By Oo Gin Lee

TALK can get really cheap on your mobile phone - if you know how.

In fact, slash your cellphone bills by as much as 60 times with new services like Hoiio and Bounce.

For a local mobile call through any of the three telcos, the cost is 16.05 cents per minute (cpm).

The new methods bring down the cost to between 2 and 5cpm.

For IDD calls, the savings are even more astounding.

An IDD call made on the cellphone, say using StarHub's 018 service to the United States, chalks up 10cpm for the IDD rate plus the 16.05cpm for the airtime charge.

Total: 26.05cpm.

The slashed cpm rates are between four times cheaper with Bounce (at 6.5cpm) and six times cheaper with Pfingo Talk (at 4cpm).

One more thing: do not be fooled by the "free IDD to many destinations" sweetener dangled by the telcos.

Only the IDD charge is waived, you still have to pay for the 16.05cpm airtime charge once you bust the free outgoing minutes.

The difference in charges is even more significant when you compare roaming charges.

A SingTel customer receiving a call on his Singapore phone line when in China is charged $2.30 per minute and $3 per minute when he calls home.

By comparison, he would have to pay only about 21cpm (10 times cheaper) and 5cpm (60 times cheaper) for the same calls using Hoiio and Bounce.

Call smart

These nextgeneration services make use of two types of technologies - Net telephony and call-back.

Net telephony, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) as the geeks call it, is not new.

Skype's PC-to-PC calls are free over broadband.

With SkypeOut, the tech savvy have been making PC-to-phone calls around the world cheaply.

The arrival of high-speed mobile broadband services, which carry voice calls over the data network and start from as low as $15 per month for unlimited access, has made mobile VOIP a serious threat to telcos' revenues.

Which explains why StarHub launched its own mobile VOIP service called Pfingo in 2007.

Unfortunately, mobile VOIP has not gone beyond the circle of geeks because it is complicated to use.

SkypeOut over 3G, for instance, works only on Windows Mobile phones.

Pfingo Talk is the cheapest at 2cpm for local calls but it works mainly on Nokia Symbian phones.

Alternatively, you can use Wi-Fi to make VoIP calls but there are many areas without Wi-Fi access.

However, the biggest stumbling block is that mobile VOIP does not display your cellphone caller ID and it is complicated to make a call from the phone address book.

Things are changing, though.

New call-back services like Hoiio and Pfingo Bounce make those long-distance calls as easy as the real deal.

Your caller ID can now be shown and with some smartphones like Windows Mobile and Google Android, you can even make calls directly from your contact list in the cellphone.

Call-back services do not make use of VOIP smarts and are not the same thing.

They tap the traditional phone network but the magic is in converting mobile outgoing calls into free incoming calls. Essentially, you key in the phone number you want to call in the Hoiio or Bounce app and press Send.

The service provider calls you back (free incoming call for you) and your friend, and then connects the two of you.

The only time you use the mobile Internet is when you key in the recipient's number. That is when a small data packet is sent via 3G to activate the call-back.

Look out for the caveats

Mobile VOIP does not work when you are overseas because the cost of data roaming is just as much, if not more, than voice roaming.

Call-back services try to get around the high cost by having you send only a small data packet.

However, you will still end up paying high roaming fees because you do not get free incoming calls when you are overseas.

The secret: Buy a cheap pre-paid card of the country you are in and make sure that it comes with free incoming calls.

Call-back providers also provide a free Internet VOIP phone number.

You can now forward your mobile calls to that VOIP number and to your overseas pre-paid number, allowing you to take advantage of the cheap call rates when you are overseas.

The process takes time to figure out but with the huge cost savings available, it is worth reading on to discover the secret to cheap chatter.

ginlee@sph.com.sg

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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