All IndiaLD services will be offline on April 14th from 12-4 PM PST. During this time you will not be able to make calls or access the IndiaLD website.

While we try to take the service down as little as possible, sometimes it is necessary. In this case, we have to perform some hardware upgrades to our servers, routers, and add some additional equipment into the cage. It takes horsepower to run almost a million and a half minutes of calling to India a day, especially when that number keeps getting bigger. These hardware upgrades will ensure that we can keep our services running smooth when we get past the 2 million minute a day mark later on in the year.

As usual, we have picked the quietest time in the week to take the system offline. This downtime will occur during late late late night in India and hopefully everyone you know will be sound asleep.

You can now call USA toll free numbers from outside the country using your IndiaLD.com account. This includes 800, 866, 877, and 888 numbers. Several of our customers in Canada, Australia, and the UK have been looking for the ability to call toll free numbers in the US, and we are now happy that we can provide this service to them. Many people often buy US products or need to reach a US customer support line (airlines, banks, computer companies), and can’t get through because 800 numbers are usually not supported overseas.

To make a call to a USA toll free number from outside the US, call your local IndiaLD access number, and then when prompted, dial the number like you would any other USA phone number starting with 1 then the area code (in this case 800, 866, 877, or 888). We’ll connect you just like a normal US phone call. While this is normally a toll free service in the US, it will deduct from your monthly minutes just like any other call to the US because of our termination costs.

Hopefully this will help you out and keep you from having to dig around websites for an international phone number for a lot of big US companies.

Update: The animal I was thinking of is the Hawaiian Monk Seal (Monachus schauinsland)

Monk seals are some of the most endangered and rarest marine mammals on earth. There are maybe 1500 Hawaiian monk seals alive right now. There are only 300-500 of their Mediterranean cousins left, and the Caribbean monk seal was last spotted in the 1950s and declared extinct about a decade ago.

The Hawaiian monk seal is a unique marine mammal. First off there are only two extant species of tropical/sub-tropical seals on earth. Second, because their population is so small, random events play a much larger role in their survival (demographic stochasticity). Finally because there is such a small number of reproductive females left, very abnormal breeding behavior takes place (look up mobbing if you are interested).

Tomorrow I will give free minutes to everyone who guessed the species I was thinking about. Today, I would like you all to take a moment and think about the Hawaiian monk seal. I hope they make it, but the odds are against them. Realize that while technology, modernization, and progress brings a great deal to humans, too often it is the overall diversity of this world that suffers. Most of our users are extremely bright professionals full of great promise. Let’s all try to make a positive impact for our future generations.

—Original Post Below——

I am going to give away 200 free minutes to everyone who can guess what animal I am thinking of. You need to be specific. I want the species name (common name, not the latin name). For instance you can’t say monkey.

Anyway here are your clues:

demographic stochasticity

French Frigate Shoals

MMPA

I wrote a paper on these guys back when I was studying at the MBL in Woods Hole. Submit your answer via the comments below. I will keep the comments hidden until end of day tomorrow. Every existing account holder that guesses right will get 200 free minutes to call India.

Next order of business: We have added new Australia Access numbers.

DARWIN : +61 08 8986 7057
NEWCASTLE : +61 02 4022 8807
LAUNCESTON : +61 03 6349 1250

Here is more information on cheap calling from India to Australia. I’d like to thank everyone down under for making us the fastest growing calling service to India in Australia. Keep using IndiaLD and tell all your friends about us.

Finally, one of our tried and true carriers had some routing problems to Airtel mobiles in India last night. We bumped around the routing order and have fixed the issue.

We are celebrating out one year anniversary with a bang. Last night we lowered prices on most of our monthly plans and launched two new calling cards.

First the savings!

The 500 and 1000 minute plans both took big cuts in price, and are now just 1.4 cents per minute. We also lowered prices on the 1500 and the 2000 to 1.3 cents per minute.

India LD 500 – Now just $6.95 a month (1.4 cents per minute)

India LD 1000 – Now just $13.95 a month (1.4 cents per minute)

India LD 1500 – Now just $20.25 a month (1.3 cents per minute)

India LD 2000 – Now just $24.95 a month (1.3 cents per minute)

Existing customers do not need to do anything to enjoy the new low rates. At your next billing date, we will automatically charge your account at the new price.

New customers, what are you waiting for? Signup now and enjoy cheap calling to India.

Now on to the calling cards!

IndiaLD is proud to introduce our new 1.5 cent per minute pay as you go India calling card.

• Call all India land and mobile
• 90 day validity
• No admin fees, no sneaky charges
• 1 minute rounding
• Comes with all our famous features
• Access numbers in 11 countries

We’ve heard from many of you who wanted the same low costs to call India as our monthly plans, but needed more flexibility. With our pay as you go calling card, your minutes are good for 90 days, and you decide when to add more minutes. Enjoy the freedom and the great rates with our new phone card.

Finally, The Cheapest Rate To India Ever

In celebration of our 1 year anniversary, we are offering 5000 minutes to call India for $35 with our 007 deal. That’s right, call all of India for just 0.7 cents per minute. This offer has a 45 day validity, is limited to 2 pinless dial numbers, and you must call from our US access number located in California. Other than that, there are no fees, and our other great features like easy dial are included.

This is a limited time promotion that we will be running for the next couple of weeks. If you are a big big talker who loves being on the phone to friends, family, and loved ones back in India, this is an incredible deal. No one has ever sold minutes to India this low, and I really had to convince my partners to do this promotion. I hope you guys burn up the phone lines.

Here are the full details of our 007 deal.

Existing customers who want to switch to our calling cards can do so through our Upgrade Downgrade tool in the account management section. After you have downgraded to a calling card, just log out, log back in, and use the recharge feature to add calling credit. If you still have monthly minutes on your account, they will come over to your calling card.

The 007 deal is for a limited time only. After the promotion has ended, customers can move into our PAYG 1.5 cent calling card or back to one of our cheap monthly plans.

Enjoy the savings and celebrate 1 year of IndiaLD.com. While your at it, be sure to tell family and friends about our great deals.

We now have a customer support number in Australia. Australia customers in need of support can call our Sydney support number at (61) 283075274.

IndiaLD.com will be down for a software upgrade on Monday November 23, from 12-3PM Pacific Time. During this period you will not be able to access the website or make calls.

We do not expect to use the full downtime window for this upgrade.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

We regret to announce that we are no long offering calling out of Singapore. Our access number was turned off a few days ago because of compliance issues with local telecom regulations. Upon researching the issue, we came to the conclusion that we would no longer be able to offer calling out of Singapore. While we have a vibrant and active community of users there, we simply did not have a large enough number of accounts to justify the additional costs necessary to resume our service.

All Singapore account holders will be getting an email notifying them of this issue shortly. We will be deactivating every account with a Singapore address and issuing a full refund for the most recent monthly renewal charge. If you receive this notice, and you want to keep your account active, please contact our customer service department. If you primarily call from Singapore, and you do not get this email, please contact customer service for a refund.

This issue will not affect calling into the country. All IndiaLD account holders can still make calls into Singapore destination.

We are sorry for the short notice and for having to terminate our service in Singapore. It was a very active market and we will miss serving it.

We are taking the system offline tomorrow the 20th at 12 noon PT until 4 PM PT in order to perform several critical updates to our calling software.

You will not be able to make calls during this time. We should be up before 4, but want to reserve the entire 4 hour period in case there are some problems. Tuesday afternoon is the quietest calling period of the week so we picked this time to have the least amount of impact on our customers.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

An announcement of the  number of minutes you have on your account has been added to each call. This has been something our users have been asking about for a long time, and we are happy to finally provide it. The feature has been live for about a week, and it looks like a hit because we are getting fewer people checking minutes on the site.

Next up we are working on getting additional access numbers in Australia, adding more easy dial numbers, supporting soft phones, and of course giving away 2 million free minutes for Diwali.

Sorry I have not been as on top of the blog comments as usual. It has been a rough couple of weeks. I will answer outstanding comments today or tomorrow.

IndiaLD is celebrating festival season with our biggest giveaway ever. We are going to giveaway over 2 million minutes to call India for free this Diwali. Every active account holder will get 1 hour of free calling time added to their account on October 14th.

We are also going to give away 10,000 special easy dialer accounts with an hour of free talk time to anybody who does not already have an account, and wants to call one number in India or our other 27 countries for free.

Here are the details:

Existing account holders – All active accounts on October 14th will automatically get 1 hour of free calling added into their account. You do not need to do anything other than to enjoy the free calling to India for festival season.

Actually there is one more thing you can do…make sure to tell all your friends and family who are not using IndiaLD that we are giving away 10,000 accounts that each have an hour of free calling. No purchase necessary, no credit cards required.

Its our:

Diwali Free Calling Offer!

We are creating 10,000 special accounts with an hour of calling on each of them. That’s 600,000 minutes of free calling to India or the other 27 countries we offer calling to.

These accounts are going to be given out on a first come first serve basis starting on October 14th, and are open to anyone who does not already have an account with IndiaLD and can call a US access number (sorry overseas callers).

We want to show off how easy our pinless dial and easy dial features are, so on October 14th give us your phone number and the number of one person you want to talk to in India or the 27 other countries we offer calling to (Canada, the UK, Singapore, Australia, and more). Then we’ll give you a US number that you can call from your phone that will automatically call the international destination.

These accounts will be good for 14 days or until all the minutes are used up. Enjoy Diwali and call home to India for free with IndiaLD.com.

Look for more details including where to create your free account soon, and start spreading the word that IndiaLD is giving away 2 million minutes of free calls to India for Diwali!