We recently discussed about etislat/ISPs blocking VOIP in UAE and today we are discussing a good solution to overcome this. A new UAE based VOIP Provider Actiondial seems to be offering a secure VPN based VOIP solution to make cheap international calls.
Etislat and many other ISP's in UAE region are always against VOIP usage and that forces many users to switch to VPN based VOIP. Hotspotshield, kongshare works for some but its still not reliable. I believe actiondial.com thought the same while designing this new VOIP solution.
According to the information I received, actiondial is offering 1.5 cents per minute to call India. Unfortunately their calling rates page is only available for registered users, so you need register first and then check rates. They advertise as 2.5 cents per minute to India but running a promotion for 1.5 cents per minute, don't know how long will this last.
Actiondial offers 2 options to overcome the UAE VOIP Block,
1) Actiondial Broadband 2 Port Voice Gateway: You must have bought over $500 worth of calling credit then they offer you this device for free.
-Plug and play
-Built-in VPN
-Ideal for blocked environments
2) Actiondial VPN Dialer-SIP Softphone: This a free SIP based softphone dialer with in built VPN. This should overcome your issues while using this in UAE.
Of course, the easiest option to test this new actiondial service is by using their VPN dialer.
A few thing you must consider before you signup for actiondial.
1) Actiondial seems more like a reseller/spin-off service using the betamax as backbone. Most likely build off actionvoip platform.
2) Its not a betamax service, it's based in UAE (I can't disclose the name of the person for security reasons)
3) No SIP settings found on their website. Although you do get response when pinging sip.actiondial.com
Pinging sip.actiondial.com [208.43.87.196] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 208.43.87.196: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=111
Reply from 208.43.87.196: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=111
Reply from 208.43.87.196: bytes=32 time=219ms TTL=111
Reply from 208.43.87.196: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=111
4) Go slow while purchasing credits. Only buy few dollars and test the VOIP service before going all out to buy more.
