Internet Telephony

Free Long Distance Phone calls
Free Long Distance Calls Capped:  Microsoft has begun curtailing its free net-based long distance service, unveiled during the height of the dot-com frenzy, when gaining marketshare was deemed more important than, oh, having a viable business model. The MSN Messenger 3.0 now allows free long distance calls to the U.S. or Canada to last no longer than 5 minutes, at which time, you have to redial to continue the conversation for another five minutes. Ads pop up before and after each five-minute call.

Users report that versions 3.6.0024 or earlier of the MSN Messenger software do not have the five-minute limitation, at least at this writing.

MSN Messenger 3.0 was released in mid-2000 as an upgrade to Microsoft's  Instant Messaging service. It incorporates technology from Net2Phone, providing free long-distance calls over the Internet to the United States and Canada. The service also offers Web-to-phone text messaging features. It's freely available from www.microsoft.com, but smart surfers may want to skip the MSN connection and log in directly to Net2Phone, which still provides free domestic calls to consumers who make phone calls directly through it.

Yahoo Messenger (also based on Net2Phone), Nortel and Dialpad, noted below, offer similar services.

Other options for Free Long Distance Phone calls
Dialpad.com laid claim in 1999 as the world's first free web-to-phone service. with it, you can make unlimited free phone calls to anybody in the U.S. (while you are browsing the Internet, if you wish!) as long as the other party has a valid phone number. Dialpad.com, the company claims, works just like your own telephone. That's true, if your own phone is an old analog cell phone that has occasional trouble connecting and suffers from fairly poor voice quality. But, hey, it's free.

With it, you can make phone calls to any phone number in the U.S. (The company says it will support international calls some day, but is currently working on improving service and quality in the U.S. The service does not currently work to or from Canada.)

Dialpad.com uses a Java applet, but the software is currently exploiting some Windows-only features. Thus, Windows 9x users don't need to manually download and install any software -- it just works. The company also announced support for Mac OS X in July 2001. Linux users, however, are currently out of luck.

Dialpad.com says it can provide this creative solution with no charge to you through an -- ahem -- "innovative advertising model." A rotating series of banner ads (that's innovative?) can be viewed in the dialpad applet.

You can sign up for the free service at dialpad.com

Nortel's "Concept Zone" (concepts.extremevoice.com) is a site offering previews of several new technologies the company is working on. Until recently, it offered a sneak peek at a technology called FreeLD, that allowed you to make a free 5-minute long distance phone call to anyone in the U.S. or Canada. Unfortunately, the company now says "At this time we have decided not to continue to offer the FreeLD service."

There was also a utility that allowed people to call you with the click of a mouse, and another that allows you to record audio "VoiceNotes" and send them to other users as email attachments. These, too, have been discontinued. Bummer.

Beware of BuddyPhone. On the surface, this sounds like a fantastic utility that lets you place phone calls over the Internet at no additional charges. You can use buddyPhone in conjunction with Mirabilis' ICQ, and all of your ICQ contacts will automatically appear in your call menu. ICQ is not required, however, and buddyPhone is a full-featured call management system in its own right. It can auto-answer, block calls, and much more - it can even work as an answering machine.

So what's not to like? For starters, It's ADware, using the notorious Aureate/Radiate "spy" files. (You can use the free "Ad-Aware" utility from www.lavasoft.de to check for and, if necessary, remove these files.) Moreover, the voice quality of BuddyPhone is inferior to other titles on the market, such as I-Link, AIM, Dialpad or Microsoft's own NetMeeting. And, if those aren't good enough reasons, users complain that the software is "bug infested." See Betanews.com for more information.

Free World Dialup
Still in the "proof of concept" phase is a system called the Free World Dialup project. According to the company, the system is a peer-to-peer network that allows a community of broadband users to connect to one-another by means of a hardware device costing about US$150 and use each other's phones to make local calls. Once connected, a call to any phone number in the world is free, as long as another member exists in that part of the world. In other words, it's a bit like Napster: a peer-to-peer network, except that it isn't music that is being shared -- it's local telephone access. News.com has details....

Web-to-Fax Service
Until Sept. 30th, you were able to fax any web page to any fax machine in the USA, Canada or Australia, by taking advantage of MacLaunch: The Fax Channel, a free service.

However, the fax4free.com service upon which MacLaunch is based has discontinued the free service (Doh!). We haven't yet checked out the company's new paid offerings. Other companies with similar offerings include:

• http://www.efax.com
• http://www.tpc.int/sendfax.html
• and several others, mentioned at dailyedeals.com.

Tip: DynSite is a Windows shareware program that will register your dynamic IP address with free dynamic DNS services such as dhs.org, dtdns.net, dyndns.org or yi.org (you have to sign up with at least one of them) so that you can be called in NetMeeting or some other video-phone programs using a fixed host name (e.g., myhost.dhs.org, where "myhost" is a name of your choice) instead of your dynamic IP address that changes each time you reconnect. Get it from author Noël Danjou's Website.

For Further Reading

• PC Magazine: a roundup of Net-to-phone services
• Go2Mac: Making PC-to-Phone Calls With a Mac