Verizon Hub VOIP Phone Service Review

With strong reports of VOIP Phone Service sales might do even better in 2009, Verizon has launched their own VOIP Phone Service called the Verizon Hub.

Verizon Wireless has launched Verizon Hub, a VOIP-based, Linux-powered home phone service last week. The Verizon Hub plugs into a home broadband line and acts as a VOIP Phone, family calendar, limited Web browser, messaging center, digital picture frame.

Verizon's idea is to provider a full fledge video conference service on VOIP Phone with video calls.

Verizon Hub is based on OpenPeak's OpenFrame design. The Verizon Hub is an 8-inch, 800x480 touchscreen device and has a single DECT 6.0 cordless phone. One very important thing that people are often confused. Do I have to buy Verizon FIOS Internet connection to use Verizon Hub? The answer is NO. Verizon Hub will work with any internet service provider.

Some Key Features of Verizon Hub VOIP Phone Service:

1) Wifi Enabled Hub Phone
2) Available from Feb. 1 for $199 with a two-year contract and after a $50 mail-in rebate
3) Built in GPS like features to search for restaurants, bars, banks.
4) Large color touchscreen with Calender, Weather updates, Voicemails etc.
5) Verizon Hub goes social with features like movie trailers,you can buy tickets rightaway from your hub.
6) Compatibility with Verizon Wireless' "Chaperone" service
7) Unlimited domestic calling (including the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands) for $34.99 a month

Now will there be any takers for Verizon Hub? As a Phone consumer in USA would you like to switch to this sexy Verizon Hub or stay with your current VOIP or Home Phone Provider?

Cheap Call to India at Recession Rates

Recession is taking a toll on everyone's personal finances. Making a Low cost call using international phone cards or even VOIP Providers can save some money off your international calling expenses.

LocalPhone, winner of Best Cheap International Call Provider of 2008 award has reduced its calling rates to India even further to 3.3 cents only. I know its not the cheapest but as I always said, the best thing about LocalPhone is their Quality of Service, Prompt Customer Service and ease of use. They provide 66000 local access numbers in over 44 countries around the world. On top of it, they give you Free 5 Local numbers which you can directly forward to any phone number in the world. This feature is completely free, they only charge you for making calls to these numbers at their advertised rate. Trust me this comes in handy. I call home from anywhere in Singapore by just dialing the local number (Free as in included in local calls) and it automatically connects me to India number. No PINS no account numbers to remember.

However, they also provide a calling card in built in your account which you can use anywhere in the world (44 countries). This calling card is assigned to your account and shares the same credit as your localphone account.

If you are currently not using VOIP, you are loosing hell lot of money on international calling. Its time to switch to VOIP and start saving. You can get started with LocalPhone if you haven't already.

We would also like to hear your thoughts on LocalPhone as existing user. Any improvements or feature request can be posted under comments and I will ensure that LocalPhone takes a note of it and starts working towards the feature.

FlashPhone VOIP became Flaphone

Rebranding and Repositioning your firm in this highly competitive marketplace is a necessity for many companyies. Flasphone has reliased that sticking to their russian VOIP company label wouldn't get them much attention on the international scene.

Flashphone.ru is now official FlaPhone. A new website but the same service. However they made some good changes to their existing SIP Platform by adding support for Video Conference Calls using the latest Video Codecs.

One of the reason I posted this because there are huge number of Flashphone.ru VOIP service users on VOIP guide and its important for them to know that all user data was moved to new service.That means all flashphone.ru users and their accounts, including SIP accounts moved to flaphone.com, they can login and continue using flaphone service.

Flaphone is also one of the very first Flash based SIP service which is built using Adobe Air. You would surely need Adobe 10 Flash Player for FlaPhone.

1) Now users can use contact list.
2)You can add/edit/remove SIP accounts right in flash app
3)You can check call history.
4)can send and receive instant messages to each other and to/from SIP because flaphone supports SIP IM
5) flapone supports new flash player 10 feature - Speex audio codec, it supports h263/h263+/h264 codecs for SIP video calls, it supports fullscreen video chat.
6) Improved CallMe Widget now has DTMF tone recognition.

We believe FlaPhone's new interface looks lot slick and easy to navigate. If only, their free calls to Russia offer works as advertised. Whenever I tried It never worked. I am not sure if this offer is valid anymore but would love to see it enabled for some quick user experience.

Nymgo VOIP SIP Configuration Settings

Nymgo has really taken off as a great VOIP Provider for long distance calls and are able to provider quality service (still need improvement though). However many people have asked how to Configure SIP with Nymgo on Mobile and SIP Phone. Hopefully this Nymgo SIP Configuration Guide should help you configure Nymgo on your SIP Phone.

I would like to thank Wecaz and many others who contributed to this article through their comments.

The most basic SIP Configuration of Nymgo which should work with third party SIP Softphones such as Xlite is as follows:

SIP Server Or SIP Proxy Server: ata.nymgo.com
SIP User ID: nymgo username
Authenticate ID: nymgo username
SIP password: nymgo password
SIP Port: 5060
Codec Used: g729
STUN Server: stun.nymgo.com
STUN port: 80

The tricky part is enabling Nymgo on your Nokia or any other SIP enabled Mobile Phone. Wecaz written an excellent comments regarding setting up Nymgo on Nokia E51 and The SIP settings he used to configure his E51.

Public username : sip:myusername@nymgo.com
Service profile : IETF

Use compression : No
Registration : When needed
Use security : No

Proxy address :sip:ata.nymgo.com
Realm : ata.nymgo.com

Username: username (without @ata.nymgo.com)

Password: password
Allow Loose routing :Yes
Transport : UDP
Port : 5060

Registrar address : sip:ata.nymgo.com
Realm : ata.nymgo.com

Username: username (without @ata.nymgo.com)
Password: password
Transport : UDP
Port : 5060

Now Lets see the Nymgo SIP configuration on Linksys PAP2 or any other Linksys based IP Phones.

Proxy: ata.nymgo.com
Make call without Registration: No
Answer call without Registration: No
Register: YES
Register expires: 3600
Display name: Your name and last name
User ID:Nymgo username*
Password: Nymgo password*
Auth ID:Nymgo username*
Use Auth ID:YES
Preferred Codec:G729
Use Preferred Codec only:YES
DTMF Tx Method:RFC2833
Silence Supp Enable:YES
Fax CED Detect Enable:YES

Now Lets see how you can configure Nymgo on Fring:

STEP 1
Choose SIP from the list (press your joystick in to select items in the list) and press Next using your right soft key.

STEP 2
A new screen appears choose "Other" from the list.

STEP 3
Enter the following for Registrar Server settings:
User ID
Password
SIP proxy
your Nymgo username*
your Nymgo account password *
ata.nymgo.com
* Your existing Nymgo username and password

STEP 4
Once Fring is registered to make a SIP call:
1. Choose a contact in your address book and press "Options" using your left soft key.

2. From the Call submenu, choose "SIP call". Your call is made using the Nymgo account you have added.

We hope this Nymgo SIP Configuration Guide will help you setup Nymgo with SIP. Let us know if you need further help with configuration.

Free Calls to China

At VOIP Guide, we track every festival season for Free VOIP Offers. The CNY is over the weekend and we have some great free voip deals coming in from several VOIP Providers. Today, we look at how to make free calls to China with the ongoing VOIP promotions.

Everybody knows that LocalPhone is our favorite VOIP Provider. They were voted as the best cheap international call provider in 2008 by our readers. LocalPhone today sent us a promotional giveaway email saying they will be running a free calls to china promotion during chinese new year.

LocalPhone promotion for Free Calls to China is as follows:

Localphone are giving away free calls each day of the Chinese New Year festival. Your first 20 minutes of calls to Chinese landlines or mobiles each day will be completely free, which comes to a massive 5 hours of free talk time over the 15 days.

Important note regarding the free calls to china promotion:

Please note that The Chinese New Year promotion begins at 00:00 China Standard Time (GMT +8) on 26th January and ends at 23:59:59 on 9th February 2009. Calls to China during this period will be charged at the standard rate of 0.8p per minute and after the promotion has completed you will receive a rebate in the form of Localphone credit for the first twenty minutes of call time used each day.

Besides that LocalPhone has added three more countries to their access list Malta, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. That means localphone is probably not sets a new record for having highest numbers of access numbers all over the world. LocalPhone's total coverage now became an impressive 66,702 access numbers in 44 countries around the world. Thats huge. Trust me their access number service is extremely cool. You can assign upto 5 numbers for your contacts and they give you local numbers in your country. Just dial those numbers and your call is directly connected to the party. No crappy voice menus, PIN numbers to remember.

Go make free calls to china with LocalPhone.

Free Long Distance Calls to Asia on CNY

Free Long distance calls to anywhere in the world is a dream come true. However you are lucky if you are a Rogers Cable customer in Canada. VOIP Guide has huge fan following in Canada and thousands of canadians visit our blog everyday.

This is to inform you all canadians that if you are a existing Rogers Cable Customer, you would get unlimited free long distance calls to Asia on Chinese new year on 25th and 26th January.

You can call china, hong kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore from Jan. 25 8:00am to Jan. 26 8:00am (Local Canada time).

Please note that due to overusage during this promotional perid, often calls don't go through. Let's hope Rogers took extra care of the exceptionally high long distance calls load.

The official website of Rogers has more promotional details in Chinese. I could only understand the minor details :-)

I wish you all a happy CNY. Gong Xi Fa Cai ! kung hei fat choi!

Truroots offering 1000 mins free talktime for Republic Day

Tata Telecommunications owned Truroots is offering a good deal for existing and new truroots users for Republic day. Althought Truroots Calling Service is not the cheapest in the world, there are still huge number of people using Truroots calling cards.

You can Sign up or re-charge your account at Truroots; choose from any one of the talk plans mentioned below. The higher your talktime recharge more free talktime will be alloted to you.

Please note that this republic day free talktime offer will end on February 2, 2009 09:00 am EST.



For those who never used Truroots, its a calling card service by Tata Telecom (VSNL managed). They offers cheap international calls to over 200 countries and mainly to India. Their standard calling rate to India is 6.9 cents per minute.

You can use the following Truroots Access Numbers.

To call from the U.K.: 0800 635 TATA (8282) or 0207 177 7272
To call from the U.S.: 1 866 925 TATA (8282)
To call from Canada : 1 866 925 TATA (8282)

We would rate Truroots as a competitive service, however not the cheapest. You would on the other hand get a reliable telecom provider such as Tata Telecom (VSNL) who would route all your calls which gives you a great voice quality and good customer service.

Happy Republic Day to all Indians and lets hope we have a peaceful 2009.

Not VOIP Hosted VOIP will rock 2009

We have noticed that several VOIP blogs around the world are claiming that VOIP usage especially in the SMB sector will surge in 2009 due to bad economy and cost cutting measures taken by businesses. We think otherwise.

Making a simple equation as Bad Economy = Surge in VOIP usage is a wrong assumption. There are still 30-40% businesses worldwide who do not understand how VOIP is going to save any cost for them. VOIP is not POTS yet, period.

However I still agree that VOIP will eventually go mainstream and in fact, traditional telecom will have to compete with VOIP at some time but still we aint there yet.

On Paper, we can assume that a switch to VOIP will save your cost. However we need to be more rational, there is always a cost associated with a switch. You would need hardware,softwares etc. Many Small businesses or even enterprise level companis will think twice before making the shift. Look at all the credit crunch around us.

Secondly, we should not forget the basics of budgeting cost. If the companies haven't budgeted any cost of switching to VOIP in 2009, they are most likely not going to add it as adhoc project cost. It's just way too stupid to even believe that. That means only those companies who made a budget for a switch to VOIP would look at the option of switching to VOIP.

Again, they have a cheaper option of Hosted VOIP.(might not be cheaper in the long run.). However the startup cost for Hosted VOIP is far lower than buying your hardware yourself and maintaining it. You possibly save time and cost and of course resources.

In our opinion, besides the residential VOIP market slated to expand this yea, we do not see any major shift in businesses adpoting to VOIP unless they already accounted for. Unfortunately, we might see many VOIP Providers going down this year. The sunrocket story might just be repeated. I wouldn't like to take names here,but I know a few feeling the pain.

If you think otherwise, Please feel free to add comments or respond on your blog about this article.

Free.fr offers Unlimited Calls to India

Unlimited Calls to India market is hotting up once again and with many mainstream large Telecom operators entering this markets, the prices are getting pushed down even further.

This time, a Frech ISP and telecom company "FREE.fr" is running a promotion. If you take their Internet+Telephone+TV offer for 30 euros, you will get unlimited calls to over 87 countries worldwide. This includes India Landline.

Thanks to anonymous comments for the information. If you live in France, you better jump on this offer. One of the reason to signup for this offer is you are signing up with a Large telecom provider, which ensures reliability and customer service quality.

I am mostly wary of small VOIP Providers claiming big stuff and as their volumes grow, they can't manage the call volumes which results in pathetic voice quality, call drops..

I hope now more and more mainstream telecom providers start offering free calls to south east asia as a part of their residential Phone Package.

EarthCaller VOIP Service out of Business?

Thousands of people reported to me over the last few days that they can't access the popular north american free calls service Earthcaller. We did a few checks and founds that EarthCaller is indeed not working anymore and most likely not going to work anymore in future.

Earthcaller is a product of Jaduka Labs and been running for well over a year. It's one of the most widely used VOIP service to call north american telephone numbers over the internet.

Why did Jaduka pull the plug on Earthcaller?

1) Cost: Many people still do not know that when a VOIP service provider offers free voip calls, he still pays for it. Takes all the expenses on his head and gives you a free call. Even though calling USA numbers is very cheap, its still a cost.

2) Excessive Calls from International Users: Jaduka always wanted EarthCaller to be used by native americans than anyone else in the world. One of the primary concerns is lack of Advertising potential and abuse of the service.

3) EarthCaller most likely will be replaced by DukaDial(Free Phone to Phone Calls only in north america) and DukaUS (free conference service). It makes more business sense for Jaduka to restrict their services to North American audience only.

Does this signify a major shift in the Free VOIP Market?

Yes, This could signify that VOIP Firms are looking for ways to cut down costs, make money through targeted advertising and create a north american base. Its extremely valuable to have a database of north americans that users in Asia. Trust me it counts.

We did some further investigation at Jaduka Labs to only find that EarthCaller is no more listed there, which simply tells us they quietly closed down EarthCaller for good.

That leaves you with a few choices to make free international calls to USA. I would recommend Mediaringtalk.

ALLVOI Unlimited Home Phone Service Review

We had look at many unlimited home phone service and unlimited calling packages in the past, most of them however failed to live upto their promises. A good example is YupeePhone. Today we look at a new VOIP Provider called AllVOI.

ALLVOI is a chicago based home phone service provider who offers unlimited calling packages for domestic USA calls and international calls. The lowest calling package starts at $3.99 per month which gives you 500 Minutes for Domestic (USA), Canada, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, only 3 cents per minute after 500 minutes, plus Free Unlimited In-Network Calling. This seems like one of the cheapest calling packages in USA. They also offer a decent $19.99 per month plan which promises to give Unlimited calling to 65 Popular International Destinations and Domestic (USA), Canada, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, plus Free Unlimited In-Network Calling.The international plan also includes Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain.

Another interesting plan is Unlimited India Calling Plan. I wouldn't qualify that as unlimited. To be very honest, no one can offer a unlimited calling package to India or for that matter anywhere in the world. There is always a fair usage policy, some VOIP Provider publish the exact number of minutes allowed under the Unlimited Plan and some VOIP Provider just make it more difficult by saying "National Average Monthly Usage". I personally tend to favour companies who are upfront in giving more detail about their product offering.

ALLVOI although not exactly unlimited atleast tells us clearly that they offer 500 minutes at $19.99 per month which works out to 4 cents per minute. This is not exactly a very cheap rate. There are some VOIP providers like Mediaring offering calls to India at 1.9 cents per minute. ALLVOI is also a fairly new VOIP Provider with little or no background about customer service, Voice Quality which we hope some of our readers can comment on.

Considering multiple factors, I would stay away from ALLVOI for the time being. However it definately has the potential to become a successful VOIP Provider if they cut down the rate close to 2 cents per minute + reliability of service + good voice quality + customer service.

Most of you already know that my favorite VOIP Provider to call India is LocalPhone. Their rates are not the lowest to India but their voice quality, ease of use (access numbers) and customer service amazes me. In a extremely short time, they have overpowered some of the veteran VOIP Providers.

If you are currently using ALLVOI, we would like to know your ALLVOI review.

Free Anonymous phone numbers by LetsCall.me

Its increasingly important to anonymize yourself especially your phone numbers online. There are already some free anonymous phone number services available and letscall.me offers a similar service for usa and canada numbers.

Most of the free anonymous phone number services are limited to USA, but letscall.me goes beyond USA and offers canada access.


Some of the important features of LetsCall.me:

-Accept calls anonymously without revealing your phone number
-No caller id blocking
-You can block unwanted calls
-Pick your own url, such as letscall.me/vinay
-Your phone will ring with the other person's Caller ID - since the other person needs to receive the call first, they cannot fake their number
-Talk as much as you want as often as you like. That means no limit of number of minutes or how many times you can use the service. Its unlimited phone calls.

There a few other services worth checking out namely iNumbr.

Doddle Web Based SIP phone Service

VOIP is evolving everday and SIP is a core component of VOIP. Today, there are lots of SIP Softphones and SIP based VOIP services. To keep up with them and secondly, using SIP Softphones on the go.

The biggest problem with SIP based softphones is the availability. You must have them on your PC wherever you go. That means if you want to access your softphone from office, you need to install it again and so on.

Doddle is a SIP Phone service which lets you use your SIP account anywhere in the world via their web based SIP service. The good thing is they already have a few popular SIP services pre-configured, so you don't even have to configure their SIP.

Doodle is no fancy stuff, its just let you use the most basic SIP functionality and ask you the most basic information about your SIP service. There are similar services provided by Tringme in their account manager. However, there are no pre-configured SIP service in there and again you need a Tringme account.

Doodle is no registration service. Just start using the moment you are on their homepage. Doodle currently only supports Windows Based OS and SIP / RTP Protocols.

Doodle supports G.711 / GSM codecs and most of the latest browsers.

How to make calls using Doddling:

1. Go to Doddling.
2. Accept the warning security, click Run
3. Click Ok in the Welcome Message
4. Enter your VoIP Provider Settings
5. Click Login
6. After the “Login ok” message you are ready to make a
phone Call.
7. Digit the phone’s number.
8. Click Call
9. Enjoy

Let us know your feedback on Doddle, the new Web based SIP Phone Service.

Free Calls to 0870 0845 UK Premium Rate Numbers

in UK, 0870 and 0845 are the premium rate non-geographic numbers, that means these numbers are do not tie to any UK county and can be assigned anywhere in the world by a Local UK Telephone company.

You may get these telephone numbers free of cost online. However, Up until now customers on BT’s Evening and Weekend or Anytime deals received free calls to UK landlines, but had to pay extra to call 0845 and 0870 numbers. Average charges to 0870 and 0845 non-geographic numbers starts from 5 pens and can go as high as 10 pens per minute, which is extremely costly. Its obvious that these are premium rate numbers. One of the reason some VOIP Providers give these numbers for FREE, so that i can make some money off the termination cost :-) Pretty slick business model.

However, this premium rate numbers will now be FREE, yes. BT has announced that calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers would be free to customers with inclusive call packages. With this change, BT will be the first telecoms firm to include these calls in its all-inclusive deals. Customers on its Anytime package, which costs £4.85 a month, will be not be charged for dialling 0870 and 0845 numbers. So they can phone these numbers as much as they like without worrying about the cost.

Mind you, but this is a great and big new for everyone in UK calling these premium rate numbers. Now they can make calls for FREE inclusive of their calling plans. Now if you are using Talktalk or NTL, you are still not lucky. However looking at the stiff competition in the home phone business in UK, the rest of the companies might follow BT soon.

Please note that these numbers will be FREE inclusive of the deals,that means they are still charged but in your inclusive minutes.

What I am most interested to follow is, since these numbers are largely used by Providers who offer them for FREE, will they continue to do so? How well they can manage the termination cost? will the termination cost remain the same? Only time can reveal this. In the mean time, go enjoy the free calls to 0870 0845 numbers on BT network.

Ooma launches Telo VOIP Phone Service

Ooma VOIP Phone Service has been in the news this december for slashing their prices by well over 70% and the Ooma VOIP Phone system is now available for even cheaper price. Ooma is however busy launching a new VOIP Phone Service called Telo.

Telo is next generation home phone system and comes with cordless handset with DECT 6.0, which is capable of HD voice and comes equipped with connected phonebook, mobile transfer and speaker phone. Teleo is the premier phone system that offers unlimited US calling for free, with no monthly fees, and huge savings on international calls. At this time, the most confusing part is why a new VOIP Phone service when Ooma already exist?



Telo will be available in the first half of 2009 and is on display in the Las Vegas Convention Center Grand Lobby GL1a at the 2009 International CES. Ooma says, Telo would help combine the home phone and cell phone so you can enjoy the benefits of both without any compromises. GrandCentral extended as VOIP Phone Service???

Unfortunately besides the standard PR release, Ooma didnt give out much information on Telo making us to believe that Telo is just another VOIP Phone service with a twist in the brand name?

However, We still believe if you are looking at save significant cost on your phone bills and if you live in USA, you should switch to VOIP. There is no better time than act today. Ooma is available at Amazon for only $219 (original price $399). That means you already save well over $180 on the retail price.

Oomagives unlimited phone calls across united states and comes bundled with all the features of a VOIP Phone Service and most importantly you only pay once and never again. You buy the Ooma box and get their service for lifetime. Not like any other VOIP Phone service where you keep paying the monthly fees and get yourself tied in crappy contracts. Go look at Ooma today.

We will update on Ooma Telo VOIP Phone Service as we get more information.

Reliance iCall hack for Worldwide Free Calls

Woot!Finally, we got the best of Reliance iCall Hack. This VOIP hack is a workaround to make totally free VOIP Calls anywhere in the world using Reliance iCall.

As many of you already know that there are lots of these access number services around the world,mainly in UK and Australia. I am not going to put a long list of these access number companies but you can find them online.
Now these access number based free calling services offers totally free international calls in lieu of you calling one of their access numbers via mobile and they get paid at premium rate. They get the cut, you make the free calls coz you have those minutes under your mobile plan. Sounds all good, but what if you don't live in UK or Australia or USA? How can you utilise those services.

There comes the ultimate Reliance iCall Hack. Use reliance icall to dial one of those access numbers and then follow the procedure according to the access number service.

Let me give you a live example of australian access number working great to call India. Please do not overload the numbers. (All thanks to a anonymous commentator who give away this idea. )

1. Use Reliance Icall to call +61 424 215 152 and than press 1.
2. Dial 001191XXXXXXXX

This way, you can utilise any service to make calls anywhere in the world, as long as that service offers a free international call termination to that country. Reliance icall will only be used to make calls to that access numbers, your actual call is still carried through by the service provider.

Secondly, those who are wondering how to use SIP on Reliance iCall. Here are the settings of Reliance iCall.

SIP Proxy : 220.224.129.34:5060
user Id: reliance icall username
password : reliance icall password

Reliance icall is free only till 15th January. Make your new year a real good one with this hack :-)

Reliance iCall offers free international VOIP Calls

Reliance Globalcom has entered the VOIP space with Reliance iCall. Beware all Free VOIP Providers, Reliance can give you a run for your money. They are now offering totally free international VOIP Calls to multiple locations.

Reliance Globalcom is one of the biggest carriers in the world and now they have launched Reliance iCall. With acquisiton of Flag telecom a few years back, the industry analyst believe over 85% of international call traffic is crossing through reliance network. Thats huge and massive for any telecom company. As we all know because being a leader in telecom, reliance can offer their partner rates as close to 1 cent to India. They are currently offering calls to india at 4.49 cents.

The big news is they are offering free international calls as a part of their launch promotion. You can make totally free international VOIP Calls to the following countries: USA,UK,Canada,Germany,China,France,Australia,Singapore,Japan,Brazil. This includes landling and mobile as well. WOW, UK mobile for FREE? Thats just too good to be true.

The bad news is the free calls are only available till 15th January 2008, so make the most of it before this free voip calls offer is over.

RelianceiCall works via their softphone, which you can download. We still do not know SIP settings for Reliance iCall. They are not published anywhere and a ping to sip.relianceicall.com doesnt not give any response.

We strongly suggest you give them a try. Never miss a Free VOIP service and especially from Reliance :-). If you are using Reliance India Call, then Reliance icall can be good alternative.

Qttel.com offers Unlimited free VOIP calls

We are already in 2009 and expecting that more and more VOIP Providers join the "free VOIP" revolution and offers unlimited free international calls around the world.

Today we take a look at Qttel, a simple Phone to Phone based VOIP Service which promises to give unlimited free voip calls to over 50 countries. Thanks to comment on our VOIP Provider of the Year 2008, thats where we discovered about this service, which seem to have changed the name recently. I remember using this service but a non-free version of it.

You must enter your number in international format.

We have embedded their softphone into this post, you can start making calls right now. Use the following Qttel widget to make free calls.



QtTel is however a browser based VOIP service. It askes you to enter your phone number and your party's number and then Call. Qttel will first call you and then call the destination number. The biggest limitation of this service is it only works for 5 countries, Australia (FIX only),Canada (FIX & GSM!),UK (FIX only),Holland (FIX only),USA (FIX & GSM!). That means only people from this country can make calls. Of course if you have a incoming phone number from any of these country you should be able to receive calls from Qttel and of course make free voip calls.

Please note all calls are limited to 5 minutes but it seems you may dial the same number and over and over. Please let us know your feedback on Qttel.

VOIP Provider of the Year 2008 Winners Declared

Finally, we got all the results from our VOIP Provider of the Year 2008 Polls. There were multiple categories in which these VOIP Provider battled out against their close competitors. Read the full report.

We had multiple categories for VOIP Provider of the Year 2008. Around 1000 voters voted on some of the best VOIP Providers and chose the best in each category.

Lets analyse the results. There are some very shocking results.

1) Free International Call Providers: Over 517 users voted for this category.

Winner of Free International Call Provider in 2008: PokeTalk.

PokeTalk won this category with 167 votes, but it was a close finish with 160 votes for Mediaring, making it a very tough competitor to Poketalk. Surprisingly, Betamax lagged behind with barely 72 votes. Another indication that people are most likely fed up with their policies and billing issues.



2)Cheap International Call Provider: No surprises here. Localphone totally washed away all competitors. I guess its time for other VOIP Providers to start looking at Localphone as their leader and learn from them. As I always said, Localphone is my current most favorite VOIP Provider.

Total 268 votes were registered. Localphone got 174 and the closest competitor was Betmax with 47 votes.See the huge difference. again betamax loosing on because of their policies. Surprisingly Rebtel and Mediaring didnt get many votes.



3)Residential Phone Service Provider: Again, Two fairly new companies dominated over the veterans here. Lingo and PhonePower got same number of votes, Vonage lagged behind. There was a tie between Lingo and PhonePower. We highly recommend PhonePower(Read PhonePower Reviews), since its the cheapest residential phone service provider in USA today.



4) Best SIP Softphones in 2008: This was one off Poll, to see the interest amongst users for SIP Softphones. As we said Xlite is still extremely popular. Xlite got over 46 votes from the total of 80, clearly showing that it dominates this market.



If anyone wants detailed reports of this poll, please contact me on ut(dot)godmode@gmail.com. The results from this poll were exciting and i hope they give good indication to VOIP companies on how they are doing and where they need to work on. Hopefully we see a great 2009 for VOIP. Wish you all a very happy new year!