Vopium is a free software program that uses mobile VoIP and Wi-Fi technology to reduce the cost of international phone calls on mobile whilst also maintaining excellent call quality. Free and easy to download, Vopium integrates directly with the address book on the phone, automatically re-routing all international calls via the least expensive method available. In addition to heavily discounted international calls, Vopium users can also slash the costs of sending text messages (SMS) abroad as each message only costs 9p.

It’s pretty much by the book in terms of implementation – address book sync, WiFi calls but what we like is that it makes use of a system that determines the cheapest reroute from an International call.

Post from: Cellphone9

I’ve been out of the country three times last year to different parts of Asia. Activation of roaming is automatic for post paid lines on my network. Because I love to be redundant I’d take a short trip to the service center at the mall and always reconfirm my roaming activation. And yes, the girl on the counter, patient as ever would always say the same thing – my post paid subscription entitles me to automatic roaming.

Trip one happened and I had to buy a SIM card because upon touch down, my BlackBerry refused to grab a signal. Trip two had the same result. Trip three was the last straw. Although not having a signal allowed me to grow a collection of foreign SIM cards, this still sucked.

So finally I made my last trip to my telco’s service center and narrated my anomaly. The system did say my account had roaming activated (SMART Network). But I told them to double check again just to make sure. The lady called up engineering and presented the situation. A few minutes later she came back to me and said that there really was something wrong!

In spite of the system reporting that my roaming was active, in reality it wasn’t. Was this a system glitch? After this incident it makes me shudder just thinking of the other info I take for granted with my telco of choice.

So yes, to be safe it is always a good rule to be redundant.

Post from: Cellphone9