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Content Tagged truphone
TruMoney For Truphone, Mobile VoIP Operator
One of the most important calls I make during the week is the one to my mother, followed by another one to my baby brother. These are international long distance calls, and for the first 15 years of my American life, those calls went over AT&T’s wired or wireless networks, forging a very special bond with Ma Bell.
This past year, however, that bond has been broken. AT&T has been replaced by Truphone, a UK-based mobile VoIP company that offers better quality voice calls at lower rates and doesn’t require me to own a landline. A WiFi-enabled Nokia phone is all it takes. (These days, I am totally in love with my Nokia E61.)
Truphone has become indispensable to my work and personal life, and perhaps that is why I’m glad to learn it just raised a whopping $32.7 million in Series B funding from “new investors,” although the company wouldn’t name names. Previous investors who have pumped in over $24.5 million in Series A funding — Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners — came back with more cash as well.
Truphone recently acquired Sim4Travel, a company that made cheap cellular roaming possible. Alec Saunders points out that, with that particular acquisition, Truphone can extend its footprint beyond expensive Nokia WiFi-enabled phones. This has been Truphone’s Achilles heel and had limited the company’s growth prospects.
This is the crucial point. Even though Truphone has made great progress, the mobile VoIP game is still about cheap minutes and low-cost SMS. And that business is all about volume. I just hope Truphone can build that volume — this is one service I really want around forever; if it’s not, I will get an earful from mom.
Cheap Calls! Truphone Raises £16.5 million In Series B
UK-based Truphone, a VoIP service provider for Wifi/data enabled handsets, announced a £16.5 million ($32.7 million) second round of financing today, adding to the £12.5 million ($24.5 million) they raised a little over a year ago.
What’s that $50+ million being used for? Cheap calls! Like Fring and a slew of others, Truphone allows free calls initiated from between Wifi/data enabled handsets and/or computers, or cheap VoIP-to-anywhere calls.
Truphone has a technology advantage that allows for better sound quality and longer battery life, but at the cost of easier carrier blocking relative to Fring. But they’re winning against carriers in court, so the blocking issue isn’t hurting them as much.
Notably absent from the funding announcement was any mention of cofounder Alexander Straub or previous investor Straub Ventures (the venture fund still lists Truphone as an investment, however). I’m betting there’s an interesting story there. (Update: see comment below from Straub, although I find it odd neither he nor his fund were mentioned in the press release.)
Update2: TechCrunch UK has more on the pricing structure Truphone is using to attack carriers.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Jaiku | Any way to have an Irish SIP number on my N95 so I can divert incoming GSM calls to it when bad coverage? Fring? Blueface? Truphone? What?
Welcome to Truphone - Internet telephony on Nokia mobile phones
A conference named Bob 2.0 " Why "Bob"?
What’s New Now: Gizmo Project 4.0, fringMe Widget, Truphone For Facebook
SIPphone just released Gizmo Project 4.0, a soft client that includes video calling. You can make free video calls, even if only one person has a webcam, and the Meta IM and Tabbed Chat interface make it a worthy IM client for your Windows desktop. Mac people will have to wait, but 4.0 works on Nokia tablets. Now if they would just improve their quality of service…
Mobile VoIP/IP startup Fring has released the fringME! widget, which lets web visitors fring you from anywhere you’ve placed it. Among the cool features on this widget is the real-time ‘find me’ feature, which instantly opens a GoogleMaps window to show the fringster’s physical location via their GPS-equipped handset.
And lastly, my favorite voice-over-Wi-Fi company, Truphone, has released a Facebook app that allows folks to call you directly from the social network, just add the Truphone ‘Call Me’ button. They also have a video explaining how it works.
