Fring brings free video calling to Nokia N Series

Mobile VoIP provider fring is far less famous than Skype, but it has beaten the larger company to an interesting first – two-way video calls over IP, for Symbian handsets. If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch user, you can have one-way video calling.

Fring’s main success has been in integrating VoIP calls into social networking activities and now it hopes to make its name by adding video. Not that it is the first firm to enable two-way video calls on Symbian phones like the N97 and N95, but these never took off because they used the 3G connection, making them expensive and clumsy to use.

Now Nokia is in full support of fring when it says that video over IP is the answer, and the handset maker is keen to see any service that will boost usage of the top-notch cameras in its N Series handsets, and make them even more desirable to potential customers.

"Hopefully now that it's free over VoIP, people will use it," said fring. "Fring enables it on [PC] Skype, and those calls are already very popular. About 30% of their customers use video. Once you enable it on mobile, I am sure it will be popular."

Fring also aggregates all of a user's social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging, into one mobile buddy list (whose members are called fringsters, regardless of which social net they came from) and integrates this with voice. Users can call, chat, IMS and now videoconference with any ‘fringsters’ who use fring or Skype, as well as on regular phone lines via Skype-Out or SIP services. The service also works for calls made from cellphones to webcam PCs. Fring is free and supported by ads.

As the fring client is available on Android, the new features might well find their way to ‘Google phones’ soon too, but for now they will only appear in their full two-way form on the Nokia N Series and other Symbian models like the XpressMusic. The limitation of the video service on iPhones is because of the position of the Apple product’s camera.