It took almost a year to get it off the ground, but Truphone’s Local Anywhere mobile service, designed to end the concept of roaming as we know it, has finally launched. The mobile VoIP service provider has revealed its first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deal with Vodafone UK (NYSE:VOD) as well as tied up with an unnamed US GSM operator, creating the first two ‘local’ markets for its service. Subscribers will be able to use a single SIM card to make phone calls while in either country without incurring international roaming charges.
Truphone has been revolutionizing the mobile international calling market for years, just as Skype revolutionized the wireline calling market, but Truphone’s business model had always been dependent on circumventing the operators’ traditional networks. It initially used WiFi-embedded handsets as a means of establishing direct VoIP connections to its global gateway network, and in 2008 it launched Truphone Anywhere, which allows a customer to place a normal international call on the handset only to have it intercepted by Truphone’s gateways and rerouted over its VoIP network. Local Anywhere, however, adds the final piece to the puzzle, letting customers not only place phone calls to distant countries on the cheap, but make phones calls while standing on foreign soil without racking up often exorbitant international roaming fees.
To launch Local Anywhere, Truphone incorporated acquisition SIM4Travel’s universal SIM card technology into its platform. Rather than contract with the multiple operators for multiple SIM cards, the service contains registration information for all of TruPhone’s partner carriers on the same chip. Local calls are then switched by the partner network operator and international calls are routed through TruPhone’s IP network.
“With Truphone Local Anywhere, we aim to be the only phone service leisure or business travellers ever need on their mobile phones,” Truphone CEO Geraldine Wilson said in a statement. ”We invite those with international lifestyles – expatriates and their families, business travellers, airline and cruise ship crews, students abroad, owners of second homes in other countries – to check out the huge savings available with Truphone Local Anywhere. We believe the savings and the ease of use will totally change the way people use their mobile phones when they are at home or abroad.”
Those savings are considerable considering AT&T (NYSE:T) charges $1.29 per minute to roam in the UK, compared to 12 cents a minute from TruPhone. But the service also takes away the distinction of having a home operator–every call is cheap compared to what you’d pay for roaming, but more expensive than if you were on a contract plan with the local operator to begin with. While the service is only available in the US and UK now, TruPhone said it plans to roll it out to other countries rapidly, as the appropriate MVNO agreements are in place.
It’s like Yahoo Messenger’s call in service, you get a local number of destination, so to save money for you and friends.
But Truphone call quality is good, I just love it.