December 11, 2003

"FREE" online phone calls and conferencing

My spin:I know you guys have been inundated with "free" calls over the Internet pitches. For the most part, it's not hype, but reall technology, transmitting voice calls over the Internet infrastructure. Larger companies such as CISCO, 3COM offer, VOIP solutions. Vonage, is carpet bombing us with their online advertising and AT&T, Time Warner and many other companies are offering or will be offering the service soon also.

However, I saw today a press release from Sipphone, on their VOIP solution also:

"SIPphone makes it possible for people to send and receive free calls worldwide using a technology called SIP. To make a SIP call, just plug in a SIPphone or regular phone with a SIPadaptor into a broadband Internet connection, dial the desired SIP number, and start talking. All SIPphones and SIPadaptors come preconfigured with a SIP number (for example: 1-747-474-5000). You can share this number with others who have a SIPphone and communicate with each other. By making this number available to other SIP users, they'll be able to call you from their SIPphone. SIPphone also supports caller ID and call-waiting, all at no charge. "

So it appears you can't use your Sipphone to call a phone on the regular telephone network. However, if you and your office purchase a set of phones, you could call your office from Israel or Jamaica for free - provided you have a broadband connection away from the office.

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