Feb 11 2009

Vopium: Save upto 90% on international calls and international SMS

Posted by Norman John in 3rd Party Application, 5800 XpressMusic, Apple, HTC, iPhone, Mobile World Congress, Motorola, News, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Symbian

n95 vopium Vopium: Save upto 90% on international calls and international SMS

Today I came across a new service called Vopium. Vopium reduces the costs of your international calls and international SMS. However, how does it work and is it really useful? Read more to get the answer.

How it works:

Vopium is free, there are no monthly fee, no call set-up charges, no hidden fees. When you make an international call, Vopium re-routes your call as a local call to a Vopium gateway and then via premium global traffic carriers to ensure top-notch voice quality. All you need to pay is your mobile provider for a local call and Vopium for the international add-on.

how it works illustration 1 Vopium: Save upto 90% on international calls and international SMS

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 Wifi) via a Vopium gateway. You pay your operator close to zero for using your data connection and Vopium for the international SMS.

The price for the redirection depends from every country. The exact price for every country can be find her.

Here a little example. If I( located in Germany) want to call somebody in Finland I need to pay for a local call, in my case 9 cent, and than 2 cent for the cost made for the redirection by Vopium. All in all one minute would be only 11 cent. This is really cheap. SMS will cost always 10 cent. A special offer is that one Vopium user can call another Vopium user for free when they do it over WiFi.

Registration and Installation:

First of all you need to sign up with your phone number and your email address over on Vopium. After you received a call and pressed ’1′ you will receive two SMS. One SMS will contain the Download-Link for the Vopium application and the other brings you your password and username. The application is available for almost every phone being your 5800, Windows smartphone or Java enabled phone.

Application:

Vopium: Save upto 90% on international calls and international SMS

However, to use the service you need the application of course. The application has 7 icons. These are:

Dial a number – for voice calls
Sent SMS – to sent SMS for 10 cent only
Top up – top up your account
Synchronize – load your contact and calender to the website
Tell a friend – inform your friends about Vopium.
Check balance – let’s you see your account stats
Settings – edit and change your setting

I doubt that your device isn’t supported as more than 500 devices are supported and especially the S60 phones are well covered. The application worked fine on both the N96 and the 5800. However, I’ve found one little bug with the 5800. As the 5800 has a touch screen you cannot enter a text message which I expect to be fixed soon.

Website:

image001 Vopium: Save upto 90% on international calls and international SMS

Using your username and your password you can sign in on Vopium’s website where you have full control over your whole account. You can pop up your account, see your contacts and your calendar entries, write text messages straight from the web, see your history and to more actions.

Verdict:

A really simple but nevertheless useful service. If you’re making a lot international phone calls or sent several text messages to people located in other countries you really should take a look at Vopium. When you sign up you get 30 free minutes as well as 100 free SMS. However, there are other services like Gizmo, Truephone, Rebtel and more where you should take a look to. Nevertheless Vopium is really worth trying. You can also visit Vopium during the 16th-19th February at the MWC in hall 2.1,stand 2.1B69. If you have any questions please leave a comment.

http://bvlad.vip.tel Vlad

Rebtel is cheaper. In fact, on certain destinations, a helluva lot cheaper. Using WiFi to call when it is available is neat, though.
http://bitflung.blogspot.com bitflung

STOP!!!! PLEASE please – you’re hurting VoIP.

all of this call-through-your-local-gateway-to-get-voip nonsense is just CRAP. why use it? why, really, why?? you want cheap international calls? go get them. your post shows a fracking N95!!! i have that same phone, half the reason i got the darn thing was for VoIP and Vopium’s watered-down version (which is OLD tech) doesn’t do it justice.

use Truphone, Gizmo, even a premium Vonage account. use SOMETHING where calling through a local gateway is the exception, not the norm. personally, i’d prefer saying NO LOCAL GATEWAY EVER. i use Gizmo – it’s the cheapest. when i dont have wifi, i use 3G. when i don’t have 3G i use EDGE (via the Fring application). when i don’t have EDGE, i dont call.

if i don’t have WiFi, 3G, or EDGE – i dont have service at all. WHY push these lousy call-through services??? so normobs and blackberry addicts can have voip too? to hell with them – if they want voip, tell them to buy a compatible phone and then use the proper service!

this shouldn’t even becalled voip at all – it should be called voip-via-gsm-proxy. it’s a broken concept that does nothing to advance the state of the art. matter of fact, i would bet good money that handset/network managers have a hard time discussing REAL VoIP specifically because this FAKE crap gets just as much press. imagine, “hey CEO Bob, CTO Sue says we need VoIP. What’s that? we DONT?!?, it’s taken care of by some local gateway company you say? oh, ok then Sue was wrong, we don’t need it afterall then thanks”.

and you miss the single greatest gift of all real VoIPs: free inbound calls. or is USA weird for charging us for inbound calls normally? each minute on the network costs the same, no matter who initiated the call. i set my redirect for ‘missed-calls’ to my VoIP account (actually, i use grandcentral) then i can choose how to accept an incoming call -> answer the GSM call or press the red key to have it forward to my VoIP and answer it without using up airtime.

seriously – how can you even call Vopium a good idea, forgetting that the concept is so old?

*grumblegrumblegrumble*
i’m in a bad mood, i may have just taken it out on you in a public forum. i’m still in a bad mood, so i’m not sorry yet. try me again in the morning, perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

-bit

p.s. when i make a local call, it would cost me $0.06/minute through my network – but i don’t pay that, i pay $0.019 through Gizmo. all for $20/month flat-rate internet. when i call international, say to finland as above – where you paid a total of 11 cent (what currency?) i would pay exactly $0.037 USD per minute. and i place that call by dialing and hitting the green button (N95 set to default Internet call) when i’m in wifi range or have 3G. EDGE is the exception, and i have to use a special app like Vopium, but it is unusualy to not have wifi.

calling finland with REAL VoIP: $0.037 / minute
call finland through Vopium: $0.06 (network) + $0.05 = $0.11 / minute

Vopium is just shy of 3x more expensive! even JUST the so-called-voip part costs more than my whole call through gizmo!

even truphone beats vopium (truphone is EXCELLENT service, but more expensive than my voip of choice) – truphone comes in at $0.108 per minute USD – again, that’s for the WHOLE call.
Linda

Thank you for introducing the service, i use to call from UK to US, Denmark and some other European countries and found that its not actually bad. it connects me with Wifi and normally charge less as compare to my local operators. When i visited their website i found that they are introducing sync feature i hope this will reduce my hassle to save the file and contacts. My mobile expenses is reduced about 50% so some what i can say that i like vopium services.
http://mobilenreviews.wordpress.com Asthana

I tried CallIndia servcie of Vopium. It was much cheaper for me than Truphone, coz i could not effort to have enough credit in my mobile before making a call. why to invest so much money if there is an alternative. I am a student and i think Vopium is a perfect solutions for Indian students like me who stdy abroad and wanna call their families in Pakistan.
http://flatpiterrent.ru/ Victor

Ну а что еще писать шоб не потерли?
Raj

Asthana you are Indian, and you wanna call pakistan to reach your famly… lolz…. fake blogging…….
Simon

I used Vopium for 1 week and could never connect a call. I tried calling multiple countries both landline and cell phones but with no success.

When I emailed Vopium and told them about this they sent me emails asking questions they already knew the answer to like “what numbers did you try to call”.

After a week of not being able to connect a call I asked them to refund my money. They told me that you must make a refund claim within 7 days so therefore I was not eligible.
Suddenly the time wasting emails from Vopium made sense.

Needless to say, I will be charging back my Visa card and continue using Skype.
http://www.bestmobilesaver.com pushya

u i used bestmobile saver ,it is dam good using this we can make any international call from u r mobile with local charges
http://www.vopium.com Rohit Sharma

Bullshit, Once you joined they will give you best of best services you can have but after 5 – 6 months they will start ripping you off. The bloody call centre is in Pakistan. Think before you go for it.
Michelle Green

That is great! Saving 90% on international calls! It would be a great relief when you are talking to your loved ones without thinking how your money is suddenly vanishing. I also know some prepaid call cards that is giving great values to their clients.

Michelle Green,
Make International Calls
VoxCall
http://www.cazturzprizs21.edu/ Luigi Fulk

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