Vonage Offering Free Calls to Facebook Friends

by Ethan on August 4th, 2010

So you’ve probably added all your old friends from your hometown via Facebook. While it’s fun to “like” their latest pictures and status updates but you really don’t want to waste your minutes on them, your problem is solved. Vonage has teamed up with Facebook, creating an app for your iPhone, (& Android), entitled Vonage Mobile for Facebook that allows free calls over Wi-Fi or 3G to anyone domestic or overseas, for free.

After you download the free app, just sign in with your Facebook account and you’ll see a list of your friends who’ve done the same, and are ready to be called for free. You will also see whom you can chat with over IM. If you don’t have unlimited 3G, or a Wi-Fi subscription, your first move should be checking with your carrier to figure out any charges that may apply to you.

Of course the program has its own Facebook page, which will allow you to invite your friends to the download the free app. This all sounds great, but I have one question. How many people are actually going to do this? Are you?

 
 

How to Get Vonage on Your iPhone

by Sebastien on August 5th, 2009

I originally signed up with Vonage because it was inexpensive and it gave me unlimited calls to France (and other countries) where all my friends and family still are. As my fiance and I are planning our one-year trip around the globe, I started looking into getting Vonage on my iPhone so I can make calls from my iPhone, either over 3G or wifi, using my Vonage plan.

There are many reports showing that Vonage is currently working on an iPhone app but it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. By digging a little more, I found this article that shows you how to set up Vonage on your iphone by using your Vonage line as a SIP line.

First, you have to find out your Vonage SIP credentials. To do so, open your internet browser from your house and point it to:

https://im-config.vonagenetworks.net/config?&login=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&type=1003

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD by your Vonage account username and password.

This is going to open a page with a bunch of information. The information we need is at the top of the page. You are looking for something like that:

[SIP 2.0]
ProxyUserName=iphoner
ProxyUserPassword=Y0ur1Ph0ne5ux
ProxyDomain=a.vonim.com
ProxyPort=10000

Next step is downloading an SIP client for your iPhone. I recommend using Fring as it can be downloaded for free from the App Store. If your iPhone is jailbroken, you can also download SIPhone from Cydia.

Launch Fring then sign up or login with your existing account. Go to More > Add-ons > SIP > Other.

Fill out the required fields as follow:

User ID = ProxyUserName
Password = ProxyUserPassword
Proxy = a.vonim.com:10000

Save these settings. You can now place a call from your iPhone using your Vonage account, assuming you have wifi connectivity. If your iPhone is jailbroken, download VoIPover3G from Cydia and you will also be able to use Vonage from your iPhone over 3G.

It works great but for some reason, I can’t have it place international calls. Every time I try to call France, it gives me an error message. It’s still pretty awesome that you can use your Vonage account to place calls for free over wifi and 3G.

That’s a pretty sweet hack, eh! What do you think?

 

Forget Fring, Use TruPhone

by Sebastien on December 11th, 2008

Ok, don’t forget Fring yet as it is a pretty good “all-in-one” app. But if you are using Fring solely for the Skype calls feature, then you might want to give a try at TruPhone, a VoIP app that was the first of its kind to be approved in the App Store.

So, what’s so good about TruPhone? Well, I guess the best feature of this application is that it allows you to make VoIP calls from your iPhone to any phone in the world over wifi, and most importantly you can make calls even if you are not in a wifi zone. Now I have to admit this part is a bit shady. I had a look at Truohone’s website and I can’t figure out how this works exactly. It doesn’t say anything about 3G or Edge but it does say that you can make calls even if you don’t have an Internet connection. It’s confusing but it still sounds great!

Fring allows you to do pretty much the same (and actually more) but the problem with Fring is that the app doesn’t let you make VoIP calls over 3G or Edge, unless you implemented my Fring hack, of course… It seems that TruPhone is making this possible, without having to hack anything.

Let’s have a look at what TruPhone can do for you:

Cheap international calls

The Truphone iPhone app routes iPhone calls over the Internet which can save you loads of money on international calls from your home country and on calls when you’re abroad. You can look at the rates here. Calling a landline in my home country (France) is $0.06/minute but calling a cellphone there is $0.30/minute. All calls in the US are $0.06/minute.

Use Truphone Anywhere

If you’re not online Truphone Anywhere can still route your call over the internet. So now you can make cheap VoIP calls even when you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi network. How does that work? I’m not sure…

Free calls worldwide

Calls to other connected Truphone users are FREE, worldwide. So if you and your friends all download Truphone, you can call each other for FREE, wherever you are in the world!

Know who’s online

A new feature lets you know which of your Truphone contacts is online. It’s great news if you want to make FREE Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi calls on your iPhone because calls between connected users are always FREE Worldwide.

Receive calls for free

You can receive FREE Truphone calls whenever you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.

iPod Touch users for once shouldn’t feel left aside. If you have a headset with a microphone you can also use this great app on your iTouch, which means that you can turn your iPod Touch into a phone!!!

Truphone is free and you may click here to download Truphone for iPhone or Truphone for iPod Touch.

One question still lingers in my mind though… Is AT&T ok with that?

 

VoIPover3G

by Sebastien on October 27th, 2008

VoIPover3G (that’s Voice Over IP Over 3G) is what I think the hottest application that came out this weekend, and let me tell you right now, like all hot apps, it is only available in Cydia – that should give you yet another reason to jailbreak if you still haven’t done so.

So what does this bad boy do? This MobileSubstrate library can trick any application into thinking that it is on wifi even though it is on a cellular data connection. There are a lot of possible uses for that, but for me the main use is being able to use VoIP programs like Fring over 3G. So no more hack necessary to use Fring over Edge or 3G.

By default, VoIPover3G is configured to to trick only the App Store and Fring but you can edit the setting, but in order to do so, you’ll have to know your way around SSH…

As mentioned above, VoIPover3Gis available in Cydia. If you instal it, don’t look for the icon on your springboard as it doesn’t have an icon. Configuration settings are explained in the “more info” link of the app.

 

Fring already hacked to allow calls over Edge and 3G

by Sebastien on October 4th, 2008

I finally got to try the official release of Fring for the iPhone. Well, actually I only tried the Skype feature which allows you to make free Skype-to-Skype calls or free Skype-to-Phone calls over WiFi only from the iPhone.

To get started, you need to have a Skype account. Registration on Skype is free. You will have to purchase talk time if you want to use the Skype-to-Phone feature though. Before I subscribed to Vonage, I used to use Skype a lot to call my family back in Europe, and I still have some credit left on my account. Sweet, I don’t even have to spend some more for the time being…

So you create your Skype account and put $10 in there to buy yourself some talk time. I couldn’t find out how long you can talk for with $10 in the US but I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere around 100 hours. If anyone has more information about that, please let us know in the comments.

Now download Fring from the App Store, launch it and register, then add the Skype service. Once you’re done doing this, you’re technically able to make calls and chat with your friends, directly from your iPhone. While the Skype-to-Skype feature works very well, I had a few problems making calls to landline phones. The problem was that even though the “Fring test call” was working fine and that it showed I was connected, every time I tried to make a call to a phone in the US (or overseas), the call would get “terminated” right away.

So I went over to the Fring forum and snooped around in search of an answer to my problem. I finally read about someone who reported that even though you are connected to Fring, you may not be connected to Skype yet. Interesting. I launched Fring again, waited a minute, dialed my home phone number, and BINGO! It rang. The key is indeed to wait a minute before making a call.

Still in Fring’s forum, I read about a patch that would allow you to make a Fring call over Edge or 3G on the iPhone, via Skype. I downloaded the Fring.ipa file, opened iTunes, dragged it in iTunes, synced my phone, and……. BINGO! I am now able to use Fring to make phone calls over 3G or Edge, via Skype. How cool is that?

UPDATE: It seems that some links to Fring’s forum have been removed by Fring’s admin. Please do not ask me to give you the link to the patched Fring.ipa crack as I will not due to past problems with Apple’s lawyers. Please do not post links to cracked applications in the comments as they will be removed right away. Thank you.

 

Fring is out! Officially

by Sebastien on October 3rd, 2008

A few months ago I talked about Fring on my personal blog. At the time, this app was just being released for jailbroken iPhones. Six months and 3 firmware upgrades later, Fring made its way to the App Store.

What is Fring?

Fring is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, including make free calls, live chat and seeing your contacts online presence with all your fring, Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM friends using your iPhone’s Internet connection rather than costly cellular airtime minutes.

So far, Fring is the only VoIP app available in the App Store, along with Truphone, althought other similar apps are coming soon.

I haven’t tried Fring yet but expect a review from us within the next few days. In the meanwhile, if you try it, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment.