. Works with almost anything related to VOIP/SIP. They also have share functionality whereby you can share your VOIP calls with other users. Works with voipcheap, justvoip, 12voip etc.

The clear winner in this market is Call Graph being an easy to use and totally free to own VOIP recording application. We highly recommend the application for Business VOIP and Personal VOIP usage.

Those who still not using the award winning VOIP software Skype, You better
Download it today

VOIP to become legal in India

Finally India is catching up on VOIP and things might change in the next coming months with VOIP being completely legal. Especially connectivity between PC to PSTN phone and mobile phones can be completely legal very soon.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will soon allow connectivity between PC and fixed and mobile phones. That means telephone/VOIP calls could be made from a personal computer to a fixed phone or a mobile phone. This is currently illegal, Those who do it use PSTN networks via VOIP gateway and SIP. allowing mainstream VOIP providers to come forward and build a VOIP network across India.

According to estimated, the current international calls terminating in India are about are about 300 million minutes in a quarter. With VOIP being legal, almost 50% of these calls will be routed via VOIP and finally terminating on PSTN/Mobile. However It would be interesting to see how TRAI enables this. Will they restrict this to certain licesed VOIP operators or allow new VOIP providers to build a network.

This will not only impact the International calls market but also impact the national long distance calls making them cheaper. With VOIP being legal in India, We could see International calls rates to India could fall as low as 2-3 cents per minute. Some big providers can even offer calls to india at 1 cent.

Don't be too surprised if you see India being included in FREE VOIP or free international calls offers in near future.