UPDATE March 2003: For perspective we have decided to leave past entries on this page for those who are interested in seeing how gimmicks and even earnest attempts to bring something new and innovative have waxed and waned over the last few years. The next paragraph starts out explaining how many free calling methods there are "out there" but unfortunately that is really not the case anymore. The best of the free services was dialpad and it is (like all the others) gone or no longer totally free. You may find it amusing to read the history of the last few years of "free" calling plans. This page was originally created in 1996 with Net Phones (PC to PC) being the only real method to "call" for free and it has been modifed several times with new ideas being presented along the way. Most of the content below was added between 1999 and 2001. The links have been left - dead or not.

Many people are surprised to find out how many different methods exist to get FREE calling, and we're talking about legal (not red boxing or "alligator clip" calls) methods of getting long distance totally free. While they may be legal, some are certainly not without catches. Check out the area of this site devoted to the over 100 Net Phone apps which have circulated around the web through the years and the current state of voice and video over the Internet. If both parties have computers and Internet connections, then calling is totally free, unless one or both incur per minute charges for the Internet connection. The quality is variable and never quite up to a phone-to-phone conventional call, but it is cheap and can be a lot of fun. Unlike the phone, you have access to lists of people from all over the world who want to chat. It's like Ham radio on steroids. You can choose the people you want speak to, what country you would like to call and learn more about it from a native's perspective. It's great for international calling to friends and family living in or visiting areas where you might pay exorbitant fees for a conventional call.

A fairly new service has been initiated which gives you a "partially free" phone-to-phone calling capability, but there are a couple of big catches. First, just signing up can be daunting. You must get on a waiting list to be allowed to use the service and then your total time can be limited. Several of us have signed up for the service, one dating back over 4 months, and none of us has yet been given the "privilege" of using even one minute of "free" time. The time is not totally free either. In what many may consider to be the final invasion of Madison Avenue, you must listen to and actually respond to voice prompts for commercial ads at the start of each call for a fixed amount of time for each minute of long distance calling you will receive afterwards. Still interested? You can check this out at the FreeWay site of Broadpoint and see if your luck is any better. Let us know how it goes with your service. In the last few weeks, even more of these plans have become available, and we are checking them out one by one. We really don't believe any of these will be worth it to the average consumer, and there are a couple of plans which use an advertising gimmick (borders on a scam) offering totally free calls to ANY number in the world, but you must give out a credit card number, and the fine print reveals some undesirable details which will almost definitely result in exorbitant charges on your credit card.

UPDATE ON THE SERVICE ABOVE
At the end of February this "service" was totally changed. It is hard to say whether the change is for the better or not. You can be the judge, as now anyone can avail themselves of this service. You buy one of the sponsor's products or services and this entitles you to receive up to 2 hours of "free" calling per month with no real elaboration on the fine print or conditions. We are currently checking it out by purchasing something we might have bought anyway and will post the results of our research into this new angle after we have had a couple of months to evaluate it. In the meantime, continue to send your opinions about the service by using the form below.

You can get the use of "your own" toll-free number for voice-mail ONLY from another provider which WILL sign you up immediately. If you want calls actually forwarded to your own line it will cost you MORE than simply signing up for your own toll-free number. You only have a total of 30 minutes of time each month and you can only accumulate 45 minutes of total time regardless of how long you allow it to build up. The time you use to access your voice-mail from a phone counts towards your 30 minutes. You don't actually have your own dedicated toll-free number. Everyone has the same number and is given an extension which must be entered for people to leave a message. The idea is to get you to sign up for the paying service, which is NOT worth it. You are only provided free with what amounts to a few cents of voice-mail each month. Remember, people can only leave a message, they can't actually talk to you for free. If you have your own toll-free number you essentially pay only for the time you talk, and the current best rates are below a nickel a minute, so 30 minutes of time would only cost about 1.50 and you can actually talk to the person calling! Check out our info on toll-free numbers before agreeing to pay for any service like this. Although we can't honestly recommend this free voice-mail service, if you would like more information, you can take a look at their website and decide for yourself. Just remember, DON'T pay for any time on the service or you'll be wasting money. BTW - you will have to allow cookies to be set or you can't even load their home page.

Another service has recently become available which really does allow for free calling to any number in the US, from anywhere in the world! You must be thinking there is a catch, but not really. The only catch may be that as more people learn of it, the quality and accessibility may drop, or it may simply be discontinued in its present form. For the time being, this is the best deal we have ever seen for long distance calling. It gives you the same advantages as a net to telephone service, but at no cost, and right now the quality is nothing short of amazing for a VOIP (voice over Internet) based calling system. It is supposedly being supported by nothing more than targeted banner ads and you are not even required to "click thru" on any of them to make your calls. The service obviously has the capability of handling only a certain number of simultaneous calls, so you will get busy signals from time to time. You are required to fill out a questionnaire with a fair bit of personal information so they can target you with the advertising. It takes a few minutes to download the app required to place the calls, and as far as we are able to determine, at this time no massive stream of information about the contents of your computer are transmitted back to the company during the installation or later use of the product, although one must always keep this possibility in mind when using any app offering totally free services in exchange for providing advertisers with personal information. We almost hate to give out the URL because we can't believe the current quality and accessibility can continue if the site is swamped with users. The purpose of our site is, of course to provide all the information we can, so here it is. Please don't abuse the service. Only use it when you really need to, and maybe this kind of thing will be available for some time to come.

UPDATES ON THE SERVICE ABOVE
As expected, the quality of dialpad has begun to suffer significantly over the last few months, although the price is still hard to beat. Out of the last 100 test calls from all over the world, about 20 or so have been good, with the remainder falling into the fair to poor quality range. As we first reported in mid 1999, many of the Net to Phone app developers have begun to offer free calling within the US as well. You must install their apps and sign up for their service, even though you will not (for the time being) incur charges for US calls. You MUST use the link on their web pages to make the "free" calls, and they are clearly not as convenient as the totally free dialpad.com. If you use the apps directly you WILL usually be charged by the minute. As dialpad.com uses an auto installing, quick access method, and currently has no catches, we suggest that you stick with dialpad for your free calls until we are convinced that something better is available. UPDATE NOTE: With dialpad's quality sometimes suffering, we have found some of the Net To Phone dedicated apps delivering better overall performance. We continue to recommend that you start with dialpad and try them all. Why not? They really are free, though their suitability for calls within the US or ANY business calls to or from anywhere is questionable. AUGUST 2000 UPDATE: Overall performance varies substantially on each call, but we now feel that dialpad is clearly the best option to try initially. DECEMBER 2000 UPDATE: After continued test calls on a variety of free VOIP services, we remain convinced that dialpad is the easiest to use and has comparable quality to the others, though it varies considerably from call to call regardless of which provider you use.

If you know of or learn about other free services not listed here, please let us know about them and what your personal experiences have been. We'll check them out and add them here with our (unbiased of course) evaluation. Use the form below to send us any info you have about free apps or anything else of interest.

OK- IF YOU MADE IT DOWN HERE YOU HAVE REALIZED THAT ALMOST NONE OF THIS STUFF STILL APPLIES!!

You may send a request for information or order any of our plans by simply filling out the form below. We can contact you by E-mail if you desire, although we actually prefer to speak to you directly at your convenience. We don't ask for any personal information over the Internet so just leave your name, phone number and the best time to call, or leave only your name and E-mail address if you don't want a return call. Leave any message you may have in the text box at the bottom and press the submit button. You are not signing up for any plan by filling out this form, nor are you obligated to accept anything if we call.

Name:   

E-Mail: 

City:       State: 

Phone:  --

Enter The Time To Call In YOUR Local Time.

Best Time is AM PM On Date 

DON'T Call Earlier Than AM PM

DON'T Call Later Than AM PM

Comments And Questions May Be Entered Below.



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