Verizon’s Smoke At The FCC Is So Thick You Can Cut It With A Knife April 17th, 2008  

I want to go on the record. Rebtel does not promote the use of alcohol, tobacco products, guns, other weapons, or illegal drugs. Nor does Rebtel advocate or have anything to do whatsoever with intense profanity or violence, graphic depiction of sexual activity, nudity, or hate speech.

We are not SPAMers or purveyors of fraudulent materials or activities that are restricted by law to those over 18, such as gambling or lotteries.

Nevertheless, if you take the time to wade through the nearly 200 collective pages of legal mumbo jumbo recently filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel and CTIA,  The Wireless Association, you might actually come away thinking we are. Or could be.

In fact, the only thing we do at Rebtel is give consumers an alternative way to make an international call from their mobile phone, for which we charge them a few pennies per minute instead of mobile operators ridiculous rip-off rates.

As you might guess, the carriers are not wild about our service even though it’s super simple and very low cost to implement. Just ask our friends at Skype, Jajah and Jaxter which are now blatantly copying Rebtel’s invention.

That, however, is an entirely separate kettle of fish.

The issue at hand before the FCC is very straightforward. And we totally agree with AT&T, which wrote in its filing that it is important for the FCC to be clear as to what this proceeding is about, and more importantly, what it is not about.

AT&T wrote in its filing: “This proceeding is not about the ability of wireless customers to exchange [text] messages with other wireless customers. What is at issue is whether wireless carriers can be forced to enter into joint marketing arrangements with content providers through the activation of short code campaigns.”

But for some reason they got it backward. The issue concerning Rebtel is all about the ability of wireless customers to exchange text messages with other wireless customers, and has absolutely nothing to do with marketing using short code campaigns.

As I’ve discussed here in the past, short codes, among other uses are how text messages (SMS) get sent from a company’s web site to an individual’s phone in the U.S.

What’s happening is the carriers customers want to send themselves a text message from the Rebtel web site and they want to receive text messages that their friends, family and work colleagues send to them from the Rebtel web site.

But Verizon and Alltel won’t approve a Rebtel short code campaign that would allow those messages through. And while AT&T has approved Rebtel’s campaign, it transmits the messages as flash SMS so they disappear if you don’t immediately save them when they arrive.

All these games because the carriers don’t like what’s in the messages: local phone numbers where you live that connect you to friends abroad.

Verizon wrote in its filing that it does not block text messages, except those addressed to its subscribers that are captured by its spam filters, or that are affirmatively selected for blocking by its subscribers.

But there is no mass mailing of text messages going out from Rebtel that might be trapped by a SPAM filter. Instead every single messages is 1:1 sending initiated by the Verizon or AT&T or Alltel or whatever customer to either themselves or from a friend.

What the carriers are doing is really no different than if Verizon started listening into customers voice calls and disconnecting the calls if someone talks about a better deal over at AT&T.

So, let’s cut through the baloney. This is about business.

We created Rebtel with a very simple vision: Take the phony out of telephony.

Our mission: Create a genuinely good, honest, trustworthy global communications service that saves people money.

And we set out in 2006 to build a company on just three values: Always take the customers side, whatever you do must be clear and simple, and have no fear; do the right thing.

That approach has paid off. Rebtel blew past 1 million regular customers months ago and we’re now tripling in size every three months in terms of new customers, revenue and minutes carried.

In contrast, I think Verizon’s approach of trapping customers into multi-year contracts and then milking them for every penny possible is beautifully captured in its request for the FCC to dismiss the petition filed by Public Knowledge, Free Press and other leading consumer advocacy groups.

Verizon argues that the complaints in the petition refer to isolated instances that don’t warrant government involvement. If consumers want to join a short code campaign that Verizon Wireless has not enabled, they may switch to a provider willing to enable that campaign.

Okay, Verizon which providers do you suggest? And, by the way, will you wave the penalty fee on my contract when I do?

By: alexander drewniak

Verizon: Forget the Short Codes. Let Your Customers Send SMS to Themselves and Friends. February 11th, 2008  

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 us 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 and 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 messages, 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.

By: alexander drewniak

Group Talk Review February 5th, 2008  

Here at Rebtel, we encourage users of our service to give us feedback on what we can do better and what we’re doing well (flattery always welcome!). Naturally, it’s very nice once in a while to hear from you guys that the work we do is appreciated embraced and makes your lives easier.

As some of you might know, not too long ago we launched a brand new, really neat Facebook app called Group Talk . Group Talk allows users to set up conference calls with each other in a truly simplified manner. You don’t even have to be a Facebook member to join in on the conversation – how sweet is that?

Recently, Group Talk got some well-deserved attention from the wicked people over at the blog Facebook Applications . They write reviews on different, cool, and useful apps you can find on Facebook, and recently they wrote about us (woohoo!!). Here is a short snippet from the review:

“…for people like me living abroad with so many friends to call and so many hours spend in websites providing services like this application does, Group Talk is a really interesting application that lets me stay checking all my stuff in my Facebook plus get connected for free in some cases, or at really cheap rates, with a great quality of sound.”

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the nice people over at Facebook Applications for the wonderful review (they gave us 4 out of a possible 5, woohoo again!). Thanks guys. Please keep providing all the Social Media and Facebook types like us and others out there with insightful reports!

Lastly, if you have written a review about our Facebook app, our service in general, or have any tips or suggestions on how we can make what we are doing better, please do not hesitate to send an email our way.

Until next time, have a wonderful week!

By: alexander drewniak

China joins the Rebtel family 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.

By: alexander drewniak

Tried-and-true is new at Jajah November 29th, 2007  

We want to tip our hat to our friends at Jajah for the introduction of Jajah Direct. Those folks have done a brilliant job at making something that Rebtel has been doing from the start sound brand new and innovative.

What I’m talking about is free or low-cost international calls without the need for Internet access. Or said another way: Rebtel service as it’s been from day No.1.

And while we’ve always thought our service was innovative, it’s super nice when you get validation from a competitor that you really did break new ground and that all the other ways of making a VoIP calls are “old school.”

This concept of removing the barriers to unrestricted communication by providing the savings of an Internet call and the convenience of a telephone has been at the heart of Rebtel since our founding in January 2006.

We are firm believers that distance in the 21st century is a myth. It doesn’t cost any more to send email to a co-worker down the hall than to a co-worker on the other side of the world. And since Rebtel is using IP for your call the same should apply to voice services.

Today, Rebtel is hands-down the cheapest way to make international calls. If you know of a cheaper per-minute rate please let us know immediately and we’ll do everything in our power to beat it.

Here are just a few examples of highly trafficked routes from the U.S. and how Rebtel compares to Skype and Jajah (in U.S. cents per minute, calling to a landline phone):

From the US to: Rebtel: Skype: Jajah:
India 5.6 9.2 7.9
China 1.9 2.1 3.3
UK 1.9 2.1 3.1
Mexico 2.0 2.1 5.4
Brazil 2.5 2.6 4.9
Israel 1.9 2.1 3.5
Russia 1.9 4.8 3.6

And those kinds of low-cost calls can be made from 40 countries to anywhere in the world that has phone service.

But actually – we think that free is even better. And that’s why we created Smart Calls.

Yes – to make the international segment of your call totally free requires that you and your friends jump through a hoop or two – the old hold-on, hang-up, call-back dance. But anyone who has done it once or twice will tell you it’s not really all that complicated. Nevertheless, we always leave it up to our customers to decide.

But for anyone out there that still thinks our Smart Calls are too complex, keep an eye on our Facebook application Let’s Talk. You’ll soon be pleasantly surprised. At least we hope so.

By: alexander drewniak