Now, international voice calls for one paisa per second

Nimbuzz so far available as instant messaging platform today announced partnership with Delhi based company to offer these services

The one paisa per second gimmick, which had shaken the Indian voice calling market in 2009 and was instrumental in making domestic voice calls cheaper, is back again. This time, it is for international voice calling.

 

Nimbuzz, which was so far available as an instant messaging platform for Indian consumers, today announced partnership with Delhi-based internet service provider Spectranet hello ip to offer international calling facilities, with tariffs starting at one paisa per second. However, there will be separate data charges for using the application.

 

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service will be available to all 25 million users of Nimbuzz in India. This will be a pre-paid service and will be available to the registered users of Nimbuzz only. The service is almost similar to Skype calling cards international calls.

 

International calls made via Nimbuzz will be charged starting at 60 paise a minute, which is about a tenth of the Rs 6.40 per minute that mobile operators charge subscribers for calls to the United States. Calls to the UK are currently priced at Rs 14 per minute. However, prices will be different for other countries.

 

“Our aim is to offer the cheapest possible option to consumers for international calling. We did not launch such a service earlier as the ecosystem was not ready. We are confident that our partnership with Spectranet will allow Indian users to reach out to friends and family globally without any cost concerns,” said Nimbuzz CEO Vikas Saxena, adding that the size of the international calling market in India is estimate at about Rs 9,000 crore.

 

Spectranet is only an outbound calling service and will not be available for making domestic calls. “The regulations in India do not allow us to offer the service for domestic VoIP,” said Spectranet CEO Udit Mehrotra.

 

Over the next 18 months, Nimbuzz hopes to double user base to 50 million. 

 

Initially, Nimbuzz will get a flat fee from Spectranet, and the two partners will get into a revenue sharing model (on total number of voice minutes generated on the Nimbuzz platform) after a certain point.

 

According to Mehrotra, the company will be able to make money once it generates about 10 million voice minutes per month. 

 

The companies have divided the world into five zones. Tariffs are different for each zone, starting from 60 paisa per minute to Rs 21 a minute.

 

Country	Existing rates offered by telecom operators	Spectranet-Nimbuzz rates
US	Rs 6.4	Rs 0.60
Canada	Rs 10	Rs 0.60
UK	Rs 14	Rs 0.60