Truphone Review
Truphone Overview
Truphone is a mobile operator for the internet era. Truphone provides service over a third-party WiFi (Wireless Internet) connection that you connect to using your Nokia cellphone. That means free mobile calls to other Truphone users or very cheap calls to anyone else. Truphone can offer these free calls to other Truphone users and low rates to others because Truphone does not use your cellular providers network to send or receive calls, it uses your home, business or public hotspot WiFi connection to route calls over the internet.
| Basic Info | Service Provider Answers |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, UK |
| Year Established | 2006 |
| Call Type(s) | Voice over WiFi |
| Compatible Phones | Nokia E51, E61i, E65, E90, N95, E60, E61, E70, N80ie, N80, N81, N82, N95 |
| Availability | Truphone service can be used anywhere a WiFi network connection is available |
| Free Calls | With Truphone you can make free WiFi to WiFi calls |
| Phone Number | Truphone users in the UK and US will get Truphone numbers appropriate to their countries (i.e. +44 and +1 respectively). |
| Calling Rates | Truphone offers low cost flat rate calling to every country in the world |
| SMS | Truphone charges 10p/20c per SMS sent to any country worldwide |
| Instant Messaging | No instant messaging capabilities are available |
| Special Features | With Truphone there is no charge for inbound calls and you can get your voicemails sent to email |
March 31st, 2008 at 6:26 am
Truphone just works!
Excellent voice quality too. Unlike some of the other WiFi based VoIP offerings it does not seem to eat batteries!
April 6th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Used this to keep in touch with Canada while in Mexico City. When in hotel wifi hotspot, service connected easily and voice quality was excellent. Excellent and easy-to-retrieve voice mail service included. Would recommend as a native application for Nokia N and E series smartphones.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
i need to use my N series mobile phone connect with voip softwitch
April 13th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Truphone is the one mobile VoIP ofering that *just works*! I use it with my Nokia E51 and have configured it to recognise the WPA2 protected WiFi Access points at home and in my office. The E51 automatically registers with Truphone as I walk in through the door - and all my calls (and SMS) are routed over Truphone.
I am seriously considering converting from a Vodafone monthly post paid account to a pre-paid PAYG as my monthly GSM traffic no longer warrants being on an expensive monthly tariff!
April 24th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Use truphone everywhere! converted my family as well as my companies employees to use only truphone. Our voice quality has gone up, quite reliable (I tested most services) but truphone had the best quality, missing IM integration into the client as well as call outside of WiFi via truphone, SMS over IP is a great service and works globally on tru, customer service outstanding, price very low as truphone to truphone FREE globally.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
No very easy to use, some features are still missing.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:08 am
using truphone on my iphone 3g. ALL calls, even to the truphone test number have problems with voice cutting in and out. conversations cut off in both directions. emails to truphone take days for response. i’m sure it truphone would be awesome if it worked.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:04 am
I tried out Truphone today on my iPhone 3G. A friend said that it sounded like I was sitting a few feet from the phone. I also tried it when making a call to a CSR at a company. The conversation was tough because of the voice cutting out.
I’ve had Vonage VOIP in the past and did not run into issues like this. I would love to use Truphone since my phone signal is pretty low at my house, but if you can’t carry on a conversation then what’s the point.
October 12th, 2008 at 7:16 am
good
October 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
its really nice, but it would be nice also if i can connect without going through a wifi, maybe through g3 with my iphone, because it is really annoying to search for a wifi location to call someone
October 27th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
The billing system has been unreliable and defaults to penalizing the customer and not Truphone.
I kept a manual log of all of my call times vs. Truphones billing system and discovered that even with rounding calls up to the next minute they still go further and overbill you approximately 40%.
Their customer service is slow and often takes many days to respond to your service issue and there response shows a total lack of background efort on their part.
very poor service company.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
Very good but customer service is very poor & slow
December 7th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I use my iPhone 3G with this service and it’s excellent. Of course you need to jailbreak your iPhone and use the Voip over 3G hack so you can use 3g data rather than Wifi. I call all over the world using my 3g data plan and truphone. It’s a combination made in heaven.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:05 am
always get severe lag and echo on all calls which makes the system almost unusable. Very poor
April 11th, 2009 at 7:07 am
This is one of the worst companies I’ve had to deal with. I signed up for their “unlimited” plan, and used it for a grand total of about 2 hours of talking over 4 days. At that point I got a text message saying I was kicked out of the unlimited plan due to the “Fair Use policy of private, personal and not-for-commercial use”.
Without any further explanation from them, or credit to my account for the money they promptly charged when I signed up, I contacted them to see what was going on, and was told they had to suspend enveryone from their unlimited plan until further notice because of some suspicious activities from some users.
I don’t have my money, I don’t have the service I paid for, and not even call credit to use with the standard plan for the amount they charged my credit card.
Stay away… and don’t even think about signing up for their “unlimited” plans, it’s a scam.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Great service, except…. when you can’t use it anyone. I upgraded my phone, waited a month or so for Truphone to release the version for my phone but no sign of it. So I requested a refund for the service I can’t use. And set up another Voip service. Turns out no refunds - as per their terms and conditions. Truphone suggested I use my old phone… err, I don’t have it any more and anyway switching the sim is a pain. So I recommend, give them tiny amounts of credit on your account if you use them, in case you need to stop using them as they won’t give it back.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Poor service, poor quality - would not recommend.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Quite terrible. Audio cutting off frequently, bad sound, customer service pathetic. Stay away from this one.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:19 am
FRAUD ALERT! Truphone website claims a 5.1 cent/minute rate for US “landlines/mobiles” Downloaded the app to my Blackberry and called UK cell phone. The real rate is 25 cents a minute! There ought to be a law (company confirms that rate is 25 cents a minute but has not responded to questions about why they list a rate a fraction of this.