EQO.com - it's crowded out there...

Once again a I was informed about another voip operator with Internet and Mobile applications.
This time it's EQO.com, which has a slightly different packaging and business model for the same technique as Rebtel, Jaxtr and Jajah.

As with the others, EQO gives you the opportunity to call friends abroad via a local number. You call EQO's number, they use voip-based calling for the country-to-country part, and uses a local number in the foreign country. That way they can keep rates lower than traditional operators, since traditional operators are well known to overcharge for international calls (just as they did with long distance calls until competing smaller firms offered low price long distance calls. After a while the traditional operators lowered the rates on long distance calls. Some of the competing smaller firms had by then become large enough to remain a competitor, some was bought by the larger companies, and some went out of business. It's market economy, guys ;-) ).

Anyway, EQO offers that service, and it does so through a java applet that you install on your cellphone. Once installed, the application will download your regular contact list from your phone to EQO, and you then make regular calls to your contacts. If the contact is in your country, the java applet will make a regular call to the contacts regular number. In that case, nothing else will happen than that you send and receive some data to the EQO service. If the contact is abroad, the applet will create a call to a local number that you get from EQO, and you are just charged for the local area phone call by your normal carrier, and for the international call by EQO. As in my case, when my local calls are free of charge, I will only be charged by EQO. That's pretty nice.

If your contact is also a registered EQO user and has the app started, the call will be free of charge! Nice one, EQO.
Some other nice features of EQO is that you can send text messages and go online to online messaging services as MSN, and that your contact list is stored at EQO.

The biggest advantage with EQO is that you don't need to learn any new numbers and that you don't need a computer to use their service.

So what's the downside? I'd say that the main disadvantage is that you need to download and run a special app in order to use the service, and that your friends has to do the same as well as having an EQO compatible phone, if you want to place totally free international calls.

I'd say that EQO is worth a try if you like mobile applications, but Rebtel, Jaxtr and Jajah is just as good choices.

Come back to this blog in a week or so, then I will have tried these different services and then I can say which service I prefer.

EQO.com

Jaxtr - Voip with a twist

After my previous post on Rebtel and Jajah Megan commented telling me to check Jaxtr out. So I did that today.
Jaxtr is pretty cool and they do most of the things that Rebtel and Jajah does.
Jaxtr functionality as far as I've understood:
* People can call you for free or at local call rates from all over the world (or at least from 51 countries)
* Your friends get a local number to call you that they can dial on any ordinary phone.
* Some free minutes each month to be called by anyone (in my case, with a swedish cellphone, 6 minutes)
* Friends on some social networks as Facebook and MySpace can call you from the site directly, and still use their regular phone.
* Visitors on your blog can call you using a similar widget, and you never need to show your phone number to the world.

So far it all sounds great, but the service has some downsides as well:
* You "pay" with Jaxtr credits when you receive calls to a regular phone or mobile phone.
* You get Jaxtr credits from recruiting friends to the service, or by simply buying them. Right now the buying process isn't fullt functional and I couldn't find any rates specified anywhere.

The people over at Jaxtr has done a really good job to make widget integration on your social networks easy, and it is also very easy to invite friends from different sources (as gmail and hotmail). I'm a bit impressed of that functionality, if I ever started a voip company, I would definitely try to make inviting and social network integration as easy.

I also like the thought of being able to be reached by readers or visitors without having to give away my own phonenumber. Right now I couldn't find a timefilter for that service, which might be a problem if you have readers in another country, I don't think I'd be fun to talk to in the middle of the night. On their infopage they wrote about the timefilter, so I guess they'll implement that function soon.

What I don't like about Jaxtr is the payment plan. I don't want to be charged for receiving calls, since I can't really control how much I am called (ok, I can filter people and point my Jaxtr account to a voicemail, but I can't control how high demand it will be for calling me).
I also don't like it that the service only works for a limited amount of time each month, if I don't recruit new members or pay cash. If I put a widget up on my facebook or on my blog, I want to be certain that anyone can call through the whole month.

It's a cool service worth checking out, obviously I have. Rebtel and Jajah fit my needs better than Jaxtr, but Jaxtr's focus on their widgets makes it an interesting service to follow.

Or what about a merger between Rebtel and Jaxtr? That would be really interesting as well.