VoipBuster beats SkypeOut's rates
posted August 9th 2005 7:30AM
There's a new kid in town in the VoIP game, and it's hitting
Skype hard in the wallet — if you open an account
and buy a single Euro ($1.27) worth of credit, you can place calls absolutely free to all points in the US, UK, Canada,
Australia and a slew of other countries, plus low calling rates to a far larger list of nations. The client itself
cannot be construed as feature-rich — there are no bells and whistles, no chat, no conference calling, presence
information or other of the niceties that Skype provides. It's definitely stripped down calling, but free is a darn
good price, although no one is quite sure how they're doing it or what the business model will be. The service is in
beta (as all such things are these days), and call quality is reportedly excellent. If you try it out, let us know your
experiences in the comments.
[Thanks, Jim]
Any bdy knows the voipbuster stock symbol. Anybody knows haow could i buy shares?
thanks
Ok, I installed the program, paid the €5 and made some free calls. All works fine so far, only the much bespoken sound advantage vs Skype does not seem to materialise in my case. I am calling from China to people in Europe, America, and China, and after several complaints about poor sound quality I revert back to Skype for my business calls. For my good friends, though, I will still be using the free (or comparatively very cheap) calls.
I have had a fairly poor experience with VoIP Buster. I downloaded it after seeing it mentioned elsewhere, installed it, but have been unable to make a free call yet due to getting a "Call Ended(The network is busy, please retry your call)" error. My suggestion? Unless you have a secure payment method you are sure they can't abuse, don't pay to use it. I don't know what to think about it, could be a con, as many positive posts are pretty similar and could be faked, or, quite simply, their service isn't consistent for all places and at all times. It is after all, beta (and I would warn against paying for software in beta). Just my $0.02
DeAR Namegduf
With all due respect and in MHO you are full of s.it. You are probably a fat cat working for skype or ebay that is seeing your fate wrote in the sand. They are going to fire you because voip is much much cheaper than skype as a matter of fact it is free.
Disclosure; I do not work for voip but I would like to know how to invest on voip. Anyone out there that knows or any voip official let me know.
Salvador Garcia at +1 630-7869914
What follows are my credentials
ENTREPRENURIALSHIPS
Carboquim -Pres. De la Plaza, Argentina 2002-Present
(www.carboquim.com)
Lead Partner
• Expanded the Food and Pharmaceutical Industry client base using my knowledge of carbon activated applications.
• Developed and introduced a number of successful new products. Among them a new powder activated carbon for the local wine industry, taking market share from renowned U.S. and China competitors
• Under my watch I was able to double production and improve the carbon activated products. I revamped the plant carrying out a number of projects and organizing the plant for greater efficiency and better quality control.
Southern Cone Wet Milling -Santiago, Chile 2002-Present
Partner
• Designed and developed a new venture in Corn Refining in San Vicente, Chile to initially produce Fructose Syrup (Liquid Sugar) and eventually expand to produce fermentation biotechnology products in partnership with Cathay Biotech. The biggest regional Coke bottler in the area is willing to invest funds in the venture.
El Paso, -Vi?el Mar, Chile / Alphatrade, -Sao Paulo, Brazil 2002-Present
Partner
• Identified and developed a market for Corn Milling and Fermentation products: Dextrose, Maltodextrins, Citric and Vitamin B2 based on importing them from China. At this point the first orders have been fulfilled and imports from China are being imported into Chile, Brazil and Argentina
Estudio, -Buenos Aires, Argentina 2002-Present
Business Development Partner
• Accounting and full service administrative outfit specialize in providing those resources to international and local companies. This unique concept endorses the idea that the sales forces are to be managed directly by the offshore/foreign company while all of the other costs are beard by Estudio under a single fixed fee. It is of particularly interest to foreign and local companies intent in reducing cost by outsourcing all (preferably) or part of their support services. Especially gear to companies looking to expand overseas on a fast track and cost competitive mode
PROFESSIONAL CONSULTING
Cathay Biotech: Fermentation Technologies-Shanghai, China 2001-2002
(www.cathaybiotech.com)
Business Development Manager
• Cost effective engineering design of a 1000 ton/day High Fructose Syrup plant at Cathay’s site in Jinin, Shangdong Province. Directed a multidiscipline team comprised of engineers, designers and estimators.
• Developed detailed business plans detailing the feasibility study as well as the operating and financial budgets for the venture. This venture is currently at the funding stage.
• Developed and implemented the market introduction of new high fructose sweeteners to Coke and Pepsi bottling plants in the Far East.
PMI, Inc. -Chicago, Illinois June 2001-August 2001
Senior Consultant
• Developed business feasibility evaluation and technical assessment of the Corn Milling plant (Johnstown, CO) on behalf of an interested corporate buyer.
• Designed alternative strategies in terms of finding higher profit margins products and significant cost reductions for alternative products like non-GMO syrups, identity preserved organic ingredients, and specialty starches.
AMG, Inc: Engineering Consulting & Project Management-Omaha, NE 2000-2001
(www.amg-eng.com)
Engineering Manager
• Design of new amino acids fermentation plant at Ajinomoto Heartland Lysine (Eddyville, IA, Cargill Manufacturing Complex).
• Project management of Cyclodextrin capital plant expansion at Wacker Bio-Chemie (Eddyville, IA). Various process assignments in support of Eddyville’s Cargill plant
CORPORATE PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
IMASA (Subsidiary of A.E. Staley, until recently)-Decatur, Illinois
(www.tlna.com)
Business Development Manager 1999-2000
• Designed and constructed High Fructose Sweeteners transfer and storage facilities within a fast-track approach. Once completed, continued on as plant manager at this facility that supplied Chilean soft drink bottlers, the first of its kind in the region. Developed the distribution logistics with innovative techniques involving intermodal transportation for both bulk and containerized transport by combination of rail and truck.
• Market introduction of the new sweetener (55 HFCS) to the Chilean Coke and Pepsi bottlers. Designed facilities to handle the syrup and worked with the bottlers to finish the projects on time for the high demand season.
• Spearheaded the introduction of HFCS to the bottlers in the Lima/Callao area. Assessed the size of the market and identified all underlying opportunities. Resolved the logistics (key to this project) involved in seizing those market opportunities.
Plant Manager 1998-1999
• Reported directly to the U.S. VP of Operations
• Transfer of IMASA technical leadership to the new operating partner (equal partner): A.E. Staley. Worked closely with senior officials and departments’ heads at headquarters and U.S. plants to implement the transfer process, improving plant operations to successfully adapt to Tate and Lyle’s (parent of A.E. Staley) Manufacturing Excellence operational standards.
• Benchmarked operations against the rest of the A.E. Staley plants and foreign subsidiaries.
• Implemented ongoing expansion projects: Grind, Fructose Syrup refinery, New Maltodextrins plant, Germ Oil Extraction
• Developed/budgeted the new expansion capital projects resulting in an increase of 50% in corn grind and doubled syrup production
• Inspected, assessed, maintained and arranged transfer of all available surplus equipment at A.E. Staley deemed useful for ongoing expansion projects. This initiative significantly reduced capital outlay and markedly accelerated expansion
Industrias de Maiz-Chacabuco, Argentina 1991-1998
VP Chief Technical Officer
• Worked jointly with and reported directly to the Executive President in developing and implementing projects directed at achieving growth, develop new markets and products, and carry out plant expansions. These initiatives resulted in a significantly increased value of the company in preparation for sale to an industry leader such as ADM or Tate & Lyle.
• Increased grind (more than double) and final products capabilities (i.e., doubled the key High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) production capacity) to make Industrias de Maiz, the leader in Corn Wet Milling in the Southern Cone and largest producer of Fructose Syrup. All projects were completed on time against strict deadlines to meet seasonal market demands using innovative technologies while being under stringent budgetary constraints.
• Successfully introduced technology and equipment (either manufactured locally or bought secondhand on the international market) to optimize/increase grind and final product capabilities, reduce operating costs, and raise quality standards.
• Ensured, through an integral role during sale negotiations, that the price valuation of Industrias de Maiz by A.E.Staley reflected the real operating value of its assets. During my tenure, the value of Industrias de Maiz climbed from a 45 million USD bid price to a 140 million USD selling price to Corn Products International, while only expending 24 million USD in capital projects.
Raytheon Engineering-Chicago, Illinois 1990-1991
Principal Engineer
• Designed major expansions of Corn Refining facilities in Hammond, IN (120,000 bushels.grind consolidation, Waxy Corn Grind expansion, new syrups l
i was using voip for more than two months, but after two month i am getting a error message (sory,network problems are blocking this call, please try again later (cause:8)). i send a lot of messages to voip team but till now more than three months i didnt receive any message from voip team.most important thing i m losing my credit which is more than 5 euros. any comments or suggestion about this problem
I downloaded this application and tried to register it but its giving some error 19 could not register you.. please help
Kind of weird !!!!!
I found on the web two Voipbuster clones (same owner, same program,...) but different rates....and differents country free list.
This compagny is so weird and I feel bad I bought 5 euros of credit to call belgium when it still free on the two others...
I think the best is to come back on skype...
Why go back to Skype???? When you can use Buster?? I use Skype for my friends on the pc, and Buster for any other pstn calls!!
There is no better/free way to make telephone calls....
I'm gonna warn everybody.. This could very likely be a scam. I like the program too. But for all new users I would advise you to use Paypal and transfer the 5 euros to them, so that they cannot credit your VISA automatically. It would be a shame one day to get a VISA bill with an extra 2000 dollars, which you did not spend, and the farthest it is possible to trace the transfer is to somewhere on the Cayman Islands.
The quality and the service is simply to good. Each time you make a call will cost them money. Even though it is not much per minute, they are loosing money everyday. I also found another program called VoIPCheap for the UK. The same program but another logo. Almost the same homepage, but different rates. What is that about?
But enjoy the program, exploit them, don't give them your credit card number, but use paypal, and they won't be able to fuck you...
It smells like a scam, it sounds like a scam, it looks like a scam....
..... IT IS A SCAM (at least it could be)
What is the business plan. There are no commercials running, and they launch themselves as the freephoning company, which seems like that it would be very hard to all of a sudden charge money for it, when the final version will be released.
VoipBuster / VoipCheap
They are both owned and run by the same company - Finarea SA of Switzerland.
I'd like to address this question of the 'scam' - I think this is unlikely, Finarea are a fairly large company, well respected in the industry. I think it is likely they are using these few free calls as a 'loss leader' to gain market share. This type of strategy is not at all unusual and seeing as though some of their other rates are not cheap their losses are likely to be relatively small.
Quality - I have installed this software in many of my customers homes and businesses and have had varying reports of the call quality, though mainly very good. As with any voip the call quality is dependant on the quality/speed of your connection, the codec used and a variety of other factors. Remember, you always get what you pay for, the fact this is free means you are getting superb value for your money !!!
Support - Totally non existent, we have placed a number of bug reports, customer service requests and tech questions over the months, none of these has ever received a response. Again, it's free, can't expect too much but some response would be good.
Payment - I always recommend that my clients use the cheapest method of payment, pay by phone, where available. This costs only £1.50, still entitles you to the free calls, and means they don't hold any other payment method on file.
Finally, watch out - The free country call list changes regularly and without warning. France and Australia were removed from the free list of 'Buster' w/e 16/10 UK removed from 'Buster' 2 days ago. The list for 'Cheap' was reduced to just UK, Ireland and Netherlands yesterday.
All in all this is a great idea, and has potential to rival Skype if only they got their support and marketing in order. For free software and free calls you can't go wrong with this. Bad line, hey hang up and try again.
FYI the contact details for Finarea SA are -
Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1, Lugano 6900, Switzerland
T - +41 91 922 5431
F - +41 91 922 5433
(Switzerland is still free on 'Buster')
Hello VoipBuster, bye bye Skype.
How much trouble Skype has given me already with their 'the creditcard option will come back in future' paranoia and the wannaknow everything moneybooker 'alternative' when trying to put some more credits on Skype-out.
I just installed VoipBuster and I am not sure what the quality will be when calling p2p, but the out-option works fine, heck, it doesn't even lag like Skype-out does. Excellent! It's amazing how you can call for free to certain popular countries after you put some euro's on it. This is too good to be true so it probably is :| , there must be a catch but I haven't found it yet, maybe it is not encrypted when calling so that everybody can listen in if they want to, I don't know, nothing can't be this too good to be true.
So far it's free or twice as cheap as Skype, it's nice and small without any obsolete options and to me it feels robust, the only glitch I found sofar is that it hasn't succeeded connecting to a mobile number in New Zealand :(
I am going to stick with VoipBuster for the moment and I am thinking of uninstalling the bulky, lagging, customer-service missing, with feedback-popups disturbing Skype.
Good luck with Skype, Ebay!
i installed voipbuster boipbuster about two months ago. the sound quality is fantastic if you have a good microphone and is calibrated correctly. i spent my inicial 10 euro and now i get an error message (error 803 has ocurred).i can not purchase more time with the visa card.any sugestions?
i tested this program is very easy and so cool .
and the free call to many land lines is just amazing .
but they just changed the ratse for Uk from free to not free 1 week ago . SO i think this party will over soon . this beta vertion is just a beta 4 maximam 5 month or this company will lose alot .
so injoy it now cause you will not find it tomoro .
But any way this is a good way to market you product by saing its freee try it and at the end u ....................(PAY to TALK)
I have tried this several times - used it to call China, or USA cities. I worked well for most calls. Especially today - I made a call to China, it is really good. The quality is even better than landline, straight connection. (better than phone card.). Sometime it may disappoint you - sound will bounce back between callers, inconsistency, and etc. Just wish it can keep the current rate for several years.
It works beautifully! The latest upgrade shortened the annoying l-o-n-g delay (up to 5 seconds) that could be present at the start of a conversation,it is now only about 1/2 second. I live in Sweden and can now call my relatives in USA and France and friends in the Netherlands for nothing. I was an "early bird" so I only paid the 1.00 Euro fee, it is now 10.00 Euro (probably because of the succes the software is). After using the software for hours, calling USA, France, the Netherlands and local calls, I still have an account balance of 1.00 Euro... That´s inexpensive, isn´t it?
The only thing i DON´T like is that both my contact list and call list are on THEIR server, not saved locally. There has to be a reason for them to collect all phone numbers this way. OK -- maybe they only want to know how many calls are made to certain countries, but nevertheless: They know the numbers to all of my contacts this way. Of course I can avoid this by not adding any contacts and constantly erasing the call list, but I would have preferred if they had been saved only on my own computer.
I took an account a week ago and integrated it into my Asterisk box. Asterisk is a complete telephony platform with all PBX functionalities you can think of and gateway between all kinds of voip and the anolog network. With Asterisk can switch between everything except Skype. It's open source and free and supports all common codecs and protocols. (www.asterisk.org or, for a preconfigured ready to use solution, www.tbook.nl)
I use it as the first phoneline to try when making a phonecall. If voipbuster is not available Asterisk will use the next available voip service. As far as I know the skip to the next available outbound line hasn't been used yet. The sound quality is perfect. Since the last three day, before actually connecting, a message is on the line saying "the costs of this call is zero".
Although this message is a great service I also think that it's part of their business model. When leaving the beta stage there will be commercial messages for a couple of seconds, a kind of vocal google adds, based on your interests and profile. It's even possible that the message gets longer after using the service for a while. Technically it's not a big problem to manage this on a personalized basis.
There will be an option without adds but then you have to pay an fee every month. They will also come with an option to get your own number out of the regular number plan. In must countries the telecom authorities are planning special number ranges for nomadic voip services like VOIP-pbuster. VOIP-buster will be the first to reserve them and offer the numbers to their custumers. Big question is: how long can they invest in market share, because they must loose large amounts of money every day. If they succeed VOIP-buster will be a multi bilion Euro business in short time.
I am using the system for a few months, started with version 207 beta. Was very satisfied with quality, until November 14. At that date the software requested updating before be able to connect. After doing this (version 233) I am experiencing problems, the volume at my side is going up and down, which makes conversation almost impossible.
I wrote tech support and received answer in les than 12 hours.
This was the answer:
Quote
This is certainly not supposed to happen. A quick fix, that should enable
you to make calls is to uncheck the "Enable automated volume control" in
"tools - options - sound devices". This will disable our program to control
the mixer volumes. You have to control the volume of your mic and speaker
manually afterwards.
If you would be able to cooperate in fixing the problem we can supply you
with some additional credit. Can you report if you are willing to spend a
little time on this. For some reason we take wrong actions for your
soundcard and we would like to investigate this problem more thoroughly.
Mp.
End quote
I followed the recommend procedure which did not solve my problem, after advising Mp I received the next answer from Mp
Quote
I have added you to my contact list, if you allow me as your contact I will call you and we can discuss the audio problem live.
Mp.
End quote.
Indeed next time I logged on, Mp requested to be added to my contact list, which I accepted. As of today I have not yet been contacted by Mp, nor was Mp on line.
Any one able to help me out or advise how to get in touch with Mp?
I'm using VB since the end of June this year and I love it. They had some problems because too many people were using it. But for most of the time the service is perfekt. I had to pay 1 Euro in the beginning. It's unbelievable how many free phone calls I already made. Every month I'm wondering when the stop their service. But they name themselfs "The Free Phone Call Company". I hope they keep that.
Hello all.i tried VB yestarday and i have found it excellent for what it does.would be nice if we could have the option to use webcams with the same quality in voice and image.who knows in the future.the voice quality was very good and of course the rates also.should we expect less in the future or we will have bad surprises ? personally i will be using it as much as it keeps convenient and i will suggest it of course to my friends.done it already lol.
Well, in my view VOIP Buster is a very good softfone like skype, but at the moment there are certain advantages, like FREE calling as mentioned and also works much better when calling on cell phones. In view of this skype s..ks. However i experienced delays sometimes 2 days ago to be exactly and could'nt talk more than 2mins with the huge 15secs delay and had to call with a normal PSTN phone.What i think is it looks that voipbuster is trying to buy the market with the free calls facility, proof of this is that some countries are removed from the list of free calls and now have been reduced to 16 from 21!And all the rest that are still available are for testing, someday i believe that there will be no Free countries anymore once voipbuster accuire thousands of subscribers... Particular country i used to call frequently was Australia...its a pity that its removed from the list...voipbuster still got more to improve and features to be added. I wish that my country call rate(Malta) will be reduced at a lower rate.
Zach and Cameron, I'm all the way with you, Big question here, but never found the answer: how about the diversity of platforms (linux, unix, apple osx, ...)??? Skype has a perfect way to bring these systems together.
Can't buy the credit to get free calls. Keeps telling me that I entered an incorrect phone number. I am sure I did not. Seems cool though, just hope I can get it to work soon.