Tringme offers free calls to many countries

We blogged about Tringme, a interesting new web based VOIP startup a few days back. We have been discussing with TringMe founders about possible usage of their Web based VOIP widgets in new Voice 2.0 age.

Finally, after about 2-3 weeks of rigorous testing the Phone Widget is finally out to public. However currently limited to people using Tringme Beta, which is invitation only. We have been testing the voicemail widget for some time and we also tested the new phone widget which is extremely fast, lightweight and has a great quick interface.

Today, we will review the latest phone widget Tringme is offering and how it will work when it's open to public.

Tringme Account Page:

As you can see the TringMe account page displays almost all the information you required to set up your widget.

1) User Id: This is your tringme id used in your Widget URL.

2) Phone Credits: By default, you will get 5 free credits which will entitle 5 mins calls for FREE. This is purely for testing the system. The new free minutes offer is yet to be launched. P.S: I have more credits :-) since i was their lead tester.


3)Website/Blog: Optional field

4) Phone : you need to select the country and put number in local number format without country code.

5) Gtalk ID: Put your google talk id. This will let you receive calls or voicemails if you set send my voicemails/calls option to Gtalk.

6) send my voicemails/calls option : You can select Phone & Email Gtalk / Email or Email only. If you select Phone, all calls will be termination to your phone number and respectively for other options.
7) Public Page is a personal widget page assigned by Tringme. you can give this page to your friend so that they can visit the page and call you.

8) Widget Code: this can be used on your favorite social bookmarking website, so people can call or leave a voicemail.

Now if you visit my Personal Widget Page (I am not sharing the url to avoid prank calls lol), you would see something like this:

Once you click on the Voicemail or Click to Call option, the widget immediately places the call to my destination number set in the account page. I pickup the call, you are connected. You can talk to me using your headphones.

Since Tringme is currently in beta. Over a period of time, there will several improvements to the existing application, such as SPAM guard to protect users from receiving prank calls. I wouldn't like to give more details at this stage since all the features are yet to be finalised.

Of course at this stage, Tringme is only available for Beta testers. However I am giving away 25 invites to start with.

I made a post at tipsity, for Tringme invites, if you need a invite please reply to this post: Tringme Invites Available

Besides this, Tringme is now offering Toll-Free solutions to Enterprise/Business users. I will make a seperate post to explain how TringMe Enterprise VOIP Solutions can bring down cost on your Toll-Free numbers. If you are interested in knowing further details, please contact ut.godmode(at)gmail.com. Please explain your requirements.

VOIPRaider offers free calls to south africa

Betamax has announces yet another VOIP outfit called Voipraider, which offers free calls to many destinations but the biggest surprise is free calls to south africa.

South Africa is typically never given away as free calls destinations since the termination costs are high. Thanks to satphoneguy from Tipsity to share this news.

VoipRaider works via a standalone VOIPRaider softphone or via SIP. YES, voipraider works on SIP so you can configure voipraider on your favorite SIP client or Phone.

Lets first see how to use VOIPRaider

1) Download VOIPRaider
2) Register for VOIPRaider
3) Sign-in and make calls.

If you want to use voipraider with your favorite SIP Client or SIP Phone, then use the following settings:

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


VOIPRaider allows following audio Codecs,

G.711 (64 kbps)
G.726 (32 kbps)
G.729 (8 kbps)
G.723 (5.3 & 6.3 kbps)
GSMFR (13.2 kbps)

If you have audio problems:
Use a STUN server (stun.Voipraider.com) with port 3478 or use G.711 codec.

Now looking back to What countries voipraider offers free calls:


Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Canada
China (+mobile)
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russian Federation
South Africa
Spain
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States (+mobile)


I guess the real suprise deals are definately, free calls to turkey and free calls to south africa. Remember, like other betamax outfits such as Nonoh, Justvoip, voipcheap etc, voipraider also has policy of Buying credits which entitles you to 120 Freedays of free calls to free destinations only.

Let us know your comments/feedback on VOIPRaider.

Joiphone offers unlimited india and pakistan calls

Do you live in USA? Don't mind paying a bit for making calls to your loved ones back home? Then this is the deal for you. This unlimited calls offer won't last long. Get in and Grab it.

We always make an effort to find Free VOIP calls to India or pakistan. However, its not easy to find such offers all the time. At the same time, we received massive comments from people primarily in USA that they are ready to PAY a right price for the right product.

I think this offer from JoiPhone is a killer offer. If you are not aware of Joiphone, then let us give you a background of this VOIP/Broadband company founded back in 1999. By 2005, they were one of the largest broaband providers in USA. When sunrocket went bust, we posted a quick alternative solution to Sunrocket. Joiphone was one of the primary alternative to Sunrocket. Why? Simplicity and straight forward approach to VOIP Calls.

If you compare, Joiphone with other providers like Vonage, Verizon etc. No one is offering unlimited calls to India/Pakistan. You buy a service worth $10 per month and use that service to make calls to India. At end of the day, you pay much more than $50 per month since all those calls to India are charged at 8-12 cents per minute.

With Joiphone, you can make unlimited calls to India and Pakistan. That's not all, you can make calls to about 70 countries. YES, you heard it right. No cap on how many minutes you can talk. Talk as much as you want. Just pick up the phone dial your friends in UK, next minute talk to your GF in India :-) Burn the phone line as much as you can without worrying about per minute charges.

With Joiphone, you can make unlimited calls to :
Albania*, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Brazil Country Wide, Canada, China, Dominican Republic, El Salvador (CTE), Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico*, Puerto Rico, Russia*, South Korea, Spain, Thailand Cellular, United Kingdom, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Zimbabwe and many more.

On top of this Joiphone offers some great features for FREE:

1) Keep Your Existing Phone Number
2) 911 Emergency Service
3) Call Forwarding
4) 411 Directory Assistance
5) Voicemail via Phone/Web
6) Hunt Me/Follow me
7) Block Anonymous Calls
8) CID on Call Waiting
9) Call Blasting- Simultaneous Call
10) Call Conferencing
11) 30 Day money back Gurantee
12) No Contract, Cancel Anytime you want


and many more! This features makes joiphone offers almost business level given away to Retail customers.

IF you don't want to take $39.95 offer, you can subscribe for lower packages which starts from as low as $8.95 per month. That's ridiculously low prices for making unlimited calls.


Honestly, we feel this is the best deal we have seen in many years. What JoiPhone is offering can't be replaced by any exisiting calling card or VOIP service, atleast at this stage.

So if you are worried about overpaying while making calls to your loved ones, why not switch to JoiPhone?

Signup for $39.95 per month. This offer has expired.

Get Jaxtr Calls with SwitchVox and SIPNumber

Didn't like the fact that your friends and family have to use widgets or dial weird numbers in USA to call you? Then this solution should help you get one single number exclusively assigned to you. This is not given by Jaxtr, but with our tutorial you can create one.

This original idea/hack is contributed by SatPhoneGuy at Tipsity, our new portal. Unfortunately this hack is posted under our exclusive members forum called as Elite Member Private Forums. Dont worry! Read on how to get Free Elite membership.

To give you a sneak preview of what you would read in Jaxtr + SIPPhone +SwitchVox solution. Here is the excerpt from the original post.

step 1: you will need a jaxtr account.
step 2: sign up for a SIPnumber. now log into your account on the Calldigits
site(its funny but you can do this; just use your sipnumber username
and password.) on the calldigits site there will be an option to change
the caller ID to always pass your SIPnumber instead of the actual
number called from.

On top of this, we also have exclusive post on how to make free 10 mins calls using Rebtel + click2voice + your sip softphone/Phone.

Read the rest at Tipsity.

Dont have elite membership? No issues.

In order to gain access to the forum, you need to register at Tipsity and become Elite member. You need atleast 100 points to become elite member, however we are relaxing the rules for 1 week starting from today. Anyone contributing a new Tip (not a forum topic) and 20 user pointswould get a Free Elite membership. This special offer is available only for a day. I would give access to each one of you who post a new tip. Remember to read the rules before you post something thats against our TOS.

Go Register at Tipsity. Already registerd? Share a Tip and get FREE Elite Membership.

is VOIP innovation?

A lot of articles are being written about VoIP being stagnant or about the lack of innovation in VoIP. I commented earlier on the same issue about how its not the case, but all the noises made me to think hard about the issue and here I would like to put forward a different perspective to the VoIP game itself.

Notice, how in each of the above articles refer to VoIP as some kind of breakthrough and that it needs to be continuously innovating or evolving. Let me just step back for a moment and talk about breakthroughs or radical innovation and incremental innovations. Wikipedia defines radical innovation as launching an entirely novel product or service rather than providing improved products & services along the same lines as currently. Incremental innovation is just a step forward along a technology trajectory and generally involves minor improvements. Generally these improvements would be along two dimensions, efficiency or cost. That is, an incremental innovation would improve the efficiency of existing technology or reduce the cost of using it.

What is VoIP then, a radical or an incremental innovation? You may be tempted to say it is a radical innovation, but I would call it an incremental innovation and here's why. In the evolution of voice, VoIP is just changing the way voice is transmitted between two participants. This is resulting in lowering the cost of communication. Cellular telephony was a radical innovation, in that, it changed the way we communicated. But VoIP is not! Breakthrough or a radical innovation redefines the way we do things, but VoIP has done nothing of that sorts. In fact, VoIP is just the application of an existing technology (packet switching) to another domain (voice). The only reason we are all so excited about VoIP is that it brings communication within reach of masses.

Given that, we should have realistic expectations from VoIP, we need to be aware of what it can and what it can't. We will continue to see incremental innovations in this or allied field, but mind you that is not innovation in VoIP. It is another application of VoIP and we need to clearly distinguish between them.

This article has been written by our VoIP news editor Alok Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

Yeigo VOIP releases 2.1 and Yeigo Lite version

Yeigo, a silent killer in Mobile VOIP arena is all set to take on their closest rivals Fring and Truphone will their latest version 2.1. Along with the new release of Yeigo, they also released another interesting application called Yeigo Lite.

Yeigo Lite is compatible with all handset which can support Java (J2ME) handsets. This should cover most of the older handset still largely used in the market. I think Yeigo scores over Fring and Truphone with backward compatibility. Wondering when Fring would launch their lite version :-)


Although Yeigo Lite is not FREE to call other Yeigo Lite members. It provides cheaper rates for calls and SMS. You can chat with Yahoo/MSN/ICQ contacts on the move. Of course, the big brother of Yeigo Lite, the original Yeigo 2.1 is totally free for calls to other Yeigo members.

Yeigo and Yeigo lite both can be connected via Wifi/3G/HSDPA/GPRS. In some countries, GPRS is extremely cheap like India. It costs less than $2.50 per month for unlimited GPRS connection. This facility can be leveraged to use mobile voip and save tremendous cost for making overseas or local calls.

The mobile voip market is heating up with new providers and new versions each month. All i can say is there won't be one winner and everyone will get their share of customers. However consumers would see some great offers and benefits from these new mobile voip services in near future.

Sooner or later mobile voip will go ahead of residential voip. Don't be surprised to see Yiego or Fring or Truphone selling for millions of $$$ in next 1-2 years.

Before I wind up, Do download Yeigo 2.1 and if you have a older handset, why not try Yeigo Yeigo Lite.

Report any issues/Bugs. Yeigo guys spends more time on VOIP Guide than on their own blog /kidding/.

However, they would be ready to help you with any issues.

Talkster offers unlimited free calls

Unlimited Free Calls ar hard to find these days. With companies bringing in more restrictions over free calls policy by limiting number of minutes or asking for a fixed $$ price to use free calls, the catch is never ending. However it seems Talkster is ready to break the market with their innovative (rebtel like) service.

Why I said Rebtel like service? coz talkster does the same thing but prolly more effectively than Rebtel. If you have been using Rebtel, then you know how they work. if not, follow me in this post and you would get the idea.

Apparently, at the CTIA WIRELESS IT & Entertainment 2007 cell phone convention (23-25th Oct 2007), Talkster is launching Ad-based Unlimited Free Call services. We could only gather few details about how its gonna work.

Visit the Talkster website from a PC or cell phone browser and enter your number and frien'ds number you'd like to call. Click to get connected. At this stage, Talkster will play a ten second commercial before you can talk all you want for free. Pretty good isnt it? I don't mind listening to a audio commercial and be able to talk for unlimited time. Sounds like a Good deal. Lets hope it turns out to be a good one unlike what we usually dream about and end up being a false promise.

Leaving that aside, Talkster is currently offering free calls service via 3 mediums. Talkster site describe the procedure in detail, however to tell you quickly,

1) You need to enter your and your friends number and dial.
2) Talkster will give you and your friend each a local Talkster number that you can use whenever you want to call each other.
3) Call the Talkster number for your friend. When your friend answers, tell them to hang up and call the local Talkster number in the SMS they were sent. You hang on - don't hang up! When your friend dials back using their Talkster number, you will be connected and can begin talking for FREE!

This is purely from PC. You can however use Talkster via Mobile and SMS as well. The details are neatly described on Talkster HowItworks page

Unfortunately, Talkster currently supports very limited countries, roughly about 30 odd countries.

Talkster seems to directly compete with Rebtel in the so called "IamonlineCallmeback" kinda VOIP services. It would be interesting to see if Talkster manages to get rid of this and straightway offer a direct dial VOIP service without the need for callback. It seems talkster is trying to offset the cost via audio advertisements and maybe thinking of making a few cents per call.

My SIP Switch announces auto call forwarding feature

We talked about Ireland based VOIP/SIP firm MySIPSwitch (Blueface) before on VOIP Guide. It was definately a great replacement to now paid Voxalot. It provides all the features of Voxalot and its totally FREE.

However, users have been asking for new features to be implemented in their existing feature list. MySIPSwitch as the name suggest is a pure SIP based routing service and in simple english, it allows you to route multiple SIP accounts from different suppliers through a single SIP login.

Most of you have read out ultimate Free Call forwarding guides and our mysipswitch review in the past. If not then do read them now.

Now mysipswitch users have been asking for a feature to auto-route calls to other SIP networks without the need to register with login/password everytime. Now its possible to just do the same.

It is now possible to take an incoming call from one SIP provider and forward it onto another SIP provider without having to have any SIP device registered. This makes it possible to receive a call without the need for a VoIP device at all if the forward is a provider that can be used to forward the call to a normal telephone.

All this works based on the dialing plan setup in your mysipswitch account. Aaron of mysipswitch gave an example of dialing plan setup.


1. A call comes in for sip:vinay@sip.mysipswitch.com with the use incoming dial plan check box ticked,

2. A look up is done on the dial plan for a match on vinay, e.g.

exten = vinay,1,SwitchCall(anon,,303@sip.blueface.ie)

3. The call is forwarded using the match in the dial plan.

Aaron further explains this with the following setup.

SP = SIP Provier
User = This would be your ATA/Soft Phone etc. registered with the sipswitch.

Outgoing Call:

User -> SIP Switch -> Dialplan lookup -> 3rd Party SP

Normal Incoming Call:

3rd Party SP -> SIP Switch -> User

Incoming Call using SIP Switch Dialplan:

3rd Party SP1 --> SIPSwitch --> Lookup Dialplan --> 3rd Party SP2


So now without need of any further registration of individual SIP providers, you can route calls to 3rd party SIP provider who might offer you a free call termination.

Go figure out a provider who offers free calls to your favorite country and play with mysipswitch setup to make totally free outgoing calls.

Free Phone to Phone Calls with Raketu

Just when you thought, VOIP Guide is slowing down on FREE VOIP and free call offers. We are back with some great news for our Phone to Phone free call lovers. This time Raketu does it again.

Raketu is a leading VOIP/IPTV services company. However their focus is more on the integrated VOIP/IPTV platform. However lately they started concentrating on the VOIP and especially free calls business to push their bundled product.

We blogged about their free calls offer to over 40 countries . That offer was limited to Now they are going one step further by offering phone to phone free calls.

Raketu now offers users free phone-to-phone calling using our RakWeb Calling service. Raketu's RakWeb service does not require any software download and can be accessed directly from any web browser, and from mobile devices at Raketu.Mobi

The way it works: Make a pre-payment to your Raketu account, and you will recieve up to 1200 free minutes per month for 3 months. These minutes can be used for: phone-to-phone calling. If both phones are in the Raketu free calling zones, you can talk for up to 600 minutes for free. If only one of the phones is in a Raketu free calling zone, you can talk for up to 1200 minutes on the free calling zone phone. Of course, if you phone is not in Free Calling Zone then normal rates apply.

Impressed? Go Register at Raketu
and make Free Phone to Phone Calls.

Why WIMAX will succeed?

If you have been following the telecom development, chances are that you would have heard about WiMAX. WiMAX is the next generation connectivity standard and is pushed hard by its proponents, which include heavy weights like Sprint, Intel and Samsung. On the other hand we have the detractors in Ericsson, Verizon Wireless, and Qualcomm who are betting against it. You can read more about the debate here but the point I want to make here is that WiMAX is here to stay and mobile WiMAX is the next big thing. Please note that this article is focused on mobile WiMAX, as even the detractors agree that "fixed" WiMAX will flourish.

The opponents of WiMAX are quick to point out that the 3G platform will be able to outperform the WiMAX offering on all counts and hence there is no reason that we should invest in alternative technology. I beg to differ. Let me list down a few points to justify my claim:

1. Reach: WiMAX can provide connectivity over a very large area, around 12 mile. This implies that for reach similar to the existing cellular providers, WiMAX will have much lower expenses.

2. Optimized for Data: Unlike the cellular network, WiMAX is designed as an Internet access technology and hence optimized for data.

3.Other devices: The major push to WiMAX would be from other WiMAX enabled devices. Chip designers like Intel, Sequens and Beceem are already pushing WiMAX as a mass market technology.

4.No SIM or Contracts: WiMAX chips will be embedded in devices like laptops, mobiles, and other consumer devices. So, you would not have to purchase a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) to activate your devices or purchase expensive contracts to use your devices. Wouldn't you love to have the iPhone without the contract from AT&T?

5.Lower cost: Since WiMAX will be used for not only voice, its uses are only limited by imagination. This will result in lower cost of usage, unlike the cellular network, which is primarily used for voice.

6.Sprint effect: The presence of Sprint in the supporting camp is a very big factor for WiMAX's possible success. Sprint already has a huge network. This will make it even easier to deploy WiMAX. The costs would be even lower, as the WiMAX devices can ride on the antennas owned by Sprint.

7.Balance of power: Nobody likes monopoly. The cellular providers are exploiting their network and charging the customer who does not have a choice. Cellular providers charge up to $0.15 to receive text messages. This is purely rent seeking.

With a rival technology in WiMAX, this will provide a much needed choice to the consumer and reduce this exploitation by the cellular providers.

It's not a coincidence that opponents to WiMAX include cellular networks or cellular component manufacturers. A lot depends on how the pilots go in the Chicago and Washington D.C. this spring. But I really feel that WiMAX has a great potential and we will soon see it in action.

If any of you have had an experience with WiMAX or have an opinion on it, please share.

This article has been written by our VoIP news editor Alok Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

VOIP Guide launches Tipsity

You wanted a VOIP hack which is not blocked by VOIP companies? We heard you. Dont miss this post. A private discussion area where you can share such stuff and not disclosed to public. Its much more than that.

VOIP Guide was a huge success, we just wanted to extend your support and love by providing you with a platform to share tips. These tips can be everyday tips or even VOIP tips for making free calls. It doesnt matter what tips you have, you can share it with each other. We want to build a community experience to save time and money for sharing useful tips.

Tipsityis launched with a mission to help everyone save time and money by using community shared tips. Every registered members of Tipsity, can create a tip and others can vote on your tip. Besides this we have some great way of identifying your efforts towards the community. This FAQ section should provide you with answers.

At Tipsity, we have a private Elite forum for only elite members, where all our new VOIP hacks will be featured. It will be a exclusive forum. You need to be a Elite member to access Tipsity. How will you be a Elite member? Read our FAQ section for more details. You need to gain 100 points to become Elite member. Its easy, just invite more members under you or post some tips. You will get there soon. 100 points offer is only available for limited time.

Now exclusively, I will give Elite membership to Top 5 people who invite max number of members to Tipsity. This competition is open till Friday. On Saturday, I will declare the winners and give them this special access.

We are also looking for Moderators. If you are intersted, please post under Tipsity Feedback forum. Please mention your name and experience with forum moderation. Also mention If you want to moderate any specific forum.


Go register at Tipsity

Free Calls to Romania with Zapp VOIP

The Free VOIP scene seems to be improving in the european region. Romania, not a very VOIP savvy nation is now joining the FREE VOIP revolution.

Zapp, a leading romanian mobile network is now eyeing for VOIP traffic. Lately, there is a definate increase in VOIP subscribers, surprisingly mobile VOIP is enjoying the benefit over traditional voip. People find mobile VOIP lot easier to use and you can use even when you are away from home. Simply replace your existing provider with a cheap Mobile voip operator like Fring or Truphone and you can save significant amount of money.

Zapp, prolly thought the same and launched "Zapp Global Free", that will enable Zapp customers to place and receive unlimited calls anywhere in the world directly from their mobile or FixTel terminal.

With Zapp Global Free VOIP service, Zapp subscriber gets unlimited internet calls, while their friends, relatives and business partners living abroad can call a Zapp phone in Romania for free. That means you can call Zapp customers in Romania from around the globe for Free.

Zapp has launched a new portal to manage this Zapp Global Free Service. This is the direct link to English homepage.

How to i use Zapp Global Free Service from outside Romania?

1) Register at Zapp Global Free
2) Use the dialer to make calls to Romanian Zapp Global Free Customers.
3) Note that you get a Free Romanian number where people can call.
4) Alternatively, you can use Zapp via SIP to make free calls to romania.

Zapp Setup for SIP: (Use X-lite or any other SIP softphone or SIP Phone)

SIP server: voip.zappmobile.ro ( the SIP server name)
Username: 0780255837 (your phone number received upon activation)
Password: °°°° (the password chosen at registration time)

Remember it requires romanian Zapp customers to activate the upgrade to Zapp Global free offer for a flat monthly fee of $4.99 (plus VAT). They are currently offering Free Trial for 1 month till 31st Dec 2007. So Grab it fast!

Happy Free calls to Romania with Zapp Global Free!

FreeCall offers free voip calls and free text

FreeCall a betamax VOIP outfit has now started offering free text messages besides their standard free VOIP calls to offers to many countries and now free SMS to india.

They have covered some countries which are not found otherwise in Free Calling country list. You can make free calls to malaysia, argentina and Taiwan. Of course, other standard countries are free just like other Betamax services such as Voipcheap, voipwise etc.

Now besides, standard free voip calls offer they have been running for some time. They now offer completely free SMS service to the following countries.

Argentina
Bangladesh
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Denmark
Hong Kong
India
Malaysia
Norway
Pakistan
Peru
Serbia and Montenegro
Singapore
Switzerland
Thailand
Venezuela

The best part is you can now send free sms to india. I seriously this works. We didnt test it ourselves but betamax is known to provide something and it only work for limited time. I won't be suprised to see free voip calls and sms would only work for paid members?

Someone requested for SIP settings of FreeCall. So here you go:

Proxy domain: sip.voiparound.com : 5060
User domain: sip.voiparound.com
STUN server address (not sure if this is needed):stun.voiparound.com : 5060

You can use this with your SIP Phone or SIP softphone such as SjPhone or X-lite etc.

Maybe you all can test and drop comments. Go look at FreeCall

Tringme VOIP to offer free calls

You didn't hear much about Free calling to India lately? You didnt hear much about free voip? Then, here is the news for you.

When i first read about Tringme on Techcrunch, I was really excited to see how their VOIP service works and what are they offering. However i reliased, it was in close beta. Thankfully, even today VOIP Guide can sell better than me :-) All I had to do is to send email to TringMe team to get myself on their limited close beta list. Within 30 mins, I got my account activated. On top of it, Tring Me founder got in touch with me to help me understand the system. Pretty Neat and frindly!

Tringme (Call me in simple english) is a VOIP company founded by an Indian, Yusuf Motiwala. I wouldn't really get into more details about his personal life :-) I had long discussion with Yusuf about Tringme's model and all i can say, it looks promising. For a change, its a bit different than other VOIP application services who expect you to download their voip softphones or use SIP based services in order to use their services.

Tringme do not require user to install anything and provide pure web based telephony experience unlike its peers like Jajah, Fring, Truphone expect users to download something or the other on their machine/phone. Now you must be wondering why Jajah is different than Tring me. Doesnt it look similar? Well, Tringme sets itself apart by not being the middleman in the voip transaction. They dont expect you to go tringme website to make calls. It works very similar to Jaxtr.

Tringme is currently testing their system in multiple phase. They are in Phase 1 where voicemail functionality is being tested out. Users get 5 voicemails credits by default. That means people can use my widget and drop 5 voicemails for me, which can be sent via email or i can access them online. More like GrandCentral? The second phase, which will actually allow making free calls would be launched soon. Again, it will be in beta and only available to select few. We will ensure that we are on the list.

Tringme wants to play it safe, ensure that their systems are performing at optimum levels and offering top class VOIP services. Its not very clear about how many free calls you can make. I assume we can get free calling credits and if used up, can buy more minutes online.

They are also trying to work their way into Enterprise VOIP, which is widely open for grabs. They are offering enterprises to register their own private SIP server where TringMe can route calls and voicemails for a set of users. Enterprise can have their internal dialing plan for further routing of the calls and voicemails. Enterprises can even develop application based on SIP to offer some innovative solutions to their users.


Tringme also offers a cool looking widget which you can place online on your blog, website or even email (i guess it would work).

Overall, Tringme seems to offers everything under the sun in a plain simple VOIP service. Lets hope they get their stuff together and launch it to public soon.

Lets tring for FREE VOIP. As i said, Tring me is under beta, however you can try your luck for being invited into Tring me. Register for Tring me.

VOIP isn't stagnant Period!

I was really surprised when a fellow blogger commented that VoIP is stagnant. Much of the article is based on the fact that VoIP services do not essentially "talk" to each other even after 2-3 years and that two VoIP services often require a PSTN to complete a call. This is definitely not the reason to conclude that VoIP is stagnant.

Every product has a distinct life cycle. VoIP is still in the growth phase and there are competing products like cell phones, traditional telcos, etc. The stakes are very high for both the competing parties and almost nothing for the VoIP Company. At one point of time the entire value of AT&T could be captured in the amount of copper cable they had put. The traditional telephone companies and the mobile phone companies have invested huge sums in their infrastructure. Now when they want to recover their investments, they see a competing technology and they would obviously try to stop the growth of the VoIP to generate some more revenues out of their network, before VoIP becomes commonplace.

As for lack of interface between any two VoIP providers like Vonage and Skype (a Skype call to a Vonage customer has to be routed through the traditional phone network), let the readers be aware that interconnect was an issue even for the traditional phone companies. Given a choice, incumbents would always want to prevent the growth of any new competition. The dispute between TTSL & Reliance Infocomm is a case in point. It is in these situations that the regulators step in to facilitate interconnection. In a traditional setup, probably one regulator can handle the situation as the players are governed by the regulator. But that is not true in case of VoIP. There is no regulator for VoIP and hence disputes in this area will take its own sweet time to be resolved. For a comparison, look at the interconnect arrangements in case of international roaming, which is not regulated and hence it is not essential that you will be able to make calls to all the phones in the world.

It took almost 90 years, after the first call made by Alexander Bell in 1915 for our telecom infrastructure to evolve to this standard and we are still not happy with it. VoIP has hardly been here. Just because you are able to write about it, does not make it a less complex industry. It has the complexities of any other industry and it does not have a regulator to resolve them. So please, give it some time and please stop making a knee jerk conclusion.

Rest assured that VoIP is here to stay and is evolving at a very fast rate. The numbers speak for themselves. A new bill plans to allow direct access to VoIP companies to the 911 systems. All these acknowledge the strength of VoIP. It is quite possible that both (the traditional companies and the VoIP) would cohabit and evolve a symbiotic relation in the future.

Probably the heading was to gather some traffic but I could not stop myself from reacting. Any comments?

This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok R. Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

Fring VOIP needs your feedback

Are you one of us who believe that Fring is the best mobile VOIP client out there? It doesnt matter what's your answer since here is your exclusive opportunity to Ask Fring Founders and product managers questions and suggest ideas to improve Fring VOIP service.

We will interview Fring Founders and Product Managers sometime this week. However, rather than we writing questions, we thought its a good idea that we can get some direct feedback from our great visitors.

So if you have any specific queries/suggestions/feedback about Fring Mobile VOIP, Please do drop your questions/feeeback under comments. We will choose the best of the lot and prepare the final interview questionnaire.

If you are still living in cave and don't know Whats Fring? Then you must read some of older posts or reviews about Fring VOIP.

Whats so special about Fring?

1) The first mobile VOIP company to enable auto-roaming on Wifi/3G network.

2) When T-mobile blocked VOIP on N95 in UK. Truphone struggled to get over this and finally went to court. However, Fring enabled VOIP on N95 with ease.

3) Integrated Messenger support on Fring. They recently started supporting ICQ on Fring

So what are you waiting for, this is a golden opportunity to ask question to Fring Founders and get most reliable answers about this great company and their future plans.

VOIP on Facebook worth it?

Yet another VoIP application in Facebook! This time babyTEL has launched a Facebook application called Telephone. Well, it is obviously good news for Facebook fans but I really had a tough time thinking of a practical use of this application, which cannot be accomplished with any of the existing applications that you already use. And, I could not come up with anything (let me know if you can find one).

Telephone allows you to make free calls to your Facebook friends. You can make calls using a small java runtime, eggphone. You can also initiate a call right from Facebook, provided both you and your friend have the eggphone up and running. In case your friend is not online, you can leave a voicemail. I do not want to spend too much time about the application, as I really feel it does not merit a long discussion. All of what Telephone has to offer can be achieved through any IM, which sits in your taskbar all the time.

The application works for both Facebook and babyTEL, but not the users.

Facebook: Facebook is just a platform and it needs content or application to increase the stickiness of the users. Applications like this just do that. They provide some additional functionality, even though it is infinitesimally small, to the user to motivate him to use Facebook for longer.

babyTEL: The company does not have a big name in VoIP. To gain some share of the VoIP market, it needs to create some noise in the market. Telephone does just that. It creates noise in the market and makes the user aware of the existence of the company. The cost …almost nil! Well, that's a smart move by babyTEL

Poor, Facebook users, they are just being used as scapegoats. Till last count there were 30 active users. I hope they will realize their mistake fast and leave the boat. Companies like babyTEL should realize that Facebookers' or people in general are not idiots to use an application like Telephone.

This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok R. Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

VOIP Business models

As the VoIP technology is maturing, we can see a plethora of companies launching their VoIP products. Not surprisingly, each has its own business model, which sometimes is quite different from a lot of others. Today, we try to look at the business models adopted by some of the big VoIP companies.

1) Advertising based VOIP: Advertising seems to be the business model for bulk of the VOIP providers on the internet today. Surprisingly, though, there are not too many of ad-supported VoIP products. Some of the notable exceptions are Click2Voice, thePudding, etc. Most of the advertisement based products are not complete offerings, in the sense that they have certain limitations. This could be restricted to certain geography (mostly within US) or they may have restriction on the length of call. So, if you were to use VoIP, relying on only these services may not be sufficient for you.

2) Phone based VOIP: These services hope to make money on the hardware that you purchase from them. Usually they bundle free calls for a certain period of time to certain locations and hope that you continue to use their offering beyond the free period and outside the free locations. Calls are usually free within the network, i.e. if both the parties have the hardware from the same company, the call is usually free. Examples in this category would be Ooma, PhoneGnome etc.

3)Pure VoIP: These are pure play VoIP providers that offer pure VoIP functionality. These can however be combined with hardware devices for added convenience, however that is not required. Players in this category usually offer the maximum geographical coverage. Some of the destinations are offered free to induce the customers. Free calls are limited and usually are available only if you pay for the base service. Players here make money on calls made outside the free locations and also when you pay for the base service. Prominent examples here are Jajah, Rebtel, TPad, Betamax companies like nonoh, voipdiscount, voipcheap etc.

Some companies have even extended the VoIP functionality beyond the desktop, to the mobile phones. This utilizes the data connection or the wifi connection to make calls. No free calls here, but isn't it the most convenient (only if you have a free or cheap data plan)? Examples here are Truphone, WiFiMobile, Fring, etc.

4) Pure hardware VOIP: These include hardware companies, which makes the use of the other VoIP service easier. These are not VoIP service providers themselves, but are hardware companies like Cisco. These companies make devices like USB VoIP phones, ATAs (e.g Linksys WIP 300, VoIP phones, etc. We will not get into the details of each, but for the sake of completeness, we can say that they enhance the usage of VoIP services.

5) VOIP Aggregators/Platforms/Others: These are not VoIP companies, per se, but they enable you to use VoIP more efficiently. This may include platforms like voxalot, mysipswitch, etc. Platforms allow you to combine several VoIP providers and utilize them efficiently. It may also include DID providers. DID allows you to receive calls directly from the traditional PSTN.

Well, none of these companies are here for charity, so it would be interesting to know how they do over a period of time and how their business models work. Meanwhile, I would request you to tell me how much have you spent on VoIP till date and on which category?


This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok R. Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

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How to make Free Voip Calls FAQ

We receive on average about 20 odd comments each day on various posts about Free Calls. Its sometimes hard to answer each and every query. This post would hopefully answer most of regular Free calls questions people ask here.

This post is part of Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) series which we started a few months back. This is part 2 of this post, you can read Free VOIP FAQ part 1

1) I am from Australia and would like to Call Hong Kong. Whats the best VOIP service to make free or cheaper calls to Hong Kong?

Answer: You can use Mediaringtalk or OwTalk to make totally free calls to Hong Kong. Mediaringtalk has limitation of 10 mins per calls however you can make multiple calls to the same number.

2) I am a russian living in London. I often call my family back in moscow and spent a fortune on calling cards. Its way too costly here, can you help me save money by making free calls to russia?

Answer: Sure. Why not. Kick your calling card company. If you have a PC/Laptop, just read our Free Calls to Russia Guide. You can save every penny spent on making calls to russia.

3) You keep talking about SIP based VOIP and making free calls via SIP. How do i actually make free calls with SIP?

Answer: SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is a protocol used for VOIP and followed by many leading VOIP providers. SIP being a protocol brings various providers together on single platform and allow interoperability.

The best part of using SIP is, everyone on SIP network has unique SIP URI which can be called via any other sip provider. This brings everyone together irrespective of the VOIP provider they are using. We written some good (people say great :-) guides for SIP. Maybe you can read about SIP Free Call Forwarding and LinkSys ATA WIP 300 SIP Phones to understand how SIP can be used to save money on international call.

Thats it for today. We will cover more such FAQ. If you have any specific question to ask, please drop comments. We will try to include it in next FAQ.

Mediaringtalk VOIP SIP Settings revealed

We know VOIP Guide users love mediaringtalk and the free calls offers they have been running for over 8 months now. Their offer is extended till november end. Now you have every reason to use Mediaringtalk with your favorite SIP client/ SIP phone.

MediaringTalk by default doesnt give you any SIP settings so we were stuck with using their SIP softphone. Mediaringtalk offers free calls to USA, Canada, Taiwan, china and many other countries. However, those who like to use SIP Phones to make free calls. We got some good news for you.

VOIP Guide's regular reader, Pavan Deshmukh has sent in a great Tip to use Mediaringtalk on any SIP Phone or SIP client.

The procedure to set up the ATA or soft phone for is :

1. Domain/ Realm: mediaringtalk.com
2. Sip Proxy: sip1.mediaringtalk.com:5080
3. Outbound proxy : sip2.mediaringtalk.com:5080

For dialing use 1XXXXXXXXXX for US and so on for UK / Australia and other countries that are free ( i.e country code and number).

Pavan also reported (we also noticed) that sometimes it takes 2 -3 atempts to connect. It gives SIP connection errors. However as long as its FREE and it works, I am sure we are happy to redial :-)

MediaringTalk is indeed a great free VOIP service and now VOIP Guide has made it SIP compatible. So Enjoy making free calls using your favorite SIP Client or SIP Phone.

If you are interested in buying a SIP Phone for yourself, You may like to read our exclusive review of Linksys WIP 300 SIP VOIP Phone.

We got some great feedback on LinkSys WIP 300 phone from our friends at Tpad. They reportedly ordered some after reading our review.

No more Innovation in VOIP ?

The other day, I was reading on a blog about how the VoIP innovation has died with Skype. This triggered a chain of thoughts in my mind. While I respect the counter views, I have a different opinion on the whole VoIP innovation. Firstly, this post is not about the management shakeout at Skype, nor is it about any other company in particular. It is about innovation in VoIP and how did Skype contributed (or did not contribute) towards it.

When Skype started out in 2003, traditional phone companies were ruling the roost. Skype was almost the initial few companies to bring VoIP to the masses and made a huge name for itself in the process. Over the next few years, Skype almost became synonymous with cheap calls (read VoIP). It was almost the telecom provider of the internet era. I am sure all of you reading this post would have used Skype at some point in your life. It had developed a huge and more importantly a loyal and evangelistic customer base. I remember how passionately people would write/discus about Skype, how to improve it, how to hack it, etc. In fact it was passionate followers like these which made Skype what it is. Skype really made a huge contribution to VoIP. Please note that I am using past tense in the above paragraph, since the growth trajectory has slowed and the company is definitely not on its initial path to glory.

Having praised Skype for all the good work, I would still not rate Skype as the most innovative company. Though it had the initial critical mass and the support, Skype is, unfortunately, not the one which has really helped in the VoIP innovation. In fact, most major innovations in VoIP have come from companies other than Skype. The first call over Wi-Fi was demonstrated by Truphone. Skype was not even the first company to introduce VoIP, we already had other companies. In fact a company called Vocaltec had probably first introduced their internet phone way back in 1996. Skype still does not support SIP or integration with other IMs. Look at web-callback, SIP, VoIP aggregation, VoIP on mobile, free calls (isn't that why you visit this site to regularly?), etc. All these have been brought to you by companies beyond Skype. Probably what Skype did well was to package the existing technology and make it easily available to the people.

This brings me to my next point. What is the real major innovation that we really want in VoIP? Let me put it this way, what would help VoIP move to the next level? Though I have some views on it (and would reserve them for the next post), but would like to hear from you. What are some features that you would like to see in a VoIP application and you think that could accelerate VoIP adoption.

This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok R. Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

SIP Discount offers free VOIP calls

We have seen many betamax services offering free voip or cheap calls to many destinations around the world. However not many offer SIP compatibility, which is a major issue for many of us.

Today, we are discussing a fairly old betamax service called SIP Discount. SIPDiscount is another betamax outfit but purely based on and works via SIP protocol. That means you can use SIP Discount via your favorite SIP client such as X-lite or your LinkSys SIP Phone or SIP ATA.

They offer free calls in following destinations:

Australia
Chile
Cyprus
Estonia
Hong Kong (+mobile)
Hungary
Iceland
Japan
Malaysia
Monaco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Panama
Puerto Rico (+mobile)
Russian Federation
Slovenia
South Korea
United Kingdom
United States (+mobile)

You can try their service by using a test SIP Account.

SIP settings:

User Name: test
Password: test
Domain/Realm: sipdiscount.com
SIP Proxy/registrar: sip.sipdiscount.com
SIP Outbound Proxy (optional): sip.sipdiscount.com
STUN server (optional): stun.sipdiscount.com

If you like the service, you may want to buy a few $$ talktime. however be aware, that betamax billing isnt really great and they sometimes screw up by billing hideen charges etc.

If you buy talktime, it will allow you to make Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days and per unique IP address.

so if you are one of the current happy betamax customer, you might want to explore SIPDiscount for pure simplicity of SIP based cheap calls.

Evolution of VOIP-Voice

First it was snail mail, then email, what next?

It is not too long ago that we used to correspond through snail mails. I still remember writing post cards and dropping them in the post boxes. Not any more, I can communicate with anyone using email. It has changed the dynamics of communication. I think (and this is again crystal ball gazing) that the next wave of communication revolution would be voice or more technically VOIP. Please note that I am focusing more on the enterprise VOIP segment here. I, obviously, don't mean that voice is not used for communication, but the written form (email and others) still rules.

Well, it is not too difficult to figure this out, if you understand the motivation behind communication. As human beings, communication is our inherent need and communication is incomplete without a feedback. Communication essentially has two legs, a message which goes from the sender to the receiver and a response which flows in the other direction. Delay in any leg can be frustrating for both the parties involved. The entire evolution in communication has been to make the delay as small as possible.

Let us look at the evolution of communication over the period of time. Initially we had people taking the messages then it were birds carrying them. Next we had the postal services and then we had the courier companies. Off late we have had email, IM and telephones. Notice how the communication loop closes almost instantly these days.

The cost of providing instant communication (read Voice based) earlier was high. Even though companies would have loved to interact with the customers, the costs involved for both the parties prevented that and hence they relied on other means of communication. Now, with the cost of voice communication dropping substantially (coz of VOIP) companies would readily adopt this means of communication to be closer to their customers. We already have Cisco, which is big in this area. Microsoft is planning to launch its Office Communication Server, Google's GrandCentral and Yahoo are also tinkering with their VOIP offering. So on one hand the bandwidth becoming cheaper and on the other hand we have (or would soon have) the complementary technology to take advantage of it. The aim of these big players is not to enable us to make cheap calls back home; they are all targeting the enterprise segment. VoIP can be really big in this area and it would impact all our lives in a much bigger way.

This will also have a trickle down effect on consumer VoIP. The entry of the big players will give the much required boost the VoIP industry. We can then expect more economies of scale, improvements in functionalities, etc. This phenomenon is already happening gradually. Lot of companies, Universities, etc. have adopted VoIP and are reaping the benefits. We will surely see more of it in times to come. The entry of the Google/Microsoft would be a trigger for a shakeout in VoIP.

We will surely witness lot of action in the immediate future.

Voice is here to stay and so is VoIP!!!

This article is written by our VoIP news editor Alok Saboo. Alok is pursuing his PhD in Marketing at the Pennsylvania State University.

Click2Voice offers free calls to many countries

Just when you thought Talkplus party is over, we gave you some more free calls offers and now something really good to make free calls to many destinations worldwide.

Click2Voice a pretty small VOIP based call routing service is offering free calls to many destinations worldwide. Click2Voice is offering free calls to US/Canada, Greece,Netherlands, Belgium, France,Spain, Ireland, Hungary,Italy, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Christmas Island, Russia, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Israel.

You can make call to or from any of the above countries. Unfortunately India or Pakistan is not included in the free calling program.

How to use Click2Voice to make Free VOIP Calls:

1) Register at Click2Voice

2) Login into Click2Voice
3) Now you can make calls to any of the above destinations.
4) Select your country, Enter your number
5) Select your party's country and enter the number
6) Click Call.
7)Click2Voice will callback your number and then connect your party.
8)Each call is limited to 15 mins. You can however call back again.


The best part is of course callback service feature. Who doesnt like using your traditional phone for making free calls. Using headphones is sometimes gets too messy and end up in broken neck :-)

So if you belong to any of the above countries, Give Click2Voice a try. We found the voice quality to be good with some lag. However its not too bad for a Free calling service.

We also found a bug in the system which doesnt refresh the page after you finished your call. You can however override the numbers and call other destination. We suspect they use SIP at the backend to route calls but maybe Click2Voice can confirm this.

Happy Calling with Click2Voice VOIP!