More Countries for VoIP User

Hi all, any idea why countries like Hungary who joined the EU are'nt on the UK tool or any ideas when they'll be added, looks good but need a call out number for Hungary..

Thnx

If you're specifically speaking about us, the reason we can only currently offer UK inbound numbers is because we only have a PSTN/VoIP gateway in the UK.

It is a network which will be expanded into other Countries, and we are in fact talking about that now.

But it all will take time.

Dean

Thnx for that Dean

Hi Dean,

Curious to know if any other service provider are offering FREE virture numbers for other countries in Europe, such as Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Italy or major countries in Asia....Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia??

I mean with the same "point to" method to my current SIP number.

Rgds,
Steve

I'm sure there are, but I don't think they're free.

Have you had a look around on google?

Dean

Hello Dean,
I'm a new user on this forum and located in the netherlands.

I would be very interested in extending voipuser sip services into the Netherlands, so we could give VoIP a kick in NL.

Any on going activities on your behalf in that direction?
Regards,
Ate

Dean and Group -

Following on from the excellent ideas and suggestions in this thread

With the ongoing interest from Voipuser friends outside the UK for PSTN to VOIP in particular countries; have you considered putting together a series of negotiational guidelines with which a motivated individual working together with you could use to apply to the National phone service provider for a particular country and get agreement on behalf of Voipuser for numbers to be released for the group.

Under your direction and with some local work and input it should be possible to put together an impressive and comprehensive facility for group use.

Voipuser already has an impressive European userbase - many I am sure (myself included) would be pleased to give some input in their own location.

John Gray - Portugal

Thanks guys, there are some really interesting suggestions coming out in this thread.

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With the ongoing interest from Voipuser friends outside the UK for PSTN to VOIP in particular countries; have you considered putting together a series of negotiational guidelines with which a motivated individual working together with you could use to apply to the National phone service provider for a particular country and get agreement on behalf of Voipuser for numbers to be released for the group.

OK, I really like this idea John, but it raises a key point.

VoIP User was started and Tj and I think should remain as a community project. That means our VoIP services are non-profit (for those interested, we do break even however, due to a custom written software backend that Tj and I created running on low cost servers). Any potential "partner" would have to therefore accept a zero profit position on numbers to our members, and it may be tricky to get a commercial outfit to agree to that.

If we look at that problem first, I wonder if we can come up with some ideas of any consequential benefit that we could offer. I can think of two:-

1. Branding. If VoIP User continues to grow as it is now, we could become quite a busy site over the next 12 months. That will bring a certain element of traffic to the site and to our control panel, within which we could offer potential "partners" an opportunity to put a "in partnership with [insert name, country and logo here]" type promotional ad.

2. If we could partner with a larger telco in another Country, with larger profit margins, we could possibly create a service for that Country whereby the telco still makes a small profit, but we could still maintain a free service. As long as we retain a sufficient revenue stream to cover our bandwidth overhead on a per number basis (which is low, but things like voicemail increase it slightly), and leave something left "for the pot" with a community outbound service, then that could work.

Any other ideas?

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Under your direction and with some local work and input it should be possible to put together an impressive and comprehensive facility for group use. Voipuser already has an impressive European userbase - many I am sure (myself included) would be pleased to give some input in their own location.

If there are members here who have contact with telco's in their Country and maybe could assist if there are any communication (language) issues, then Tj and I would be more than happy (delighted actually) to incorporate other Country telcos into the system in some manner or form.

I'm sure that we could offer those telco's something, but being commercial they would definitely want something, and I see that as the main barrier that we need to find a way around.

Dean

It's just that there are the following 2 things about the current situation:
1) I'm more of a dial out guy then that people call me up.
For me a phone is to talk to people when <I> want to.
2) As the others who occasionally call me certainly will never want to pay international rates (my boyfriend, my mother, my granny, etc...) i CAN give them my number, but they wont ever dial it.

So, what i am feeling now is that I am a leecher, as I will probably generaty almost nothing to nill income for the pot, and i on average am using the outbound service for 30 to 60 minutes a day.

So, AM I REALLY a leech ?

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So, AM I REALLY a leech ?

There's more than one way to contribute to this site - you can stick around and help others here in the forum, write a review of whatever VoIP kit you own etc etc.....

We are looking into extending the inbound number ranges into other Countries - but it's likely to take a while.

If you feel really bad about it, and don't feel you can contribute in other ways, but want to use SIP, there are plenty of service providers around - and they all want your business and so are correspondingly cheap.

Dean

The local call in the UK may not be the most cost efficient way to fund VoipUser since only part of the BT fee is paid back to VoipUser. Unless I am mistaken, and I apologize for my lack of knowledge, I think it would be more efficient to have callers reach VoipUser via VoIP (instead of through their normal phone line), and keep a charge account for each user and have him/her credit the account in advance via PayPal or any other means of payment.

In addition, this would let callers from abroad (my case) use VoipUser, therefore largely broadening this site's member base.

Arnaud.

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keep a charge account for each user and have him/her credit the account in advance via PayPal or any other means of payment.

That's not really our overall philosophy here - we will not be creating a chargeable service for VoIP User.

That was a ground rule from day one. But we do have a number of alternative options to make things work, and make the books balance, if we are unable to maintain credit in the community pot.

Dean

There is another site which offers free inbound numbers in the US (in the Washington State 360 area code). Because of the way things are structured in the US telecom market, I suspect that they are actually losing some money on this venture, but presumably not too much. So far as I can see, it's just another service set up by nice people for the good of humanity rather than for profit.

www.ipkall.com

I don't know if there's any way to make a deal with them, but I would guess not.

I agree that it's not a good idea to turn this into a service where individuals get billed, but it would be nice if there were some way to put money into the communal pot, so that those of us who don't expect to receive very many (or perhaps any) incoming calls wouldn't wind up as leeches.

I live in the US, and my brother lives in England. Although he might call, he's presently unemployed, so he's not really likely to much. And I really don't know anyone else in the UK who is likely to call me. I'm a grad student myself. I can simply use another VoIP service to call him instead (I like sipphone.com since they have no monthly fees of any sort, no connection fees, and quite reasonable per minute fees), but it's sort of nice being part of a community.

Keith Irwin

Hi Keith,

Someone else mentioned the possiblity of having a PayPal "donation" (pay what you want kind of thing) on the site, and that's something we're considering.

Dean

I live in Canada, but I have a lot of friends in europe an Uk, so i hope that they will be generates some money for pot, anyway I would like to donate the community and i thought there is a chance to put some paypal button to website so i could send from time to time some money....