Nimbuzz partners LG Mobiles to offer free voice calls to US

After cornering revenues from messaging services, instant messaging players are now looking to eat into the telecom companies’ income from voice telephony. Nimbuzz has partnered with LG Mobiles to provide 100 minutes of free international calls to any number in the US.

Post the usage of 100 minutes by the customers, the company will charge 1 paisa/ second for the calls made to the US. Customers can pay through their credit cards.

The service will be initially available on L–Series III smartphones from LG Mobiles. Nimbuzz is also in talks with other handset makers – global as well as local players – to offer similar plans in the future. Such services can be accessed on all regular data and Wi-Fi networks.

“International calling is becoming large through Internet services and people look for such minute by minute offers to save cost. It is the new way of calling and right now our biggest focus is around such Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP),” Vikas Saxena, Chief Executive Officer, Nimbuzz, told Business Line .

However, he said the offer is valid only in India (for calling to the US) as the company does not have licensing agreement with other countries right now.

But, the company is looking for such agreements with other countries too so that it can offer similar services worldwide.

“Their (Nimbuzz) commitment to extend an affordable international calling platform to users will draw maximum value for LG and Nimbuzz. The growing popularity of affordable smartphones from industry players like LG and the increasing adoption of Wi-Fi/ 3G networks will only accelerate this technological shift,” Amit Gujral, Marketing Head, LG Mobiles India, said.

Nimbuzz is also looking at launching a conference call facility, which will allow its users to talk to multiple people at the same time as long as all of them are on the Nimbuzz platform. Saxena said the work is in progress for that too.

“Technology is all ready and it is time that the whole enterprise calling should be touched upon,” he said, adding that security wise also, the company offer highest secured network, which are encrypted as compared with other international players such as Skype or Viber. It has over 150 million users globally and a current growth rate of over 2.10 lakh new registrations each day or a new Nimbuzz user every second, and an international user footprint of over 200 countries, Saxena added.

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