Anay Kamat’s Weblog

Fring is an application for mobile phones that allows you to make calls using VoIP. Yesterday I decided to try it out myself. I had mentioned in one of my post that it is possible to make free calls with fring if you have access to public Wi-Fi hotspots, but in Goa, there are no such public Wi-Fi hotspots. On the other hand, my Nokia N72 doesn’t have support for Wi-Fi networks. So I had to rely on GPRS connection.

If you refer to Fring website, it mentions that the application is compatible with Symbian from version 8 to 9.2. Thus it can work on my Nokia N72. I activated Airtel GPRS service on my handset and downloaded fring directly on my mobile from its site.

After installation, fring asked me to register as a new user. Then, I had to select one VoIP service provider from Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, SIP, Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo and AIM. I have been using skype for long time to make VoIP calls so I selected Skype. After that, fring asked me to login to my skype account with skype screen name and password. That’s it!!!! Now fring was ready for use on my handset.

Fring presented me with list of contacts which were taken from my phone book and skype contact list. From here I could have called my friends who were online on Skype at that point of time. If you try to call a person from your phone book, then you will be presented with options of either Direct GSM call or SkypeOut call.

I wanted to try out fring by making a real call. So I requested my father to call me from skype. Soon, my cell started ringing and Fring showed me that the call is from my father. I was able to talk to my father normally without any problems.

But one thing I noticed is that, I was not able to hear my father’s voice instantaneously. There was a small time gap so I felt as if I’m using a walkie-talkie.

If you want to call your friends at a very cheap rate then should try out fring yourself. Hopefully in near future, just like broadband, the number of public Wi-Fi hotspots in India will increase and then people will be able to use applications like Fring with better voice quality.