{"id":102675,"date":"2014-05-22T14:08:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T12:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=102675"},"modified":"2014-05-22T14:12:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T12:12:10","slug":"ttrumpet-65c-per-minute-calls-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/102675-ttrumpet-65c-per-minute-calls-in-sa.html","title":{"rendered":"Ttrumpet: 65c per minute calls in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ttrumpet, a voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service, held an official launch event for its Android and iOS mobile application in South Africa on Thursday, 22 May 2014.<\/p>\n

Similar to other VoIP services, Ttrumpet offers free voice calls to other users and \u201cTtrumpet out\u201d, which lets you call conventional landline or mobile numbers through its gateway.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, Ttrumpet charges 65c\/minute for calls to mobile networks, billed per minute, and 40c\/minute to landlines, billed per minute.<\/p>\n

Although its services are available in 140 countries, Ttrumpet co-founder Grant Theis said that what sets them apart in South Africa is that they are a licensed Electronic Communications Network Service.<\/p>\n

Theis said that they manage their own interconnect agreements, which was an incredibly difficult offering to put together.<\/p>\n

To make calls to landlines and cellphones in South Africa, you have to register for a Ttrumpet account and load credit through the Ttrumpet.com website using your credit card.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the world Ttrumpet lets users load credit using in-app purchases, but because of the nature of their South African operation, Theis said they can\u2019t afford to give Apple or Google 30% of the recharge amount.<\/p>\n

They are also working on integrating PayD in the Ttrumpet website to offer the ability to buy credit using a debit card from South Africa, Theis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we start getting traction you will start seeing vouchers at the till-point,\u201d Theis said.<\/p>\n

Another feature that sets them apart from other services, Theis said, is that this credit may be transferred as airtime to a pre-paid number on any of South Africa\u2019s mobile networks.<\/p>\n

They also plan add the ability to allocate credit to mobile data and Wi-Fi hotspot data within the next 3 months.<\/p>\n

Like Afrihost, Ttrumpet is working on offering custom APNs for mobile data on MTN, Cell C, and Telkom Mobile. For the moment a custom APN for Vodacom is not on the cards, Theis said.<\/p>\n

This is also something they are looking at offering within the next 3 months.<\/p>\n

\"Ttrumpet<\/a>

Ttrumpet screenshots<\/p><\/div>\n

More features promised<\/h3>\n

Competing with WhatsApp, WeChat, and SnapChat, Ttrumpet also plans to launch text chat features in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Ttrumpet plans to launch its text chat feature in an update within the next two weeks, followed by a \u201cSecret Chat\u201d feature at the end of June.<\/p>\n

Although the Secret Chat feature aims to mimic SnapChat, Theis said that they won\u2019t be making any promises regarding privacy.<\/p>\n

They will do their best to delete photos and messages that pass through a Secret Chat, but it will be possible for people to take screenshots, for example.<\/p>\n

Secret Chat will also not offer any guarantees with regards to encryption, Theis said, as the \u201cdon\u2019t want to be associated with people using our service for selling drugs or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

International roaming<\/h3>\n

Ttrumpet also offers an international roaming data service, where users get a SIM card to put in their phone.<\/p>\n

Theis said that they then charge much less to receive calls than mobile networks do, and also try to offer significantly lower mobile data roaming rates.<\/p>\n

Price competition<\/h3>\n

Asked whether its 65c\/minute price for mobile voice calls was informed by Cell C\u2019s recent 66c\/minute pre-paid tariff plan promotion, Theis chuckled and described how the price came about.<\/p>\n

When Cell C fired its latest volley in the mobile voice price war, an e-mail circulated around Ttrumpet asking how they should respond.<\/p>\n

Theis said he was able to log into their CRM system from his phone and drop their rate to 65c\/minute. The change propagated to all their users within 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can make a decision in 10 minutes on the rate,\u201d Theis said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to first file our rate with Icasa, but can respond immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related voice calling and mobile messaging app news<\/h3>\n

How Vodacom, MTN can kill mobile VoIP<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

8ta planning mobile VoIP service<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

How Vodacom is fighting WhatsApp<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Astonishing WhatsApp, WeChat moves in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

MTN WeChat CliffCentral unlimited data promotion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A competitor to VoIP services like Skype and Viber is offering voice calls to any SA number from 65c\/minute along with its free VoIP calls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":102679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[355,25105,35,42,689,25103,41],"class_list":["post-102675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecoms","tag-cell-c","tag-grant-theis","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom-mobile","tag-ttrumpet","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102675"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102681,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102675\/revisions\/102681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}