“We expect to have 500,000 subscribers by the end of 2009,” said Flippo chief operating officer, Geoffrey Chan.

Flippo operates similarly to services offered by UNOS, Mino Wireless, VoIP Stunt and others but its key advantage lies in its payment method. This is done via purchasing a prepaid Internet phone card worth RM15 from Flippo’s network of dealers that is to be rolled out nationwide from September - making it easily accessible especially to prepaid mobile users, including students, foreign workers and other low income earners, most of whom don’t have credit cards.

The user keys the calling and destination phone numbers into the freely downloadable Flippo Java midlet running on their phone and it then sends those two numbers to Flippo’s telephony server over the Internet via their phone’s GPRS, EDGE , 3G or WiFi data connection.

The Flippo server then makes an IP-based call back to the calling number via a fixed or mobile telephony gateway in the originating country and when the caller picks up the phone, the server calls the other party in similar fashion through a gateway in the destination country and once that call is answered, Flippo connects the two together, with conversation being carried over the Internet most of the way, thus saving on expensive international call costs.

Flippo’s call charges were unavailable at time of writing but its chief executive officer, Carmel Tan said they would be up on its website at www.flippo.com.my within a week and that they would be “very competitive” compared to prevailing prepaid rates. The RM15 includes RM13 call credit and RM2 per month for unlimited SMS worldwide between Flippo subscribers.

Flippo expects to enable WiFi calls directly from phone-to-phone, phone-to PC or PC-to-PC by the end of the year.

“Towards the end of the year, we expect to begin negotiations with several WiMAX licensees to allow WiFi calls from the various WiFi hotspots connected to their WiMAX network,” said Flippo chief executive officer, Carmel Tan.

The Flippo midlet is downloadable from http://203.223.147.133/Flippo/Download.htm through a phone’s WAP/Web browser or a PC’s Web browser. Several variants are available for different phones and screen sizes. Users can also send the word "Flippo" by SMS to 33228 to receive a link to download the Flippo Software to their phone.