Feb
22
Remember those cheap rate international numbers that would make you enter about 100 digits so you could call Uncle Fred in the US at some ridiculously low rate of 3p a minute?
If we’re being honest, they never really worked all that well did they? Sometimes you’d get through, but the line would be so unclear that you’d barley be able to decipher the other person amongst the static. Or you’d find yourself cut off within seconds of being connected. Or you couldn’t even get through in the first place.
But all of this seemed a small price to pay when you were essentially getting long distance phone calls at a massively reduced rate.
Well, thanks to a new phone app called Viber there’s now a brilliant way to make the same international phone calls for free! Yup, you pay absolutely nothing, nada, diddly squat. And what’s even better is there’s a good chance the quality of the connection could be clear as a bell.
Free Overseas Calls – What’s the Catch?
Calling someone on my mobile overseas for free? Are you insane?
So here’s the basics of how it works. Viber is a phone app that doesn’t use phone lines, it’s using your internet connection for the phone call. That’s how the call can be free, because you’re already paying for your wi-fi or 3G on your mobile phone plan.
What this means is that the person you’re calling must also have the Viber app installed and be in range of their wi-fi or have a 3G connection. The quality of the call is dependant on the speed of your connection, so you’ll find if caller and receiver are both sitting at home, for instance, using their home wi-fi connections for their phonecall, then they should have a very clear sounding line as these speeds are likely to be quite high.
The sound quality of a 3G phonecall might not be quite as clear, but this is debatable. Obviously the other thing to be aware of is if your mobile phone plan has a data storage limit then making a phonecall using the Viber app over a 3G network will draw on your data storage, and yeah….that could prove costly if you go over it!
On the plus side the app is incredibly easy to install and get up and running and is available for both Android and iPhone.
After install Viber uses your contact list to detect who else has the app. Which means when you load up the app you’ll get a new contact list of people using Viber that you can call – oh and message too –for free.
Viber is still growing, so the popularity of using it as an international (or national) free messaging service might not yet rival the likes of Facebook chat, Blackberry messenger and Whatsapp, but the combined free call and free messenger service definitely gets a big tick from us.
Viber Pros
- Free app
- Free phone calls & texts to any other Viber users anywhere in the world
- Available for Android and iPhone
- Good quality sound over wi-fi connection
Viber Cons
- Not yet as widely used as other messaging apps
- Viber calls using 3G could suck the life out of your data storage limit
- Caller and receiver must both be in range of wi-fi or 3G connection
