RIM’s new BBM Voice detailed and demoed in tutorial

BBM Voice is here, allowing you to make free calls to your BBM contacts over Wi-Fi. The service launched this week in beta and adds a whole other dimension to one of RIM’s most well known services and USPs. 

The idea behind Voice is simple: it lets you make phone calls to any of BBM contacts for free. It doesn’t work over 3G, so you will have to be connected to Wi-Fi to use it – no doubt in order to keep the networks happy. 

Once connected to a Wi-Fi network, however, you can make free calls to contacts all over the world, with the only prerequisite being that they’re also using BBM and connected to a Wi-Fi network. 

‘BBM Voice is tightly integrated in BBM so there is really no learning curve at all. If your contact is available, just tap the status icon to start a BBM Voice call and that's that,’ reports CrackBerry. 

Know Your Mobile spoke with Sean Hungerford, RIM’s senior manager for BBM, and he told us that Voice was all about adding an additional level of intimacy to the company’s existing service. 

‘Sometimes, it’s just better to say something, whether it’s bad news, a business call, or keeping in touch with family overseas,’ said Hungerford. 

BBM currently has around 60 million users, according to Hungerford, and over 50 per cent of them – around 30 million – have now created groups within the service.

Hungerford says that BBM is the gold standard of mobile IM messaging, and the addition of Voice is the next logical step in the platform’s evolution. 

BBM, including its Voice features, is now available for all BB7 and BB6-powered devices, with support coming for BB5-powered handsets. 

The new service will also be present inside RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, which gets officially launched on January 30. 

Check out the video below to see BBM Voice in action: