3 Skype Phone Offers Free Skype VOIP Calls

We declared about a year back that VOIP would replace PSTN and will threaten Mobile Operators. Industry never agreed to this concept. Now VOIP is all ready to go mainstream in UK Mobile market.

3, one of the UK's Mobile operator is not shy to introduce Skype Phone about a year back and now, they want all their customers to enjoy free skype calls without paying for data charges, 3G mainly.

From May 1 2009, there will be no data charges or top up fees for either contract or prepay customers who use Skype on 3’s UK network. Anyone with a 3 Skype-enabled handset will be able to buy a 3 SIM and talk as much as they want to other Skype users without ever having to pay a penny.

Furthermore, over the new few months (possibly by July), 3 will expand its offering to include anyone with a 3 SIM and an unlocked handset, regardless of whether 3 supplied the device or not.

Accordng to 3 internal estimates, almost 1.5 million minutes of free skype calls are placed everyday on their network. Although, Most of the Skype calls still originate from PC, 3 SkypePhone is all set to change this in UK.

We are sure that other mobile operators won't be too happy with this move, however most likely not going to jump onto the VOIP scene so soon. They would just wait and watch and let 3 eat on their share for a while.

3 Mobile has definately managed to crack the "mindset" of the mobile operators. Afterall you need to CHANGE and VOIP is the future, everyone has to adopt to it one way or the other.

Do you own a 3 SkypePhone? If yes, we love to hear your opinion on 3 SkypePhone.

Etisalat blocking VPN based VOIP in UAE

VOIP is UAE has always been under radar of Local Telecom and ISP companies who doesn't want VOIP to have any serious footage in UAE telecom business. During past, we have seen that almost every VOIP Provider or service is blocked by UAE Telecom companies. When it comes to SIP based VOIP services its lot easier to just block all 5060 SIP default port and all related VOIP service would automatically fail to connect.

Now thanks to our smart brains, we managed to escape from the famous "5060" block and routed our connections through VPN. VPN is a virtual private network which can be hosted off a server outside of UAE and can be used over HTTP port 80 which can't be blocked by your ISP.

However, they are strong rumours that Etisalat is going to apply a VPN Filter to track all VPN based traffic originating from UAE. This could potentially mean they can target users in UAE using VPN extensively, mainly individuals as they generally don't need to use VPN on daily basis.

We do not know the consequences if Etisalat knows that you are using VPN for VOIP purposes, however it's always better to be safe. Now if Etisalat manages to shut the VPN thing down, VOIP could be in trouble. The only other way is to use VOIP web based services which ain't blocked in UAE. I seriously do not know the list of these, if anyone knows please share it with others.

In my opinion, Etisalat should atleast offer a competitive local VOIP option which can be used by the locals. Blocking all out VOIP is really not an option.

Do you live in UAE? Do you have something to say? Voice your views on this move by Etisalat.

Optimum Voice VOIP Phone Service Reviews

In USA, There are more than 30 VOIP Home Phone Service Providers and choosing the best amongst all of these new and old VOIP Phone Services is a huge task. We reviewed many VOIP Phone Providers in USA in past and today we look at Optimum Voice VOIP Phone Service which is creating a lot of buzz in USA.

Optimum Voice VOIP Phone service is a part of CableVision, which offers a triple play service Internet, VOIP Phone and Cable TV. However, Optimum Voice is definately making a difference to the company revenues with steady growth.

Optimum Voice also won the best VOIP Phone service in USA for 2008 as voted in PC Magazine Readers' Survey. Lets look at What Optimum VOIP home phone service really offers.

Optimum Voice Basic Plan offers:
1)Unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico
2)Comes with all the VOIP Phone features such as Block Caller ID,VoiceMail etc.
3)Plan starts from $14.95 more per month.

If you are interested in making calls beyond USA,Canada and Puerto Rico, you might wanna consider Optimum Voice World Call Plan which offers calls anywhere in the world up to 250 minutes, including up to 30 minutes to Cuba, anytime day or night for only $19.95 more a month.

If you want to call for more than 250 minutes, Optimum Voice will charge you normal international calling rates. For e.g: Calling India is about 2.7 cents per minute which is inexpensive but not the cheapest.

Optimum also offers Rewards Program which gives Rewards Points for your monthly bills which you can claim on their website Optimum rewards.

If you are a existing customer of Optimum Voice VOIP Phone Service, we would like to hear your feedback or Optimum Voice Review.

Telbo Unlimited VOIP Service by Betamax

We recently discussed about actionvoip, one of the cheapest VOIP Providers available however Betamax has just launched a new VOIP service called Telbo. Although, it seems that this service is by Dellmont Sarl. There is clearly a connection between Betamax and Dellmont Sarl. After a lot of bad publicity about the betamax brand, Betamax could be trying to rebrand themselves under the new name.

Lets leave that apart for now and look at what Telbo can offer. Telbo is mainly a unlimited VOIP service as they claim to offer unlimited calls from $1.00 onwards.

Telbo offers 2 packages,

1)Telbo.com Unlimited US & Canada: Unlimited calls to landlines and cell phones in the US and Canada for $1 per month. You can also call Guam and Puerto rico. The 3 and 12 months subscriptions also include a little credit so you can reach people outside of your subscription.

2)Telbo.com Unlimited World package: Unlimited calls to landlines in 36 countries worldwide. This does not include countries like India or Pakistan. Again, 3 and 12 month subscriptions plans are available.


You can always use Telbo to make calls at extremely competitive calling rates. Telbo charges 2 cents per minute to India.

As usual, Telbo comes with a FUP (Fair Usage Policy). We analysed some important points:

a) Calls to phones and mobiles are included in your subscription subject to a fair usage limit of 10,000 minutes per user per month, with a maximum of 6 hours per day.
b)no more than 50 different numbers in total can be called per day.
c) Once these limits are exceeded Telbo will charge normal rates and a connection fee for any additional minutes used.

10000 minutes per month in our opinion is a fair plan, which comes to more than 300 minutes per day.

How to use Telbo:
You can make calls using various methods such as Local access numbers, Phone to Phone. Unfortunately, Telbo doesn't offer SIP based VOIP service as their website doesn't provide any instruction to use SIP. however, if you ping sip.telbo.com it does give a response, so this could be working?

All we can say is $1 for 10000 minutes to USA/Canada is a good deal. $5.95 to 36 countries is definitely a good deal. The choice is yours.

If you are using Telbo VOIP service, do let everyone know your feedback and comments on Telbo.

Smart VOIP.com now offering cheapest calls to India

We talked about AirtelCallHome promotion yesterday, today we noticed that Smartvoip has reduced calling rates to India.

Smart VOIP is a betamax product and now they are offering calls to India at 0.005 eurocents (0.0063 US Cents) making it the cheapest VOIP call to India even cheaper than our favorite actionvoip. As we said before, Actionvoip's competitive india calling rates will only trigger a massive price cut for calls to India and consumer will benefit.

The new rates are effective immediately so if you already making calls with smartVOIP, you should have noticed the rate change.

Smart VOIP also offers SIP support that means you can use SmartVOIP over SIP Phone or any supported SIP device.

You can use following SIP settings for SmartVOIP:
SIP port : 5060
Registrar : sip.smartvoip.com
Proxy server : sip.smartvoip.com
Outbound proxy server : leave empty
Account name : your SmartVoip username
Password : your SmartVoip password
Display name/number : your SmartVoip username or voipnumber
Stunserver (option) : stun.smartvoip.com

These new rates for India are already lower than our target price of 1 cents per minute calls to India. Can India would soon be a free destionation? Probably not unless VOIP calls can be terminated as FREE or cheap calls on our mobile or landline networks. Greedy Mobile operators and landline companies won't let it happen. Lets just expect that stiff competition will force them to lower the price. Let them fight as we benefit from lower calling charges.

Airtel Call Home offering 1 cents per minute calls to india

With actionvoip offering lower than 1 cents per minute to india, other VOIP companies are under tremendous pressure to reduce their rates to offer competitive pricing. Airtel Call home, part of bharati Telecom one of the world's largest telecom carrier is definately one of those VOIP companies who follow our blog regularly and have realised the potential and importance of offering 1 cent per minute to india.

AirtelCallhome has launched India One Product under which offer you need to pay $9.99, which has a rental of $ 3.99, for the balance $ 6 you get the rate of 1 cent / min rate on local access. Howeever, please note that this offer is only applicable for local access that means you can't use any other way to use airtelcallhome like toll-free number which will charge you at @3 cents per minute.

Now although, airtelcallhome claims that they offer 1 cents per minute to india, its not actually 1 cent becoz we end up paying $4 as rental fees which do not contribute towards any calling minutes. That means you only get $6 for calling India which gives you 600 calling minutes to India.

This gives you an effective calling rate of 1000/600= 1.66 cents per minute to India. I would competitive calling rate but not the best. obviously airtelcallhome is widely used by indians worldwide and those who are currently using their calling card might be interested in switching to this plan which would save them some money on calling India.

Always remember the customer is king and I always said that 1 cent per minute without any catch or FUP or terms if possible for large carriers. Lets see when we are offered with such pricing, hopefully soon. Actionvoip is already doing it and more VOIP Providers will follow soon.

Truphone offers unlimited VOIP calls package including India

Truphone,once a great Free Mobile VOIP Service lost the ground when they stopped offering free mobile voip calls to 40 countries. However they are now back in the VOIP market with a flat monthly billing Unlimited Calling Package which included 40 countries around the world including India,Pakistan, bangladesh and many more.

If you don't know what TruPhone is, its basically a Mobile VOIP Service that means you need to have a Mobile which supports Wifi and SIP. Truphone also works over GPRS, but the call quality could be poor due to lack of bandwidth. Most latest Mobile Phones supports SIP and Wifi, mostly all N and E series Nokia phones do support SIP and VOIP Calling.

TruPhone's TruUnlimited Landline package starts at $17, however it does not include all the countries and calls are restricted to Landlines only. Don't worry, They also have a TruUnlimited Mobile package which offers unlimited calls to landlines + Mobiles in all the countries including India and most other asian countries.

You have two options to choose from:

TruUnlimited Landlines ($17)

Unlimited calls to landlines* in 38 countries worldwide. Call any time of the day, any day of the week. No long-term contract. Also includes unlimited calls to mobiles in 9 countries including the USA and China as a bonus!

TruUnlimited Mobiles ($40)

Along with unlimited calls to landlines* this plan includes unlimited calls to mobiles* in 69 countries, including the USA, the UK, Germany and China. Call any time of the day, any day of the week. No long-term contract.

How can i use TruPhone in my country?

Well there are mainly 4 ways to use TruPhone:

1) Truphone over Wifi- If you are in USA, Singapore, UK or most part of europe, you would find ample number of Wifi hotspots to connect to. This should be your preferred choice. Wifi is often Free, if not then cheap.

2) Truphone over 3G- 3G would be almost equivalent in call quality as Wifi. However, 3g data usage can make you poor overnight. 3G data cost in many countries are way high, so unless you have a unlimited 3G data package don't go for this option.

3) Truphone over GPRS: GPRS is poor man's wifi, especially in India where Wifi and 3G is not existent. Truphone works over GPRS, but no guarantee than you would hear the other party clearly and vice versa :-)

4) Truphone Anywhere: You have no option to call, no wifi, no 3G, no GPRS, nada nothing. What will you do? you can use Truphone anywhere. it Works seamlessly in the background, If you dial an international number, the call is redirected at the handset to a Truphone access number in your country, which connects to truphone server which in turn automatically completes your call to the international destination.

What you pay for

* Domestic rate GSM call to Truphone server in your home country.
(Please note that data connections will be needed for iPhone and BlackBerry)

* Low cost Truphone call to your international destination.


Does truphone cap number of minutes or per month call usage?

Yes, like everyone else. Truphone has Fair usage policy. You can make maximum 3,000 minutes call per month and all calls are subject to 60 minute call duration. If you consider, paying $40 for 3000 minutes, it works out to 1.3 cents per minute which is a good rate for calling India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.

If you signup for this package, do let us know your feedback so it helps everyone to make a decision. We are really excited to see mainstream VOIP Companies offering rock bottom prices for asian countries and making VOIP cheaper than traditional phones lines.