Different Kind of Internet Telephone Service
Ok, everyone knows that Skype is the king of Internet telephone. But it has its weaknesses, like the fact that you need a computer to make phone calls. And, sometimes, when the Internet connection is not so good, the audio quality goes down, too. And Skype is not even the cheapest voip provider. It’s just most practical, hassle-free way of making phone calls relatively cheaply.
So, as an international traveler, I am always in search of the perfect Internet phone call service. I didn’t find the ultimate answer, but there are three very interesting services that can challenge Skype in one way or another.
Jajah.com is not so famous yet, but Intel found their service so promising that they already invested $20 million on it. Well, $20 million is not exactly 2.6 billion that ebay payed to buy Skype, but it is a start.
Jajah provides several useful services. First, Jajah Direct provides a local number for an international phone number. For example, if you are in the US, and you want to call someone in France, then you call the local US number, then, following the instructions, dial the French number. Once you finish your phone call, you will get an SMS with a unique local phone number you can call from any phone. In other words, you only pay local rates to make international calls without using the computer. I think that is a quite brilliant idea.
Or, you can just visit their Web site, and submit your phone number and the phone number you want to call. Then Jajah will ring your phone and the other phone. When both parties pick up the phone you can begin to talk. It can be very useful when the Internet connection is slow, or your computer does not have mike.
If you cell phone has Internet function, you can use your cell phone to visit their mobile site to use their service. They also have Mobile plugin, which works with Symbian phones (and some other models like Motorola RAZR) to integrate Jajah function with your cell phone.
Jaxtr.com is interesting in that their site looks more like a SNS for youngsters than a serious telephone business Web site. In fact, they seems to emphasize the SNS aspect very much. But let’s stick to the telephone aspect for this posting, shall we?
When you sign up, Jaxtr gives you 50 jax, which is a nice gesture (although it is only around half a dollar in real money). You type in the number you want to call first, then your phone number. Now, you are faced with a choice: You can either receive a local number that you can use with your phone, or you can ask Jaxtr to ring both phones. Since it is done on the Internet, you do not worry if the country you’re in is supported by it. At least, I checked it in Korea, and it worked fine.
Finally, there is voipdiscount. Their site looks really horrible, and it didn’t change for at least couple of years. But I like their service, because it is so cheap. How cheap? Well, you can make calls to most countries (mostly landline, but in the US and in China, mobile also) for free. But there are some conditions. You can make only 300 minutes free phone calls a week, from one IP address, and you get free minutes for 120 days after you buy credit. If you run out of your free days, you can buy more credit (but, what’s the point of accumulation credits? You will never be able to finish them all…) Even outside of the free days, rates are quite cheap, like 1 cent for most lanline phones. In fact, this is the service I rely on regularly. In my game, cheap beats elegant 
One good news is that even though their software that you use for Skype style phone calls only works on PC, there is a workaround. First, you need to use their application at least once (you can create the account only on their application. Don’t ask me why). Then you download X-Lite, which is a freeware VoIP software. Then you configure it according to the instruction(just scroll down to X-lite v3.0 Software section. That’s all that you need to know) Et voilà! You are using voipdiscount on your mac!
Now, enjoy your free or cheap phone calls!
P.S. Jaxtr left a comment with a link to the Mobile VOIP rates comparison page. You may want to check it out.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Hi Cimio. Thanks for mentioning us. While we do offer free SMS messaging to our members, you are right that the main thing we do is offer an international calling service. The local number that you mentioned can be saved and used for calling that particular individual in the future, much like the jajah local number you talked about.
We just put together a comparison chart with competitors, which you can check out here:
http://jaxtr.blogspot.com/2008/08/mobile-voip-comparison-chart-how-does.html
I don’t have voipdiscount in there, but this should give you a pretty good idea of rates across quite a few companies. Let me know if you have any questions. Take care!