The Localphone Blog

We contacted customers on Friday to announce a special weekend rate to Pakistan, and were very pleased to see such an enthusiastic uptake.

You may recall we were recently forced to increase our rates due to higher costs imposed by the Pakistani Government. As promised, we have worked hard with our suppliers to try to reduce our rates again as soon as possible, and I’m pleased to announce our new rate to call Pakistan landlines and mobiles is USD $0.085 / GBP £0.059 / EUR €0.067 per minute, effective immediately.

While this is not yet back to the previous levels it does represent a significant reduction, and follows through on our commitment to always pass our savings on to you. We will continue to strive to be the best value for your international calls, and thank you for your ongoing support.

As a departure from the usual Localphone blog posts, I wanted to let you know about a worthy cause one of the Localphone Team is undertaking later this month.

For the last six months, Pete Kelly has been training hard to take part in a cycle challenge, riding 317 miles (510 kilometres) from London to Paris in just four days!

Pete is undertaking this difficult challenge to raise money for The Christie NHS Foundation Trust—the largest cancer treatment centre of its kind in Europe, and an international leader in cancer research and development.

Pete helped bring you popular features including Localphone SMS, and an upcoming secret project that is going to help save you even more on your international calls with Localphone.

While we’re all sick of tripping over his cycling equipment in the Localphone office, the whole team is very proud of Pete and we would like to wish him the best of luck for his long journey.

For more information, and if you’d like to sponsor Pete, please visit his Just Giving page.

Hot on the heels of launching our service in South Africa, I’m pleased to announce that our most popular products are now available for users living in or travelling to Germany. As of today you can now use Localphone access numbers in Berlin, Dortmund, and Frankfurt.

With Direct Dial we’ll give you a different German landline number to call for each of your contacts. When you dial these local numbers you’ll be connected straight through—no need for account numbers or PINs.

With our Virtual Calling Card you can call one German number to manage your Localphone account and to dial any number in the world.

Don’t forget you can already purchase Incoming Numbers in Germany. These appear as normal landline numbers but can be forwarded to your landline or mobile anywhere in the world at our great international rates, or for free to a Localphone VoIP account.

Existing users can get German access numbers by clicking the “change” link next to “Your Location” near the top of the Localphone Direct Dial page. New users should select Germany as “Your Country” when signing up for their free test call.

Don’t forget to tell your friends and family in Germany and you can call and SMS for free!

We have unfortunately been forced to increase our call rate to Pakistan in response to actions taken by the Pakistani Government. Effective from 00:00 GMT on 1st July our rate to Pakistan will be $0.109 / £0.076 / €0.089 per minute to both landlines and mobiles.

Due to a rise in the cost of terminating international calls in Pakistan, our suppliers have had to increase the rate they charge us, and we are forced to do the same. It is important to note that this situation is entirely unavoidable and Localphone will in fact make less profit as our margin is now even tighter.

While we always hate to increase our rates, even at these new prices we still offer considerable savings on your international calls with no compromise on quality.

We expect that all international call providers will announce similar rate increases in the coming days. As has happened in the past with Pakistan, we expect the wholesale market will quickly compete to offer lower rates and we’ll pass these savings straight on to you.

We’re very excited to announce the availability of our most popular products for users living in or travelling to South Africa, with the addition of access numbers in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, and Pretoria.

With Direct Dial we’ll give you a different South African landline number to call for each of your contacts. When you dial these local numbers you’ll be connected straight through—no need for account numbers or PINs.

With our Virtual Calling Card you can call one South African number to manage your Localphone account and to dial any number in the world.

You can now also purchase Incoming Numbers in South Africa in any of the four cities. These appear as normal landline numbers but can be forwarded to your landline or mobile anywhere in the world at our great rates, or for free to a Localphone VoIP account.

Existing users can get South African access numbers by clicking the “change” link next to “Your Location” near the top of the Localphone Direct Dial page. New users should select South Africa as “Your Country” when signing up for their free test call.

We’re very pleased we can now offer these great products to users in South Africa, and to those travelling to South Africa for the upcoming World Cup. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family and you can call and SMS for free.

To help commemorate Memorial Day we’re giving completely free calls to landlines and mobiles in the United States for the entire weekend!

As of 9:30am GMT this morning and lasting until 12:00 GMT (noon) on Monday 31st May you can talk to the US for as long as you want, to as many people as you want, and we won’t charge you a cent!

New and existing customers can make free calls from your landline or mobile using Direct Dial or Calling Card, or from your PC, iPhone, or other VoIP-enabled device with Localphone VoIP.

You can also buy a number in any of our 45 Incoming Number countries and forward calls to your landline or mobile in the US for free throughout the weekend!

Don’t forget to tell your friends and family to sign up for an account of their own, and if they keep using the service after the weekend you can keep calling for free!

For full details, please see our Cheap Calls to USA page.

India has always been one of Localphone’s most popular calling destinations, and to say thank-you for your continued loyalty we’re going to be offering all calls to Indian landlines and mobiles at just 1p / 1.5¢ / 1.2c per minute for the rest of May.

Compared to our standard rates that’s a massive saving of up to 32%!

There has never been a better time to recommend Localphone to your friends and family. For example if they top-up just $15 you’ll earn enough for 100 minutes of talk time to any landline or mobile in India, and you’ll keep on earning more for any orders they place in the first 90 days of their account! For full details see our recommend-a-friend page.

For full details of this promotion please see our cheap calls to India page.

I hope you’ll enjoy this new low rate for your calls in May. Please take a moment to become a fan on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and let us know any suggests or feedback you have for the site or service.

One frequent request that we hear from our European users is to improve our access number coverage across the continent, and to offer more Direct Dial numbers in the cities we already serve.

To start this process we’ve contracted with a new supplier and I’m pleased to announce that we have expanded our coverage to 50 Direct Dial access numbers in the following cities:

• Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Dublin, Ireland
• Madrid, Spain
• Oslo, Norway
• Paris, France

If you are currently using access numbers in these cities please note that we have updated the numbers you’ll need to dial. You can get an up-to-date list on Your Dashboard. The old access numbers will continue to work for now but we plan to disable them within the next few weeks.

If you live in one of these countries but are not currently using access numbers in the above cities and would like to take advantage of the improved coverage, you can update your Direct Dial numbers at any time by clicking the “change” link next to “Your Location” on Your Dashboard.

I hope you’ll benefit from this first stage of improved coverage. Over the coming months we’ll be expanding our access numbers in more cities, as well as launching our service in new European countries.

As always, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other suggestions or other comments.

Last month we reduced the cost of international SMS messaging to 30 countries, and now we’re ready for another round of savings.

Below are our new per-SMS rates to countries you have SMS’d or called. These new rates are effective immediately and you don’t have to change a thing:

To keep up to date with the latest Localphone news don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and become a fan of our Facebook page.

Please Note: The following announcement only applies to customers billed in British Pounds or Euros. Users with USD accounts will be unaffected.

The recent changes in the UK’s VAT rate—from 17.5% to 15%, and back to 17.5% this year—highlighted a number of weaknesses with our current model, where VAT is reflected in our per-minute rates.

In an effort to be more open and flexible with our billing practices from April 1st we will be reducing all of our call, SMS, and Incoming Number rates for new and existing customers by 17.5%, and adding a 17.5% charge at checkout under the heading “taxes, surcharges, and fees”. All prices on the website will be shown inclusive or exclusive of VAT at your preference.

We will also be reducing your current balance to reflect this change, but it is important to stress that no customer will be worse off as a result.

Example

Bob has a balance of £10 and is currently paying 10p per minute for his calls. This means that he has 100 minutes of talk time remaining.

On April 1st we will reduce Bob’s balance by 17.5% to £8.51 (£10 / 1.175), but also our rate per minute will go down to 8.5p per minute. Bob will still have 100 minutes of talk time remaining.

When Bob places a £10 order in the future, VAT will be added and he will pay £11.75. We will, however, give the option of reducing the order to £8.51 of credit for which he will pay £10.

I hope this e-mail provides a full explanation and plenty of notice for the upcoming change. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.