Free Calls

Gizmo5 adds free conference calls

Doug Mohney — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:59:18 -0400

SIP/VoIP provider Gizmo5, home of SIPphone, has added free conference calling for its customers.

The company sent an email announcement about the new service over the weekend, reports Om Malik. Om is a bit skeptical of the service, having run into voice quality problems with Gizmo5 in the past, but he says he was able to get a room number with ease and a conference call number "surprisingly smoothly." Each conference room can handle up to 10 people, and it's easy enough to "tape" conversations for archival purposes.

Observers of entrepreneur/mad genius Michael Robinson might interpret this as an opportunistic move to snap users who liked Skype's free, but now dropped, conferencing service.

For more:
- Om blogs about Gizmo5 new conference call service at Web Worker Daily

Free calls with Asterisk/Gizmo5 trick

Doug Mohney — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:46:42 -0400

Gizmo5, the entity formerly known as sipphone, has a lot of untapped potential for routing free calls across the Internet, says IP PBX site Nerd Vittles.

Turns out Gizmo5 has peering deals with a number of phone companies routing calls over the Internet. Its list covers more than 10 percent of both phones and cell phones in the United States, including a number of cable companies, IP/Internet Telephony Service providers and wireless carriers. Brand names Gizmo5 can reach include: Alltel, Cablevision Lightpath, Cbeyond, Cincinnati Bell Wireless, Comcast, Cox, RCN, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and XO.

Gizmo5 has a feature called backdoor dialing; type 0101 and the 10 digit number of your choice to see if you get a free call. You need to have some Gizmo5 CallOut minutes/money to activate the service, so there is a $10 cost to establish an account. If you want people to call you back, throw in $3 a month for a phone number.

If you aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty, there are plenty of gritty details to do a configuration within the Asterisk "FreePBX" variant, some other tricks to take advantage of Gizmo5 phone numbers and routing, and also ways to add ENUM support.

For more:
- Eat up Nerd Vittles "to do" for getting Gizmo5 free calls using Asterisk

Free World Dialup no Longer 'Free'

Doug Mohney — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:05:28 -0400

Over the weekend, the one million registered users to Free World Dialup (FWD) were told that free is no longer free. After 12 years of free operations, users will be asked to pay $30 per year as of September 1, 2008. The announcement also named Daniel Beringer, as CEO of FWD.

In an email sent out on Friday by FWD founder and VoIP pundit Jeff Pulver, the $30 yearly fee is being justified as a "magic number" that is only "10%" of the cost of Vonage's unlimited usage plan. However, Pulver has disavowed any connections with old style telephony and the PSTN, vowing not to chase per-minute arbitrage for lower-cost long distance calling as Skype, Jajah and others have done. According to the blog post, FWD "will provide no services to facilitate interconnection with the telephone network," which means the company won't support "-In" and "-Out" connection type services to the PSTN. It also won't have to worry about 911 and CALEA obligations.

It will be interesting to see how well FWD's business model will work in practice. In theory, users could pay $30 to be able to connect to a large number of SIP networks for voice, IM, and video calls. But it is only a matter of time before one or more of those networks start asking for interconnection charges since the "Free" has gone from FWD. Vonage has already nixed FWD's free calls on its network.

The blog post also cites Vonage as a successful business model on track to generate nearly "$1 billion," but this reporter isn't sure if that's a good analogy. Vonage is still burdened with significant debt due to high per user marketing costs and its services are also designed as a plug-replacement for PSTN, with the ability to reach any number anywhere, including 911.

For more
- Pulver FWD $30 per year manifesto blog

Related articles:
Beringer has pontificated on Lights Out for Phone Networks
FWD may have The Telco Skype Killer to fear

Lights Out for Phone Networks

Doug Mohney — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:37:33 -0400

SIP VoIP devices already account for as much as 20 percent of landline phone traffic, with mobile networks soon to embrace VoIP as Fring and Truphone offer options to traditional voice plans, says Daniel Beringer over at GigaOm. It's only a matter of time before SIP makes the analog network go away.

Pile on SIP clients for consumer handheld devices (Games like the Nintendo DS or players like the iPod Touch), gizmos like magicJack, and free calls for subscribers on services like Skype, Vonage, Jajah or Jaxtr and it's only a matter of time before a majority of callers stay "on net" rather than gatewaying out to the PSTN.

Of course, there's the not-so-minor matter of how all the "free" services pick up extra revenue by connecting calls from the PSTN to their clients. A 20 percent VoIP penetration implies that called and calling parties have VoIP devices about 4 percent of the time, leaving plenty of work (right now) for the legacy phone network. Down the road, the penetration of VoIP devices will cross a line where the traditional minutes-based business model of telco and VoIP players alike just doesn't work.

The legacy network has its uses, with reliability giving the POTS an edge over the Internet for sales calls and other "high-value" communications. (This reporter wonders if Berenger thinks telemarketers calling during dinner represents high value). Beyond that, there's a dive into the Brave New World of better devices, cheaper rates, and a train-wreck at some point when the by-the-minute model declines and revenues from arbitrage goes away.

For more
- GigaOm Sees The End of Telephony

Related articles:
PSTN and VoIP get equal time in China
VoIP peering shapes up to disrupt
Keynote Kicks VoIP Reliability and Clarity

Nimbuzz Retreads Familiar Ground

Doug Mohney — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:25:39 -0400

Nimbuzz has announced an application to provide free calls, chat and more, pumping an all-in-one solution for free mobile VoIP calling, conferencing calling, instant messaging, chat and group chat, and photo and file sharing across multiple IM communities, including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, and AIM, plus 23 social networks, including Facebook and Myspace. Is an offer to include a set of Ginzu knives far behind?

It's hard to get excited because of the glut of companies offering bits and pieces to the puzzle, ranging from Skype with a mobile client, free client-to-client calling and IM solution to Jajah/Jangl's bits splicing in VoIP to social networking. Nimbuzz's Swiss Army knife approach with a S****-out approach to pick up a couple of pennies per minute per call sounds tired. Skype isn't standing still either, moving to testing a mobile VoIP client in Europe and other improvements no doubt in the works.

Despite being officially announced today, Nimbuzz says it already has more than 500,000 registered users (collected through their beta started in January 2007) and is generating more than a million logins per week. The company resides in Rotterdam and boasts of venture and strategic funding by Mangrove Capital Partners, the VC backers of Skype.

For more:
- Nimbuzz TechCrunch/Washington Post write-up.

Related articles:
A fring fling on iPhone
Jangl and TalkPlus On the Block
Skype's mobilized phone play