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

Sipphone

Gizmo5 adds free conference calls

Free calls with Asterisk/Gizmo5 trick