Rebtel Blog

Focus on Mobile Web

A new day and a new post from San Francisco. This time the topic will be on one of the presentations from the actual conference that I found generally interesting, but particularly from a Rebtel perspective.

The session was entitled Mobile Ajax and the Future Web and was held by Daniel Appelquist. Daniel is senior technology strategist with the Vodafone Group based in London, UK, where he primarily works on Web and Internet projects and industry activities.

The first part of the talk (which I found most interesting) was a lot about the two different (and today separate) entities we refer to as “The Web” and “The Mobile Web” and how a convergence between the two is taking place.
In a (not too distant) future there will only be one Web when referring to mobile devices as well as regular laptops and desktops. Thematical Consistency, ensuring that content across all devices is provided coherently and consistently, will be ubiquitous and the standard to aim for. Thanks to devices like the iPhone (which naturally was mentioned as a groundbreaking device in this field), the task of obtaining Thematical Consistency becomes significantly easier.

Daniel also mentioned that today, mobile devices are slowly overtaking desktops and laptop based web usage (so cool). Mobile browsing is in other words seriously on the rise and with that device from Apple that came out last year securing a fourth place overall on the Internet browsing market share list with its 0.15%, we can get a hint of what’s to come. In as little as five years, the majority of the total worldwide web usage is predicted to be mobile (!).

A cool little detail during the talk, which felt very reassuring for us coming from someone like Daniel, was that he mentioned Rebtel (see the picture above) as one of the companies that truly are in the forefront in mobile technology and web. Thank you Daniel, you are a rock star!

Posted in 2.0, In the media, Vodafone, blog, daniel appelquist, iphone, mobile, rebtel, rebtel staff, rebtel web, web 2.0 expo | No Comments »

Verizon: Forget the Short Codes. Let Your Customers Send SMS to Themselves and Friends.

Stupid Rebtel.  We should have known better.  

Soon after Public Knowledge, Free Press and others filed a petition asking the FCC to rule that text messaging and related short codes are protected from “unjust and unreasonable discrimination,” Rebtel – which was named in the petition – received some attention in the press, and Verizon was none too happy about it.    

I’m talking about the Verizon that reported $1 billion in earning last quarter while adding 2 million wireless customers to bring its total to 65.7 million. 

The Verizon that went to Capitol Hill recently as part of the CTIA to ask that they be spared from the indignities of “burdensome regulation” on their text-messaging services and short-code offerings.

The same Verizon that told BusinessWeek that Rebtel can “still text-message our customers to offer their service.” 

And the very same Verizon that is now preventing its customers from sending standard SMS – text messages – to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel. 

Goliath didn’t like the negative attention it received in the press regarding its treatment of little David.  It doesn’t want people – especially people at the FCC – to know that Verizon violates their customers’ freedom of speech every day. 

So they contacted Rebtel just before the New Year and told us that they would stop blocking their customers’ SMS – IF – Rebtel would shut down all PR on the short code issue and send a letter to the FCC in praise of Verizon and its new openness and cooperation with Rebtel. 

Being the trusting souls that we are, we complied.  We stopped talking to the press.  And when the press called during January we explained that Verizon had seen the light – that we were talking with Verizon and expected to have an announcement from the two companies shortly. 

At first Verizon complained because there were some straggler stories appearing on the Web.  And then there was silence. No response to our mail.  Return phone calls came to a halt.  Nothing.   

It took as a week or two but we finally realized that we had been tricked. Verizon had tricked us into silence.  Well, shame on us!  We should have known better. And now we do. 

But the true shame – the real crime – is that Verizon customers are being prevented from sending SMS messages to themselves and their friends from the Rebtel web site.   

We’re not asking for special access or treatment.  We just want Verizon customers to be able to send standard text messages to themselves and their friends regardless of the content.  That’s what free speech is all about.  But Verizon thinks differently.   

Because it doesn’t like what’s in those SMS – local phone numbers that will connect Verizon customers to their friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the highway robbery charged by Verizon for the same call – and because they don’t like the viral nature of the Rebtel service, Verizon shuts them down.  It turns off their customers’ right to send SMS. 

Well, live and learn, as they say.  But I promise, this one ain’t over!  This David, for one, is pissed.

Posted in BusinessWeek, Free Press, In the media, Jajah, Public Knowledge, Verizon, blog, calls, cheap, federal communications commission, international, mobile, mvoip, price, telecom cartels, telephony, voip | 1 Comment »

VoIP services compared - and we’re the ‘overall best choice’!

The folks at lucafiligheddu.com decided to compare a bunch of VOIP services. They bought a PAYG SIM card from T-Mobile and, beyond the initial set-up, didn’t use a PC while on the go.

Services compared were Jajah Direct, Mobivox, RebTel ,Talkster and WifiMobile. Rebtel was considered to have the best features and to be the overall best choice. The review concludes:

“RebTel offers the most complete range of features at a very competitive price, letting you choose what to do, whether to use your Rebtel credit for calling out or sharing the cost with the person you are calling by using the call back feature.”

They go on to say:

“I praise RebTel for having really improved their service since its first launch, so that it deserves to be selected as the best choice in this comparison.”

We’re blushing! Cheers dudes. We’re glad you like the service.

Posted in In the media, blog, mobile, rebtel, t-mobile, voip | 14 Comments »

Revolution Rebtel-style now!

We were thrilled to see reports this week on a new research study from Disruptive Analysis showing that mobile VoIP will rapidly eclipse voice over WiFi and become a mainstream form of communication. Rebtel users – you are the revolution’s vanguard. Well done!

And for us at Rebtel, third-party validation that your dreams and vision are on the mark always feels super good. Yesterday we got a double dose of such validation when our friends at Jajah finally came around to offering what Rebtel has been doing from day No.1, while our old buddy Om Malik reminded blog watchers worldwide just where this bright idea came from.

What they’re all suddenly so excited about is the concept conceived in early 2006 by our CTO, Jonas Lindroth: voice over the internet – VoIP calls – without the need to be connected to the internet.

What’s cool is that’s exactly what Rebtel users have been doing for more than a year now, every time they needed to make an international call to someone new while not at their computers.

With Rebtel you just call the Rebtel Operator in your country, enter the international phone number you want to call, and instantly receive an SMS with a local number for that person, which you can save, use and dial forever directly from your mobile phone book. Of course, you never have to pay your operator’s super-expensive rates for international calls ever again.

The big difference between Rebtel and the copycats is that with Rebtel you can use this feature to call anywhere in the world from any of the 40 countries where we offer service. In contrast, they can only do this in six countries and offer access numbers in just a couple of cities.

One long-standing Rebtel bigot was so incensed when he saw this “news” that he wrote us a nasty note with the subject heading: “What’s your view? Jajah a complete Rebtel rip-off?”

Well, our view is “no worries”. We know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So happy calling, Rebtel users. And never forget: you are at the forefront of a revolution!

Posted in In the media, blog, disruption, international, mobile, rebtel, telephony, voip | 3 Comments »

Call for Change with Rebtel

In a recent interview with Rebtel’s CEO, Hjalmar Windbladh, trade publication EETimes characterized Rebtel’s No.1 value — taking the customer’s side — as our “novel business plan.”

Novel this may be – in the telecoms industry, at least – but ever since we started it’s been Rebtel’s goal to be an active, disruptive force for change.

We aim to empower our customers, not just by saving them money, but by opening their eyes to the mobile operators’ unethical behaviour and thereby, we hope, bringing about positive changes throughout the entire industry.

Thing is, we’d like to do a bit more than this. We’ve been pondering how to use Rebtel’s technology as a positive force, not just on an individual scale, but on a global one too. How can we help people to express their opinions and voice their protests about things that matter far more than dollars saved on phone calls?

And that’s when we came up with Call for Change – a new program that permits customers to use our technology to disrupt more than the mobile industry. If a hundred people can trigger change by voicing their opinions in front of an embassy, why not use mobile technology to enable hundreds of thousands of people to make their voices heard from afar?

Why not, for example, jam the switchboards of a repressive regime’s embassy around the world, at no cost to the protester? Why not set up a telephone voting system so callers can express their dissatisfaction in a matter of seconds, absolutely free?

With this in mind we recently ran our Call for Change Burma campaign on Facebook, encouraging Facebook users to flood the switchboards of Burmese embassies worldwide to register their disapproval at the atrocities there.

But we want to do so much more.

How can Rebtel technology help organisations like Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders or Friends of the Earth?

Do you run an organisation that could benefit from our technology?

If there is anything we can do for you, please call Greg on +1 415 717 4666 or click here to get a local number where you live to let us know what we can do to help you Call for Change.

Posted in In the media, calls, cheap, disruption, facebook, international, mobile, rebtel, telephony | 2 Comments »

webex connect shoots for widgets

web-strategist, Jeremiah Owyang’s excellent blog, carries an interesting video interview with Shankur Iyer, who is VP of Strategic Initiatives at WebEx. WebEx, a recent acquisition by Cisco, provides enterprise netmeeting, conferencing and collaboration environments. The video is of interest if only because it points the way forward to what the web may become: a shared platform where functionality consists of numerous, widgetized tools. It’s my conviction that widgetized voice tools, such as we’re developing for environments like Facebook will have their role in the enterprise too.

Posted in 2.0, In the media, blog, disruption, facebook, mvoip, rebme, rebtel, telephony, voip | No Comments »

Apple iPod touch would make a killer Voip phone…

…if it had a microphone, that is.

Last month the iPhone dominated the news, but now that the ipodtouch is hitting the stores later this month, Apple’s two-pronged strategy is becoming clear. In a surprising move that will have put frowns on the faces of AT&T’s board of directors, Apple is making the new touch available including wifi capabilities, and with the possibility to download songs directly from iTunes onto the iPod. AT&T will be none too pleased about this: a shrewd bit of strategic maneuvering had Apple out-witting them. On CNN Money, Stephanie Mehta points out:

The Wi-Fi capabilities built into the touch - and other devices such as Nokia’s N95, Samsung’s T409 and a number of Windows mobile devices  - in the long run could end up by-passing wireless phone networks altogether. How? If a user downloads ringtones or searches the web on a Wi-Fi network, he or she is not consuming minutes on the carriers’ data networks, which phone companies are spending billions to build.

Elsewhere I’ve been saying that a wider availability of Wifi enabled devices coupled with VOIP services will be a substantial kick in the behind of Mobile Operators. It’s easy to see why AT&T disabled VOIP on the iPhone, and now Apple has gone the other route and has released a device that is – at this moment – a phone without a microphone. All this to the relief of AT&T directors, no doubt. However, it’s also abundantly clear, that the iPod with a microphone, or a device like it, will come. When the iPhone was first released, there were a lot of comments on the stranglehold AT&T was supposed to have on Apple. It’s now obvious that this is the other way round. And it is like this for all of us. I’m cited in the article as bragging of “using (my) hotel’s Wi-Fi connection to make a 90-minute VOIP call to Europe” where roaming charges would have bought me a new phone altogether. Today that’s as true as it was then. Apple has now changed the landscape. Device manufacturers but also the likes of Nokia have tried to push wifi and therefore voip for a couple of years now. For consumers wishing to make cheap international calls, Voip is a success story that is as yet poised for success. Its breakthrough may be one step closer but we are still missing an open platform strategy from the device manufacturers. Meanwhile, manufacturers are reproaching Telcos for not opening up their platforms to enable innovation as seen on the tethered Internet. Neither Apple nor Nokia have ever been known for such an open approach. Compared to them, even Microsoft looks decidedly open source.

Posted in In the media, blog, calls, cheap, disruption, international, iphone, mobile, mvoip, price, rebtel, telephony, voip | 2 Comments »

what will be the impact of the recent outage on skype?

Over at Disruptive Telephony, Dan York writes about the impact of Skype’s recent massive log-in outage.

The seductive aspect of Skype is that it makes it very simple and easy to use the product. It has (at least for the moment) a massive directory of users. It has APIs that let it be readily integrated with other web sites and services. It’s easy to use… and I expect that probably many if not most users will simply go back to using it as they have always done once it comes back into full operation. People have short-term memories…

Certainly, Skype has become an infrastructure layer on the net, as so many services are built on top of it. It was interesting to see
how much functionality I was personally unable to use. Crazily, as I was still logged in to Skype through iSkoot on my cellphone, that was the only way I could gauge whether Skype was becoming available again. “Are my contacts there yet”. Skype’s prolonged unavailability also raises questions about reliability of such software, as it was not the service itself, but merely access to it that was disabled. Important to keep this in mind: it has convinced me, that adding a layer to control access to a VOIP service is not the way I wish to have my VOIP needs met. SIP based protocols are becoming more available now, and I consider that a good thing. Meanwhile, for my international telephony needs, I gladly trade add-ons and plug-ins for Rebtel’s elegant simplicity: assign local numbers to my contacts, call them using just my mobile phone, done. No web based software, no log-ins.

Posted in 2.0, In the media, calls, cheap, disruption, mvoip, rebtel, skype, telephony, voip | 4 Comments »

Trip advisor acquires “where I’ve been” facebook app for $3M

Inside Facebook brings the news that Trip Advisor has reportedly bought the “Where I’ve Been” Facebook application for $3 Million. Where I’ve Been was coded by Craig Ulliott and is said to have over 2,5 M users on Facebook. This puts the value of every W.I.B user at about $1.30… This is a news story comparable to the “island hype” surrounding Second Life 2 years ago. I’ve been toying with the idea of proposing to add functionality to the Reb Me Facebook app that would show the collective amount the entire Rebtel community takes from the mobile operators’ pockets by using Rebtel.

Posted in 2.0, In the media, facebook, facebook apps, rebme, rebtel | No Comments »

Reb Me brings mobility to the party

Our Facebook app, Reb Me, is now live. We’re a little surprised to note that it’s only the second of two functional VoIP apps on there, as bringing Rebtel functionality to Facebook was a logical next step for our service. There’s a strong use of social media within Rebtel itself, and, of course, our users are there - so why not go to them?

As Rebtel developer Ola Sundqvist explains, it’s now possible to do everything on Facebook that you can do at Rebtel.com, apart from crediting your account which, for security reasons, must be done at our main site. We provide Facebook users with free credit so they can try the service immediately - and if their friends sign up they receive more credit, which should help promote the viral spread of the app through interconnected groups of friends.

Despite the ease with which you can form connections on the internet, research shows that online networks tend to grow from offline ones, whether that’s a group of work colleagues, students at the same university, or members of a social group based around sport or leisure activities. Here at Rebtel, we think it makes sense to extend communication outwards from Facebook back to the ‘offline’ world by developing a mobile application.

Most other VoIP-based services require the use of a computer to initiate the call: with Rebtel, once the number has been generated, the customer saves and dials it as they would any other number. In this way, Rebtel brings voice to the world of social networking, expanding the number of ways in which Facebook users can interact with each other by providing a cost-effective, real-life means of communication that segues seamlessly with their chosen networking platform.

As Rebtel CEO Hjalmar Windbladh points out in an interview on the Jeff Pulver blog, “[with Reb Me] Rebtel becomes an integral part of social networking, bringing mobility to the party. Now you can reach all your friends when not online with just a local call. There are no exorbitant long distance charges, and you’re calling right from your mobile phone, not chained to your desk.”

Posted in 2.0, In the media, facebook, mobile, mvoip, rebme, rebtel, telephony, voip | 1 Comment »