Top 10 VoIP services

Latest news about VoIP services

2020. Facebook launches CatchUp, an audio-only calling app


Facebook launched an app CatchUp that's basically Houseparty for phone calls (not video calls). CatchUp, which is free to download, lets users see who's available to voice chat, and then allows them to initiate both one-on-one and group calls within the app. CatchUp is a standalone app that is not connected with the Facebook app. You don't have to have a Facebook account, or an account with another Facebook-owned company, to use it. Since it's part of Facebook's "experimental" division, it's a bit soon to tell how it could play into the business, presuming the app sees any success.


2020. Truphone raises $38M at $516M valuation for its eSIM business



Truphone, a UK-based startup that provides voice and data services for phones, tablets and IoT hardware by way of eSIM software integrated directly into the devices, has raised $38 million. The company said it has now provisioned some 4 million eSIM profiles globally and is seeing further eSIM downloads of 20,000 daily. Although eSIM technology was conceived as a quick way to switch carriers without physically changing fiddly, tiny physical cards (and subsequent carrier contracts), it’s an interesting datapoint right now, given that we are seeing a big focus on technology and transactions that can be run in a contactless way (thus avoiding the spread of the novel coronavirus).

2019. Anti-spam service Truecaller adds free voice calling feature


Truecaller, the app best known for helping users screen calls from strangers and spammers, is adding yet another feature to its service - free VoIP-powered voice calls. The company has started to roll out the free voice calling feature to its Android users. The feature, which currently only supports calls between two users, will arrive on its iOS app soon. The addition of voice calling functionality comes as Truecaller aggressively looks to expand its business. The service, which offers both ad-support free tier and subscription bundle, has added messaging, mobile payments, and call recording features in recent years. Earlier this year, it also added a crediting option, allowing users in India to borrow a few hundred dollars.


2019. Business communications service Movius raises $45M



Movius, a company that allows companies to assign a separate business number for voice calls and texting to any phone, has raised a $45 million Series D round. With this, the company has now raised a total of $100 million. Movius currently counts more than 1,400 businesses as its customers, and its carrier partners include Sprint, Telstra and Telefonica. What’s important to note is that Movius is more than a basic VoIP app on your phone. What the company promises is a carrier-grade network that allows businesses to assign a second number to their employees’ phones. That way, the employer remains in charge, even as employees bring their own devices to work.


2017. VoIP vet Truphone raised $339M



Mobile VoIP-provider (since 2006) Truphone has picked up a massive $339 million funding that it will use to retire its debt and double down on providing data connectivity for connected devices beyond mobile phones. The rush of new, smart devices that work in part by connecting to the internet is bringing in a new group of startups to provide that connectivity. In addition to Truphone, alternative providers in the same area of business include Skype and Cubic Telecom — which works with Audi on connected vehicles and also recently raised some funding to fuel its growth. Interestingly, Truphone’s basic technology is at the root both of the company’s legacy business, and the business it hopes to tap into in the future.


2017. Viber acquired shopping keyboard startup Chatter Commerce



Messaging app Viber earlier this year made its first foray into shopping services with Instant Shopping, a feature that lets you search for items for sale via a keyboard when you have the messaging app open. Today, the company has acquired Chatter Commerce, the startup that helped build that feature. That's how Viber wants to catch up with alternatives. According to rumors, Amazon is building a consumer-focused messaging app. With Facebook also adding in more transactional features into Messenger — part of a huge expansion that has taken it beyond basic chat and into bots and other services — there is a clear trend among messaging apps to leverage engagement they already have with their users to drive their business in other ways.


2017. Viber introduced secret chats with self-destructing messages



Viber for iOS and Android got an update today that brings “Secret Chats” to the service for the first time. Like Snapchat, Facebook, Telegram and many others before it, Viber now enables its users to set a timer for their messages, after which they will self-destruct. The new feature also alerts a user if the person to whom they are talking takes a screenshot — that’s another feature that Snapchat pioneered. Viber appears to be pushing its security credentials in a bit to differentiate itself from the rest. It added end-to-end encryption and hidden chats last year.


2017. Viber adds e-commerce feature



Messaging app Viber (owned by e-commerce company Rakuten) wants to monetize on e-commerce without turning to stupid advertising. Viber will start to present users with items for sale, inspired by your current chat, when you press a small shopping bag icon at the bottom of the screen and search for items.  The feature is due to go live in the U.S. first, on March 6, before Viber looks to roll it out to other markets. Initially the shopping feature will not be letting users make purchases directly on Viber itself — they will either be redirected to the relevant page in a brand’s app via a deeplink.


2017. Google Voice gets group chat and other new features



Google has launched a refreshed version of its VoIP calling service Google Voice on mobile and the web. Largely, the update is about giving the product a more modern look-and-feel, after having not received a major upgrade in years. But the relaunch also includes a few new features, like support for photo-sharing, group conversations, Spanish-language voicemail transcription, and more. In the new app, the Google Voice inbox has separate tabs for your text messages, calls and voicemail, explains Google in its blog post about the update. Your conversations will now stay in one continuous thread, which makes it easier to keep up with the messages from your contacts in a single place.


2016. Viber launched Public Accounts for businesses



Messaging app Viber is launching Public Accounts for businesses and brands who want to communicate with Viber users for marketing, customer service - or a bit of both, without a user needing to add that account as a contact first. Instead they can justsubscribe to them. Besides, by the end of November, Viber’s API will be integrated with between 10 and 15 popular CRM packages for customer service integration. Businesses can then send and read their Viber messages alongside all of their other social media, email and messaging interactions. Public Accounts puts Viber among several other consumer-focused messaging apps that already  have similar feature: WeChat, Line and Facebook Messenger.


2016. Truecaller will be preinstalled on Huawei phones



Stockholm-based Truecaller, which offers social features inside the caller app and uses a crowdsourced directory to help identify spam calls, has landed a partnership with Huawei which will see its caller ID and smart phone book app pre-loaded on Huawei smartphones. Truecaller migrated its standalone social calling app — Truedialler — into its main app in March, and the company revealed today that its users are now making more than 500 million calls per month. The average duration of each call is around 100 seconds, the company added. That’s pretty impressive when you consider that WhatsApp reached 100 million calls within its app per day earlier this year — yet it counts more than a billion active users.


2016. Viber adds end-to-end encryption and hidden chats



Following WhatsApp, another popular messaging app Viber is introducing end-to-end encryption for all messages and calls on its platform, including group chats (you can chat with up to 200 people), and a way to ‘hide’ chats on your account alongside its existing expanded deleting function. The new privacy features will work across Android, iOS, PCs and Mac desktops, with the encryption coming with the latest app update (6.0) and a reauthentication of the app (via QR Code) to turn the feature on. Viber’s encryption will come with varying levels of security, which will show up in the form of a color-coded lock on the right side of the screen.


2016. Rebtel adds unlimited international calling



VoIP provider Rebtel introduced Rebel Calling to the United States, allowing for unlimited, free app-to-app calling without the need for a Wifi connection. Usually, when calling someone internationally, you pay ridiculous rates or you use an app like WhatsApp. Without a WiFi connection, apps like WhatsApp or FaceTime Audio require users to dip into their data plan to have the call. With Rebel, the app uses a data (or wifi) connection to place an app-to-app call, and then routes that call through local phone lines. This uses up no data and doesn’t require wifi, letting users make international calls on the go without cutting into their data plan. The Rebel Calling service is free for 50+ countries including the U.S. starting today and will eventually cost $1/month starting in 2017.


2015. Yahoo Messenger becomes a mobile messenger



Yahoo is now breathing new life into Yahoo Messenger with a set of new messaging apps. The older web-based Yahoo Messenger will continue to be supported for the next couple months but will eventually be retired, the company says. The new Yahoo Messenger app is similar to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other messaging apps. But it does have a few tricks of its own, including built-in GIF search (via Tumblr) and the ability to share large numbers of photos almost instantly, regardless of whether you're on Wi-Fi or a data connection (via Flickr.) You can also like individual messages within a thread or unsend a message you've sent at any time. In addition to the iOS and Android app, the new Yahoo Messenger also has a web app and will appear within Yahoo Mail on desktop, where it will function similarly to Google Hangouts within Gmail.


2015. Truecaller launched new Android Messaging app



Truecaller launched a new service - Truemessenger - aimed at making SMS smarter and less spammy. It is an SMS replacement app for Android that taps into the company’s network of users to verify the identify of those who send text messages. If someone sends you a spam message, Truemessenger allows you to help others avoid the pain by labeling that person as a nuisance in their contact list. It uses exactly the same principles behind Truecaller: users identify spam calls/SMS as a nuisance, that information is saved in its directory and then the same caller/SMS sender is identified as a spammer when they call/message another user. Users can also set up their own spam rules, just as you do for email. Messages market as spam are then shifted to a separate folder, rather than being contained in the general SMS inbox, which helps avoid clutter.


2015. Visual voicemail provider YouMail gets $5М



YouMail, a visual voicemail app, plans to use the proceeds from a $5.5 million Series B funding round to expand its user base. YouMail is a digital personal assistant that replaces voicemail on Android, iPhone and Windows Phones. It's designed to identify callers, filter unwanted calls, offer a greeting, capture contact information and provide callers alternate forms of contact.  Features include visual caller ID, automated caller blocking, personalized smart greetings, automatic replies, cloud storage, multi-platform access to messages and call routing.


2014. Viber adds public chats


Messaging app Viber is launching a new social feature - Public Chats, giving users a way of using its direct messaging and voice services to broadcast to the world at large.  Public Chats will see the introduction of live conversation streams — from celebrities, or other interesting people, that will be open for any follower to see, but not necessarily participate in. Users will only be able to jump in and talk in Public Chats if the account in question is in their contacts.  Right now, there is no option for everyone to enable their streams to become part of the public mix but those who feel their chats are Public Chat-worthy can email publicchats@viber.com


2014. Truecaller gets a sister-app for dialing



The company behind Truecaller (the app that provides handy information about incoming calls) released its counterpart for outgoing calls - Truedialer. The app, initially available for Android only, is a dialer that taps into the enormous database of phone numbers, while user types a number and searches for autocomplete options. The database is collected from Truecaller original service — via deals with phonebook providers and third parties like Yelp and Twitter, but also via users uploading their contacts books — to beef up the contact information shown in call logs. While Truecaller tells you if an incoming call is from a known spammer, Truedialer will warn you if you’re dialing a dodgy number.


2014. Contact identification app Truecaller scores $60 Million



Truecaller, a mobile phone directory and called ID app that lets people search for other mobile users by name or number, has raised $60 Million In Series C funding. Truecaller provides a very useful feature that offers a way to cross the mobile silos that have grown up around mobile services — around platforms, carriers and apps. The service has been a hit in countries that have a high number of mobile users still using phones largely for calls (or apps that use phone numbers to connect people, like WhatsApp), but little in the way of directory services to help users find each other. Truecaller’s platform aggregates existing directory services via deals with white pages companies, and platforms like Yelp to bring in businesses. It complements that with crowdsourced information from the app’s users. It also offers filters to screen spam callers and proudly tells you how many annoying calls it’s saved you from getting.


2014. Japanese internet giant acquires Viber



Japanese company Rakuten acquires perhaps, the main Skype's rival right now - Viber for $900 million. And of course it remind of the recent fring acquisition by American company Genband, after which fring was transformed to white-label communnication platform for telecom providers. However, in this case don't worry about Viber. Rakuten isn't going to close it or trandform for it's specific business. They will just invest money in Viber hoping to win Skype and somehow return their investments (for example, by selling ViberOut voice call minutes). Ratuken is running diversified business by investing into internet startups. For example, they own the ebook platform Kobo, co-own Pinterest, Play.com and some other online projects. Recall, Viber - is a cross-platform instant messenger that supports free voice and video calling. At the moment, this service is used by about 300 million people.


2013. Skype gives free group videochat and screen-sharing for 2014



Skype (or Microsoft ?) team from time to time invents some strange projects and tries to link them to Skype. For example, a year ago they tried to launch the social network Skype In The Workspace. And earlier this month they created Skype Collaboration Project. It's a site for creative people where they can get closer to the industries they love, get inspired and get on ... blah blah blah ... Victoria Beckham ... blah blah blah. At least, this project resulted in the substantial benefit: in order to draw attention to this site Skype is running the great holiday promotion. Anyone who visit Skype Collaboration Project and enter email, can get Skype's premium account features for the whole next year. It includes group video chat, screen-sharing and no advertising.


2013. Viber now can call landline and mobile phones



Until now Microsoft wasn't touching Skype and most people continue to use it. But if MS take just one mistake step - there is a crowd of services that want to replace Skype as a defacto-standard of Internet communications. And the first in this crowd is Viber. This service gained considerable popularity (over 200 million users) thanks to mobile-first strategy and simple authorization via mobile number. And at the moment Viber and Skype are virtually identical in their features. Recently Viber eliminated, perhaps, the last gap - added the ability to call landline and mobile phones at cheap rates. Rates (as expected) - are slightly lower than Skype. For example, 2.5 cents to Indian landlines (4.5 cents to mobile phones), 2.3 cents to Mexico (9.9 cents to mobile), 2.3 cents to all China numbers and 1.9 cents to the U.K. (5.9 cents to mobile). This new feature works on Android, iPhone and Viber dektop (PC and Mac).


2013. Google invented desktop-apps. Inbuilt own Start button into Windows



Today marks the 5th birthday of Google Chrome, and today's Google's blog post is started with the words that 5 years ago "we started Chrome-project to push the Web platform forward" ... blah-blah-blah. And then they announce the new achievement of this Web-platform - desktop applications. From now the Chrome browser for Windows and Chrome OS support applications that run completely on the desktop, offline, without the need of Internet connections. For these apps, the separate section was created in the Chrome App Store. In addition, Google unveils the Chrome App Launcher for Windows - a button on the taskbar, that opens the list of installed Chrome-apps (just like the regular Start button), and the apps launched from this list open not in the Web-browser, but in the own window, like regular Windows programs. So, in fact Google doesn't care, Web or not Web. They just want to replace Windows to Chrome on your computers.


2013. Why your business needs SmartWatch?


Today Samsung has unveiled its first smartwatch - Galaxy Gear. Why executives and business people need such gadget? Of course for sales and good deals. Imagine: you coming to the office of potential customer or partner, the phone sound rigns and you answer via your smartwatch: "I 'll call you later". Of course, after that, your potential customer will ask you something about your watch, you'll tell something, and the talks will go easier (and your image will grow). Ok, it's clear. And what benefits can the smartwatch bring to organize your life? For now the Samsung's watch - it just a bluetooth-connected add-on for the phone (Galaxy Note). Without the phone in your pocket you can't make phone calls, receive SMS, email, reminders. ***


2013. Microsoft to acquire Nokia (cheaper than Skype)



Microsoft has announced the acquisition of  Nokia's devices and services business for $ 7.1 billion. Recall, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion. However, such a low price is not surprising. After all, Nokia is ruled by the former Microsofter, Stephen Elop, who is also the top contender for the position of Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) after his retirement. So it was the family deal. Microsoft injected Elop to Nokia back in 2010 and then two companies became close partners. Nokia became the major manufaturer of Windows Phone smartphones, but had quite a little success with this project. And maybe to Nokia from looking to Android opportunities, Microsoft decided to acquire it. Stephen Elop now will become Microsoft's vice-president of device and services (probably until Ballmer's departure).


2013. Zangi wants to defeat Skype



Today Skype turns 10 years. Already 10 years Skype is the most popular service for VoIP / video calls. But one day the One will come and defeat Zangi. Maybe it will be Google Hangouts, or Viber, or Tango, or ooVoo, or Nimbuzz. And maybe - the new startup - Zangi, that will launch globally in October. What is the brilliant idea of Zangi? They want to create really unified communications tool that can connect two people, no matter where they are, what device they use and what connection they have. Unlike Skype, that works only via Internet, Zangi allows to connect via GSM (using call-back). In addition, it allows to send SMS  and support calls via browser (web interface). Unlike Viber, Zangi allows you to make video calls. ***


2013. Microsoft connected Lync and Skype



Almost 300 million people around the world use Skype. This is a very large customer base, that's why many companies add skype-address to their contacts in order to offer customers a convenient communication channel. But in large companies using Skype at the workplace - doesn't fit the corporate security policy. Therefore, the integration of Skype with Lync communication server can become a breakthrough for deploying Skype in large companies. And thus Microsoft can get a significant competitive advantage over Cisco, Avaya and other enterprise communication vendors. That's was the main reason why Microsoft acquired Skype for a lot of money. ***


2013. Google unites GTalk and Hangouts


Google engineers have so much work to do (mostly for Google Glass), that they simply don't have time to fix other (useful) products. For several years we have been waiting when Google finally unites its separated communication services in order to create competitive Skype alternative. And finally, they spent few weeks and implemented the half of this task. Google Talk messenger is now replaced by Google Hangouts videochat. Google has released two Hangouts mobile apps: for Android and iOS. In addition, Hangouts is available in GMail and Google+. All your Hangouts chat apps are synchronized, so you can start conversation on your computer (in GMail) and continue it out of the office on your phone. In chat you can insert pictures and videos from Youtube. Video chat supports up to 10 people simultaneously. Unfortunately, for now Google had not time to unite Hangouts with Google Voice. So you can't send SMS in Hangouts and make voice calls. You can either send a message or make video call. No voice calls yet.


2013. Outlook.com users will be able to chat with their Google contacts



Having read the title of this news you could thought that the miracle occurred and IT monsters finally stopped building walls around their empires and decided to implement open standards for the overall happiness. But in fact the things are much more pragmatic. Microsoft still doesn't like Google, and Google still doesn't like Microsoft. Microsoft just wants to move GMail users to its Outlook.com, and one of the reasons that keeps them from moving - is the loss of the ability to chat with contacts "that stuck on GMail" (it's a quote from Microsoft's blog). Within few days, Microsoft will add this feature in Outlook.com. By the way, Outlook users already can chat with contacts from Skype and Facebook.


2013. Viber launched desktop version


Mobile video chat Viber managed to gain popularity while Skype was very slow in its moving to mobile platforms. And now it already has 200 million users and it seems to be the first in line of those services who wants to replace Skype as an independent communications app. Yesterday Viber released the desktop versions for PC and Mac. However, to start using them, you still have to install the mobile app first, because in Viber the accounts are linked to phone numbers. The most interesting feature in Viber's desktop version is that you can move seamlessly from desktop to smartphone and back without terminating the call. In addition, all messages (and contacts, of course) are automatically synced between the mobile and desktop versions and incoming call comes only to the device (computer) on which you are working right now.