Making Calls Miles Away From The Box
When traveling outside of your town or country you are always at the mercy of cellular roaming charges. The service has no control over that as they piggyback off the cellular providers network for the first leg of the call. You can however, swap your current SIM with a prepaid SIM card that allows free incoming calls; most SIM carriers worldwide provider this. With a SIM that allows free incoming calls, you can use the service's 'TextConnect' feature. TextConnect works this way:
- Send a text message to 1ButtonToWifi's servers in One Wilshire with your account PIN and Cell Phone number.
- They will call you back on your cell phone (that now allows free incoming calls) and give you a dial tone to call out.
- The only charges you occur are for your original text message and the 1ButtontoWiFi call.
If you are in a hotel room has a constant high speed connection without the need to login, you can simply plug the device in and plug in a regular handset. The device will connect to the service's network in Los Angeles and send your call over the Internet.
The Service's Free Features
1ButtonToWifi's free
features include voicemail, voicemail to email, three-way calling, follow-me, TextConnect (SMS Callback for the world traveler), call waiting, caller ID, call hold, whitelist / blacklist, call screening, WebConnect(Web Callback), free 411, E911 and a few more.
Also, all calls from box to box are free and you can access any of your feature settings, call history (within 2 minutes of a call), balance and more from the service's online customer portal.
Call Quality
According to Michael Valera from 1ButtonToWifi, the call quality is indistinguishable from traditional PSTN. Their backend routes consist of about 15 Tier 1 & 2 Carriers in which destinations are hand-picked based on the best quality. If you are making a call into their network from your cell phone walking down a busy street and dialing Japan, they make sure you can hear your called party as clearly as if you made the call over the cellular network.
A Word On Wi-Fi
The word Wi-Fi in the service's name makes it quite misleading since Wi-Fi technology is not used anywhere in the service. The word is here because the service provides WiFi-like capabilities. You could actually do the same with other services by using a Wi-Fi phone in a Wi-Fi hotspot, but then you would have been restricted to 300 feet around the hotspot, and would be needing one of those still-very-expensive Wi-Fi phones. 1ButtonToWifi allows you to do same without the Wi-Fi phone and from long distances from the box, and at cheaper rates.
Bottom Line
1ButtonToWifi does a great step towards bettering mobile VoIP communications. You will save lots of money and improve access if you are a heavy international caller or happen to travel and communicate a lot. If you mostly make local calls, then it will be a very long time before you break even with the investment. You might then want to consider
other device-based services on the market.
