In an announcement today, UK-based Truphonelaunches free calling from mobile Truphone customers in the US to landlines everywhere (well, 40 countries worldwide actually). This program is an extension of their UK launch promotion and will be in effect until the end of June. So if you really want give a great mobile VOIP application a whirl, now’s your chance. US customers have always been able to talk to other Truphone users for free but now they can call regular landlines too.

You can download Truphone for your Nokia handset here:
http://www.truphone.com/downloads/downloads.tru

Watch a YouTube video of this press release here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK9wuSFoSqQ

And finally, read the whole press release:

March 27th 2007 – Orlando, FL & London, UK - Owners of Wi-Fi-equipped Nokia smartphones will be able to make free international calls from the USA to landlines in 40 countries throughout April, May and June, mobile internet telephony pioneer Truphone announced today. The announcement extends and enlarges Truphone’s current price promotion [ending on March 31st], during which customers have been able to make free mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) calls across the USA and Canada.

“We’re delighted to be making it so attractive for people to try internet telephony on their mobile handset, instead of being tied to their computer,” said James Tagg, Truphone’s CEO. “The convenience of a normal, mass market cellular handset and free international calls is an unbeatable combination for the consumer.”
Countries to which any on-net Truphone user worldwide may now make free calls to landlines include China (landlines and mobiles), Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey), Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg) and most European Union countries.

Tariffs to some paid-for numbers may have changed from the previous promotional period. Truphone’s full tariff document is available at www.truphone.com.

Under the terms of the new promotion, free Truphone calls can be made to the following countries (applies to Truphone calls to landlines only, unless otherwise stated): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo only), Canada, Chile, China (Landline and Mobile), Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong (Landline & Mobile), Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea (South), Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico (Guadalajara, Mexico City & Monterrey only), Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama City, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia (Moscow Central & St Petersburg only), Singapore (Landline & Mobile), Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, US Virgin Islands and USA (landline & mobile).

About the Truphone service
Truphone enables Wi-Fi equipped mobile phones to make 100% VoIP calls at either zero or very low cost to the caller, by using the SIP standard and the Internet to route network traffic, rather than traditional mobile phone networks. Truphone-to-Truphone and Truphone-to-SIP number calls are always free, with Truphone calls to other numbers charged at cheaper rates than those charged by mobile operators and often at lower cost than even a conventional fixed line.
There is no monthly subscription, no inbound charges and billing is via pre-pay. Sign-up and top up are done via the web site. Customers get Truphone by downloading a small piece of free software over the air to their phone. When a Truphone-equipped handset is not in Wi-Fi range it reverts to being a normal mobile phone, with calls routed over GSM as usual.

We just had our first winter storm blow through. The result was twenty-seven hours of no power. After the first two hours my son proclaimed the most boring day of his life (no computer, no Nintendo). In the midst of trying almost every home VOIP solution under the sun, I’ve still hung onto my landline. Good thing too. Even my cell phone battery died. Of course, my PhoneGnome didn’t mind. Without power or Internet connection, landline calls worked just fine thanks.

Initially, I thought that the online support systems for VOIP softphones Skype and Gizmo Project were pretty decent. Using them to answer burning questions is another matter. 

Online Help belongs with the application. When I click Help > Online Help, please DON’T send me to the Knowledge Base or FAQs. Please DON’T open up another browser window and make me wait while the generic Help home page appears. Please DON’T make me use the Search feature. High level user guides or getting started tutorials are great, but make sure they’ve got some meat in them.

A Knowledge Base gives you little gulps of info with no breadcrumb trail to follow and no sense of context. To really aid and educate users, build Help right into the interface. Take the time to explain fields and buttons before I use them. To provide more information, use a fly-out Help pane (part of the interface that’s only visible when needed) and pull the content from an online server.

I want online Help that is specific to what I’m looking at on the screen. I want to browse Help by drilling down to the level of detail I need without losing my place in the story.

The End.

Alec Saunders has a post today on keeping kids safe on the Internet. A new product called IMSafer allows parents to monitor unsafe or suspicious online messaging while still protecting kids’ privacy. Bravo! See http://www.imsafer.com/.

The subject of kid safety online brings me to Skype and their talk-to-a-stranger-anytime feature called Skype Me. Skype Me essentially disables your privacy settings so that anyone on Skype can call you or invite you to chat. I’ve only turned this feature on once to see what would happen. Yikes. No thanks. Frankly,  I think it’s creepy. And after I disabled it, I went looking for the parental control command that would allow me to block this feature from being used. There doesn’t seem to be one.

Now I believe that parents have the responsiblity to supervise their children’s Internet time. It’s not the job of a corporation. However, Skype should consider building in kid safe features. For parents like me, it will make the difference if or where their product is installed in the home. 

As usual, Carolyn Schuk over at Voxilla writes a great post summarizing Skype’s appeal to business users. The bottom line is that today, Skype works well for a “small workgroup to increase productivity”, but it just doesn’t bring it for all around business-class communications.

Tom Keating recently talked about how to pure VOIP providers like Vonage stack up against the cable and telco companies offering broadband Internet VOIP phone services.

In the article he compares pure VOIP providers like Vonage and Packet8 to telecos and cable companies like Verizon and Time Warner. What do consumers really want? Is cost always the bottom line or are people looking for brand trust, quality of service and reliability over the long haul? His assessment may surprise you.

Click here to read the complete article on his blog.

Who is Tom Keating? He owns the VOIP and Gadgets Blog and is CTO, VP and founder of TMC Labs, one of the leading sources for unbiased opinions and reviews in the VoIP, call center, datacom/telecom industries.

 

Here’s an idea from Michael at GroovyGreen.com who commented on my Three Tries to Cancel Vonage post. When he called to cancel his Vonage service, he had this great yarn prepared:

“This is what you do: Call their HELP line, go to the cancellation option and then wait. (Luckily, I waited about 5 minutes.) Next, as soon as the person gets on the line say, “Hello, My name is Michael and I would like to cancel my account because I am moving to another country.” This will immediately cause them to lose most of their script and go to Page 2. The kind woman on the other line then asked me if the move was permanent. I told her that I would be overseas for the next 10 years. She countered by saying that Vonage could be used anywhere, it was one of the advantages, etc. I agreed that the thought had crossed my mind, but unfortunately I was moving to a place where Internet service was not allowed. She asked if she might know the location of this country. I told her Ethiopia. She asked if there were any towns nearby that might have Internet access, I told her no, because I was moving to a monastery and it was 100 miles away from the nearest town. Very remote. She became quiet and then asked if there was anyone living in the U.S. that could use the account while I was gone. As this point, I was like, ‘Jeesh…’, but I went on, “No, there’s nobody here in the U.S. I could transfer this too. That’s part of why I’m leaving the country. My family has passed away, my dog just died, and I just don’t value material possessions as much as I used to.’

She got started on canceling my account….”

Reprinted with permission from: www.quickstartvoip.com

When shopping around for a VOIP phone, no doubt you’ll come across buzzwords like: softphone, SIP phone, IP phone, and Internet phone.

Do all these terms mean the same thing, or is there a difference? Let’s take a look.

VOIP phone or Broadband phone: A handset used to make VOIP calls. A VOIP phone has an Ethernet port (RJ-45) instead of regular phone jack (RJ-12), and they connect directly to a broadband Internet modem. A VOIP phone does not require a computer or softphone application to make or receive calls. A high speed Internet connection and subscription to VOIP phone service is all that is required. A SIP phone is a type of VOIP phone.

SIP Phone: A VOIP handset that complies with the SIP standard for voice over IP. SIP is the latest open standard, succeeding H323 standards. Bottom line, SIP compatibility is good. Phones that compete with SIP use proprietary signaling protocols for voice over IP. SIP softphones are VOIP software applications that comply with SIP standards.

IP phone: An umbrella term but used to mean any phone that can be used on an IP network (like the Internet). An IP phone may comply with either proprietary or open standards for voice signaling. An IP phone doesn’t have a RJ-12 connector like regular phones.

Internet phone: This term is used pretty loosely and depending on the context can mean the same as IP phone.

Softphone: A software application that lets you make calls over the Internet using the mouse or keyboard to dial phone numbers. To use a softphone, your computer must have an sound card, plus a speakers or headset, and a microphone. A USB phone can take the place of headset and microphone. Softphones are often free to download. Free VOIP software such as Skype and Free World Dialup are two popular choices.

USB phone: A handset that connects to the USB port on your computer. It is used for convenience when dialing from your computer, but it requires that a softphone application be installed first. Instead of using the softphone with a headset or microphone, the USB phone looks and acts like a regular phone and keypad. USB phones require driver software to be installed on the computer.

WiFi phone or WLAN phone: A handset used for making wireless VOIP calls. It has a  built-in WiFi transceiver unit instead of an Ethernet port. When you talk over WiFi, the phone connects wirelessly to a WiFi base station and from there to the Internet and a remote VoIP server. A computer or softphone is not required to make and receive VoIP phone calls. All that is required is access to a WiFi base station. Many cell phone companies are developing handsets with WiFi capability. This means you can make calls on the regular cell phone network and make VOIP calls on a local WiFi network (called a WiFi hotspot).

Skype phone: A handset that is much like a USB phone, except that the softphone application used to make the calls is Skype. A Skype phone can only make calls using the proprietary Skype phone software running on your computer. Linksys recently announced the release of its CIT200 wireless Skype handset which makes using Skype convenient from anywhere in the home.

Web phone: A marketing term that has been used to mean many things, both softphone and IP phone-related.

Net phone: Same as IP phone

Computer phone: See softphone, PC phone or USB phone.

PC phone: See computer phone, softphone or USB phone.

With so many companies assembling at the starting line for the race to mobile VOIP world domination, I wonder if we’re seeing a hurry-up-and-wait sort of thing. On the VOIP Service Blog read about mobile VOIP in a nutshell.

One thing I wish for in my quest for perfect Internet phone service the ability is to fix voice quality problems on the fly or at least be able to understand “is it me or the network?”

When I had Vonage service, I usually started the converation with “So how do I sound, can you hear me?” Many times there was such a delay that practical converation was impossible. If I was at my computer, I’d try quitting applications to see if that helped (usually not). After hanging up in frustration, I’d try messing with the dreaded ”Bandwidth Saver” feature. But in my opinion, AFTER the call is way too late.

Is it possible to build intelligent applications that KNOW when they’re not performing optimally and can tell you what the problem is, or better yet advise how to fix it?

No sooner had I written this when Peter Csathy, CEO of SightSpeed, let me in on a little secret (okay well it’s not actually a secret…), SightSpeed detects when your video or voice call isn’t going so well and automatically makes adjustments to improve the quality.

For example, a video call that appears jumpy or out of sync with the audio could be caused by network congestion. SightSpeed can downsize the bandwidth usage for video so that at least the voice aspect of the call is preserved or improved. SightSpeed lets you know it’s doing this by popping up a dialog box that says it’s making these adjustments. I don’t know if you can you make adjustments yourself DURING a video call, but you can easily see your upload and download speeds while talking to someone.

To see SightSpeed statistics: 

With your mouse hovering over the SightSpeed title bar,  press CTRL + S (or right mouse-click followed by CTRL + S). A statistics dialog box appears showing your current, peak and average bandwidth usage.

Gizmo Project has a Call Quality Assistant (click the bar graph in the bottom left of the Gizmo Window) that gives you an idea of your network conditions. While it shows you at a glance the quality of your connection, it doesn’t say what you should do about it and at this point in my life, that’s what I need.