It is not beer, but telco provider Gotalk is hoping to lure new VoIP users with a half price Happy Hour promotion, starting from today.
Gotalk, which until a fortnight ago operated under the name Telecorp, is halving the price of its VoIP calls to mobiles and landlines both here and abroad, between 6pm-7pm each day.
The offer is modelled along the same lines to what mobile operators have been successfully providing to their phone subscribers, said Gotalk CEO Steve Picton.
It is attracting people during teatime who want to make phone calls. It's the perfect time, he said.
Plans, subject to a 12-month contract, start from $14.95 per month. After discount, local calls will cost 4.85 cents. Calls to mobile phones, normally 19.9 cents per minute will be 9.95 cents.
The package also comes with a free DLINK DVG 2001s ATA adapter, valued at $119. An ATA adapter allows you to enable an ordinary telephone, including your cordless, to make VoIP calls.
The Happy Hour deal follows the company's ezichat DECT phone, released earlier this week. Although VoIP may be all the rage, the company has identified regular POTS calls as a profit maker.
The $99.95 ezichat phone, which comes with a $20 credit, is programmed to bypass the customer's existing carrier automatically without the need to enter override codes.
When the credit runs out, customers recharge via the Gotalk site or from a number of partner sites.
Gotalk has come from a tradition of offering prepaid long distance telephone cards.
Picton said the company's prepaid international phone cards account for one-fifth of all long distance calls made from Australia.
