I gave my love a red, red rose but she actually wanted an iPhone 4S and now you, too, can hand over one of these exciting products to your loved one thanks to Rebtel. This weekend’s TC Gadgets giveaway is a fresh-in-box iPhone 4S (your carrier choice) and $100 worth of calling through Rebtel’s VOIP solution. Got your attention? Good. → Read More
You may not be well-familiar with Rebtel, but the company is currently the largest independent mobile VoIP provider now that Skype is under the Microsoft umbrella. Rebtel, which routes international calls made from mobile phones and landlines to local numbers (specifically to minimize the cost of calling abroad), counts more than 13 million connected users and offers its services in more than 200 countries around the globe. (Not to mention an expected run-rate of $75 million by December of this year — and profitability since 2010.)
The company launched its first versions of its iPhone and Android apps in 2010, followed by Blackberry in 2011, and today is announcing the launch of version 2.0 of its free iPhone app, which allows users to make and receive free international calls using WiFi, 3G, or local minutes. The app also allows texts and calls to be made to any non-Rebtel users (on any phone) for what Bernstrom says are 90 percent cheaper rates than standard international calling on an average carrier. → Read More
Rebtel considers itself to be one of the biggest threats to the Skype empire, so I was interested in learning from the company’s CEO, Andreas Bernstrom, how they felt about Microsoft acquiring their main rival for $8.5 billion in cash.
Unsurprisingly, Bernstrom said the acquisition ‘validated the market’ but he also had some more interesting things to say, mainly about VoIP and mobile telephony in general, and how financially sound the Rebtel business currently is. → Read More
A new study published by Harris Interactive and mobile VoIP company Rebtel reveals some interesting statistics regarding measured U.S. consumer sentiment on international calling services and providers.
One of more surprising stats from the report compared the use of international calling and VoIP services by men and women. Of those who make international phone calls, men are more likely than women to do so via their computer through software based services like Skype (31% vs. 19% respectively). The survey also reports that men are more likely than women to say that if they were going to change the way they make international phone calls they would switch to use their mobile phone VoIP service/application (10% vs. 2% respectively). → Read More
VoIP company Rebtel is launching a new version of its Android app that allows users to make free Android-to-Android international calls between more than 50 countries.
While the international part of the call is free, the caller and recipient still may have to pay for local calling minutes determined by their mobile phone plans. The app runs in the background and will intercept users making a more expensive long distance calls by automatically converting the number to a cheap local number. So when the user dials an international number from the native Android dial pad, or selects a contact with an international number from the address book, the call is automatically intercepted and routed via Rebtel instead of their carrier. Also since Rebtel works on the standard cellular network using local phone numbers, no WiFi is needed to make calls. → Read More
Tonight, Talkster launched a beta of a new presence-based communication platform in the VoIP market, with a focus on the enterprise and aim to connect callers by alias regardless of their device. Talkster is similar to services like Jajah, Rebtel, Hullo, ConnectMeAnywhere, and Fring in that it uses VOIP to make cheap (currently free) long distance phone calls. But those services are highly targeted towards the consumer market, whereas Talkster is not. CEO James Wanless calls the consumer VoIP market a “race to the bottom of rates.” Talkster doesn’t want to play that game. Talkster has its sight set on the enterprise. Talkster enables calls between and across phones and PCs, with the necessary software bridge. Unlike Jajah and Hullo, however, Talkster doesn’t require a download and works via the Web through your mobile phone and desktop browsers. This makes it more widely available than Jajah’s Symbian based client. Talkster will have a Java client in 2007. Currently, the system connects mobile phones, VoIM (voice over IM), VOIP phones, and PSTN Phones, with the potential to connect to any service that speaks SIP. You can also use Talkster to place free mobile calls to virtually any phone or buddies on MSN, Google Talk, and Gizmo. After registering for the service online, you have the tedious but necessary task of inputing your contacts’ alias, email address (for VoIM), and phone numbers. VoIM contacts must accept your invitation to be included in Talkster. When you log your mobile phone into m.talkster.com, you are greeted with a list of contacts’ VoIM online/offline status and can either connect to the contact over VoIM or be automatically forwarded to their phone number of choice. In the case of a long distance call, Talkster acts as a VOIP bridge between the two callers. When making local calls, Talkster steps out of the way and just connects directly. If you don’t want to place a call on the PC you are working on, Talkster has call-in or call-back options that lets you place a call through the computer, but connect using the phone. The option has definite cost benefits, depending on your mobile plan. Talkster’s device agnostic model is reminiscent of text based JumpChat and Swarmteams, but incorporating phone calls makes the model much more powerful. The Web interface was a sacrifice but it will at least get Talkster in front of the maximum number of people. → Read More
A bunch of VOIP services have launched to help people make cheaper calls from normal phones. None of them are compelling for the mass market. VOIP is great when you initiate calls from VOIP phones or software (Skype, Vonage, etc.). These VOIP networks can call other VOIP phones, or patch into the normal telephone networks to make relatively inexpensive calls. Vonage long ago replaced my normal telephone service, and an increasing number of people are using VOIP solutions instead of a normal telephone. But a new crop of companies have a launched that are trying to let people make free or cheap VOIP calls from a normal POTS (plain old telephone service) phone (often a cell phone) to another POTS phone. If someone gets it right, there’s a huge market out there to destroy. The problem is that no one has gotten it right. And the mass market won’t adopt these services until they are dead simple to use. These services generally take one of two approaches to allow people to make VOIP calls. One approach is to tell the service what number you are calling from and what number you would like to call. The service then calls both parties and connects them. The second approach is to assign special phone numbers to use instead of the normal phone number. These special numbers are controlled by the VOIP service and bypass the POTS system for the most expensive parts of the call. Neither approach allows people to make quick calls on the fly to someone. Both require multiple steps to make a call, usually involving the use of a website as well (meaning you have to be at a computer or try to access the services via a mobile browser). Here are a few that we’ve been tracking: Jajah: Go to the website, tell it your phone number and the number you want to call, and a call is initiated to both phones. Call rates are very cheap, sometimes free. But you have to be at your computer to use it, and have a billing relationship with jajah if you are making non-free calls. They have some big news coming out this week, however, that will be worth noting. Rebtel: We first covered Rebtel here. They just announced a whopping $20 million in venture funding. Rebtel has an extremely confusing method for making calls. The basic fee is $1 → Read More
Sweden-based Rebtel have launched a product that will allow users to dial any international number at the cost of a local call. It works by having the two ends of the call use local connections (over low-cost local calls) to a VoIP point and then bridge the call to the recipient at the other end over the net. I am sitting here at AlwaysOn conference watching the CEO, Hjalmar Winbladh, demo the product as part of the CEO showcase that Mike Arrington is moderating. Rebtel has received a good reception with the audience and the judges here as it seems to be a simple, yet inovative solution for the high costs of long-distance telephone calls. You can try the product by filling out the form on the front page of their website. It will send an SMS to both the initiator of the call as well as the recipient and then connect the two ends. It will setup a local number for each friend you setup. The cost of each number that is setup is $1 per week, which is for unlimited calling to the other end. The company is based in Sweden and was founded by serial-entrepreneur Hjalmar Winbladh, the founder of SendIt (which was acquired by Microsoft in ’99) and a General Manager for Microsoft Mobile solutions in Europe. → Read More
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