Last week, Rebtel announced a $20m funding from Benchmark and Index, and Jajah presented its new mobile clients. Both these companies try to tackle the same problem – the high rates paid by people making international calls on their cell phones.
My husband and I have lots of family in Israel. My husband is one of those “Starbucks is my office” type of people. While sipping Starbucks tea, he racks up huge phone bills calling his family on his mobile phone. There’s not a good enough connection for SkypeOut at the Starbucks he frequents. I was immediately excited at the prospect of lowering our cell phone bill and considered both Rebtel and Jajah’s solutions.
Rebtel
Rebtel works on any cell phone. They set up a local number for you to call your international contacts on, and set up a local number for your international contacts to call you. You sign up, coordinate these numbers, have your contact sign up, call the local number provided for your contact, hang-up, your contact calls you back on the local number Rebtel provided, and voilà, you’re making an international call while only paying your communications provider for the price of a local call. This is called a “RebIn” call.
Did you think that was simple? If so, Rebtel’s pricing scheme is set to test your wits. It takes a good while to figure out whether they are cheaper than simply making a regular call overseas on your cell phone. An example:
1. When we call our family/friends, we care about the expenses they have using Rebtel’s system. Rebtel has set up a mobile number in Israel for our relatives to call us on (“Reb-in” calls). This mobile number costs quite a lot for Israelis to call.
2. We subscribe to Cingular, but not with an unlimited minutes plan. My husband often goes over the minute-limit in his plan, incurring the 45 cent/minute for the extra minutes. I figure that his cost of placing the call to the local Rebtel number is somewhere between 0 and 45 cents/minute.
3. In addition to the two fees above, Rebtel charges $1/week for every week that you make a Rebtel call. You have to figure how much that is per minute based on how many minutes you expect to be talking that week. WHY make it this complicated?
All this is required to calculate the savings for the “RebIn” method. Rebtel also offers “RebOut”, where your contact does not call you back, but then there is another per-minute fee that you pay Rebtel for connecting the call.
For my husband, Rebtel probably ends up saving money. For my friend Vered, who doesn’t own a landline, subscribes to the Metro-PCS all-you-can-eat for $35 plan, and has family in Israel as well, Rebtel is a slam-dunk.
Jajah
From their website Jajah appears to be simpler to use, and their rates appear to be cheaper on a per minute basis (free or 2.5 cents to Israel). However, they don’t work on our simple Nokia phones, so the question is moot. The website claims that they are regularly adding more supported phones – I eagerly await support for ours.
These companies are vying for a huge consumer market that doesn’t yet have a winning solution. I wish them the best of luck in making life easier and less expensive for all of us.
