Preview: pfingo
29 Mar
If you’re wondering why many in the local blogosphere are suddenly sporting Nokia E65s and talking about some secret service.. most of us are testing a new service by Starhub, “pfingo”:http://www.pfingo.com/. (For the sake of disclosure: yes we all received a Nokia E65, but have signed contracts that say we give them back — they just needed uniformity of the user experience for this trial, so no, no kickbacks unless you think of beta testing new cool services as one). You may have read about it in the news when it was “accidentally revealed”. I’ve been using pfingo extensively for the past week, and for now my first thoughts are pretty positive. It seems to me for the first time, a local telco is getting something right.
Let’s just say pfingo puts “VoIP”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP on wifi-enabled phones. I won’t go into the technicalities of how this works, but it was fairly easy to set up — and has some innovative features.
*Bring Your Own Sim*
Fantastic idea. You can have a Starhub SIM card, M1 or Singtel — they don’t care. In my case, I could even bring it to Thailand and pop in my DTAC SIM card. If I’m in India my telco in Karnataka is Airtel, but in Assam and beyond it’s BSNL. It doesn’t matter what telco you’re on.
*Kinda like SkypeIn and SkypeOut, but a little different*
There are ‘level 3′ phone numbers, meaning they start with the number ‘3′ instead of ‘9′ or ‘6′ or ‘8′. You have a level 3 phone number on top of your existing ‘9′ number (or Thai or India number, or wherever). Calling Singapore numbers is free — they show up on caller ID as your ‘3′ number, and your friends can call that number and it reaches you if you’re online, and if you’re not the call gets forwarded to your regular phone number so you don’t miss the call. Technically, I could be sitting in the Coffee Society in Bangkok and chatting with my family in Singapore for free, using the free wifi service (I’ll be trying that next month). Or I could be at Barista in Colaba Causeway (Mumbai) talking to Z for free, too. You’ll be able to add on to the service by subscribing to extra numbers, such as American mobile numbers.
*pfingoACTIVE*
A set of applications with pushmail, RSS, chat, even remote file storage. I was prepared to be skeptical, but I’ve become rather fond of them — they seem very well built and intuitive. The chat program (part of pfingoACTIVE) is one of the best I’ve used on a phone so far; only supports MSN for now, with support for other protocols possibly on the way. The remote file storage is fab.
*How does it stack up?*
Voice clarity: A+
I can barely achieve the same clarity using my home wifi network and Skype or Gizmo — and yet in the past few days I’ve picked up the phone, and easily called Thailand, the Philippines and India with superb clarity. Since I live in the hostel my regular GSM outgoing minutes are shockingly high; with pfingo I’ve been able to call Singapore numbers at no charge (and my recipients have free incoming calls).
Ease of Use: A
Pretty easy.
No information on pricing yet but have heard it will be a flat and reasonable rate. I am still putting pfingo through extensive usage — and next month we’ll see how well it stacks up in Koh Phi Phi, Sangkhlaburi, Bangkok, Mae Salong — and in Delhi the next month. :) For now, though, it’s doing extremely well.
