Was using "betamax" for making cheap calls your worst nightmare? If we make a poll, more than 70% would say I am fed up of Betamax. Till date, there was really no solid alternative to Betamax,so people just stuck to them. However, today I am going to post one solid alternative which will make you uninstall your betamax softphone :-)
I often receive emails from blog readers about "What is the best VOIP Service to call India , Middle East, Australia or UK or take any other country for that matter". I advice them on using a VOIP service which has following:
1) Good Voice Quality
2) Competitive Calling Rates
3) Customer Support
4) Ease of Use (No jokes, over 60% first time users have no clue how to use the softphone)
Now I don't have to reiterate that Betamax doesn't qualify on any of these "prerequisites" besides the rates probably. However, whats the use of a cheap calling service if you don't have good quality and horrible customer service. When was the last time, you ever heard from betamax?
Now Lets talk about what we found, a new VOIP service from Netherlands which truly fits in our "4" pre-requisites.
Its called Fastvoip. FastVoip is based in netherlands and it does look very similar to Betamax, its not owned by them or even dellmont sarl for that matter.
I have been using FastVoip since last week and my experience has been great. Fastvoip offers solid voice quality and their customer service is top-notch. Send them a question and then should reply within 24 hours top.
FastVoip currently offers €1 cent per minute to India (Landline + Mobile) there is more to cheer. You can apply Promo code, "VOIPGUIDES09" at the buy credits page to get 25% extra credits. So if you buy €10 credits, you would €12.50. This means your effective calling rate to India drops to €0.075 cents, which is the best rate to call India right now.
UPDATE:
1) Please note that VAT issue is fixed now so from now on, if you live outside europe, VAT won't be charged to you.
2) FastVoip has given €5 euro (€2 VAT charge+ €3 Extra Credits) free credit to those who were charged the VAT. This should be applied to your account automatically. So those who paid the VAT are lucky :-)
3) No start rate for client and local access number (betamax charges 5 cent for local access number). This rate is now waived off by Fastvoip.
Fastvoip also offers full support for SIP. you can use the following settings for your SIP Phone/VOIP Adapter/SIP Softphone.
Username: yourusername@fastvoip.com
Password: yourpassword
Domain: fastvoip.com
Proxy: sip.fastvoip.com
For all those people who like to connect with other people (besides facebook), there is a cool way to find other people on Fastvoip and make calls to them for free via PC to PC option on FastVoip Softphone.
If you on the move, you can also use FastVoip via Local access numbers available in over 50 countries. FastVoip also offers a SMS service.
FastVoip developers told us that they have lot more in the pipeline like using your own phone number as Caller ID for making calls out, so people know who called them. FastVoip will also be working on getting calling rates to India down to 0.05 cents in near future.
