Ringo App Blocked by Indian Tele Operators

Just days after launching its local calling service in India priced at 19 paisa/minute, Mumbai-based international voice calling app, Ringo, has been forced to suspend the service.

Ringo on Monday received a major setback to its India operations when some of the Indian Telecom operators allegedly blocked the app on their networks. According to the company’s official blog, this has led Ringo to suspend its domestic call service until the issue with operators is resolved.

Founded in 2014 by Bhavin Turakhia, Ringo, is a flagship product of Directi. It is a voice calling app that does away with the hassles of tele-communication, like switching to different apps for calling options, confusing tariff plans, high costs and low quality calls.

Ringo app is already being used in 100+ countries (in the UK and Brazil) and has about 500K+ downloads across iOS, Android, Windows platform and as well as at Ringo.co platform.

Basically, Ringo makes bulk purchase of minutes from operators and offers voice calling to their users at 19 paisa/minute. Due to this price difference, it has not gone down well with the telecom operators, who have invested billion of dollars to build their network.

In the official blog post, Bhavin Thurakia, Founder and CEO of Ringo said, “The service is a fully legal, compliant service, and follows all aspects of the DoT and TRAI regulations. However in spite of being fully compliant with the law, the service allegedly seems to have been blocked as of half an hour ago (30th November) without any notice to our service providers. This is the information we have just received from our service provider.”

However, the company will continue to persevere in providing innovative voice solutions, and intends to take relevant remedial action, but do not have an ETA on the same. “As it stands, until we manage to get an intervention from relevant regulatory authorities to unblock our service, none of our domestic calls are going through,” mentioned in this statement.

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