New Innovation in Click-2-Call Telephony Service
Click-2-Call services have been growing in popularity and are now being used by individual users and companies who have a web-presence (Blogs, Social Networking profiles, Customer support etc). They offer a convenient way to engage the web visitor to get instantly ‘in-touch’ directly from the web. TringMe and a couple of other companies offer the two call-legs based Click-2-Call services, however all Click-2-Call services suffer from a major deficiency. Due to it’s two call-legs nature, the call cost is doubled compared to a normal call and hence it is relatively expensive (technical details here). Inspite of such a market, there hasn’t been a disruptive innovation in this area that would solve the above mentioned deficiency and make such a service economical and commonplace amongst businesses interested in offering this ability.
Even though TringMe offers a pure web-based Push-n-Talk widget (single call-leg) which addresses the above deficiency, we still see a need for a service which offers callback-based Click-2-Call service in a manner that’s relatively much cheaper.
That’s exactly where TringMe’s new product comes in. It attempts to handle the need for an innovation in this space head-on and assures to reduce the cost of Click-2-Call telephony by more than half, thereby accounting for substantial savings over recurring use. This new product is focused towards the enterprise Click-2-Call users who can tremendously benefit from it. TringMe employs a very simple, yet an innovative patent-pending technique which enables the call-back based Click-2-Call solution to be relatively cheaper when compared to the existing callback-based solutions.
How does it work? Instead of originating multiple calls (call-legs), TringMe intelligently notifies the called entity about the caller. Notified entity then automatically initiates a call back to the original Caller. The method of notification can be of any type, including sending an SMS containing the caller details OR using the data network.
For example, when a website visitor clicks on the click-2-call link on a website which uses TringMe’s solution, it will simply notify the caller’s phone by a special message using SMS or data network. Once the caller’s phone receives the message, it will automatically initiate the call to the caller and hence meet the same goal at a drastically reduced cost (refer to diagram below). The call can be either cellular or using our MobileVoIP or a combination of both depending on the cheapest method to the caller’s destination. For example, a local call could be cheaper by cellular, and long distance by VoIP (a typical scenario in markets like China & India) and hence be routed accordingly.
Although, this may sound like a very simple extension to how Click-2-Call solution works, it’s an important one since it caters to the mass market. For any decent size business website which uses Click-2-Call solution, the savings will be tremendous. For example, a website in India deploying Click-2-Call solution will have to pay massive 11-15 cents per minute (based on existing rates from TringMe and other Click-2-Call services) for India-India calls. Whereas, using our new Click-2-Call solution, it may cost just as low as 2-3 cents per minute. As you can see, the savings are substantial. India is just one example. Given that the solution can be applied worldwide and the solution is flexible enough to be applied in varying scenarios, the overall savings would be phenomenal.
All that a business website owner needs to do is to install our software on their mobile and specify the security and other call preferences. Our application works in the background and processes the notification messages from SMS and data network and make appropriate callbacks. We currently support Nokia Symbian 2nd and 3rd Series phones. Support for more phones and a desktop application is in progress. If privacy of number is required by the caller, it is also achieved by our MobileVoIP solution wherein a random phone number is generated on the fly which is then mapped to caller’s number.
We had already announced the API and additional APIs will be announced soon.
While the overall solution is catered towards the enterprise use, even individual users can make use of it to meet their personal needs.
Since we have filed for the patents on the key concept, TringMe will be an exclusive company which can offer you this solution and help you reduce the costs drastically. This new service is ready to use for any business and we are running a ‘launch special’ for the next few days that will essentially give companies who deploy our solution right away a ‘first to the market’ treatment including special services and rates from our end. We will infact customize and brand the solution for the first few companies at no cost.
There are several companies who may be offering some flavor of Click-2-Call solutions but TringMe’s portfolio contains a broad range of products backed by patent-pending technologies to offer world-class, cutting-edge solutions. Because of our extensive portfolio, we can combine these services and products in innovative ways to cater to varying needs. For example. MobileVoIP in addition to the traditional calling support in Click-2-Call, Integrating Instant Messengers and other termination options etc.
As demonstrated in the past, TringMe will still continue to provide other innovative solutions in the overall next generation telephony paradigm. TringMe’s complete capability and products are available at tringme.com. If you have a unique requirement, let us know and we will work with you to provide a custom solution as well.
TringMe introduces VoIP accessibility from low-end mass market mobile devices
VoIP has been a boon for long distance internet telephony for quite a while now even-though it’s mainly accessible from PCs. A key problem which hasn’t been well-attended so far is a way for a common man who doesn’t have a PC to use VoIP (popularly known as “internet telephony”) to make really cheap worldwide calls. Mobile-VoIP can be an answer to this problem since mobile penetration rate is increasing by many folds every year. In India alone, there are over 200 million mobile users compared to 5 million broadband users. However existing Mobile-VoIP solutions (including one previously introduced by TringMe) really cater to Smartphones and rely on GPRS or 2.5/3G (data network) connections, a combination that isn’t in the reach of a common man. Statistics show that :
- In developing countries like India, more than 80% mobile users do not have data connection on their mobile. And for the remaining ones who have it, data connection is poor to have any effective real time communication like VoIP. We strongly believe that to make Mobile-VoIP a common-place technology, it needs to cater to the lowest-end mobile devices, devices which can just make voice-calls and do SMS. (source: TRAI)
- Smartphones only constituted 10% of the total mobiles sold last year (source: Symbian market share data).
So almost 90% of mobile users (which translates to millions of users) – a fairly big share of market – are devoid of using Mobile-VoIP via their existing mobile devices. To address this market, TringMe, after successfully demonstrating Mobile VoIP from a Smartphone, is now launching a new patent pending service which allows a low-end mobile phone to make VoIP based calls without installing anything. All one needs to do is send an SMS to TringMe and it will connect you to any phone number worldwide. It’s very convenient – no PC’s, no smartphone, no 3G/data connectivity and no configuration - just send a SMS containing the phone number and you are connected. Couple this convenience with TringMe’s extremely competitive low-price worldwide calling rates for a win-win combination. Infact, with this the call can terminate not only on phone but on any of the devices that TringMe terminates on. For e.g if a user has configured his TringMe profile to terminate inbound calls on IM (e.g. Gtalk), then sending an SMS with user’s tringme address will establish the call from the caller to user GTalk client.
With this feature, scheduling calls is as easy is sending an SMS with relevant details in the body. TringMe’s infrastructure takes care of establishing the call at the scheduled time.
We are very excited to demonstrate this technology thereby creating a market opportunity to deliver TringMe’s key offerings on a common man’s low-end mobile device as well.
TringMe continues to be in the forefront of the web-based telephony space with its well-rounded portfolio. It currently provides click-to-call widgets, fully web-based SIP phone, enterprise and consumer centric web-based toll-free service, Mobile-VoIP, ability to make and receive web based calls on phones, IMs and Web. TringMe’s platform – TringSwitch – is an enterprise grade scalable platform developed from scratch to provide optimum performance for web-based telephony. We are also planning to collaborate with global players including providers, retailers etc to take this service to next level. Write to us if you like to join hands.
VoIP calls from low-end mobile devices
It’s very easy to use this service. The alpha pilot is currently only available in India. You can send an SMS to 91- 9980153695 to try out this service. Please follow the instructions below:
Register
1 - Register with TringMe if you haven’t already – http://tringme.com
2- Register the mobile with TringMe from which one wants to make the low cost worldwide call. User can register their mobile with their TringMe account by sending an SMS as follows:
tringme reg <tringme username> <tringme password>
For example, “tringme reg myname@myemail.com abcdef”
A confirmation message will be received about success of the registration.
Making Calls
Once registered, user can make worldwide calls, not only to the phones but to Gtalk, SIP URI etc by merely sending an SMS as follows:
tringme <phonenumber>
for example, to call a US number 1-(858)-555-1212, one only need to send a SMS “tringme 18585551212”
Users can also call millions of worldwide SIP users just by using SIP URI as follows:
tringme <SIP URI>
To make a call to a registered TringMe user, send an SMS as follows:
tringme <user’s email address>
This will establish a call from the originator’s mobile device to the calle’s currently configured termination device. For example, if user has chose to receive call on Gtalk, sending above SMS will connect your phone to his or her Gtalk.
Scheduling a Call
You can even schedule a call for later time, say for a business meeting or conference. TringMe understand time in plain english and you can specify absolute date and time or in relative terms. You can schedule it in one of several ways:
tringme 18585551212 next week 11:30AM
tringme 18585551212 March 17, 2008 11:30AM
tringme 18585551212 tomorrow 11:30AM
The time specified will be as per the timezone setting which you have configured in your TringMe profile.
To unscheduled a call, just send “tringme unsched <call id>” in the SMS body.
Other
One can unregister the mobile currently registered with TringMe by sending message “tringme unreg“.
To check the account balance, send message “tringme bal”. Also, “tringme help” message will get you help on existing commands.
As mentioned above, the alpha pilot is currently only available in India. We are presently working on adding more messaging gateways and enabling this service in other countries as well. During beta, you may rarely experience minor delay in SMS processing during peak hours and we will appreciate your patience.
We really look forward to hearing your comments and feedback.
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