How to use VOIP service with a N95

Recently I had the occasion to spend some time with a N95. For those of you that doesn't know what is a N95 they can go there to learn more about it. To put it in a nutshell it is a beautiful piece of technology among many things you can use it as a phone, camera, browser, GPS.

After sometimes I noticed that something important to me was missing the voice over IP. A mobile phone with the wifi is a call for this feature, isn't it? My personal use case for this is while sitting in a restaurant, café, hotel with a free or cheap hot-spot in a foreign country I would like to call some friends using Skype for example. I will see in the following part of this article that Skype is not the only option.

Let us come to the facts:

What do you need?

1. N95 obviously this is the phone I will use however it is interesting to note that this technique can be applied to many other mobiles
2. An internet connection
3. wifi network
4. a computer with the Nokia PC suite

Step by step

The corner stone of this capability is a software called : fring. Here it is the definition that you can find on their web site:

fring™ is a free mobile VoIP application that utilizes
free WiFi or your mobile internet data plan to make free mobile
internet calls and live chat (IM) to other ‘fringsters’ and PC-based
services including Skype®, Google Talk™, ICQ, MSN®
Messenger, Twitter, AIM® &Yahoo!TM **

You can download this amazing piece of software for free on their web site. The installation procedure is very easy also I have chosen to download the software on my laptop and then to install it from there using the Nokia PC Suite.

Once fring is installed on you mobile you are almost set the last things you need to do is to configure your skype account. You have to enter your username/password in "Option/Configure Service".

That is it you are now able to call you contacts on skype...

Enjoy the liberty given by this new way of communicating give me a fring if you like it :-))



Happy new year.

--yml