Nimi Jaja is a 60-year-old widow from Bayelsa State. She has an only child, a daughter, who lives in Germany with her husband and two children. Though Nimi is a secondary school headmistress, who spends most of her time associating with students, she feels lonely after school and misses her daughter. There is no single day she does not call her daughter and grandchildren, and it costs her between 500 – 700 naria to make a few minutes call to Germany.
Chika Ikenna is a banker based in Enugu State. His fiancée recently got a two-year contract job with the United Nations and was posted to Mexico. To Chika, two years with her seems like forever. There is no day his fiancée does not call him. Sometimes, he does the calling. However, whoever calls, it costs them a lot of money to stay connected for at least 10 minutes.
Fortunately, Nimi and Chika are among the millions of Nigerians who have family, friends, and loved ones who live abroad with whom they need to stay connected on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the cost of calling people abroad, especially for a longer time, is a luxury most of them cannot afford.
On the other hand, these days, one of the cheapest and most innovative ways of contacting and connecting with friends, relatives, and associates who live abroad on the phone for a long time is through international calling/texting apps.
There are many of these apps in the internet, which can be downloaded from Google Play store or Apple iOS store. Some of these international calling apps include, but are not limited to, Dingtone, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, Hangout, WeChat, Viber, and Chili Talk.
According to the Senior Marketing Manager at Dingtone, Dora Yale, Dingtone was founded in 2012 in the United States, and since then, it has grown into a phone service provider designed to be easy to use from a mobile device and offer a simple and clean interface for its users to make “free calls and texts”.
She noted that in a world of tech where privacy is a major concern, one could also link a second, third, fourth, and even multiple numbers to their mobile device in order to navigate between numbers for professional use and a personal number for close friends and family.
She stated that Dingtone offers international phone numbers for the following countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium. She added that users of the app could make cheap international phone calls to the United States, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Philippines, Jamaica, Nepal, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, Brazil, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates.
Yale added that this service can be free if the caller and the receiver are using the same app. If they are not, a small charge will be involved, about 80 – 90 per cent cheaper when calling/texting with airtime.
Depending on the Dingtone feature one is using, a 30-minute phone call costs about 3.5MB, 100 text messages cost 300KB, a shared picture costs 64KB, A shared two-minute video costs 1.6MB, and a shared map costs 2KB.
“Dingtone helps you manage and save outrageous roaming charges that apply anytime you travel outside the United States,” Yale said. “With Dingtone, you are hardly stranded anywhere in the globe, as the free service keeps you in touch with family and loved ones across 200 countries.”
Yale said though Dingtone appears tailored for individuals and households seeking to cope with biting inflation, the app also assists small-and-medium businesses cut costs by providing affordable fax and conference call features.
Tiger Liu, the Vice President of Product at Dingtone, said Nigeria is the perfect place to launch a new business. The country is where South Africa was 10 years ago: on the cusp of enormous growth. Its large, increasing population—already half the size of the U.S.—The demand for international numbers is still surging because of the growing international trade. Dingtone’s affordable international phone services for everyone would help relieve the financial burden, protect privacy, and create closer connections.
He said Dingtone rates are the cheapest among the other calling apps and that the letter ‘C’ is used for Dingtone credits. Some of the countries and the rates they are charged for making calls to them per minute are as follow: US 0.9 C/Min, Bangladesh 2.5C/Min, Nigeria 7.0 C/Min, UK 1.0 C/Min, Italy 0.9 C/Min, Brazil 1.35 C/Min, Japan 2.6 C/Min, India 2.0 C/Min, Mexico 0.9 C/Min
Liu urged Nigerians to invite their family and friends to join Dingtone and enter the world of free talking and texting. Dingtone users can make free local and international calls among 30 million Dingtone users, as long as they and their friends both have the Dingtone app. He further noted that there are no roaming fees or hidden charges.
Punch newspaper reports that “London to Lagos may be 4292 miles in the distance”, but with the help of calling apps like Dingtone, this distance can disappear.
According to an article in CallHippo, every year, approximately 6.2 billion international calls are made, totalling a staggering 490 billion minutes. The article added that making international calls can cost one a lot if not properly taken care of, and this is why a lot of people rely on international calling apps to save money while travelling.
Akin Abiola, a businessman from Ogun State, who imports phone accessories from China and how has been using Dingtone for almost six months now, said many people go through the nightmare of opening the bill and seeing hundreds and thousands of naira or dollars charged on international calls due to roaming charges.
He, therefore, advised Nigerians to use Dingtone because it comes with a lot of benefits. He said it comes with group video calling, which will enable up to 10 people to join the meeting.
Nimi Jaja and Chika Ikenna, like Akin Abiola, now use Dingtone to connect with their family and friends. And with the rate at which Nigerians are downloading the Dingtone app shows that they prefer it to most calling apps.