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.
Truphone is great. They’ve been offering free calls for quite a while (due to finish soon) and I use it all the time when I need to call numbers in the US. (Let’s me try out US only services like Goog-411 too).
http://www.tech-exposed.com
Wow, I never heard of them here in the US. I’ll signup and see how free they are when I phone Brazil.
Micheal,
No story, we participated with Straub Ventures in the Series B. Love the truphone products like nothing else (as I showed you in Davos at the WEF) and believe it is the best mobile service you can have on your phone. It saves me at least £5,000 a year in mobile charges. Now running a £600 a year bill with truphone (about £50/months). Got all my business to use truphone now.
Using it a lot on WiFi (since we are as mobile users most of time in our own WiFi zone’s), at home in the office and also anywhere else in the world. With the Sim4Travel acquisition and integration of WiFi and GSM call, truphone is the first truly GLOBAL MOBILE INTERNET CARRIER, and this should finally get me using it on GSM as well. (the 10% I am actually in GSM mode
Call me FREE, call me using ((truphone)) http://www.truphone.com
Alex Straub
i use fring from this blog and really like it! i will maybe try now truphone too. it is interested for me
Hmmm…
will give it a try!
Checked Truphone’s rates. Too expensive. Skype is better they just need a mobile option. Maybe I should try Fring too.
Strange, Skype has not saved me a penny on my mobile phone bill, while truphone is better voice quality than any other service I have used, including GSM and 3G mobile voice. I am not using Skype at all anymore, no NEED with truphone. To my best knowledge Skype is more expensive than ((truphone)). TruLover
hmm, yeah if Skype had a mobile option that would be ideal…
I confess, I am a real truphone fan. Not (only) because I work with Alex at Straub Ventures and he is probably the biggest seller of the idea. Also, because I frequently travel and don’t want to pay roaming charges anymore. I never got a mobile plan or fixed line when I moved to London - only on truphone (+backup pay-as-you-go SIM).
The benefit over Skype is, that it is mobile and the voice quality is far superior (even better than GSM). The benefit over fring is, that it behaves like a real mobile phone. No extra app to start, no battery drain, no change of usage pattern - it simply automaticaly logs into your network and you can make call directly from your phone’s address book. Beautiful.
For now, it is running on selected premium phones. I really encourage people to try truphone on their Symbian phones. Interested in feedback.
BTW: As far as I know, all prior investors joined this round and only some of the lead investors were named.
That is some serious cash!
I am seriously impressed with the huge disruptive potential of this ((truphone))
service. But do I not incur charges for using my mobile internet browser? What does a handset require to render it wi-fi compatibile and how common are wi-fi zones around UK and Europe really?
Would love to test it out, but was told at the T-Mobile store to beware of costs of accessing my browser when intending to visit Web Expo in Dam, for e.g….
Look forward to your illuminating responses… Cheers.
Can I use this on a BlackBerry?
It works on a range of Nokia smartphones. New supported phones are planned. It works best in a wifi environment. Most of us are in wifi most of the time anyways. This of course does not incur any data traffic cost at your mobile operator.