Letter to Paris Hilton May 31st, 2007  

Dear Paris,

I heard through some sources that calling from prison is extremely expensive.

A local call has a $3.60 surcharge + $.50 per minute while international calls start at $.75 per minute!! That’s a ridiculous amount to pay for any call and continues to amaze me that incarcerated individuals such as you would accept those rates.

A public figure such as you is probably making no less than 30 calls per day which amounts to no less than $2,800 in calls. Calling your friends in the French Riviera to talk about the Cannes Film Festival can be very costly. So, I will round it up to $3,000 for the 23 days that you are in prison.

While I can’t change the prison rates, here is what I will offer you: $3,000 worth of Rebtel minutes. This amounts to nearly 150,000 free minutes of calling to beautiful countries such as France at $.02 per minute. This is a great opportunity to talk about your CD, haute couture, and let all your friends around the world know how you are doing.

Hopefully, the battery on your mobile phone will last that long.If you are interested, I would welcome a call from you (I’ll even accept collect charges).

Sincerely,

Souheil Badran

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By: admin

Vodafone Results Boosted By Wasted Free Minutes May 30th, 2007  

Vodafone wasted mintutesI am shocked to find out that as Vodafone announced their increased annual revenue, experts have claimed this is because customers are not using up the inclusive minutes offered with their phone contracts.

The extent of free calls wasted is so high that the average Vodafone customer needlessly throws away 816 free minutes every year at a cost of 0.04p per minute. This means Vodafone’s 6.96m contract customers waste £227.2m in free calls every single year – 14 times more than the construction cost of the Scottish parliament building and enough to build a brand new state-of-the-art hospital.

These free minutes could be used to call friends and family abroad completely free. Instead, every unused minute goes straight back into the profits of the major operators, which saw Vodafone announce a £31.1bn annual revenue yesterday.

Commenting on this Hjalmar explained:

It’s shocking to think that most mobile users are throwing away hundreds of inclusive minutes every year – minutes that could be used to call abroad for free with Rebtel. The major operators know this, but still don’t highlight it to their customers, leading to revenues we are seeing now. We want Britain’s millions of mobile users to know that we think it’s time they stopped getting used by the operators, and started putting their free minutes to good use instead.

My advice to all of you is to thank your operator for all the minutes they are giving you and use them as international calls.

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Rebtel research: Cheaper to fly than to call May 28th, 2007  

We have recently commissioned some research to understand how much UK mobile operators mark-up their prices. The results were incredible – so much so, that when we showed our results to the media, the News of the World couldn’t wait to report about it. Extracts of this article are below:

SKY-HIGH international mobile phone charges can make it cheaper to FLY abroad for a chat with a pal than to call them up.

Industry insiders have told the News of the World that UK customers are charged up to 50 TIMES what the networks actually pay for international mobile-to-mobile call time.

On average the mark-up is a whopping 1,174 per cent.

The revelation comes in the week the EU pledged to cut the costs of using mobiles abroad.

You could fly to Vitoria, near Bilbao, in Spain, for just £10 all-in with Ryanair—£8 CHEAPER than a one-hour call with ‘3′ at 30p a minute. It also costs a tenner to fly to Wroclaw in Poland, but a one-hour Orange call would again cost £18.

Add that kind of mark-up to a £2.50 pint of lager and it would cost you £29.35. The mark-up is calculated by comparing what it costs networks to buy minutes with the amount customers are charged.

A minute of mobile-to-mobile calling from the UK to places like Spain and Portugal costs networks between 7 and 8p a minute to buy. But ‘3′ charge 30p a minute and 02 charge 17p. It’s a similar story for other countries.

A minute’s call time from the UK to the US can cost networks just 0.6p, but ‘3′ will charge 30p—a mark up of 5,000 PER CENT.

A spokesman for ‘3′ did not deny the figures but insisted they had worked to bring down the cost of international calls. An O2 spokesman said lower rates for international calls were available. Orange said: “These details are commercially sensitive.”

Our view is quite simple.

The mobile operators have been ripping off British customers for far too long.

They have created a myth that the further a call has to travel, the more it has to cost. This is simply not the case anymore.

A mark-up of over 1000% cannot be justified in any market. It’s hardly surprising that people have started to refer to GSM as Get Screwed Monthly.

Rebtel believe that international calls should not cost more than a few pence…not a few pounds. In an age of cut-price everything else, it’s time to dispel the myth that calling international from your mobile means breaking the bank.

 

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By: admin

Hjalmar named by Fortune as one of 24 Top innovators May 24th, 2007  

FORTUNE MagazineKudos to Hjalmar for being named by Fortune as one of the top 24 innovators. Describing these individuals, Fortune explains:

Call them innovators, entrepreneurs, or good old-fashioned trouble-makers. These 24 disrupters have gone up against the odds as they’ve rattled old industries and tried to create new ones.

Hjalmar WinbladhCouldn’t agree more.

Stephanie Mehta’s view on Hjalmar from Fortune is as follows:

The latest entry in the (almost) free-phone-call frenzy, Rebtel lives up to its bad-boy name by using Internet Protocol, or IP, the language of the web, to deprive phone operators of lucrative international calling fees. The Stockholm startup, backed by $20 million in VC cash, offers international calls for the cost of a local connection by assigning local phone numbers to the dialer and the dialed. But unlike competitors Vonage and Skype, Rebtel doesn’t require customers to download special software or use a separate device.

Congrats to Hjalmar for well deserved recognition for his contributions to the disruptive world of mobile communications.

 

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By: admin

Rebtel Partners With DigiLinea on Mobile VoIP May 22nd, 2007  

DigilineaGreat news – we have just announced a partnership with DigiLinea (leading VoIP provider) to the US Hispanic and Latin American markets.

Under this partnership we will work with DigiLinea to enable people to call to and from Latin America by only making a local call. What’s more we have also expanded our service to over 100 cities in the Mexico, Central and Latin American.

Gregory Keough, Chairman of DigiLinea, really hit the nail on the head as he understood the true value of what we can do:

“Not all Latinos have a broadband internet connection but many have cell phones. Rebtel’s service is especially pertinent and useful to them so they can save money. With Latinos spending more per month on telecom services than other demographic groups, mobile VoIP is a natural fit.”

It’s also good to see so many people pointing out the value of this:
Andy Abramson – Going Minute Stealing In Latin America
Pat Phelan – Rebtel go South
VoIP Digest – Mobile VoIP Partnership Between Rebtel and DigiLinea – VoIPMonitor.net
MyVoIPnews – RebLinea?
Unified Communications – Rebtel and DigiLinea Alliance
VoIP Monitor – Mobile VoIP Partnership

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By: admin

Mothers Day – 120 minute free call to the US/Canada on May 13 May 9th, 2007  

Did you know that the tradition of Mothers Day can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians who held a festival each year to honour Isis (who was commonly regarded as the Mother of the pharaohs)?

Did you know that the National Retail Foundation predicts Mother’s Day to be a $14 Billion industry, with $1.98 Billion expected to be spent on flowers.

Did you know that up to 6 million American’s live abroad?

Did you also know that not calling your mom in the US because it is too expensive to call abroad is not a good excuse any more?

That’s because Rebtel have decided to celebrate Mothers Day on May 13 by giving everyone a free call for up to 120 minutes to anywhere in the US and Canada.

This offer can be used from any mobile, without needing to sign a contract or download any software.

To use: please click on the following link

Go on – call your mom. It’s free which will save you lots of money to also buy her those flowers.

Happy Mothers Day from all at Rebtel.

 

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By: admin

Vodafone costing users out of VoIP May 8th, 2007  

Home Button - Vodafone LogoDean Bubbley makes a great post about Vodafone’s new pricing policy.

I have discussed before how the mobile operators are running scared - firstly with regulation and secondly with locking VoIP features from mobile devices. 

Now Vodafone, whilst trying to address how they are going to remain profitable, have turned their eye towards charging customers for using VoIP services.

Dean believes that the way that Vodafone has set-up their pricing model is:

cleverly (cynically?) crafted to mitigate the risk of any substitution by 3rd party services.

This of course is a potential hot potato for VoIP providers when this becomes introduced in July. However, because Rebtel’s service initiates the VoIP session by dialling a local number – my understanding is that Vodafone’s new policy will not affect us – unlike the competition.

I’ll be watching this space to see how the other operators follow-suit. Rest assured – at Rebtel we are trying to stay one step ahead of the cartel so whilst this policy hits a lot of customers hard – it shouldn’t make any difference to the Rebtel community.

Quick edit:

Since publishing this post, Orange has come clean about it’s policy towards VoIP. The CNET quote from Orange explains they “actively discourage VoIP”:

Orange said on Monday. “We would discourage any customer from using VoIP through the mobile Internet due to the quality of service they may experience. We are looking to launch our own high-quality IM service in the next few months, which will deliver a far superior customer experience to currently available services.”

Looks like Orange is running scared too!

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Rebtel proporciona llamadas gratis a y desde México May 2nd, 2007  

Mi madre piensa que nunca la llamo lo suficiente.

Es justo que estando en la situación en la que estoy ahora, haga algo al respecto.

Cinco de MayoCon el Día de la Madre y el Cinco de Mayo al caer, hemos decidido permitir que cualquier persona en los Estados Unidos y en México pueda llamar a sus queridos gratis por un total de 60 minutos.

No tienen que firmar un contrato, descargar ningún software, entrar códigos especiales ni utilizar ningún dispositivo.

Los clientes pueden hacer cuantas llamadas quieran (10 minutos máximo por cada llamada) hasta alcanzar una hora en total. Para hacer más llamadas gratis, simplemente tienen que seguir las instrucciones del operador de Rebtel al comienzo de cada llamada, que son fáciles de seguir en español o en inglés.

Podrán llamar desde cualquier dispositivo móvil (smartphones, PDAs, etc.) y cualquier red celular, por lo tanto, los clientes pueden beneficiar se de utilizar la mayoría de los planes locales existentes de portadores como Telmex en México o cualquiera de los portadores principales de los E.E.U.U., tales como AT&T/Cingular, T-Mo’vil, Sprint, o Verizon.

A ver si mi mamá se queja todavía de que no la estoy llamando, ¡Supongo que tendré que tomar el teléfono para descubrir lo!!

 

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By: admin

Rebtel Provides Free Calls To and From Mexico May 1st, 2007  

My mother never thinks I ring her enough.

It’s only fair that being in the position I am in now, I should do something about it.

Cinco de MayoWith Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo coming up, we have decided to allow anyone in the United States and Mexico to call their loved ones for free for a total of 60 minutes.

They wont have to sign a contract, download any software, enter special PIN codes, or use different devices.

Customers can make as many calls as they like (10 minutes maximum per call) until they hit one hour in total. To make more calls for free, they simply need to follow the instructions from the Rebtel operator at the start of each call, which are easy to follow in Spanish and English.

They will be able to call every mobile device (smartphones, PDAs, etc.) and every cellular network, therefore, consumers can make the most of their existing local calling plans from carriers such Telmex in Mexico or any of the major US carriers such as AT&T/Cingular, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon.

Will my mom still complain that I am not calling her. I guess I will have to pick up the phone to find out!

 

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By: admin