The Localphone Blog

I’m pleased to announce that we’re halving our SMS rates to all destinations from now until the end of February.

Just as we have done with cheap international calling, we’re going to drive down the cost of sending SMS messages abroad while maintaining a reliable, high-quality service.

Here are some of our new half-price rates to popular destinations:

All International SMS Rates

Sending an SMS with Localphone couldn’t be easier. Simply log on to your Localphone dashboard to enter your messages and start sending.

To keep up-to-date with this and all the latest Localphone news please become a fan of our Facebook page and follow @localphone on Twitter.

Update: We’re glad we were able to help so many of you get in touch with your loved ones over the last few days. We will now be returning calls to our standard rates as per our Haiti page.

The Localphone Team was deeply saddened by the recent earthquake disaster in Haiti. It’s vital at times like these that those affected can stay in constant contact with friends and family in the area, and as such we will be offering completely free calling to Haiti until further notice.

New users can read our How To Call guide to see the various ways you can keep in touch via Localphone. Existing users can continue to make calls as normal, for free.

We hope that this small contribution will go some way to helping comfort those affected by the disaster. If customers would like to make their own donation we recommend Direct Relief to ensure that 100% of your gift goes to helping those in need.

Please note that there has been significant damage to the telephony infrastructure and customers may experience difficulty getting through to some numbers. We are working with our partners to restore full service as soon as possible.

Best wishes,
Paul Cusack and the Localphone Team.

As you may be aware, from Friday 1st January 2010 the UK’s VAT rate is going back up from 15% to 17.5%.

Most companies will be increasing their prices to compensate, but to celebrate another successful year at Localphone we’re going to keep our rates as they are, effectively giving a 2.5% discount across all destinations.

Thank you for your support in 2009. We’re looking forward to some exciting new developments over the coming months.

Please note that this notice affects our GBP and EUR customers. Users with USD accounts do not pay VAT.

We wanted to write a quick guide to help you get the best level of service from Localphone over the holidays. Like many companies we’re expecting a dramatic increase in traffic over the next couple of weeks, especially on Christmas Day and New Years Eve, so here are a few handy tips to avoid any issues…

Top-Up Your Call Credit Early

To make sure there are no delays you should add any call credit you expect to use now, so it’s ready when you want to make those important calls. You can make a secure online payment at at any time.

Verify Your Payment Details

When you use a new credit or debit card we may split your first payment into two separate transactions. You can then check your bank or credit card statement and tell us what these two amounts were, proving that you own the card so we can speed up your future payments.

Verify your payment details.

If you prefer to use Paypal for your Localphone credit you can still verify your account by following the instructions on the Paypal website.

Update Your Access Numbers

We have been busy expanding our capacity to avoid problems when there is an unusually high spike in call traffic. If you should experience busy signals when calling via Localphone try changing Your Location to another city in your country and then dial the new access numbers you’re given.

Users in the UK should switch to our high-capacity “London (0207)” range.

To update your location just visit your Localphone dashboard and click the “change” link next to your current location.

Send an SMS

We recently added the ability to send international SMS text messages from the Localphone website.

Let Friends & Family Call You Instead

You can get Localphone Incoming Numbers in any of 2,262 locations across 46 countries, and forward incoming calls to your existing landline or mobile where you are.

This has been a great year for Localphone and I want to thank all of our customers sincerely from the entire Localphone team. We’ve got a lot of exciting new developments planned for 2010 and you can expect the same commitment to call quality and great rates to continue.

As of midnight this morning Eastern Time (5am GMT) all calls to United States landlines and mobiles will be completely free for five days, for all Localphone users new and old.

You can talk for as long as you want, to as many people as you want, any time you want, and we won’t charge you a penny.

Call from your landline or mobile with Direct Dial or Calling Card, or from your PC, iPhone, or other VoIP-enabled mobile with Localphone VoIP.

This offer even applies to our Incoming Numbers service. Buy a number in any of our 46 Incoming Number countries and forward calls to a landline or mobile in the US for free for five days.

We hope this offer will help you keep in touch with your loved ones this Thanksgiving.

This promotion will run until 10am GMT on Monday 30th November. For full details please see “Free Calls to the USA for Thanksgiving”.

Please note that this feature is currently only available on our UK Incoming Numbers, and only applies to SMS messages sent from a UK mobile network.

We have now enabled an exciting new feature on Localphone Incoming Numbers in the UK.

Available immediately, free of charge, when somebody sends an SMS text message to any of your UK Incoming Numbers it will be recorded in your SMS History.

You can also opt to have the SMS automatically forwarded to a number of your choosing—anywhere in the world—at our standard international SMS rates.

Just visit your Incoming Numbers Dashboard and click “Edit” next to your SMS-enabled number(s). On this page you’ll see a new “Forwarding Your SMS Messages” section where you can enable and disable this feature.

When you send SMS messages from the Localphone website you can choose your Incoming Number as the “Send From” field. When your friend in the UK replies, you can have it forwarded straight back to your mobile!

We hope you’ll enjoy this powerful new feature. We plan to start rolling it out to our Incoming Numbers in other countries soon.

Recently a few Localphone users have asked for our thoughts regarding the packages offered by some competing services, where customers pay a monthly fee and receive “unlimited” or a fixed number of minutes per month.

In our opinion these rarely offer good value for all but a relatively small number of the most heavy callers.

For example, here in the UK Vonage offers “V-Plan 4i”, advertising unlimited calls to India and others for £18.99 per month. We’ve found that a typical user calling India does so for about 400 minutes per month, giving an effective rate of 4.75p per minute (versus our current GBP rate to India from as little as 1.3p per minute).

To match our rate with Vonage you’d have to be calling for more than three times the average—almost 1,500 minutes per month!

Another common feature of these plans is a “fair usage policy” which can really sting those users that do make significantly higher numbers of calls. In Vonage’s case their fair usage policy limits their “unlimited” package to 2,000 minutes per month.

For those few users who do fall in this 1,500 to 2,000 minutes per month range we feel Localphone’s advanced features add enough value to be worth the small rate increase.

With Vonage you’re tied to using their hardware (with up to £39.99 set-up costs), while Localphone lets you call from your existing landline or mobile, or from your broadband or mobile Internet connection with Localphone VoIP. You can also send cheap international SMS messages, or even get an Incoming Number in your destination countries so friends and family can call you back.

As I’m sure our customers will agree, Localphone’s per minute billing offers significantly higher flexibility and value for money than competing package offers.

(information sourced from Vonage’s website on 23rd November, 2009)

We recently launched Localphone SMS—a service for sending cheap international SMS text messages. We’ve listened to your feedback and have added a number of new features to enhance the service.

SMS Your Direct Dial Contacts

Users in the UK can now send SMS messages to our Direct Dial numbers and the message will be forwarded on to the corresponding contact. There is no extra charge for using this service—just our standard SMS rates.

We are working to add this functionality to other countries as soon as possible.

SMS History

From now on any messages you send will be recorded and available on your SMS History page.

Receive SMS Messages on Your UK Incoming Numbers

If you have a Localphone Incoming Number in the UK you can now retrieve SMS messages too. When a friend sends a message to your number it will be displayed in your SMS History.

You can also send SMS’s from your Incoming Number when sending a Web SMS.

This added functionality comes at no extra charge and we hope to expand it to our Incoming Numbers in other countries soon.

New Number Verification Methods

Customers asked for alternative methods to SMS-enable Your Numbers so we have added the options to send or receive a verification code on your mobile. You can find out more information on this new feature on our SMS Verification page.

We hope you’ll enjoy these improvements to Localphone SMS. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any comments or suggestions about this or any other part of the Localphone service.

I am very pleased to announce that you can now send cheap international SMS text messages from the Localphone website.

We hope to bring to the international SMS market the same balance of high quality and low rates that you’ve come to expect from Localphone.

You can check out our fantastic rates on our SMS page.

You can start sending SMS messages straight away by logging in to your account and visiting the SMS dashboard.

We have a lot of great features planned for the future and are already working on extensions to the service. As always, we would value your feedback so please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any thoughts about Localphone SMS.

Best wishes,
Paul Cusack, CEO.

As part of our ongoing commitment to reducing the cost of international calls I’m please to announce that we’ve been able to discount our rates to Nigeria by up to a whopping 20%!

As of yesterday our new rate to Nigeria is just 6.9p GBP / 9.5¢ USD / 7.6c EUR per minute to both landlines and mobiles.

You can expect to see the same great call quality despite this reduction, as the price drop reflects the growing popularity of our calls to Nigeria. As we continue to grow we’ll keep re-negotiating our rates and passing the savings on to you, so don’t forget to recommend Localphone to your friends, family, and colleagues—you can even earn free call credit when they top up!

Thank you for your continued support and loyalty. With your help we’ll keep driving down the cost of calling Nigeria and the world.

Best wishes,
Paul Cusack, CEO.