VoIP Management

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VoIP Management Featured Article

February 16, 2012
Are Data-Only Smartphone Plans in our Future? Rebtel May Help Make it Happen
 By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Rebtel (News - Alert) celebrated a milestone recently, hitting the 15-million user mark. Part of the success is due to the early decision to offer its communication service to a variety of platforms associated with both mobile and desktop. 


According to this Gigamon (News - Alert) post, the VoIP management specialist has now surpassed Skype (News - Alert) three times over in the average revenue per user column. Some speculate that Rebtel’s early decision to offer its VoIP management solution to a variety of platforms that reach a multitude of devices was what drove the success it enjoys today. 

More than 500 million calls have been made through Rebtel, and the company estimates that it will hit estimated revenue of $85 million in 2012.

The VoIP management solution has attracted 15 million users, offering these consumers a cheaper way to contact their friends, family and business partners. Critics are quick to point out that Rebtel’s services aren’t completely VoIP because they have to be routed over a voice network or telephone line. 

Consumers, however, are seeing significant cost savings because they are making calls over WiFi (News - Alert) and 3G networks, which take the heat off your minutes on your carrier’s phone plan. If only carriers would allow data-only contracts – you could surf the web and make calls all day without a though of using up valuable and expensive minutes.

What Rebtel is finding are users who are taking the lowest cost and lowest priced plan and making the bulk of their calls with Rebtel’s service. Revenues for the company shot up over 50 percent last year as nearly two billion minutes of international calls were made by its 15 million users in its 500 million calls.

Being one of the world’s largest mobile VoIP providers, Rebtel got its start in 2006 ahead of the smartphone revolution, and started making a profit in 2010. Skype, its biggest competitor, operates on average revenue per user of $8 per month. Rebtel is hitting around $24 per month. This variance could explain why Skype has struggled for years to make money.

This revenue success for Rebtel might be due to its customer loyalty, which by some accounts is around 96 percent. After launching its KeepTalking technology, which is a set of international calling apps, in 2011 it saw 13 times more downloads in its fourth quarter than what it saw in the previous quarter.

Rebtel’s smartphone apps allow you to see which contacts in your contact list can be called for free and which are cheap. While the iPhone (News - Alert) app is described as a social networking app, companies using the free and reduced calls are finding it to be much more than social networking.


Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny

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