Today I had a conference call with Martin Smink, co-founder of the Netherlands based Nimbuzz.
He better explained to me how Nimbuzz works and kindly posted some notes on this post’s comments. I’ll quote it here for your convenience.
Luca, thanks for the review. Highly appreciated. The N80 model is very popular to Nimbuzz indeed. Some points need further explanation: Yahoo, ICQ and AIM will be connected soon, i.e. in the coming weeks really. Other than MSN, you add your GTalk contacts one by one currently. With MSN / Live Messenger you import your complete MSN roster. For Gtalk we will come out with the option to import your complete GTalk contactlist at once in one of the next releases. The main thing here is that the Nimbuzz audience has a split opinion on this. Some like piece-by-piece others like the import more. We’ll find an easy way for both. Then the calling option on Nimbuzz: To take away any misunderstanding we’d like to add the following: Using Nimbuzz on your mobile phone requires a GPRS dataplan (UMTS or EDGE is not needed). With this data connection the Nimbuzz application is in contact with our infrastructure. For Chat and Text messages this is all you need. No additional costs. When you call another Nimbuzz buddy on his mobile or PC your call request is transmitted via GPRS to our one of our servers. The server then sends the Nimbuzz call-in number to the Nimbuzz application on your mobile phone. The application releases that number and you can call in using GSM. Currently we support 35 countries. In those countries our Nimbuzz users pay the local cost for the call to their provider. No hassle with credits or anything really. And perfect quality! The same is true when calling a GTalk or a MSN / Live Messenger buddy. If the receiving party is on his mobile, he/she pays a local rate too. If the receiving party is on a PC then he/she pays nothing at all. Therefore, with Nimbuzz you avoid the huge international roaming tariffs, and you’re finally able to communicate with your IM buddies for voice, chat and text. Important note: · To avoid international roaming charges you must be located in your home country · And your home country must be listed as a country with a local Nimbuzz accesspoint for mobile voice, please check at http://www.nimbuzz.com/en/features/callsatlocalcost/ · When your country is not listed, or you are roaming abroad, you can still use the service but then you pay international tariff. The accessnumber is always displayed including the country code. Becuase we don’t want you to get surprised afterwards · We’ll increase the number of countries with local assess during 2007 · For a call initiated to another Nimbuzz mobile user in the same country, the communication is simply established on the GSM network, as a different call routing would provide no cost benefit For calling MSN buddies I would like to add the following: The calling feature is now available for the mobile browser version only. An update for the J2ME clients will follow coming week. In conclusion: we are convinced that this is the way forward. And yes, we’re underway!
Thanks Martin for the comprehensive explanation. In addition, he underlined that they are not “minute stealers” but a medium to connect the mobile world to the internet. Great job. I’ll stay tuned for further developments.
Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, martin smink, nimbuzz, mobile voip
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