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From iPhone Hype to iPhone VoIP
2007-07-17
Visit Talkety's beta Web site, and, from its look and feel, you’d swear you were on one of Apple’s iPhone pages. It’s hardly a coincidence, since Talkety’s marquee application, Talkety for iPhone, does ... well, you can probably guess: VoIP calling from the iPhone.
Talkety is a British/German company that says VoIP on the iPhone is as simple as creating an account (a mercifully brief process), launching the Safari browser, pointing it at Talkety.com and logging in. As is becoming common with Web-based VoIP apps, you enter your phone number and the numbers of one or two others you’d like to call or conference with; Talkety first calls you, then calls them, making the connections through VoIP.
As iPhone Atlas reports (how quickly an iPhone-blog community is springing up) when Talkety calls you, it asks you to enter a verification code, probably to prevent the service from being used for VoIP spam. iPhone Atlas also notes good voice quality on Talkety calls but also some latency.
A Few More Features
Talkety has several other features that aim to attract both Apple and Windows users:
* A Talkety Firefox extension allows users to call phone numbers they find on Web sites by right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking, for Mac users) the number and selecting Talkety from the resulting pop-up menu. The only drawback here is that you must set Firefox to allow pop-ups.
* Apple users will enjoy a dashboard widget that enables fast Talkety calling even with no browser open, while Windows users will appreciate an Outlook plug-in that serves a similar function: letting users make calls directly from their Outlook contact list.
* Talkety has several other features, including the ability to import from and synchronize addresses with Apple’s Address Book and other vCard-based systems.
You Must Pay
Note that Talkety’s consumer and business accounts both cost money. For example, consumer-account users get 30 free minutes for starters, then have to pay for calls at Talkety’s rates (see examples below). But in exchange for parting with some money, you are getting mobile-to-mobile VoIP on phones that have Web browsers — and for much less than the cost of either landline or mobile calls.
While regular Talkety accounts only let users make conference calls with two other people, a Talkety Pro account for business users expands the service's conference-calling ability up to 50 people at once. A Talkety Pro account costs a minimum of €10/month — yes, that’s euros, don’t be intimidated — which translates to about $ 13.60 per month right now. That price includes up to 500 minutes of what Talkety calls 'International Flatrate,' which allows you to call more than 20 countries, regardless of where you are located, for a flat per-minute rate. Those rates can range from a low of $ 0.0164 per minute to call within Germany to $ 0.0363 per minute to call Iceland, with only Turkey coming in higher at $ 0.0519 per minute.
The advantage here is not the rate, which is low enough, but the fact that Talkety increases the transparency of international-call pricing. In addition, the company is happy to invoice you each month rather than demanding you have money in a Talkety account, in the extraordinary case that your phone calls take longer than you expect.
Talkety is trying to be the first service on the block to promote iPhone-friendly VoIP. If you have a new iPhone, it couldn’t hurt to try Talkety VoIP on it, and potentially make calls for quite a bit less than Ma Bell charges.
By Paul D. Kretkowski
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