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Preview: pfingo
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. (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 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.
12 Comments
Was at the snooze fest-I mean, press event today. Almost wrote it off, but you’ve given me another thing to thunk about.
The first question that I need answered is: Will it work with the iPhone?
That said, pfingo sounds like it’s going to be really cool and it’s quite interesting to see that it’s a telco rolling this out, which means that having VoIP on our cell phones may not be as cannibalistic to their business as many have supposed it might be.
So, pfingo is basically a SIP client, and their service is a SIP registra. Its a case of bring your own SIM, use whatever WiFi connection is available, and be pfingo enabled?
I guess the pfingoACTIVE is what makes this application a steal. Otherwise, the Nokia phone’s themselves come with a SIP client, the only catch is connecting to a SIP registra (say, gizmophone)
Wonder if it’ll be available worldwide (I am very rarely in Singapore, once a year if I’m lucky - love your airport where I transit regularly, but here’s hoping the service works in Australia and Malaysia).
Do continue telling us how it goes, its might interesting to see whats happening in the VoIP/WiFi space, as more phones are WiFi enabled. Cell phone companies are so going to “enjoy” the competition.
It is available worldwide =)
i m trying to be tech savvy here…1 yr ago if u tole mi VoIP i wld say…waaaaaaaat?
the pfingomail feature, does it integrate accounts or merely synchronises? the 10mb remote storage sounds kewl…
If you like pfingo’s free local calls, you might want to try truphone. It is also a SIP service and allows free calls almost worldwide, for now, until end June. Voice quality varies though.
helo adrianna, keith from wham bam here, if u rem me!
I juz dont get something. i know how SIP works, but i dont understand the pricing bit. if it really is just based on wifi (im takin 3G out of the equation), hw cld any1 charge for that?
nonetheless, it seems really excitin. lucky u!
What they’re charging for isn’t for SIP or the wifi — it’s for the service they’ve built around these. Bit hard to explain now, will do a better review with screenshots and stuff.
Happy studying!!
the 2 words happy and studying are not complimentary :D alrite U too, den! and thanks for any future reviews`
hi nice site.
Pfingo is SIP, you can use xten.com (xlite) which I have been using for the past few years, very good and free, but sip setting should be sip.pfingo.com (then talk.pfingo.com shown on the installation manual).
Good points: QoS one of the best voice quality so far, Free Trial, Singapore number
Current Disadvantages: Intermediate connection, Address book does not allow adding contacts without email address (put a . on the email field)
I dont think the L3 number is going to be a big selling point for mobile users, because WIFI connection will allow maybe 2 hours of battery life, hardly call that standby time. The L3 number is useful for PC uses at this moment in time.
For outgoing call, voipstunt.com, voipbuster.com (maybe the same company) and etc charges EU$10 for 4 months with unlimited free calls to lots of countries which allows settings for the E65 and etc. Skype also came out a unlimited usage deal which is also quite cost effective.
Singtel provides a PC to landline service with incoming calls number for S$8/month (S$5 for Singnet users), with free 30 mins video 3G call / mth from your PC to Singtel mobiles, free incoming calls but you will need to pay the standard rate of local calls which is something like 80 cents per hour in the day and 40 at night. (Very Cheap)
Gizmoproject provides free landline and mobile call to certain countries for regular users of it PC to PC calling service and and multi platform messenger.
sipgate.co.uk which provides free landline (similar to L3) number in a number of countries, without a monthly sub. service, and relatively cheap outgoing calls.
Comparing the above, Pfingo will need to consider its pricing very carefully. Since most of the above runs on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), all you need is the sip proxy settings and you can use it on most of your mobile phones e.g. E61, E65, N80I, N95 and etc. Truephone.com and fring.com also provides VOIP on mobile phones.
I believe that VOIP/messenger on mobile is the next trend. M1 is in the right direction on having the unlimited broadband on the 3G sim card S$22/month, one fixed data price for the messenger and VOIP and etc.
Currently three.co.uk is giving £5/mth for unlimited data including using MSN and Skype, T-mobile.co.uk provide unlimted web surfing for £7.50/mth, Orange.co.uk provide £1 maximum/day for unlimted data (if you dont use data everyday) and I heard from a staff who works in Vodafone said that unlimited data will be at approx. £7/month in July 07. All these are on 3G with all have the bandwidth to support VOIP on mobile (this will allow you to turn on your pfingo all the time (significants for the L3 number). As for Wifi, I think you may need a few more batteries, or bring a charger everywhere you go (not very mobile for a mobile phone).