A First look at Spokn: The New Internet Telephony Service

The last couple of weeks has been seeing a lot of buzz over this new Internet Telephone service called Spokn, which seems to be a “Skype Killer”. Yes, in the economy today one product has to kill another product, or at least subtly hint at doing so, for any attention to be diverted from the press and consumers towards them. This service really looks and sounds promising, so let's see what exactly it’s all about.

Initial registration is a breeze on their site; it asks for a 7 digit numerical code as a name, which actually will act as your Spokn number for others to reach you on. The sign up is free, you only pay for what country specific service you need, we’ll get to that in a bit. The site itself is very clean and nicely laid out, adding that all important user friendly touch, keeping the jargon and complexities out the door.

The reason why this service has piqued our interest is its never before seen features in an internet phone. There are the basic vanilla PC–PC free calls, and of course PC – phone calls, but the payment structures are different, and moreover, they turn out cheaper. Firstly incoming calls are free, from a phone. Spokn has access line in over 40 countries, so the caller at the other end has to dial an access number, and then your 7 digit ID. You receive the call on line over the internet, and if you're not online, she  I’m assuming it’s a she) can leave voicemail. She gets charged for only a local call, and you don’t need any Spokn credits in the first place to receive these calls. But this is still not the main service. There’s more.

For a dollar a month, one can purchase a local number of a list of countries. Thus sitting in India, one can get a number for London, a proper  +44... phone number. A person receiving a call there will see that number on his phone, plus she can save it also. Then calling back for her is the charge for a local call, and you receive it online, on the Spokn Software. If you aren’t available a voice mail can be saved.

The rates we checked out are really reasonable. For India-US it starts at about about 0.01 dollars a minute. When one is offline, there is a service to forward the calls to a regular phone number. We have signed up and started using it, watch this space to see whether there are any hidden costs, voice clarity etc. Watch the video below.