Archive for RingCredible

RingCredible Acquires African Jabbaworld And Gets Funding

Posted in Commentary with tags on September 19, 2014 by itnerd

I’ve reviewed popular VoIP app RingCredible on two occasions and they continue to make news. It was announced yesterday that they not only have acquired African Jabbaworld, but a Dutch consortium consisting of PPM Oost and Brooklyn Ventures is investing over 1 million euro in RingCredible and the company expects to attract more investment going forward. That’s not a surprise as the company has over 2.5 million users n Europe, North and South America and growing at a fast pace.

Expect more from them in the future.

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RingCredible Acquires Yeloworld

Posted in Commentary with tags on May 13, 2014 by itnerd

RingCredible is a VoIP app that I’ve written about before and they announced that they have acquired Hong Kong based VoIP app Yeloworld. With this acquisition RingCredible passes the 2 million users milestone just 4 months after breaking the 1 million mark, and expanding to the Asian market. Yeloworld users will now be able to migrate over to RingCredible and get better rates, higher call quality, and no battery drain with up to 75% less data usage. To celebrate the move from Yeloworld to RingCredible, there is an offer of 30% extra call credit on your first topup. After you get have registered successfully on the RingCredible App, just go to http://www.ringcredible.com/buy-credits/ and enter the promo code welcometoRC30 or click here.

 

 

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Contac and RingCredible Join Forces

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 27, 2013 by itnerd

RingCredible, which is a VoIP app that I’ve written about previously, has partnered with Contac as the exclusive distributor in Canada for RingCredible. Contac will also distribute RingCredible globally, leveraging the mywurld Travel Platform. The net result is that RingCredible will be seen and used by way people who use the mywurld platform. The advantage of this platform is that their products and resources are integrated seamlessly, which allows their clients to benefit from their cutting-edge knowledge and infrastructure.

Full details are available in their joint press release which can be found here.

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Review: RingCredible For iOS Version 3.0

Posted in Products with tags on November 22, 2013 by itnerd

I last reviewed RingCredible a few months ago as they had come onto the scene in Canada to offer Canadians cheaper long distance calling. At the time I had said RingCredible for iOS is a simple to use VoIP app that has good audio quality and lived up to the promise of cheap long distance calling. Now in version 3.0, the Netherlands based company is trying to make this an even more attractive value proposition by introducing a number of improvements.

Besides bringing is iOS 7 compatibility which makes the look and feel of the app consistent with other iOS 7 apps, RingCredible 3.0 also brings a new way of packaging audio so that it sounds great and uses less bandwidth. The company claims that the app uses 0.16 MB a minute. At that level, it would be practical to use RingCredible over a 3G or 4G network rather than just use it over WiFi. When I tested it out, it did not sound any different than any call I’ve made over a cellular network on my iPhone 5. Callers had no problem hearing me clearly and they could not tell that I was on a VoIP application. That sounds lame, but it isn’t as VoIP apps sometimes have lesser call quality than a cellular or landline call. RingCredible didn’t and that’s excellent. Another plus is that because the app uses less data, it will consume less battery life which is a welcome feature. Another welcome feature is the fact that I can make an in-app purchase in my local currency as previously, I could just purchase in Euros.

One thing that didn’t change was the fact that my mobile number appeared the call display of the person on the other end of the call. That’s a nice touch. In terms of price, RingCredible still wins in this department. A 10 minute and 24 second call from Toronto to Houston Texas was 0.22 Euros according to the application. That works out to $0.17 CAD which includes a $0.07 connection fee. That’s a good price but it would have been handy if the app displayed the cost in Canadian dollars seeing as Canadian dollars in other parts of the app. But at that price, this is an app that will stay on my iPhone for use when I travel. You can check the rates within the app and online for other countries and I think you’ll find that they’re more than competitive.

RingCredible is available not only iOS, but you can get it for Android on Google Play as well. I recommend it if you travel or you want to keep in touch with people back home cheaply.

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RingCredible Announces Some Big News

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 5, 2013 by itnerd

News came out from VoIP start up RingCredible which I’ve reviewed their VoIP app for iOS previously that they’re getting attention for what they do in two ways. Here’s the details from their press release [Warning: PDF] on the first way they’ve gotten attention:

Last week a well-known independent research firm stated that RingCredible is one of the key communication apps worldwide, due to its sole focus on closing the gap between mobile providers and free peer-to-peer apps.

Not only that, this is even bigger news for them:

Just recently, RingCredible raised an additional $700,000 funding from a consortium of private investors to accelerate the application’s distribution in Europe and North America. 

Clearly RingCredible is gaining momentum and I think it’s going to do so. I’d keep an eye on them because I think they will be making more noise in the future.

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Review: RingCredible For iOS Version 2.3

Posted in Products with tags , on June 3, 2013 by itnerd

NOTE: This app has been updated to version 3.0. Read the review here. 

Frequent readers of my blog will recall that I did a In Depth article on RingCredible who make a VoIP application for  iOS, Android, Blackberry, and forWindows. One of their chief selling points is that they offer cheaper long distance calls than any telco and cheaper than Skype as well. Another selling point is that they are focused purely on long distance via VoIP rather than being like Skype by doing things like peer-to-peer calling and video calling. The question is, does it deliver? To find out, I downloaded the iOS version of the app from the app store which is free to do.

Setting up the app was easy as it was wizard driven. The only thing that stood out was the fact that you would be sent a registration code via text message. The app said the code would be sent in 60 seconds via SMS. But in reality, it took 7 minutes. In fact, I thought that it wasn’t going to arrive so I did the wizard twice. I eventually got two codes and the second one worked for me (presumably the first one was deactivated when I sent the request to get the second one). A minor glitch. But I thought it was worth mentioning.

Now once you’re set up, using it is just like using any other phone. Just dial the number and go. You can make calls over 3G/4G (expensive if you don’t have a good data plan) or over WiFi (much cheaper). My wife used it to call a friend of hers in Maryland (US) from Toronto (Canada). Now when she went to the extremes of our WiFi coverage, my wife’s friend reported that her voice faded a bit and my wife reported that her voice faded a bit and the call cut in and out. But the call did not drop. It also improved when my wife went into an area of our condo that had better signal strength. The fact that the call did not drop was impressive as another VoIP product that I use on a regular basis was not nearly as resilient in similar conditions. As for the audio quality, my wife reported the call quality was good on both ends. That’s important for any VoIP app as you don’t want it to be any different than a landline phone call.

A interesting touch is that the person that you’re calling sees your mobile number on their call display. I can see how that would be a plus for some people. A not so interesting quirk is the fact that when it reports how much money you’ve spent, it shows it in Euros (Not a surprise seeing as RingCredible is a Dutch company). Not only that, but when I did the math on what the test call cost in US dollars (more on the costs in a second) based on the posted rates on their website, it matched the numbers that were displayed in Euros inside the app. That is a bit of a problem as Euros should be less than US dollars at the current exchange rates. They may want to look at fixing that and at making the currency selectable while they’re at it for bonus points.

How about costs as that’s the main reason to use a VoIP app over traditional landline calls? The per minute rate to the US was $0.01 a minute with a $0.07 connection fee. In the case of the test call that my wife made, she talked for 1 hour, 10 minutes and 34 seconds and it cost $0.78. To compare this, I went to Skype’s website and found a pay as you go rate of $0.027 a minute with a connection fee of $0.069. That works out to $1.98 for the same length of call. RingCredible comes out ahead in this department.

The bottom line? RingCredible for iOS is a simple to use VoIP app that has good audio quality and lives up to the promise of cheap long distance calling. Not convinced? The company offers you a 50 cent calling credit when you sign up, which is good for up to 15 minutes of calls on average to give it a try for yourself. You can’t go wrong with that.

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In Depth: RingCredible

Posted in Products with tags on May 20, 2013 by itnerd

Early this mooring (as in 6AM) I had a conversation with Hans Osnabrugge who is the CEO of a company called RingCredible which makes a VoIP alternative that promises super affordable long distance calls with excellent sound quality from your smartphone over 3G, 4G or WiFi. In fact, Mr. Osnabrugge spoke to me via RingCredible and the sound quality was pretty good. Plus it shows confidence when you’re willing to use your own product in a media demo.

Now, someone reading this is going to say “what about Skype?” For starters, Skype has a bunch of features other than long distance calling such as voice calling and peer to peer calling. RingCredible doesn’t do any of that as it is strictly focused on long distance voice calls. The reason being that in Canada like many countries, long distance calling is expensive. Let’s take Canada for example. As I’ve said on many occasions, even though there are three big telcos in the form of Bell, Rogers and Telus, rates for telecom services are higher than they should be thanks to the oligopoly that exists in this market. Now Skype does bring that cost down a bit, but RingCredible is even cheaper than Skype. If you take a look at their rates, you can get as low as $0.01 a minute. Thus this makes RingCredible a disruptive force in the same way that an app like What’s App has done to text messaging.

The RingCredible app is available for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and for Windows. I’ll be downloading a copy and writing a review in the next week. Stay tuned.

 

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