Source: goebel.net

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Just a fast news break: O2 in Germany is not blocking the phone numbers of Rebtel anymore. Their blog says "Victory! Rebtel is officially back in town and were planning on staying for a loooong time without any unexpected interruptions." I just heard the good news from my contacts and already did some Rebtel calls with a German SIM card from O2. Rebtel’s CEO Hjalmar Winbladh is very happy that the pressure from thousands of Rebtel users made this breakthrough possible. He had had asked to write emails to the boss of O2 in Germany, Mr. Jaime Smith Basterra (jaime.smith@o2.com) or call the O2 support desk on 0049 179 55 22 2. Hjalmar told me in an email:

"We are very grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from our users. They proved that together we can make a difference. O2 would not have changed their mind without our users mailing, visiting and calling O2’s CEO and customer support. Thank you all Rebtel friend! People can now stay in touch their loved ones again and afford to pay for it. We hope this has shown other operators that people do not accept being told who they can call and if they can use VOIP-services or not. We will continue to support our users and offer some of the world’s lowest rates and best quality calling."

It cannot be overheard: Rebtel is happy, but they also send a message to incumbent telco operators to never try that again. Actually not only the Swedish company was affected. There are still more callthrough services and chatlines which see their numbers constrained by O2 and E-Plus in Germany. Their numbers are blocked or "limited", which is an especially nasty trick that user handytim explains in the web forum Telefon-Treff.de: "The numbers are not blocked, only limited. In my test I could only establish 1 connection out of 100 trials". While blocking of certain phone numbers is illegal for mobile operators, limiting seems to allowed to save their bandwith. One has to ask what’s the difference to a blockade if really one of 100 calls comes through.

The affected companies are listed in a Google Spreadsheet which forum user Vesko keeps up to date: Budgetmobil, DialNow, Calleasy, voipwise.com, nonoh.net, VoipBusterPro, yipl.de, Chat House, Bluerate, Speed-Chat, partyknack.de, 030chat.de and Phonecaster. As you might notice there are several Betamax services among them. If the company wasn’t so reluctant to talk to its users, Betamax could make a similar call for help.

Source: goebel.net

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Om Malik has asked "Is Nokia Turning Its Back on MobileVoIP?", pinpointing to the fact that the new Nseries devices N78 and N96 lack an own SIP client, while Nokia before embraced mobile VoIP on it’s Nseries and Eseries devices. Charlie Schick of Nokia Conversations says the report of the death of VoIP has been "grossly exaggerated" and people like Phoneboy, Gizmo5’s Michael Robertson or the company Truphone are buying that argumentation, although it has its flaws. Truphone, Gizmo5 and Fring must have realized immediately that they are winning from Nokia’s move. That’s why they are holding back their horses.

Nokia says that it’s no problem that they have removed the native SIP client from their latest handsets, since companies can develop their own VoIP software based on great APIs. But it’s not as easy as Nokia is trying to say: There are hundreds or thousands of companies without an own software for mobile VoIP. They just rely on the SIP standard. In Germany it’s GMX, 1&1, Sipgate and the several Betamax daughters. Together they have millions of customers, I am one of them. These people cannot use VoIP on the new Nokia phones. I have always ten or more VoIP providers installed on my Nokia E61i’s SIP client. This way I can always use the cheapest route and leverage free on net calls.

It would be nasty if had to install ten or more pieces of software for that purpose. It’s already annoying that Truphone requires a special software because they don’t give me my SIP password. That’s a perversion of the idea of standards. If I need a special software for every company’s offer why is there a standard called SIP?

So as a VoIP tinkerer I have to stay with the older Nokia devices, or at most I can change to the E71. But Nokia’s new Symbian release, S60 3.2, is no option for me – as long as it has no own SIP client. It’s obvious why companies like Fring, Truphone, Gizmo5, Vyke and others are applauding the Nokia move. It ties their customer to them and makes it more difficult to use other companies’ offers. With a native SIP client, which allows to be connected to several different SIP services at the same time, I can be promiscuous. Even the most disruptive mobile VoIP companies prefer to lock me in their walled garden, but I don’t want that.

I still believe that pressure from mobile operators has caused this move of Nokia. HSDPA and HSUPA have brought great bandwith to the latest handsets, enough to use it for Voice over 3G. With the right voice codec you can talk about 15 minutes and use only 1 Megabyte of data. Filtering for VoIP packets slows down the mobile data networks and therefore it’s not very common. If you combine that with the right VoIP provider, like Betamax, this means free mobile phone calls to more than 30 countries. Only data prices apply.

Source: goebel.net

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In the last weeks I received many messages from people who want to start a lawsuit against the VoIP company Betamax from Cologne, Germany. They feel betrayed by the mothership of Voipstunt, Voipcheap, Sparvoip, Lowratevoip, Nonoh and other offers. Something must have gone wrong with their billing or they believe that Betamax wrongfully charged too much. Aside from the problem that Betamax themselves are apparently victim of a scam, I can only say that for me everything works flawlessly. But I get the impression that many users don’t understand the company’s Terms of Service. This morning a Betamax user called Robert wrote:

The company I work for happens to be in Moscow so I call them regularly. Why do they suddenly want to charge me for these calls? It doesn’t make any difference whether I call the U.S.A., Italy or Russia. They are all free and perhaps I call Moscow three times a day but perhaps twice a week.

I told him to first look at the website http://backsla.sh/betamax. There you can always see the latest prices and you will realize that with most Betamax companies you can call Russia’s landline phones for free, within a Fair Use Policy (FUP) of 300 minutes per week. This FUP seems very fair to me. I never exceed it, so Betamax’ normally works like a flatrate for me.

In fact I am very surprised about their cheap prices for Russia, because I know that connections outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow are very expensive to buy in wholesale markets. Therefore e. g. Rebtel users have to pay $0.019 Cents to Moscow and St. Petersburg landlines – but $0.079 Cents to other Russian cities. So Betamax’ $0.00 Cent is a great bargain. For the German company it makes a big price difference whether they terminate calls in the U.S.A., Italy or in Russia. Although it might be difficult to explain to the average user like Robert.

Now I see that calls, which were originally free, are now being charged under the ‘fair use policy’. This I don’t understand.

There can be two reasons for that:

1.) Robert calls for more then 300 minutes per week.

2.) He shares his IP number with other users, so that Betamax thinks that it’s only one user. That’s what happened at Voxalot, a virtual internet PBX: All Voxalot users had the same IP number to Betamax. Therefore they jointly exceeded the FUP very fast. Voxalot managed to strike an agreement with Betamax to pass the original IP number, so that every user now has his own FUP.

So, if Betamax charges for actual free calls, there might be a technical problem. Otherwise it seems a great bargain to me to get 1.200 minutes per month from Betamax for just 2.50. (Taking into account that that you have to pay 10 every four months to get the 0.00 to Russian landlines.) People should also consider what user satphoneguy wrote in Voxalot’s forum:

having lived in many parts of the world I think that a lot of what is happening is relate to cultural differences and expectation of customer service. from what i have read the vast majority of complaints are coming from the USA. here in the USA it is somewhat expected that if you are unhappy with a service or feel deceived by misleading marketing that you should be eligible for refund on what you spent. most American companies do indeed give 100% refunds to their customers no questions asked when they complain. i do know from having lived overseas that is not the business etiquette everyplace. there are a number of reasons why many people may feel deceived since the betamax ‘fair use policies’ are not very clear. in particular concerning additional charges for use of SIP devices on some services. it is all exasperated in that americans also feel that every company should have a customer service line where they can call with questions(or complaints) or at very least email support with a quick turnaround to response(same day)

i do have to say though that it seems many people who complain about numerous betamax companies continue to try the others. this is very similar to what i dealt with working for a very large retail company – some of the biggest complainers and returners of products for refunds were also some of the biggest shoppers; i would see them on nearly a daily basis.

i personally have never had a billing issue with betamax. although in recent months my only funded account is nonoh; since the rates are so much less for the mobile destinations that i call than with any of the SIP options and i have unlimited calls to NA and most landlines through another provider.

Many people in Europe accept a lousy service, as long as it’s cheap. But others expect a great service although they pay nearly nothing. That’s just not possible to deliver for a company. Good service always has its price, especially in a country with sky-high wages like Germany. People who want more than just plain phone minutes should subscribe to companies like PhoneGnome, Packet8 or Sipgate which have real hotlines by phone and email for their clients. That’s what I also told Robert, who finally admitted:

I suppose, like most people, I never fully read the ‘Terms of Use’, although in these terms there is no exact reason mentioned and more than that, there is no exact time limit per country or city mentioned where this might be relatively easy as an adder to the price information.

Please always have a look at the small print at the end of every Betamax web page!

* Max 300 minutes per week of free calls, measured over the last 7 days and per unique IP address. Unused free minutes cannot be taken to the following week(s). If limit is exceeded the normal rates apply. With your FREE DAYS you can call for free to all the destinations listed as free! When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply. You can get extra Freedays by buying credit

They say it very clear that free calls are limited to 300 minutes per week and IP address. That’s not too difficult to understand, isn’t it? What still remains a mistery to me, is the sentence When you have no FREE DAYS left the normal rates apply.

What are these normal rates after 300 minutes? I couldn’t find them either.

Source: goebel.net

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It seems that the VoIP provider Betamax has to be relieved from fraud allegations which spread across the web in the last weeks. Alec Saunders had pointed to a story from MyVoIPProvider.com which said that the mother company of Voipstunt, Voipbuster, Voipcheap, Nonoh and much more VoIP services was fraudulently charching money to credit cards and Paypal accounts of members and nonmembers. MyVoIPProvider.com had issued a public warning:

Over the past 18 – 24 months we have had dozens, if not hundreds of complaints about the Betamax group, all from users and even non-users trying to find an outlet to vent their anger or trying to find a means of contacting the company in Germany.

In all cases the modus operandi is the same: Users who have never used the VoIP services of any of the Betamax VoIP websites find that small amounts averaging between between US$10 and US$35 are charged to their credit cards. In every single instance the credit card charge description was – BETAMAX VOIP CREDIT COLOGNE – (Cologne is the English name of Kln – the apparent headquarters of the group in Germany) and Betamax are the beneficiaries of these fraudulent charges.

At the Voxalot forum most of us couldn’t believe these charges, since most of these penny pinchers there are quite satisfied with Betamax’ offers. Of course their customer service is terrible. If you have a problem there’s no one to call and the email support is just a joke, as I already told in "WTF is Betamax (VoIP)?". But then, there are heartbreaking stories to read in Ebay’s user forum for Paypal:

jlmoore0 (7 ) View Listings | Report Jan-31-08 05:43 PST 22 of 28

I have never heard o Betamax GmbH & Co.KG HOWEVER I have just been charged 383 on my credit card by PAYPAL. I stopped my credit card & contacted Paypal – who tried to imply that someone in my household had used my account!! This seems incredible owing to the amount of complaints about this company. I am not impressed & when resolved won’t be using paypal again!!

Unfortunately it turns out that Betamax is not responsible for all the wrongdoings but a victim itself, as a Paypal representative declared yesterday:

ericj@paypal.com View Listings | Report Jan-31-08 14:08 PST 23 of 28

Hi All,

If you are seeing fraudulent charges in your PayPal accounts, your login information has been compromised. Please contact us ASAP and an agent will assist you with reporting the fraudulent transactions and resetting your login information.

Its also important to keep in mind that while this company is showing on the charges, they are a victim as well. It’s quite unlikely they are behind the fraud itself. Rather it would be the spoofers who gained access to your accounts.

I apologize for the inconvenience and will pass this information onto the necessary individuals for review.

Thanks,
Eric

Betamax was caught in a trap: Their terrible customer service has made the fraud charges highly believable, although they are not very plausible. Few people wondered how Betamax could have charged a Paypal account secretly a second time, when the customer only gave a one time authorization. Even more unlikely was the allegation that they charged people who didn’t even know the company.

From where should they have had these credit card data?

It seems that the company and these poor people fell victim to a phising attack. But I have to repeat my claim to Betamax: Please be more open! Get a press department! Talk to your customers!

Don’t leave room for conspiracy theories!

Source: goebel.net

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I got a tip about four free phone gateways in a European country. They let you call almost every fixed or mobile phone number in the world at no charge. "The gateways haven’t a pin authentication, so the minimum security rules aren’t respected", says the tipster. "If you test it will you see also caller ID is forwarded. A real good service." Oh yes, I understand the guy’s enthusiasm. People love free phone calls.

So these four numbers could be the ultimate callthrough solution, the new Yak4ever. If it only wasn’t illegal. That’s why I don’t publish them. The tipster even sent detailed instructions on how to use these numbers. You just need free calls to that country, which you get for instance from Truphone or several Betamax companies. After the tone you type in the callee’s number with international prefix, followed by the hash key (#), to be connected.

A poor company must have forgotten to take the most basic security measures. This security breach is said to be open for more than one year already, since December 2006. Which makes me wonder whether it’s a bug or a feature. If a study from Stealth Communications is right then phreakers steal a staggering two hundred million minutes per month valuing around $26 million. No wonder if some companies make it so easy.

UPDATE:

Just minutes after posting this blog entry I had a reader from Sindh, Karachi, Pakistan. I looked him up in my log files after getting his message: "Sir I am the regular reader of your forum, I want to make a free call to my relatives outside the country, Actually I am from a very poor family, Sir can you give me that 4 gateways number where i can call free to my relatives. plz".

Unfortunately that is not possible, although I still feel the giving spirit of Christmas. What’s illegal is illegal. There is a not so thin red line between free phone calls from companies with loads of venture capital and plain theft.

Source: goebel.net

FierceVoIP has an interview with Andrew Frame, founder and CEO of Ooma. We can learn something, but it’s mostly PR blabla for Ooma. Much more interesting are, again, the comments to this article.

Maybe Andrew shouldn’t have answered the question "How is ooma different from PhoneGnome, aside from the physical aspect?". It causes an outrage of devoted PhoneGnome users, calling his answer "completely misleading" and presuming that he didn’t understand how PhoneGnome works.

In steps Dennis Peng, director product management at Ooma, making an even more comprehensive comparation of the two devices. He asserts that PhoneGnome doesn’t have two phone lines, like Ooma does, but just "one and a half". What does that mean? Maybe a half phone line is shorter than a full line? Peng gets it worse from the next commentator who says "Dennis, with all due respect to your position at Ooma, you need to do a little more homework", before he strips down his argumentation.

Too sad that most comments are anonymous, because they give pretty much insight and are funny to read. I hope that Mr. Blog himself, PhoneGnome’s CEO David Beckemeyer, will find this article soon and also leave a comment.

I was personally shocked to read that poor Americans pay $65-70 monthly just to get two phone lines from AT&T and PhoneGnome. With the necessary broadband connection it sums up to $100 every month.

I just pay $40 monthly for broadband and VoIP, of course having two phones lines. Two people can call my Sipgate number at the same time. If the first phone is already in use the other rings. Also twofold dial out is possible. Betamax’ SparVoIP allows this without hassle, using my Sipgate number as caller ID and letting me call my favourite countries for free for just $3 per month. On top of that I can use 10 different VoIP providers on my Fritz!Box, having lots of inbound numbers from different countries and arbitrating for the best price on outgoing calls. At Voxalot I can install 30 more providers.

I can switch easily if one provider goes belly up or messes with their rates, without getting a new box or changing anything hardware-wise. Ooma guarantees only three years of free service and nobody knows what happens to the box if they go bankrupt.

UPDATE:

David Beckemeyer, designer and proprietor of PhoneGnome, aka "Mr. Blog," aka former chief technology officer and co-founder of EarthLink, has officially requested the opportunity to respond to Andrew Frame’s comparison of Ooma and PhoneGnome.

You can read more about that in today’s FierceVoIP article "ooma versus PhoneGnome". But his response will not be featured untile the Monday, Sept. 10 edition of FierceVoIP.

Too sad we have to wait so long.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Markus ask and makes me wonder too…

Any one thinking that this could be a stealth play by DT?

Source: goebel.net

Most VoIP users probably know the company Betamax from Cologne (Germany) or one of their more than 20 cheap brands like Voipbuster, Voipstunt, Voipcheap, Sparvoip, Voipwise, Webcalldirect and their latest tongue in cheak attack against Jajah, called Nonoh.

Betamax undercuts nearly every price in VoIP, as you can see in this regularily updated comparison. It already happened that one VoIP company proudly sent me a personal e-mail to announce that they just had lowered their prices to Lima (Peru) landline to 4 Euro Cents. I just yawned and told them that at Betamax I get the same for just 1 Cent. And even they could have offered cheaper calls to Peru if they would have used Betamax’ wholesale brand, Voice Trading, as provider where Lima landline cost only 2 Cents of an Euro.

Betamax is no insider tip anymore, as you can tell from thousands of postings in the corresponding internet forums. I guess they are one of the worlds biggest VoIP providers, but nobody knows that for sure because Betamax is so tight-lipped. Betamax’ press releases are spare and their customer support is often lousy, as you can learn from many posts in internet forums. My e-mails to Betamax never got an answer. The German webzine Onlinekosten.de tells in its articles that the user forum on the Voipbuster website is difficult to find and that Betamax was reluctant to give any information.

Many people already felt betrayed because Betamax’ pricing changes rapidly and the free call routes, which made them subscribe to the service, suddenly have to be paid. At least most customers nearly never need technical support because Betamax’ VoIP worked great in the last years. With one short exeption that I covered on my blog: Too many phone calls? Voipbuster’s server on fire (Friday, February 16, 2007).

So probably thousands of people are using Betamax. But does anybody know them?

I think that’s an important question, because telephony is a matter of trust, especially in times when everyone can start his own phone company for just $199. Until now Betamax is the only VoIP provider that actually gets money from me, because normally I am an advocate of free phone calls. But sometimes cheap prices go together with a big drawback on the long run. Nobody wants his calls to be wiretapped and most people want to be sure that their payments don’t go into a money laundering machine.

Betamax’ website only states that they are not publicly listed and that "Betamax is a privately owned company. Betamax was founded in 2005 in Germany by a group of marketing experts and received funding from private investors and venture capitalists." I find it really funny how they try to prevent any contacts:

I want to contact Betamax. How?
We are busy developing our products and are a small company. To be honest we have little time. If you still have questions about Betamax, please contact us at service-at-betamax-dot-com.

A little bit more public relations work from Betamax would be great! I would really love to get better press releases and to read an in-depth story about Betamax soon. I still remember the time when they introduced Voipbuster in Germany. They gave us the calls for free, but wanted our bank account data. You had to send them one Euro from your bank account to start to make unlimited calls. This seemed suspicious and many people feared some kind of phishing or another big scam.

But until now Betamax turns out to be a reliable company. Only that they give no face to the customer and the media, which leaves room for conspiracy theories. The recognized VoIP blogger and entrepreneur Pat Phelan even says:

I couldnt agree more with you on Betamax/voice trading/voipstunt/Nonoh and their almost reversal to norm role of press releases, press contacts and very little public interaction, as a carrier myself and someone who would have strong contacts in large European telcos. I can tell you that Betamax has its own rumour mill around it most of which I would not even dream to write here.

You can imagine that Pat’s comment made me really courious. But he doesn’t tell me much more, only that in Ireland they use Colt Telecom as provider.

So what do YOU know about Betamax?

Every comment is very welcome, especially if it comes from the Betamax people themselves. Maybe after all I have to be the person who writes the missing in-depth story.

Source: goebel.net

In the last days I played with Wifimobile’s oneFone VoIP client for Nokia’s E- and N-Series and liked it very much. Business Development Manager John O’Prey had invited me for a free trial.

The oneFone client is so easy to use that at first I did everything wrong. You just have to start the program and then you should forget it until your next call. Instead I pushed many buttons, because I didn’t know how to dial a number. The program’s contact list contained only four SIP addresses, which it had harvested from my address book. But how to dial other numbers? I didn’t find a button and searched so much that that the program hung itself up.

I should have read the manual! In an email John explained to me:

To dial a landline minimise oneFone to the background and dial as normal. You can also dial directly from your contact list. Let oneFone run in the background and use your phone as you normally would.

And it really works like this. You start the program once and then let it disappear by hitting the "Back" button. Afterwards you can forget it. When you dial a number, in the same way as you always do on your mobile phone, the program kicks in and establishes the call over VoIP. Before the call really starts a voice says "Thank you for using Wifimobile". That’s to indicate that this call will not appear on your normal phone bill but goes for free over Wifi. Unless of course that you make the oneFone call over 3G. I did that once and it cost me only 3 Cents of a Euro. The quality was acceptable, it nearly sounded like a normal GSM phone call. But taking into account the high data costs in Europe I recommend to use only the "Auto WLAN" mode which prevents VoIP calls over 3G.

The entire oneFone application seems like a least cost router for mobile phones. Comparable to Cellity the program kicks in only if it can connect the call cheaper than your cell phone contract. The website explains it:

Only 15.99 11.99 7.99 Per Month

The oneFone service from WiFiMobile allows you to make unlimited* free calls to landlines in over 40 countries as well as mobile phones in certain countries including the USA. For a list of countries that you can call for free click here.

All calls to landline and mobile numbers to countries not listed here are automatically routed through your normal GSM provider. This allows us to guarantee that customers are never charged more than the set monthly line rental.

*The unlimited free calls are subject to a fair usage policy.

The list of free countries covers probably every destination you need. I was happy to see that even Peru is free. What I really like about oneFone is how inobstrusive it is. You just don’t notice the program anymore, once you have it enabled. They don’t even give you a login to their website for a call history list. Calls go over oneFone free of charge, covered by the flatrate tariff, or they go over GSM and appear on your cell phone bill. So why keep track of them.

Also you don’t need to give a new phone number to your pals, like you have to do as a Truphone user, because oneFone uses your normal cell phone number as caller ID when it establishes the call. So the company can directly work on an international scale, other than Truphone which has only UK or US numbers and still has to apply with the regulators for numbers from other countries.

Both companies give Wifi calls between their members for free. But oneFone’s presence application, where you can see if your friends are online for free on net calls, really works. Other than Truphone which recently had to disable the presence feature in their client because "it was hammering the servers and becoming less reliable as more people upgraded and began to use it".

John O’Prey told me some more points which "distinguish oneFone not just from Truphone, but all providers who use the Nokia client":

• oneFone is a self developed and wholly owned stand alone VoIP client and Works in all Nokia E and N Series phones
• Presence is fully supported and operational
• Support for automatic roaming between WLAN and 3G
• Automatic selection of best Internet Access Point
• oneFone works in far more NATed environments than the Nokia client
• Adhoc conference support coming in a few days

By not relying on Nokia’s own VoIP client they circumvent the mobile incumbents’ agreement to lock down alternative VoIP providers. A smart move.

But would I really recommend oneFone? Not necessarily.

15.99 / 11.99 / 7.99 per Month is quite a lot of money for Wifi phone calls from a mobile, given the fact that Truphone gives nearly the same countries for free until the end of 2007. And with VoIP from Betamax, which you can also install on your Nokia E- or N-Series, you get 120 days of free calls for just 10. My personal costs for mobile and fixed line telephony are together not more than 10 per month, although I am a busy journalist with family in Peru. So people have to think good if they really need Wifimobile’s offer. After all it’s a normal VoIP flatrate and, e. g., with the bellshare flat you get more or less the same for just 5,99.

Also I think that the proprietary oneFone client could do much more. Look at what they do at Eteleon! Their wiFon client allows a seamless handover between Wifi VoIP calls and GSM. During a phone call it continuously checks the strength of the Wifi signal. If it drops under a certain point the software tells the Eteleon server to continue the call over GSM. The German webzine Teltarif has tested the handover and was quite pleased. wiFon even gives a free fixed line number from your local area, so that also your friends can save money when they call you on your mobile.

Source: voipcentral.org

Free VoIP does not come free. There is also strong competition among the free players. If it were not, then we would not find a number of free players. It seems that no one can claim undisputed leader in the VoIP world.

For instance, Jajah. The Austria-based VoIP start up has been in news for its free VoIP offers. It has now more than two million registered users, the number very close to Vonage. Now, Jajah has a strong competitor. And it is Nonoh.

Developed by Betamax, Nonoh is a free downloadable software that enables customers to enjoy free and high-quality voice communication services all over the world. The registered users can call regular phones in various popular destinations for free.

With Nonoh, Betamax targets Jajah. The Nonoh call rates are lower than Jajah. You can call more than forty destinations for free using Nonoh application. Some of the major countries are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium Brazil (Landline), Bulgaria, Canada, China Denmark, United Kingdom and United States.

Nonoh application is also very simple. You just need to register at Nonohs site and then enter your phone number and your friends phone number. Then you should click the call option available at the Nonoh site. By doing so, you will be contacted to the desired number very quickly. The number may be landline or mobile because Nonoh supports both.

Image:

Source: goebel.net

The Betamax company Voipbuster now offers free SMS from a mobile phone. I have just checked it out and it works great. You just have to install a small Java applet on your cell phone. Voipbuster routes the message as so called "UrlSms" over their servers. The SMS is free, besides of a little 3G data traffic. I have just sent two totally free SMS over Wifi from my Nokia E61. The messages arrive within minutes and seem to be a tiny bit slowlier than normal SMS.

1) How to install:

• On your mobile go to http://gsm.voipbuster.com/ (on some mobiles you need to choose ‘download application’ on some phones you can just go to the webpage).
• download and install the application, start the application (for most mobiles: in the menu, go to applications)
• in "settings" fill in your VoipBuster username / password and your mobile phone number

2) How to send SMS:

• start the application (for most mobiles: in the menu, go to applications)
• go to options –> sms
• you can select the person you want to send a sms from your mobile phone contacts through options –> add from contacts
• type your message and hit SEND!
• your mobile phone will ask you to open a data connection. This uses just a tiny bit of data traffic.
• Voipbuster charges you nothing! Yes –> NOTHING!

Again I wonder how Betamax will refinance this service. But they already surprised me a few times with such offers. Normally they don’t last too long and then become paid services at cheap prices. I guess it’s just an introductory offer.

Source: goebel.net

I dont understand the US American market of VoIP devices. The PhoneBoy tells terrible things in the VoIP Weblog:

It seems that the VoIP providers are just as bad–or worse–than the mobile phone carriers in the United States, which generally don’t let you take your phone to a competing provider. Unlike with US mobile phones, where there are two standards, pretty much all customer premises VoIP hardware speaks SIP, the lingua franca of VoIP. Just recently, I threw a Vonage-locked Linksys ATA/Router combo that Vonage refused to unlock for me. What a waste!

And Garrett Smith explains "How to Unlock SunRocket Gizmo For Use With InPhonex".

"Poor Americans", must I say. Why do they accept ATAs that are locked to just one provider? Because they don’t know it better from their mobile telephony? Why do Vonage or Sunrocket users have to throw away their hardware and cannot simply use it with another company? Why doesnt PhoneGnome admit that Free calls between PhoneGnome members is a normal feature that is available with every other VoIP provider. Its called "on net calls" and nothing special.

In Germany we use open devices, such as Fritz!Box, where you can install up to 10 VoIP providers of your choice. One of them can be PhoneGnome, because it also supports the open SIP standard, but it doesn’t have to be the only one.

With intelligent ATA dial plans you can assure to make only free on net calls and to always use the cheapest provider for your other calls. People use to play around with the cheapest routes of the various Betamax brands, depending on where they are calling to, and they like to install several of them at the same time.

In the USA, in contrast, VoIP devices are commonly locked to just one provider. Like cell phones that you have to throw away when you change the provider.

Is this really the "land of the free"?