One of the features included in our PhoneGnome PowerSuite feature bundle is something we call Find-me/Follow-me. One of the cool things about this feature is the ability to ring many numbers at the same time, sometimes called “Sim-ring”.

You simply activate the service on your My PhoneGnome website and enter the places you want to ring. These can be regular phone numbers, or SIP addresses. When someone calls your home number, your existing number connected to your PhoneGnome box, all the phones specified will ring. You can answer the call on any of the ringing phones, including your mobile phone, at the office, etc. and the caller will not even know you didn’t take the call at home.

Calls can even ring to your PC. simultaneously with other numbers. We recently spoke about missed call notification. Sim-ring takes this to the next step, beyond learning about missed calls, to not missing the calls in the first place because they will ring you wherever you wish.

Missed Call Notification is a free feature of the PhoneGnome service. By installing the award-winning PhoneGnome box, you can be notified on your mobile phone whenever you miss a call on your home line.

Missed Call Notification is a common feature on cell phones, but is essentially non-existent for home phone service. Sometimes missed call notification can be ordered as part of an expensive “unified messaging” bundle, at extra cost, but in most cases it’s not available at all for home phone or home-office phone service. With PhoneGnome, it’s free for life with the box - there are no monthly fees for this simple, but very handy feature.

What’s more, other services often provide only a notification that you missed calls, without the call details. With PhoneGnome, you will get a message such as shown at left giving the call details, with the time as well as the number and even the name of the caller (if available).

To activate this free feature, simply navigate to the Features page of your My PhoneGnome website control panel and click Activate on the Missed Call Notification feature. You can adjust how the notifications are delivered by clicking Edit.

Today we’re launching iPhoneGnome, a new web 2.0 application for the iPhone that enables PhoneGnome calling from your iPhone. You can call other PhoneGnome numbers as well as anyone using SIP-based services, FWD, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, and any other numbers that you can call from your PhoneGnome account.

• Use your iPhone to make calls on your home-phone or office-phone service through your PhoneGnome account
• Make International calls at cheap PhoneGnome rates - or even free!
• Check your PhoneGnome voicemail directly on your iPhone
• Have all your PhoneGnome Contacts conveniently and automatically on your iPhone
• Place calls to VOIP and IM users without hacking your iPhone

The iPhoneGnome application provides the familiar look & feel of the iPhone’s dialer, enabling users to quickly and easily make free and low-cost VOIP and international calls directly from their Apple iPhone.

How It Works

You simply point your mobile Safari browser to http://m.phonegnome.com/iphone and dial the number you want to call. Alternatively you can select a name in your PhoneGnome contacts and click on the number you want to call. Your iPhone will place a call that will automatically connect you to the desired international, VOIP user, or any number. No call back hassles. Simple, easy VOIP calling.

If you don’t have a PhoneGnome account yet, get one today - it’s free!

In June 2006 we reported that only 39% of calls by PhoneGnome users were being delivered via their local telephone service attached to their PhonGnome box. That number has now been reduced even further. Among PhoneGnome box users, a full 69% of calls are bypassing the user’s local phone service and being delivered via the Internet. When looking at the overall minutes delivered, we find only 20% of the minutes of PhoneGnome box users are using the local telephone service - in other words, 80% of minutes have been diverted from the local carrier! I guess that makes PhoneGnome a “minute stealer” in the words of Andy Abramson.

Overall, here’s how calls placed by PhoneGnome users are being terminated (i.e. where they end up):

This represents calls by all PhoneGnome users, including those with the PhoneGnome box and those without the box (those using only web-based or PC-based calling, with no PhoneGnome hardware). In the chart, ITSP means calls delivered to the PSTN via an “Internet Telephony Service Provider” (i.e. cheap calls via paid VOIP service) and PSTN means calls delivered via the LINE port of a PhoneGnome box (i.e. user’s local telephone service). That might be a normal landline, a Cable VOIP service, or even an ATA-based VOIP service like Vonage. GNOME FREE means calls to another PhoneGnome user. OTHER FREE represents calls to some other free Internet destination, like another SIP service (FWD, Gizmo etc.), a peering partner, etc. SOFTGNOME represent calls that were answered by a PhoneGnome user on their PC.

Compared to 2006, the percent of calls to other PhoneGnome members is up from 16% to 24% and the overall percent of free calls is up to over 30% (from 19% in 2006). Calls to other SIP users and other compatible VOIP services doubled from 3% in 2006 to 6% today. All of this results in a drop of calls placed via the local phone service from 39% in 2006 to 26% today.

When we look at this in terms of minutes rather than calls, we see even more use of the Internet over the traditional service:

How do users place calls?

When we look at how user’s originate calls, we find a tale of two user segments. Users with the PhoneGnome box clearly appreciate the convenience and simplicity of simply dialing with their ordinary phone, placing 96% of calls using the telephone attached to the PhoneGnome box.

Looking at how those users without the PhoneGnome box place calls, we see that over two-thirds of calls, 69%, are placed using softphone credentials, either via PC or an ATA, SIP phone, or PBX. This is somewhat unexpected - we would have assumed that people prefer using their existing telephone and it clearly shows that people appreciate that PhoneGnome provides free open credentials with every PhoneGnome account. This enables users to use the free softphone we provide, or any softphone they choose, as well as ATAs, SIP phones, and even PBXs, to place calls with their PhoneGnome account.

However, it’s also interesting to note that while a large percentage of calls are placed using a PC, very few are answered on the PC, only about 1 percent. This suggests that even though many people are comfortable using their PC to place alls, very few leave their PC on to receive calls.

Among these free-account (no PhoneGnome box) users, a full 75% of calls are free calls, either to other PhoneGnome members, PhoneGnome peers, or other compatible SIP/VOIP destinations all over the world.

Overall, this data makes it graphically clear that PhoneGnome members, especially those using the PhoneGnome box, are saving a tremendous amount of money through a myriad of means.