Revolution

Revolution: Mobile telephony at “Skype“ prices! 23.01.2008

An English start-up is aiming to revolutionise the world of mobile telephony, has managed to transport Skype’s appealing cost structure to the cell phone and is now launching the beta phase 2. What makes it all especially attractive is that it takes just one text message to initiate a double call-back. The savings? Up to 90 percent!

Modern mobile telephones can do just about everything these days: play music, take pictures, make short films, surf the web and even in certain areas communicate via Skype. But there is one area where all these wonderful things turned out to be woefully disappointing – the costs. Especially phone calls made abroad but also those made into other networks domestically can turn out to be real nightmarish cost traps – and that’s not even including cell phone calls made from abroad. There have been some attempts already to apply “Skype“ to cell phone but all these projects had had their pitfalls. To avoid jumping from the frying pan of the phone call cost problems to the fire of data transfer fees you previously would have needed a WLAN connection. But be honest: not even the experts would want to go through the hassle of getting into one wireless network before then strolling out of that connection zone a few minutes later into another area. On top of all that there are only a few phones capable of doing that and in any case special software was needed.

A well-travelled German-Czech-Austrian trio of frequent callers is now presenting a system with “Hype“ (www.hypecall.com) that has transferred the cost-structure of Skype to cell phones. The truly revolutionary part of it all is that it works with every cell phone, in every country in the world, in every network and doesn’t require any special software. By just sending one text message a call-back system is initiated through the so called Skype Out account and within ten seconds the two parties are connected. And that’s where you can start to see the enormous potential for savings. The Hype user does not place the call him- or herself, but instead is called back. He or she only pays the cost of a text message as well as the minimal Skype fee. The service Hype is completely free and users are only required to pay for the Skype Out fees that are due.

Ales Sobotka (33) from the Czech Republic and Stefan Aufschnaiter (44) from Austria together with a German colleague have spent more than a year developing and testing the system. During a first phase 10000 users will be activated and granted a free starting bonus for a trial use.

PHOTO CAPTION: “Hype“-Girl Julia describes in www.hypecall.com in seven different languages how easy it can be to save money while making cell phone calls.