Vonage Continues To Challenge Skype With New Mobile App For iPhone, Android

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
vonage

Vonage has been battling Skype for many, many years, but they’re not letting up now that the latter has been acquired by Microsoft.

The Internet calling company, which came dangerously close to dying a few years ago, this morning launched a new Vonage Mobile app for iPhone and Android, offering free calls and texts to anyone who also has the app installed (as predicted a few weeks ago).

This is hardly the first time Vonage has debuted apps for smartphone platforms, but this one is definitely worth checking out.

Vonage says the app, which works over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G wireless data networks, provides users with international per-minute calling rates that are, on average, 70 percent lower than major mobile carriers and 30 percent lower than Skype (based on per-minute rates to the top 50 countries called).

Vonage Mobile users can instantly add calling credit directly from the app through iTunes or Android Market, in increments of $4.99 and $9.99. Also worth noting: the app utilizes the phone’s existing mobile number and contact list, removing a lot of the hassle of using such a service.

Also important: users do not need to be a Vonage customer to use the app. However, as an added benefit to all app users, calls to Vonage home or business lines are also free.

Also read: Call All Your Facebook Friends Free With Vonage


Company: Vonage
Website: vonage.com
Launch Date: January 2001
IPO: August 2, 2006, VG

Vonage is a publicly held provider of broadband VoIP services. Their technology enables anyone to make and receive phone calls with a touch tone telephone almost anywhere a broadband Internet connection is available.

→ Learn more