Room for one more VoIP play? Meet MyGlobalTalk

The cheap cost of the service is what Stessel expects will drive customers to MyGlobalTalk. According to the company, a 20-minute call to Italy can be made with a pre-paid MyGlobalTalk plan for approximately 40 cents, but the same call would cost more than $7.00 with a typical cell phone plan. The business model for i2Telecom relies purely on usage – there are no contracts, connection fees or minimums. The MyGlobalTalk plans can be used domestically as well, but Stessel said that is not the focus as of yet. In future releases of MyGlobalTalk, the software will be optimized for use within the US after users have reached the limits of their calling plan.

“There is no loss in time,” Stessel said. “It’s perfect sound quality. The cost of the phone call to another land phone overseas may be two or three cents a minute and to another cell phone, overseas, maybe three, four or five cents a minute depending on the country you call. It is a competitive price to any other company who might offer those services, but ours is done with one button push, using this application. The application automatically knows what you are doing, so you don’t have to engage any way. You just dial the number and press send, and it engages automatically.”

The software currently supports Blackberry versions 4.2.1 and above and, as of this week, Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0. MyGlobalTalk won’t be up and running on the iPhone, when it goes on sale tomorrow. While the Apple application is complete, it is still a matter of getting approval from the hardware maker. The Symbian OS will also be supported in the near-term future. Consumers who don’t have one of these OSs can use the MyGlobalTalk service by using a bridge for any calls made.

The first months of beta trials revealed a few road bumps, but nothing major, Stessel said. For example, the company quickly realized that Canada was not on the same calling system as the US but had a similar three-digit dialing code. The software read Canadian callers as international and charged them accordingly. In a trial of about 1,200 consumers – many of whom were technology-savvy – the only other problems were around properly identifying and signing up the correct handset model. Monaghan isn’t necessarily convinced all the roadblocks will be as easy to get over, however. As competition continues to heat up, the end result might not be just really cheap phone calls but altogether free ones.

“Mobile phones are getting cheaper and cheaper,” Monaghan said. “Every major provider has an unlimited all-you-can-eat plan for $99 or, with smaller companies like Cricket, $45. The price of voice continues to decline, whether that’s landline or wireless. Trying to find the niche for inexpensive minutes is getting tougher and tougher. You are seeing more competition. Vonage is seeing more competition from T-Mobile. There is more and more competition there beyond just bundles of cord cutters. It’s really all this activity, whether it’s VoIP or unlimited wireless minutes, it is driving voice to zero.”