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Viber is celebrating this year’s Cinco de Mayo with free calls to Mexico from the United States, the company said, having added that the new offer is starting today and will run indefinitely. Up until now, users of the Viber app for Android and iOS devices who wanted to call Mexico from the United States had to pay 1.5¢ per minute when connecting to a landline number and 1.8¢ per minute when calling mobile devices, depending on their Viber Out plan of choice. No prepaid service will now be required for contacting Mexican users from the U.S. via Viber, though the offer doesn’t apply to any other country, the Rakuten-owned firm disclosed.
Viber Out is the app’s flagship service and one of its main monetization avenues, having been designed for calling landline and phone numbers internationally at affordable rates. While Viber’s latest move is being framed as a celebration of Cinco de Mayo, it’s also meant to promote its platform as a whole. The company is quick to point out that its free U.S. calls to Mexico come with “absolutely no strings attached” and will work for all American users starting today without the need for coupons, vouchers, codes, or any other form of intervention on their part. The offer stands for both the mobile and desktop variants of Viber, the firm said.
The tool competes with apps such as Skype that have also been offering Internet telephony services for years now, with Viber pointing out that the recipients of your phone calls don’t need to have an Internet connection themselves. Likewise, if you’re a U.S. Viber user calling anyone to Mexico but don’t have another use for the service, you won’t be required to sign up for a prepaid plan or add any credit to your account. To get started with the free U.S.-Mexico calls in Viber, all you have to do is install the app from the Google Play Store if you’re using an Android device, sync it with your contacts, and select a Mexican number to contact at no charge and without any limitations.