LINE to offer low-cost calls to landlines and mobile numbers both domestic and international

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LINE Corp, owner and operator of the free call and messaging app LINE, has announced the release of “LINE Call”, a low-cost calling service for iPhone and Android that allows users to make direct calls to fixed landlines and mobile devices from inside the LINE app at very little cost.

The company said in a statement on its website that LINE Call will be unveiled in March with plans to open up service in six countries — Japan, the United States, Mexico, Spain, Thailand and the Philippines.

The service is known as “LINE Denwa” in Japan, and “LINE Call” globally.

After beginning service on June 23, 2011, LINE released a new feature on Oct 4 of the same year that allows users to call each other for free. Since that time, LINE has continued working to improve the quality of its voice calling feature in order to provide a richer and more useful communication tool for its users. However, the free calling service offered by the app has been limited to calls between LINE users only, meaning that the service could not respond to needs for calls to homes, businesses, offices and other landlines as well as those to mobile devices not registered with LINE.

With the release of LINE Call, the app is now responding to those needs by allowing users to make low-cost calls to public landlines and mobile telephone numbers. Any registered user with an iPhone or Android device can choose to use this new feature from their LINE app in addition to the free voice calling feature already available to LINE users. The new service boasts clear and uninterrupted high-quality voice calls with an interface just like any other mobile phone call without any additional in-app setup.

LINE Call is only available for users with a registered mobile device phone number. Users registered through their Facebook accounts will not be able to use LINE Call.

There is no initial set-up fee or monthly service charge with LINE Call. The user simply pays for the time spent making calls. The calling fee is the same regardless of whether the caller is in the country or traveling abroad. Domestic calls made to landlines in Japan cost 2 yen per minute, the lowest rate in the industry, while calls to mobile devices are charged as low as 6.5 yen per minute. The fee for making international calls from Japan is cheap too – calls to countries such as the U.S. or China are charged at 2 yen per minute for both landlines and mobile devices.