LOW-PRICED INTERNATIONAL CALLING METHOD TO LAUNCH ON FACEBOOK

Rebtel to launch facebook application: ‘Reb Me’ will allow Facebook users to create local numbers for global friends across their Facebook network direct from the Facebook site.


Facebook, the social networking site with an estimated 33 million users is to become home to a revolutionary new international calling method. With its unique mix of globally-connected socially-mobile students and young professionals Facebook would seem the perfect location for the innovative new communications tool.

Rebtel, which is the brainchild of Swedish entrepreneur and former Microsoft employee Hjalmar Winbladh, uses the latest in VoIP technology to sidestep expensive international charges - allowing users to make calls to anywhere in the world for the price of a local call direct from their mobile phone. Based on a deceptively simple system, Rebtel works by creating local landline numbers in both the country of origin and destination and then rerouting the international part of the call over the web.

Now thanks to the planned collaboration Facebook users are to get in on the action. The new application to be named ‘Reb Me’ will allow Facebook users to create local numbers for global friends across their Facebook network direct from the Facebook site. The application allows users to add a ‘Reb Me’ box onto their profile so friends can instantly create a local number for them.

Soon Facebook users or ‘Facebookers’ as they’ve come to be dubbed can expect to save on average 88p a minute on the cost of overseas calls. Added up over the course of a year spent talking with friends abroad and such savings soon become irresistible. If the average Facebooker was to spend just 30 minutes a month calling overseas they can expect to make yearly savings of over £300.

With most Facebook users having an internationally diverse collection of friends Reb Me provides an affordable simple and convenient method for keeping in touch. Rebtel founder Hjalmar Winbladh explains, “Facebook is the world’s fastest growing online community, its home to a new generation of globalised young people whose friends and social networks are spread across the planet. There is no reason in the world why these people should be loosing this amount of money to mobile operators. Like Facebook we just want to make communicating as easy, cheap and as freely available as possible. Our message is very simple: why pay 100 times over the odds when you don’t need to?

Fore details see www.rebtel.com