Yippii has launched a voip service reselling Freshtel’s services to the Christian community. Yippii targets the pastors and communities in its immediate network which is reportedly about one million members. Yippii also planned to create a complete Internet telephony service encompassing an Internet phone, Freshtel Mobilelink (Freshtel’s VoIP over 3G service ) and hardware such as the Siemens dual cordless phone which will be customised and branded for Yippii.

Freshtel has succeeded in getting its voip application for the Apple iPhone approved for sale on the Apple iTunes Store. Users of Freshtel can use their existing mobile phone numbers to call other Freshtel users free of charge. All other calls to mobile, landline and international numbers are charged at a substantially cheaper rate than mobile calls.

After successful trial with supermarket giant Tesco in the UK, start-up Freshtel has launched commercial voice-over-internet protocol services for mobile phone users commercially in Australia. The voip service will be offered for sale directly over the company’s website, with Freshtel currently working to complete partnership agreements in both Australia and other markets. The operator aims to market the service to its entire user base, claiming it has approximately 300,000 users on its network.

Freshtel says its VoIP service trial on four Nokia handsets, the N95, the E65, E51 and N81, is the simplest in the market as it uses the customers existing number. The phones uses Symbian 60 functionality.

The trial was certainly easy to set up, using a SMS to request the application download and integrating with the users SMS inbox and phonebook with no set up.

When connected to WiFi, the service offers the normal free calls and texts between online users. However, it also gives verbal and on-screen confirmation if the service is free when the phone book is uses in a normal way.

Whether consumers are sufficiently interested in VoPI to test this service remains to be seen, but if big-name branding comes in then the marketing push might be enough, especially if WiFi enabled handsets become more ubiquitous in the market.

Freshtel, the Australia-based internet phone provider, claims it is in talks with various network carriers and mobile handset manufacturers to extend its VoIP service. This include launching a mobile-integrated VoIP trial in the UK in partnership with Tesco, offering seamless use with internet-enabled mobiles.

Also, Freshtel offers it voip services under other carrier branding in Europe and the Asia Pacific regions, where it already has an infrastructure presence and sees a dense customer base.

Under the branded service, it could potentially see a phone locked to the Three network using a Vodafone-branded VoIP service, though no specific companies have been touted as yet.