Telenordic followup

A reader in Norway wrote in with these comments:

"I just want to tell you that I have signed up for Telenordic's GlobalLink service and tested it.The service offers a fixed rate of NOK 2.99 per minute to basically everywhere. It is a 'call back' service where you call a number in Norway and hang up five seconds after initiating the call (just enough time for Telenordic to register the cell phone number you are calling from). Immediately after hanging up, Telenordic calls your cell phone and a machine asks you to enter the number of whom you want to call. Then, a call is set up and charging commences once the called party picks up. For many handsets (it appears they are all(?) running Symbian) you may download a GlobalLink client application. I did this on my SonyEricsson P900. The client simplifies the calling process: basically you just enter a number or click on a contact in your phone's contact list and all the call back-stuff is taken care of behind the scenes. I tried clicking on an entry in my contacts list who lives in Canada and her PSTN-phone started ringing after, say, 10 seconds. Everything worked fine.

My wife has relatives in Pakistan who own cell phones. I will ask her to call them when she comes home to see how that works (I don't speak Urdu and they speak neither Norwegian nor English so I cannot call them myself :). Calling a cell phone in Pakistan is among the more expensive calls one can make from a PSTN phone in Norway. We always try to use SkypeOUT or other VoIP softphones, but quality varies a lot and often we have to use Telenor PSTN (which always works, but their rate is NOK 17 per minute--don't know what the Telenor Mobil rate is, but it is probably astronomic)."