Actually, industry observer Anders Bylund likened mobile calling plans to the dodo, a famously extinct species. They never had good mobile calling plans either.
Bylund went to the Citi Entertainment, Media, and Telecommunications conference recently where he heard VoIP expert Vonage talk about “some of its current growth strategies,” with CEO Marc Lefar (News - Alert) presenting some mobile applications.
Lefar said when it hits the market, Vonage’s offering will “roll free calls worldwide from one Vonage (News - Alert) user to another,” Bylund said, “as well as its own messaging system and the usual calling plans.”
And what keeps this from being a Skype (News - Alert) Lite, Lefar said, is that Vonage is going to charge about 30 percent less than Skype does, and the fact that “Vonage is also a full-fledged phone line alternative, while Skype wasn't designed for that,” Bylund noted.
In August TMC’s (News - Alert) Beecher Tuttle wrote that iPhone owners who have resisted making international calls due to the lofty fees now have an additional option: “Voice provider Vonage rolled out a new iPhone app earlier this month that lets users make Wi-Fi and 3G VoIP calls to more than 100 eligible nations for prices as low as $0.99 per 15 minutes of talk time.”
The app, dubbed Time to Call, can be downloaded for free at any one of 87 iTunes stores worldwide. Calls are billed in 15-minute increments and are paid for via a user's iTunes account. This means that you don't need to set up a subscription or be a current Vonage customer; simply download the app and begin dialing.
MagicJack VocalTec’s iOS-only app doesn't impress Lefar, who sniffed "Our product testing would suggest that it's nowhere close to same quality that we have sbut for folks who are looking for a cheap alternative, but don't care about 911 services, that are not as concerned about reliability, it's certainly an alternative."
VoIP services like Vonage and magicJack “bypass the cherished system of airtime minutes altogether, replacing it with a surprisingly small amount of data traffic,” Bylund noted. Lefar added that "You could be taking over 1,000 minutes a month over VoIP and still be using only a couple of megabytes.”
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Juliana Kenny