Rebtel Networks
Social Media Release
09.03.2008
O2 GERMANY LIFTS BAN ON CHEAP INTERNATIONAL CALLING WITH REBTEL
Full Release
Stockholm, Sweden – September 3, 2008 – Telefonica O2 Germany, one of the fastest growing mobile phone operators in the country, today reversed its decision to prevent customers from using Rebtel to make low cost international calls to friends, family and work colleagues abroad.
Rebtel is a global calling service that makes it possible to call any phone, anywhere in the world from 47 countries, for just pennies per minute. For the past 15 days O2 prevented its customers from using the Rebtel service by blocking all calls made to Rebtel numbers. Today, O2 reversed that decision and calls to Rebtel numbers are now connecting.
“O2 demonstrated today that it is an enlightened operator that listens and responds quickly to its customers and understands that it can not dictate whom its customers may call and how they do it,” said Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel cofounder and CEO, who asked mobile operators around the world will take notice of O2 Germany’s progressive decision.
“Rebtel users and friends have proven that together, people can make a difference,” said Winbladh. ”We will continue to support our users and offer some of the world's lowest rates and best quality calling."
Who is Rebtel?
Thanks to Rebtel, millions people around the world today are talking to one another for a fraction of what the big mobile operators charge.
Just a little more than 2 years old, Stockholm-based Rebtel was started by serial entrepreneur Winbladh and his business partner Jonas Lindroth, who put up the original seed money to get going, together with some sweat equity from a handful of likeminded technologists.
The 16-strong band of Rebtel rebels began work with a unified mission to take the phony out of mobile telephony, and create the first genuinely good, honest, and trustworthy global mobile telecommunications service that saves people money. With Rebtel there would be no hidden clauses. No small print. No secret charges.
Rebtel’s vision was equally straightforward: Shrink the world; make it a friendlier place, and bring people worldwide closer together by making all phone calls local.
Call local, talk global
Rebtel gives people local phone numbers in their country that connect them directly with their friends, family or work colleagues who live abroad.
For example, Rebtel gives someone living in Munich a local Munich phone number to reach their dad in Sydney, and gives the dad in Sydney a local Sydney phone number for calling their son in Munich. Then, Rebtel connects the calls over the Internet so they can call each other as often as they like and talk as long as they want, for little or nothing more than the cost of the local calls.
Rebtel’s concept of making all calls local was a first – something never done before. And when the world heard about it on May 17, 2006 at the Innovate Europe conference in Zaragoza, Spain it was named one of Europe's top three new startups, and received acclaim from leading business and technology press all over the world.
“The beauty of Rebtel’s service is it was designed from the start to be used with any mobile phone – even old junkers – without modification, software downloads or changes to the existing calling plan a customer already had with their cell phone provider,” said Winbladh.
The venture capital community was instantly enamored. Just four months after its debut at Innovate Europe in Spain, Rebtel received $20 million in Series A funding from Index Ventures and Benchmark Capital, which together had been early investors in wildly successful companies such as Skype, eBay and MySQL.
Today, with its Direct and Smart Call services – as well as its Facebook application for free conference calling, called Group Talk – Rebtel is tripling in size every three month, in terms of customers, revenue and minutes carried.
And even though Rebtel’s core innovation of making all calls local is now starting to be copied by companies like Skype and Jajah, its largest competitor remains inertia – despite Rebtel’s most recent customer survey that showed 97 percent of its users love the service and regularly recommend it to friends.
“People can spend hours surfing the web to save a few dollars on an airline flight, but for some reason have given up on the idea that they can be just as smart when it comes to mobile communications,” said Winbladh. “People are spending hundreds of billions of dollar calling abroad, roaming and sending SMS with their mobiles. Yet, there’s something they can do for a fraction of the price, without changing their phone or carrier, and start saving real money.”
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Rebtel is a global calling service for individuals and business. With Rebtel it’s possible to call any phone, anywhere in the world, for just pennies per minute. Rebtel’s services can be used with any mobile phone without modification or software downloads. There is no charge to set up a Rebtel account. No monthly fees, no connection fees and no hidden costs. Anyone may make a free 10 minute call to test the service. Thereafter, customers only pay for the minutes they use. Smart Calls between the 47 counties served by Rebtel are always free and only one of the two people on a call have to be a Rebtel customer. For more information, or to start using Rebtel services, go to http://www.rebtel.com.
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