Archive for the ‘China’ Category
Friday, August 8th, 2008
Hey guys!
Today is a special day for a lot of people from many cultures, especially in China. Over here at the Rebtel office in Stockholm you can almost feel it in the air. Let me tell you why.
It’s not a coincidence that this years summers Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to officially open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 PM. The word for “eight” in Chinese sounds very similar to the word which means “prosper” or “wealth”. And who wouldn’t want a little bit more of that in their lives? Especially when you’re hosting one of the largest and greatest events known to man and the eyes of the world are directed straight at you. How’s that for pressure? 
A lot of us that live in the western parts of the world would like to call the Chinese superstitious because of their faith and belief in the number 8. A lot of us would call the person in China insane that bought the phone number 8888-8888 for USD$270,723 in China (thanks Wikipedia). Here at Rebtel we call him (or her) a visionary. Even though we tend to want tangibility in our lives (because we often can control those things) this is a great day and opportunity to adopt the eastern way of taking control of your destiny.
To celebrate this, starting today stretching for two weeks, we’re launching the “Rebtel Goes Crazy For 8″ campaign. Here’s everything you need to know:
What
88 free minutes of calling to China to try Rebtel
888 free minutes to China for new customers who credit their account
Every 888th new user gets 888 RMB (Chinese currency approx. $130 credit) in their account
When
Friday, August 8, 2008 — 08/08/08
How
1. Go to http://www.rebtel.com, set up account (no charge), enter voucher code “888″
2. Enter your mobile number and your friend’s mobile number in China
3. Rebtel will give you a local number where you live to reach your friend
4. Dial the local phone number to speak with your friend in China
Enjoy and good luck to you!
Posted in China, calls, cheap, rebtel, voip | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 16th, 2008
People are in desperate need of help in China and Myanmar (Burma). Rebtel wants to help. This is a no-strings attached offer: For the next week you may use Rebtel free of charge to contact your friends, family and colleagues in China and Myanmar to make sure they’re okay and offer your help.
How it works
1 Enter phone number
Enter your mobile number and your friend’s number in China or Myanmar
2 Get local number
We’ll give you a local number in your home country that will connect you to your friend in China / Myanmar
3 Save number and call
Dial the local phone number to speak with your friend in China or Myanmar
Join here to get started or log in if you’re already a Rebtel customer.
You’ll be charged your phone operator’s usual rate for a local call. The connection to China / Myanmar will be free.
If you want to support people in Myanmar and China please visit important support organizations like:
http://www.supportunicef.org
http://www.redcross.org
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
Please note (Updated 2008-05-19)
Fair-use policy allows you 2 hours to China. We are happy that so many are calling to Myanmar but our current capacity cannot hold more calls, so a lot of people cannot get through. We therefore have to temporarily limit the free minutes to 10 minutes when you phone. We hope to be able to increase our capacity again before the 22nd of May. We apologize the limited calling but are happy we can help people to connect. We will continue to work on increasing the minutes and quality. China and Myanmar will have the above mentioned free minutes until the 22nd of May 2008.Â
Posted in China, blog | 1 Comment »
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Today Rebtel launched a new Facebook application called Group Talk that lets you setup free conference calls with people in any of the 40 Rebtel countries.Â
If you’re not a Facebook user you should join just to use Group Talk. It makes it super easy to set up free conference calls and has lots of cool bells and whistles worth checking out.Â
Once you’ve downloaded Group Talk you can set up a free conference call with as may people as you want in less than a minute. You just enter your Facebook friends’ names, and click Add. You can then make the call private – just for the people invited – or public, which makes the call open to any of your friends who want to join. To include people who are not Facebook users you enter the participants’ names, mobile phone numbers or landline numbers and their email addresses, and click Add. That’s it. Everyone invited to a Group Talk call automatically receives a local dial-in number in the city or country where they live via SMS (text message) or email. For the first person who joins a conference call, Group Talk offers to notify all of the other invited participants that the Group Talk session is starting.Â
Facebook users are able to see public Group Talk conference calls as they’re happening that have been set up by their friends, by members of the Facebook groups that they’ve joined, or by the organizers of events they’ve been invited to attend, and can get a phone number to join any of those Group Talk calls with a single click of the mouse.Â
And because Group Talk is built by Rebtel, conference call participants’ personal phone numbers are always kept private.Â
Group Talk conference calls are always free – no matter how long you talk. So give it a try. Do something fun. Get your friends or family together to celebrate someone’s birthday. If you’re an Aussie living abroad, set up a Group Talk call with all your mates back home the Saturday after next for Australia Day. And now that Rebtel is up and running in Shanghai don’t forget Chinese New Year – it’s just around the corner. But whatever you do with Group Talk please drop us a line and tell us what you think. We hope you enjoy it. Happy talking.
Posted in China, Shanghai, blog, facebook, facebook apps, international, mobile, rebtel, telephony, voip | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 21st, 2007
Rebtel is turning on service today in Shanghai. We’re super thrilled to welcome China to the Retel family of countries where residents can make free international calls.
Opening this market has been in the works for a long time. It’s one of the toughest markets to get into. So we’re very proud to be the first to give people in Shanghai local numbers they can use to ring friends anywhere in the world.
This local number service that Rebtel invented is what gives the 24 million residents of Shanghai a choice to either make super low-cost calls to any phone, anwhere in the world, or make free international calls to friends, family or work colleagues living in one of the other 39 Rebtel countries.
When we started Rebtel last year some influential bloggers were skeptical that the Rebtel service would take off. They said that asking your friend to hang up and call back on their local number for you while you stayed on the line, was too complex.
Well guess what? Thousands upon thousands of people do it regularly. And, many more thousands are signing up every week to give it a try. Clearly we’re doing something right because not only is the number of Rebtel subscribers growing steadily, our users, on average, make at least three Rebtel calls per week, and their calls are getting longer and longer, meaning our minutes, too, are on a very steady growth path week-over-week.
But I digress. Back to China and low-cost calls.
Rebtel calls from Shanghai to the U.S. cost just $0.018 per minute; $0.019 per minute from the U.S. to Shanghai. None of the VoIP services beat that, but even their prices are better than AT&T, which charges $3.50 per minute to call a mobile phone in the China from a mobile phone in the U.S.
Rebtel calls from Shanghai to U.K. landlines cost $0.019 per minute, and $0.018 per minute to U.K. mobile phones. Using Rebtel to call Shanghai from London is the same as from the U.S.: $0.019 per minute. Again — Rebtel is the low-price leader among internet calling services. And Vodafone doesn’t come close, with $3.33 per minute to call Shanghai from the U.K.
Shanghai is just the start. We plan to expand Rebtel service to the rest of China in the New Year. So, stand by. We’ll keep you posted.
In the mean time — happy calling. All of us at Rebtel wish you the happiest of holidays. To our cusomers: Thank you! It’s been a terrific year. May 2008 bring everyone happiness and good fortune. But most of all may it bring peace and freedom on earth for all.
Posted in AT&T, China, Jajah, Shanghai, Vodafone, blog, calls, cheap, international, mobile, price, voip | 1 Comment »
