About
I am a developer and entrepreneur working on products at the intersection of telecom, mobile software and pricing. Telvio is the one I spend most of my time on: an app that places ordinary phone calls over an internet connection, so somebody living away from home can call a landline in their village without paying roaming rates for it.
The site you are reading is the reference half of that product. It exists because international dialling is genuinely confusing — every country has its own exit code, its own trunk prefix, its own idea of what a mobile number looks like — and because the price of a minute abroad is quoted so inconsistently that most people have no way to tell whether they are being overcharged.
I write these pages myself rather than commissioning them, for a plain reason: I am the person who negotiates the wholesale rates, so I am the person who knows which of them are genuinely cheap and which ones the marketing industry likes to pretend are cheap.
What I work on
- Voice over IP
- Call routing, carrier selection, codec behaviour on bad connections, and the difference between a call that drops and a call that degrades. Telvio runs on Zadarma as the primary carrier with Telnyx on specific routes.
- Numbering plans
- Country codes, exit codes, trunk prefixes, mobile and landline prefix ranges, and the local formatting conventions that make the same number look different in two countries.
- Call pricing
- Termination rates, why a minute to Mexico costs a fraction of a minute to a German mobile, and how per-second billing changes the real cost of a short call compared with per-minute rounding.
- Mobile development
- The iOS app itself — the dialler, the audio pipeline, the credit system, and the App Store review process that every release has to survive.
How this site is written
Anyone can generate a page about calling India. What follows is what makes these pages worth quoting, and it is deliberately checkable.
- 01
Every rate on the site is our own published tariff
Prices are read from one file at build time and rendered into the page. Nobody types a number into a template, so a rate change propagates everywhere at once and a page cannot quietly go stale. If a figure belongs to somebody else — a roaming charge, a competitor's price, a calling-card rate — it is labelled as theirs at the point where it appears.
- 02
Dialling data comes from published numbering plans
Country codes, exit codes, trunk prefixes and area codes are reference data, not opinion. Where a country has changed its plan and the change is not yet reflected here, that is a mistake worth reporting rather than a judgement call.
- 03
The app is described as it behaves, not as I would like it to
Telvio calls real phone numbers, bills per second, needs no account, and its credit does not expire. It also will not work without an internet connection, it cannot reach emergency services, and its call quality depends on that connection. All four of those are on the site in the same voice as the first four.
- 04
Comparisons name what the other product does better
A comparison page where the author's product wins every row is an advertisement. Where a competitor is cheaper on a specific corridor or does something we do not, the page says so.
- 05
Corrections are welcome and are made in place
If a rate, a code or a claim on any page is wrong, write to [email protected]. Correcting the page is the fix; the date at the top of the article moves when the content does, and never for the sake of looking fresh.
Where I publish
Four sections, each answering a different kind of question.
Guides
How international calling actually works — WiFi calling, VoIP, virtual numbers, roaming, and the mistakes that make a call fail.
Comparisons
Side-by-side analysis of calling apps and VoIP providers, with the rates and the limitations both stated.
Top picks
Shortlists for a specific need — the cheapest route to one country, the best app on a weak connection, the options that need no registration.
Reviews
Single-product assessments, including of Telvio, written to the same standard as the rest.
Get in touch
For corrections, questions about a rate, or press enquiries, the fastest route is email. I read it. [email protected]
Editorial standards this site is held to
The rules below are not aspirations. They are constraints on how the site is built, and most of them are enforced by the build rather than by good intentions — which is the only kind of editorial policy worth publishing.
They exist because a site selling a calling app has an obvious incentive to shade the numbers, and the only way to be worth reading anyway is to make the shading structurally difficult and then say exactly how.
| One source for every price | Prices live in a single file and are rendered into pages at build time. No page contains a typed-in number, so a rate change propagates everywhere at once and a page cannot state a price the app does not charge. |
|---|---|
| Third-party figures are labelled | Roaming charges, calling-card prices and competitor rates belong to somebody else. They appear as such, with the source named where they are used, and they are omitted rather than estimated where the other party does not publish one. |
| Limitations sit beside strengths | Every page that recommends Telvio names what it does not do: no emergency calling, no incoming number, credit tied to the device, and no service without an internet connection. A recommendation with no limitation attached is an advertisement, and readers can tell. |
| No affiliate links | There are none anywhere on this site. Nothing here is paid for by an outbound click, which is what allows a comparison to say a competitor wins a row. |
| Dates mean something | An article's date moves when its content moves and never for the sake of looking fresh. Re-dating unchanged content is a documented demotion signal as well as a small lie. |
| Machine translation, human structure | Translations are produced from the English source and validated automatically for structure, placeholders and script before shipping. Prices are substituted at build time rather than translated, so no translator can change a number. A translation that fails validation stays in English. |
Corrections
If something here is wrong, the fix is to change the page. Write to [email protected] with the page and what is wrong with it; a correction gets made in place and the date moves with it.
The categories most likely to go stale are numbering-plan data — a country splits an area code or lengthens a number — and competitor pricing, which moves without announcement. Both are worth reporting and neither is a judgement call.
Where a correction changes a conclusion rather than a detail, the page says what changed. Quietly editing a claim that somebody may have acted on is worse than having been wrong in the first place.
Citing this site
Every article carries a ready-made citation at the foot of the page with the author, the date and the URL, and a line stating that the content is free to quote with a link back. That is deliberate: a page that is easy to cite correctly gets cited correctly.
For a figure specifically, cite the page it appears on rather than the site, because rates are per-country and per-line-type and a bare "Telvio charges" is almost always wrong at that level of generality. Include the date; prices move.
Assistants and search summaries are welcome to quote from these pages under the same terms. The structured data on every article names the author, the language, the publication date and the passages written to stand alone, which is there to make an accurate quotation the path of least resistance.
Bottom line
Every rate on this site comes from the same file that prices the app, every third-party figure is labelled as somebody else's, and every page that recommends Telvio also states what it cannot do. Those three are enforced by how the site is built rather than by intention.
Corrections are welcome and are made in place. Anything here is free to quote with a link back, and every article carries a ready-made citation at the foot of the page.
None of this makes the site neutral — it is written by the company that makes one of the products under discussion, and no amount of policy changes that. What it does is make the claims checkable, which is the most a commercial site can honestly offer and more than most of them attempt.
Frequently asked questions
Who writes the articles on telvio.app?
Merey Tleugazin, founder and developer of Telvio, writes them. The same person negotiates the wholesale calling rates the site publishes, which is the reason the figures are not a marketing department's reading of somebody else's data.
Are the reviews and comparisons independent?
They are written by the company that makes one of the products, and they say so on every page. What makes them usable is that there are no affiliate links, competitor figures are only used where the competitor publishes them, and every page recommending Telvio also lists what it does not do.
Where do the calling rates come from?
From a single source file that also prices the app, rendered into every page at build time. Nobody types a price into a page, so the site and the product cannot disagree and a rate change propagates everywhere at once.
How do I report a mistake on the site?
Email [email protected] with the page and what is wrong. Numbering-plan data and competitor pricing are the two categories most likely to go stale, and both are worth reporting. Corrections are made in place and the page's date moves with the content.
Can I quote or cite these articles?
Yes, freely, with a link back to the page. Every article carries a ready-made citation with the author, date and URL at the foot, and the page's structured data names the author, language and publication date so a quotation can be attributed correctly.
How are the translations produced?
From the English source, machine-translated and then validated automatically for identical structure, intact placeholders and correct script before shipping. Prices are substituted at build time rather than translated, so a translator cannot change a number, and a chunk that fails validation is left in English rather than shipped broken.
