Rebtel Hits 15 M Users Worldwide, 2011 Revenue Jumped 55% To $60 M
It's easy to think that Skype is the only kid on the block, but its VOIP competitors are hitting significant numbers. Rebtel, the world's second largest VOIP network, announces today that it has hit 15 million users worldwide and has increased revenues by more than 55% in 2011 to $60 million in revenue. The company attributes this to its transparency, honesty, and new innovations, such as the KeepTalking technology that lets users switch seamlessly between between WIFI and 3G if the smartphone app senses the connection quality is deteriorating. In comparison to Rebtel's 15 million users, Skype has 663 million registered users as of September 2011.
Rebtel 2.0 Now Out On Android, Service Claims 15 Million Users
As Rebtel launches version 2.0 of it's VOIP app on Android, they also announce they have hit 15 million users making it easily the second largest VOIP company after Skype. With a run rate of over 1 billion minutes per year, the company claims it is on pace to hit $75 million in revenue by the end of 2011. This competition in the VOIP sector can only benefit consumers, as you can see with the innovations present in their new app update.
Patric Blixt At Arctic15 (Video)
More Arctic15 keynotes coming up! This one's from Patric Blixt from Rebtel. Blixt is the Chief Marketing Officer at the VoIP operator that is surprisingly little hyped about, considering they're doing tens of millions of revenue only a few years after their founding. We had the honor to have Blixt share his thoughts on marketing and promoting startups in the early part of their growth phase. He talked a lot about the virality loops, which are a key component of Rebtel's success.
Rebtel Launched A Lot More Than Just Free iPhone Calling
A couple of weeks ago we covered Rebtel and their improvement to their iPhone application. Little did we know that last week they came out officially with a whole lot more than just free calls between iPhone users, as we titled the post. Rebtel has announced some cool new technologies to their application as well as making the free calls platform independent.
Rebtel Adds Free International Phone Calls For iPhone
Rebtel has taken a step forward into becoming an even more attractive company on the VoIP industry. The Swedish company announced yesterday that they have released a new version of their iPhone app that will allow users to make free phone calls to each other. The requirement is though, that both of the users are using the Rebtel application and are on Wifi or 3G. The new update has also added a few nifty updates to make the use even more simpler and in doing so the company has taken, in my opinion, its biggest steps to catering to the online community in a more integrated way.
Patric Blixt, CMO Of Rebtel Coming To Arctic15
Patric Blixt is the Chief Marketing Officer of a Swedish VoIP telephony company called Rebtel. He's been with the company since 2007 and will come to Arctic15 to share the story of the company and how they've been able to grow their company with such high growth rates. Earlier this year we interviewed the CEO of Rebtel, Andreas Bernström and he revealed that the company will do around $75 million in revenues this year. We'll be sure to ask the latest figure on that in September.
Rebtel Moves To Lower Costs In International SMS Traffic
Just before Easter, Rebtel has announced that they are moving into the international SMS space with the launch of the ToIP (Text-over-IP) service. With this two groups of clients can take advantage of cheaper international SMSs. First, obviously the consumers using Rebtel's services are one group, but also app developers who require sending of international SMS as part of their service can also take advantage.
Rebtel Continues With Its Record Breaking Spree; Reaches 10 Million Users
Rebtel continues to grow by leaps and bounds and set to continue with the same as per its recent growth. The company announced that it has crossed the 10 million users globally, continuing with its high riding performance lately. As per the current statistics Rebtel is growing almost five times faster than Skype the leading VoIP service provider. Rebtel has increased its revenue by over 120%, exceeding beyond $40 Million in 2010 and given how it has grown, Rebtel is in line to double the same and push the revenue to $75 Million by the end of the current year.
Voxtrot - The Free Mobile Network
Voxtrot is building a free mobile network. The Switzerland based company is headed by Taavet Hinrikus, who happens to be Skype's first employee. There seems to be a lot of activity in the mobile space, not only in gaming but on a deeper level to the way the whole infrastructure works. Earlier this week wrote on Blaast, who is working in a slightly similar space and now Voxtrot is pushing to be your free alternative to traditional operators (though you still need an operator agreement to access the free calls).
Interview With Andreas Bernström, CEO Of Rebtel
Rebtel is a very interesting Swedish telephony company. This year, the Rebtel is expecting to make $75 million through VoIP telephony. The company has seen immense growth and it's been a fantastic company to follow. Last Friday, the company released their Blackberry app to further fuel the growth. The reason, or at least one of the, why Rebtel has become so successful is their concept of VoIP calls - they don't require the user to have a working internet connection, but instead transmit the calls through local numbers. This way, it sort of falls in between the likes of Skype and companies offering calling cards. It's pretty much a perfect approach for the mobile generation.
In the interview Andreas Bernström sheds some light on how the company has grown and where they're headed. With $75 million in expected revenues for this year, they want to remain independent and further grow the company.
Rebtel Brings Its Free International Calling App To BlackBerry
Rebtel, the world’s leading independent mobile VoIP company that provides users with local phone numbers in their country of residence to enable to them easily communicate with friends and family across the globe. The idea is to rid consumers of the lengthened International phone numbers, PIN and an access number to dial prior making a call. Rebtel was launched back on May 17, 2006 at Innovate Europe and was named Europe’s top 3 startups.
Saul Klein On What Companies In The Nordics Make More Than $10 Million Annually
Quora has become a great source of information for entrepreneurs, and pretty much anyone interested in a specific topic. In short, Quora is a well executed question and answer service that is currently in beta. WIth this, they've been able to choose who they want to let in while this in turn has helped them keep the quality of the answers very high. Another interesting aspect of the service that startups should take notice of, is the people they've managed to get on board. You can find lots of famous startup CEOs there answering questions and helping people understand more about their companies. Enough about Quora though. There was an interesting question in Quora regarding which Nordic companies make more than $10 million annually and Saul Klein had answered it. He answered a similar question about companies based in London that interested a lot of people, so it's definitely interesting to look into this as well.
ArcticEvening Stockholm On November 18th
Our second ArcticEvening this year in Stockholm will be held on 18th of November 2009.
The theme of the evening will be Mobile smartphone solutions and trends - how to strategically build business around the different native application platforms and mobile web.
Discussion around delivering content and servics to Android, iPhone, Symbian, and different app stores is stirring up the mobile industry, and there are lots of different views on how to approach the smartphone market. In our evening's panel discussion, we have representation from three firms: one that provides their service using mobile web browser and SMS solution (Traveas), another that uses a native application to complement otherwise "app-less" service (Rebtel), and third a cloud computing firm making it possible to access your documents and virtual computer on any device over-the-air (Cloudo). Each of the firm will surely bring interesting viewpoints into the discussion.
Rebtel Being Blocked Again In Germany
Rebtel, the Sweden-based VoIP company, is being blocked again in Germany by E-Plus. Rebtel is letting E-Plus bypass their foreign calling rates by giving a cheaper alternative to calling expensive foreign numbers - through VoIP. Alexander Drewniak wrote about the incident in the company blog.
It seems this is an annual issue with Rebtel. They were blocked in Germany last year as well, exactly around these times of the year. Last year it was O2. Needless to say, but this sort of activity is against EU regulations and also the consumer contracts with E-Plus.
E-Plus is the third largest operator in Germany, so the problem isn't a small one. Furthermore, Alexander has written the blog post that Rebtel has some 3 million customers who will want to defend their rights for cheaper phone calls. I'm sure E-Plus will get their fair share of contacts from consumers in the coming days if they won't resolve the situation to Rebtel's favor.
Rebtel no longer blocked in Germany
We wrote about Rebtel, the Sweden based VoIP company, a while back how their phone numbers were blocked in Germany by O2. Today, Alexander writes they no longer are blocked in Germany. Alexander thanks the individuals who blogged about this, tweeted, sent Facebook messages, e-mailed and personally called the CEO of O2 about issue.
He does not give out details on how the problem eventually got resolved, but I believe the large amount of consumer action that ignited around the issue did result in the positive outcome.
Swedish Rebtel being blocked in Germany
Rebtel, a Swedish and Luxembourg based startup offering cheap international calls over internet, is pushing itself hard to conquer the VoIP market. Some might say that even a bit too aggresively as their phone numbers were blocked in Germany by O2.
However, as Alexander Drewniak writes in his blog post, this sort of activity is against EU regulations. He is also asking customers of O2 to send an e-mail or contact Jaime Basterra the "boss in Germany" about this and let the company know how the customers feel about this sort of activity. He goes on to make a Churchill type speech regarding the future:
The fact remains, old operators will always cling on to their decreasing margins, lock-in contracts, hidden charges, big offices, expensive TV-commercials, and out-dated methods but they cannot stop the future of calling. When internet now meets telecom, operators are going to have to change or die. Internet stands for transparency, consumer value, openness and change. Values that clash against the business models of all telecom operators.
It'll be interesting to see how this works out. We'll be following the activity closely.
