The Localphone Blog

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.