Some days back Tech24Hours did a small but
informative post on the total volume of the international long distance minutes to-and-fro from India in the year 2010. The salient feature of the said write-up is that even though the minutes send by the people of the country was huge, what was remarkable was the minutes received from all over the globe—which were an almost three times of the minutes sent.
We are pretty sure, the numbers for Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, from where many of our esteemed readers come from, will be pretty much the same.
This means for an Indian living outside India, for every three calls made by him or her to his or her family, only one call is made by his loved ones back home.
In short, the people living abroad and still emotionally connected with their families back home, try to remain connected with their loved ones as far as possible.
No one can reduce the longing these enterprising men and women have for their families back home, but any service or product which helps them connect with their loved ones, better and more, is definitely a utility to talk about.
The products that we’re going to present to you today are the ones which do just that. They help people living away from their home countries and frequent travellers, connect better and more with their families and friends back home.
Introduction: The products and services we bring to you today are from Vopium.
Vopium, a Copenhagen based startup company shows determination to drive down the cost of international mobile phone calls making use of mobile VoIP and Wi-Fi technology. According to the info provided to us, the Vopium solution helps slash phone bills significantly while it works independent of networks or operators.
What Vopium solutions/products offer:
• 90% off rates on all international calls
• Absolutely free calls between Vopium-Wifi users
• Freedom i.e. no need to change cell phone or SIM card
• Works with over 500 devices from Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry & iPhone
• Top-notch voice quality
• Free Mobile data back up through Vopium Sync Application
• Swift communication with family & friends regardless where they are.
In addition:
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Free: Vopium is a free software program installed on your mobile phone.
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Installs Fast: It takes less than a minute to download and install the program.
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Versatile: It works on most mobile phones like Nokia, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony-Ericsson and smartphones like iPhone, Blackberry etc.
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User has the final say: The software runs in the background and when you are making an international call, you will be asked if you wish to use Vopium. If you choose to use the service then it re-routes your call as a local call to a Vopium gateway via premium global traffic carriers to ensure top-notch voice quality. You will pay your mobile service provider for a local call and Vopium for the international add-on.
In addition, when you send a text message (SMS) with Vopium the message is sent as a small data package over your data connection (GPRS, 3G or Wi-Fi) via a Vopium gateway. You pay your operator close to zero for using your data connection and Vopium for the international SMS.
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Customer always gets the best deal: Vopium also offers great service to the customers who are travelling abroad. While abroad, Vopium will always detect the cheapest possible solution for you. It will disable itself when it detects that its not the cheapest service while you are roaming on a foreign network. But if you are calling non-EU (European Union) destinations Vopium still will be your best choice.
When you make an international call from abroad, Vopium routes your call to a local access number in that country instead of calling the access number in your home country. You will pay your operator a roaming charge for making a local call in the country you are in and Vopium will charge you the standard rate for the international part of the call. Vopium also offers a great customer support and detailed instructions to new customers regarding signing up, how to use the service and any other technical difficulties.
At the moment the service is available in Europe, America and Australia and offers special call packages to India i.e. 400 minutes to call any network (landline/mobile) for only USD 16.38 per month.
They offer similar packages for our readers in Pakistan and Turkey. At this moment they are promoting a trial offer for 30 free minutes and 100 SMS for new customers when they signup for the service.
What Tech24Hours feels:
As the startup is making use of mobile VoIP technology, from the technological point of view, their claim regarding the reduction of international call costs seems feasible.
Just to give you an idea of what VoIP is and how it manages to slash costs, a brief explanation will be good.
VoIP or Voice over Internet protocol is a technology by which voice packets are sent via internet, just like data. And since data transfer via internet is one of the cheapest modes of transfer, any service which incorporates VoIP is bound to be inexpensive.
Another technology used by Vopium is the Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi is a technology which enables a Wi-Fi enabled device to connect to the internet wirelessly, when within Wi-Fi supporting geographic areas or places called hotspots
Wi-Fi too reduces mobile call costs; the only requirement is to find Wi-Fi hotspots (places which support Wi-Fi technology). And finding one is not a problem in developed countries.
Another variable to look out for is pricing of the products.We found the products to be competitively priced.We found a steady growth in the search volume for the keyword 'Vopium' over time since its earlier days as a new startup company. Its popularity is consistently increasing among the international callers.
The search trends for Vopium in Google trends, showed a heightened activity whenever the company achieved some landmark or launched new products.
Even if the popularity of the keyword are indicative of the better quality and better publicity of the products, it also indicate the competitive pricing of the products.
Conclusion: After reviewing all the features of this product we expect it to be very economical and useful. We would like to suggest our readers to include Vopium products in their shopping list. As Vopium is offering a trial offer for a limited time we would suggest our readers to really consider giving it a try. We certainly hope that you will not be disappointed.
[Although Tech24Hours regularly scans the cyber sphere for products and services that provide value to our readers, sometimes we do receive requests to get the products and services reviewed. Today’s products and services fall in the latter category.]
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