More good news for you all! We’ve dropped rates across some of our very popular destinations -
India – Now 1.5 cents / min (reduced 25%)
Pakistan – Now 4 cents / min (reduced 50%)
China – Now 1.5 cents / min (reduced 25%)
Singapore – Now 1.5 cents / min (reduced 25%)
Great quality calls at great prices with Spokn!
In the spirit of the new year and as a celebration of our latest Windows dialer 3.0.0 release, we’re announcing a Double Bonus offer for our Resellers.
If you are a Spokn Reseller and you recharge for USD 100 or more, you get a bonus of USD 10 instead of the regular USD 5!
With the proven new dialer that works flawlessly in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East, we’re sure that you’ll have the happiest customers. So recharge soon to get the Double Bonus – this offer expires on February 15, 2012.
Wish you a prosperous and happy new year!
There are millions of people in the Middle Eastern countries such as UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain who have families back home in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and need to communicate with them on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the regular calling rates from the Middle East to these countries are prohibitively high. Naturally, these people look towards VoIP services to make calls at affordable rates but the ISPs in the Middle Eastern countries actively block all VoIP communication.
At Spokn, we have been working hard to come up with a solution that works well for callers from the Middle East, most of whom are in Dubai. With version 3.0.0 of the Spokn Windows dialer, we’ve finally cracked the problem and we’re calling this technology O-VoIP, short for “Obfuscated VoIP”. Essentially, we make the VoIP traffic look different so that the rules that the ISPs have implemented on their firewalls don’t catch our VoIP data.
Many people subscribe to expensive VPN services to make VoIP calls. But in countries like Oman, even VPN connections are blocked. Also, making VoIP calls through a VPN will result in worse voice quality since the data has to go through yet another network, adding latency and possibly, packet drops.
We are rolling out our O-VoIP technology on all our existing clients. The first one out will be our new Android dialer that should be available next week. The iPhone dialer will follow soon after.
Some customers have reported voice distortion issues with v3.0.0 of the Windows dialer – this is because their microphone volume is set too high. In the next release, we will be implementing Automatic Gain Control (AGC) so that microphone volume settings do not need to manually set.
If you haven’t tried Spokn yet, give it a shot. We’re committed to our customers in the Middle East and promise replies to all your queries within 1 business day.
The last few months have been an eye-opening experience for us as far as VoIP in the Middle East is concerned. Customers in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait etc have been facing connectivity issues and have generally had a hard time making calls over VoIP. We thought a VPN-integrated Spokn dialer would work well, but with help from helpful customers like you, we found that VPN connections too were getting blocked by ISPs.
We’ve quickly engineered a solution that relies on obfuscation of the VoIP stream and we’re thrilled to release it today. As an added bonus, we’ve tweaked the codec for improved voice quality. We’ve beta tested this with customers from different countries in the Middle East and all of them had very good things to say about it. So here it is – Spokn for Windows v3.0.0.
As always, do let us know your feedback and suggestions – it helps us make Spokn better for you.
Here’s wishing you all a wonderful new year! We have something exciting coming up for our Resellers and Android users, so stay tuned…
Update: Some users may experience voice distortion during calls. This is due to HIGH microphone volume. Please reduce the volume manually for now. We are working on an automatic mechanism for our next release.
Last month we asked for your support to help us test our upcoming VPN based dialer in the Middle East. Thanks to our helpful users who chipped in, we discovered something that left us quite surprised.
For example, when a user in Oman was logging in using the experimental dialer, we noticed that the ISP was detecting the VPN tunnel being established and was blocking the connection. Apart from the first packet, nothing else was reaching the Spokn server. Clearly, the ISP in question was performing deep packet inspection before allowing packets through to the Internet! We believe the same is happening in certain other Middle Eastern countries as well and this has forced us to rethink our implementation.
We’ve quickly come up with a new solution which relies on obfuscation of the data that the dialer is sending. Since the data is obfuscated, the ISPs will not be able to detect a standard protocol ‘signature’ in the packets being generated by the dialer. This will also allow us to increase the voice quality by using higher-quality codec bit-rates as will hopefully not be restricted by speed throttling tactics implemented by ISPs.
Yet again, if you are in the Middle East, we need your help to validate our assumptions and to verify that our new implementation works well for you. So please write in to us at support@spokn.com if you can help us make Spokn better for you and others like you.
We’ve just released an update to the Windows Dialer, version 2.3.5. This version is a bug fix release and also has changes to fix voice quality issues reported by some customers in the Middle-East.
We’re already field-testing the upcoming version of the Windows Dialer. We’re quite excited about that release since the Dialer features inbuilt VPN support. With that dialer, Middle-East residents who are unable to use any VoIP service without a VPN service subscription will be able to make great quality low-cost calls with Spokn. No more clunky VPN to use and no more monthly VPN subscription costs!
In case you would like to help us test it out, just drop us an email at support@spokn.com with “Beta testing” in the subject line.
We’re happy to announce that we’ve just released version 2.3.3 of the Spokn Windows dialer. This version features a completely overhauled VoIP engine that we’re sure you’ll be very happy with.
As part of the overhaul, we made logins instantaneous and reduced the data usage even more while keeping the same level of quality. Now Spokn will work well even if you have a low speed internet connection.
At the same time we’ve made sure that Spokn continues to work well even in restricted environments. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
You’re in luck if you have an Indian mobile number. Now you can just send an SMS with the text “CALL<space><destination number with country code>” to +919212401234 and Spokn will set up a call for you. Even if you don’t have an internet connection, you can make an international call at Spokn’s low rates.
To be able to use this service, you just need to register your mobile number in the Spokn settings page and have some Spokn credits in your account. This service uses the Click-to-call API to set up a phone-to-phone call for you, so you are billed for two Spokn calls when you make a call using this service.
We’re working on making this available in other countries as well. If you’re not in India and want to use this service, let us know where you’re located and we’ll see what we can do. Read more about this service on the SMS Callback page.
Quite a few of you have been asking for this and we’re glad to be able to finally announce that we’re now accepting Reseller applications.
Resellers are able to transfer credits to other Spokn accounts and are also entitled to a 5% commission on recharges of USD 100. Resellers are also able to generate Prepaid Recharge Codes that can be redeemed by Spokn subscribers for Spokn credits. Resellers typically transfer Spokn credits to a Spokn subscriber’s account in exchange for cash. Of course, they are able to sell Spokn credits in their local currency at a premium of their choice.
If you have friends or associates who don’t own credit cards and need to make international calls, you should consider becoming a Spokn reseller – it can provide you a good alternate source of income while you help them. All you need to do is fill up a small form and recharge your account with USD 100. When you receive our confirmation, your account will be upgraded to Reseller status and you will be able to transfer credits and generate recharge codes. Read more about this on the Reseller page.
We’re happy to announce the new m.spokn.com that now lets you make a Spokn call using your mobile phone. Just head on to the website from the web browser in your mobile phone, put in your number and the destination number and hit the Call button. Spokn will call you on your number and then connect you to the destination number.
Great quality calls on the go! Do remember that you’re charged for two Spokn calls since Spokn is calling your number as well as the destination number. Remember to bookmark m.spokn.com on your mobile phone for easy access! Read more on the original Click to call blog post and on our website.