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International phone calls on the mobile may not be that expensive now, what with a Vancouver based company having developed a software, which when downloaded to a cell phone, uses the Internet to make the calls cheap.
Washington, Sept 17 : International phone calls on the mobile may not be that expensive now, what with a Vancouver based company having developed a software, which when downloaded to a cell phone, uses the Internet to make the calls cheap.
Bill Tam, CEO of Eqo, the company behind the project, said, the model is similar to Skype, which allows users to make calls over the Internet from their computers.
A Skype user can call another Skype user for free, or call a non-Skype user very cheaply. But while Skype can be used on some handheld computers, it cannot be used on all mobile phones.
This is where Eqo comes in, which works on standard mobile phones that have basic Internet service, said Tam.
First, a user downloads Eqo's software to the phone. Next, the software automatically organizes existing contacts into the Eqo application.
Once the contacts are set up, the phone owner can see which contacts are Eqo users. They can be called for free, whether they live in the next county or the next country.
"We like to say that it takes your local minutes and turns them into international minutes," said co-founder and chief software architect Jeff LaPorte, who developed the technology that makes Eqo work.
Tam said most cell phone users in the US have a plan that allows them to make calls nationwide for the same fee, so the real benefit would accrue from making international calls.
"As an example, AT and T/Cingular charges 1.49 dollars per minute for calls to the UK when you're not on an international plan. Our rate is 2.3 cents per minute to a UK landline," Discovery News quoted Tam, as saying.
Presently, Eqo is available in 29 countries throughout Europe and the Middle East. But, according to Tam, it will be available in 40 countries by the end of this year and in 60 countries by the end of 2008.
ANI
