PC-based phone makes use of traditional phone cards

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By melvin g. calimag, Manila Bulletin

A cheaper alternative, although not necessarily better in quality, in making voice calls was unveiled recently by the Internet arm of mobile phone carrier Globe Telecom.

The new product solution, called the GlobeQuest Web Phone, is said to be the country’s first PC-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service that utilizes traditional prepaid cards.

To avail of the service, a PC user, preferably with a broadband connection, must go to the GlobeQuest website (www.globequest.com.ph) and click the Web phone icon to launch the service.

Only those with a Globe1 prepaid cards can make calls on the Web phone. It may take a while, however, for a user to get acquainted with the voice quality and sometimes extended time for the phone to be connected.

But the good side of using the service, according to GlobeQuest officials, is that it allows the user to save as much as 78 percent in international calls.

Also, it can be used to call a landline and mobile anywhere in the country and abroad at a lesser rate.

As a way of emphasizing its point, calls using the Web phone to the top ten most popular foreign destinations – Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and USA – are charged for only P4.50 or .086 per minute as compared to the traditional IDD rate of .40.

Jesus Romero, head of GlobeQuest, said companies which require constant communication with business associates in the said countries can gain substantial savings if they use the Web phone.

Reaching a mobile phone subscriber, whether Globe subscriber or not, using the new service only costs P4.50 per minute as compared to P6.50 per minute for mobile-originating calls.

The executive said the PC-based phone is a "unique" in the sense that although the underlying technology behind the service is VoIP, the business model employs the use of widely circulated prepaid cards.

The Web phone, the company added, is also targeted towards road warriors who often have to work and call using their laptops and PDAs (personal digital assistants).

Romero said that while other popular Web-based programs such as instant messengers provide PC-to-PC international calls, he said these are only available to subscribers who must be logged simultaneously.