A company out of the UK, called LocalPhone.com has put together a cheap calling service, plus some very nifty features, largely around SMS and call forwarding, plus of course inexpensive VoIP minutes.
In reading their blog, they are offering inexpensive VoIP minutes, local numbers in many countries, with the claim of "Call Global, Pay Local."
One of the pieces of their service is a dedicated pairing service of numbers you want to call, where you assign a local number in your home country. This used to exist with a now defunct Orange County, CA company called Mint Telecom, which enabled over the border calling at really low prices. This is the kind of service that appeals to the mobile expat crowd as it enables them to make local calls to reach friends and family Internationally.
But there's another great use for this today, and it ties in to why I say, this looks like Gizmo to me.
Prior to the acquisition by Google of Gizmo, I purchased a bunch of local, in country numbers from both Gizmo and a very reliable ITSP, CallCentric.com. Using a combination of SIP DIDs from both, and my second Gizmo account, I forwarded Gizmo to Google Voice. This meant I can make a call to a local number in each of the countries I am visiting, and be connected for the price of a local call, to my GV voice mail box and return calls very easily, and inexpensively. On the other side if I wanted to, I have had my primary Gizmo number as one of my GV destinations, allowing calls to be received on the laptop softphone client or forwarded to any number. What I do however on the outbound is forward to Truphone, which handles the international calling and changes which phone number I'm using as I currently change SIMs from country to country.
Another reason they remind me of Gizmo, is they are offering a softphone of their very own. But that's where the comparison's stop as they are offering a "calling card" program as well, which provides a local number to call, and which you can then dial out to other number from.
There are lots of good features to LocalPhone.com, and if they can control fraud, they may have a nice play in the cheaper minutes game that still remains an active part of VoIP, especially via the wholesale side of the equation.
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