ALKHOBAR, 3 October 2006 — Making calls over the Internet is nothing new. For years in Saudi Arabia, Net2Phone and other similar services have been available, discreetly. If you are just getting online, and many in Saudi Arabia are only now having the opportunity to try certain Internet services, let me explain that Internet telephony or voice over IP (VoIP), is a means of delivering voice information over the Internet. VoIP involves sending voice information in digital form in packets rather than by using the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The major advantage of Internet telephony is that it is much cheaper than fixed line or mobile telephone service.
Internet telephony received a lot of attention when a company called Skype began a global campaign to sign up individual users. I was delighted and logged in to Skype within moments of first hearing about it. I had high hopes of doing away with my horrifying telephone bills forever. Pretty quickly though I came to realize that Skype wasn’t the answer to my problems. Unfortunately, I make a lot of calls to people who don’t have PCs or who aren’t technology savvy, so I need to be able to place calls to a standard telephone line. That requires the use of Skype’s premium service and the company won’t accept a credit card from a Saudi bank. Even when calling those contacts who did have access to a PC, the connection through Skype was poor. Developing countries simply don’t have the very high speed broadband that makes a good quality call a possibility with Skype.
Enter Fusion Telecommunications’ Efonica. With its main offices in Dubai and New York, Efonica (www.efonica.com) was introduced to the region about three years ago and they have recently upgraded their Internet telephony service. Efonica gives consumers the ability to make calls from any combination of PCs, Internet phones and regular telephones (with a SIP adapter), connected to either a wireless, broadband or dial-up Internet connection. The company hopes that callers in the developing world will embrace its offering. Efonica is based on DSP technology (Directed SIP Peer-to-Peer). This technology requires less resources in terms of both computer capability and Internet bandwidth in order to deliver acceptable Internet telephony. Efonica is reaching out to users in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean who have limited access to broadband.
Efonica comes in three forms — Efonica FREE, Efonica PLUS, a paid service, and Efonica PRO for business users. Efonica FREE includes Call Waiting, Caller ID with Name, Call Hold, Call Transfer, Call Forwarding and Do Not Disturb. Subscribers can use the service through their PCs by downloading a free computer-based telephone, or “softphone”, from the Efonica website, or with one of the many compatible hardware devices that do not require a PC. To use the service you must register and get an Efonica telephone number. The company has determined that “10” will be its worldwide Internet code and basically all a user does is register an existing landline or mobile number which will then be preceded by “10” to become their “eNumber.” If you are concerned about your privacy, at sign up don’t forget to uncheck the box for inclusion in Efonica’s “Orange Pages.” Otherwise, your number will be listed for all to see, and if you’re using your personal mobile number as the basis for your eNumber, that might not be the best idea.
Free calls can only be made to registered Efonica users connected to PCs. For me, that’s not a primary interest. Efonica does have two services though that could seriously reduce my phone bill. EfoOut is a service that allows users to make “off-net” phone calls, meaning calls to non-Efonica members. Thus, users can call virtually any telephone number in the world at discounted rates from any PC. The rate charged depends on the destination number called. EfoLink is a another service that is automatically included when purchasing EfoOut. EfoLink allows a user to trigger a call between any two phone numbers. The subscriber pays for both calls, and the cost of the calls is subtracted from the balance of their account, but this produces calls with exceptional clarity, away from the computer using phones located anywhere. Both services are premium services which means that it’s necessary to charge your Efonica account. That requires a credit card and can take up to 36 hours because of verification procedures. The calls are extremely inexpensive however, less than using any standard telecom service.
“Efonica hopes to create a worldwide community of subscribers, primarily targeting customers who call internationally. The company aims to target users around the world who have traditionally been underserved and burdened with high calling costs, particularly for international calls,” said Ibrahim Choueiry, Efonica’s regional director, Asia and Africa. “We believe that as Efonica’s free service works well with dial-up it is especially relevant in the Kingdom where many Internet users still do not have broadband.”
“I would also like to point out that we are physically present in the Middle East in Dubai Internet City and this shows our commitment to this part of the world,” said Marwan Khadij, business development manager, EMEA, for Efonica. “The Middle East is a key market for us and a local presence is critical to the company’s strategy of understanding and customizing its service offerings to meet the needs of the regions it serves.”
In the Kingdom, Efonica would eventually like to be used at the corporate as well as individual level. The company is in the process of choosing a distributor for Saudi Arabia, which will enable them to sell their premium services and business services locally, rather than depending on online credit card facilities to purchase Efonica PLUS.
“To do this we need a license in Saudi Arabia. The regulations regarding the local distribution of our services are still being reviewed,” said Choueiry. “We are in talks with some Saudi companies who are in discussion with the regulatory authority concerning licensing for firms engaging in VoIP. To serve corporates we need to fully support our clients and in the Kingdom that’s not possible yet. In Bahrain and Jordan we have acquired licenses and we will have full support for our corporate solutions in those countries.”
But Choueiry asserted that Efonica won’t let red tape slow them down. They’ve already got over 500,000 subscribers since they launched their new service, with 40 percent of those subscribers in the MENA region. The company will be adding new languages including Arabic to their service soon. Due to the difficult bandwidth situation in Saudi Arabia, Choueiry recommends that users without a high-speed connection make a small investment in an IP phone or an ATA Analog Telephone Adaptor. This is a handset-to-Ethernet adaptor that turns traditional telephone devices into IP devices. This will enhance the Internet telephony experience because the stand-alone hardware has better voice compression and voice management and this will produce better voice quality. Such an arrangement is also more convenient than using a headset, microphone and PC.
“As with any technology, Efonica’s technology has limitations,” said Khadij. “When a person calls from his cell phone in downtown Riyadh to another phone in Riyadh, the connection is usually perfect. But if that same person makes a call to an individual out in the middle of the desert the clarity might not be ideal. Users of our service may experience similar issues but it is not our technology that is at fault. Rather it is the local Internet connectivity that is less than ideal.”
The bottom line here is of course the bottom line. International calls with acceptable quality made using free Efonica resources coupled with Internet dial-up cost far less than calls using local telecom services where even then quality is too often an issue. So why pay more for international dialing?
(Comments to: [email protected].)